A gap in Helion's memory edited out this wait, and brought his time and time sense current to the next point in the conversation. To him, there was no pause. It may have been hours, or merely seconds, later.
The undisputed informal leader of the Peers, Orpheus Myriad Avernus, was not physically present, there or anywhere. He was the eldest and wealthiest of the Seven. He presented
himself to Helion's senses as a dark-haired, pale-skinned youth, whose face had a haunting lack of expression, but with eyes unblinking, inward looking, deeply self-absorbed. He wore a long black Plutonian thermal cape of a style so quaint and so far out of fashion that only during a masquerade would it pass without comment. The wide neckpiece rose almost to his ears, and the pauldrons extended past his shoulders, making his head seem small and childlike.
Orpheus spoke in a very soft voice: 'We applaud the sentiment expressed by our newest Peer. When conditions are optimal, any change, by definition, is decay. And Helion knows all too well how chaos, disloyalty, and recklessness can be found within our own households and holdings, and even within the hearts of those nearest to us.'
For a moment, no one spoke. All eyes were fixed on He-lion. An embarrassed silence hung over the room.
Gannis (or one of him) was physically present in the library chamber in Aurelian House where the meeting was 'actually' taking place. Gannis was disguised as a character from First Mental Structure mythology, in robes of sky blue and white, crowned in rays, and with a lightning bolt for a scepter. He held the copyright on a rather striking face: black bearded, with deep-set eyes spaced far apart, beneath a wide and kingly brow. An eagle and a she- eagle were perched on his chair back, one over either shoulder. Gannis's eyes were as bright and fierce as those of his pets, but his voice was an agreeable, cheerful boom.
He now spoke to break the tension: 'Elder Orpheus! Here you are opening old wounds. Helion has Phaethon well under control; why bring up an episode we all agreed to forget? I thought we were not going to speak any further it.'
Orpheus spoke softly, as if he were talking only to himself, without moving his eyes: 'We did not speak on that subject. Except we note that Helion has good reason, now, to display uncompromising zeal in the defense of tradition and orthodoxy.'
Orpheus was a member of the small, ancient, peculiar school called the Aeonites. Their practice was to record an
unchanging idealized version of themselves into permanent computer space. This template, at regular intervals, created an emanation or eidolon of itself, which came to life. New eidolons absorbed the information any prior active or living eidolons had acquired since the time the template was absorbed, but rejected any changes of personality, philosophy, or basic values. Members of this school were frozen and unalterable.
It was only by the narrowest margins that the Curia determined Aeonite legal status to be that of self-aware entities rather than ghosts or recordings. Public opinion did not necessarily agree.
(Helion, watching with part of his multiple mind on another channel, saw that Orpheus had no sensorium in operation. Orpheus saw no room at all; the dialogue was merely text; face expressions and nonverbal signs appeared in frames nearby, like the faces on playing cards. There was no other extension or background in Orpheus's scene. Everything else was black. Helion, disturbed, lowered the attention-value of that view, and paid attention to his own version of the scene.)
For a moment, Phaethon was silent, caught in a spell of wonder. He should have been repelled, but he was not. It all sounded as splendid and strange as anything one of his wife's deep-dreamscape dramas might portray.
The Neptunian was speaking: 'Even now, I have called my surface-to-orbit pinnace down from Cernous Roc, my vessel. A partial-vacuum generator is among the capabilities in my base layer which grants me flight, and my subsurface fluids can sustain your life cycles in suspension till the midair rendezvous is accomplished. Retrieve your true body from its crypt?I assume it is nearby, for the material housings of Rhadamanth Mansion are not far away. Wake, come here, then step within the circle of my arms; put your face into the surface substance of my body; it will part before you and
flow around you, bonding cell with cell, to encase you in a protective vacuole.'
Phaethon spoke softly: 'But... but... I would need several years, at least, to set my affairs in order, and to create and educate a partial-duplicate of me to see to my duties in my absence. In any case I could not leave the festival before the Final Transcendence in December.'
'No. You must come without any delay whatsoever. If you send a message, or even a signal, the labyrinth may close again, and, this time, any loose stones be bricked over!'
Leave immediately? Phaethon imagined his wife, giddy on imagination amplifiers, emerging from her pseudomnesia womb, eagerly seeking him out to talk about her dream-victories, all her newly made computer- generated friends and wonders.
But he would not be there. Impatient, then angry, then frantic, she would seek among the images on the promenade, or in the feast-cities, ballrooms, or game halls, seeing a thousand costumes, all in masks. The location channel was disenabled during masquerade. It would be eight months or more before her fears could be confirmed. Till then, she would not know if he was no longer in this world rather than merely hiding or ignoring her.
The thought sobered him. He laughed. 'I'm quite sorry, my dear sir, but you must realize what a ridiculous offer you are extending?'
And he stopped. Because it was beyond ridiculous. Go to Neptune?
Neptune was the farthest outpost of civilization, and, with two notable exceptions, the farthest any colony of humanity had ever reached: The actual last outpost of the Golden Oec-umene was at 500 AUs, at the focal point of the gravity lens created by Sol. Here, elements of the Porphyrogen Composition mass-mind had created an artificial ice planet for themselves, and for the other visitors and staff of the Cosmic Observatory Effort. Beyond that, the nearer stars were barren of life. But at Cygnus XI, a small colony founded to study the effects of the singularity there had discovered a source of
infinite energy, and, with that wealth, had expanded to a mighty civilization. Yet the distance was so far, the costs of travel so very great, that all communication with that society was lost; for that reason, it was known as the Silent Oecu-mene.
Neptune was unthinkably closer even than the nearest star, and yet was still unthinkably remote. Even ships with fairly high fuel-mass-to-payload ratios required very long times to make the journey, months, sometimes years.
