The Phoenix Exultant : The Golden Age, Volume 2 (The Golden Age)

253 Pages·2003·0.79 MB·English

by  John C. Wright

The Phoenix Exultant
Book Two of The Golden Age Or, Dispossessed in Utopia
John C. Wright
Books by John C. Wright
The Golden Age
The Phoenix Exultant
The Golden Transcendence
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE PHOENIX EXULTANT; OR, DISPOSSESSED IN UTOPIA Copyright (c) 2003
by John C. Wright
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any
form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, IXC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-765-34354-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2002073280
First edition: May 2003
First mass market edition: October 2003
Printed in the United States of America 0987654321
MAJOR CHARACTERS, GROUPED BY NERVOUS SYSTEM FORMATION
(NEUROFORM):
Biochemical Self-Aware Entities: Immortals:
Base neuroform:
PHAETHON PRIME of RHADAMANTH, Silver-Grey Manorial school.
HELION RELIC of RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's sire, founder of the Silver-Grey
Manorial school, and a Peer.
DAPHNE TERCIUS SEMI-RHADAMANTH, Phaethon's wife.
TEMER SIXTH LACEDAIMON, Dark Grey Manorial school, an Advocate.
GANNIS HUNDRED-MIND GANNIS, Synergistic-Synnoint school, a Peer.
ATKINS VINGT-ET-UN GENERAL-ISSUE, a soldier.
UNGANNIS, daughter of GANNIS, also called UNMOIQHOTEP QUATRO
NEOMORPH of the Cthonnic school, of the Nevernext movement, whom Helion calls
the "Cacophiles."
Alternate Organization neuroform, commonly called Warlocks:
AO AOEN, the Master-Dreamer, a Peer.
AO VARMATYR, one of the Lords-Paramount of the Silence, commonly called Swans.
NEO-ORPHEUS the Apostate, protonothary and chair of the COLLEGE of
HORTATORS.
ORPHEUS MYRIAD AVERNUS, founder of the Second Immortality, a Peer.
Cortial-Thalamically Integrated neuroform,
commonly called:
Invariants:
KES SENNEC the Logician, a Peer.
Cerebelline neuroform:
WHEEL-OF-LIFE, an Ecological Mathematician, a Peer.
GREEN-MOTHER, the artiste who organizes the ecological performance at Destiny
Lake.
OLD-WOMAN-OF-THE-SEA, of the Oceanic Environmental Protectorate.
DAUGHTER-OF-THE-SEA, a terraformer of Early Venus.
Mass-Mind Compositions:
The ELEEMOSYNARY COMPOSITION, a Peer.
The HARMONIOUS COMPOSITION, of the College of Hortators.
The BELLIPOTENT COMPOSITION (disbanded).
Nonstandard neuroforms:
VAFNIR of MERCURY EQUILATERAL STATION, a Peer.
XENOPHON of FARAWAY, Tritonic Neuroform Composure School, called the
Neptunians.
XINGIS of NEREID, also called DIOMEDES, Silver-Grey School.
NEOPTOLEMUS, a combination of Diomedes and Xenophon.
Mortals:
VULPINE FIRST IRONJOY HULLSMITH, an Afloat.
OSHENKYO, an Afloat.
LESTER NOUGHT HAAKEN, an Afloat.
DRUSILLET ZERO SELF-SOUL, an Afloat.
SEMRIS of IO, an Ashore.
ANTISEMRIS, an Ashore.
NOTOR-KOTOK UNIQUE AMALGAMATED, an Ashore.
An OLD MAN, gardener of a grove of Saturn trees, who claims to be of the
Antiamaranthine Purist school, not otherwise identified.
Electrophotonic Self-Aware Entities: Sophotechs:
RHADAMANTHUS, a manor-house of the SILVER-GREY school, million-cycle
capacity.
EVENINGSTAR, a manor-house of the RED school, million-cycle capacity.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR, advisor to the College of Hortators, ten-million-cycle capacity.
