by John Wright
Now, the Afloats would be dressed better even than the Ashores, and in garb both clean and dignified. Surely it would improve their esteem, mold their slovenly demeanor to better forms! Phaethon wondered why not one of these Afloats had spent any time trying to communicate with Daughter-of-the-Sea before.
A third group, under his direction, was sent ashore to the graveyard of houses. This was not a party of festival-goers, not a simple house-felling operation. Instead, Phaethon conducted a survey, found every house-brain and brain seedling, and sent the group to restoring, cleaning, regrowing, and rewiring. He estimated that, with these brains linked in parallel, by the end of two days, the thought-shop would have the brain capacity of a Rhadamanthus outbuilding, enough to give every Afloat personal help at job-hunting, as well as being able to take over some of the more routine tasks of such jobs.
This would also give each Afloat the ability to log on to the mentality (if they could find a server who would accept them) and send messages to Ironjoy's markets without going through Ironjoy.
Again, he wondered why none of them had thought of it before.
A fourth group he sent to cleaning the rust off the barge. This he did, not because it helped forward any scheme, but only because the hull was dirty and unsightly.
The final group, consisting only of boxlike neomorphs, swam along the strands of connection fiber and old nerve wires that shrouded the many floating houses like so much cobweb. With mechanical grapples from the robotoolboxes on their prows, they spliced together and gathered up rolls of the material. And they grumbled every second of their task, complaining to each other in sharp, time-compressed subsonic bursts, but Phaethon expected them to find enough wasted fiber to allow him to wire the entire floating community for light, power, speech, and text. The actual work of physically stringing wires from house to house could be done by the spider-gloves in a matter of hours.
And, gloating in his secret thought, Phaethon expected that these last two improvements together, if any of the Afloats were clever enough, would allow someone else here to set up a search engine and a thought-shop of his own, and break Ironjoy's monopoly forever. Did they dislike Phaethon's stiff insistence on punctuality, proper dress, sobriety? All the better. The more unpopular Phaethon was, the quicker some other Afloat would be to go into the business and draw away his customers.
At sunset, Phaethon had a little ceremony. Everyone who was not working the night shift was on the deck of the barge when he pointed toward the darkened houses all around them. He made the restart gesture.
And light flared from every window, lamps flamed, beams glittering across the water. It was a breathtaking sight.
In chorus, the houses all spoke at once, "Welcome, masters and mistresses! We slept; now we wake. It will be our pleasure to serve you!" And, at Phaethon's cue, in hushed, huge voices, which rolled across the water, the houses in choir began to sing the ceremonial housewarming song from the Fourth Era.
It was a sight to expand the heart. Phaethon felt a tear of pride in his eye, and smiled in mild embarrassment as he wiped it away. He looked up and saw, in the distance, peering warily over the cliff, a group of silent Ashores, half-nude, or garish in their advertisement smocks, drawn by the echoes of the song. They stood as if amazed by the lights.
Phaethon smiled, and turned. Behind him stood the Afloats, handsome in new jackets and trousers of brown and dark brown, tunics, skirts and films of white or green. And yet why did so many of them slouch, or knot their shirttails, or stain their skirts? Why did none of them smile? Phaethon had been expecting them to cheer. Didn't they want their houses to be lit?
With a brusque gesture, Phaethon dismissed the day shift, cautioning them to appear sober for work the next day. Then he strode down the ladder to the cabin in the aft of the barge, which had been Ironjoy's sanctum and restoration chamber.
Several days had gone by; it was time for the next step of his plan.
Ironjoy's restoration chamber was barren except for a cot, a formulation rod, an ewer of life-water and an aspect mandala tuned to nearby thoughtspace, obviously meant to watch for Sophotech or Hortator calls and police activity. Ironjoy certainly did not coddle himself; these quarters were more stark than most of his employees'. Perhaps the pleasure of dominion and control, a pleasure now so rare in the Golden Oecumene, was enough to sustain him.
