by John Wright
Of the Base neuroforms, however, the humans here were made to look (to their senses, at least) like men, and their places were made to look like the places of men, with chambers and corridors, windows, furniture, hallways. The Master of the Sun had willed it so.
All this immensity was, with one exception, deserted. The army of craftsmen, meteorologists, artists, rhetoricians, futurologists, sun Warlocks, data patterners, intu-itionists, vasteners and devasteners, who formed the company and crew of the Solar Array and all its subsidiaries, were flown or radioed away, called to celebrate in the Grand Transcendence.
Even the Sophotechs, it could be said, were gone, for all their activity and attention was poured into that single, supreme webwork of communications, orchestrated by Aurelian, which spread from orbital solsynchronous radio stations (constructed for this occasion) out to the dim reaches of the Solar System, one continuous living tapestry of mind and information that would form the basis of the Transcendence.
One remained behind. All others celebrated: he did not.
At the intersection of several long corridors, roads, and energy paths, was a wide space, where ranks of balconies were made to look as if they were opening out upon the sea of fire burning endlessly outside. In the middle of this space, where several bridges ran from balcony to balcony and road to road met in midair, was a rotunda, looking out over the dark roads, silent corridors, empty balconies, and the immeasurable hell of fire beyond.
In the center of the rotunda, like a small stepped hill, tier upon tier of thought boxes rose. Each box held high an energy mirror, raised toward a central throne as flowers might raise their faces toward the sun. The mirrors were dark.
To either side of that throne, jewel-like caskets holding thoughts and memories, governors for distant sections of the Array, and vastening stations for mind-linking with the Sophotechs, were arranged. All were still.
Helion sat here alone, his armor pale as ice.
His eye was grim, and graven lines of bitterness embraced his mouth. At his jaw, a muscle was tight. He Mated without seeing.
Now he stirred. "Clock," he asked, "what is the hour?"
The clock to his left woke at his voice, and spoke. "How can we, who live in the coat of the fiery sun, measure the shadow of a gnomon to attest the time? It is ever forever midnight here, for the sun, to us, is ever underfoot. A pretty paradox!"
A wince of irritation twitched in his eye, but his voice was low and level. "Why do you mock me, clock?"
"Because you have forgotten the day, mighty He-lion! It is the Night Penultimate, the last night before the Transcendence, the night that was once called the Night of Lords."
The Night of Lords, on the last day before Transcendence, by tradition, was the time when each man, half-man, woman, bimorph, neutraloid, clone, and child was given, in simulation, control of all the Oecumene. Each became, in bis own mind, at least, Lord of the Oecumene for a day. Each saw all his idle wishes fulfilled. Each was allowed to act upon his private theories about what was wrong with the world, each allowed to put his theories into effect. And the consequences of his actions were played out with remorseless logic by the simulators.
The tradition was first begun during the First Transcendence, many millennia ago, under the tutelage of Lithian Sophotech. However, after repeated disillusionment, failures, and tragic results (which were played out by people who had not thought out their theories of the world very well), the Night of Lords became instead the night when the Earthmind gave gentle advice as to how to improve and make realistic some of the extrapolations so soon to be presented to the Transcendence for consideration.
In effect, the night before the Transcendence was the last trial period for all the extrapolation candidates, the preliminary weighing of possible futures before the real work of choosing a future was begun.
Helion had no need for such a preliminary. His vision of the future, sponsored by the Seven Peers, had already undergone a much more thorough review than any Penultimate Night test was likely to be.
The clock continued: "Why are you awake, alone, instead of deep in dreaming? Aurelian Sophotech promised that this Transcendence would extend further into the future and deeper into the Earthmind than any millennial attempt before has done! Together, all humanity and transhumanity as one may reach beyond the bottom of the dreaming sea; surely you will need more than a day to pass from shallow into deeper dreaming, to prepare yourself for what is next to come! Why are you still awake?"
