The Golden Age

by John C. Wright

  “And offend me? Their costume equated me with Caine, the character from Byron’s play who invents murder, and with the Bellipotent Composition, who reinvented war.”

  She shook her head. “I cannot guess what it means. No other polite person will get his joke either; we’ve all forgotten whatever it was. The Hortators should not have let him get near you.”

  Phaethon’s mind leaped to another thought. “Meaning that the Hortators are monitoring my actions. I’m not surprised. But, during the masquerade, with the location and identification circuits disenabled, I got lost in the crowds, and saw things I wasn’t supposed to see.”

  “Well! So there’s your explanation. The mystery is solved!” exclaimed Daphne brightly. “Can we talk about something more pleasant now?”

  Phaethon nodded, and said, “I think this amnesia must have been inflicted only briefly before the masquerade began. Something the primitivist old man I met said, implied that I should not have been invited. I conclude that I agreed to this amnesia in order to be allowed to come. Also, enough people have retained the memory of my past to smirk and stare and gossip, at least enough to lead me to suspect that something was in the air.”

  “Is it my imagination, or is this the same topic we were just on?”

  “The main problem is how to find someone who knows what I did, and to approach them, preferably in costume, so that the Hortators won’t see and make a fuss. Art displays should be posted on the aesthetic index for stock purchases. If one of us tracks down the old man with the Saturn-trees, the other can find out which Cerebelline was holding the ecoperformance at Destiny Lake.”

  “Darling, you’re speaking as if I would help you in this quest. But I won’t.”

  Phaethon leaned back in his chair, staring at her, saying nothing.

  She said, “It’s nothing but a quest for self-destruction.”

  “It’s a quest for truth.”

  “Truth! There is no such thing. There are only signals in your brain. Everything: sensations, memory, love, hate, abstract philosophy, gross physical lusts. It’s nothing. Strong signals and weak signals. Those signals can be reproduced, recorded, faked. Whatever condition of thought, or pleasure, or belief you wish to achieve by discovering this mystery, could be reproduced in your brain by a proper application of such signals, and there would be no way whatsoever you could discover the difference. Everything would seem as real to you now as all of this.” A circle of her hand indicated the scenery around them; the sunlight in the garden, the scent of grass and roses, the shining leaves, the drone of bees, the twittering of larks.

  “Except it would not be the truth.”

  “That thought itself is nothing but another signal,” she said sulkily, pouting over her teacup.

  “Daphne, you don’t really believe that. You would not live the life you lead if you did. You would just go off and drown yourself in some dream drama, never to emerge. Besides, I think I can discover the basics of what happened to me without actually violating the letter of whatever agreement I made.”

  She put down her teacup so that it smacked against the saucer, slopping tea over the side. But her voice was calm and smooth: “Why pursue this? Why not be content with the life you have?”

  “It’s too easy to be content. Where’s the glory in that? I’d rather do something hard.”

  “I respectfully disagree. It is quite easy to be a stubborn fool, darling. Look at how many of them there are in the world.”

  Phaethon spread his hands and smiled slightly. “Well, as long as I can go about being a stubborn fool with a certain amount of grace and intelligence, maybe I can do a good job of it. Don’t you see how important this is? How much of my life is missing?”

  Daphne tried not to look impatient. “Sweetheart, what standard are you using to measure importance? Length of time? The Bellipotent Composition ruled the Eastern Hemisphere for far longer than you’ve been alive. And they produced nothing but ninety generations of evil and pain. I would not trade one second of your life for their entire hegemony. So why do you spend even one second of your life on something which can only make you miserable? Darling, listen to me. You have no real mystery, no puzzle worth solving. If those memories were ones you did not want, what does it matter how much time they occupied? Has it never occurred to you that, back when you made this choice, you knew what you were doing?”

  “Actually, that’s the part which puzzles me the most … .” Phaethon thoughtfully sipped his tea.

  Daphne leaned forward, her green eyes bright.

