At night, a man in black-and-gold armour stands alone on a rusty deck with one boot raised, looking up at faint stars under a pale arc of light across the sky, a tiered-tent barge and stilt-legged shell houses behind him.
Alone on the prow of a thought-shop barge on Ceylon, the exile tells the stars of the Swan that his enemy cannot stop him short of murder.

The Golden Oecumene · Book II · 2003

The Phoenix Exultant

Exiled, mortal and cut off from every mind in the Solar System, the man who built the greatest starship ever made must start again from the bottom: among the outcasts of Ceylon, with nothing but his armour and his pride.

The second volume of the Golden Oecumene, published by Tor in 2003 and subtitled or, Dispossessed in Utopia, picks up where The Golden Age ends. Phaethon has opened his forbidden memories, been shunned by the whole civilisation, lost his immortality and his fortune, and walked down a space elevator alone. Now he has to live as no one in this utopia lives: without money, without help, and without the shared mind that lets everyone else see, read and remember.

It is a picaresque of poverty first, among the outcasts of Talaimannar on Ceylon; then a romance, as Daphne Tercius, the freed copy of his wife, rides into exile after him; then a spy story, as the enemy he has been told is imaginary shows its face and three professionals, a soldier, a detective and a war machine, show theirs. It ends where Book III begins, aboard the Phoenix Exultant.

Part 1

The World Gone Blind

Phaethon Prime of Rhadamanth comes down from the space elevator into festival Kisumu, above Lake Victoria, and finds that exile is a sense before it is a sentence. Without the Mentality he has no sense-filter, so the telepresent revellers look to him like grey faceless mannequins; the signs in the air are unreadable, the music inaudible, every channel shut. The Hortators’ ban forbids anyone to sell him anything, give him anything or help him, so he must refuse even a bite of a passing girl’s pastry. He masks himself in a black domino drawn from his skin-suit, hides his gold armour under a cloak, and sets it to follow him three paces behind.

It is the Millennium. The Deep Ones, the last of the Jovian half-warlocks, have risen into the lake under jewelled sails to sing their once-in-a-thousand-years song, the one that first gave him his dream of the stars. From an empty airship he glimpses Scaramouche, Columbine and Pierrot hunting the crowd, and he stands in gold at the hatch to denounce them. The Deep Ones fall silent after one note; the crowd turns on him, then filters him out; the hatch closes and he is carried away, never to hear the song.

The pilot is a six-legged, three-vulture-headed fighter-plane cyborg, which claims to be the last of the Bellipotent Composition, a mass-mind of one, and names him for what he now is, with no copies in any bank: “Surely you are Phaethon Zero of Nothing.” It sets him down at Talaimannar, where every outcast goes. His hope that Harrier had some clever plan in sending him there dies before a robot arm shoves him down the gangway.

A masked man in a black suit walks through a crowd of grey faceless mannequins on a vast balcony above a city and a lake, a tall cloaked figure following behind him.

II · 1 The World Gone Blind Festival Kisumu, above Lake Victoria, at the Millennium. With no sense-filter, Phaethon sees the telepresent revellers as grey faceless mannequins, cannot read the signs or hear the music, and may accept no gift. He goes masked, his armour hidden under a cloak three paces behind. Out on the lake the Deep Ones have risen to sing their once-a-thousand-years song, the song that first gave him his dream of the stars.

A figure in gold armour stands at the top of an airship’s boarding ramp, pointing down at three grey mannequins while a huge crowd turns toward him.

II · 2 The Denunciation Through an antique screen that shows the masquerade’s costumes, Phaethon has spotted Scaramouche, Columbine and Pierrot sweeping the crowd. He armours up and stands at the head of the airship’s ramp to denounce the three as enemies of the Golden Oecumene. The Deep Ones fall silent after one note; a thousand faces turn on him in anger, then tune him out. The hatch closes, and the airship carries him away.

A huge cyborg with six metal legs and three vulture heads stands plugged into the ceiling controls of a cramped cabin while a man in black-and-gold armour folds his arms and faces it.

II · 3 A Composition of One Over the Indian Ocean Phaethon finds the pilot: an old fighter-plane cyborg that sold its war memories to Atkins and claims to be the last of the Bellipotent Composition, a mass-mind of one. It renames him Phaethon Zero, since he has no copies left in any bank, and argues that war among the stars would beat a static age. Asked what is worse than war, it answers: defeat.

Part 2

Death Row

Talaimannar’s self-growing shell-houses have run wild into one another; idiot houses shout greetings and green nano-sludge runs in the gutters. Oshenkyo, tattooed, one-eared and speaking a clipped pidgin, finds Phaethon in the town’s sludge pool and welcomes him to death row: Ashores serve fixed sentences, while Afloats, exiled for life, live on dead houses towed into the bay. Phaethon regrows Oshenkyo’s ear with a dab of his armour’s black lining, the substance the whole plot will soon be fought over.

