The Golden Transcendence

by John C. Wright

  “ ‘The way to conquer the chaos which underlies all the illusionary stable things in life, is to be so free, and tolerant, and so much in love with liberty, that chaos itself becomes our ally; we shall become what no one can foresee; and courage and inventiveness will be the names we call our fearless unpredictability. . . .’

  “And you vowed to support Phaethon’s effort, and you died in order that his dream might live.”

  8

  THE TRUTH

  1.

  Daphne said, “Phaethon had outsmarted you, outsmarted the Hortators, the Curia, everyone. Because the real Helion, had he lived, would have helped Phaethon and funded the launch of the Phoenix Exultant. And there were only two possibilities. Either you become enough like the real Helion to satisfy the Curia, or you don’t. If you don’t, then you are legally dead, and Phaethon inherits your fortune, and the Phoenix Exultant flies. If you do, then you’ll be like he was, and you’ll support Phaethon, lend him your fortune, and still the Phoenix Exultant flies. Do you see why all your simulations trying to recreate your last thoughts, burning yourself again and again, never worked? Because, deep down, underneath the simulations, or before they began, or after they were over, your one thought was fear. You were afraid to lose yourself. Afraid to lose your identity. Afraid that Helion would be declared dead. But the real Helion did lose himself. He lost his identity, and his life, and everything. He was not afraid to die, much less to be declared dead. Don’t you see? This attack by the Silent Oecumene, this weird, slow, hidden war we suddenly find ourselves in, does not change a single thing. If your last storm was caused by an unexpected malicious creature rather than an unexpected malicious whim of fate, it does not matter. Life is still unpredictable. The insight you had, the answer to how to fight against chaos, is the same. Let people like Phaethon establish their own order in the midst of the confusion of the world.”

  Helion had bowed his head, and placed one hand before his eyes. Daphne could see no expression. His shoulders moved. Was it tears? Rage? Laughter? Daphne could not determine.

  Daphne said cautiously, “Helion? What is your answer?”

  Helion did not respond or look up.

  At that same moment, however, there came an interruption.

  Two of the energy mirrors in Helion’s field of vision lit up with images. One showed, against a starry field, the foreshortened view of a blade of dark gold, with a brilliant fire before it like a small sun.

  The rate-of-change figures were astonishing. The object was on a path from transjovial space, normally a two- or three-day voyage. This ship had crossed that distance in under five hours.

  This was the Phoenix Exultant, her drives before her, her prow pointed away, decelerating. There seemed to be a halo of lightning around her; charged particles emitted by the sun were being deflected by her hull armor, and the ship had such velocity, and solar space was so thick with particles, that the Phoenix Exultant, flying through a vacuum, was creating a wake. Views to either side, in other color schemes, showed other bands of radiation, diagrams of projected paths.

  The Phoenix was descending into the sun.

  The other mirror that had lit displayed a figure in black armor, the faceplate opened to reveal a lined, harsh, gray-eyed face.

  Helion said, “What is this apparition from the past, who comes now so boldly past my doors and wards? By what right do you interrupt where I have asked for privacy, you who wear a face out of forgotten bloody history?”

  A slight tension around the corners of the mouth might have been a smile or a grimace of impatience. “This is my own face, sir.”

  “Good heavens! Atkins?! Have they allowed someone like you to live again?! That means . . .”

  Daphne said softly: “It means war. ‘War and bloodshed, terror and fear; the wailing of widows, the clash of the spear . . .’ ”

  Atkins said: “I’ve never been away, sir. I don’t know why you people think I vanish just because you don’t need me.” He gave an imperceptible movement of a shoulder; his version of a shrug. “No matter. I’m interrupting to tell you you’re in grave danger and to ask you to cooperate. There may be a Silent Oecumene thinking machine, called the Nothing Sophotech, hidden inside the sun. We don’t know what kind of vehicle or equipment or weaponry it has. So far, Silent Oecumene technology has proven able to introduce signals into the shielded interior of circuits, by either teleporting through, or creating electric charges out of, the base-vacuum rest state. We think they can do this for other particle types as well, and we don’t know their range and limitations. The last solar storm, the one that killed the previous Helion, was created and directed by their technology. The Silent Ones are in a position to seize control of the Solar Array. If they do that, especially during the Transcendence, when everyone’s brains will be linked up to an interplanetary communication web . . . well, you can imagine the results. From the Array, they could induce prominences to destroy Vafnir’s counterter-ragenesis stations at Mercury Forward Equilateral, crippling our antimatter supplies at the same time. In any case, I’d like to ask you to cooperate. . . .”

  “I know you from old, Captain Atkins. Or is it ‘Marshal’ now? You want me to stay here, in harm’s way, until the enemy commits himself. Then when he reveals himself by striking at me, you promise to avenge my death by utterly annihilating him, is that it? I do not recall that your somewhat Pyrrhic strategy of winning was all that successful at New Kiev, was it?”