There was no point in arguing with a clock. It was a limited intelligence device, not a true Sophotech, and had been instructed, long ago, to remind him of his appointments and engagements. In this case, with a holiday almost upon them, the clock was in a mindlessly cheerful mood: such were its orders. Pointless to grow irked.
"I envy you, moron machine. You have no self, no soul to lose."
The clock was silent. Perhaps its simple mind dimly understood Helion's grief. Or perhaps it had been given the dangerous gift of greater intelligence during the Sixth-Night, the Night of Swans, when the Earthmind bestowed wisdom and insight onto all "ugly duckling" machines, those with more potential for growth than their present circumstances allowed.
The clock said cautiously: "You are not going to kill yourself again, are you?"
"No. I have exhausted every possible variation on that scene. I have replayed my last self's final immolation so many times, it seems as if all my memory now is fire. But in that memory, I cannot recall, I cannot reconstruct, what it was I thought then which I can-not think now. What insight was it which I had then that made me laugh, though dying? What epiphany did that dead part of me understand, an understanding so deep it would have changed my life forever, had I lived? An insight now lost! And, with it, all my life..."
He sank into grim silence once again. The resolution of Phaethon's challenge to Helion's identity was merely one of many things that would be decided during the manifold complexity of the Transcendence. Since both he and the Curia, and everyone else besides, would be brought as one into the Transcendence, and be graced with greater wisdom and wholeness of thought than had occurred for a millennium, Helion had, as a courtesy to the Court, agreed to let the Transcendent Mind decide the issue.
That had been when he still had hope of reconstructing his missing memories, of finding his lost self.
But now that hope was gone. He knew the Court's decision would go against him.
Helion spoke again. "I lost but a single hour of my life. But in that hour, I lost everything. I said I saw the cure for the chaos at the heart of everything. What was that cure? What did I know? What did I become in that hour, my self which I have now lost... ?"
Silence.
The clock said in a slow and simple tone: "Does this mean you won't be going to the celebrations tomorrow?"
Helion did not answer.
The clock said, "Sir-"
"Quiet. Leave me to the torment of my thoughts...."
"But, sir, you asked me to-"
"Did I not command silence?!"
"Sir, you asked me to tell you whenever someone was approaching."
"Approaching ... ?" Helion straightened on his throne, his eyes bright and alert. Who could be here, on this last night before the Transcendence? With one segment of his mind (which he could divide to perform many parallel tasks at once) Helion sent a message to Descent Traffic Control, demanding an explanation. But the Descent Sophotech was occupied with pre-Transcendence business; only a limited partial mind was standing watch, a copy of one of He-lion's squires of honor, Leukios. He replied, "No ship is approaching, milord. She is docked." "Docked? How did a ship come to dock?" "By the normal routine. I engaged the magnetohy-drodynamic field generators to create a helmet streamer reaching up past the base corona, to create a zone of colder plasma through which the vessel could (descend. I posted a report an hour ago. Your seneschal refused to pass the message along, asserting that you had instructed all servant systems to leave you in private"
Wi
th another segment of his mind he ran an identity check. Since the Sophotechs were absent, he was not sure to whom he spoke, what type or level of mind, nor what the voice symbols were supposed to indicate, but the answer came back: "Helion, your guest is protected under the protocols of the masquerade. Identification is not available."
"Tell me where this intruder is, at least?" "That is beyond the scope of my duties." "Then switch me to your supervisor." "My supervisor is Helion of the Silver-Gray, who is the only sapient being aboard the Array at this time----"
With a third segment of mind, simultaneously, he queried his Coryphaeus, a partial mind tasked with counting and coordinating the motions of men and an-imals throughout the unmeasured vastness of Solar Ar-ray habitat space. Helion was old enough to remember the days when police minds and watchman circuits were necessary to ensure that people would not violate the property or privacy of another. His Coryphaeus also had a security submind, dating from the late Sixth Era, one of the oldest servants of the many in Helion's employ.
