'Oh, he'll see me, all right. I know how to take care of that!' She smiled. 'The Grand Transcendence is still thirteen days away, isn't it? That means the Masquerade is still in force.'
Sigluvafnir issued one last warning. There was no further time for words.
Phaethon put out his hand.
(Shake hands?!! If you try to shake hands with me, I'll rip your arm out of your socket and beat you to death with it.)
He said, 'Good luck.'
Daphne smiled. (You're lucky you're wearing invulnerable armor, you stinking sack of medical waste. Otherwise, you'd be suffering multiple contusions delivered by a bleeding ex-limb!) She demurely put her little hand into the palm of his gauntlet. 'You are most kind to be concerned about me, sir. I am ever so very grateful for what attention you can spare me from your other concerns.'
Phaethon pulled on her hand to draw her quickly and securely into his arms. Even through her suit, his hard embrace drove the breath from her, and she melted to him, pressing as closely as the suit-fabric allowed. 'I'll come back for you,' his voice burned in her ears.
Then he departed.
Daphne stood looking after him, love shining in her eyes, forgetful of all else.
There hung Phaethon, resplendent in his armor, hovering in weightlessness within the axial visitor's dodecahedron at the dead center of the Mercury Equilateral Station. Wide, white expanses of pentagonal hull surrounded him. One of the Pentagons was tuned to a window. In the window, like a golden blade against a velvet black background, loomed an image of the Phoenix Exultant.
His ship.
Out of deference to Silver-Grey aesthetic conventions, or, actually, out of mockery, one of the other pentagons was designated as 'floor' and the one opposite it was 'overhead.' This 'overhead' panel was blazing with direct light, rather than the indirect lighting all space tradition required. In fact, it was ablaze with the direct light of the Mercury-orbit Sun, so that Phaethon had to adjust his vision centers.
More mockery: Victorian furniture, chairs and settees on which no one in microgravity could sit, were bolted to the 'floor' panel atop an expensive rug. Antimacassars, spinning slowly, sailed above the chairs. A tea service floated nearby, with a ball of scalding tea, held together mostly by its own surface tension but with moonlets of little teadrops all around it, surrounding the silver teapot. Tumbling china cups had drifted in each direction on the ventilation currents. Fortunately, the sugar bowl had held lumps, not powder.
The other bulkheads were established in a nonstandard aesthetic. Objects of unknown use, like strange half-melted candles, rotating glassworks, or webs of laser-light, shimmered in the bulkheads, extending arms or mists toward the center of the chamber.
In the center of the dodecahedron, not far from Phaethon, roared a turning cylinder of flame and pulsing energy. It was Vafnir. The beam of fire extended from one side of the huge chamber to the other.
Two other entities, smaller, dwarfed by Vafnir, were in the room: a dull olive-drab sphere in the Objective Aesthetic, representing the attorneys from the Bankruptcy Court; and a calitrop of black metal, with magnetic jets and manipulator gloves at each axis, surrounding brain housing into which Neo-Orpheus, or perhaps one of his partials, had downloaded, here to represent the College of Hortators.
In one hand Phaethon held up a credit ring. The circuit in the stone had memorized the numbers and locations of millions of seconds of time currency. He pointed it at the olive-drab sphere. A ray from the ring made a circuit with a point in the sphere; the currency exchange was recorded.
Within the ring also had been recorded the contracts and agreement between himself and the Neptunians, now the true owners of the starship, showing that he acted as their representative in this matter, and was accredited both as the pilot and agent of the Phoenix Exultant, and directed, after repairs and final checks were complete, to transport the vessel, with himself at the helm, to the Neptunian Embassy at Jovian Trailing Trojan.
