And, like the gemstone that makes a ring not merely an ornament, but a valuable servant and library, here was the bridge.
Phaethon, it is true, had missed the dance of Earth and all the worlds on the Twelfth Night. And had missed participating in the Choir of All Worlds, that fantastic symphony and paean, where every mind and voice and soul was embraced in one single unimaginable harmony, which crowned the hours of the Tenth Night. But he needed neither music nor dance nor any other celebration.
Phaethon rose; the door “above” him parted; a dim light, like the hint of light before the dawn, fell down around him; the floor beneath him rose, and carried him upward; and he was on his bridge. What other song or splendor did he need?
He called for light; light came. He called for knowledge; tall, energy mirrors on concentric balconies sprang to life, and information flowed into his brain. He walked across the deck.
Each tessellation of the deck was paved with another hue of wood, darker grains contrasted with lighter, to form a pleasing irregularity, each one shining like gold, dark or bright, by the sheen of its polish.
Pressure curtains ran from the floor to the dome above, shimmering pale blue, royal scarlet, and burgundy. Concentric banks of thought-boxes and energy mirrors rose like an amphitheater, with one larger mirror extended up several balconies to the dome, tuned to display the local area of space and local communication activity. Space was deserted of ships under power; but communication channels flowed like rivers of light, everywhere, a wide-flung net burdened with massive volumes, connecting every habitat, ship-at-rest, sail, satellite, xenonanomechanical cloud and cloud bank, every coronal substation and intelligence formation, throughout all this area near Mercury Equilateral.
Phaethon crossed to the captain’s chair. There it was, polished, cleaned, charged. To the left was a symbol table, showing two visitors awaiting him. To the right was the status board, showing that the million checklists of the preflight roster had been checked; the Phoenix Exultant was ready to start her burn.
He savored the moment, merely looking at the chair. Then, with only the slightest of smiles, he seated himself, sighed, gripped the chair arms, and cast his gaze back, forth, upward, and down. The hundred energy mirrors shining on the balconies were lit with views and images from each part of the ship, diagrams, informata flows, engine status, field strengths, weight distributions, storage and containment formations for the cargo, supercargo projections, acceleration umbrellas, radio-radar views, meteorological reports on the conditions of at wanear-space, including particle counts, ship-brain and robopsychiatric analysis, hull-configuration monitors. Everything.
Phaethon sat on his throne and surveyed his kingdom, and he was well pleased with what he saw.
To people his kingdom, and, as a sort of compliment to the Silver-Grey aesthetic in which he had been born and raised, he now created a mannequin crew, costumed in different periods, and downloaded with a different partial-personality. Because Phaethon did not want to be alone in his hour of triumph, he peopled the deck with his heroes from myth and history.
Squares of the deck drew back. The mannequin racks beneath lifted several bodies into view. Phaethon activated his sense-filter, signaled to the ship-mind, created, downloaded, constructed, drew.
Soon each one stood before a different duty station, manipulating controls that were merely symbols to display the ship’s status.
Here was Ulysses, wearing beggar rags over his half-hidden armor, an unstrung bow of triple rhinoceros-hide in his hand, manning the navigation station. Next to him, Sir Francis Drake, splendid in blue surcoat and white lace, held a magic looking glass and watched for other ships and foreign objects. Admiral Byrd in his parka watched the board displaying internal heat and environment controls.
Here was Neil Armstrong with the stiff banner of the United States on one hand, tasked with guiding the forward remotes and smaller robot-ships that flew before the Phoenix Exultant as part of her array. There was Jason with his Golden Fleece, holding the thread that showed open communication lines were still present; and, at the tiller, (of course) was Hanno.
Magellan, Cortez, Clark, and Cook were also there, as well as Buckland-Boyd Cyrano-D’Atano, the first man to survive a Mars landing. Sloppy Rufus, Cyrano-D’Atano’s dog was there, not given any tasks to do, but just because Phaethon could not imagine the iconoclastic self-made Martian pioneer without the loyal mongrel he had brought with him to Mars. Oe Sephr al-Midr the Descender-into-Clouds was charged with watching the gravitic alterations and the acceleration schedule, which was ironic, considering the circumstances of his tragic death in a Jovian subduction layer.
Vanguard Single Exharmony in his white ablative armor kept track of the total-conversion drive core temperatures, which was not ironic at all, considering the remarkable success of his first mission into the Solar Photosphere, after Harmony Composition had sent so many to fiery death and failure.
