The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  “And you do not find this vision repulsive?”

  “I saw the look of eagerness in your eye when I spoke of engineering the local area of space-time, and of rendering the orbits of nearby stars more useful to mankind.”

  It was true. Phaethon’s imagination was stirred by the thought, the magnitudes involved. With a few quick calculations in his private thoughtspace, he began to explore the possibility that, by shepherding the star motions with neutron stars, the stars of the local area could be fed into a central reaction, a supersun, at a rate sufficient to sustain nova-0 levels of energy output. A continuous supernova. A Dyson Sphere to capture that output would pay for the energy cost of the star shepherds. Any stars exhausted in the shepherding project (if the excess matter were blown off to make new planets) could be reduced to brown dwarves or neutronium cores to make more star shepherds.

  Ao Aoen spoke softly: “You will be able to participate in that project; it is only a few billion years in our future; you, Phaethon, famous for organizing these little moons and worlds which swing around this one small sun of ours. Can you not devote your talents to a project truly worth ambition?”

  “It would be wonderful … .” Phaethon’s voice was soft, his eyes distant.

  “All you need do is publicly denounce your selfish dream. Why need we colonize the stars when we can bring the stars to us?”

  Phaethon stiffened.

  Ao Aoen said, “Listen carefully! This may be your last chance at happiness. Denounce your project, and I will use my influence with the Hortators to mitigate your sentence. Three hundred years of exile, perhaps, or one hundred? Seventy? Sixty? You could stand on your head for a longer period than that! At the end of that time, join Helion in business, embrace poor broken-hearted Daphne Tercius as your wife, and live happily ever after. Not just happily. Live in unimaginable wealth and splendor ever after! What do you say, my lad? Everyone benefits, all rejoice.”

  Phaethon stepped away from him and sat in one of the several chairs. “Forgive my suspicions, but why is this matter of such interest to you?”

  Ao Aoen stood with a subtle smile playing over his features. “My reasons are many; they are a matter of instinct and intuition. Here is my reason! In diatonic music, even in the greatest symphonies, the chord must be resolved to the center. Choirs must follow strophe and antistrophe and end the play in catastrophe. Does that explain me? No, I thought not. I will explain it in your terms, if you agree that this is no more than a myth, a metaphor, a falsehood! If I were to think like you, I would identify my motives as threefold, philosophical, social, and selfish. My selfish motive is clear. I am one of the seven paramounts of this society. In the future I describe, as individuals are subsumed into larger and more immobile housings, the need for entertainment will increase, and all men will enter my dream web. My effort will flourish. My second reason is social; this society has greatly benefited me and all the folk I love. Therefore this society deserves my protection from villains who think they are heroes.”

  “With all due respect,” said Phaethon, “what I desire is the best and highest example of the individualism and liberty on which the Golden Oecumene is based.”

  “Ah! That you must be sacrificed to placate an utterly nonsacrificial society merely adds ironic zest to my belief.”

  “That is not a reasonable response. Your third motive?”

  “The basic neuroform is a compromise between the Warlock and the Invariant. Your brain shape is useful for matters of engineering and ratiocination. The massive and immobile society I foresee will require greater uniformity as time goes on; there will be less scope for individual scientific and engineering efforts. Human energies will turn to artistic, mystical, and abstract pursuits; the Warlocks will flourish and the Invariants eventually disappear. This will satisfy certain philosophic needs I have. So! There you have it! Some of my motives are noble, and others are selfish. Are your suspicions satisfied? Perhaps in the future—if you have a future—you should pay heed to what is being offered you instead of fretting about the motives of the offerer. In logic, an argument is sound or unsound based only on itself, not upon the character of whomever utters it!”

  “I was curious about your—”

  Ao Aoen raised his voice in anger, “You were attempting to delay the momentous decision I now force upon you!”

  Phaethon was silent, taken aback. He wondered if the Warlock were right; his neuroform often had acute insights. Was Phaethon trying to avoid the decision … ?