A housecoat programmed with a score of medical functions hung from a rack, with a dozen medical history files stacked in coin slots along the vest; Ironjoy evidently used it to cure some of the older Afloats. Phaethon frowned to see a euthanasia needle clipped to the housecoat belt in a sterile holder.
Two walls of the cabin were fixed. Opposite the door were narrow windows looking out upon the bay and the cliffs beyond. The other two walls were not smart-walls, but they knew a few words, and they could slide open.
Behind one was a Demeterine decorative screen of surprising elegance and taste, a pattern of gold birds and dark blue Demeter-style fruit. Sound threads were woven through the panel, but Phaethon did not have a reader to receive the signal, and so the threads gave a few puzzled chirps and woodwind notes when he looked at various parts of the design, but then, unable to follow the pattern of his eye movements, the threads fell into puzzled silence.
It was a magnificent work. Phaethon did not know enough about this particular form to guess the artist's name, but Phaethon wondered again about Ironjoy's character. Who would have guessed that such a meditative and abstract delicacy attracted him?
Behind the other wall, facing the blue-gold decoration, were three talking mirrors. They must have been tuned to place their calls as soon as light hit them. The moment the walls slid back, the mirrors formed images of Ironjoy's three main customers.
He was not unprepared. Phaethon stood straight in his armor, with the magnificent decoration panel forming his backdrop. He spoke briefly, introducing himself and explaining the change of circumstance. "I intended to fulfill all of Ironjoy's contracts with you to the letter-the work performed today will testify to that. It is my hope that you will consent to deal with me on the same basis you dealt with him. It is only until his release a few weeks hence. What do you gentlemen say? Do we have an understanding?"
Each of the three spoke for a moment, describing the work they might need over the next few days, asking questions, and issuing tentative consent. Each one seemed to be aware that if he mistrusted Phaethon, or refused to deal with him, the other two would rush in to fill the gap.
An identification gesture had brought their names to the surface of the mirrors in a subscript. The indigo-faced man on the left was Semris; the writhing mass of bloated snakes in the middle was a neomorph named Antisemris; a tube with mechanical arms with emblems of a half-Invariant was labeled Notor-Kotok. Semris, to judge from the name, was a Jovian, perhaps from Io. Antisemris was evidently an undermind or child of Semris, but who had joined the Cacophile movement.
The Ionians came from what had once been a wild and dangerous world, and some small few had not put away their wild and dangerous personas after that moon's volcanisms were tamed by planetary engineers (Including the famous Geaius Score Stormcloud of Dark Grey, a terraformer whose work Phaethon had studied, followed, and admired.) If Semris was one of those few last Wild-Ionians, he would ignore the Hortators; they had long ago condemned his mental template as destructive and temperamental.
Likewise, Antisemris was a freak, perhaps a Nevernext, and Hortators' standards would mean little to him. Both were the type of unsavory people, perhaps insane, whom Phaethon would never have received or entertained, back when he had been a Silver-Grey Manorial.
Notor-Kotok was a different case; he spoke somewhat like an Invariant, somewhat like a Composition. Phaethon suspected that he, or they, were actually a small combination-mind made of people whose relatives and friends had been exiled, and who had all contributed a few thoughts to make a composite being that would still look after their relatives, talk to them, or find them work. The bei
ng was modeled along unemotional Invariant lines, perhaps to render it immune from Hortator pressure. Phaethon had heard of such things before.
Phaethon said, "You gentlemen will be pleased to note that I intend to make improvements to the working conditions here. This will no doubt increase productivity. The greatest loss to productivity is to false-self dreams and deep intoxicants. I believe the Afloats are driven to these things out of despair for their relatively short life spans."
Antisemris fluttered several of his snake-heads. "Too true! Yet what can be done? Orpheus controls all noumenal recordings."
