The Phoenix Exultant tga-2

by John Wright

"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 cafe 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 handle 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 dream-space. 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 signaltraffic, 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 over-stimulation, 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 War-mind 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 the 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.

  "Hence the target was completely without suspicion or inhibition, and was unable to override its pre-established highspeed reflexes. Finding itself in a brain under fire, it activated noumenal recording circuits, and broadcast itself to a safe station. Harrier Sophotech's predictions in this regard seem to be have been confirmed. Signal was intercepted by cislunar sail and suppressed. Unfortunately, the enemy thought-encryption system, which is based on an infinite-infinitesimal number process we cannot decode, prevented the signal from being trapped or recorded property. Scaramouche is dead beyond recovery."

  Phaethon turned to Harrier. "What is going on? What prediction did you make?"

  Harrier smiled, and said, "The other odd thing that Mr. Jason Sven Ten Shopworthy did, aside from leaning on his left elbow at the teahouse, was that he sleepwalked on his way home last Tuesday. While his body was on autopilot, records indicate that his mind entered into the Orient Free Market Group Thought-shop Mall in the Deep-Dreaming Commercial Channel. He visited quite a number of shops and business, and ran many free samples, and, all in all, seemed quite impressed with the luxury and wealth of our commercial consumer markets."

  Phaethon said, "I don't understand. How could our wealth impress him? He was from the Silent Oecumene, which, by all accounts, was much richer in energy than our Golden Oecumene by an almost infinite amount. What was our wealth to him?"

  "But their technology was arrested at the Fifth-Era level of development. They have only those technical advances from the Sixth Era, the Era of the Sophotechs, that we broadcast to them. There is no evidence, however, that they had in place any of the social or marketplace structures necessary to take advantage of those developments. Furthermore, it is not clear what percentage of the population survived the events depicted in the famous Last Broadcast, nor what their level of civilization was thereafter. War can do terrible things."

  "Are you suggesting that their technology level is less than ours? Less? I had been assuming all this time it was greater..."

  "Mr. Rhadamanth," said Harrier, "if you came for the first time from a more primitive circumstance and entered into the Golden Oecumene, what is the first, the very first, technological advantage of which you would avail
yourself... ?"

  Phaethon looked at Daphne. Perhaps he was thinking about her past.

  He said, "We did corrupt him. Scaramouche bought a Noumenal Immortality account, didn't he?"

  Harrier said, "And suppose you were an alien spy. You could not send your brain-information into any Golden Oecumene Sophotech or any of our mind banks, could you? So where would you send it? To which Sophotech would you direct the broadcast?"

  Phaethon looked back and forth. "There is really something horrible about you all, Warmind, Harrier, Atkins. You just shot an innocent man without warning."

  Harrier said, "If a police officer must shoot through a hostage to strike a criminal hiding in his mind, who is to blame? The officer, or the criminal who deliberately put that hostage in danger?"

  Atkins patted Phaeton on the shoulder. "I think you need to reload some intelligence enhancers or something, sir. Maybe you're tired. Warmind! Tell our newest recruit about Mr. Shopworthy."

  "Mr. Shopworthy is unaware of what occurred. He is presently recuperating in the Orpheus Alaska branch of the Noumenal Immortality life bank."

  Atkins turned and stared at the eastern horizon. There was no hint of light there yet, but a predawn smell was in the night and, on the shore and not far away, first one bird note, then another, rang out, and soon the air was filled with song.

  "Dawn's coming," said Atkins.

  "It's refreshing!" said Daphne. "I always have loved the dawn! A time of hope, isn't it... ? And we really are going to defeat these creatures, aren't we? These monsters?"

  "Actually," said Atkins, "I was thinking we should get under cover. I don't think a purely passive spy satellite or remote sent out from the enemy starship could see us in the dark, not if it did not dare emit any sort of signal to bounce off of us. But once the sun is up, the enemy may have enough magnification and resolution to get a picture of us even from somewhere beyond Mars, if his collector is big enough and his resolution is fine enough."

  Daphne glumly looked up at the night sky.

  Atkins said, "As for our plan, I think Phaethon has to continue with the masquerade we started here. If he publicly approaches the Hortators and proves his innocence, that will warn the enemy. So, without any visible help from anyone, he has to make contact with the Neptunians, get them to hire him, and get back to his ship. Once Phaethon is aboard the ship, the enemy will have to come for him. Each time they have acted so far, they've tried to get the armor."