The Phoenix Exultant

by John C. Wright

  Perhaps this was all a simulation. “End program!” shouted Phaethon. But the scene did not end. Everything was as before; he sat in a dirty white shell, with sunlight blazing in through a window above, and the floor still swooped and lurched, sickeningly. Or perhaps the floor was steady and he was ill. There was no way to tell. “End program!” he shouted again, slamming his fist into the curving wall beside him. “End! End! End program! I want my life back, damn you!”

  Phaethon fought his way to his feet. This place remained solid and “real” (if that concept had meaning any longer in his life). He was alone; he was unwell. Or perhaps he was not unwell. The floor was actually rocking.

  Hunger pangs stung his stomach. Where was his armor? It was his only food supply.

  At that, he heaved himself upright and tore the noisy, flashing advertisement banner off his body. With a convulsion of disgust, he threw it fluttering out the window. It struck some impediment just below his line of sight and flapped there, giving off a shout.

  No; it was a man who had shouted. Now that man rose into view. He had been walking up to the window, and Phaethon had thrown the advertisement over his head. He was dressed in gray.

  Now, the oval expanded, and the man stepped in. The oval was not an oeil-de-boeuf or window; it was a door. The mechanism was jammed or ill. The door tried to iris shut, but dwindled only to its former dimension, trembled, squeaked, and remained half-open. Now through the opening, Phaethon saw he was inside a house floating on angular legs in the waters of the bay.

  “Where is my armor?” said Phaethon, squinting. He had one hand against the sloping wall to keep himself upright.

  The man took the advertisement carefully off his head, balled it up, and tossed it out the window. The banner floated away, looking for prospective clients.

  When the man turned, Phaethon saw he had no face.

  It was not a man. It was a mannequin.

  Phaethon straightened up in shock. No person from the Golden Oecumene would be telepresenting himself here, not with the Hortators’ ban in place.

  Scaramouche … ? It was not impossible …

  “What do you want of me?!” asked Phaethon in a ragged voice.

  The mannequin’s external speakers said: “I’ve come to ask you to cooperate.”

  Phaethon stepped away from the wall, and tried to stand straight. He did not want to show any weakness. “Cooperate? In what way?”

  “You have been the victim of a crime. I want you to help me punish the people who did this to you. They claim that they are your society and your people and that you owe them loyalty now, but don’t listen to that rubbish. Your interests still are best served by cooperation.”

  Phaethon squinted. This was an odd thing for Scaramouche to be saying. Yes, forcing Phaethon into exile was a crime, but did this creature from beyond actually think Phaethon would help Scaramouche punish the Hortators?

  Phaethon said, “Where do you creatures come from? Another star? Another time? How do you know so much about the Golden Oecumene when we know nothing about you?”

  The gray mannequin had no face, but there was an expression of surprise in its posture, in the set of its shoulders. “Uh, sir, I don’t mean to intrude on your hallucination, but I’m a constable officer from the local commandry, Ceylon 21. My name is Pursuivant Eighteenth Co-Mentalist Neoform of the Andropsyche-Projection Or-thochronic Schola.”

  “What?”

  “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I had my valet place a description of myself and my reason for coming into the Middle Dreaming, and I had assumed you would know all about me at a glance. That is the way we at the Andropsychic Projection school run our affairs. I had been informed that you, despite being ostracized, still had access to the mentality. It just did not occur to me you would not use it.”

  The gray mannequin now held out an empty hand toward Phaethon. “Here is my badge of office, with warrants and commissions appended in nearby files. Do you wish to inspect it? All you need do is log on to the mentality.”

  Phaethon looked at the mannequin’s hand. To Phaethon’s mentality-blind eyes, it was empty. “I am not willing to log on to the mentality,” he said.

  “Ah. That’s too bad. I have a magistrate standing by on channel 653. She-they will sign a warrant for the seizure and arrest of your remaining nanomaterial—that suit-substance in your armor—before the rest of the Drunks here eat the stuff. A lot of people last night took handsful of your stuff back to their rafts, and most of them injected or inhaled only a few grams, according to my best guess. If you want to get it back, what little is left, we must act quickly. Just log on to the mentality and talk with the magistrate; I’m sure we can get an injunction and have that stuff seized before your new pals wolf down the rest of it for breakfast. We may only have a few minutes. Just log on.”

