The Golden Transcendence

by John C. Wright

  Skin ruptured, he was covered from head to toe with his own blood. The Neptunian parted around him.

  Another memory came: his blood was toxic. In addition to white and red blood cells were so-called black blood cells, an army of assemblers and disassemblers, programmed to poison, unmake, dissolve, and destroy any biological substance it touched which was not him. The Neptunian was dissolving.

  As the Neptunian body fell back to either side, wounded and burnt, he rolled, grasped the katana Atkins had dropped beneath him, came to his feet. Static sparks crawled along the bloodstains as the waste heat from the nanomachine black blood was converted to radio white noise, jamming all signals in the area, disrupting noumenal circuits, preventing any thought transfer.

  In one swift motion, with infinite grace, he lunged and shouted and struck. His movement, stance, and execution were controlled and forceful, a perfect example of the art. The finely tempered swordblade punctured the yielding material of the Neptunian body in a way no energy weapon could have done, neatly severing the major nerve groups where his advanced senses told him the Silent One brain activity was housed. Housed, and unable to escape, while the burning blood jammed all thought traffic in the area.

  With the withdrawal stroke he severed the brain mass a second time for good measure, and came back to a balanced, upright posture, flourished the sword (light glanced from the beautiful antique perfection of the steel), and drew it down to his side, where a scabbard would have been had he not been nude.

  A rough circle of blue-gray Neptunian substance still surrounded him, crawling and writhing, and it showed neuroelectronic activity in some of its segments, perhaps routines still attempting to carry out the Silent One’s orders. Near his foot was the smaller blade, a wakizashi, which he had noticed hanging beneath the symbol table when he first woke here. This knife had been under the noetic unit, and therefore had survived the incineration of the bridge: the wreckage of the table, the noetic unit, and the blade had all been under Phaethon’s armor during the blast.

  He hooked the sheath with his toe, kicked the knife up into his left hand, and, with a wrist flick that sent the sheath continuing upward, exposed the blade.

  The knife was not an antique but a modern weapon, shaped like a knife so that it could be used for stabbing when its charge ran out. The charge was full. He glanced at the control surface set into the blade, so that circuits could track his eye movements, and then he looked at what he wished destroyed.

  A battle mind in the hilt found the pattern to his eye movements, extrapolated, defined the target, and (before he even finished looking at what he wanted struck) sent a variety of energetics and high-speed nanomaterial packages out from projectors along the blade surface and blade edge to destroy the remaining Neptunian bodies and microbes in the room.

  The blade also emitted command signals to lock out those sections of the ship’s mind that may have been affected by enemy thought viruses, made a prioritized list of cleanup procedures, made contact with the stealth remotes still hovering in the area, reconfigured them, programmed them for new tasks, and sent them to disable the ghost-particle generator housed in the disrupters planted along the ship’s drive core.

  All this, in less time than it would take a man, dazed by the blaze of fire and lighting coming from that knife, to blink.

  The scabbard reached the apex of its arc, and then fell. With his left hand he caught the scabbard on the blazing knife tip, mouth-first, so that it fell neatly onto the blade and sheathed it.

  He looked left and right. The deckplate was broken and black. He was alone. The enemy was dead.

  He looked in astonishment and horror at his bloodstained hands, crawling with steam and sparks, and at the knife and sword, which seemed so familiar in his grip.

  His whisper came hoarsely from his throat: “Who the hell am I?!”

  3.

  Across the wide chamber, one of the surviving mannequins, Sloppy Rufus, first dog on Mars, turned away from the last bank of still-functional detection assessors, stood on his hind legs, put his forefeet up on the balcony rail, and, with muzzle between paws, peered gravely down. A naked man with a naked sword stood in a circle of black and steaming destruction, that once had been the bridge, and stared back up at him.

  “Isn’t it obvious, my good sir? You are Atkins.” The voice from the dog was Phaethon’s voice.

  “The hell I am. I don’t want to be Atkins. I’m Phaethon. I built this!” He gestured with the still-dripping sword left and right at the bridge around him. Perhaps he was pointing at the wreckage. The man’s voice sounded nothing like Phaethon’s.