Out in the bay sits Ironjoy’s thought-shop, a rusty barge of diamond-fabric tents. Ironjoy, four-armed and insect-faced, comes up the cliff with Lester and Drusillet, and Phaethon lets slip that an engineer could break his monopoly. The Afloats swarm ashore with cupped palms and call him “Engineer”. By the end of the night he has been pricked by a stranger’s bracelet, accidentally dosed himself with painkillers, helped fell a house as his welcome gift, handed out scoops of his lining, and fallen off a rope-swing into the sea.

He wakes hung over. A faceless grey mannequin calling itself Constable Pursuivant urges him to log on; fearing Scaramouche, he refuses, and walks the sea floor to the barge, where Ironjoy is eating the interface webbing out of his golden helmet. A recording shows Phaethon signing the community’s Pact the night before; the bracelet man was Lester in disguise. Ironjoy sinks Phaethon’s new house and explains the local law:

Not because you are wrong. Only because you are weak.

Phaethon’s rage goes cold. He bluffs, summoning Pursuivant to take testimony he dare not give, since he cannot face a mind-reading, and Ironjoy folds. Plates and jars of black material come back, Oshenkyo vomits up the hoard he swallowed and weeps, and the lining flows back over its owner. Then the crowd throws him into the sea, and he sees he has won his armour and lost every way to earn a living. The Afloats’ tampering has left the suit turning his breath into laughing gas and dumping its oxygen, and he is suffocating without noticing; he sheds the plates and fights upward through black kelp toward small approaching lights.

In the square of a decaying town of overgrown shell-shaped houses, a cloaked man by a muddy pool dabs black material on the head of a bald, tattooed man.

II · 4 Welcome to Death Row Talaimannar is a slum of self-growing shell-houses gone feral. Oshenkyo, an Afloat, finds Phaethon splashing and shouting at the town’s simple-minded sludge pool and welcomes him to death row: Ashores serve fixed sentences, while Afloats, exiled for life, live on dead houses towed into the bay. Phaethon regrows Oshenkyo’s missing ear with a dab of his armour’s black lining, the first gift of a substance he cannot replace.

Three figures in shimmering blue-green coats and wide straw hats climb a flowering cliff path above a bay of stilt houses, the leader four-armed and insect-faced.

II · 5 Ironjoy’s Party Ironjoy, boss of the Afloats and keeper of the thought-shop on the barge below, climbs the cliff with Lester (of the Privacy School, he insists) and the half-male Drusillet, their faulty housecoats rippling as if under water. Drusillet tries to plug a reading-card into Phaethon’s suit; he refuses, and Ironjoy stalks off. Phaethon lets slip that an engineer might break Ironjoy’s monopoly, and soon the Afloats are hailing him as “Engineer”.

At night a man in gold-and-black armour stands in a rope swing at the top of its arc over a dark sea, reaching up toward the stars.

II · 6 The Rope-Swing The welcome party. A bracelet pricks Phaethon’s wrist, a botched gesture floods him with painkillers, and the night becomes dancing, a dead house felled and rolled into the bay as his gift, and a rope-swing over the cliff. Drunk, he hands out scoops of his irreplaceable suit lining and shouts that the stars will be his; at the top of the arc he stands and reaches for them, and falls into the sea.

Under glittering canopies on a rusty barge, a four-armed, insect-faced man sips from an upturned golden helmet while a winged woman sleeps hugging a gold breastplate.

II · 7 The Golden Bowl Hung over in his new house out on the bay, Phaethon refuses a faceless mannequin calling itself “Constable Pursuivant”, which urges him to log on, and walks the sea floor to the barge. There Ironjoy is eating the interface webbing out of Phaethon’s golden helmet as if from a bowl, and a winged girl sleeps hugging his breastplate. A recording shows that last night Phaethon signed the community’s Pact, and with it passed title to his armour.

On a crowded barge deck, black liquid flows up over a man as gold armour plates rise into place, while sullen onlookers glare and a bald, tattooed man sits weeping.

II · 8 Like a Loyal Hound Phaethon bluffs. He calls on Pursuivant to take testimony he dare not give, since he cannot face a mind-reading, and Ironjoy cannot know it. The Afloats sullenly hand back his plates and the black material in jars and bags; Oshenkyo brings up the hoard he swallowed, and weeps. The lining flows back over Phaethon like a hound that remembers him. Then the crowd throws him into the sea.

Part 3

The Drowned House

The lights belong to Old-Woman-of-the-Sea, a mind spread through kelp, coral, fish and sea-floor dust, whose city is the only one on Earth that never signed the Hortator accords. She holds him in an air pocket her dolphins refill. She has waited aeons for someone to carry fire back to the heavens, and tells him he is failing because he has not given up enough.