  For a moment, such a wild emotion pulsed in Phaethon that he could not speak. But a cold ripple of doubt quelled his joy. What evidence did he have that his armor had not been entirely destroyed? What evidence did he have that this faceless mannequin was not, in fact, Scaramouche? He seemed to have insisted once too often that Phaethon should log on to the mentality.

  And yet, if part of his armor still existed, and might still be saved, and if it were destroyed because Phaethon stood here hesitating and doubting … ?

  Phaethon licked dry lips, not sure what to believe.

  The mannequin said, “We don’t have much time.”

  Phaethon thought a moment, came to a decision. “I will go talk to Ironjoy,” he said to the constable.

  2.

  It was with some difficulty that Phaethon made his way to the central barge where Ironjoy kept his thought-shop. First, he could not dilate the oval window-door to get out of his house with any dignity; nor would the constable help him by overriding the house-mind’s faulty command-line, as such charity might have been in violation of the Hortators’ ban. Phaethon had to squirm through the hole, whereupon he fell across a narrow ledge and plummeted twenty feet into the sea.

  The water here was clogged and clotted with snag-lines and ropy tendrils, which made up part of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea’s body, or perhaps one of her manufacturing subsections, so Phaethon did not sink. But neither was his body buoyant; the special organs and space-adaptations built into his thick hide added weight. However, his strength was much greater than an unmodified man’s, and he was able to lunge forcefully through the thicket. Another modification enabled him to hold his breath for the twenty minutes or so it took him to walk (and crawl and swim) across the beds of undersea kelp and ratting to the rusted barge in the center of the bay.

  He swarmed up the anchor lines, awkwardly negotiated the float-sponsons, and eventually found himself dangling from the side of the barge.

  Clinging to an anchor line, Phaethon looked up. Sheer vertical surface loomed above him, and a metal overhang or catwalk extended out overhead. There was no way upward. The mannequin representing Constable Pursuivant was not in sight.

  Phaethon banged on the side of the hull and shouted for attention. Once again, he underestimated the strength involved in his space-adapted body; the metal dented under his blows.

  The hull rang like a gong. In the heat of the equatorial morning, the hull metal seemed scalding. Rust flakes and barnacles scraped his fist.

  After what seemed a long time, a tall silhouette stepped out upon the catwalk. Phaethon craned his neck and stared overhead. It was Ironjoy; he had four arms, and the same wide hat he wore yesterday, the same shifting green-blue garment. The housecoat was whining as its air conditioners attempted to keep a zone of cool, scented air around Ironjoy.

  “Hoy! You clang at my personal property, creating disturbance. Aboard I have early shift workers, with their work personalities ready to load, and needing sanity-chips to balance themselves after last night’s festivity. Why do you irk them? Do you come for work?”

  Without his sense-filter Phaethon could neither amplify the view, nor edit out the metal honeycom
b that formed the catwalk floor, so his vision was obscured. Ironjoy was holding a large round golden object in three hands, and as he spoke, he bowed to sip or lick something from the inside of the golden bowl. Eating did not hinder speech: his voice issued from a machine in his chest.

  Phaethon said, “I’ve come to get my armor back. You must be able to call everyone together.”

  “Not possible.”

  “But I saw Oshenkyo do it yesterday! He set his advertisement cloak to emit a call!”

  “Yes. Oshenkyo has enough chits to pay off the interruption fee. You have not. The rental on your revived house-mind has already accumulated over two hundred units, and it’s another twenty-five units’ fare you’ll owe to rent my coracle to carry you back to your house. Unless you want to swim back? Plus my consultation fee, which started to accumulate from the moment you began to speak to me. You are severely in debt, New Kid. Are you ready to start working it off, or are you going to cling there, jabbering?” Ironjoy now bent to take a slow sip of whatever he held in his golden bowl. Phaethon saw, with a sensation of shock, that Ironjoy was holding, not a bowl, but the helmet of Phaethon’s armor, and that he was eating out grams of the delicate skullcap interface webbing.