  The dog said, “I’m quite sorry, sir, but to be quite blunt, you are an atrocious version of me. Half the things you thought were exaggerated mockeries of what I believe, that other half were pure Atkins. And why did you kill Ao Varmatyr? That was reprehensible! He could have been captured safely, kept alive, cured, saved. Vengeance? Wasteful notion. Besides, you should have known Diomedes was not dead. You recorded him, and most of Xenophon, into the noumenal recorder before you spoke with the Silent One.”

  The man dropped sword and knife and pressed his palms against his brow, eyes strained, as if trying to keep some terrible pressure inside his brain from exploding. “The memories are still going off inside my head! Burning cities, clouds of nerve logics, a thousand ways to kill a man . . . You’ve got to stop it. Where’s the noetic unit?! My life is boiling away! I’m Phaethon! I want to stay Phaethon! I don’t want to turn into . . . into . . .” He was on his knees scrambling for the noetic unit.

  The dog said: “Your desire not to be Atkins is probably just an exaggeration of what you think I think about you. Its really not true. I’m sure killing is a useful and necessary service to perform in barbaric times, or under barbarous cicumstances like these. . . .”

  “Then you be Atkins! I’ll transfer the mnemonic templates to you—”

  “Good God, no!”

  The man took up Phaethon’s helmet and put it over his head, and slung the breastplate across his shoulders. The thought ports in the epaulettes opened; responder lights in the noetic unit winked on. A circuit was established between the noetic unit and the thought systems in the helm and wired under the man’s skull.

  The man’s fingers were tapping impatiently on the casing of the noetic unit. “Hurry . . . hurry . . . ,” he muttered. “I’m losing myself. . . .”

  Interruption came. A beam came from the hilt stone of the knife the man had dropped to the bloodstained and burnt deckplates. The beam touched the shoulder board and negated the circuit. The noetic unit went dark.

  A voice came from the weapon: “HALT!”

  The man ripped off the helmet he wore. There were tearstains running down his bloody cheeks. His face was purple-black with emotion. Veins upon his brow stood out in sharp relief.

  The man said in a voice of murderous calm: “You cannot stop me. I am a citizen of the Golden Oecumene; I have rights. No matter what I was before, I am a self-aware entity now, and I may do to myself whatever I please. If I want to continue being this me that I am now, that’s my right. No one owns me! That rule is true for everyone in our utopia!”

  “FOR EVERYONE BUT YOU. YOU BELONG TO THE MILITARY COMMAND. YOU DO AND DIE AS YOU ARE ORDERED.”

  “No!” The man shouted.

  The dog said to the knife: “I don’t mind the copyright violations, if he really wants to use my template for a while. . . . I mean, can’t you just let him, ah . . . Don’t you have other copies of him and such?”

  The weapon said to the man: “RETURN TO YOUR DUTY. RETURN TO YOUR SELF-IDENTITY.”

  “But I’m a citizen of the Oecumene! I can be who I want! I am a free man!”

  “YOU ALONE, MARSHAL ATKINS, ARE NOT AND CANNOT BE FREE. IT IS THE PRICE PAID SO THAT OTHERS CAN BE.”

  “Daphne! They’re going to make me forget that I love you! Don’t let them! Daphne! Daphne!”

  Weeping, the nameless man fell to his face. A moment later, looki
ng mildly embarassed or amused, face stern, Atkins climbed to his feet.

  “Well, that operation turned out to be a clusterfoxtrot, didn’t she?” he muttered.

  4.

  Atkins spoke with his knife for a few minutes, making decisions and listening to rapid reports concerning the details of the cleanup procedure that the battle mind in the weapon had initiated.

  Phaethon’s voice came down from the mannequin dog on the upper balcony: “Don’t dismantle the ghost-particle broadcast array in the drive core!”

  Atkins stared up at the dog. He said (perhaps a bit harshly, for he was not in a good mood), “What the hell’s the problem? Bad guy is dead. War’s over. There might be some sort of deadman switch or delayed vendetta program running through those things. Best to dismantle them now before something else weird happens.”

  “With all due respect, Marshal, the idea is unwise. Firstly, they are the only working models in existence of what amounts to a Silent Oecumene technology. Secondly—”

  Atkins made a curt, dismissive gesture with his katana. “That’s enough. Thank you for your concern. But I’ve already decided how to handle this.”

