by John Wright
"Welcome to Death Row," said the bald, squat man.
Phaethon, dirty, dripping, and burnt, mustered his dignity. "How do you know me to be a manorial?" If a random passerby could deduce or guess that he was Phaethon, it would be child's play for Xenophon or the Nothing Sophotech.
The squat man wagged his head. "Ai-yah! Listen to him snoff!" Then to Phaethon, he said, "You shout at pool, all nice talk, full sentence. 'I shall surely drub you!' you shout. 'You shall learn what it means boldly to go against orders!' also you shout. Eyah. 'Boldly to go' ... ? You mean 'to boldly go,' you don't? Only machines talk like this way. Very puff-puff. Very polite."
"I see. I shall endeavor to make my speech more colloquial, if that is what anonymity requires."
"Oho. You don't want attention? So you splash and yell off head? Very wise, very deep-think! Hey, maybe blind deaf-mute in coma off yonder has not seen you, eh?"
"I was under the impression that most of the people here had their sense-filters engaged."
"No such. No sense-filters, no fancy puff-puff. They just cussed, is all. Dark, black, nasty cussed. They want out and up, so they make-pretend. Make-pretend they are rich, make-pretend they are loved-up, make-pretend they are wise and kind and good-good. Ashores. All of them Ashores. They hate all us right full deep, you know. You too."
"Us? What defines us as a group?"
"Afloats."
"I fear I don't understand."
"Is simple as simple is. Ashore live ashore. They may live. Their sentence is measured; a year, six year; hundred year, what-have-you. When time is done, they get their lives again, they get up-and-out. Can buy from Orpheus. Can buy live-forever machines. Land they live on, is rented to them; once they get lives back, they pay back. All fair. All square."
"And the Afloats, I assume, live afloat... ?"
"Live on sea as sea is free. No rent on water."
"You have houseboats?"
"We got rafts. Drag dead houses out to sea. Is trash; no one stop us." He shrugged. "Man at local thought-shop revive house-mind for small fee, you know."
"And your term of exile, unlike those of the Ashores, is permanent?"
"We here till we not here no more. Here till we die. Is Death Row." And he extended his cupped hand, palm up, a beggar's gesture. "Name's Oshenkyo. What've ye got for us, eh?"
And Phaethon took a daub of his precious, limited supply of black nanomachine material and applied it to the scar on Oshenkyo's head where there had once been an ear. Phaethon drew upon the ecological and medical routines he had in his thoughtspace, set the daub to take a gene sample, and he set it to reconstitute the missing ear.
The bay was surrounded on three sides by cliffs. The cliffs were overgrown by a Cerebelline life-garden, which may or may not have been part of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea. Pharmaceutical vines and adaptive fibers clung to the rocks, tended by weaver birds and tailor birds. Suits and outfits finished by the tailor bird hung flapping in the sea breeze, awaiting shipping dolphins.
In the middle of the bay, strangely silent and dark, were houses shaped like gray and blue-brown seashells, standing on spider legs that gripped floats and buoys beneath the water. Dozens of dangling ropes, ladders, and nets hung between the house shells, like webs, or dropped to crude docks floating in the houses' shadows.
In the middle of the irregular floating mass of house shells rose an old barge, streaked with barnacles and rust. On the flat upper surface of the barge towered a group of tents and pavilions made of cheap diamond synthetics, in three tiers, one above the other. From the crown of the upper tier, rose a false-tree with limbs of steel, and many solar collectors like leaves. Banners of material, and globes like fruit hung from the tree limbs. Phaethon could see where fruit or banners had dropped into the nets and cupolas of the tents below, quickly gathered up by scurrying spider-gloves and waldoes.
"It's quieter here," said Phaethon, looking down from the cliff into the bay. He had put his gold armor back on and had tuned some of the surface area in his black nanomaterial cape to catch and analyze some of the scents on the breeze. Mingled in the scents of green leaves, sunshine, and sea, were the command-pheromones and tiny nanomachine packages, smaller than pollen spores, which complex Cerebelline activity had as its by-product. Invisible clouds of these microspores extended far out to sea; the Cerebelline called Old-Woman was deep in thought.
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 bargai
n 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 Iron-joy. 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 in-sectoid 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 dangling 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 hullsmiths, 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, I 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 an
d 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.