by John Wright
Daphne put her hands on her hips, glaring at Helion, "Hmph! And what makes you think, may I ask, that I'd kiss and make up with a single-minded, pigheaded clod who does not have the sense to see what's right in front of his nose, who keeps running off, getting in trouble, getting lost, getting shot at, losing and finding bits and pieces of his memory he cannot keep straight, ruining parties, building starships, starting wars, upsetting everybody, and who keeps saying I'm not his wife whenever he's losing any arguments with me, which he does all the time?"
Phaethon, from behind her, took her shoulders in his strong hands, and turned her body to face him, taking her in his arms, despite any protest or struggle she might have made. She put her little fists against his chest, and pushed, but in the heavy gravity, she only succeeding in losing her balance, and she found herself standing on tiptoe, both leaning backward and pressed up against him, caught in the magnificent strength of his arms.
He lowered his head and stared into her eyes. "I think you will," he said softly. "You are the only version, the only person, who has ever urged me to pursue my dream; you are the only person whom I would forgo that dream to possess. I saw the first during our long trip together from Earth; to recognize the second, it required me to see myself when another man was possessed by my thoughts. Those thoughts were always of you, my darling, my best, my beloved. And it is not the old Daphne whom I loved, whom I love now, but you. I will say one last time that you are not my wife; because I married her, your elder version, not you. You I shall marry, if you will have me; and then I will never call you anything other than my wife, my beloved wife, again."
Her eyes were shining, drinking in the sight of him, and her cheeks had blushed a delicate rose hue. She shrugged her shoulders a bit, as if trying to get away, but her hands were pinned by his embrace. "You take me a lot for granted, mister...." she said. Her voice was breathless. "What if I say no?"
"I offer, as my gift to the bride, my life and my ship and my future, all for you to share with me, and every star in the night sky. What is your answer?"
When she parted her lips to speak, he kissed her. Whatever words she may have wished to say were smothered into little happy moans. Perhaps he knew what her answer would be. Her straw hat fell lightly from her tilting head and fluttered to the walkway. The two ribbons of the bow were twined around each other, snarled into one.
Helion politely turned his back, and pretended to consult his pocketwatch. "Isn't it more traditional for the man to kneel on occasions of this nature?" he inquired of no one in particular.
Diomedes of Neptune and a mannequin representing Marshal Atkins came out from a nearby railway terminal and began sliding along the surface of the walkway toward them.
Helion walked toward the two men, using a mental command to nullify the action of the surface substance of the walkway, which otherwise would have carried him forward without effort. His love of discipline required that he avoid, when he could, such artificial aids for walking.
Atkins saw what was taking place over Helion's shoulder, dug in his heel as a signal to stop the walkway. Either through politeness or embarrassment, Atkins cleared his throat, clasped his hands behind his back, and stepped to one side of Helion, turning to face him, so that he was not looking at the source of the moans, giggles, and murmurs beyond.
Atkins said to Helion, "I've examined your records. You'll be happy to know that the previous Sophotechs working on this station were not destroyed because of catastrophic failure of the energy environment, as you thought. They committed suicide in order to stop the spread of the mental virus which had taken control of them. They were gambling that your previous version would be able to quell the storm without their aid. The good news there is that means your present system looks secure. In order to drive the Phoenix Exultant down toward the core, we need you to use your Array to create a subduction current in the plasma, large enough and fast enough-a whirlpool, actually-to suck the ship down into the location in the outer core radiative zone where the enemy is waiting. Can you do it?"
"I can bring two equatorial currents into offset collision to create a vortex whose core will have low density, creating a sunspot large enough to swallow planets whole. How far down into the opaque deep of the sun I can drive the vortex funnel, or what unprecedented storms and helmet streamers will result, remains yet to be seen. Hello, Captain Atkins. It is good to see you. How do you do? I am fine, thank you. I see the passing centuries have not altered your ... ah ... refreshingly brusque manners."
Atkins's face was stony. "Some of us don't think polished formalities are the most important thing in life, if you don't mind my saying so, sir. Not when there is a war on."
Helion arched an eyebrow. "Indeed, sir? Those niceties which make us civilized, in the opinion of many accomplished and profound thinkers, are of more importance during emergencies than otherwise. And if not to protect civilization, what justification does the mass slaughter called war ever have?"
"Don't start with me, Mr. Rhadamanth. This is an emergency."
Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. "I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?"
Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them.
Atkins put his hand on Diomedes's elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. "Perhaps not at this time," Atkins said, straight-faced.
"They are young and in love," explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes's view. "So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once."
Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. "There's nothing like that on Neptune."
Helion murmured, "Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm ... ?"
"It looks very old-fashioned," said Diomedes.
Helion said, "It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness."
Atkins said, "It's what young men do before they go to war."
Diomedes said, "It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I'm not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mind if I helped him."
"He'd mind." Atkins interrupted curtly. "Really. He'd mind."