  “I’m not going to debate old battles with you, sir. But the Earthmind told me you might cooperate. I told her I was sick of trying to deal with you people who do not seem to understand that sometimes, when the cold facts demand it, you have to risk your life or give your life to win the battle. Since you remember me, Helion, you remember why I say that.”

  There was something very cold in his tone of voice. Daphne looked back and forth between these two eldest men, wondering what past was between them.

  Helion’s expression softened. “I remember the kind of sacrifices you were willing to make, Captain Atkins.” His expression grew distant, thoughtful. “It is odd. You also stand your ground when everyone else runs away to save themselves, I suppose. We may be more alike than I supposed. What a frightening thought!”

  “Are you all done kidding around there, sir, or do you want to help?”

  Helion straightened. “I will not desert my Oecumene or my post. Tell me what service I can perform for you. Though I think I can guess. . . .”

  “Don’t bother guessing. I’ll tell you. Phaethon is about to dock that monster ship he’s flying at your number six Equatorial Main two-fifty. It’s the only place big enough for the Phoenix Exultant.”

  “You need to give me more time. I have to use my field generators to create a sunspot underneath you as you descend, a cooler area, with a helmet streamer to create a flow of cooler plasma, a stream the Phoenix can follow to come down here to my dock.”

  “Don’t bother. Phaethon says the Phoenix Exultant can descend through the corona without damage. But once we dock, I want you to provision him with what he needs: you can spare the antimatter, I take it?”

  “I can spare it,” said Helion wryly. His Array controlled thousands of masses of antimatter the size of gas giants.

  “And give him your latest intelligence on submantle conditions. The Nothing Sophotech must know we’re coming; Earthmind thinks the approach of the Phoenix might tempt the Nothing to show itself. It will probably try to corrupt your whole Array and take control of you personally, if it hasn’t already done so.”

  “It has not, to my knowledge.”

  “That doesn’t mean much, in this day and age. The other thing I want you to do is direct as many deep probes as you can toward the solar core, to see if we can find any echotrace of the Silent Oecumene ship. All we have right now is a location; we don’t know size or what else is there. Also, examine your record to see if any suspicious astronomical bodies fell into the sun in any place your sensors could have seen.”

/>   “What else?”

  “You stay up top while the Phoenix goes down through the chromosphere into the radiative layer of the core, where the enemy is hiding. You will act as our sounding station, and meteorological eyes-up.”

  “With no one to help me? It seems a little odd, on a day when everyone else is celebrating, not to sound a universal alarm and call to arms?”

  “I think so, too. But the Nothing, smart as it is, may not know how much we know, and if it thinks the Transcendence is going to go off as usual, it may hold its fire until everyone is linked up into one big helpless Transcendent mind. Got it? I don’t want to set off the alarm if that will make the Nothing set off its biggest guns.”

  Helion was silent, thoughtful.

  Atkins said, “Well? That’s what I want from you. You have a problem with any of this?”

  “I have no doubts or reservations. You are not the only one who knows what the word ‘duty’ means, Captain Atkins.”

  “Great. And just between you and me, since you’re in such a giving mood today . . .”

  “Yes . . . ?”

  “Say you’re sorry to your kid. He’s been moping around ever since we set course for the sun, and it’s getting on my nerves. I mean, it would be good for morale.”

  With another segment of his mind, Helion made contact with his lawyer and accountant subroutines. Aloud, he said, “Very well! You may tell my son, by way of apology, that, by the time he docks at number six, his debts will be cleared, his title reinstated, and the ship he is in shall belong to him once more.”

  2.

  Helion came out of the place still called an air lock, even though it included transformation surgeries, noumenal transfer pools, body shops, neural prosthetics manufactories, and other functions needed to adapt a visitor to the physical environment and mental format of the Phoenix Exultant. This air lock was housed amidships, projecting inward from the hull nine hundred feet, a direction that was, at the moment “down,” and surrounded by other housings and machines, all looming like the skyscrapers of some ancient city turned on its head.

  Phaethon stood not far away, on a walkway that ran from upside-down rooftop to upside-down rooftop. Behind him, underfoot, far below the fragile railing, rested the fuel cells of the Phoenix Exultant. These cells reached away to each side beyond sight, like an endless beehive of interlocking pyramids, each with a ball of luminous metallic ice at its center.

  Helion thought this made a fitting backdrop for his scion—a landscape of frozen antimaterial fire, endless energy held in rigid geometry, capable of vast triumphs or vast destruction. Phaethon wore his gold-adamantium-and-black armor, helmet folded away. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, legs spread, eyes intent and bright; the pose of a youth patiently ready for action.