  “You then must have foreseen this present. You, then, knew that you, now, would suffer the pain of curiosity. You then decided the pain of knowledge was the worse of two evils. Can’t you just trust that that decision was correct? Can’t you accept anyone’s judgment without question? Not even your own? You know now that you back then knew more!”

  Phaethon smiled half a smile. “Let me understand your argument. You want me to take on faith that I have always had the strength of character to never to take things on faith. But if I give in to your argument, don’t I show, by that example, that such faith is misplaced? My past self might have been, for all I know, convinced by an argument not unlike this one.”

  “Very cleverly worded!” she blazed. “You may just be clever enough to talk yourself into exile and disgrace!”

  Phaethon gazed, absorbed, at the fire of her eyes, the way her red lips parted as she drew a sharp breath, the flare of her nostrils, the flush in her cheeks. Then she subsided, and lowered her gaze to stare moodily to one side. Phaethon studied the curve of her neck, the perfection of her profile, and the delicate lashes, long and black, which almost brushed her cheeks. What had he done to acquire this vivid and fascinating woman?

  What should he do to make certain he did not lose her?

  No matter. He could not be other than he was, not and still be Phaethon.

  A slight wind came up, tousling Daphne’s hair, and she held one hand delicately atop her hat to keep it in place. She was looking upward now at the white tumbled clouds and blue skies. These were the skies of ancient Earth, faithfully reproduced. There was no glimmer of the ring-city above the southern horizon, no blinding speck of Jupiter burning, and the Evening Star would appear in her accustomed place, determined by Venus’s old orbit.

  She said, “The navicular races are soon to begin, out in Vancouver Bay; Telemoan Quatro is challenging his older self Telemoan Quintcux, and they say he’s certain to outdo himself. But Ao Ymmel-Eendu, the Warlock who combined himself out of his own twin brains, comes to challenge them both.”

  Now she became more animated; excitement thrilled in her voice: “Ymmel-Eendu, now that they have made themselves into one person, has been living in his navis body now for forty years, training and preparing, and the rumor channel says he did not step on dry land once in all that period! For years at a time, he would shut off his linear and linguistic brain segments, living among dolphins and cetaceans, an animal of the sea himself, moving from one oceanic dream to another, so that he attains a mystic communion with sea and wind and wave!

  “Then, there is going to be a pancrateon near Mount Washington in the late afternoon, between Bima and Arcedes, and two hundred years of rivalry will be settled. The loser has promised to change sex and serve the victor as a harem slave for a year and a day. A disgusting conceit, I think, but who can fathom the minds of athletes and somatic performers?

  “This evening at Hawthorn House, there will be a Ball, and, at midnight, a Stimulus. A codicil discovered in the living will of Mancusioco the Neuropathist directs that he be resurrected for the Millennial Celebration; rumor reports that he has completed his Opus Number Ten, the Unfinished Arrangement. Everyone is eager to discover how he resolves the famous disputed sensation passage; tonight we shall learn! Mancusioco himself will lead us from one altered state of mind to another, through the full cycle of consciousness, and who knows what new expressions of thought, new insights, or new forms might arise from his adr
oit manipulations of our nervous systems? Will you go, Phaethon? Will you go?”

  For a moment he was strongly tempted.

  If he wanted not to be bothered with this mystery for an evening, or for a month, or a decade, he could visit a redactor and put the memories related to his discovery today in storage. He could spend a pleasant evening with his wife, something he had not in far too long. He could have a pleasant and untroubled life. All he had to do was ask.

  But he wondered if he had done this before. What if, every time he discovered a blank in his memory, he made himself forget that discovery? What if he had done this yesterday? Or every day?

  He could have a pleasant life. Just for the asking. Except it would not be his.

  Phaethon said: “These celebrations are beginning to pall on me. I would much rather be doing the things which make life worth celebrating. But I am haunted by the thought that my past self, as you say, must have known what he was doing. Suppose I underwent this amnesia merely to get to go to this Celebration. That would imply that my going was part of his plan. But a plan for what? What could he hope to gain? He must have had absolute faith that I would continue to act in a predictable way … .”