So he erases his artificial mind: eidetic memory, complex calculation, a hundred languages, perfect pitch, emotion buffers, intelligence augments. Slower and duller, he sleeps and dreams clearly for the first time since the exile. The dream is the Black Sun: a black hole over a space-city’s hull, black machine-filth dissolving its people, the minds of the dead beamed from twin rows of black pyramids into the event horizon. He wakes with his armour laid in a circle round him and names the enemy: the Silent Oecumene, the one colony ever sent out from the Solar System, at Cygnus X-1, which grew rich on black-hole energy, banned minds greater than man’s and fell silent. Some of them must have come home in secret to stop his ship.

In his drowned house he finds Ironjoy’s copy of the Pact glowing on a child’s slate, an anonymous, text-only door into the Mentality. As “Hamlet” he downloads a free self-consideration circuit, revives and drains the house, and drinks cold tea like a civilised man. The circuit flags his disgust for the cacophiles and an unnatural fear of logging on; he dismisses both. When he files a complaint against Ironjoy, a real constable tells him there is no such person as Constable Pursuivant.

Deep under a green sea, a man lies cradled in a silvery bubble of air, wrapped in kelp and vines, while two dolphins swim down to him.

II · 9 Old-Woman-of-the-Sea Old-Woman-of-the-Sea, a mind spread through kelp, coral, fish and sea-floor dust, holds the drowning man in an air pocket her dolphins refill, in a voice that reminds him of his mother. She has waited aeons for someone to carry fire back to the heavens. He is failing, she says, because he has not given up enough; he will dream, and “you will know your enemy, and you will kill.”

A black sun ringed by a blazing red corona hangs over a dark plain, with two long rows of black pyramids running toward the horizon and a vast black-and-gold ship hull lying in front.

II · 10 The Black Sun Having erased his eidetic memory, his calculating power, a hundred languages and his intelligence augments, Phaethon sleeps clearly at last, and dreams of the Black Sun: a black hole over a space-city’s hull, black machine-filth dissolving its people, the minds of the dead beamed from twin rows of pyramids into the event horizon. He wakes sure he knows his enemy: the Silent Oecumene, Earth’s lost colony at Cygnus X-1, which banned minds greater than man’s and fell silent.

Inside a white-lit, pearly spiral room, a man in black-and-gold armour sits cross-legged on a woven mat sipping from a small bulb, a glowing slate beside him.

II · 11 A Civilized Man His drowned house lies down the slope with air trapped inside, and in it Ironjoy’s copy of the Pact glows on a child’s slate: an anonymous, text-only door into the Mentality. Signed in as “Hamlet”, Phaethon downloads a free self-consideration circuit, revives and drains the house, and drinks cold tea like a civilised man. The analysis flags his disgust for the cacophiles and an unnatural fear of logging on. He dismisses both.

Part 4

Engineer of Death Row

Ironjoy, convicted from his own memories, is sentenced to six seconds of pain, two hours of remorse and perhaps weeks living his victims’ lives in simulation. Showing unexpected care for his flock, he lets Phaethon run the shop rent-free while he serves his time sealed in diamond. Phaethon erases the vilest dreams, preaches Silver-Gray self-discipline (Oshenkyo leads the chant of “Hortator!”), trades with Daughter-of-the-Sea for decent clothes, and sets crews to revive the abandoned house-brains and wire the floating houses together. At sunset every house lights up and sings, and the Afloats stand unsmiling in their new clothes.

Playing Ironjoy’s three customers off against one another, he raises enough to call the Neptunians’ legate in Jovian space. The news: the Silver-Gray School has won wide acceptance in the Neptunian Duma, endowed by Diomedes in memory of a friend unjustly exiled; and Diomedes and Xenophon have merged into one mind, Neoptolemous, who holds the Phoenix Exultant and cannot decide whether to fly her or break her up. Phaethon offers himself as pilot, and gives his name.

Then the doors close. The Bellipotent cyborg calls and warns him that he has just given away his location on an open line; Antisemris is bought off; the graveyard of abandoned houses burns by a Hortator petition granted in half a second, and Phaethon glimpses a figure in black armour diving into the cliff. A mob lays hands on him and he electrifies his armour; constable machines carry every Afloat away. Unmoiqhotep’s partial tells him he is worth more to the cacophiles as a dead martyr. Alone on the prow he addresses the Swan, where Cygnus X-1 lies, and sends an offer to Daughter-of-the-Sea in scraps of lining that night-birds eat. One masked person answers, promising to carry him off to a little world that would keep him in gentle chains.

At sunset every stilt-legged shell house in a bay glows with lit windows while a man in gold armour stands in the foreground with an open hand toward them, a small barge beside him and a group of unsmiling people in brown jackets and white and green tunics at his side.