"Your visitor is now a hundred twenty-eight meters away from you, approaching along the main axial corridor of the command section, Golden Elder Strand Zero Center, Heliopolis Major."
"Here, in other words, within my private sanctum?"
"Yes, milord."
"Why was an intruder allowed to pass my doors? Why wasn't he stopped at the outer atrium, at the inner gate, at the command doors, or at my privacy doors?"
The Coryphaeus answered in its archaic accent: "By your instruction."
"My instruction... ? I told you all to guard my solitude."
"In the case where two orders contradict, I am to assent to the higher priority. This order is of the highest class of priority I recognize. I shall repeat the text."
Helion's own voice, blurred and faint as if from an ancient recording, came then, and the words were in an older rhythm, with words and expressions Helion had not used for four thousand years. He almost did not recognize the voice as his own, so different was it from his present way of speaking: "... I tell you, if ever when my best-loved friend should come again, whole or partial or anysomeway that be, hale him within, and let him pass. Let pass all doors and barri-cados, open firewalls, bridge delays, but bring him to me in all haste, or any who presents himself as him: he has priority higher than anything else I am doing or shall do hereafter, if only he will come again! If only he would call! Let be admitted any who come under the name of Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray. ..."
Then the Coryphaeus asked, "Those are your orders, eight thousand years old, but never revoked. What are your orders now?"
Hyacinth-Subhelion Septimus Gray. It was the name of a dead man.
Helion said, "How can it be Hyacinth?"
The Coryphaeus replied, "It was not said that this was Hyacinth, sir, only that this visitor is wearing the identity of Hyacinth, and in a fashion allowed by the masquerade. What are your orders?"
He heard the footsteps sounding on the balcony in the distance. Through an archway, lit by windows of fire to either side, a figure now came forward, and paused.
Helion rose to his feet, staring. With an abrupt gesture, he turned a mirror toward the figure, as if to amplify the view and see the other's face more closely; but then be stopped. It was a violation of Silver-Gray forms of politeness to examine a guest by remote viewers, or speak by wire, when the other came for a face-to-face meeting.
Helion saw only a Silver-Gray cloak, trimmed richly with gold and green, and a glimpse of pale white armor beneath. It was a fashion Hyacinth himself used to affect, in the days just after he had lost the right to be Helion, but he still dressed and looked as much like Helion as copyright and sumptuary laws would allow.
The hooded figure stood on the balcony, motionless, perhaps watching Helion as closely as the other watched him.
Helion said to his Coryphaeus: "I will receive the visitor. Admit him."
And a bridge extended from the rotunda across the wide space to the balcony.
Helion watched the white-cloaked figure approaching. He turned off his sense filter for a moment and examined the visitor's true shape: a squat, pyramidal body, made of carbon-silicon, approaching through an opaque, dense medium that filled this place. Helion was not using sight (normal vision was not possible here) but was using echolocation.
The body told him nothing. Anyone entering the special environment of the Solar Array would have to adjust his body to this configuration; materials and routines for making the transmogrification were found aboard every drop ship in solsynchronous orbit.
Helion turned his sense filter back on. The hooded figure now stood not ten meters away, at the foot of the little hill of tiered thought boxes on which Helion had his throne.
Helion spoke first: "Is this some ghost I see before me, stirred up from some unquiet archive? Wakened, perhaps, by some unexpected power Earthmind has unleashed on this, the last night before we drown our separate humanity in all-embracing glory? If so, go back! Return to whatever museum or noumenal casket had carried your dead thoughts through all these years. The dead have nothing to say to the living."
A neutral voice came from the hood. It was sent as text, but Helion's sense filter interpreted it as a voice, did not add any detail of inflection, pitch, or rhythm. It sounded like a ghost talking indeed. "The dead can allow the living to recall the lives they used to live. Dead loved ones can warn the living of loves they are soon to lose."
"Who are you?"
The cold and eerie voice came again: "Does my appearance frighten you? I had to assume this shape to be allowed to pass your doors. I cannot appear in my own shape; a terrible fate befalls whoever beholds me as I am!"
