The Golden Transcendence Read online

  “Even a war as distant and slow and strange as this one, has harmed us all, and cheated us of many fine delights and freedoms we would otherwise enjoy. It is tragedy, mere tragedy, with no such benefits as milord would like to pretend.”

  Helion looked at him. “And yet there is glory in it also, and many brave acts. Humanity at its finest.”

  Rhadamanthus said: “If milord will forgive me, I must say, there are certain things about mankind which we machines will never understand. I truly hope we never understand. Would you like to see humanity at its finest? Look up.” And the image raised its hand to point. There was one particular star to which he pointed.

  Music, many years in transit, from that distant star, at this moment fell around Helion, and his many unimaginable senses came awake. The star herself shifted in her spectral characteristics and apparent luminosity, as if a Dyson’s sphere, transparent until that moment, suddenly took on a gemlike hue or polarized all the radiation output into coherent communication-laser pulses; or as if some Solar Array, vast beyond dream, webbing the entire surface of the star, tamed all the light shed into one huge symphony of signals.

  The star trumpeted with challenges, and a new Oecumene blared her name out into the wide night, boasting of her accomplishments, shining in the radio light shed by her First Transcendence: the Phosphorescent Oecumene, she called herself, the Civilization of Light, founded by Phaethon and Daphne and their children.

  This star was farther than any other colony had been, and safer, for no ship of the Silent Oecumene, cold, slow, quiet ships, would reach so far for centuries to come.

  Even at this point in history, the Silent Ones had no such technology to allow them to build a Phoenix Exultant. How could they? Such a thing required a supercollider and energy source the size of Jupiter to make the metal (and the Silent Ones, long ago spread from Cygnus X-1, living in hiding, nomads, would never dare to reveal their positions by building such a thing). And, even if they did build one, any ships whose drives were kept baffled and cold would never reach the velocities required to catch the bright, loud, roaring, fiery Phoenix Exultant in her flight.

  Helion squinted and called more senses to his aid, and delicate instrumentation. For there, in the halo of sudden radio noise and song and motion and light surrounding what had been, till now, merely one other uncivilized star, he saw (or thought he saw) that bright sharp signature, intensely Doppler-shifted, which comes of massive amounts of antimatter totally converting to energy, receding at nearly the speed of light.

  Helion said, “This is the sign of Phaethon.”

  Rhadamanthus said, “Now, perhaps, now he finds more joy in life, having survived so many strange adventures, and the odd horrors of the discovered colonies of Cygnus X-1. But he is forever beyond their reach now. The tiny mote of light which depicts his most recent acceleration burn has taken hundreds of years to reach our eyes. Phaethon flies so far, so swiftly, that even the light which carries news of him is left behind.”

  Helion said, “Phaethon paused in his flight, far beyond the reach of his foes, to wait for the wakening of this, his latest child. Now she is grown, and calls herself the Oecumene of Light; and on he fares again, blazing!”

  So he stood on the balcony, gazing upward, hoping this group of Transcendence messages from the Oecumene of Light would contain messages, also, from Phaethon, to him.

  “How I miss him, Rhadamanthus. How I regret . . .”

  Rhadamanthus now leaned and touched Helion’s shoulder, wakening him from his dream. “Sir. That was only a projection. It is the Month of Resumption, now, when everyone must return to the burden of being no more than himself for another thousand years. Phaethon has not departed yet. Even before leaving this system, he begins the task that will occupy him for countless thousands of years; already he is chasing enemies.”

  “No, that was a vision. The war I saw has not yet begun. . . .”

  “Once Phaethon is done, the Phoenix Exultant shall return from her refitting at Jupiter one last time to Mother Earth, to pick up Daphne Tercius. Sir, it is not too late.”

  Helion sat up in bed and looked around his bedchamber in Rhadamanthus House. Outside the window, a rose garden, blooms gone, lifted empty thorns beneath a slate gray English winter sky. Shadows softened the dark rafters above. There was a fire in the grate, but little could it dispel the cold, the gloom of the January day.