II · 12 The Houses Sing With Ironjoy sentenced to live his victims’ lives in simulation, Phaethon runs the thought-shop. He erases the vilest dreams, preaches Silver-Gray self-discipline and is pelted with garbage, trades with Daughter-of-the-Sea for decent clothes, and sets crews to revive the abandoned house-brains and wire the floating houses together. At sunset every house lights up and sings an old house-warming song. The Afloats stand in their new clothes, unsmiling.

In a bare steel cabin, a man in gold armour stands before a screen of gold birds, facing three framed oval panels showing an indigo-faced man, a mass of snakes and a metal cylinder.

II · 13 Three Mirrors In Ironjoy’s aft cabin three talking mirrors carry his customers: the indigo-faced Semris, the snake-mass cacophile Antisemris and the cylinder-mind Notor-Kotok. Reading their moods from an emotion-sensing tapestry, Phaethon plays them off against one another until he can afford to call the Neptunians. The news: Diomedes and Xenophon have merged into one mind, Neoptolemous, who holds the Phoenix Exultant and cannot decide whether to fly her or break her up.

Across a dark bay, tall shell houses on a cliff flare with blue-white fire inside webs of mist while a small black figure dives from the sky; a man in gold armour and a dark-haired person in black eye-cups and a beaded shawl stand in the foreground beside a barge.

II · 14 The Graveyard Burns Antisemris has been bribed off, the Bellipotent cyborg warns that Phaethon has given away his location on an open line, and the graveyard of abandoned houses on the north cliff burns, by a Hortator petition granted in half a second. Nebuchadnezzar’s mist spins silk webs that make each house flare blue-white and vanish. Phaethon glimpses a figure in black armour diving into the cliff, and Drusillet, proudly wearing his uniform, explains.

On a barge deck lit red by distant fire, a man in gold armour and a pharaoh-style head-dress stands amid a ring of fallen people as large crab-like flying machines descend.

II · 15 The Linked Crowd A mob demanding its wages and Ironjoy’s old parties lays hands on Phaethon, Oshenkyo crying for his black lining from atop a neomorph’s floating box. Phaethon electrifies his armour, the charge runs through the linked crowd, and everyone drops. Flying machines like crabs carry every Afloat away. Then every door closes: two customers will not answer, the third cannot help, and Unmoiqhotep’s partial says he is worth more to the cacophiles as a martyr.

Part 5

The Heroine Errant

What comes is a horse, swimming to the barge and plunging up the gangway with Daphne Tercius on it, in a dark riding habit, her hat lost in the swim. She became an exile the instant she said hello. They kiss under the arch of the ring-city, and he cools at once: she is the copy, and her love was implanted. Stiffly, she offers him the story of her journey, recorded by her ring, and he replays it through his armour.

Rhadamanthus, as a penguin, gave back the memories she had set aside for a day, and with Eveningstar explained why the Sophotechs will do nothing obvious: no mind that starts violence may join the Universal Mind at the end of time. Eveningstar gave her a silver memory casket that opens only in exile, and a librarian’s ring holding Eveningstar’s own ghost. On the lawn of Meridian Mansion, Aurelian, dressed as Comus, gave her a gold case for Phaethon, and Rhadamanthus admitted a flaw in the inquest record: whoever bought Phaethon’s false-memory program did not know he was broke. She hiked for days through the autumn Rockies, tamed a wild stallion of her own design, and rode to Atkins’s cottage at Heavenfall Lake. Over tea he told her there was no invasion, only a masquerade prank by Unmoiqhotep, Gannis’s clone-daughter, and that Phaethon should take a mind-reading. It is a cover story, though neither she nor the reader knows it yet.

Back in the cabin, they quarrel over whether she is his wife, and he seizes the casket: its lid, in Daphne Prime’s hand, says it holds her own emergency wake-up code, to be delivered to her emancipated copy. It will not open for him, and he slides down the wall and weeps. It is useless, Daphne says, unless he clears his name, and she has brought the means: Aurelian’s gold case is a portable mind-reader, cut off from the Mentality. As for the real Daphne, let the better bride win.

At night on a barge deck, a wet horse rears at the top of a gangway while a woman in a riding habit, crop in hand, walks toward an astonished man in a black cloak.

II · 16 Silly Boy In the dead of night a horse swims to the barge and plunges up the gangway, and Daphne Tercius, the freed copy of his wife, is on it, hatless after the swim. She became an exile the instant she said hello. “Silly boy. I’ve come to rescue you.” They kiss under the arch of the ring-city, and then he cools: she is the copy, and her love for him was implanted.

Beside a crystal-lotus house on an azure lake, a woman in blue-and-silver robes takes a small silver casket from a tall red-haired queen in scarlet silk who holds a slender wand, while a portly penguin stands by leaving wet footprints.

II · 17 The Penguin and the Queen Daphne’s recorded journey, played from her ring. Rhadamanthus, as a penguin, returns the memories she had set aside for a day; with Eveningstar, a red-haired queen in scarlet silk, he explains why the Sophotechs will never start violence: no mind that does may join the Universal Mind at the end of time. So they will do nothing obvious. Eveningstar gives her a silver casket that will open only in exile.