  Rage throbbed in his body. “Stop! You are destroying my property! You will return my helmet to me as of this instant! Then you will take all steps to recover whatever of my equipment as might remain from the others here!”

  Ironjoy’s insectoid face was incapable of expression. “Do not irk me. You may have been a significant man before, on the outside. Here, only I am significant. Cooperation is necessary to survive in this community. Cooperation is defined as acclimation to my wishes.”

  Phaethon’s fists tightened on the anchor line. He wanted to leap up the sheer surface but saw no way up. His head swam with anger; he tried to calm himself. (He wished Rhadamanthus were there to calm him.)

  “I have made a lawful request that you return property that has been stolen from me,” said Phaethon “Look! Constable remotes as thick as wasps hover over this entire area! Do you think to defraud me of my only possessions?”

  “I see Drusillet and Oshenkyo did not explain real things to you, as I instructed. Come up; I will tell you the truth.” With a kick, Ironjoy unfolded a gangway of stairs from the catwalk. Phaethon dropped into the water, awkwardly made his way to the stairs, climbed. Ironjoy stood under a parasol of diamond in one of the pavilions on deck, rainbow shadows rippled around his feet.

  Other pavilions, to the left and right, showed sleeping figures, their mind-sets connected by cheap hard-wire to an interface board which ran the length of the deck.

  A winged girl nearby had her arms around Phaethon’s gold breastplate, to which she was snuggled up, like a child sleeping with a favorite toy. Phaethon, without a word, stepped over to her and knelt. His arms reached for the breastplate, which, to his delight, he saw still had more than half its nanomachine coating glistening on the interior.

  “Halt!” said Ironjoy. “No stealing!”

  Phaethon turned, his eyes burning, his head pounding. Civilized instinct told him not to touch the armor, to negotiate, and to allow the normal process of law to settle the dispute. But were those instincts of any use to him now?

  He pulled up the breastplate and set it off to one side. The winged girl stirred and murmured but did not wake. Then Phaethon stood, his eyes glassy with anger, and crossed to confront Ironjoy.

  He stared at his foe for a moment. Was there any point in talking? Floating in the transparent surface of the diamond parasol, which spread like a halo over Ironjoy’s head, were the icons and display-boards indexing the contents of Ironjoy’s thought-shop. The icons appeared in Objective Aesthetic symbology; Phaethon understood their meaning.

  To Ironjoy’s left were routines to suppress restless thoughts, to produce personas incapable of fatigue, boredom, talkativeness, or dishonesty. Evidently his work roster. To his right were pleasure-stimulants, a wide number of anesthetics and pornography simulations, mood alterants, false memories, gambling interfaces, and self-justification dreams. Here were stupifiers, nullifiers, distorted mythoformations, and choose-your-own revenge dramas.

  Phaethon, to his deep disgust, also saw sickly sweet addictive thought-forms of the type passed out freely by the mass-mind Compositions, intended only to persuade individuals to surrender the pain and loneliness of individuality to the unconditional and mindless love of the group-mind. Since, of course, no real Composition would permit an exile to join its ranks, Ironjoy could not fulfill the promises those addictives created. But next to them were a group of awareness-interrupters intended to create the temporary illusion of being a member of a mass-mind.

  Phaethon saw not a single intelligence enhancer, memory augment, philosophy text, emotion balancer, or any other useful or wholesome application. He now saw what kind of thought-shop Ironjoy ran.

  Without a word, he yanked the golden helmet out of Ironjoy’s grasp.

  Ironjoy grappled Phaethon, seizing him by both wrists, putting his third hand on the helmet itself, and grasping Phaethon’s neck with his remaining hand. His hands were as hard and strong as mechanical grapples; he evidently expected no resistance. Ironjoy’s face, pressed to Phaethon’s, now showed the only expression of which it was capable: the mandible plates drew back, making a parody of a sneering smile.

