The Phoenix Exultant

by John C. Wright

  Next to him, Oshenkyo was skipping and skylarking, waving and weaving his hands in the air, snapping his fingers in both ears, and smiling at the stereo-auditory noise. “Much quiet! Buckets of quiet! Know why? No ads.” Oshenkyo smiled, humming.

  “What of the advertisement you wear? Why is it silent?”

  “Not silent! Just our ears not hear it.” Oshenkyo explained that certain advertisers were trying to sell services and philosophy-regimen to a Cerebelline consciousness (a daughter of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea) that occupied the cliffs and kelp beds throughout the area, and who, having once, long ago, been part of the Venereal Terraforming Effort, had been heartbroken when that effort finally achieved success. The Daughter departed once Venus was towed to a new orbit, but had never altered her perceptions back to standard frequencies, time-rate, and aesthetic conventions of Earth. Hence, her “eyes” were tuned to the shortwaves and subsonic pulses the dark advertisement banners gave off.

  The other banners would display advertisements meant for humans only when asked, and then only from advertisers who could not afford to, or did not bother to, prevent an exile from experiencing them.

  “We use them, you know, semaphore. Or listen to jingles. Or for light. Or as sails for boats. No one mind, as long as ads get shown.”

  “But you do not use them to search out useful products and services?”

  “No one sells to Afloats. Almost no one. No one, we’d be dead. Almost no one, almost dead. Look it.” And he pointed above the central barge.

  Phaethon was still not accustomed to how bad his eyesight was. There was no amplification when he squinted. He saw a swarm of darting and hovering specks, glittering gold, like bees, above and around the pavilions and tents rising above the barge. But he could not resolve them into clear images. “I cannot make out what is out there.”

  Oshenkyo was seated on the wide, low limb of a gold-extraction bush, cupping his hands over his ears, then covering, listening to the changes in sound. He spoke absently: “Vulpine First Ironjoy on yonder barge runs a thought-shop. We get work, sometime. Can get buffers and tangle lines to reach deviants and dark markets through the Big Mind.” By which he meant the mentality.

  Phaethon was intrigued. Work? The boycott of the Hortators evidently had enough holes and gaps to enable these people to live.

  Then Phaethon smiled sadly at his own thought. “These people” … ? Did he still think of himself as somehow apart from the other exiles?

  Phaethon said: “No, I can see the barge. But what are those miniature flying instruments swarming around the area here?”

  “Constables. Tinee-tiny. About so big.” Oshenkyo held up his thumb.

  “So many?”

  “Zillions. They watch us all time. Good thing, too. Otherwise, we club each other right quick dead.”

  “Indeed? Are we all so violent, then?”

  Oshenkyo shrugged a broad, one-shoulder shrug. “All us crazy, filthy people. Got nothing to lose.”

  “Why are there such a number of police?”

  Oshenkyo squinted at him. “We still got rights. No thieving, no killing, no broke words.”

  “What about lying?”

  Oshenkyo stared out at the bay, sniffed, gave another one-shouldered shrug. “Fib till your tongue falls out. No one here to buy a thought-read machine. We not like other folk: we don’t know what goes on inside other people head. Just like long-ago days, eh? But swaps, bargains, work, all that: very sacred. You give word, can’t take back. You got?”

  Evidently contract laws were still enforced. “I got.”

  But Phaethon realized that it would be a dangerous system, since the Oecumene law, with no emotion and no favoritism, would enforce any bargain struck, no matter how foolish, no matter how risky. Had he had access to Sophotech foresight and advice, the risks would have been small. He didn’t. Had he been raised in a society where suspicion and care were normal, he could have been in the habit of mistrusting his fellowmen, and of striking careful bargains. He wasn’t.

  Oshenkyo squinted up at him. “All be clear as clear once you sign our Pact. You join up, be one of us, eh? Otherwise, not so great live here. Nowhere else to go but sea.”

  This did nothing to calm Phaethon’s qualms. But he smiled in joy and relief. If he had qualms, that meant he had plans, he had a goal. He was young and in good health, and he had a supply of nanomaterial which could be adapted to medical geriatrics. He might live long enough to outlive the Hortators’ term of exile; the political circumstance of the Oecumene might change. Who could tell?