On a sunny lawn of pavilions and arbors before a white mansion, a dark-haired man crowned with poppies presents a flat gold tablet to a young woman with a pack on her back.

II · 18 The Gold Case The send-off on the lawn of Meridian Mansion. Eveningstar puts a librarian’s ring holding the Sophotech’s own ghost on Daphne’s finger; Aurelian, dressed as Comus, gives her a gold case for Phaethon and reminds her of an agreement between them. She refuses to see Helion. Rhadamanthus admits privately to a flaw in the inquest record: whoever bought Phaethon’s false-memory program did not know that Phaethon was broke.

In an autumn mountain valley of pines and golden trees, a woman with a walking stick calls to a tawny stallion trotting down the slope toward her.

II · 19 The Wild Stallion Daphne hikes for days through a no-technology reservation in the autumn Rockies, sleeping in a moth-wing tent and spearing a trout with her ring’s coaching. In a high valley she meets a wild tawny stallion of her own design and tames him with a secret command word. Then she spends far too much of her nanomaterial on a saddle, boots, breeches, a jacket and a silk hat.

A man in a dark bamboo-print tunic and divided skirts, a sword in his hand, salutes with a fist in his palm while a woman on a bay horse touches her crop to her black top hat, a pale-wood cottage and a lake valley behind them.

II · 20 Heavenfall Lake Atkins’s cottage at Heavenfall Lake. Over tea, beneath a screen of four virtues, he tells Daphne that his wife left him over his service, and that there is no invasion: the “Neptunian” was a masquerade prank by Unmoiqhotep, Gannis’s clone-daughter, using Gannis’s materials, so Phaethon should take a mind-reading. It is a cover story, though Daphne cannot know it. He watches her gallop away, expressionless.

In a candle-lit steel cabin, a man in gold-and-black armour sits slumped against the wall with a small silver casket in his lap while a woman in a riding habit stands over him, one hand half reached toward him.

II · 21 The Silver Casket The record ends. Phaethon rages at Rhadamanthus’s silence and at Atkins’s story; Daphne insists she is his wife, and he says she is not. He seizes the casket: its lid, in Daphne Prime’s hand, says it holds her emergency wake-up code, to be given to her copy. It will not open for him, and he slides down the wall and weeps without a sound. Clear your name first, Daphne tells him, and points him to the gold case.

Part 6

The Enemy

Daphne’s theory is tidy: there is no Nothing Sophotech, only Gannis, jealous of Helion’s true sun beside his own burning Jupiter, working with Unmoiqhotep to plant a thought-virus. Phaethon half believes it, while noting it is just what an enemy would want him to think. He studies the reader (its core a weightless sheet of frozen neutronium), builds a buffer of wires and housecoats that makes him, she says, a walking Yule tree with a bucket on his head, and learns that the flying-suit patent he once told Rhadamanthus to release has been earning royalties from masqueraders renting flying suits anonymously: he is secretly rich enough to reach Mercury. She also names the moment his fear of logging on was planted, when a cacophile pressed a file on him outside the Courthouse.

The reader finds her truthful; when Phaethon tries it, a pulse scrambles it. On the deck, sealed under a black dome, stands her horse Sunset, reared upright, blue-white machine-matter pouring from its split skull. It preaches that only pain is real and demands his armour, to fly the ship. Daphne, armed with a broken cot-leg, tells him not to be a coward. He says he loves her and fires everything the armour holds; a skeleton walks out of the flames; and Phaethon, thinking coldly at last, sees that the jamming around them was built to trace any message sent out, and offers to surrender only on the word of the creature’s master. Something supersonic unmakes the monster. On the far cliff, Atkins raises a silver sword in salute.

In a candle-lit cabin, a man in a hooded blue-green coat studies a gold tablet in his lap, glowing threads rising from it, beside an empty suit of armour, while a woman on a cot holds a slate and watches.

II · 22 The Handiwork of the Gods Daphne’s theory: there is no Nothing Sophotech, only Gannis, jealous of Helion’s true sun, planting a thought-virus with Unmoiqhotep. Phaethon half believes it, though it is just what the enemy would want. He steps out of his armour and studies the reader through Ironjoy’s housecoat: its core is a weightless sheet of frozen neutronium, the handiwork of gods to him. A hidden clock suggests that, about fourteen hours ago, someone used it to examine their own mind.

Under a dark dome on a barge deck, a monstrous horse-shaped creature rears upright, glowing blue-white, as a man in gold armour shields a woman holding a broken wooden leg as a club.

II · 23 What Sunset Carried The reader confirms Daphne is no spy; when Phaethon tries it on himself, a pulse scrambles it and her ring cries an alarm. On the deck, sealed under a black dome, stands Daphne’s horse Sunset, reared upright, blue-white machine-matter pouring from its split skull, black whips where its face should be. It preaches nothingness, then states its aim: “Give us the armor. We need it to fly the ship.”

