The thought came to him: I was such a man, at one time, worthy to wear such armor as this.
The Armor of Phaethon.
And whatever I may have done to make myself unworthy, I shall undo.
He went back over to the medical coffin, lowering himself carefully himself into it, waited for the liquid to crawl up over him, and made himself gulp a mouthful into his lungs without flinching. The pillow embraced his head; contact points buried in his skull were met by a thousand intricacies of energy and information flow. His sensory nerves were artificially stimulated; he began to see things that existed only in computer imagination. His motor- nerve impulses were read; the matrix of an imaginary body moved accordingly. Even his thalamus and hypothalamus were affected, so the emotional-visceral reactions, bodily sensations, and the unconscious interplay of body language and deep neural structures were perfectly mimicked.
For a moment he was back in his blank and private thoughtspace, a pair of hands hovering near a wheel of stars. He touched the cube icon to the right and brought up his accountant. Here were lists of purchases, in the hundreds of millions of seconds, or billions, from Gannis of Jupiter and Vafnir of Mercury. The amount of money spent was comparable to what nations and empires used to spend on their military budgets.
Small payments to the Tritonic Neuroform Composition were recorded, along with inspection receipts. Phaethon had been buying large packages of information from the Neptu-nians. And, unlike every other merchant venture in the Golden Oecumene, goods from the Neptunians had to be inspected for hidden flaws, gimmicks, and pranks.
There were also moderate payments to one of the Cere-belline Life-Mother houses, a daughter of Wheel-of-Life named the Maiden; a very large number of extrapolations, ecological formulae, and bioengineering routines, equipment, and expertise had been purchased.
And biological material. Phaethon had bought so many metric tons of viral and recombinant bodies that the number was beyond belief. It was enough material to wipe out the biosphere of Earth and replace it with new forms. Had Phaethon been gathering an army? Was his black-and-gold armor actually 'armor' in the old sense of the word, like the re-
sponders of ancient Warlocks, a system to deflect enemy weapons? The idea was insane.
There were also legal and advisory fees, in large amounts. For smaller matters, Phaethon got his legal advice from the Rhadamanthus Law-mind for free. But here were expenditures showing that Phaethon had approached the Westmind Sophotech, and purchased an extraordinarily expensive advisory, aesthetic, and publicist Mind-set, equipped it with personality-extrapolation programs of the Hortators. The advisory-mind was named Monomarchos.
This was significant. One did not create an attorney, equip him with billions of seconds of intelligence, and give him the ability to anticipate the thoughts and actions of the Hortators, unless one were being called before the Synod for an Inquiry.
A Synod was not a trial; nor did the Hortators possess real legal authority. They were not the Curia. But they did possess social and moral authority. In the modern day, the only way to discourage acts that where socially unacceptable, yet not directly harmful to others, was by means of Hortatory. Hortators could not punish, not directly. The Sophotechs would interfere if men used force or coercion against each other except in self-defense. But men could organize censures, complaints, protests, and, in more extreme cases, boycotts and shunnings. Many business efforts put clauses in all their standard contracts forbidding them from doing business with or selling goods to those whom the Hortators had boycotted, including important food, energy, and communication interests.
The Curia and Parliament, of course, could do nothing to interfere. Contracts were private matters, and could not be dissolved by the interference of the government; and, as long as subscription to the Hortators was not compelled by physical force, it could not be forbidden.
Phaethon realized that here was his first solid clue. Whatever he had done to rouse the Hortators to conduct an Inquiry against him, that was the act that had lost him his memory. It was safe to conclude that Phaethon had agreed to the am-
nesia to avoid a worse penalty, such as a public denouncement, or a shunning.
But Phaethon had not been called before the Curia. He had not been accused of crime. That, at least, was a relief.
There was no more to be learned here. Phaethon touched the yellow disk icon to reestablish network contact with Rhadamanthus.
And there he was, frozen in the scene in the Rhadamanthus memory chamber, every detail perfectly in place. The sunlight was slanting in through the windows, glittering on memory-caskets and cabinets. Dust motes hung in the sunbeam, motionless. His wife was there, a picture, looking lovely.
When Phaethon took a deep breath, the same sensations in his brain that could have been caused by a tension in his abdomen and a straightening of his spine were created, including a subconscious signal of gathering courage.
'I'm ready. Resume.'
AT TEA
Perhaps Daphne had also used the opportunity to think; she seemed more composed. 'My dearest, I owe you an explanation; but in return, you owe me that you must use your most honest and rigorous sense of justice you can muster.' She had stepped close to him and was staring up into his eyes.
He touched her on the shoulder and pushed her slightly away. 'First I have a few questions which I insist you answer.'
Daphne's red lips compressed. The responder studs on her Warlock costume fluttered angrily, as if she were deflecting a Bellipotent nanoweapon, or painful poison. 'Very well! Ask!'
'I just want to know how you thought you could get away with this? The holes in my memory are so large that I could not have lived for very long without noticing. Yet they concern many things which are matters of public record. Expenditures of antimatter, energy, computer time. Interplanetary flights. I can go look into the space traffic control records to find where I went or what I did. Hortator's inquires are matters of public record. It will only take me a little time to piece this together. So what was the point of all this?'
Daphne said simply, 'But I don't know.'
