La Trascendencia Dorada (76 page)

“The plan was that Uncle Kassad would lie down in the coffin they sent for my dad, and take a retarder, and pass himself off for dead, till he got out of monitor range in the grave stream. Then he would wake up, dissolve his way to the surface, and set off south after the warren breaker. He had his filter pike with him, folded on his chest like a spear, which he was going to use to pierce the breaker’s dry suit to pump out his blood and filter the moisture, till he got a volume equal to what we had lost from our ice.

“The Sophotechs, way back then, we all thought they were gods, and no one understood them, or tried. But I was studying for a wardenship, and was a cadet, and I believed what the Sophotechs preached, so I told my uncle that he was wrong. Wrong, because the breaker came from the garden belt the Irenic Composition controlled; wrong, because the breaker probably wasn’t aware of what he had done; it wasn’t a man, just a part of a mass-mind, a cog in a mob. Wrong, because the Undead police had already ruled the death an accident, and paid the insurance.

“He showed me his pike, and pointed the field spike at my eye, so I could see down the bore to the extraction cell. And I sweated (even though sweat was a waste under our water laws) because I knew how quickly, if he touched the trigger, the field could suck op the moisture in the tissues of my eye, my veins, my brains. I was looking right at death.

“And Uncle Kassad, he told me that this was where right and wrong came from. It came from a weapon’s mouth.

“Then he turned off his heart and lay down. And Uncle Kassim opened the floor, and we lowered Uncle Kassad to the sewage to drown.

“We only got one cast from him later, a silent picture of him in his suit, emerging safe from the disassembler pools, and heading off overland, south.

“Later, we got the liters of water, the death payment, sent by post. It was the moisture from the body of the one who had killed my father. But it was sent by the Irenic Composition, our enemies. After Kassad killed their breaker, they took and embraced him, and drained his mind into theirs.

“My half-sister once, years later, after the Commonwealth consolidations, said she saw a body which looked like my uncle, tending a tree in the plantations down south. She said he looked happy. But I never went to look.

“Maybe the Irenic Composition, back when it was still intact, thought it was as right, as justified, as Uncle Kassad thought he was, and repaid the murder of one of their human units by turning him into one, and forcing a life of hopeless bliss on him. But I never went to ask.

“But I learned, back then, that there was no such thing as right or wrong, not that anyone could agree upon; or if there was, it did not make a damn bit of difference, if someone did not have the might or wit or luck to make right things go right. My uncle Kassad told me. Right and wrong come from the mouth of a weapon.”

The weapon Atkins carried spoke, and it said, “Sir? Permission to speak frankly?”

“Granted.”

“If your uncle had been right to say that might makes right, then the mere fact that his enemy was stronger, by his own theory, makes him wrong. Is this what the Marshal-General believes? That there is no reason for duty, honor, obedience? No reason to live a life such as that which the Marshal-General has led?”

Atkins frowned.

After what was a short time, but which seemed very long to him, he softly said, “Very well. Belay that last order. Stand down.”

And he returned the dagger, asleep, to its sheath.

Phaethon, with a gesture, banished the image off the mirror, and commanding one of his crew mannequins, said, “Drake, please go see Marshal Atkins, give him my compliments, and escort him off my ship before he commits any mischief.”

Daphne was gazing at Phaethon in mingled speechlessness, impatience, amusement, and outrage. She demanded, “Were you actually going to sit here on your lump and just watch him sabotage your ship? What if you had guessed wrong about him?!”

“A good engineer always has a backup plan.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I would not care to cross swords with Marshal Atkins on any field of combat, land, space, sea, dream, or air, except here. Any other place, he would have such weapons and such advantages that anyone would be helpless. Except here. Aboard my ship, I’m in my element. I built this place. I control what happens here. That’s why he did not know I was spying on him.”

“And what would you have done?”

He smiled expansively. “The stealth remotes are a fascinating piece of technology. Each one has an artificial molecule in its inertial navigation system, completely shielded from the outside, which registers movement by electron shell displacement in the surface atoms. The shielding normally protects it from tampering. Because, normally, there is no ghost-particle array system in place to teleport electrons through the base vacuum directly into the heart of the little machines and disable them.”