  Ironjoy certainly was not expecting Phaethon’s strength to exceed his own. With a brush of his arm, Phaethon threw Ironjoy aside. The tall creature stumbled, four arms windmilling, and fell.

  A group of constable remotes, glittering and buzzing, had descended to take up a circle around the two of them, tiny stings and stunners open.

  Ironjoy rose to his feet and addressed the nearest constable: “I have been assaulted. You boast that violence is unknown in the Golden Oecumene! Yet now this wild barbarian commits outrages upon me!”

  The flat voice spoke from the constable: “The law allows a person to use a reasonable amount of force to recover stolen property.”

  Phaethon said: “Yet neither did you protect me against him!” The constable said: “His action was arguably self-defense. Also, the grounds of your action are not unambiguous. Ironjoy may have a colorable claim to the property.”

  At this, Ironjoy stepped forward again and reached toward the helmet.

  Phaethon said softly: “The property is mine. Interfere at your peril.”

  Ironjoy drew back. But his voice machine issued a strident tone:

  “By what right do you make this claim? You gave it all away, last night. Observe!” Ironjoy drew out a field slate from his coat. He touched the slate surface and called up an image of glowing dragon-signs, surrounded by icons and cartouches of the legal sub-language. Beneath, in Phaethon’s perfect Second-Era-style handwriting, using linear-style cursive letters, was Phaethon’s signature.

  “Last night you signed our Pact. It states our properties are to be administered according to the group will. Haven’t you read it? I left a copy at your house. Your signature passed title to your armor.”

  Phaethon stared at the slate. In a window to the side of his signature, the document showed a visual recording from last night. The picture showed him, giggling, one arm around some pink-haired air-sylph, reaching out with a light-stylus to inscribe a slate Lester was proffering. The time in the scene was dusk. A clock statement stamped by a notary public showed the hour and place and reality level. In the background of the scene, a group of men had begun to chop down a dead house. Phaethon recalled no such scene; but his memory was blurred.

  “The donation is void on the grounds that I was intoxicated.”

  “Intoxication and other voluntary alterations of mental capacity do not form a valid basis for setting aside such a contract. That is the primary law of the Golden Oecumene.”

  “Scoundrel! The intoxication was not voluntary.”

  Ironjoy drew back the slate. He produced a nasal tone: “No doubt you have edited your memory. Fortunately, the re
cords of the garden monitors will confirm my version of events. You drank an expansive from a bulb offered you; you doused yourself with painkillers from your own internal supply.”

  “Only because I was already drunk, and unable to control myself. Earlier than that, you conspired to have one of your fellows, a man with diamond teeth and glass eyes, stab me with a drug!” As he spoke, Phaethon realized who the man must have been. With his stimulant beard, housecoat, and opaque eye cusps removed, Phaethon had not then recognized him. Phaethon said: “You ordered Lester to do the deed. You feared that the capacities of my nanomachinery would threaten your monopoly. It was your intention from the first to rob me.”

  Ironjoy’s tone grew even more nasal: “You will not prove this.”

  “Are you insane!? We are citizens of the Golden Oecumene! How can you even dream to succeed at your deceptions? There are a hundred constable remotes within earshot. Come, let us have the constables do a noetic reading. Your own thoughts and memories will show what you intended!”

  “Perhaps so, if you bring foreword a complaint to the constables. But you will not. This is a trick the constables always play whenever a New Kid is thrown to us here on Death Row. They wait until the New Kid is disadvantaged by one of our practices, but before he has been here long enough to learn our ways. Then they swoop in to stir up trouble. To stir up disloyalty. To stir up disunity. Yes, they would like to have a complaint against me. The Hortators put them up to it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I give these exiles a way to stay alive. The Hortators want them to die. I alone of all these people here have the presence of mind, the discipline and willpower to prosper in this adversity. I alone brought wealth with me into exile, and established secret contacts and way stations in the more private sections of the mentality before I came, or made contracts without the standard Hortators’ escape clause.”

  “You volunteered to live this way?” Phaethon’s words came out slowly, amazed, perhaps disgusted.