Vanguard Single Exharmony was Phaethon’s second favorite historical character, not only because he was the ancestor-in-spirit for Helion’s work, but also because the transition from the Fourth Era to the Fifth was triggered partly because Vanguard, an individual detached from the Harmony group-mind, had succeeded where so many of the mass-minds had failed.
Phaethon’s favorite explorer was Sir Francis Drake, who had not only explored the northern passage but turned a profit on the venture. His least favorite was Christopher Columbus, who was not pictured here in his bridge; Phaethon had no use for a man who miscalculated the diameter of the Earth, and reached, by accident, a continent he failed to identify. His second least favorite was Chan Noonyan Sfih of Io, the first man to “set foot” on Pluto. Phaethon also had no use for a man who, despite having been warned by experts, had his landing vehicle fall through the surface layer of hydrogen ice weakened and thawed by his landing jets, fall through successive layers of nitrogen and methane ice, strike a layer of oxygen ice, which thawed and ignited and set fire to the entire surface of the planet. On the coldest planet in space, Chan Sfih had burned to death, whereas a careful thinker like Vanguard Single had been dropped into the sun, and lived.
There was also no image of Ao Ormgorgon Darkwormhole Noreturn. He had been the leader, during the Fifth Era, of the expedition to Cygnus X-l.
Phaethon glanced to his left. The symbol table showed the glowing visitor icons. Only the most extraordinary circumstance would have a visitor calling him, now. A visitor would either have to be an exile or be beyond the fear of becoming one. Who could it be?
Now that his ship and crew were ready, Phaethon made the acceptance gesture for the first icon in the symbol table.
A mannequin rose up out of the square of deck, stood, and saluted. “Permission to come aboard.”
How quaint and archaic. Phaethon looked into the ship’s Surface Dreaming, expecting to see a Silver-Grey, perhaps even some newly converted Neptunian introduced to Silver-Grey custom by his friend Diomedes.
But no. Here was a man in a dark blue uniform and cuirass of a Sixth-Era Advocate Warden. The Advocates, before the evolution of the College of Hortators, acted as the emissaries and translators between the Sophotechs and the Humans. During those years, before the developments in noumenal technology allowed for vastenings, intelligence-augments, and synnoetics, the gulf between Sophotechnic minds and human minds had been large indeed. The Advocates were sent by the Sophotechs to guide by example and prediction, never by force, the human community away from self-inflicted dangers. The Warden were a subgroup of the Advocates that acted something like a voluntary police force, guarding people against fire, disaster, and mind-crash.
The figure held up a twelve-pointed blazon in his hand, signaling his identity through the ship’s Middle Dreaming.
No, he was not a Silver-Grey. He was a Dark-Grey.
The Dark-Grey also followed ancient customs and disciplines, not because they admired the beauty of the ancient world, but because they admired the harshness and rigor that had formed the human character. Dark-Grey were required to devote a certain amount of their lives to public service, as Constables, Fire Wardens, Censors, Werewolf-monitors, Rescuers, and, back in the older times, as Reserve Soldiers under the Warmind.
This was Temer Sixth Lacedemonian, Humodified (space-adapted), Uncomposed (ascetic werewolf self-imposed override), Multiple-parallel attention-monitors, base neuroform, Dark-Grey Manorial Schola.
And his uniform was not a Masquerade costume. Temer Lacedemonian was the Advocate Warden in charge of space-traffic control. This corporation had maintained a monopoly on space-traffic control since the middle of the Sixth Era, despite fierce competition for the market. It was Temer Lacedemonian who controlled the safety of all ships in flight throughout the Solar System, and most of the Outer, and his position made him on the verge of becoming a Peer.
Phaethon stood and projected an image of himself into the Dreaming, so that he did not need to remove his armor. “Welcome aboard. But before you speak, I feel I must warn you that the ban of the Hortators is still in force against me. You will find yourself shunned if you address me.”
Temer Lacedemonian had the white hair face-symbology used to show sagacity, and his skin was the jet-black space travelers favored as a block against radiation. He smiled grimly.
“As to that, sir, please tell me, if you can, how a machine one hundred kilometers from prow to stern-plate, radiating a four-hundred-kilometer drive discharge that washes out all the unshielded communications in her radio-aura, and able to accelerate at ninety gravities of thrust, and preparing even now to launch; tell me how I am to orchestrate safe flight-paths for all vessels in this area without speaking to the pilot of that machine?”
Phaethon made his self-image smile, which his real face, behind his helmet, also did. “You could merely warn other vehicles out of my way…?”