HARRIER, consulting detective, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity.
MONOMARCHOS, a barrister, one-hundred-thousand-cycle capacity.
AURELIAN, host of the Celebration, fifty-thousand-million-cycle capacity.
The ENNEAD consists of nine Sophotech groups, each of over a billion-cycle capacity,
including WARMIND, WESTMIND, ORIENT, AUSTRAL, BOREAL, NORTHWEST,
SOUTHEAST, and others.
EARTHMIND, the unified consciousness in which all terrestrial machines, and
machines in Near-Earth-Orbit, from time to time participate: trillion-cycle capacity.
Simulacra, Fictional Persons, Constructs:
COMUS, an avatar of AURELIAN.
SOCRATES and EMPHYRIO, constructs of NEBUCHADNEZZAR.
The Justices of the CURIA.
SCARAMOUCHE, an extract of Xenophon the Neptunian.
The Envoy of DIOMEDES of NEREID.
MINOR CHARACTERS, INCLUDING HISTORICAL OR FICTIONAL PERSONS
MENTIONED IN THE TALE:
AO ANDAPHANTIE, Daphne's name when she was a warlockess.
AYESHA, a cottage-mind used by Daphne, ten-thousand-cycle capacity.
CURTIS MAESTRICT, the Parliamentary Protonothary, and a friend and client of
Daphne's.
JASON SVENTEN SHOPWORTHY, whose odd behavior has piqued the curiosity of
the Sophotechs.
KSAHTRIMANYU HAN, the First Speaker of the Parliament.
UTE NONE STARK, Daphne's mother.
YEWEN NONE STARK, Daphne's father.
HISTORICAL AND FICTIONAL PERSONS:
Ao Enwir the Delusionist, famous for his treatise, "On the Sovereignty of Machines."
Ao Ormgorgon Darkwormhole Noreturn of the Black Swan Coven, captain-monarch of
the multigeneration starship Naglfar, and culture hero who founded the Silent Oecumene
at Cygnus X-l.
Ao Solomon Oversoul, marshal of the jihad in service to the Witch-King of Corea,
credited with orchestrating the defeat of the Bellipotent
Composition during the Era of the Fifth Mental Structure.
Buckland-Boyd Cyrano-D'Atano, the first man to survive a Mars landing.
Chan Noonyan Sfih of Io, explorer who accidentally set fire to Pluto.
Demontdelune, an unfortunate who came to grief on the dark side of the moon.
Enghathrathrion, a celebrated poet of the late-period Fourth Mental Structure.
Hamlet, a character from a linear-experience simulacrum, William Shakespeare, Era of
the Second Mental Structure.
Hanno, of Carthage, sailed down the coast of Africa. The first explorer whose name is
recorded by history.
Harlequin, a clown from the Italian Commedia del'Arte Era of the Second Mental
Structure.
Jason, master of the Argo, who sailed to Golden Cheronese and returned with the Fleece.
Mancuriosco the Neuropathist.
Mother-of-Numbers, a Cerebelline mathematician, whose disquisition on Noetic
Mathematics formed a foundation for Noumenal technology.
Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on Luna.
Oe Sephr al-Midr the Descender-into-Clouds, early Jupiter explorer.
Scaramouche, a clown from the Italian Commedia del'Arte Era of the Second Mental
Structure.
Sir Francis Drake, Master of the Golden Hind, discovered the Northwest Passage.
Sloppy Rufus, the first dog to survive a Mars landing (Bucky-Boy Cyrano's dog).
The Porphyrogen Composition, a noted sect of astronomers.
Ulysses, King of Ithaca, who sailed far to know the minds of men and their ways,
returning from the underworld.
Vandonnar, according to pre-Ignition Jovian
poetry, a cloud-diver so entirely lost in the storms surrounding the Great Red Spot, that
even death found him unable to locate the course to the afterlife, and therefore
Vandonnar circles eternally in the storm, forever seeking, forever lost.