"Gentlemen, it is well-known that the Neptunian Tritonic Composition can store brain information within the laminae of their special material. At near absolute zero temperatures, there is no signal degradation, even over centuries. With cascade-sequence re-recording and corrections, the Neptunian superconductive nerve tissue can retain a given personality for aeons. I recommend we create a branch of the Neptunian school right here. The Neptunians scoff at Hortators' mandates; we will find no difficulties finding Neptunians willing to deal with us. And, once that is done, whole new markets will open to us. We will no longer need interpreters or Eleemosynary routines to communicate with the Neptunian neuroforms. And you know those outer markets are hungry for even simple thought-work."
"Your proposal?" asked Semris.
"Gentlemen, I ask for your investment. An initial fund of some sixty-five hundred seconds should allow us to buy a channel of communication, if not with Triton or Nereid, then at least with the Neptunian Legate-mass stationed near Trailing Trojan city-swarm, where they keep a permanent embassy. A modified search engine could examine Neptunian thought-space for work opportunities; we will have labor, cheap and plentiful. I estimate we can make our return on the investment in a matter of days."
Semris said, "A new market is always attractive; but I have dealt with Neptunians before, the group who did work on Amalthea. They are tricky and unlovable, and enjoy cruel jokes. Ironjoy was always against the idea of opening markets with the Neptunians."
Some snake-heads of Antisemris stared at each other in puzzlement. "Neptunians are also very far afield! Think just of how long it would take to broadcast across the radius of the Solar System to ask a query or get a response from Neptune. Telepresentation is impossible; second-by-second oversight of the work is impossible."
Phaethon said, "The distance is not an obstacle for piecework done in large blocks, especially high-quality work with low data densities. I hope to train the Afloats to be able to work without supervision."
Antisemris was unconvinced: "Why stir up so many changes? We are all satisfied with the way things have gone heretofore. The Afloats have nowhere else to go; change may confound things! Why irk the Hortators more than we must? We subsist only because they do not have the patience to squash us all. No, for once, the flat-headed Semris, no doubt by accident, has uttered a truth."
But Notor said, "I place a high priority on keeping the mental well-being of the various Afloats at an optimal or praedo-optimal level, as measured by the Kessic sanity scale. Increased life would be beneficial, as would increased markets. Yet I have curiosity about Phaethon's motives. Your plan to find work in the Neptunian markets does seem disproportional to the desired effect."
"Yet, Mr. Notor, you do not object to dealing with Neptunians in and of themselves?"
"Allow me to employ a metaphor. I will accept any coin that burns." (This was a reference to the antimatter currency.)
Phaethon heard some warbling bird notes from the tapestry behind him. Perhaps one of the men in the mirror had glanced at the gold-and-blue figures, and his eye motions had been interpreted to reveal his emotional state. Phaethon now realized for what purpose the crass Ironjoy kept such beautiful art. And while Phaethon was not familiar with the note codes and tuning of the emotion-reactives woven in the tapestry, he could make a good guess.
Hiding a smile, Phaethon now bowed to Semris and Antisemris. "If you gentlemen are not interested after all, perhaps you can allow Mr. Notor and I a little privacy to discuss some matters of mutual interest and mutual profit..."
Semris and Antisemris interrupted each other, suddenly eager to discuss the matter further.
Less than an hour later, Phaethon had the money he needed to place a call to the Neptunians.
Phaethon folded the wall over two of the mirrors, used Ironjoy's formulation rod to calm himself and fix his purposes in mind. Then he turned to the mirror and placed the call.
In their present orbital positions, it took sixteen minutes for the signal to go to and to return from near-Jovian space, where the Neptunians maintained a permanent legate. This delay, Phaethon had expected.
But then, while Phaethon stood idle, doing nothing, there passed another five minutes while the messenger speech-tree loaded from the signal into the limited mind-space of the thought-shop's isolated communication circuits.
There was a further half-minute delay as line checkers and counteractants and virus hunters examined the received messenger speech-tree for viruses or surprises, a precaution not usually necessary, except when dealing with Neptunians.
The delay of time was considerable. Phaethon reflected that Rhadamanthus could have performed a million first-order operations in this same amount of time, or Westmind, a hundred million. Almost six minutes had passed. The true depth of his poverty impressed itself on Phaethon. He was living like some creature out of a forgotten age of history, practically like a Third-Era Victorian in truth.
