The Phoenix Exultant Page 27

  A dot of light from the ring touched one of the unstained diamond parasols. A connection was made. An image formed.

  Phaethon stared in surprise. “You. It was you. But why … ?”

  In the parasol, the very detailed image of Harrier Sophotech smiled and touched a finger to the bill of his deerstalker cap by way of salute. “My investigation was not yet complete. And I thought, to gather all the evidence, I would have to send a contingent out into space. And I knew that you could not pilot your fine ship without your armor, now could you?” His keen eyes swept back and forth across the group. “So then. Are we all ready to go..?”

  2.

  “Go?” said Atkins in surprise. “Pardon me for seeming obtuse, but we don’t know where to go yet. We only have one vector. We need a second vector to triangulate.”

  “That difficulty shall soon be adjusted. The particular nihilist psychology of the Silent One you just slew, Mr. Atkins, was, I calculate, a defense intended to prevent that poor creature from being, shall we say, ‘corrupted’ … ? During its stay here on Earth. Or should I call it exposure to Earth? The other servants of the Silent Ones we have seen so far have not manifested that particular type of unreason. You understand my meaning.”

  “Forgive me for both seeming and for being obtuse,” said Phaethon, “But … You? You?”

  “I? I, what, Mr. Rhadamanth?” Harrier smiled.

  “How could you be Pursuivant? I thought that Sophotechs may not and do not serve in any position of Parliament, government, or military, nor (or so I thought) in the constabulary. How could you be Constable Pursuivant?”

  Harrier smiled. “But I never was. Pursuivant is a fictional character, a share-mind with a download of training and police experience, who, as a character, is in the public domain. It is no crime, during masquerade, to pretend to be a public-domain character.”

  “Certainly it is a crime!” said Phaethon. “It is the impersonation of a police officer!”

  “No, sir,” said Harrier. “To impersonate a police officer one must show a badge or blazon or display a uniform, or do some other definite act, which a reasonable person would take to be a warrant of authority.”

  “I saw you when you were a mannequin. You held out your hand and said your badge was in it,” said Phaethon.

  “I held out my hand, but there was nothing in it. No reasonable person would have been fooled. At that time, I was still expecting you to log on to the mentality. Once you engaged your sense-filter and saw who I really was, I thought you would submit to a noetic examination, and we could solve this matter. Surely you were expecting me to meet you in Talaimannar … ?”

  “In any case, when you did not log on, despite that I had provided you with every good reason to do so, I realized that your behavior differed so widely from what my anticipatory models had led me to believe, that someone must have interfered with your normal thought-process.

  “Then I spent a considerable amount of time (about how long it took you to fall out the window twenty feet down into the water) checking the records, one at a time, of every citizen, neuroform, and self-aware entity in the Golden Oecumene, to see if anyone else had acted out of character, to the same degree or in the same way. (I was thinking the criminal might be using a standard mode of operation, you see.) Well, I can certainly tell that during a wild celebration has got to be the worst time to check to see if anyone is behaving oddly. Everyone behaves oddly during a party.”

  “After about one-half second of this, your time, or 789 billion seconds, computer time, I had narrowed the scope of my investigation down from around 300 million people, to only some 45 hundred. And guess who one of those mentally altered people turned out to be?”

  Phaethon said, “Helion. They had to control him to use the Solar Array as a weapon.”

  Daphne said, “Diomedes. They have to control him to seize control of the ship!”

  Atkins said, “Daphne Prime. They made her drown herself to stop Phaethon from launching.”

  “Hmm. Daphne Prime … ? Interesting idea …” muttered the image of Harrier.

  The ring on Daphne’s finger chirped: “Can I guess, too? It must be Neo-Orpheus. How else could the Silent Ones have ensured that Phaethon would suffer an exile?”

  “Excellent guesses, all!” said Harrier expansively. But no. The person I was thinking of was none other than Mr. Jason Sven Ten Shopworthy, base half-communal with projected avatar share-mind, Glass Onion School, who lives in Dead Horse, Alaska.”

  Dull silence followed that announcement.

