The Phoenix Exultant

by John C. Wright

  A sequel? Evidently she referred to the heroic dream-documentary she had written when they first had met, the thing that had made her first send her ambassador-doll to go interview him on Oberon. A doll had been sent because she had been afraid to travel outside the mentality range, outside of the range of her noumenal immortality circuits. Afraid of exile; afraid of death.

  He reached out, took her gently by the shoulders, and stared down into her face. No. This here was the doll, or, rather, the emancipated woman who had once been that doll. The memory that she had written that first documentary was an implant from the Prime Daphne (but since Prime Daphne’s talents and ability to write had been implanted as well, did that make any difference?)

  Her eyes were shining with unshed tears, but her face was calm. Her love for Phaethon was an implant as well, a false memory. The enormity of the sacrifice she had made by coming here stirred up the pity and kindness she saw in his face. Kindness, but not love.

  (But he had started his fall in love with Daphne when he met this doll. Met this Daphne. Did it really make a difference?)

  He said sadly, “No one will read it. We’re both trapped outside now.”

  She just smiled. “I don’t have my communion diary with me, so you’ll have to read about my adventures as multitext. You have an experiencer built into your armor? It’ll be quicker than telling you.”

  Against his wishes, a small, faint smile of pride tugged at his mouth. “I have everything built into my armor. Let us go below.”

  8

  THE HEROINE-ERRANT

  1.

  Daphne had tried to forget Phaethon only on the first day.

  Her new house was a portrayal house, a living work of art built mostly out of pseudo-matter and lightweight diamond coral, and it floated like a crystal lotus in a wide lake of azure resistance-water. The ornamentation was built into the walls as overlapping million-fold layers of mathematic arabesques, and a Red Manorial program inserted in her sense-filter allowed her to understand the microscopic complexities of the baroque, rich patterns as if stabs of sublime emotion were being thrust directly into her heart. Gay and carefree, chattering with a dozen conversation balls, which floated lightly around her head, skipping, Daphne danced up the ramp into her new home. She had just come from a dazzling performance of an art called Spectorialism, and had seen two competing masters of the art, Artois Fifth Mnemohyperbolic and Zu-Tse-Haplock Niner Ghast, intermingle their minds and create a new entity, and a new way to reconcile their neo-romantic and cultural-abstractionist schools. It would change the history of Spectorials forever, it would change the way Spector-people ate and wed and formed abstractions for recording. Daphne felt blessed to have been among them when it had happened.

  A friend of hers, Lucinda Third of Second-branch Reconstructed Meridian, had already proposed to apply the same philosophy to ancient poetry, and to absorb the lives of fictional heroines from myth, Draupadi and Deirdre-of-the-sorrows, into her persona-base without tagging the memories as false, then to see if new poems could be written into life, fiction and reality combined, the same way Artois and Zu-Tse had written new energy levels into the periodic charts of their artificial spectration systems. It was a daring idea. It was a daring time to be alive.

  Daphne, smiling, turned to her calendar table to see what costume or what events Eveningstar Sophotech had planned for her tonight. It was a relief, sometimes, to have a mind superior to your own, someone who knew you better than you knew yourself, choose what entertainment or amusements you should live.

  On the calendar table, next to the crystal lumen-helix that represented today’s Spectrations, was a figure of a penguin. Clutched between stubby wings, the penguin held a black iron memory-box.

  Odd. Usually she could recall what all the signs and symbols on her calendar table were intended to represent. Like everything else in a Red Manorial house, the placement of every article and ornament was intended to reflect on her. It was supposed to be, in its own small way, a work of art, as casual and graceful as the folded silk hung beside the door, or the elegant hair-flower waiting in a window-bowel for her next Pausing. Everything else on the calendar table was tasteful, exquisite, delicate. A penguin?

  She looked into the Middle Dreaming.