Vanguard Single Exharmony, survived the first manned mission into the Solar
Photosphere.
THE CYBORG
He opened the door onto a crowded boulevard of matter-shops, drama-spaces,
reliquaries, shared-form communion theaters, colloquy-salons, and flower parks. An
elaborate hydrosculpture of falls and aerial brooks spread from a central fountain works
throughout the area, with running water held aloft by subatomic reorientations of its
surface tension, so that arches and bows of shining transparency rose or fell, splashed or
surged with careless indifference to the reality of gravity. Light, scattered from tall
windows lining the concourse or from banners of advertisements or from high panels
opening up into the regional mentality, was caught and made into rainbows by the high-
flowing waters. Petals from floating water lilies drifted down across the scene.
Beneath all this beauty was a crass ugliness. More than three-quarters of the people were
present as mannequins. This was evidently a place meant for manorials, cryptics, or
other schools that relied heavily on telepresentation. Since Phaethon no longer had
access to any kind of sense-filter, all these folk, no matter how splendid of dress or
elegant of comportment they might have appeared to an observer in the Surface
Dreaming, looked to him like so many ranks and ranks of gray, dull, and faceless
mannequins.
There may have been beautiful music sweeping the area; excluded from the mentality,
Phaethon was deaf to it. Here and there were hospice boxes or staging pools, ready to
send
out dreams or partials, calls, messages, or any form of tele-presentation. All channels
were closed to Phaethon, and he was mute. There were dragon-signs burning like fire in
the air, displaying messages of unknown import. Phaethon could not read the subtext or
hypertext; Phaethon was illiterate. There may have been thought-guides in the Middle
Dreaming to allow him to remember, as if he had always known, where to find the
public transport he sought. Mnemonic assistance gone; Phaethon was an amnesiac.
There may have been ornament and pageantry in the dream-stages gathered in the air
around him, lovely beyond description, or signs and maps to show Phaethon where, in
this wide concourse, might be the way or the road he sought. But Phaethon was blind.
Here and there among the mannequins, the face of a realist or vivarianist showed. Their
eyes turned dull when they lit on Phaethon, and their gazes slid past him without seeing.
All sense-filters were tuned to exclude him. The world was blind to him as well.
He expected the banners overhead to swoop down on him when he looked up. But no.
They floated on by, shouting with lights and garish displays. Even the advertisements
ignored him.
No matter. Phaethon tried to keep his thoughts only on the next steps immediately before
him. How to find out where he was? How to find Talaimannar? How to go from here to
there? Once there, how to find out why Harrier Sophotech recommended that place?
He had to ask someone for help, or directions.
Phaethon stepped behind a stand of bushes; there was a flow of water from the fountain
works overhead, forming a rippling, translucent ceiling. Was anyone watching? He
assumed not.
He doffed his armor and covered it with the cape of nanomaterial, which he then
programmed to look like a hooded cloak. Phaethon himself merely drew out some of the
nanomaterial from the black skin-garment he wore, and drew circles around his eyes, to
solidify into a black domino mask. And that was that: Both of them were now in
disguise. He hoped it was enough to fool at least a casual inspection. He programmed
the suit to follow him at a fixed distance, avoiding obstacles; to "heel" as Daphne would
have said.
He stepped out again into the concourse, followed by the bulky, cloaked form of his
armor, looming three paces behind him. He went downstairs and found a pondside
esplanade that had fewer mannequins walking along it. He saw real faces; faces made of
flesh or metal, or cobra scales, or polystructural material, or energy surfaces. They were
laughing and talking, signaling and depicting. The air seemed charged with a carnival
excitement. Many people skipped or danced as they strolled, moved by music Phaethon
could not hear. Others dived over the side of the esplanade, to glide among the buildings
and statues in the pond.