  “Not too late . . . ?” muttered Helion.

  “To go. To go with him, sir. To follow your son to the stars.”

  3.

  The Phoenix Exultant was in trans-Neptunian space. At 350 AUs the sun was only one of the brighter stars. The ship’s three-kilometer-wide main dish had been deployed, hanging in space nearby, and was pointed back toward the Inner System, synchronized with orbital radio-lasers near Jupiter. More ship fuel was being used to maintain radio communication than to decelerate the hundred-kilometer-long vessel.

  Those aboard who were still within the Transcendence had slowed their personal times to a mere snail crawl. Hours passed between a signal sent from this distance and any reply from the Inner System Sophotechs. There was a slightly shorter lag-time during communion with the Invariant populations in the cities in space at the leading and trailing Trojan points in Jupiter’s orbit.

  Phaethon had undergone naval vastening, and was one with the ship. He was in four-on four-off, spending every other watch in the transhuman state of consciousness. However, as the ship approached her goal, Phaethon was finding the memory-distractions too great, the transitions too jarring, and woke up.

  There he was, in his specially designed high-acceleration body, in his Chrysadamantium armor, in the captain’s chair, on the main bridge.

  Exactly where he was meant to be.

  Aboard in the ship’s mindspace were the two wardens from the Dark-Gray Mansion, Temer Lacedaimon, and Vidur-yet-to-be. For legal purposes, and to fill out the memory of Vidur Lacedaimon once he was born, this partial was standing in the place of his unborn principle.

  The main deceleration burn had ended, and the gravity was only at two or three times Earth normal, so the Lacedaimonians were able to manifest themselves in physical bodies on the bridge.

  Vidur Lacedaimon wore a black nanomachine coating, much like Phaethon’s own inner garment. The inner coat was webbed with vertical formulation rods, to assist the several Warlock Wolf-minds Vidur kept stored in lower compartments of his mind; the inner coat contained a para-matter generator and a set of templates, to allow Vidur to materialize any additional clothing or gear he might require.

  Temer Lacadaimon was a Dark-Gray, and was concerned with tradition just as much as any Silver-Gray manorial; but his traditions were strange and grim to Phaethon. He did not appear as a Second Era Englishman (as a Silver-Gray would have done). Instead, he wore a police uniform from the late Sixth Era, a symbiot that was grown into his skin cells, but which left his hands and head free. This symbiot kept Temer warm and well fed, protected him from acceleration shock or blood loss. Upon impact, it would stiffen into armor; reflective tissues became visible when ambient energy or laser-light impinged on the symbiot surface.

  The symbiot’s name was Mimmur; and it was ten thousand years old, for it had been granted immortality by Orpheus to commemorate Temer’s grandfather, Pausanias, who had worn Mimmur during the Sixth Era Riot Control police actions that had claimed his life. The uniform was dark gray in hue, of course.

  Holstered at his belt was a variable-energy baton, whose grip was slick and black with age. This weapon was named Widow-maker, and it was even older than the uniform.

  In the circuits of the weapon, the New College had prepared the multiple simulations of every death, of all the pain, loss, and grief of all widows, orphans, lost partners, lost selves, which so many would have suffered for so long, had Xenophon or his agents successfully used the Phoenix Exultant to attack the helpless Golden Oecumene during Transcendence. Temer carried a million purgatories’ worth of pain with him, so that, when
Xenophon was caught, he could be killed not once but as many times as he would have killed his victims, had his plans succeeded.

  To see a civilized man carrying such a deadly antique reminded Phaethon of Atkins, and of the old soldier’s habit of carrying a ceremonial sword. With his mind still haunted by the visions from the Transcendence, Phaethon was surprised to find how normal the sight looked to him. He was shocked that he was not shocked.

  Vidur said, “The New College, when it is formed, will applaud you for this donation of your time, and the use of your ship.”

  Phaethon smiled, and sent the smile onto the ship channels, so that the two wardens could see it through his faceplate. “Gentlemen, I am honored; and yet I cannot entirely overlook the fact that, for good or for ill, I will be beyond the reach of the applause, or the censure, of the College of Hortators, in a very little time from now. I plan to return only once more to Earth, to finish resupplying, and to pick up crew.”

