'How close, young sir?'
'Let me see the memories. I want to get close enough to smell them.'
'Phrase that as an order, and I have no proper choice but to obey.'
'Open memory archives, please.'
'Come, then, young master, if you are so bold. Step deeper into the mentality. Beyond the Middle Dreaming, even Silver-Gray thoughtspace does not necessarily reflect the analogous real surroundings with perfect accuracy. I can make a short way back to your mansion.'
Phaethon wandered across the lawn and away from the performance. Not far away was a pleasure ground where guests were arriving or activating. A group of Stratospherians had folded their flying prosthetics like umbrellas, and hung them from the branches of a Nexus oak. Gathered at the roots of the oak were several staging pools.
Phaethon stepped and sank into the liquid. Swarms of tiny machines, smaller than pinpoints, gathered around him, drew carbon out of the water, and solidified it into a protective diamond shell.
He seemed to himself to rise again. When he rose, he was in pure dreamscape, his mannequin left behind] among other sleeping forms, all diamond-shelled at the bottom of the pool.
Rhadamanthus bore an expression of unearthly serenity; he gestured with majestic slowness to the East. Among the clouds beyond the edge of the mountain, Phaethon now saw hints of towers and windows rising above the trees. It was strange, but it was not quite a violation of visual continuity.
Phaethon walked. He passed through a stand of trees and found the mansion was much closer than it had first appeared.
At the end of the path was a portico. Columns of gray, dappled marble held up a porch roof shingled with silver plaques; the Rhadamanthine emblem was carved into the entablature. With the sound of a gong, the tall main doors opened.
THE CHAMBER OF MEMORIES
Phaethon stood, or seemed to stand, in his Chamber of Memory, a casket of recollection hesitating in his hand. A legend ran in letters of gold across the casket lid:
'Sorrow, great sorrow, and deeds of renown without peer, within me sleep; for truth is here. Truth destroys the worst in man; pleasure destroys the best. If you love truth more than happiness, then open; otherwise, let rest.'
His curiosity grew. Phaethon turned the key, but he did not open the lid.
Fire flashed on the casket lid. Letters as red as blood appeared:
'WARNING! The following contains mnemonic templates that may affect your present personality, persona, or consciousness. Are you sure you wish to proceed? (Remove key to cancel.)'
Phaethon stood for long time without moving, staring out the windows.
Outside, the architecture and every appearance was authentically Victorian English, dating from the era of the Second Mental Structure, or early period Third.
The windows were peaked arches, set with diamond-shaped panes. Framed in the western window rose the mountains of Wales, cherry red and ethereal against the purple dusk, crowned with the light of the setting sun. Phaethon could see, from the windows opposite, a pale full moon rising, dim as
a ghost in the twilight, floating in the deep evening blue.
In the dreamspace of the Rhadamanthus Mansion, the sun always set in the West, and there was only one. The moon showed no city lights nor garden glass; but, proper to this period, was still a gray, dead world. Outside the windows, every detail of perspective, proportion, and consistency was correct. Each tree leaf and blade of grass cast its shadow at the proper angle, and the play of light and shadow was just as it should have been. The computer model determining the look and texture and color went down to the molecular level of detail.
If he had gone down to the garden and plucked a single leaf from the rosebushes there, that leaf would still be gone at his next visit; if it blew away on the wind, the computer would simulate its path; if it rotted into the mold, the extra weight and consistency of the soil would be measured and accounted for. This was the realistic accuracy for which the mansions of the Silver-Gray School were famous.
The memory chamber was in deep dreamspace. It was as real, and as unreal, as everything else in Rhadamanthus Mansion.
To be sure, somewhere, in reality, there must have been a real housing for the mansion's self-aware sophotechnology; a power supply, cables, neural conduits, computer laminae, in-formata, decision-action boxes, thought nodes, and so on. Somewhere was the real, physical interface machinery that fed carefully controlled patterns of electrons into circuitry actually woven into Phaethon's real auditory and visual nerves, his hypothalamus, thalamus, and cortex.
And somewhere, presumably, in the real world, was his real body.
His real self. But what was his real self?
Phaethon spoke aloud: 'Rhadamanthus, tell me.'
'Sir?'
'Was I a better man ... back before?'
The Polonius-shape here was replaced by a Victorian-era butler in a stiff-collared black coat showing a double row of well-polished silver buttons. The butler was red-faced,
slightly portly. His chin was clean-shaven, but the handlebar mustache led to enormous muttonchop sideburns, whiskers reaching right and left halfway to his shoulders.
The butler image stood in the doorframe, a white-painted narrow stair curving away behind him, but he did not, or could not, enter the room.