Helion squinted. "That is a line from one of Daphne's Gothic melodramas. Owlswick Abbey-she wrote the scene flowchart script."
"Many name her as the finest authoress of this time. I do her no dishonor to speak words she invents."
Helion, with deliberate slowness, resumed his seat, and now he leaned his elbow upon his throne arm, hid-ing a half smile behind his knuckle, looking up from beneath his brow.
"And what is this warning you come to bring me, old ghost?"
"Just this: Do not lose your son, Phaethon, as you lost your bosom friend Hyacinth. Do not lose yourself. Phaethon knows the dying thought of your former self: you and he spoke just before you died, during a storm when no recording systems were alert. With that thought you can reconstruct your memory by extrapolation; you can become what Helion would have been, had be lived. The Curia will call you Helion and grant you his name and place and face and property. Otherwise, you are Helion Secundus, and Phaethon takes all your fortune with him into exile; this Solar Array, He-lions house and memory caskets, riches, copyrights, thoughtrights, everything! But if you agree to loan Phaethon funds enough to buy his starship's debts, and give him once again clear title to the vessel, he will tell all he knows, or, if that fails to make you into Helion, he will award to you your fortunes nonetheless." Helion stared down for a time at the robed and hooded figure. Then he let free a sigh, and spoke in a tired tone: "Daphne, you know I cannot agree to those terms. I swore, long ago, to uphold the establishment of the College of Hortators, as our only dike against the tide of inhumanity which waits to inundate us.
That oath I shall not breach, not even to regain my true self again, not while I love honor more than life."
Daphne threw back the hood she wore, and signaled a waiver of her masquerade. Helion saw her face and heard her voice. "You are now in exile if you knowingly consort with me," she said. "But I think you should join us: Temer Lacedaimon is here, outside, beyond the pale, and so is Aurelian Sophotech!"
"What?!!"
"Yes!"
"That means the Transcendance ..."
She shook her head, her smile flashed. "Will not include the Hortators. They will not be in our future, then, will they? Or will you join the boycott yourself, and let the future you dreamed up, the one the Peers love so much, just go to waste, unheard?"
Helion frowned. "I should cut you out from my sense filter now, and hear no more of this ... but... Aurelian in exile? He communicates with the Earth-mind. Is she in exile now, too?"
"Why do you think none of the Sophotechs is speaking?"
"I thought they were preparing for the Transcendance ..."
"They are preparing for war!"
There was a pause while Helion's language routine brought that word up out of ancient memory, and checked the connotations for him. He said, "You do not call Phaethon's conflict with the Hortotors a war, do you? This is not a metaphor."
"I mean war with the Second Oecumene, which killed my horse and tricked the Hortators into banishing Phaethon. The attack on him was real! Everything Phaethon said was true! Why didn't you believe him, just believe him, instead of listening to other folk?! He would never have disbelieved, no matter what, in you!"
The sophistication of Helion's mental system allowed him to embrace sudden revolutions of outlook without disorientation. Assistance circuits in his thalamus and hypothalamus made connections, reassessed emotional reactions, calculated a multitude of implications.
Because of this, he straightened on his throne and spoke in a calm, quick voice: "It took ten thousand years for the Last Broadcast to reach Sol from Cygnus X-1. Vafnir's people sent one-way robot vessels, which, moving at far less than the speed of light, arrived some thirty thousand years after the death broadcast was received. Long enough for some sort of civilization to revive.
"No civilization answered their requests to build a breaking laser. The vessels fell through the dark Swan system with their light-sails spread wide, and to this day continue to infinity ... as the probes passed the Cygnus X-l system, their readings showed conditions were indeed as the Last Broadcast depicted. No sign of industrial activity, no radio noise. Silence. Death.
"But the survivors of that event might have hidden themselves. It would not be difficult. The signals of an extrasystemic civilization, especially one ten thousand light-years away, could easily escape the notice of our astronomers."