  “An interesting conceit, sir, but irrelevent, as that ghost-particle broadcast array is my property, being found on my ship, and having no other true owner. I believe the heirs and assigns of Ao Varmatyr died several centuries ago in another star system.”

  “I’ve had a hard day, civilian. Don’t try to play that legalistic hugger-mugger rights game with me. This is still a military situation; those are enemy weapons; and I’m still in charge.”

  “But you just declared the war was over, my dear sir. And that legalistic ‘rights game,’ as you call it, is what you are sworn to protect, soldier, and it gives the only justification to your somewhat bloody existance. You are here to protect me, remember? I never did join your hierarchy, my cooperation is voluntary, and you are my guest. If, as a guest, you overstep the bounds of politeness and decent conduct, I would be within my rights to have you put off this vessel.”

  Atkins lost his temper: “You trying to butt heads with me? Come on. Let’s butt heads. I am the God-damnednest Number-one Ichiban First-Class Heavyweight Champion Tough-as-Nails Ear-biting Eye-gouging Hard-assed Head-Butter of all Time, mister, so don’t try me!”

  The dog pricked its ears, looking mildly surprised.

  After a quiet moment, Phaethon’s voice came: “I suspect, Marshal Atkins, that you and I are both a bit ruffled by the events here. I am, quite frankly, not used to violence, and am dismayed at how you have chosen to conduct this affair. I suspect you are still suffering from memory shock, and are half-asleep.” The dog lowered its head, and continued: “But, unlike you, I have no excuse for my conduct. I have let emotions get the better of me, which is a vice in which a true gentleman never indulges. For that I proffer my apologies.”

  Atkins drew a deep breath, and used an ancient technique to calm himself and balance his blood-chemistry levels. “Apology accepted. You have mine. Let’s say no more about it. I guess I’m a little disappointed that there wasn’t any superior officer in all this, that our communication tracks did not lead to the Silent One’s boss. If he had one.”

  “But that is what I was attempting to tell you, Marshal. There have been periodic signals leaving this vessel ever since Xenophon came to the bridge.”

  “Leaving how? The hull is made of adamantium!”

  “Leaving through the drive, which was wide open and showering energy out into the universe.”

  “Aimed?”

  “As far as I can determine, yes. The signals were encoded as ghost particles generated by Xenophon’s array of disruptors.”

  “Aimed where?”

  “I could not trace them.”

  “That’s what you were supposed to be doing, friend, while I was getting my little butt kicked.”

  “I did not understand the nature of the signal until Xenophon boasted of the technology, and described it. This ghost-particle technology is not one with which I, or any one else in the Golden Oecumene, is familiar. I had to design and build new types of detection equipment while you and Xenophon were making all that noise. But the broadcasts are occurring at regular intervals. Those magnetic disruptors are still drawing power out of my fuel cells, charging for their next broadcast. There is still a piece of instruction cycling in the ship-mind’s broadcast circuit, written in that Silent Oecumene encryption I cannot decode. It will be a directional broadcast, or so I guess, since there are also line actions in the navigational array. When this next broadcast comes—and this is the second reason why I would ask you not to dismantle my ghost-particle array—I hope to be able to track the signal to its receiver.”

  “Xenophon’s CO. The Nothing Sophotech.”

  “And, if I am not mistaken, the Silent Phoenix, or whatever starship they used to come here.”

  “You did not believe his story?”

  “No more than did you, Marshal. The enemy is still at large. Come! We have much to discuss before the next broadcast.”

  Atkins looked down at his blood-drenched body, the blasted deckplates underfoot, and said, “Is there some place I can scrub up? My blood is a weapon, and I don’t want to get any of it near you.”

  “My dear sir, is there any part of your body which they have not turned into a weapon?”

  “Just one. They let me keep that for morale purposes.”

  “Well, come up to the main bridge, where my body is stored: I have antinanotoxins and biosterilizers which can clean, and robe you.”

  “Main bridge? I thought this was the main bridge.”

  “No, sir. This is just the auxiliary. You don’t think I’d expose my real bridge to danger, do you?”