  “ … Or maybe the horse could learn how to sing.” Phaethon murmured.

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “Sorry. I was ruminating over my hopes for the future.”

  “Hope? You said ‘horse.’”

  “There is a story about a man condemned by a tyrant, who pleads for one more year of life, telling the tyrant that, if the sentence is suspended for a year, he will teach the tyrant’s prize stallion to sing hymns. The tyrant agrees. The other prisoners are amused to see this one prisoner, every day, patiently caroling in the stables. When the other prisoners mocked his folly, the man replied that a great deal could happen in a year. The tyrant could die; the horse could die. And, who knows? The horse could learn to sing.”

  “Stupid story.”

  “I always used to think so, too. Now, though, I’m not sure. Are false hopes better than none at all? Perhaps they are.” Phaethon’s eyes were fixed on a point beyond the horizon.

  “No, is stupid because would not take so long to download info and singing routines into horse, if brain-fittings are standard. A year? Would only take five minute.”

  “This is a very old story, from the days before horses were extinct.”

  Now Oshenkyo squinted in surprise. “Funny, I thought horses were make-up, you know, genetified, by Red Manor Queens.”

  “Make-up? You mean invented?”

  “Make-up! Like dragons and gryphons and elephants.”

  “Modern elephants are a genetic reconstruction of a real species.”

  Oshenkyo snorted. “With flappy-arms on their noses? You think such creature as that evolve by itself? Nar. No how. Red Manor folk make up for sure. Just their kind of stupid thing. Ah, wait!” Now Oshenkyo jumped to his feet and waved his arm high. “Lookit there! Welcome menus! You get meet Ironjoy. He tell you what’s what. You listen him, he get you fine-dandy job assignments, maybe you eat, maybe you sleep in-of-doors, out of rain. Nice-good, eh? Lick up nice chum to him, now, and smile pretty!”

  “I shall endeavor to be on my best behavior,” Phaethon said in a voice of heavy irony.

  A party of three figures was picking its way up the slope of the cliff to the spot where Phaethon stood with Oshenkyo. All three wore blue-green housecoats of antique design, with flared shoulders and long skirts, and many pockets to hold a dozen house instruments. The one in the middle (perhaps the leader) had a design of gold attention-thread running through the chest pockets. Their faces were shadowed by wide flat straw hats whose brims hung over their shoulders. The color elements in the housecoats were not correctly attuned; all three figures were surrounded by a web of green-blue rainbows, shifting glints and shadows, and it made them look as if they were walking underwater.

  The lead figure seemed to be a base humaniform until he was within ten feet of Phaethon. The color play of his malfunctioning coat had hidden his true silhouette. As the stranger approached, Phaethon saw he had a second pair of arms and hands springing from his doubled shoulders. Beneath the shadow of his hat, his face was an immobile mask of bony cartilage, with three or four pairs of eyes and secondary eyes, microwave horns, infrared sockets, electrodetection cells, and ELF antennae. The face lacked a nose; the mouth was an insectoid clamp.

  Phaethon’s gaze swung left and right. The other two wore standard faces, male and half-male, with teeth made of glittering diamond. The male had a beard woven with many-colored sensation strands. The half-male had similar strands dangli
ng from her hair. The two wore black metallic cusps covering their eyes, perhaps a crude type of sense-filter and interfacer, controlled by blinks and eye motions. The man was sucking on a colored strand drooping from his moustache.

  The quadruple-armed leader stepped forward and looked Phaethon’s gold-and-black armor up and down. Phaethon returned the inspection.

  Phaethon recognized the fellow’s body design from the late Fifth Era, when the mass-minds, losing money and prestige, had attempted to cut costs on space services by having specialized serf-bodies replace expensive EVA machinery. The serf-creatures were immensely strong, having been used as longshoremen and hull-smiths, and could perceive many frequencies of radiation at once. Their space suits or second skins could be made much more cheaply than the elaborate space armor needed by a human-shaped man. Serfs required very little food and water; their bodies could recycle much of their own waste materials.

  The serf-form had been extinct for centuries, and, as far as Phaethon knew, they had never been patronized by a single consciousness. But it was an excellent body to be exiled in, being long-lasting and very frugal.