  Helion had dressed in the air lock, constructing a human body (modified for the high solar gravity) and Victorian semiformal dress suit. (Day clothes, of course. Helion long ago determined that no gentleman would sport evening wear while in or near the sun.) He had also constructed a valid legal copy of the receipts for Phaethon’s debts, and the petition to the Bankruptcy Court to remove the Phoenix Exultant from receivership. These he had formed to look like golden parchment, stamped with the proper seals and red ribbon.

  He held up this document, and extended it toward Phaethon.

  Before he could say a word, however, Phaethon stepped forward, ignoring the document, and threw his arms around his father. Helion, surprised, raised his arms and embraced his son.

  “I never thought I would see you again,” said one of them.

  “Nor I,” said the other.

  The document in Helion’s hand was quite crumpled and mussed by the time they stepped apart, and Helion dabbed his joy-wet eyes with it, before he recalled what it was, and extended it sheepishly to his son.

  “Thank you, Father; this is the finest of presents,” said Phaethon, accepting the crumpled and tearstained mass with a grave and solemn expression.

  Phaethon looked up. “And Daphne . . . ?”

  Helion nodded at the air lock hatch behind him. “She is still getting changed. You know how women are; she’s picking skin color and skeletal structures. I suppose she is trying to find a body which will look as good in this gravity as a Martian’s.” (Martian women were notoriously vain of the buoyant good looks their low gravity imparted.)

  Phaethon looked pensively at the air lock door. Helion, seeing that look, smiled to himself.

  Helion stepped to the rail. “What is the meaning of this intricate activity?” he said, pointing upward.

  “Mm?” Phaethon pulled his gaze reluctantly away from the air lock door. “Ah, that. The Phoenix Exultant is installing her solar bathyspheric modifications. There, ranged along the inner hull, are magnetic induction generators. This will create a field along the hull which will act like the treads of a burrowing vehicle, using magnetic current to force dense plasma to either side of the ship, propelling her forward and downward.”

  “Crawling your way into the sun?”

  They both wore the same expression of ironic humor. “If you like,” Phaethon nodded.

  “Your refrigeration lasers, I trust, will be adequate to the task? The geometry of your hull does not minimize surface area. Also, the increasing heat of each successive layer as you approach the core exceeds the drive combustion heat of, at least, my bathyspheric probes.”

  Phaeton pointed. “Can you see about forty kilometers aft of us? That is the line of advancing workers clearing an insulation space of a half kilometer inward of every hull surface, which I intend to flood with superconductive liquid. This liquid will circulate heat to my port and starboard drive cores, which I am using as heat sinks. The centerline drive core will be used as a refrigeration laser, and can easily generate heat greater than the solar core.”

  Helion did a few hundred calculations in his head, frowned at the answers he got, and said, “So great a volume? With your hull, I would have thought your reflective albedo would near one hundred per cent. Why are you taking in so much heat?”

  Phaethon pointed overhead and sent a signal into Helion’s sense filter, to show him exterior camera views of work being done outside the hull. “My communication antennae and thought ports are being replaced by crystalline adamantium optic fibers of a bore too large to allow the thought ports to close. I will be taking in heat at these places.”

  Helions said slowly, “Why in the world are you entering combat with the Second Oecumene Sophotech—who, from what Atkins told me, excels at many forms of virus combat and mind war—with your thought ports jammed open? You will not be able to cut off your ship’s mind from external communication, unless your circuit breakers are—”

  “The circuit breakers have been replaced by multiple alternate lines of hardwire, welded point to point. There is no way to break the circuit. There is no way to shut out external communication from inside. The hardwire connections cannot even be physically wrecked faster than they can regrow.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “Because this is not going to be a combat. It will be something much more definitive and permanent.”

  “I do not understand. Please explain it to me.”

  But at that moment, the air lock door opened, and there was Daphne, radiantly beautiful, her eyes alight with cool joy.

  Phaethon stared, a smile growing on his features, as if he were storing the image of Daphne at the threshold in his permanent long-term memory. She wore a short-sleeved blouse and long skirt of pale silken fabric, crisp and shining, and a beribboned straw skimmer of the type called a sun hat. Despite the high gravity, she had somehow designed her feet and ankles to be able to wear high-heeled pumps. She stood smiling, her eyes twinkling, one hand raised to hold her hat to her head, as if she expected some impossible breeze to blow through the deck.

  Phaethon stepped forward, arms raised as if to embrace her. “Darling, I have so much to tell you. . . .”

  She fended him off with her
free hand. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your father? Hello, Helion!”

  Phaethon stepped back, puzzled. He said, “What? You know him. You were just in the air lock with him.”

  Helion said dryly to Daphne, “Don’t toy with the boy. He’s confused enough as it is. I’m trying to learn his master plan for how he intends to survive the next few hours.” With an ostentatious gesture, Helion draw out his pocketwatch, clicked open the cover, scrutinized the dial. “Please consummate your kissing and making up with dispatch. I’d like to conclude my conversation with him.”

  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, who 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.”