  Temer said, “You are young yet, Phaethon. Eventually, you will return from star voyaging, or human civilization, in ships yet unbuilt, of designs yet undreamed, will overtake you. It may be a thousand years from now, or ten thousand, or a hundred; but you and I will meet again. You will not be the only one to travel among the stars, I promise you that.”

  Phaethon saw Vidur smile at Temer’s comment. Young? Phaethon supposed that to a man not yet properly born, the difference between a four-thousand-year-old and an eleven-thousand-year-old did not seem that great.

  The ship-mind said, “We are approaching the alleged source of the ghost-particle signals.”

  Diomedes was not physically present, but an image of him was projected from the ship-mind space where he lived into the sense-filters of the men on the bridge. Being a collateral member of the Silver-Gray, Diomedes had his image enter through the air lock, had it cast a shadow, gave his footsteps echoes, and had it walk across the whole length of the bridge to approach the three men, and so on, rather than having a self-image fade in out of nowhere. The image was dressed in the normal costume of the Silver-Gray; coat, tie, jacket, shoes.

  Diomedes said, “I’ve made a second copy of myself, so I can still participate in the Transcendence while helping you here, Captain—may I call you Captain?”

  Phaethon said, “Certainly. But you will not get paid until you sign my articles.”

  “Be that as it may; my ‘upper-brother’ still in the Transcendence has done a much more thorough analysis than I have done. Hmph. He had help. Mars-mind invented new analytical tools for combing through the data. . . .”

  Phaethon said, “Does he confirm our results?”

  “He does. Ghost particles from this point in space are being rotated into virtuality, transmitted to variable broadcast receivers around Triton and Nereid, and rotated back into reality. Xenophon was meshed with the Neptunian Duma when the Duma was brought into the Transcendence.”

  “Is Xenophon still there?” asked Phaethon. “In the Transcendence?”

  Diomedes said, “My upper self and I think so. Look.”

  The mirrors on the bridge came to life. Most remained blank: heat and particulate matter, electromagnetic energy, was the same as the normal background of empty space here. But the Silent Oecumene—built ghost-particle array aboard the Phoenix Exultant was receiving pulses of semi-nonexistent waves from an area less than one AU distant. A repeated image technique allowed a shadowy picture to form in one mirror.

  Here was a hermit cell, webbed with antidetection gear, floating in space, hidden inside a ball of ice half a mile across, a cometary head.

  The gear detected a ghost-particle array, perhaps as small as several yards across, exchanging signals with a transponder near Neptune.

  Vidur scowled. “So Xenophon has already seen the next ten thousand years of our plans and goals, assessed our strength, counted our troops.”

  Temer said, “The disadvantage of life in a free and open society—we’ve forgotten how to lock our doors.”

  Diomedes held up a single finger. “One. We’ve only got one trooper. Don’t need to be a Sophtech to count that high.”

  Phaethon said, “If one were equal to one according to the math of these Swans from Cygnus, we’d have less trouble from them.”

  Diomedes said, “The Transcendence did not predict that the Silent Ones could maintain a full-scale war against us for any length of time. Um. At least what an entity to whom a thousand years is but a day regards as ‘a long time.’ . . .”

  Vidur spoke with the certainty very young men tend always to have: “Our predictions were unduly optimistic, I am sure, and made the spy to smile.”

  Temer said, “He would smile just as much if our predictions overestimated the Silent Oecumene strength as underestimated.”

  Phaethon said, “He must have seen this ship, even at this distance. We are huge, and we make a lot of noise, and our stern is toward him as we decelerate. What is he thinking? Is this a trap?”

  Temer said, “Suppose he had an escape ship—the Phoenix should be able to outrun anything in space. And how far could he go? I think he is saving fuel. He is going to be caught in any case.”

  Diomedes looked sidelong at Phaethon, and raised a hand to hide a discreet cough. This was one of the Silver-Gray traditions, indicating a wish for a private word or two.