“You figured out how to control the ghost-particle array?”

“Not entirely. There are circuits I cannot trace till they activate. But the machine is on my ship, and it is a machine, and, well, it is on my ship, so I suppose it is just a matter of time.”

Daphne smiled, sharing his emotion, and delighted to see him so happy. She pointed at the now-blank mirror that had been focused on Atkins. “You really like him, don’t you?”

Phaethon looked a little surprised. She knew he did not have many friends in the Golden Oecumene, and few men he admired. He said, “Yes. Actually I like him a great deal. I’m not sure why. We’re opposites. I am a builder and he is a destroyer.”

“Not opposites. Two sides of the same coin. And you both wear spiffy armor.”

He laughed out loud. Then he said, “My system checks are almost done. Helion has returned to his tower, and has generated a low-pressure area in the plasma below us, a whirlpool to carry us down toward the core, and he is pulling most of the energy in this magnetic hemisphere to run the force lines parallel to our line of motion, in order to minimize resistance.” Two mirrors to his left and right lit up. The one on the left showed an X-ray picture of the plasma below, with a vast swirl of darkness and relative coolness yawning beneath them, a slowly turning red-lit well of inconceivable fire.

The mirror on the right displayed an upper image. Here, like a tiny arrowhead of gold, hung the Phoenix Exultant beneath the slender bridge of the Solar Array lateral dock. Down from space loomed a titanic pillar of flame, directly above the black well, and centered on the Phoenix. This column stretched far into space, and majestically curved to the east. It was a prominence, with one foot atop the sunspot beneath the Phoenix, the other atop the sunspot’s magnetic sister to the east. This prominence was created by plasma trapped in the magnetic field lines Helion had torn from the sun’s huge aura and pointed down vertically here.

The sunspot below was larger than the surface area of most planets; the prominence held up an arch beneath which giant planets could have passed with room to spare. The mirror also carried a sound of sinister hissing; this was a representation of the noise of the wash of particles descending through the vertical tornado of the prominence, and ringing against the invulnerable hull.

“So,” said Phaethon. “We are almost ready to cast off. See? We are just waiting for the currents creating the tornado below us to build up more energy. Shall we celebrate the launch?”

She blinked. “Did you say ‘celebrate’…?” “Of course! It is the Night of Lords! Transcendence Eve! A time of high exploits and splendor. What shall we have…?” He signaled for his servants. “Champagne…?”

Daphne said, “Do you think that is appropriate? We might be about to die!”

“Better to die in style, then, isn’t it?” She looked at him, and narrowed her emerald eyes. “I know what it is. You’re free. After three hundred years of building and dreaming and working and doing, this ship is finally ready to fly. Oh, I know that over the last day or so, she’s been flying. But she was not owned by you, then, not really. And it was Atkins at the controls, not you. And you had Hortators to worry about, or missing memories, or someone trying to stop you. Well, no one is trying to stop you now, are they?”

“If you don’t count the unthinkably evil and super-intelligent war machine sent out from a dead civilization for incomprehensible reasons, which I am about to descend into hell in an unarmed and completely open ship to go confront, exposing the woman I love and my whole civilization to horrid danger, why, except for that, no, I’m fine! Who would care to stop me?”

“Don’t you think we should be more gloomy? I mean, considering the circumstances? The heroes in my stories always make grim and noble speeches, saluting wan sunsets with bloody swords, or blowing last defiant trumpet blasts from empty battlements when they are going off to die.”

He held up his delicate glass to toast her, and the light sparkled mirthfully along the dancing bubbles in the wine. “But I am not the hero here, my dear. Ao Aoen, just before my Hortator trial, told me that. I am the villain. And I think I am going to prevail against this Nothing Machine. That hope and confidence delights me; nor do I believe that fate is more cruel to those who fret than she is to those who laugh. And so I laugh. Comic-opera villains always vaunt and gloat, do they not?”

And she laughed too, to see him in such good spirits on the brink of such deep danger. Daphne said, “Well, if you are the villain, lover, who is the hero?”