His armor detected a rapid exchange of signals between Vafnir, Neo-Orpheus, and the Bankruptcy Attorneys, a huge volume of information compressed into a few short bursts. He could have tapped into their lines and eavesdropped on the conversation, perhaps. But he knew the gist of it. Vafnir furiously and Neo-Orpheus coldly were attempting to find some loophole, some delay, some chink in the iron plate of Phaethon's original contract with Vafnir. But that contract did not contain the normal escape clause permitting one party to be excused of his duties should the other party fall under Hortator ban. Two hundred years ago, when this contract first had been drafted, Phaethon, planning to depart from the Golden Oecumene, had foreseen no need for such a clause, and insisted on its exclusion.
'Now, then,' Phaethon said aloud, 'one of you is officially required, by law, to inform me that my debt to Vafnir has been settled, and that he shall perform his remaining duties under the contract. Fortunately, Vafnir's warehouses and orbital factories are already at hand directly abeam of the Phoenix Exultant; some of the smaller factories, as I recall, are actually inside the hull, for ease of construction. It should require a hundred hours, or less, to load the remaining fuel aboard, and to fit into place the hull-metal segments which you began to dismantle. I demand that the Phoenix Exultant be restored to the condition specified, cleaned and polished with no sign of tool-marks, neglect, or debris. Now, which of you is going to embrace a life of exile by telling me these things? Or, better yet, which of you is going to be arrested by the constables for failing to tell me?'
The speaker on Neo-Orpheus's housing whined to life. 'The Hortator exile does not obtain against those who, by law, are compelled to treat with you, nor for comments strictly limited to legal business. Only gratuitous comments are forbidden.'
Phaethon regarded the calitrop without friendliness. 'That itself was a gratuitous comment. Thank you for joining me in exile.'
There was something shameful about the fact that Neo-Orpheus, had, at one time, been the selfsame Orpheus who inspired the modern romantic movement; and he had led the team that invented the technology to preserve the human soul, intact, after bodily death; shameful that he should, nowadays, choose to dwell in bodies so ugly. This pyramid-shaped skeleton robot was not from the Objective Aesthetic, nor from any aesthetic at all. It was stark, functional, and utterly inhuman.
Neo-Orpheus said, 'My last comment was permissible, as falling under the general umbrella of necessary comments required to conclude our business here with dispatch.'
'Ah. But now I must ask, was the comment explaining that last comment gratuitous ... ? It certainly was unnecessary. Welcome to exile!'
Neo-Orpheus did not deign to respond.
Vafnir said, 'Phaethon! In order to conclude the contract quickly, and in order to minimize further interactions between the two of us, I hereby not only turn over to you the materials you bought from me, but also the warehouses and the robot workers attendant thereto, base work crew, supervisors, partials, decision informata, everything. I am giving you, as a free gift, without warranty, all the operators you will need to carry out this operation yourself. They are yours. They will load and equip and polish your insane ship according to your orders, but I will not be responsible hereafter for their acts. Do you acknowledge that this will satisfy all my obligations to you under the contract... ?'
A window opened up on one of the decks to the left and showed a view from a point in space near the Phoenix Exultant. Even as he watched, he saw the flares of light darting from the warehouses, and saw the first of many spheres of fuel, like a line of pearls, beginning to emerge and slide across space toward the waiting ship.
To the port and starboard of the titanic ship, other warehouses opened their doors. A second string of pearls joined the first, then a third, then a score, then a hundred. The vast bays and fuel docks of the Phoenix Exultant stirred to life and opened to receive the incoming gifts.
The running lights of the ship lit up. Red to port. Green to starboard. Flashing white along the keel. The ship had come to life again.
'Do not imagine that your victory over us is achieved, Phaethon,' Neo-Orpheus said in a cold voice.
Phaethon said, 'But, my dear sir, I am not imagining it at all. I see it clearly.'
In the window, at that moment, orbital tugs appeared, guiding the mile-long slabs of golden adamantium, one after another, toward the rents and gaps in the vast armored hull.
Silently steadily, ton upon countless ton of material, fuel, ship-brains, biomaterial, and the vast expanse of hull segments, began falling like gentle snow toward the golden doors opened so wide to receive them.