  Phaethon stirred and turned, and asked his companions, Is there anyone here besides me who is just simply incredibly irritated?”

  Atkins had a what-the-hell-is-the-point-of-this look on his face. He said, “Pardon me, sir, but who is this, um, what’s his name … ?”

  Daphne said, “And what is so weird about this guy you had to pick him out of 45 hundred people?”

  Harrier continued, “Mr. Shopworthy had made it his practice, every day, to put on his winter-body and to ski out to his local contemplationary for incremental vastenings of his special avatar personality he keeps in his supercortex. Normally, in the afternoon when he is done, he pauses for a sensory-overload type of refreshment /apotheosis at a small tea-and-wire café on the slope of New Idea Mountain-sculpture. I do not know if you are familiar with the Glass Onion habit of using sensory overloads to test what degree of mental capacity, recall, and detail-recognition they achieve after periodic vastenings … ? But here is the strange behavior I noticed …”

  Phaethon, Atkins, and Daphne leaned toward the image slightly, small, unconscious movements.

  “Mr. Shopworthy usually sits looking north, on a mat placed near the post’s thermal-illusion window, with the balcony railing on his right. But recently he had started sitting facing the south, which is odd, because he had to prop his left elbow on the balcony to turn on the goblet for his overloader. But his control points for his hand extension are on his left elbow.”

  The three of them all leaned slightly back, exchanging puzzled glances.

  And Daphne said brightly, “Yoo-hoo! Can I change my guess about who is acting weird … ? I pick Harrier Sophotech.”

  Atkins said, “Sir, this really seems like a waste of everyone’s time. Could you just get to the point without drawing it out … ?”

  But it was Phaethon who suddenly spoke up.

  “The main million-channel cable leading from North America to Northern Asia runs right under that area.”

  Daphne and Atkins turned and stared at Phaethon.

  Daphne nudged Atkins in the ribs. “It’s spreading. Now Phaethon’s doing it.”

  Phaethon continued, “But the whole cable structure is surrounded by a polystructral alloy mesh, with informata placed at every mesh-point, programmed to redesign and reformat the cable housing to prevent any possible outside interference. There is simply no way anyone could break the mesh to tap into the cable. Except at a join-box, a big one, where a branch reaches up toward the surface.” Phaethon turned, and said to Daphne: “I know all about these cable designs, because I had to study the effects of the tidal changes my Lunar Orbital corrections might cause on large-scale structures. A cable that long and that big is vulnerable to crustal tides.”

  Daphne said, “I really hope this is going to turn out to be important, or, at least, interesting, because I still haven’t gotten my chance to tell you about what Aurelian Sophotech said to me in the Taj Mahal.”

  Atkins spoke up. “Contemplationaries situated near the Arctic Circle are usually large domes, but they can’t use ring-city point-to-point systems because of their location so far from the equator, and because of the atmospheric conditions.”

  Daphne looked at Atkins with dismay. “Now you’re doing it!” Atkins said, “All I mean is that I happen to know that arctic contemplation houses have deep-root cables to lead down underground and merge with any main cables in the area. Because contemplation houses in general have to be able to h
andle almost any level of thought exchange, there are usually no gateways or barriers securing their connecting link to the main cables. It’s a weak spot.”

  Daphne blinked. “Weak spot?”

  Atkins said, “In other words, if you were going to introduce a data convulsion, a death worm, or a virus, into a main cable, such as, for example, if you were going to sabotage the medical dream-coffin system and kill thousands of innocent and helpless people, you’d pick the area beneath a contemplation house for your insertion point.”

  Daphne demanded impatiently: “And why in the world would I want to kill thousands of innocent and helpless people?”

  “I’m not saying you would, ma’am. But it’s something to think about, and run scenarios on. Sort of interesting, actually, once you find a weak spot in a system, such as where a contemplation house feeds into a main cable, to figure out how many people you can off how quickly, and what their possible retaliations would be.”

  Daphne murmured to Phaethon, “You’re right. No wonder people get nervous around him. He’s weird.”