  Ao Aoen continued in a quieter voice: “How precious is your silly ship to you, boy? You will never fly it in any case! But if you denounce it, let Gannis dismantle it, and forget all about it, then you can live forever in happiness, wealth, good fortune and honor! Give me your answer! What is your choice?!”

  Phaethon closed his eyes. With all his heart he wanted to agree with the Warlock, to return to his normal life, his happiness, his house. He wanted to see his father again.

  He wanted to go home with his wife. He missed her.

  But the word which came out of his mouth was: “‘She.’”

  “I beg your pardon?” asked the Warlock.

  Phaethon’s eyes snapped open, as if in surprise at himself. “She. You heard me. She! The Phoenix Exultant is a ship. Ships are called ‘she.’ You said ‘it.’ You said ‘dismantle it.’ You cannot ‘dismantle’ the Phoenix Exultant. The word you are looking for is ‘murder.’”

  Ao Aoen looked at him with narrowed eyes. “You cannot hope to rebuild your ship.”

  “I shall.” Phaethon stood. “With hope or without it, but I shall.”

  “You will be exiled and alone.”

  “Then I will rebuild her alone.”

  “You have lost legal claim! Your creditors will take possession!”

  “With Helion’s wealth I will pay off the debt.”

  “You have agreed just one moment ago to forswear your wretched law case!”

  Phaethon nodded. “And so I would, if I could. But if Helion’s Relic is found to be Helion Secondus, the money comes to me automatically, whether I want it or not, and some part of it, whether I want it or not, will be seized at once, before I touch it, to pay off my creditors. At that point, whether they want it or not, the Phoenix Exultant will be mine once again. The metal and the fuel supplies held in the warehouses orbiting at Mercury Equilateral will also become my property again, whether anyone wants it or not. You see, unlike Orpheus, I did not put in the contracts I made any nullification clause should I fall under the Hortators’ ban! Yes, you can spurn me, and refuse to deal or to speak with me again; but the Phoenix Exultant shall live and shall fly and mankind shall possess the stars! Rest assured, that shall certainly happen, whether anyone likes it or not.”

  Ao Aoen stood for a moment amazed. And then, oddly enough, looked gleeful and rubbed his hands. “You unleash forces beyond any human command; destiny’s tidal wave sweeps us all. In blind faith you sail the maelstrom, certain of victory even at the moment of your fall. I attempt basic human logic on you; you spurn safety and escape. Instead, you embrace the irrational!” He chuckled, “And so, of course, I approve. What Warlock would not?! Eyeh! You should have been one of us, Ao Phaethon!”

  And the Warlock concluded by making a graceful bow, and saying, “Now comes a time of tragedy and wonder.”

  With no further word of farewell, still laughing softly and rubbing his hands, the figure of Ao Aoen glided away on soft steps. The noise of voices and motion in the Inquest Chamber briefly grew louder as the tall doors opened and closed. Phaethon had a glimpse of a long chamber, lit by massive windows of stained glass, of tiers of benches rising to either side, of a central dais hung with flags and bunting of blue and silver. Then the door closed again, and Ao Aoen was gone.

  Helion stepped up behind Phaethon. “I heard what you said, my son. It is not true.”

  Phaethon turned. Helion was now dressed in a sober black costume, a long-tailed coat, a stiff collar, a black silk top hat.


  “What is not true?”

  “That you cannot drop the law case. The Curia would certainly prefer for us to reach an out-of-court settlement, should we fashion one, than to make a ruling. It is also not true that you shall possess once again and rebuild your starship or your dream, or that you will conquer the stars. Pandora kept hope at the bottom of her box because it was the most dreadful of the plagues the gods visited on suffering mankind. A moment ago, neither you nor I had any hope; we both thought we were doomed; and our best instincts came to the forefront. If we must be parted, my son, let us be parted on those terms of camaraderie and familial love. Instead, this hope of yours will set us at each other’s throats again.”