  Phaethon thought the creature was hideous.

  The fact that they were dressed in something other than advertisements or simple polymeric homespun led Phaethon to believe that these three represented the upper class of whatever “society” existed among these outcasts. The Peers of the poor, so to speak.

  Phaethon noticed that the other two, hissing and slurping, chuckling and murmuring to each other, had both bent close to stare at Oshenkyo’s new ear. The she-man uttered a breathless giggle of awe and delight; the man was nodding slowly, pleased and impressed, his straw hat bobbing.

  The buzzing, flat voice of a mechanical speaker issued from the chest area of the serf-creature. “Self identifies as Vulpine First Ironjoy, base neuroform with nonstandard invariant extensions, Uncomposed and Unschooled. Compatriots identified as Lester Nought Haaken, base, ejected from a limited non-hierarchy mind-partnership, Ritual Murder Reformation School; second compatriot identified as Drusillet Zero Self-soul, sub-Cerebelline neuroform, multiple personality stasis-lock, self-schooled.”

  The half-male, evidently Drusillet, straightened up and spoke in a contralto she-man voice: “Incorrect! My school is the Omnipresent Benevolence Assertion! Many children are its members, filled with love and kindliness, protected from all life’s ills and harms! Soon, oh so very soon now, they will recall their love and gratitude for all the benefits I’ve shown to them, and force the Hortators to rescind their ban on me!”

  Lester, likewise, made a preemptory gesture, and spoke up: “There is no Ritual Murder Reformation School; such a thing exists only in horror stories. I am and always shall be a member of the Privacy School. My thoughts are my own, not open to examination or review. If I want to throb with the desire to lie, cheat, steal, and kill, then that is nobody’s business but my own, provided I don’t act on it, right? Don’t let Ironjoy here baffle you, New Kid. We, none of us, are criminals here.”

  Oshenkyo chimed in, “No criminals. Just unpopular, eh?”

  Lester said, “Some of us suffer for a Righteous Cause.”

  Phaethon nodded. “A pleasure to make the acquaintance of someone who shares my feelings in the matter, good sir. I, too, suffer tribulations for a cause I deem to be just and right.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed Lester, slapping Phaethon’s shoulder plate with a brotherly hand. “Kindred souls then! Good to meet you! And take my word for it, this sick society that has rejected us cannot last long! No, sir, the Golden Oecumene will soon collapse under her own over-stuffed rottenness. The machines think they can anesthetize us, force us into unnatural, inhuman modes! But the true bestial nature of man will one day spring forth, roaring! And on that day, rioters will topple the edifices of the thinking machines, rapists and looters will fulfill their dark fantasies, and blood, gushes of glorious blood, will run through the streets! Take note of my words!”

  Lester, at this point, was standing too close to Phaethon, and waving his finger in Phaethon’s face for emphasis.

  Ironjoy put one of his left hands on Lester’s shoulder and drew him back. “Improper! Allow New Kid to acclimate himself. Talk of other matters after.”

  Oshenkyo said, “He got plenty long time to hear all about you theory, Lester.” He turned and squinted at Phaethon, and said, “We all got to hear Lester’s talk. Sort of like hazing. Whoever stand it the longest wins big prize.”

  Lester either was inured to this type of joke, or held Oshenkyo in such good fellowship that the comments did not offend him. In either case, he merely gave Phaethon a polite nod, turned to Ironjoy, said, “Oshenkyo’s earned his chit; I’ll send you a bill from my informant, at fifteen cut. Fair?” And, when Ironjoy grunted in agreement, Lester turned again, gave a last, lingering look of envy and wonder at Oshenkyo’s new ear, and then briskly walked away.

  Oshenkyo muttered to Ironjoy: “Worth more than fifteen. Lookit that armor shine! Admantium. Is my fish; I say twenty.”

  Ironjoy made a curt gesture with his lower right hand. Oshenkyo shut up and stepped back, squinting. It was hard to read the tattoo-scarred face: but he seemed glum. Ironjoy pointed at Phaethon with his upper left hand, evidently a signal to Drusillet, who took out a reading card, face yellowed with age, and stepped toward Phaethon.