  The ring on her finger chirped in a cheerful voice: “Taking an overstimulation refreshment requires the user to superactivate his Middle Dreaming circuit, shut down his inhibitors, and open up all his sense-filter files to any and all sensations!”

  Daphne said, “Oh no! Not you, too!”

  Phaethon said, “The mannequin control lines are usually stored near the surface of the main-cable web, since the core axis is reserved for polyphotonic noumenal devoted lines, which need more insulation. And that’s where the architect would usually place the interruption sensors. If you were tapping into the line, you could get into the shallower mannequin lines without triggering those sensors.”

  Atkins said, “When you make a drop onto a hostile planet, you land near the poles. Not only would the planetary magnetic fields tend to mask your vehicle signature during the drop, but the laws of orbital mechanics require that most of your target planet’s launch traffic and orbital traffic is near the equator. Where most of the traffic is, is where more traffic-control radar is. No one watches the north pole.”

  Daphne said, “Athenian architects avoided the use of mortar. Instead, they trimmed their stones to an extremely accurate fit and bonded the marble blocks together with I-shaped clamps. Second-Era classical buildings have scars and pock-marks where men of later ages chiseled out these clamps to melt down and sell the metal.”

  Phaethon said, “I beg your pardon … ?”

  Atkins said, “Come again, ma’am … ?”

  They were both staring at her.

  Daphne smiled a winning smile, and shrugged, and said, “I was beginning to feel left out, that’s all.”

  The image of Harrier Sophotech turned keen eyes on her. “Actually, Miss Daphne, you disappoint me. You are the one here who is familiar with the intrigues from spy-romances. I thought the pattern of clues would make sense to you. Why, for example, would Mr. Shopworthy lean on his left elbow rather than his right?”

  Daphne shrugged. “Well, he wouldn’t. Not normally. It would be too awkward. The only reason why you would wear one of those clumsy hand-extension things is to let you manipulate controls which you can’t manipulate by a thought-to-wire command. The contact points are at the elbow because the rest of the glove, from about here up, extends into dreamspace. The only time you’d want to push it up against anything, would be if you were touching a contact-point and trying to bring in signals from somewhere else, and feed them through your glove into dreamspace. And …”

  Harrier prompted, “And why would any person relaxing under a sensory overload be acting in the mentality? Would he normally be afraid of accidentally sending out nonconfirmed thoughts, making wrong connections, or losing his reality level?”

  “It would have to be another part of his mind, insulated from the first part.” And then Daphne’s face lit up: “I’ve got it now! In an episode I saw, Weng chi-Ang Moriarty, the hundredth lineal descendant of Fa So Loee and Professor Moriarty, and the last member of the Invisible Empire of the Si Fan, had set up this wild card from the Middle Dreaming on a hillside where he knew a bird-watcher was going to be looking with binoculars, so that, the moment the victim saw the card, a ghost would download into his personal thoughtspace. And then the ghost committed crimes while the bird-watcher was otherwise occupied. It was a pretty good story, because the bird-watcher was trying to find the criminals, and he never thought about himself as a suspect. He also did sensory overloads. The overload relaxation covered up the extra signal-traffic, because overloads flood all your personal channels anyway. And …”

  Harrier said, “I think the Silent Ones saw the same episode.”

  “Oh my heavens! You’ve got to be kidding! That was just a show! People don’t really have things like that happen to them! I mean, not real people …”

  Harrier said: “The card the Neptunian spy dropped from the Cernous Roc used to introduce a ghost into Mr. Shopworthy only had to be somewhere, anywhere, on the north slope of the New Idea Mountain-sculpture. During his daily overstimulation, his sense-filter is tuned to maximum, and set to accept all channels and all stimulations. And he simply looks out over the landscape. Under normal circumstances, it is a perfectly safe thing to do.”

  Phaethon said, “Am I right in guessing that the times Mr. Shopworthy was sitting and enjoying his overloads coincided with, first, just after my hearing before the Curia, and, second, just before the Deep Ones’ performance at Lake Victoria?”