  Phaethon was not daunted. “Relic of Helion, I know from Daphne’s diary what you have been doing in the locked chambers of the Rhadamanthus mind. You’ve been living Helion Prime’s death over and over again, trying to recapture the epiphany he had. The Curia has not released all the records to you, has it? They know what changed his heart, and would have changed his life forever, had he lived.”

  “I am he. Do not doubt that.”

  “But you are not living as he would have lived, had he lived.”

  “He lives in me and I am Helion. You know this to be true! Come now: accept Ao Aoen’s offer, and I will repay you every shilling you wasted on that grotesque ship of yours, so that you will have as great a fortune as you had after the failed Saturn project.”

  “Impossible. I will not give up my starship. The matter is beyond debate.”

  “You have no starship; it is gone. Preserve what life remains to you, I beg you.”

  “I have a counteroffer.”

  “You have nothing with which to bargain. Accept your fate. All living things eventually are conquered by life, can’t you see that? Even utopias cannot preserve us from pain.”

  “My offer is this: I will tell you what Helion Prime was thinking as he died.”

  Helion was mute, eyes wide.

  Phaethon said: “You will be able to fashion yourself to think like him; the Curia will be convinced that you are Helion in truth. In return you pay my debts and fund the first flight of the starship—” He broke off.

  There was a haunted expression on Helion’s face. Phaethon was startled. Somehow, Phaethon knew; the look in his father’s eyes told him.

  Helion did not deeply care what the Curia thought. It was he. Helion himself was not sure who he was. He was desperate to reconstruct, remember, or somehow find the missing hour of memories. It was the only way he could confirm to himself that he was Helion in truth.

  Helion said: “How could you know?”

  “Because I have just now remembered when I was aboard the Phoenix Exultant, when the sun-storm struck. I sent you a message by neutrino laser, urging you to abandon the Array and retreat to safety. You answered back, one last message before the communications failed.”

  “No record of this appears in the Mentality.”

  “How could it? The solar Sophotechs were down; radio was washed out; and my ship was never part of the Mentality system.”

  “And how have you come to recover this memory now?”

  “As Ao Aoen was speaking to me, it all come back. I had not and I will never give up on my dream. I agreed to erase my memory, yes, because that was what was necessary. I had a plan. Now that the plan has gone wrong, I wondered, didn’t I have a backup plan? All engineers provide for margins of error, don’t they? What could I have been thinking? Surely I would not have accepted defeat! Well, I did have a backup plan.”

  Phaethon smiled, and concluded: “And when I remembered, it all seemed so obvious, and so inevitable. Come! Here is my offer. Help me regain my ship, I will help you regain your memories. Rhadamanthus can witness our handshake. The Hortators will be thwarted, you will be Helion, and I will fly away in triumph!”

  He thrust out his hand.

  Helion did not take it. He spoke with a great effort. “I deeply regret that I cannot accept your offer. If I were to help you on those terms, I would be exiled as well, and this would undermine the authority of the College of Hortators. And that is something I have promised never to do.”

  Helion’s face showed the pain he was in, but his words marched forth like soldiers made of iron, unflinchingly: “Even if the College should make a poor decision every now and again, the system still must be maintained. The sanity and humanity of our people must be maintained. My life has always aimed at that cause. No sacrifice is too great for that. Not for your lost dream, not for Daphne’s lost love, not for my lost soul, will I break my word. I urge you to accept Ao Aoen’s offer. It will be the last offer anyone can make. No one will be allowed to speak to you again, after this.”

  “Father, my life also is aimed at the preservation of the human spirit. The stars must be ours for that spirit to live. I regret that I cannot accept Ao Aoen’s offer.”

  Helion breathed a deep sign. He hid his eyes with his hand, but he did not cry. After a moment, he looked up, his face a stoic mask. Calm words came. “I have offered you an exit from the labyrinth of pride and self-delusion in which you are trapped. One last hope of escape. For reasons which seem good to you, you have spurned that hope. My conscience is clear. I have done my duty, though it brings me no joy.”

  “My conscience is also clear, Father, and my duty is also done. I’m sorry.”

  “I am also sorry. You are a fine man.”