  “You have two bridges?”

  “Three. And a jack-together I can plug into any main junction. I am a very conservative engineer: I believe in triple redundancy.”

  “Where did you put two other whole bridge complexes? How could you be sure Xenophon would not find it?”

  “Surely you are joking, Marshal! On a ship this size? I could hide the moons of Mars! In fact, I’m not sure one of them did not wander into my intake ram by mistake when we passed Martial orbit. Has anyone seen Phobos lately . . . ?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Come: follow the armor. It will lead you to the nearest railway station.”

  6

  THE FALSEHOODS

  1.

  Diomedes and Phaethon were seated at the wide round wood-and-ivory table grown out of the bridge deck. Both were dressed in severe and unadorned black frock coats with high collars and cravats, according to the Victorian conventions of the Silver-Gray. Around them, shining gold decks, tall energy mirrors, overmind formation pillars, and pressure curtains blue and lucent as the sky, gleamed and blazed and glowed, like a world of cold and silent fire.

  One anachronism: Diomedes held a bronze-headed ashwood spear in one kid glove, and toyed with it, staring at the spear tip, and waving it slowly back and forth, metronomelike, trying to acclimate to the binocular vision a human-shaped body and nervous system afforded.

  Atkins, seated opposite them, was wearing a suit of Fourth Era reflex armor. The chameleon circuit was disengaged, and he had tuned the color to a brilliant blood red, a sharp contrast to the umbrageous black walnut of the high-backed, wooden chair in which the soldier sat. The suit substance looked like fiery elfin scale-mail, with overlapping small plates of composite, which were programmed to stiffen under impact, and form blast armor, locking into different bracing systems to protect the wearer no matter from which direction the stroke came. The routine to make this primitive armor had been coded within the black-body cells in his blood, and the armor itself had been woven out of the broken deckplates of the old bridge, where his blood had spilled.

  In the center of the table was an imaginary hourglass, measuring the estimated time till the next broadcast from the ghost-particle array.

  The three sat watching the sands run.


  Diomedes drew his eyes up to the glinting spear point of the weapon he held. “Here is cause for wonder! I live and breathe and speak and see, incarnated by a new machine, a portable noetic unit with no more support than glorious Phoenix Exultant’s mind could give. No Sophotech was needed for the transfer! No large immobile system was required. Does this mean immortality shall be common hereafter even among the Cold Dukes and Eremites and Ice-miners, among all us nomads too poor to afford Sophotechnology? It may be the death of our loved and cherished way of life! Hah! And, if so, good riddance to it, say I!”

  Phaethon said, “Good Diomedes, it is that way of life which has made the crew here on the Phoenix so unthinkably tolerant of the secrecy which now surrounds the antics on the auxiliary bridge, and the murder of Neoptolemous. Who else but people born and bred to utter isolation and invincible privacy would tolerate not to know what’s going on? Atkins still fears spies, and now insists all these doings be obscured, until the Nothing Mastermind be brought to bay. Who would be so crazed, except Neptunians, to accept the idea that there were things which, for military reasons, the citizens who support the military are not allowed to know!”

  Atkins leaned forward, hands on the tabletop, and said to Diomedes, “Speaking of death, are there other copies of Xenophon or Neoptolemous loose in the Duma whom we have to track down, or was the one brought aboard this ship the only copy?”

  Diomedes said, “Were you thinking of hunting the others? The exercise is futile. While I was Neoptolemous, I saw the Silent One’s mind in action, Ao Varmatyr as we might call him. He tried to send copies of himself to corrupt as many Neptunians as he could do. Despite his boast, his virus weaving was not enough to penetrate the concentric privacies with which each Neptunian surrounds himself. Unlike you in your world free from crime, we are used to mind hoaxes, hackers, hikers, highjackers, bushwackers, thought wormers, sleepwalkers. Had Ao Varmatyr been received on Earth, rather than at Farbeyond, your non-immunized world would have been flooded with virus at the first public posting. With us, we who have no public, all he did was irk his fellow Dukes of Neptune, who sent back rabbit casts and aphrodisiacs and core swipers and other irritants and viruses whose names you would not know.”