On a dark domed deck, a man in gold armour blasts fire, lightning and a beam of light from his armour into a towering column of flame.

II · 24 Everything at Once Daphne tells him to kill it and not be a coward. He tells her he loves her and is sorry, and fires everything his armour holds. The horse explodes; a blue-white skeleton with a guillotine for a ribcage steps out of the flames. Switching off his fear, Phaethon reasons coolly that the trap’s jamming was built to trace any message he sends, so someone else set it, and he offers to surrender only to the creature’s master.

Across a dark bay a small armoured figure with a halo of black scales raises a silver sword in salute, while a man in gold armour and a woman in a riding habit watch from a scorched barge.

II · 25 A Salute from the Cliff As the monster reports it is sending Phaethon’s terms, something supersonic hisses past his ear and the creature is unmade, leaving only a pinhole in the dome. On the far cliff a figure whose armour turns night-black against the sky raises a silver sword: Atkins. Phaethon and Daphne kiss at the rail; he pulls away first, because hers is his drowned wife’s face. Then Atkins leaps the whole bay and lands like a cat.

Part 7

At Dawn

Atkins used Daphne as bait without telling her; he apologises and comes clean. The technology is the Silent Oecumene’s. He has suspected them since the solar storm that killed Helion Prime, whose flares looked to him like a barrage aimed at the ship, and the cacophile “Scary”, a polyp riding Unmoiqhotep’s back, was Scaramouche, who handed Phaethon the black card. Daphne’s ring projects Harrier, who explains that Pursuivant was a public-domain constable character he had been playing in the masquerade, implies he had expected to meet Phaethon in Talaimannar all along, and has searched the whole Oecumene for people acting out of character. He names one: Mr Sven-Jason X Shopworthy of Dead Horse, Alaska, Scaramouche’s unwitting host.

Atkins calls down an orbital beam through the body of the Earth. Phaethon lunges to stop him and is tripped, and the Warmind appears to warn that interfering is treason, the one capital crime. The shot lasts a fraction of a picosecond; Scaramouche, who had bought himself an immortality account, broadcasts himself to safety by reflex, and is caught and destroyed; Shopworthy recuperates in an Orpheus life-bank. Phaethon is horrified by all three of his rescuers. At first birdsong his almanac, beating the Warmind to the answer, crosses the two signal bearings in the Jovian Trailing Trojan city-swarm, which can only be a relay or a lieutenant, and Harrier lays out the blackmail: enlist, and gain the military’s own immortality circuit, or face a treason trial. Daphne rescues him a second time: Aurelian has told her the reader can also record a mind, and will back Phaethon up himself. So Phaethon gives Atkins his answer as the equatorial sunrise strikes his armour:

I have but this to say: Let them try.

Before dawn on a barge deck, a woman raises her ringed hand and the glowing image of a Victorian detective in a deerstalker appears in a crystal parasol above her, while two armoured men stand beside her.

II · 26 Harrier in the Parasol Atkins apologises for using Daphne as bait, and comes clean: the technology is the Silent Oecumene’s, he has suspected them since the solar storm that killed Helion Prime, and the cacophile “Scary” on Unmoiqhotep’s back was Scaramouche. Daphne’s ring projects Harrier, who explains that Pursuivant was a public-domain character he had been playing, and who has searched the Oecumene for anyone acting out of character. He names Mr Sven-Jason X Shopworthy of Dead Horse, Alaska: Scaramouche’s unwitting host.

The glowing image of a stern king in red-stained Greek armour with a vulture and a jackal, flanked by two winged masked figures, looms over a man on his hands and knees on a barge deck.

II · 27 The Warmind Atkins calls down an orbital beam that will pass through the Earth to strike Alaska. Phaethon lunges to stop him and is tripped, and the Warmind appears as a blood-soaked Greek king with vulture, jackal and Furies, warning that interfering is treason, the one capital crime. The shot lasts a fraction of a picosecond. Scaramouche’s reflexive broadcast is caught and he is destroyed; Shopworthy wakes in a life-bank, none the wiser.

At sunrise on a barge, a ray of golden light strikes a man in gold armour standing tall at the rail while a woman raises her ring toward him and an armoured soldier looks on.

II · 28 Let Them Try Harrier spells out the blackmail: enlist and gain the military’s own immortality circuit, or face a treason trial. Exhausted, Phaethon asks Daphne to rescue him, and she does. Aurelian told her the reader can also record a mind, and he will back Phaethon up himself, Hortators or no. So Phaethon tells Atkins to let them try. The equatorial sunrise flashes on his armour as he says it, and Daphne records the look in her ring.