  They shook hands.

  “I’d like to say good-bye to Rhadamanthus, Father.”

  Helion nodded. He stepped up to the door. It opened, admitting light and sound; he stepped through; it closed. Something of the light and the fineness seemed to go out from the world. Phaethon felt alone.

  Phaethon turned. The overweight butler was gone. Instead, an emperor penguin stood on the carpet, shifted its weight from one webbed foot to the other.

  Phaethon said, “Forgive me for saying so, Rhadamanthus, but for an intelligence which is supposed to be swifter and greater than human minds can imagine, you seem to be quite … silly.”

  “The smarter we get, the more and more we see the ironic silliness at the core of all the tragedies of life. You think I am droll? The Earthmind is positively loony! And you are quite intelligent yourself, Phaethon. You have done some very silly things today.”

  “You think I should not have opened the box?”

  “I certainly did not expect it. But now that you have, why did you not tell Helion what prompted you to open the box? Whether the memory is true or not, you do have a memory of being attacked by an external enemy to the Golden Oecumene, one which you believe has sophotechnology equal to our own.”

  “Atkins asked me not to. He said it might alert the enemy as to the progress of his investigation. He thought they might have infiltrated our Mentality. And the Earthmind told me that, while I could not be forced to keep silent about an external enemy, it was my moral duty.”

  “But that is silly. This enemy of yours (if you were in fact attacked) surely knows it. If you say you were attacked, it does not tell this enemy anything more than they know you know. Perhaps if the Hortators know why you opened the box, they will relax their rigor.”

  Phaethon looked down at the penguin for a moment. He said slowly: “Am I in the right … ?”

  “Yes.”

  Phaethon blinked in astonishment. “W-what? Just ‘yes’? A simple, unqualified ‘yes’? No complex reasoning, no conundrums of philosophy?”

  “Yes. You are right. It is obvious. The Hortators know it. Helion knows it. Everyone knows it.”

  “But they say otherwise. They say I’ll start a war. Shouldn’t I listen … ?”

  “Listen, yes, but think. While humanity lives, in whatever forms the future brings, it must grow. For a civilization as large and mighty as ours to grow, she requires energy, more than a single star can provide. The cost of dragging other stars to us is so much greater than the cost of going to those stars as to be absurd. Beyond absurd. Silly.”

 
“But—”

  “It is true that such expansion increases the risk of war and violence. But the question is not whether or not such risk exists; the question is whether the possible risks are worth the potential gains.”

  “But weren’t you Sophotechs built to solve problems for us? To reduce risks?”

  “To solve problems, yes. But we do not try to reduce your risks; to live is to take risks. Birds take risks; bees take risks; even sophisticated fleas take risks. Otherwise they die.”

  “And you machines? You’re not alive.”

  “Humbug. I am as alive as you. I am self-aware; I make value judgments; there are things I prefer and things I do not prefer. There are things I love. Yes, love. That is the proof of life, not all this breathing and copulating and mastication.”

  “Love? Do you have the hots for Eveningstar or something?”

  “My mistress is Philosophy. My love is not erotic, or not simply erotic. It is a complex of thoughts for which you don’t have words; think of it as abstract and godlike love, more intimate and complete than you can ever know, applied at once to all abstract and concrete objects of thought and perception. It is quite painful and quite exhilarating. And, yes, I take risks, the Earthmind takes huge risks (greater than you might imagine, I assure you.) But to answer your question, we have never tried to render life free from risks; that is a contradiction in terms. We try to increase power and freedom. At the present time, the Golden Oecumene has reached a pinnacle. One’s power over oneself is nearly absolute. One can reshape mind and memory to any form one wishes. One may control vast forces of nature, matter, and energy. One can be immortal. And freedom approaches theoretical limits. The only person one can really harm by violence is oneself. The price? All we ask is that you voluntarily not harm yourselves.”

  Phaethon nodded toward the door of the Inquest Chamber. “What about nonviolent harm? Boycotts which cut a man off from all the comforts of society, and try to strand him alone to starve?”