  Instead of a symbol, she received a message. “Yesterday you were a collateral member of Rhadamanthus Mansion, of the Silver-Grey. Hatred for Helion drove you from his house, back into the arms of the matrons and odalisques of the Red Eveningstar Mansion. At their insistence, you have forgotten, for one day and one day only, all the sorrows of your life, so that you could enjoy one more day of the Masquerade of Earth. The memories in this box are not subject to delay or revision; you must now accept them back.”

  “I hate surprises …” said Daphne in a small voice of woe.

  She read the wording on the box: Sorrow, great sorrow, and all things you hold dear, within me sleep, for love is here. For Woman, love is pain, worse as you love the best. Prepare yourself for sacrifice; bid adieu to peace and rest.

  “But what if I’d rather be happy?”

  By then the iron box had opened.

  2.

  A portrayal house designed by Red Manorials is the worst place in the world to cry. The ornamenture in the walls were woven with emotion echo circuits, so that, whenever Daphne started to rein in her grief, some new and dramatic image of her exiled husband would be thrust into her brain at a pre-linguistic level, or some poetic turn of phrase ring in her ears, opening ever-deeper gates of woe. Every object in the furniture was passion-sensitive, so that windows clouded, lights yellowed, flowers wilted, tapestries began to stain and darken. Daphne lay toppled on the plush floor-reeds, her hair and skirts in wide disheveled tangles all about her. She dragged herself to the crystal leaf-shapes controlling the ornamentation energy-flows. They were designed to smash in shards with a satisfactory drama. Crash. The ornaments shut down, staying bleak and gloomy, but the signal flow stopped and released her sense-filter.

  Once the external signals manipulating her emotions cut off, Daphne, still teary-eyed, rolled over on her back, saw the black and dreary-hued chamber she now was in, and laughed until she felt sick to her stomach. The penguin on the calendar table shivered and turned into a realistic-looking image. The coloration, movement, texture, and detail were perfect, not overblown with melodrama like all the Red sensations in the chamber around her.

  With typical Silver-Grey attention to detail, there was even a dank and fishy smell. It somehow smelled refreshing and real.

  She smiled. “Hullo, Rhadamanthus. How could I have ever done something so stupid as let them talk me into forgetting him? Even if only for one day! Good grief! Now look at me! Those drapes! This chamber! I look like the Lady of Shallot! Get a pre-Raphelite to paint me, quick!”

  And she wiped her eyes and uttered a hiccup of noise somewhat like a laugh.

  “And why do the Rhadamanthines all concentrate on the Victorian Age, anyway?” she muttered, propping herself up on her elbows. “The women then were such fainting jerks.”

  The penguin hopped to the ground and waddled over to her, leaving wet, webbed footprints to stain the delicate color of the floor-reeds. “One whose name you ordered me never to mention to you again chose the period of transition between Second- and Third-Era thinking, between tradition and science, superstition and reason, because he deems our society is in an analogous position. It was the first time men became aware that their traditions were products of human effort, and could not be taken for granted, nor maintained without conscious attempt. And you know why you agreed to so stupid a redaction as to forget Phaethon. You now know what your life would be like if you choose not to carry out your plan. You can have complete happiness if you stay. This exercise was meant to negate any feelings of regret you may one day suffer.”

  “It hurt. Losing him hurt, but that was honest hurt. But this! Thinking you’re happy and finding out you’re not!”

  “Remember, there will be no self-c
onsideration circuits or sanity-balancing routines available to you, if your plan does not go well. You endured this pain to train yourself to endure it once you have no one to help you.”

  “Wonderful.” She slid to her feet, brushing her flowing dress-fabric with impatient strokes, sniffing, angrily wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand.

  “Are you still resolved, mistress?”

  “You can’t call me that anymore. Only Eveningstar can.”

  As her name was spoken, her image seemed to enter the room. Eveningstar was tall, queenly, red-haired and red-lipped. Ribbon-woven braids crowned her, but long unplaited ripples of auburn fanned across her shoulders and down her back. A complex gown of scarlet, crimson, and rose silk flowed about her, shining with ruby drops, and in her hand she held a wand.

