blown from her tray. She straightened again, tucked her hair behind her ear, came toward him, and proffered the card containing the libretto.
Many men found Martian Dryads quite attractive; they had the deep chests required by the thin air Mars had once had (Dryads dated from the middle of the Second Terraforming Interrum), and a long-legged delicacy lesser Martian gravity permitted. And they did not have the rough hide of a south-hemisphere drylander. But they were not usually clumsy or shy. Why had the waitress paused?
Phaethon deactivated his sense-filter and saw a man dressed as an Astronomer from First-Century Porphyrogen Cosmic Observatory at 500 AUs, of the Undeterred Observationer School, a Scholum now defunct. It had been a period of hardship, before the construction of the artificial ice-planetoid, and
the costume reflected the hardness of those times. He had thick radiation-proof skin, with the internal recyclers and extra layers of fat that allowed him to stand long watches without taking air or water from the common stores. His face was disfigured with multiple eye-jacks, plugs, and extensions, as the Observationers of that period could not afford to abide by the Consensus Aesthetic.
The waitress must have paused to hand a libretto to the Observationer, a man Phaethon's sense-filter had censored from view. The filter could not let him see her hand the card to nobody, and so had invented an action for her to do. Her dropping and stooping and picking up was mere waste motion to account for the missing time.
Phaethon recalled that his sense-filter had been programmed to keep hidden from him a certain disaster in near-Mercury space, brought on solar storms. If the man costumed as an ancient astronomer were an astronomer in truth, he may have ready access to a channel or an index containing information.
Phaethon took the libretto but only pretended to study it as he stepped toward the man. The astronomer was watching the burning collapse of the supertree with several eyes.
Phaethon said, 'The life-artist creates a scene of grim disaster.'
Phaethon detected signal actions on Channel 760, the translation matrix. There was a moment while the man adjusted to Phaethon's language forms, downloading grammars and vocabularies into himself.
'Truly said,' the man replied with a smile. 'Though not so grim, I think, as Demontdelune's final hours on the Moon's far side.'
Phaethon did not bother to explain he was dressed as Hamlet. He said, 'Life can be grim, even these days. Consider the disaster near Mercury.'
'The solar storm? A moral lesson for all of us.'
'Oh? How so?'
'Well, we'd like to think the Sophotechs can predict all coming disasters, warn, and protect us. But in this case, very
minor, perhaps subatomic, variations in the solar core conditions caused the forces to escape Helion's control during one of his agitation runs. Very minor differences between the initial conditions and the predictive model led to disproportionate results; sunspots and solar prominences of truly unusual size and violence erupted all across the affected fields. Joachim Dekasepton Irem has made a rather nice study of the irregular flare patterns, and set the effect to music on channel 880. Have you seen it?'
'I have not,' said Phaethon. He did not explain that his sense-filter, on its present setting, would prevent him from viewing any such thing. 'But I am given to understand that he ... ah ... portrays certain of the details, ahh ...'
'Inaccurately?' asked the man.
'Perhaps that's the word I'm looking for, yes.'
'Well, it's an understatement! Large segments of Helion's sun-taming array wrecked! Interplanetary communications disturbed by the sunspot bursts! And Helion, staying behind, still in the depth of the sun, to try to prevent worse disasters! Much of the collection equipment, orbital stations, and other materials near Mercury was saved only because of Helion's last-ditch effort to restore the magnetic curtains to operation, and to deflect some of the heavier high-speed particles erupting from the sun away from inhabited zones. Great Helion proved his worth a million times and more that hour, I tell you! And to make such a sacrifice for that worthless scion of his house! I wonder at the gall of the Curia! Is there no gratitude left at all in the courts of law? They should just leave Helion alone! But, at least, the Six Peers (well, I suppose they are the Seven Peers now) had the good sense to reward Helion's valor with a Peerage.'
'His valor?...'
'Helion stayed when the others fled. The Sophotech's delicate on-board circuitry had broken down; the other members of the Solar crew transmitted their noumenal information, minds and souls and all, out to Mercury Polar Station. Helion did not; the signal time between Mercury and the sun was too far to allow him to guide matters by means of any remote
service. Helion rode the star-storm till he broke its back, then transmitted his brain information out at the last minute, despite the static and the garbled signal!
'Helion predicted that control of internal solar conditions would be an absolute necessity for an interplanetary society like ours. The Sophotechs, for all their wisdom, can't make a way to transmit information from world to world except by radio. They can't invent another electromagnetic spectrum, now, can they? And, for so long as the Golden Oecumene is connected by electromagnetic signals, we will need to moderate the solar output into a steady, even, and predictable background.
'Who listened to Helion when he first said this, so many thousands of years ago? They all mocked him then.
'Well, they won't mock now! Whatever happens during the Final Transcendence, I know my segment of the world-soul will pay close attention to what Helion envisions!'
'I feel much the same way,' admitted Phaethon. 'Though I have heard that, the same desire to control the uncontrollable which is so to be admired in an Engineer, in Helion's domestic life, makes him somewhat of a tyrant and a bully.'
'Nonsense! Slander! Great men always have these envious flies and gnat bites to contend with.'
'Even the greatest men can have flaws; even the worse villains can have small virtues. What do you think of