  Drusillet said, “Open your thoughtspace, please, New Kid. We need to see what you have to offer. Medical routines is what we mostly need. Though information structuring, data compression, and migration techniques also pay off. Let me log you on to the mentality and run a check-through.” And she stepped forward and began to apply the reading head of the card to a jack in Phaethon’s shoulder board.

  Phaethon brushed her hand aside before she could meddle with his suit controls.

  Drusillet stepped back, mouth open, and she darted a fearful look at Ironjoy. The metal cusps that hid her eyes partly masked her expression, but evidently she had not expected to be rebuffed.

  Phaethon spoke: “Sir (or is it miss … ?) forgive me, but we have not been properly introduced. And I have personal and very severe reasons for wishing not to log on to the mentality. But perhaps a word or two of explanation would reassure me. Were you thinking of simply making free with my property? Were you attempting to make pirate-copies of my routines? There are a dozen constables floating nearby.” He gestured toward the swarm of bee-sized metal implements, which buzzed through the air overhead.

  “No cops!” Ironjoy held up all four hands at once, an eerie, almost menacing, gesture. “New Kid is disoriented. He thinks he is still alive. He thinks the constables will protect him. Explain reality to him! I go. Events will be adjusted.” And with that, he turned with a snap of his green-shivering garments and strode off down the path between the pharmaceutical bushes.

  Drusillet was staring at Phaethon in fascinated half-fear. Oshenkyo squatted down not far away, humming to himself, and drawing squirming circles in the dirt with a twig. Phaethon stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his head forward, legs spread, his black cloak falling in folds across his armored shoulders, around his elbows. For a moment, no one spoke.

  Drusillet said to Phaethon, “You don’t understand how things work here.”

  “I am attentive. Explain.”

  “Ironjoy’s not an Afloat, not really. He’s an Ashore; he just doesn’t care how much time he adds on to his sentence. Parts of his brain died, a long time ago, from old age, but he had the other parts propped up with Invariant mind-viruses that they give out for free. Even to us. Anyway, Ironjoy runs the thought-shop here. He’s the only one around who can sell us goodies, or who can run a search engine to locate assignments in the dark markets and back nets.”

  “How does this Ironjoy fellow find assignments for you?” asked Phaethon.

  Drusillet tucked a strand of her hair between her lips and sucked. Then she shivered and smiled. “You’d be surprised! Everyone always thinks the machines can do everything better
and smarter and faster than anyone, so how can anyone ever get a job? But they can’t do everything at once, and so there are certain jobs which, even if we do them slower and stupider, we can still do them for cheaper. Like me. The last thing I did, was going through Devolk-ushend’s memories to prepare his autobiography, and cutting out or glossing over the parts of his memory that don’t make for good theater. It was rough work, living his stupid life over and over again, but he’s got some fans, or something, so I guess he wanted it done, and on the cheap, too. It required some human judgment; I got a judgment-routine from Ironjoy for that, one of those things put out by Semi-Warlock Critics.”

  “Did I correctly hear Ironjoy say you had a Cerebelline neuroform? You express yourself in linear fashion, like a basic, not like a global.”

  She suddenly looked shy and sad. “Sub-Cerebelline. Think of a mass-mind with a split personality. As long as my other personalities don’t come to the forefront, as long as I don’t weave myself back into a global whole, I think and act like you lonely people. Just one mind, one point of view, all alone. It’s what I have to do to keep my children safe.”

  Phaethon was curious, but saw she would not say more on that topic. Instead, he asked her about her work: “How does Devolk-ushend, when he hires you, escape falling under the Hortators’ opprobrium?”

  “Oh, he’s a Nevernext. They hate the Hortators. Nevernexts, deviants, freaks, they still cut deals with us. And a lot of things are done on the sly, or through schools with high privacy restrictions. Especially now during the masquerade. Some of us dress up and sneak off to go look at the real people …” Her face took on a look of wistful longing. Phaethon pictured her in masquerade, in the rain, peering up at a window or balcony for a distant glimpse of a grown child who might no longer know her. It was a pathetic picture, disturbing. Was it accurate? He did not know.