La Trascendencia Dorada (71 page)

“You did not flinch. You knew you were going to die; you knew it when the Sophotechs, who are immune to pain and fear, all screamed and failed and vanished.

“And you knew, in that moment of approaching death, with all your life laid out like a single image for you to examine in a frozen moment of time, that no one was immortal, not ultimately, not really. The day may be far away, it may be further away that the dying of the sun, or the extinction of the stars, but the day will come when all our noumenal systems fail, our brilliant machines all pass away, and our records of ourselves and memories shall be lost.

“If all life is finite, only the grace and virtue with which it is lived matters, not the length. So you decided to stay another moment, and erect magnetic shields, one by one; to discharge interruption masses into the current, to break up the reinforcement patterns in the storm. Not life but honor mattered to you, Helion: so you stayed a moment after that moment, and then another. Voices from the radio screamed at you to transmit your mind to safety, beyond the range of danger. Growing static from the storm drowned out those voices; you laughed, because you, at that moment, were unable to comprehend what it was those voices feared.

“You saw the plasma erupting through shield after shield, almost as if some malevolent intelligence was trying to send a lance of fire to break your Solar Array in two, or vomit up outrageous flames to burn the helpless Phoenix Exultant where she lay at rest, hull open, fuel cells exposed to danger.

“Choas was attempting to destroy your life’s work, and major sections of the Solar Array were evaporated. Chaos was attempting to destroy your son’s lifework, and since he was aboard that ship, outside the range of any noumenal circuit, it would have destroyed your son as well.

“The Array was safe, but you stayed another moment, to try to deflect the stream of particles and shield your son; circuit after circuit failed, and still you stayed, playing the emergency like a raging orchestra.

When the peak of the storm was passed, it was too late for you: you had stayed too long; the flames were coming. But the radio-static cleared long enough for you to have last words with your son, whom you discovered, to your surprise, you loved better than life itself. In your mind, he was the living image of the best thing in you, the ideal you always wanted to achieve.

“ ‘Chaos has killed me, son,’ you said, ‘But the victory of unpredictability is hollow. Men imagine, in their pride, that they can predict life’s each event, and govern nature and govern each other with rules of unyielding iron. Not so. There will always be men like you, my son, who will do the things no one else predicts or can control. I tried to tame the sun and failed; no one knows what is at its fiery heart; but you will tame a thousand suns, and spread mankind so wide in space that no one single chance, no flux of chaos, no unexpected misfortune, will ever have power enough to harm us all. For men to be civilized, they must be unlike each other, so that when chaos comes to claim them, no two will use what strategy the other does, and thus, even in the middle of blind chaos, some men, by sheer blind chance, if nothing else, will conquer.

“ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability…’

“And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.”

Daphne said, “Phaethon had outsmarted you, outsmarted the Hortators, the Curia, everyone. Because the real Helion, had he lived, would have helped Phaethon and funded the launch of the Phoenix Exultant. And there were only two possibilities. Either you become enough like the real Helion to satisfy the Curia, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you are legally dead, and Phaethon inherits your fortune, and the Phoenix Exultant flies. If you do, then you’ll be like he was, and you’ll support Phaethon, lend him your fortune, and still the Phoenix Exultant flies. Do you see why all your simulations trying to recreate your last thoughts, burning yourself again and again, never worked? Because, deep down, underneath the simulations, or before they began, or after they were over, your one thought was fear. You were afraid to lose yourself. Afraid to lose your identity. Afraid that Helion would be declared dead. But the real Helion did lose himself. He lost his identity, and his life, and everything. He was not afraid to die, much less to be declared dead. Don’t you see? This attack by the Silent Oecumene, this weird, slow, hidden war we suddenly find ourselves in, does not change a single thing. If your last storm was caused by an unexpected malicious creature rather than an unexpected malicious whim of fate, it does not matter. Life is still unpredictable. The insight you had, the answer to how to fight against chaos, is the same. Let people like Phaethon establish their own order in the midst of the confusion of the world.”