How had those ancient British folk, or Second-Era Romans or Athenians (so prominently pictured in Silver-Grey Simulations) tolerated all the mess, delay, and anguish in their lives? How had they faced the inevitability of death, disease, injustice, grief, and pain? How had they tolerated the loneliness of being frozen in the base neuroform, without even the possibility of joining a mass-mind?
And how had they changed and improved their minds and selves without the benefit of noetics, noumenology, redaction, or any science of psychiatric editing or self-consideration? Had it just been by an effort of will and the practice of a habit of virtue?
The symbol of the Tritonic Neurofrom Composure scholum appeared on the mirror, indicating that the messenger was loaded and awake. Phaethon drew a breath, mentally recited his formulated Warlock autohypnotic mantra one last time, and steeled himself. Had he just been marveling at the stoicism of the mortal men of earlier ages? He himself was now mortal. And it was his stoicism which would now be tested.
"Good afternoon," said Phaethon. When that produced no response (he still was not used to the lack of a translator to convey his meaning into other formats and aesthetics) he said, "Start. Go. Initiate. Begin. Read Message. Please."
"This is the messenger. I represent information from the presently dominant sects and discourses embraced by the Tritonic Neuroform Composition. If your question or provocation is one which has been anticipated by my writers (if I have writers), then a recorded response will be brought forward to reply. The lector is flexible, and can organize and edit the responses according to the logic of your statements, if it so chooses. If your question is one which has not been anticipated, expect a spate of nonsense and irrelevancy. On the other hand, if I am, in fact, a self-aware entity, then my responses are not merely the recorded statements of the writers, but the freely chosen deliberate communication of a mind having a perverse joke at your expense. (Please note that, if I am a self-aware entity, then erasing me from your communication buffer would be an act of murder. Constables may be standing by.)"
Phaethon blinked in puzzlement. This was hardly what he had been expecting. "Pardon me, but are you in fact a self-aware entity?"
"I have been programmed to say that I am."
Phaethon checked the memory space the messenger-tree occupied. It was large. Large enough to hold a self-referencing (and therefore self-aware) program? Unlikely, but with proper data-compression techniques, it was not impossible. It would be a reckless act to erase wha
t might be self-aware. But then again, it would be typical Neptunian humor to absorb large sections of expensive memory with an unintelligent messenger-tree no one dared erase.
The messenger said, "And please do not attempt to place the burden of proving my humanity on me. The law against first-degree murder does not hold that those who cannot prove their humanity are subject to instant and arbitrary death."
The joke seemed particularly cruel to Phaethon, since he himself, by pursuing this call, might be exposing himself to instant and arbitrary death. What if the agents of the Silent Ones were listening?
"Can you give me a precis of who is presently in charge of, or wields the most prestigious and influence in, the Neptunian Duma?" The "Duma" was the Neptunian name for their main social organization. It was made of partial minds and client minds beamed in by Neptunians, who were too scattered to represent themselves by any direct means. The partials combined and evolved in a seething, tangled mass of vigorous conflict, to form a consensus entity, or, rather, successive sets of consensus entities, whose proclamations influenced the course of Neptunian dialogue and society. The Duma was more like a clearinghouse and central marketplace of ideas rather than like a parliament.
Neptunians were highly individualistic and eccentric, and so they instructed their representatives to place a higher value on obdurate zeal than on rational compromise. Consequently, the Duma was often insane, pursuing several contradictory goals at once, overreacting or underreacting with no sense of proportion to the petitions, ideas, and new lines of thought that the Neptunians, from time to time, introduced. The Neptunians had never yet reprogrammed the Duma to behave with logic; this baroque form of social government apparently amused the Cold Dukes and Eremites of Neptune far more than a rational one would have.
The messenger-tree said: "The Silver-Grey School has recently won wide acceptance among the Duma. It is presently the dominant school, followed, but not closely, by the Patient Chaos School."