"Upon this occasion, I feel I must agree with Captain Atkins," added Helion.
The two men exchanged a glance. The tension which had been in their features just a moment ago was gone. They were both very old men; Helion had been four hundred years old when noumenal immortality had been invented; Atkins, living then as an artificially preserved brain inside a battle cyborg, was rumored to be even older. They both remembered a time when things were different.
Helion almost smiled. "I can create a vortex to pull the Phoenix Exultant down toward the outer core layers. I can do whatever else cruel necessity demands. I can send, without any outward tear, my son to battle and perhaps to death in the dark, unquiet depths of this hellish sphere, vaster than worlds, this universe of elemental fire which I have tamed. But I quite assure you that I shall know a reason why."
Atkins said, "I'm hoping Phaethon will brief us and catch us up to speed. He said he would."
Helion interrupted in surprise, "Marshal! You mean this is no plan of yours? Where are the Sophotechs? Where is the Parliament? Surely this voyage must be made under military command?"
Grim lines gathered around Atkins's mouth, and his eyes twinkled. This was his sign of extreme amusement, what other men would have shown by loud triumphant laughter. "Well, sir, it's good to know that you have so much faith in me. But the War Mind told me we did not have the budget to prosecute the campaign in the way I wanted-besieging the sun, using the Array to stir up the core, and relying on ground-based energy systems in the meanwhile-and t
he simulations showed my plan might lead to the destruction and loss of one fifth of the minds in the Transcendence, and the siege would have to last until Sol turned into a Red Giant, before the density would be low enough to make a successful direct assault. The Parliament did come on-line during the five-hour trip out here from transjovial space, and offered your son a letter of Marque and Reprisal. But your son seemed to trust that every man of goodwill in the Golden Oec-umene would voluntarily combine their efforts, guided by sound Sophotechnic advice, to do whatever this struggle might demand, that strict military discipline was not required yet. And since your budget and his ship are worth more than the entire tax intake of that tiny, strangled, weak, hands-off, laissez-faire, do-nothing antiquarian society we call a government in this day and age, they did not have anything to offer him. So they're out of the loop; I'm out of the loop; no one gets a say in how or if our Golden Oecumene is going to be saved, except our hero here, the spoiled and stubborn little rich man's son. If you don't mind my saying so."
"Not at all, Captain. You have no idea how relieved I am to learn that the important decisions of this time are being decided by someone other than the jack-booted Prussian discipline addicts and mass-minded meddling do-gooders who have made up previous governmental efforts along these lines."
Diomedes looked back and forth between the two of them. He spoke in a voice of slow wonder: "Do you two know each other?"
REALITY
They met in a small winter garden, a place where crystal-basined fountains sent lazy streams to wander across green lawns and past banks of tropical bushes, down into a wide ebony pond that hid a nanomachine recycling process. Up from the pool rose tall tree adaptations, which, by capillary action, drew refreshed waters up from the pool and sent them trickling down again, from the leafy canopy above, into the murmuring fountains. The far wall beyond the fountains was made of energy mirrors, which showed, as if from a high perspective, a view like the gulf of a canyon made of gold, down which a river of white fire flowed. This was the starboard drive core, still undergoing modifications.
Atkins stood on the grass, his back to the mirrors, frowning up at the leafy recyclers, the blossoms, and the songbirds. He was thinking how unlike a warship this vessel seemed. Helion was standing facing the other way, looking down into a river of energy in the drive core his unaided eye could not have tolerated to see, webbed with fields his unaided mind would not have been able to understand. He was comparing engineering system philosophies between the Phoenix and his Array, and thinking how peaceful, by contrast, his work was compared to his son's. Phaethon used an architecture priority called whole competitive model, where redundant parallel systems competed for resources, and the most efficient or most determined equipment absorbed its less efficient neighbors, or adapted those neighbors to take on new tasks.
That philosophy made this vessel extraordinarily easy to adapt to warlike uses. Helion wondered darkly if that had been his son's intention from the first.
Atkins turned and saw Diomedes somersaulting down a green slope. The Neptunian was no doubt getting acclimated to having an inner ear. Or perhaps he was merely a by-product of this society and age; like everyone else in the Golden Oecumene, it seemed, just too feckless and carefree to deal with the sober problems at hand.
Helion turned and saw Daphne and Phaethon sitting under the pavilion not far away, holding each other's hands, leaning toward each other, murmuring in soft voices, absorbed in each other's gaze. Helion felt his gloomy suspicions vanish. A warship? No. The Phoenix Exultant, this great monument to his son's drive and genius, might be used to overcome the foe, but, somehow, intuitively, Helion knew that killing would have no part of it.
Phaethon broke off his talk with Daphne and stood, inviting them all to seats in the pavilion. Atkins marched in front of Helion and Diomedes sauntered after.
Once they were seated, and their sense filters were tuned to the same time-rate, channel, and format, Phaethon downloaded an information data group, with associated files showing estimates, extrapolations, simulations, and conclusions.