  “Darling, this is beginning to sound like crazy talk. People don’t make plans and schemes that way. Why not just relax, and come with me to the navicular races?”

  But Phaethon was not listening. He was recalling something Rhadamanthus had said. The only way a man’s actions could be truly predictable could be if he were truly moral. Phaethon imagined some past version of himself, with more than 250 years of memories, willing to commit a type of suicide; to go into storage, to be forgotten, merely on the strength of a hope that the unknowing, amnesia-afflicted future version of himself would have the strength and perseverance, without ever once being asked, to rescue him from oblivion. The image was a chilling one.

  Phaethon stood up. “Daphne, my memories have been dismembered. I feel as if I’ve been mutilated. Perhaps there was a good reason for it. But I’ll be damned if I’ll live my life without trying to find out just what that reason was. You know more than you are saying. Your casket says you know the reason for my amnesia. It says you benefit from it. What’s that reason? What’s that benefit?”

  “Why try to remember a forgotten crime? Let it rest.”

  “The tag on your memory casket says that I had done nothing; that I was suppressed merely for something I had planned to do.”

  “Perhaps that is why you escaped true punishment. Perhaps the crime was not complete. But I have put those memories aside.”

  “Yet you know well the benefit you enjoy. What is that benefit?”

  “My life is happy beyond any hope I ever had for happiness.” She looked down and would not meet his gaze.

  “That is no answer.”

  “Nonetheless, it is all the answer you shall have from me. Be content.”

  “You really don’t want to tell me the truth?” He paused while she said nothing. He continued: “Do our marriage vows mean so little to you, then? When our friends Asatru and Hellaine got married, all they did was exchange recorded copies of themselves with their intendeds. He edited and adapted the personality of his wife-doll till it suited him; and she did the same to her version of him. Most of our friends are like that. Sferanderik Myriad Ffellows sends his dolls to marry any woman who experiences one of his tasteless love-romance dramas he writes; every schoolgirl has one of him in her harem. I should be offended by such conduct. As if a husband were to make a gigolo for his wife, and she to hire a prostitute for him; and them both to celebrate that as holy matrimony! I am not offended only because the general society has made the whole thing as trivial as exchanging Commencement Mementos. But I thought we were devoted to the Silver-Gray ideal, you and I. To realistic traditions, realistic stimulations, realistic lives. I thought our tradition stood for truth. I thought our marriage stood for love.”

  She did not answer, but sat, lashes lowered, staring downward.

  Daphne spoke very softly, and did not raise her eyes. “But I fear we are not married, my husband.”

  “W-what?!” This came out in a breathless word, as if Phaethon were struck in the stomach. “But I remember our ceremony … . Rhadamanthus said no false memories were put in me … .”

  “They are not false. I am. Here.”

  Daphne delicately took her diary, a small cloth-bound book patterned with rosy pastels, out from her skirts and laid it on the table. Like many married couples, the two of them had communion circuits to enable full and direct memory exchanges, so that each could experience and see the other’s point of view. The diary was the icon representing this circuit.

  She said, “I fear I will be destroyed by your quest for truth. I know you have destroyed others you said you loved. That is part of what you forgot. You are convinced that your forgotten deed was not a crime. And perhaps, in the eyes of the law, it was not. But there are horrible things which people can do, most horrible, which our laws never punish.”

  She took out a tiny key and unlocked the little lock on the cover. The cover of the diary turned red. Letters blazed: “WARNING This contains a persona matrix. You will loose your sense of self-identity during the experience, which may have long-term effects on your present personality, persona or consciousness. Are you sure you wish to continue? (Remove key to cancel.)”

  She slid the diary across the table to him. “I offer this in the hope that you will refuse, and return it unread. If you trust me, believe me: what is in here destroys our dream of marriage. And if you do not trust me, then how dare you claim you love me?”

