Helion's scion, Phaethon?'
'Ah! You see how this performance is a criticism of his work and life.'
Phaethon blinked toward the boiling lake, the flash and motion of lights beneath the waters. 'Some parts of the analogy are more obscure than others. ...'
'Not so! Phaethon is madman who plans to destroy us all! Who could not be astonished by the bizarre selfishness of Phaethon's scheme? Does the Silence teach us nothing?'
Phaethon, utterly mystified, nonetheless nodded sagely. 'An interesting point. But some people have said one thing
and some have said another. Which part of what he has done do you find to be the most reprehensible?'
'Well, now, I can't believe the boy really means to do evil?maybe what you say about villains having a good side has some merit here?but he really should not have?Ah! Wait! I think I see friends signaling to me. Yoo-hoo! Over here! Excuse me, it was a pleasure to talk to you, Demont-delune, or whoever you are. My friends and I are Orthom-nemocists, and our discipline requires that we neither edit nor replay old memories nor take on new ones; so if we miss the climax of the performance now, we will have no chance to see it. With your permission?'
'Of course. But perhaps you could reveal your true identity, so that we could find each other and talk later; I found your comments most stimulating. ...'
'Ah, but this is a masquerade! I might not have been so bold in my opinions if I knew who I was talking to, eh, what?'
The man was hinting that he wanted Phaethon to take off his mask first. Phaethon was loath to do so, for obvious reasons. So, with a sinking sensation in his stomach, Phaethon exchanged meaningless pleasantries with the man, and watched him walk away.
'Damn,' he muttered, and looked down at the libretto card. He expected an explanation and commentary on the ecoper-formance. But the card was blank. He had to turn his sense-filter back on to see the symbols and events of Middle Dreaming. Now when he looked at the card it was the same as looking at the costumes of the guests, and an explanation flowed into his brain.
The Cerebelline artist here was trying to demonstrate an example from game-theory mathematics concerning the stability of ecological and economic systems, and the inevitability of conflict.
A criticism of his work? Had Phaethon been involved in some project involving abstract mathematics? Economics? Biotechnology? He could only wonder.
He turned his attention from the libretto, and looked up in time to see the finale of the supertree's death.
The microforms of that tree, having adapted too well to the complexity of the tree hierarchy, now crumbled into the water. Overspecialized, unable to readapt to the primitive circumstance of the treeless existence, they perished horribly.
Phaethon was mildly puzzled and faintly disgusted by the finale of the sequence. He had expected the central tree to fall, but then to rise again as the forces of evolution compelled a new series of adaptations. And why hadn't the factors favoring symbiosis within the trees also operated to favor symbiosis, or, at least, cooperation, between the trees? Any two trees that discovered how, despite the desolation between them, to exchange mutually scarce resources would have mutually benefited; such cooperation was common in nature.
Instead, the epilogue of death led to a new sequence of violent events: other tree organisms now began to fling colony-seeds skipping across the boiling lake surface to claim the abandoned center territory; their conflicts grew in wild fury. As each tree became more daring and more bent on success, the heat of its chemical reactions increased. Very, very slowly, the level of the lake water was dropping, boiling away from the very reactions which created short-term success. The life-pebbles near the shore would eventually be exposed, rendered useless, as the water level dropped, which would no doubt lead to additional excesses on the part of the warring trees, producing more waste-heat. The additional waste-heat increased the evaporation of the lake.
Phaethon studied the libretto reading the mathematics, background information, the statements of purpose. Everything was written in such vague terms that there was no guessing what Phaethon's 'work' had been that this was supposed to criticize. On the other hand, the astronomer could
have been mistaken, and nothing about Phaethon had been included here at all.
In any case, Phaethon could see no point in the death of the burning trees. It merely struck him as ugly and pessimistic. If what he had done had been the opposite of this, perhaps he had not been such a bad fellow after all.
He stepped back into Surface Dreaming, to find an image of fat Polonius standing next to him.
'I don't see anything here worth seeing,' said Phaethon. 'And I certainly don't see what they didn't want me to see. Whoever 'they' are.'
'Define 'they,' ' asked Rhadamanthus, quirking an eyebrow.
'I never would have 'volunteered' for memory redactions unless some pressure were brought to bear by someone. That someone is 'they.' '
'So you no longer think you committed a crime?'
'Why do you pretend you don't know? You know exactly what happened. So why ask rhetorical questions?'
'Why ask rhetorical questions indeed? But the part of me who talks to you does not know, young sir, nor will I be allowed to know, the substance of the forgotten material, till you know yourself. The other part of me, that part which does know, is not allowed, by any sign or signal, not by a hint, or expression, or even a pregnant pause of silence, to communicate the forbidden knowledge. My orders are clear.' He shrugged. 'In the meantime, of course, this version of me can remain on good terms with you, and make such comments as any reasonably intelligent superintelligence could make, eh?'
'So you're dropping a hint. If there is a signal or a trigger which will tell you if I recover the forbidden memories, there may be triggers to signal other people too, eh? The question is, when are those triggers activated? When I think about going back for my stolen memories? When I talk about it? Let's see what jumps if I get close.'