Helion had bowed his head, and placed one hand before his eyes. Daphne could see no expression. His shoulders moved. Was it tears? Rage? Laughter? Daphne could not determine.

Daphne said cautiously, “Helion? What is your answer?”

Helion did not respond or look up. At that same moment, however, there came an interruption.

Two of the energy mirrors in Helion’s field of vision lit up with images. One showed, against a starry field, the foreshortened view of a blade of dark gold, with a brilliant fire before it like a small sun.

The rate-of-change figures were astonishing. The object was on a path from transjovial space, normally a two- or three-day voyage. This ship had crossed that distance in under five hours.

This was the Phoenix Exultant, her drives before her, her prow pointed away, decelerating. There seemed to be a halo of lightning around her; charged particles emitted by the sun were being deflected by her hull armor, and the ship had such velocity, and solar space was so thick with particles, that the Phoenix Exultant, flying through a vacuum, was creating a wake. Views to either side, in other color schemes, showed other bands of radiation, diagrams of projected paths.

The Phoenix was descending into the sun. The other mirror that had lit displayed a figure in black armor, the faceplate opened to reveal a lined, harsh, gray-eyed face.

Helion said, “What is this apparition from the past, who comes now so boldly past my doors and wards? By what right do you interrupt where I have asked for privacy, you who wear a face out of forgotten bloody history?”

A slight tension around the corners of the mouth might have been a smile or a grimace of impatience. “This is my own face, sir.”

“Good heavens! Atkins?! Have they allowed someone like you to live again?! That means…”

Daphne said softly: “It means war. ‘War and bloodshed, terror and fear; the wailing of widows, the clash of the spear…’ ”

Atkins said: “I’ve never been away, sir. I don’t know why you people think I vanish just because you don’t need me.” He gave an imperceptible movement of a shoulder; his version of a shrug. “No matter. I’m interrupting to tell you you’re in grave danger and to ask you to cooperate. There may be a Silent Oecumene thinking machine, called the Nothing Sophotech, hidden inside the sun. We don’t know what kind of vehicle or equipment or weaponry it has. So far, Silent Oecumene technology has proven able to introduce signals into the shielded interior of circuits, by either teleporting through, or creating electric charges out of, the base-vacuum rest state. We think they can do this for other particle types as well, and we don’t know their range and limitations. The last solar storm, the one that killed the previous Helion, was created and directed by their technology. The Silent Ones are in a position to seize control of the Solar Array. If they do that, especially during the Transcendence, when everyone’s brains will be linked up to an interplanetary communication web … well, you can imagine the results.

From the Array, they could induce prominences to destroy Vafnir’s counterterragenesis stations at Mercury Forward Equilateral, crippling our antimatter supplies at the same time. In any case, I’d like to ask you to cooperate…”

“I know you from old, Captain Atkins. Or is it ‘Marshal’ now? You want me to stay here, in harm’s way, until the enemy commits himself. Then when he reveals himself by striking at me, you promise to avenge my death by utterly annihilating him, is that it? I do not recall that your somewhat Pyrrhic strategy of winning was all that successful at New Kiev, was it?”

“I’m not going to debate old battles with you, sir. But the Earthmind told me you might cooperate. I told her I was sick of trying to deal with you people who do not seem to understand that sometimes, when the cold facts demand it, you have to risk your life or give your life to win the battle. Since you remember me, Helion, you remember why I say that.”

There was something very cold in his tone of voice. Daphne looked back and forth between these two eldest men, wondering what past was between them.

Helion’s expression softened. “I remember the kind of sacrifices you were willing to make, Captain Atkins.” His expression grew distant, thoughtful. “It is odd. You also stand your ground when everyone else runs away to save themselves, I suppose. We may be more alike than I supposed. What a frightening thought!”

“Are you all done kidding around there, sir, or do you want to help?”