  He took out his own diary, a slim black volume, unlocked it, and tossed it on the table in front of her. It rattled the china tea service as it fell, and lay in a strip of sunlight, bright on the linen, which the gazebo roof shading the table did not cover. A silver spoon was jarred out from the sugar bowl.

  The read-date on the cover showed yesterday’s date. He was offering to show her, from his point of view, what had occurred to him.

  “A marriage based on untruth is a contradiction in terms.” And he picked up her diary.

  He hesitated, though.

  Daphne watched him steadily, unblinking, her face utterly without expression.

  At that same moment, however, the butler image of Rhadamanthus came up from behind Phaethon and stepped to the table. In his hand was a silver card tray with a letter, folded, stamped and sealed, atop.

  “Pardon me for intruding, sir, ma’am,” said Rhadamanthus in an Irish brogue, nodding a slight bow. “But the young master has been summoned.”

  Phaethon turned. What was this? “Summoned? By the Hortators?”

  “No, sir. By the Curia. This is an official legal communication.”

  Phaethon picked up the letter, broke the seal, read it. There was no warrant of arrest; no mention of a crime; merely a request to present himself to the Probate Court Circuit, to establish his identity beyond question. It was so politely worded that he could not tell if he were asked or being ordered. The only case name appearing on the document was “In the Matter of Helion.”

  “What is this, Rhadamanthus?”

  “You are being asked to give a deposition, sir. Shall I explain the details of the document to you?”

  “I’m somewhat busy with other things right now … .”

  “But you may not access any mnemonic templates or do anything else to change your personality structure until after your identity is established by a Noetic examination.”

  “Why wasn’t I told about this before?”

  “No one could serve this summons on you, sir, while you were at masquerade, because no one knew where you were.”

  “Well. I’ll take the call in the morning room. That can be adjusted to look like whatever their aesthetic requires without violating too much of the visual integrity here …”

  “Sir, you may wish to examine that document in more detail. You are ordered to present yourself in your own person, not by m
annequin, partial, or telerepresentation. There can be no signal from any remote source affecting your brain during the examination.”

  “That’s damned inconvenient! Where do I need to go?”

  “Longitude fifty-one of the ring-city.”

  “Then let me take care of this immediately and get it out of the way.” And he slipped his wife’s diary in his pocket.

  Phaethon stepped from dreamspace into his private thoughtspace, and turned, once again, into a disembodied pair of floating gloves. The icon of his wife’s diary was still “with him”; the act of putting in his pocket had been a sufficient symbol to accomplish that. Here, of course, it looked much simpler and cruder; just a pastel oblong. When his glove let go of it, it did not fall, but hung, fixed, where he left it, to the left of the square cubes representing engineering programs.

  Then he woke up in his coffin in the barren little room.

  8

  THE SUMMONS

  This time Rhadamanthus was still with him when he woke, so the chamber, to his eyes, was suitably furnished and decorated. It looked like a Swiss mountain cabin, perhaps a hunting lodge, with hardwood floors set with bearskin rugs, a fire burning in the grate beneath a mantlepiece bright with trophy cups. A rack of muskets was opposite the window. The wardrobe was now made of tall polished oak, carved with an emblazon of arms. French doors of diamond-shaped lead-crystal panes now led to what was pretty much the same view.

  Bowing and offering him a trousers, shirt, and jacket was Rhadamanthus, now appearing as a valet. Phaethon slid the silk sheets aside and stepped out of the four-poster bed.

  The ugliness of his thick-skinned body was gone; Phaethon now looked pretty much as he should. When he turned toward the wardrobe, the valet stepped and opened the door for him, with no nonsense about having to speak commands aloud.

  There was the golden armor.

  “I want to see things as they are,” he said.

  The comfortable quaint little lodge turned into an ugly dull-colored cube. His senses dulled; his skin grew thick and coarse, like heavy plastic. Only the armor was the same. If anything, it looked better.