Part 8

The Farewell Cup

Flying on a harness drawn from the levitation array over India, Phaethon hands the shop back to an Ironjoy changed by his sentence; Drusillet has talked half the Afloats home, and they float down from the sky in rented flying jackets. Daphne, side-saddle on a flame-jetting black horse that Daughter-of-the-Sea has absent-mindedly fitted out for Venus, refuses to be left behind, and when he says he does not love her, claims he was looking at her nose. They fall sunward for weeks in a cargo canister, and in a dream-world they build together, Novusordo, he asks her to stay there with him. She sees the gentlest trap of all, and he ends the dream.

At Mercury Equilateral Station the ban still holds. In a hall with a glass floor, as he begins to tell her something, the turning station brings the Phoenix Exultant into view below, a hundred-kilometre golden spear-blade; Helion’s yacht is docking with his sun-diver nearby, for reasons neither of them can guess. Phaethon offers Daphne a handshake, then crushes her to him and promises to come back. Vafnir, bound by a contract with no exile clause, must deliver, and Phaethon pays off Vafnir’s lien; he goads Neo-Orpheus into one needless remark and mockingly welcomes him to exile; fuel slides toward the ship like strings of pearls.

On the Ninth Night before the Transcendence, Phaethon takes his throne among mannequin explorers. Temer, the Dark-Gray warden of space traffic, exiles himself on purpose and reports that Aurelian has declared against the Hortators. Atkins brings the Warmind’s sealed plan, doubting the enemy commander is a Sophotech at all; Phaethon agrees to follow it and then have it erased from his memory. Their course is the Trojans, to take aboard the ship’s legal owner. A robot brings two goblets, and the volume ends on a toast.

On a glassy road by a town of shell houses, a woman riding side-saddle on a rearing black horse with flames at its belly confronts a man in gold armour holding his helmet.

II · 29 The Venus Horse Flying on a harness drawn from the levitation array over India, Phaethon hands the shop back to an Ironjoy changed by his sentence; Drusillet has talked half the Afloats home, and they float down from the sky in rented flying jackets. On the road, Daphne, side-saddle on a black horse that Daughter-of-the-Sea made her and absent-mindedly fitted out for Venus, flame-jets and all, refuses to be left behind. She may come as far as Mercury. She has already booked passage.

At a rainbow sunset in a grove of tall silver-white crystal trees, a man and a woman walk hand in hand while small white monkeys play in the grass.

II · 30 A World Called Novusordo Falling sunward for weeks in two coffins inside Old-Woman’s old cargo canister, they pass the time in shared dream-worlds and build one together: Novusordo, with crystal trees and white marmosets. He asks her to stay there in the dream with him. She sees the last and gentlest trap, and tells him no deed of renown can be done in a dream. He ends the program; she cries in sped-up time before waking.

In a station hall with a glass floor, a man in closed gold armour and a woman in a moss-covered pressure suit stand lit from below by the glare of a huge golden starship.

II · 31 The Glass Floor At Mercury Equilateral the ban still holds: Phaethon keeps his helmet shut, and Daphne itches in a moss-grown pressure suit. In a hall with a glass floor, as he begins to say something about the two of them, the turning station brings the Phoenix Exultant into view below, a hundred-kilometre golden spear-blade. Helion’s yacht is docking with his sun-diver nearby, for reasons neither can guess. Phaethon offers Daphne a handshake, then crushes her to him and promises to come back.

In a white twelve-sided chamber, a man in gold armour and a pharaoh-style helmet holds up a gold ring before a roaring pillar of flame, with Victorian chairs on a rug, a floating ball of tea, a spiked black robot and a golden ship in a window.

II · 32 Vafnir’s Chamber Vafnir, a turning pillar of flame, must deliver: Phaethon pays off Vafnir’s lien, and his old contract has no clause excusing Vafnir because of a Hortator ban. He goads Neo-Orpheus, in a spiked black robot body, into speaking to him, and mockingly welcomes him to exile. To be rid of him, Vafnir hands over warehouses and robots. Fuel slides toward the ship like strings of pearls, and gold hull-slabs drift into place like snow.

On a starship bridge with a polished wooden floor, tall coloured curtains and tiers of glowing panels, a man in gold armour on a throne touches crystal goblets with a soldier in black armour.

II · 33 The Farewell Cup On the Ninth Night, with the Solar System gone still for the Transcendence, Phaethon takes his throne among mannequin explorers. Temer, the Dark-Gray warden of space traffic, exiles himself on purpose and reports that Aurelian has declared against the Hortators. Atkins brings the Warmind’s sealed plan; Phaethon agrees to follow it, and to have it erased from his memory. Atkins toasts the ship, doubting she will live long. “Long may she live, and far may she fly.”