  Phaethon’s sense filter linked with Diomedes. An imaginary solarium appeared around them. It did not quite have the usual Silver-Gray attention to detail. Instead of an English garden scene appearing outside the eastern windows of the porch, an image of Phaethon on his throne, continuing a conversation with Vidur and Temer, appeared, so that the two men could track what was happening in the outer reality.

  4.

  Diomedes sat. “You seem troubled, friend.”

  Phaethon poured himself a cup of imaginary tea. He sipped it, staring moodily into the middle distance. He said, “I wish I could remember what it was I had been thinking during the Transcendence. My body, acting more or less on its own, sent the Phoenix Exultant out here. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Diomedes said, “There is no mystery. The Golden Oecumene has only one operating ghost-particle array. And it is aboard this ship.”

  “Is Atkins aboard?”

  “I am sure he must be.”

  “The ship brain is still half-asleep. I don’t even know what is really going on.”

  Diomedes leaned across the table and patted Phaethon’s arm in a friendly fashion. “Don’t fret so! Once the Transcendence is concluded, and all are restored to their normal states, communication lines will be restored, records will be set back in order. In the meanwhile, look at the fine gifts we all got! You now have something like Helion’s multiple parallel brain compartments, but with no speed loss; I have a mechanism for interpreting Warlock-type intuitions using a subroutine. See how insightful I am these days?”

  Diomedes leaned back and inspected his friend. “Hm. My intuition tells me you are still uneasy.”

  Phaethon sighed. “I am getting tired of always acting on blind faith. When I do not have gaps in my memory, I have gaps in my knowledge. I always seem to be forced to trust that either my old self, or some Sophotech, has thought out the details of what I am about to do, and has already arranged everything to come out right—it is a childish way to behave. I am tired of being a child.”

  Diomedes made his eyes crinkle up with a smile. “You are so impatient to leave this ‘utopia’?”

  “It was never a utopia. It is a good system. Maybe the best system. But in reality, everything has a cost. The cost of living in a system with fairly benevolent giant superintellects, frankly, is that you have to live as I have done. Blindly.”

  He tuned one of the windows in the solarium to a view of the nearby stars. Like jewels, they glittered against the velvet dark.

  He said, “I yearn for the solitude of empty spaces, Diomedes. There, finally, I shall stand on my own; and if I fall, the fault will be mine and mine alone.”

  D
iomedes said, “I take it there is still something missing from your life?”

  Phaethon said, “There is still a gap in my memory. A period of two weeks from seventy years ago is gone; even Rhadamanthus does not have a record of it. I visited a colony of purists living to the east of Eveningstar Manor. Records show I shipped a container to Earth, to the enclave where Daphne was originally born. Telemetry data indicate there may have been biological material aboard. A fortnight. It’s a blank. Even the Transcendence could not fill in what was missing. I was aboard ship and cut off from all communication.”

  “The canister? You have no medical officers or inspection services on Earth?”

  “We are not Neptunians, my good Diomedes. Who would be so rude as to open up someone else’s private container? I suppose the purists could have hired any inspectors they wished to examine their packages for them; but purists do not keep system-linked records.”

  Diomedes posted a file where he enumerated the parallels between the purists and the Eremites of beyond-Neptune. Neither group entered mind-links of any kind, not even Transcendence. While the rest of civilization celebrated, they remained on their farms and blue houses. He said aloud: “We tend to think the Sophotechs know everything. But what they don’t know, they don’t know, do they?”

  Phaethon stared at the image of the nearby stars, and scowled.

  Diomedes said plaintively, “But nothing so very important could have happened in two weeks could it?”

  5.

  Meanwhile, in the outer conversation, Temer was staring thoughtfully at the chamber hidden in the flying iceberg, watching the readings on the volume of information passing back and forth from the chamber to Neptunian transponders.

  “There is someone still alive there,” said Temer. “There is too much information volume for an automatic process. This is a mind participating in the Transcendence. He may not be aware of us because he is involved in the visions.”