  Daphne said, “We’re talking about Scaramouche, aren’t we? The guy running that mannequin doesn’t know he’s running it.”

  Atkins turned, looked up at the night sky, frowning. Then he raised his finger and pointed. “I can get a fix through some triangulation satellites. And the orbital weapons sniper platform can angle the beam somewhat, so I’ll only have to cut through a small cord of planet to hit the target. Which is good, because most people who armor themselves against space attacks put their armor and deflection grids overhead. No one expects a beam weapon to drill through the Earth and shoot you up the tail. Also, nothing much in Alaska. Should minimize collateral damage.”

  Phaethon realized in horror that Atkins was about to kill a perfectly innocent man in Alaska, without any warning or mercy. He moved to grab Atkins’ arm, shouting, “No! Stop!” Atkins swayed to one side, and kicked Phaethon’s feet out from under him, so that he fell to his hands and knees.

  “PHAETHON, STOP.” One of the diamond parasols next to the image of Harrier Sophotech unfolded, blinked, and displayed an image of a tall figure, stern, kingly, and grim, dressed in Greek armor with breastplate, hoplon, and horse-plumed helm. On his shoulder was a vulture, and at his feet, a jackal. To either side of this kingly figure stood two winged beings, masked in brass hag-faces, with nests of snakes for hair.

  Phaethon stared up at the apparition. “Diomedes … ?”

  The figure’s armor was drenched in blood from crown to heel, old blood and new blood, brown and bright red, splashed together. In its hand was a spear of ashwood. The voice came out at a lower volume: “Not Diomedes. I represent the Warmind Sophotech Group. This image is, I trust, the correct mythic symbol to fit into your Silver-Grey aesthetic?”

  Phaethon climbed to his feet. Atkins was still squinting at the sky. Phaethon took a half-step forward.

  The blood-red armored figure said, “STOP! You have already attempted once to interfere with the military operations of the Golden Oecumene armed forces. You are liable for charges of treason, which carries the only death penalty recognized by Foederal Oecumenical Commonwealth law. Do not increase your offense.”

  Phaethon was startled, and froze in his steps. “Treason? To stop him from murdering someone … ?”

  “Interference with the constabulary is merely obstruction of justice. Interference with the army during the course of an ongoing battle is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. This crime is the only one mentioned by name in our Constitutional Logic, and is th
e most ancient. The Warmind Group is unlike all other Sophotech constructions, and recognizes no priority above that of the salvation of the Commonwealth from external enemies. Do not deceive yourself. Merely because this law has not been enforced since the beginning of the Sixth Era has not caused this law to lapse or to lose its full force and effect. Your attempt to interfere means that you may yet be tried for treason and executed. This matter is quite serious.”

  Atkins addressed the red-armored figure. “Warmind Group!”

  The Super-Sophotech saluted. “Sir!”

  “The events happening here are classified as secret. You may not release the data concerning Phaethon’s attempted interference to the Curia or to any other civilian body, except for the appropriate members of the Parliamentary Military Oversight Committee, until and unless I instruct you otherwise. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Summarize report on last action-situation.”

  “Entire action took place within 0.002 picoseconds. At that time, directed-energy weapon entered target skull at midbrain and cortex, disabling fast-reaction circuits, but leaving the target’s implants, including noetic and noumenal broadcasters, intact. Beam exited skull through upper crania. Brain signal action was closely monitored during the next .04 seconds. Noetic information allowed sniper platform to track which neural pathways were being engaged for which thoughts. While the noumenal espionage delator was unable to break the Silent One encryption on the enemies’ thoughts, it was nonetheless able to detect nerve-paths leading toward suspicious sectors or circuits embedded in the target’s brain. Those sections were disabled with a secondary-beam targeting by a surgical program from the orbital sniper platform. The Estimator anticipates that this prevented even any thoughts of suspicion or inhibition from forming, because it believes that those secondary sections were where the suspicion reflexes of the brain were kept, and the energy weapon was able to reach and destroy the suspicion-reflex brain cells before the pain-signals from other parts of the nervous system, traveling at biochemical speed, were able to reach them.”