Helion straightened. “I will not desert my Oecumene or my post. Tell me what service I can perform for you. Though I think I can guess…”

“Don’t bother guessing. I’ll tell you. Phaethon is about to dock that monster ship he’s flying at your number six Equatorial Main two-fifty. It’s the only place big enough for the Phoenix Exultant”

“You need to give me more time. I have to use my field generators to create a sunspot underneath you as you descend, a cooler area, with a helmet streamer to create a flow of cooler plasma, a stream the Phoenix can follow to come down here to my dock.”

“Don’t bother. Phaethon says the Phoenix Exultant can descend through the corona without damage. But once we dock, I want you to provision him with what he needs: you can spare the antimatter, I take it?”

“I can spare it,” said Helion wryly. His Array controlled thousands of masses of antimatter the size of gas giants.

“And give him your latest intelligence on submantle conditions. The Nothing Sophotech must know we’re coming; Earthmind thinks the approach of the Phoenix might tempt the Nothing to show itself. It will probably try to corrupt your whole Array and take control of you personally, if it hasn’t already done so.” “It has not, to my knowledge.” “That doesn’t mean much, in this day and age. The other thing I want you to do is direct as many deep probes as you can toward the solar core, to see if we can find any echotrace of the Silent Oecumene ship. All we have right now is a location; we don’t know size or what else is there. Also, examine your record to see if any suspicious astronomical bodies fell into the sun in any place your sensors could have seen.”

“What else?”

“You stay up top while the Phoenix goes down through the chromosphere into the radiative layer of the core, where the enemy is hiding. You will act as our sounding station, and meteorological eyes-up.”

“With no one to help me? It seems a little odd, on a day when everyone else is celebrating, not to sound a universal alarm and call to arms?”

“I think so, too. But the Nothing, smart as it is, may not know how much we know, and if it thinks the Transcendence is going to go off as usual, it may hold its fire until everyone is linked up into one big helpless Transcendent mind. Got it? I don’t want to set off the alarm if that will make the Nothing set off its biggest guns.”

Helion was silent, thoughtful.

Atkins said, “Well? That’s what I want from you. You have a problem with any of this?”

“I have no doubts or reservations. You are not the only one who knows what the word ‘duty’ means, Captain Atkins.”

“Great. And just between you and me, since you’re in such a giving mood today…”

“Yes…?”

“Say you’re sorry to your kid. He’s been moping around ever since we set course for the sun, and it’s getting on my nerves. I mean, it would be good for morale.”

With another segment of his mind, Helion made contact with his lawyer and accountant subroutines. Aloud, he said, “Very well! You may tell my son, by way of apology, that, by the time he docks at number six, his debts will be cleared, his title reinstated, and the ship he is in shall belong to him once more.”

Helion came out of the place still called an air lock, even though it included transformation surgeries, noumenal transfer pools, body shops, neural prosthetics manufactories, and other functions needed to adapt a visitor to the physical environment and mental format of the Phoenix Exultant. This air lock was housed amidships, projecting inward from the hull nine hundred feet, a direction that was, at the moment “down,” and surrounded by other housings and machines, all looming like the skyscrapers of some ancient city turned on its head.

Phaethon stood not far away, on a walkway that ran from upside-down rooftop to upside-down rooftop. Behind him, underfoot, far below the fragile railing, rested the fuel cells of the Phoenix Exultant. These cells reached away to each side beyond sight, like an endless beehive of interlocking pyramids, each with a ball of luminous metallic ice at its center.

Helion thought this made a fitting backdrop for his scion—a landscape of frozen antimaterial fire, endless energy held in rigid geometry, capable of vast triumphs or vast destruction. Phaethon wore his gold-adamantium-and-black armor, helmet folded away. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, legs spread, eyes intent and bright; the pose of a youth patiently ready for action.

Helion had dressed in the air lock, constructing a human body (modified for the high solar gravity) and Victorian semiformal dress suit. (Day clothes, of course. Helion long ago determined that no gentleman would sport evening wear while in or near the sun.) He had also constructed a valid legal copy of the receipts for Phaethon’s debts, and the petition to the Bankruptcy Court to remove the Phoenix Exultant from receivership. These he had formed to look like golden parchment, stamped with the proper seals and red ribbon. He held up this document, and extended it toward Phaethon.