had not even been aware suddenly relaxed in his stomach and released him. Harrier's suggestion made perfect common sense. In a moment, the College would see that he was telling the truth; the existence of the interstellar menace would be confirmed. The College had already taken a vote: if Phaethon were telling the truth, he would be cleared. He would he free to return to his life and his dream. The Phoenix Exultant was waiting for him, the stars were waiting for him, and, this time, nothing would be standing in his way.
Phaethon froze the scene, and stepped out of the Deep Dreaming. He woke to find himself in his armor, half curled in the warmth and blackness of the Eleemosynary public box. The helmet circuit sent pictures from the faceplate-eyepieces directly into his optic nerve; he could see the telltale lights and dream points on the controls and glyph signs inscribed on the interior of the casket.
Commands went from his thought into his suit interface. The black lining of his armor was able to nanomanufacture a data crystal (Phaethon vented the production waste-heat as a jet of steam into the liquid medium in which he floated) and this crystal he filled with his memories.
Phaethon opened the control panel with his finger manually. (Imagine using his hand to open a control! He felt just like a man from the prehistoric past.) With the panel open, he found the jack to accept the data crystal, and had his armor
circuit impose an energy pattern on the wiring to trigger the activation switch. Thus, there was no physical connection to himself when his recorded memories were transferred to a public inspection channel.
Phaethon stepped back into Deep Dreaming, saw the austere Inquest Chamber of the Hortators around him, frozen. He started time again. 'A copy of my mind is available for your review on public channel 2120.'
Once the summons was read, the oaths affirmed, and the reversion circuits were made ready, the Mentality opened itself into many minds. The College of Hortators, each and every one, remembered Phaethon, and became Phaethon.
They saw and suffered the scene. All of them wept above the coffin of Daphne. All of them heard Eveningstar's curt refusal. All of them wandered, thoughts heavy with despair, out onto the steps in front of the mausoleum. All of them saw Scaramouche and heard his mocking talk.
All of them felt the sword blade cut their neck, felt cold steel and hot blood.
Then the Phaethon who had been Benvolio Malachi, the Mnemonicist, said to the other Phaethons: 'There is a time-texture friction here, of the type one only sees with redacted memories. Note the extra read-lines and time- cues. This memory has been tampered with.'
The Phaethon who had been Tau Continuous of the White was an engineer, by nature a methodical thinker. 'Maybe it is the alleged virus.'
They all knew that read-line tags could get scrambled by imposing two mind systems into one thoughtspace ... or two memories.
The Phaethon who had been Ao Sinistro was able to use a burst of intuition to assemble the scattered read-line fragments, to look at them as though they were a shattered geometric shape, combine that shape like a puzzle, then
retranslate the result back into a linear format. From that, the association path traces of the original memory could be read. He said, 'Here is the memory, whole and untouched. Who of me is willing to see the unhindered and unhampered truth?'
All the Phaethons, of course, wanted to see the truth. After all, they were Phaethon.
And a new memory came.
They remembered standing on the stair outside Eveningstar Mansion. They remembered the sensations of hopelessness and sorrow; sorrow without cure. Daphne was gone.
Phaethon drew a deep breath, searching the gardens and the sky, perhaps for inspiration, perhaps for some sign promising escape from this world of flat despair that had trapped
him.
Since it was a Red Manorial scene, the wind was not merely refreshing, scented with autumn, but also filled with a wild melancholy. The tattered clouds were turning red-gold in the sunset, a sight as strange and sad and haunting as the funeral ship of a fairy king descending in flames to the waves. The far hills, draped in shadows like the vestments of conquered titans, seemed like the towers and gates to some alien world, threatening, terrible, but challenging, as if daring him to penetrate their secrets. In the near distance, on a grassy slope tinted with cherry, rose, and scarlet dusk light, a stallion of a brand Daphne once had made now reared against the sunset, uttering a wild cry, and tossing its mane with furious
pride.
It was as if the landscape itself were urging him to wild, swift, relentless deeds. Deeds of peerless renown.
'But of course!' Phaethon was jarred with sudden hope. 'I do not now recall the password or secret key to waken my Daphne. But such a word (why not?) could be hidden in the casket of locked memory. And in that box is the man she lost, not me.'
But what use would it be to waken Daphne, only to suffer exile immediately thereafter?
It took him but a moment to invent a story. He could pretend he was attacked, that he had to open the memory box. But attacked by whom? There was no way any such attack could take place, except by an entity as smart as a Sophotech, able to infiltrate the Golden Oecumene, alter records, and erase memories. But where could such a Sophotech originate?
Phaethon remembered that Atkins had been investigating some Neptunian Masquerade prank. That gave him an idea. Atkins was actually investigating an external threat to the Oecumene. The evil Sophotech would belong to a highly advanced but completely invisible interstellar civilization. A civilization people by aliens, or the descendants of a lost colony. Or time travelers or wombats or hobgoblins. The excuse did not matter. All that mattered was that, if the Hortators thought Phaethon were acting on an understandable impulse? a reaction to a threat, no matter how far-fetched?then they might be lenient. Certainly they would not for a moment believe in the threat themselves, but if they thought Phaethon believed in it...
But how to make himself believe? He would have to falsify his own memories, of course, in order to cheat the Noetic examination that certainly would follow. Any purchase of a pseudomnesia editor would be normally be