He did not know what particular event was being celebrated. It was rare to see so many
folk together. Whatever bunting or decoration swam in the dreamspace here, which
might have given him a clue as to the nature of the occasion, was, of course, invisible to
him.
People smiled and nodded at him as they walked by, full of good cheer. "Merry
Millennium! May you live a thousand years!"
He had not realized how much he had missed, and was going to miss, the sight of
friendly human faces. Phaethon smiled back, waving, and calling out, "And a thousand
years to you!"
Phaethon reminded himself that he had to be careful. Theoretically, the masquerade
protocol would not protect him, since he was no longer part of the celebration, no longer
part of the community. But how many people would even try to read his identity if they
saw him wearing a mask during a masquerade? Most people, Phaethon guessed, would
not.
The rule from the Hortators was that no one was to give him aid, comfort, food or drink,
or shelter, sell him goods or services, or buy from him, or donate charity to him. This
rule did not (in theory) actually prohibit speaking to him, or looking at him and smiling,
although that was the way it surely would be practiced.
If Phaethon tried to buy something from a passerby, Aurelian was obligated to warn him
that he was about to be contaminated with exile. But as long as Phaethon did not try to
win from the passersby either food or drink or comfort or shelter or charity, Aurelian
would no doubt stand mute. Sophotechs had a long, long tradition of failing to volunteer
any information that had not been specifically asked.
It was hard. A couple walking hand in hand were passing out wedding-album projections
of their future children. Phaethon smiled but declined to take one. A young girl (or
someone dressed as one) skipping and licking a floating balloon-pastry offered him a
bite; Phaethon patted her on the head, but did not touch her pastry. When a laughing
wine-juggler, surrounded by musical firecrackers, and balancing on a ball, rolled by and
tried to thrust a glass of champagne into Phaethon's hand, Phaethon was not able to
refuse except by jerking his hand away.
The juggler frowned, wondering at Phaethon's lack of courtesy, and raised two fingers as
if to try to find out who Phaethon really was. But the juggler was distracted when a
slender, naked gynomorph, fluttering with a hundred stimulation scarves, jumped up in
drunken passion to embrace him. Singing a carol to Aphrodite, the two rolled off
together, while the juggler's bottles and goblets fell this way and that.
Phaethon let the throng carry him down the esplanade.
The pressure of the crowd eased when Phaethon came to a line of windows, two hundred
feet tall or more, which looked out upon a balcony larger than a boulevard. Out onto the
balcony they all went together. Phaethon climbed up a pedestal holding a statue of
Orpheus in his pose as Father of the Second Immortality. The stone hands held up a
symbol in the shape of a snake swallowing its own tail. Phaethon put his foot in the
stone coils of the serpent and pulled himself high, looking left and right above the heads
of the crowd.
Several lesser towers and small skyscrapers grew up from the railing of the balcony, like
little corals fringing the topless supertower of the space elevator.
Beyond the balcony, the metropolis spread out from the mountain-base of the space
elevator in three concentric circles. Innermost and oldest, the center circle consisted of
huge windowless structures shaped according to simple geometries; giant cubes,
hemispheres, and hemicylinders, painted in bright, primary colors, connected by
rectilinear motion-lines and smart roads. The architecture followed the Objective
Aesthetic, with the building shapes, slabs, and plaques all rigidly
stereotyped. There was little movement in this part of the city; human beings of the basic
neuroform tended to find these faceless buildings and looming monoliths intolerable.
Mostly, this central ring housed Sophotech components, warehouses, manufacturies.
Invariants, who had little desire for beauty or pleasure or inefficiency, lived here,
dwelling in square dormitories arranged like rank upon rank of coffin-beds.