The machinery of this book

  • Exile by shunning. The Hortators have no police power, only esteem, and their ban works through everyone else: no one may sell to Phaethon, give to him or help him; escalators will not carry him; sense-filters edit him out of sight. The law still protects him (the constables take his complaint, and the Curia convicts Ironjoy), and anyone the law compels to deal with him, like Vafnir and Neo-Orpheus, may do so; Daphne, Temer and Aurelian each choose exile by speaking to him or standing up for him.
  • Life without the Mentality. Cut off from the shared mind, Phaethon is, in the book’s terms, blind, mute, illiterate and an amnesiac: masqueraders are grey mannequins, signs are unreadable, songs unheard. A child’s slate becomes his anonymous door back in (as “Hamlet”), and erasing his own augments to sleep and dream is the price of thinking clearly again.
  • The armour’s living lining. The black nanomaterial under the gold plates clothes and feeds him, heals Oshenkyo’s ear, carries messages inside scraps eaten by night-birds and, in Talaimannar, is worth more than money, the stuff of drugs. He spends it gram by gram. Facing the enemy agent, he reshapes the lining in seconds into weapons (fire from the gauntlets, lightning from the shoulders, a beam from the breastplate), and by the end he has built a flying harness into it.
  • Thought-shops and the Pact. Exiles survive on Ironjoy’s barge: a dealer in stupefiers, false memories and revenge-dreams, linked by black lines to deviant customers. Contracts are sacred there but lying is not policed, so a drugged signature on the community’s Pact can pass title to a man’s armour, and a bluff can win it back.
  • Sophotechs who do nothing obvious. Rhadamanthus and Eveningstar explain the machines’ restraint: no mind that starts violence may join the Universal Mind that will outlast the stars. So they help by gifts, rings and hints, and wait for some human to act. The masquerade does the same in miniature: anonymous renters of Phaethon’s flying suits make him secretly rich.
  • The noetic reader. A mind-reading is the Oecumene’s lie detector, and Phaethon fears logging on to take one. Aurelian’s pocket version, a gold tablet around a core of weightless neutronium, tests Daphne’s honesty, and it can also record a mind: a backup outside the Hortators’ reach, and in the end the tool that will erase the Warmind’s plan from his memory.
  • The Neptunians and their bodies. The outer system’s cold, shape-changing people answer to an often-mad Duma, where Diomedes has founded a Silver-Gray School, and they can merge: Diomedes and Xenophon have become Neoptolemous, legal holder of the ship. The ship’s spinning living decks are chilled for Neptunian bodies, and an enemy agent once wore a Neptunian shape to reach Phaethon.
  • The Warmind. The war-group of the Sophotechs recognises no priority above defending the Commonwealth, keeps its own immortality circuit, and enforces the one capital crime, treason. Through Atkins it fires through the body of the Earth and shoots through an innocent host to reach the spy riding inside him.

Continuity notes

  • Phaethon ends the book still officially exiled and mortal, his augments erased except the star almanac; Atkins, Harrier and the Warmind know he is innocent, but it stays secret. He has paid off Vafnir and is the Neptunians’ hired pilot, on the bridge as the launch begins, bound for the Trailing Trojans. He has not enlisted, but has pledged to follow the Warmind’s sealed plan and have it erased from his memory.
  • Daphne Tercius is exiled and mortal by her own choice, at Mercury Equilateral with fifty robots Phaethon signed over to her (several tugs and small boats among them), intending to see Helion on legal business. They love each other; he told her so and called her his wife under fire, then denied it to her face on the road, and parts from her with a promise to come back.
  • Daphne Prime still sleeps in the Eveningstar mausoleum; her wake-up code is in the silver casket Eveningstar gave the copy.
  • Atkins is out of storage and on campaign: he has destroyed one Silent One agent and Scaramouche, carries the Warmind’s plan, and doubts both that the enemy commander is a Sophotech and that the ship will survive.
  • Helion appears only as a yacht docking with his sun-diver at Mercury, motive unknown; Atkins believes the solar storm that killed Helion Prime was an enemy attack on the ship.
  • Rhadamanthus has quietly helped Daphne and privately exposed the flaw in the inquest record. Harrier had been playing the public-domain constable persona “Pursuivant”, and unmasked Scaramouche’s host.
  • Aurelian gave Daphne the reader, will back Phaethon up, and has declared against the Hortators and gone into exile. The Hortators’ ban still stands, but they are increasingly alone.
  • Neoptolemous (Diomedes plus Xenophon) holds the ship’s title and is to come aboard at Jupiter. Scaramouche rode on Unmoiqhotep’s back; how much Unmoiqhotep or Gannis knew is unresolved.
  • The enemy: Silent Oecumene technology, beyond doubt, though Atkins will not yet say it is the Silent Ones themselves; Scaramouche and one agent destroyed; their signals traced to the Trailing Trojans, a relay or a lieutenant; a hidden enemy starship, a dark twin of the Phoenix, suspected. The Grand Transcendence is nine nights away.

The whole walk: · · · II · The Phoenix Exultant · ·