“I don’t appreciate the humor, Mr. Phaethon.” He pointed to one of the mirrors, where information from Mercury North, the nearest Inner System control tower, was being checked and fed into the navigator. Other legal documents appeared alongside. He continued: “Also, our standard contract contains a clause allowing for an extra schedule of fees for vehicles of unusual properties or dangerous cargoes that require closer observation on our part, and extra precaution. I expect a healthy profit. And I hope you will not quibble over the price, considering the many useful services space-traffic control has done for you in the past.”
Phaethon studied the man in silence for a moment. Then Phaethon said, “You hardly needed to come in person, sir. An indirect message, perhaps, or a call routed through the back-net, would have done just as well. Why do you expose yourself to my, if I may use the word, contamination?”
“You recall that I was rather abrupt in driving you out from my section of the infinite tower during your descent on foot…?”
“I had not meant to broach an indelicate subject, but, yes, as I recall, you sent remotes to sting me each time I paused for food or rest.”
“Lacedaimon Sophotech, whose wisdom I trust, warned me that I would be led to favor your case and join you in exile. A dire prediction which, by my rigor against you, perhaps I was trying to defeat. As usual, Lacedaimon knows me better than I know myself. And so here I am.”
“Why not send some lesser servant to talk to me?”
“Send into exile? I could not command a subordinate to do that which I was unable to tolerate myself. Besides, my subordinates will all join me soon enough if they expect to keep their jobs. You see the flaw in the Hortators’ scheme of things, do you not, sir? Social pressure cannot be used to defeat those who shape society. Every ship under acceleration, or ship that hopes to do a burn, will have no choice, now, but to communicate with my ostracized space-traffic-control network. The ring-city above the Earth will soon join us. And the Hortators, for all their prestige, will find themselves isolated, besieged on Earth, walled off from space by their own presumptions.”
Phaethon was more than astonished. “But why should you do such a thing for me?‘
“Do not be arrogant, sir. I do as my conscience commands. You are incidental. The Hortators overstepped their mandate in your case, and they ignored the warnings of Nebuchednezzar Sophotech not to pursue you. It will destroy them.”
“Destroy? A strong word to use.” (Phaethon wondered why there was a note of hope, of relish, in his own voice.)
“Have you been out of communication since you disembarked from Earth to Mercury Equilateral? I see that you have. Aurelian Sophotech has already declared against the College of Hortators.”
“What…?”
“Aurelian Sophotech is in exile. The Grand Transcendence is only a week away. The lesser combinations have already formed; the mass-minds have begun their data-migration overtures. The Ennead is making ready; the basics are calling back all their partials and winding up their affairs. You see? If the Hortators do not back down, the policies and visions that will guide us for the next thousand years will be established by the deviants and freaks, the Afloats and Ashores of Ceylon.”
“And the Neptunians.”
“And you and I, sir.”
Phaethon’s image showed a smile. “A small transcendence, perhaps, but I shall be grateful for your company, sir.”
“Thank you. After my business here with you is done, I will be transmitting a noumenal copy of myself to Earth. I want to walk among the gardens of Aurelian, and visit the Endless Thought Libraries. No one else is there, and I will have the entire place to myself. Aurelian’s reconstruction of Beethoven will be conducting a complete (if parahistorical) version of his unfinished masterpiece Eighty-first Symphony, the first since Cuprician’s time, and holding a performance. I shall be the only person in the theater.”
“I am still grateful for your sacrifice, Warden Lacedemonian.”
And now Temer’s smile grew broad, startlingly white against his space-dark skin. “The gratitude is mutual. I must tell you one more thing, just privately, between you and me. When you opened your memory casket, and recalled your Phoenix Exultant, mine came open, too, and I spent a whole day, not at the Celebration as my wives and I had planned, but sitting under a noesis helmet in a oneiriatrist’s closet. I had days and years of memories, spent thinking about and watching the progress on your ship. My whole life, ever since I gave up sea-farming, has been ships, Mr. Phaethon. I was a member of the Celeritolumenous Society since before you were born, since before there was a science of Celerotology. I am in love with your ship, sir. And, with the Hortators’ ban still in place, I am the only man, equipped with the instruments to record the whole process, who will be able to watch the Phoenix Exultant when she soars. Please inform me when you intend your first burn, and transmit your vector and discharge area, and, considering the size of your ship, the extent of your occlusion umbra. If we have nothing further to discuss…? Then that will be all. Permission to disembark.”