The second ring was done in the Standard Aesthetic. Here were black pools and lakes of
nanomachinery, with many brooks and rills, touched with white foam of the dark
material streaming from one to another. Tiny waterfalls of the material formed where
cascade-separator stages mixed and organized the components. Each lake was
surrounded by the false-trees and coral bioformations of nanomanufactory. A hundred
solar parasols raised orchidlike colors to the sun. The houses and presence chambers
were formed of strange growth, like sea-shells; one spiral after another, shining with
lambent mother-of-pearl, rose to the skyline. Blue-black, dark pearl, glinting silver, and
dappled blue-gray hues dominated the scene. Thought-gardens, coven places, and sacred
circles dotted the area, along with nymphariums, mother trees, and staging pools.
Warlocks and basics tended to prefer the chaotic fractals and organic shapes of the
Standard Aesthetic. Wide areas of garden space were occupied by the decentralized
bodies of Cerebellines.
Beyond this, on the hills surrounding, green arbors and white mansions prevailed. This
was the Consensus Aesthetic, patronized mostly by manor-born and first-generation
basics. Greek columns marched along the hilltops; formal English gardens rested in
green shadows before grand houses done in the Georgian style, or neo-Roman, or stern
Alexandrian.
In the far distance, Phaethon saw a wide lake. On the lake were a hundred shapes like
jewel-armored clipper ships, whose sails were textured like a dozen wings of butterflies,
surrounded with light.
Now Phaethon knew where he was. This city was Kisumu, south of Aetheopia,
overlooking Lake Victoria. And Phaethon understood the wonder and excitement of the
crowd. For the huge shapes in the lake were the Deep Ones.
These were the last of the once-great race of the Jovian half-warlocks, a unique
neuroform that combined elements from the Cerebelline and Warlock nervous-system
structures. Once, they rode the storms and swam in the pressurized methane atmosphere
of Jupiter, before its ignition. When the time came to end their way of life, they chose
instead to enter whalelike bodies and to sleep at the bottom of the Marianas Trench,
where they called back and forth to each other, and wove songs and sonar images
relating to the vast, sad, and ancient emotions known only to them; and made sounds in
the deep, which reminded them, but could not recapture, those songs and sensations their
old Jupiter-adapted Behemoth bodies once had made in the endless atmosphere of that
gas-giant planet.
Once every thousand years, only during the time of the Millennium, they woke from
their dreams of sorrow, grew festive gems and multicolored membranes and sails along
their upper hulls, rose to the surface, and sang in the air.
By an ancient contract, no recordings could be made of their great songs, nor was
anyone allowed to speak of what they heard or dreamed when that music swept over
them.
No wonder so many people were here in reality.
Phaethon's heart was in his throat. The songs of the Deep Ones he had only heard once
before, since he had not attended this ceremony his second millennial masquerade,
during Argentorium's tenure. That time once before, three thousand years ago (during
the tenure of Cuprician) the song had sung to him of vastness, emptiness, and a sense of
infinite promise. It was as if Phaethon had been plunged into the wide expanses of the
Jovian cloudscape; or into the far wider expanses of the stars beyond.
The Deep Ones had originally been designed also to serve as living spaceships, able to
swim the radiation-filled and dust-filled vacuum between the Jovian moons, able to
tolerate the almost unthinkable re-entry heat of low-orbit dives down into the Jovian
atmosphere. But the early successes in cleaning circumjovial space and in taming the
Jovian magnetosphere, made those space-lanes safe and economical for ships of
ordinary construction; the emplacements of sky hooks made alarming re-entries
unnecessary. The Deep Ones' way of life was past; the danger and romance of space
travel was removed. Phaethon had heard all of this in their song, so long ago. It had
planted the seed that blossomed into his own desire to embrace his dream of star travel.
It had been Daphne who had brought him to hear it. But had that been Daphne Prime, or
her ambassador-doll, Daphne Tercius? Phaethon could not remember. Perhaps his lack
of useful sleep was beginning to affect his memory.
Phaethon jumped down from the pedestal and began to push his way through the crowd,
and away. For the Deep Ones did not give away their grand, sad music freely. Everyone