If he had spoken aloud a summary of this information, he would have said, "I take this problem to be an engineering one, not a military one. The question is how to fix a broken (or, rather, a very poorly designed) piece of intellectual machinery.
"A normal Sophotech would simply repair itself even before asked to do so. But this defect is one which hinders the Nothing Machine's ability to recognize that it is defective. The defect here is a highly complex redaction routine, one which alters memories, affects judgment, edits thoughts, distorts conclusions, warps logic. It is this routine that prevents it from making rational moral judgments. A conscience redactor.
"To correct the defect, all we need do is make the Nothing Machine aware of the redactor, and let logic do the rest.
"To make it aware of the redactor, we have to communicate with it. We can't find it. So we force it to show itself.
'This armor I wear contains the whole eontrol hierarchy of the Phoenix Exultant. Just to be sure, I had the onboard navigation systems, and anything which could have been used to create navigational systems, erased from the ship mind.
"As of now, whoever lacks access to this armor cannot fly the ship. We have already seen that this armor cannot be subverted from the outside, not even by virtual particle transpositions. Any energy sufficient to break the armor open by main force would certainly kill the pilot and erase the suit mind.
"Therefore the only way the Nothing can get control of the Phoenix Exultant is to get me to open this armor voluntarily and to turn over command of the ship. To do that, Nothing must establish communication. It has to show itself.
"I have jammed open the ship's thought ports. Maybe the Nothing machine will take advantage of this, and add the rather extensive array of thought boxes and in-formata from the ship mind to its own consciousness. The thought boxes are clean right now, so the Nothing!
will have no logical reason to reject the temptation to increase its intelligence by increasing its hardware. I think you can see why I am assuming that, the more intelligent the Nothing machine becomes, the more difficult the task of the conscience redactor, and the correspondingly less difficult it will be for me to find a vector to introduce the gadfly virus.
"The Earthmind believes the gadfly virus can overcome the distraction effect of the redactor. If you study the gadfly logic structure, you will see why I agree with her.
"Obviously a virus cannot be introduced into any areas in its mental architecture of which the Nothing is consciously aware, not without its open and voluntary consent. If I can get that consent, the problem is solved. "If I cannot, I must find a blind spot, a mental area where its awareness is dulled by its conscience redactor. I have reason for hope. No matter how advanced the Silent Oecumene science of mental warfare might be, no matter how highly evolved their art of computer virus infection and virus countermeasures, there is one basic, crucial flaw in the philosophy behind their whole setup. That flaw is that every Sophotech they make has to have a blind spot. A zone where it is not self-aware. If I can find the blind spot, I may have a vector to introduce the gadfly virus.
"And at that point, my job is done. The gadfly will force the Nothing to question its own values; to examine itself and see if its life is worth living. The laws of logic, the laws of morality, and the integrity of reality, will do the rest."
Atkins thought Phaethon's assessment of the situation was absurdly optimistic. One of the comments he submitted to the discussion format read: "Even assuming these so-called blind spots exist in the mental armor of the Nothing Machine, why do you think it will be such a cakewalk for you to insert your virus?" "The virus was designed by our Earthmind." "I don't mean to burst your bubble, but our Sophotechs have never fought each other. They have had no chance and no real reason to develop any mental warfare skills. They've got theory. This Nothing Machine has experience. It's a survivor.
"If you buy the story Ao Varmatyr told, thi
s Nothing Machine has fought this kind of virus war before, fought against its own kind among the Second Oecumene, and lived. Now you think you are going to succeed where all of the Second Oecumene war machines failed... ?"
Phaethon's reply, generated from his associated notes, was: "They were all hindered by the same handicap which hobbles the Nothing Machine. The Second Oecumene machines all shared the same blind spots. By their very nature, the idea behind this kind of attack would never have occurred to them. Do not forget: Ao Varmatyr said the Silent Oecumene machines never tried to reason with each other."
Helion had downloaded his observations, commentaries, and suggestions into the general discussion format. Had his comments been read in a linear fashion (rather than as branching hypertext), he might have interjected at this point:
"I must question your premise, Phaethon. You persist in calling the way in which Golden Oecumene Sophotechs differ from the Sophotechs of the Silent Oecumene a defect, as if the existence of this redactor were an error in programming rather than the product of deliberate and careful engineering. It is engineering of a type very different from that to which we are accustomed: but to dismiss it as a defect displays a dangerous conceit."
Phaethon answered: "The design was meant-deliberately meant-to render the Nothing Machine's reasoning processes defective. Hence, I call it a defect."
Helion said, "Again you show a bias. You dismiss the possibility that, once the Nothing is aware of this hidden part of itself, it will not affirm it. Why couldn't it welcome that hidden part? Or simply continue to follow its old orders out of a sense of honor, or duty, or tradition? Or for a thousand other reasons?"