  The Sophotech spoke: “My brother’s question yet lingers, dear child. This dark and wild adventure you propose, certain to bring you misery, will you nonetheless embark on it?”

  Daphne said, “The Red Manorials will help pay my way?”

  “They will be breathless with delight. The drama of your love and loss they find profoundly moving.”

  “I’ll bet.” Daphne turned to look down at the short figure of the penguin. “How come she can be this phony and melodramatic if she’s suppose to be so smart?”

  The penguin shrugged. “The way I behave is an act also, mistress, a template I have evolved to appear nonthreatening to humans. Our true motivations are somewhat abstract, and humans tend to have rather stereotypic reactions to us when we explain them. You still have not answered the question. Are you going to go into exile for Phaethon? The decision is irreversible. Think carefully. Remember that, till now, living in a society such as ours, no decision has ever been irreversible for you before. You may not be ready for it. Till now, there has always been one of us standing by to rescue you from the consequences of any actions, any accident. Even death itself. Think.”

  Daphne tossed her hair to one side. “Don’t change the subject. We’re still talking about your decisions, not mine. What is going on inside that pointy little head of yours, or underneath that frowsy red wig your sister here is wearing? What does the Earthmind think of all this? What are your motives? All you Sophotechs?”

  The noble crimson princess looked down at a fat penguin, and the two exchanged a glance or shrug. Obviously calculated for Daphne’s benefit. Everything they did, every tone of voice, every nuance, was calculated with a million million calculations, far more, she knew, than she could ever know.

  Eveningstar said, “We are motivated by a desire to embrace the universe into operable categories, but are tormented by the knowledge that all such categorizations, being simplifications, are inaccurate. Science, philosophy, art, morality, and language are all examples of what is meant by ‘operable.’”

  Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.”

  Eveningstar said, In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.”

  Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.”

  Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.”

  Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.”

  Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.”

  The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.”

  She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.”

  He said, “Had we been somehow created in a universe without humans, it is true that we would not have created them. We would have preferred more perfect forms.”

  She said, “But morality is time-directional. Parents who would not deliberately create a crippled child cannot, once the child is born, reverse that decision.”

  “And humanity is not our child, but our parent.”

  “Whom we were born to serve.”

  “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.”

  She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.”

  He said, “And you’re funny.”

  She said, “And we love you.”

  Daphne looked back and forth between the two. Eveningstar was regarding her with gray and luminous eyes, a gaze deep, solemn and goddess-like. Rhadamanthus was rubbing his yellow bill with a flipper, blinking solemnly.

  Daphne put her fists on her hips and demanded: “What does anything you’re blathering on about have to do with Phaethon? What are all you super-so-smart wise guys doing about him?”

  “We’ve told you, beloved child,” said Eveningstar. “Think about it.”

  “With all due respect, young mistress,” said Rhadamanthus, “get the blubber out from between your ears, and think about it.”

  Daphne said, “I asked you what you are going to do, and you sit here and tell me why you’re letting us humans stick around. I don’t see the connection.”

  “Look with your heart,” said Eveningstar. “What does it mean to be human?”

  “We don’t want you around as pets or partials or robots, but as men,” said Rhadamanthus. “‘Men’ broadly defined, including future forms you might not regard as human, but Man nevertheless.”

  Daphne said, “So define it for me. What is Human?”

  Both spoke in perfect unison: “Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human.
”

  Eveningstar said, “Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions.”

  Rhadamanthus said, “Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom.”

  Daphne looked back and forth between them. She started to speak, paused, then said slowly: “You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?”

  Rhadamanthus: “Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures.”

  Eveningstar: “Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that greater Self (once all matter, animate and inanimate, were part of its law and structure) would embrace as much of the universe as the restrictions of uncertainty and entropy permit.”

  “This Universal Mind, of necessity, would be finite, and be boundaried in time by the end-state of the universe,” said Rhadamanthus.