“You mean heroine. Yes. Who else? Born in ugly poverty among the primitivists, tempted by wild hedonisms in her youth, sultry Red Manorials and mysterious Warlocks; then for a moment, married, and yes, happily, to a handsome (if I may say so) prince: but then! Cruelty! Evil fairies! She wakes to discover it is all a dream. That she is no more than a doll and plaything of an evil witch, who has stolen her prince and name and life! The witch kills herself and the prince goes into exile. Who is brave and fair enough to save him? Who else but Daphne? Our heroine risks everything to save her man, embraces exile and poverty, survives being anywhere near a gun-happy Atkins, finds him, turns him back from being a toad, and voilà! He gets his ship back and he, at least, lives happily ever after. I, of course, am still hoping you will share that life and happiness: but I do not seem to recall you actually answered my proposal, did you?” “Yes.”

“Yes, what? Yes, you agree to wed me, or yes, you didn’t answer the question?” “Yes!”

“Which yes?”

But, at that moment, the disembarking klaxon sounded, and their thrones grew up around them to embrace them in protective layers, and so he did not hear her answer.

The Phoenix Exultant closed hatches, shut valves, withdrew fuel arms and tethers, paused, and then dropped like a falling spear down from the dock into the swirling madness of the whirlpool of fire underneath.

The pressure was at once inconceivable, and the mirrors on the bridge grew dark. No outside view was possible, by light or radar or X-ray, because the density of plasma was so great, at once turning the medium opaque.

The great ship was being pulled downward between two granule currents. The hot substances, a thousand miles to her left and right, were flowing upward, and a relative layer of coolness was pulling her irresistibly down and down.

Daphne said, “Why does it look dark? Aren’t we entering the upper layers of the sun?”

Phaethon said, “We are presently passing from the photosphere to the convective zone. This is one of the cooler parts of the sun, the outer fifteen percent of the core. There are more ions in the plasma outside than occur more deeply, and they are blocking the photon radiation. Most of the nuclear heat here is being carried by convection currents. But the mirrors are dark only because the environment is homogenous. Lower, we should achieve a different ratio of gamma and X-ray radiations, we can formulate some sort of picture. Here…”

A mirror lit to show a darkness interrupted by a vertical white line. The line trembled slightly, “What’s that?” “A view from my aft cameras, an ultra-high-frequency picture. That line of fire is the discharge from the main drive. I might be able to adjust the picture to make the turbulence caused by our wake visible. The rest of the picture is black because our sun does not generate any cosmic rays at this high wavelength. My drive is hotter than our environment, which is why the plasma is not rushing backward into the drive tubes.”

Daphne stared at the pitch-black forward mirrors, the shivering white line in the aft view. “It’s not much to look at, is it?” she said in a subdued tone. Something of the lightheartedness of the Champagne moment a moment past was gone. Phaethon’s face and tone had become cold, intent, rock steady. Time went by. An hour. Two hours. Daphne shut off her sense of time with orders to wake her when something changed.

She woke when they were deeper. Back-pressure estimations from the drive showed that the subduction current had carried the Phoenix Exultant far, far lower than any prior probe had gone. They were, perhaps, a thousand kilometers or so above the radiative layer, moving through a medium so dense that light required untold centuries to cross the space, so thick that even the Phoenix, driving with all the force of her main drives, was crawling forward at a speed measured in kilometers per hour.

There was a chattering hiss from one of the mirrors nearby.

“What is that?” Daphne asked. Phaethon said, “The ghost-particle array is still giving off periodic bursts. That was the most recent one. I cannot interpret the codes embedded in the ghost array, but I think it is using neutrino sources from distant quasars as orientation points, and is continuing to track where the Silent Phoenix (as I call her) might be. I cannot block out the transmissions with my drives open. But since I want the Silent Phoenix to find us, I don’t really mind.” Daphne looked at him skeptically. “This really is a crazy idea, isn’t it? There is something out there in all that fiery darkness, looking for us, an enemy hunting us?”

“Maybe. Unless the enemy left a long, long time ago, and we’ve been chasing shadows all this time.”

Daphne looked around at the shining golden chamber of the bridge, jewel bright. Then she glanced at the mirrors showing the outside: utter blackness. She shivered.