Phaethon drew in a ragged breath, then laughed bitterly.
'Ha! Eveningstar Sophotech must have thought me a fool just now! I gave the same arguments this morning as I gave last December. But that last time, in December, I was physically present, and in my armor, and no force on earth could stop me in my rage. I swatted the remotes aside which tried to hinder me. I broke Daphne's coffin and released assemblers to undo her nerve bondage, and wake her from her lifeless dreams. But the body was empty; they had downloaded her mind into the Mansion-memory of Eveningstar, and replaced all the mausoleum with synthetics, pseudo-matter, and hologram. Eveningstar prevented me from committing anything worse than an attempted crime, some minor property damage.
'I gave myself entirely to rage, and began to tear the mausoleum apart. The motors in my arms and legs amplified my strength till I was like Hercules, or Orlando in his rage. There were two squads of Constables by then, in ornithopters armed with assembler clouds. I tore up the pillars of Eveningstar Mausoleum by the roots and threw them. I scattered the mannequins of the Constables and laughed as their darts and par-alyzers glanced from my armor.
'They had to call in the military to stop me. I remember
the wall melted and Atkins stepped through. He was not even armed; he was naked, and dripping with life- water. They had gotten him out of bed. He didn't even have a weapon. I remember I laughed, because my armor was invulnerable; and I remember he smiled a grim little smile, and beckoned me toward him with one hand.
'When I tried to push him out of my way he just leaned, and touched my shoulder, and, for some reason, I flew head over heels, and landed in the puddle of melted stone he had stepped in through. He squeezed some of the life-water out of his hair and threw it over me. The nanomachines suspended in the water must have been tuned to the ones he used to disintegrate the stone. When I fell, the stone was like dust, utterly frictionless. It was impossible for me to get up, there was nothing to grip. Then, when he shook his wet hair at me, the nanomachines bound molecule to molecule with artificial subnuclear forces. The stone now formed one macromolecule, and my arms and legs were trapped. Invulnerable, yes, but frozen in stolid stone. No wonder Atkins despises me.'
'I don't think he despises you, sir,' said Rhadamanthus. 'If anything, he is grateful that you allowed him to exercise
his skills.'
Phaethon pressed his aching temples with his fingertips. 'What did you say the third stage of grief was? Bargaining? The Eveningstar Sophotech did not press charges?she was delighted to have been the victim of the only half-successful attempt at violent crime in three centuries; the Red Manorials loved the drama, I suppose; all they wanted was a copy of my memories during the fight.'
Phaethon remembered now the notoriety that had surrounded him. It was not just for the violence he had attempted. (As long as human passions were still legally permitted to exist in the human nervous system, there would always be violent impulses. Many people attempted crimes. There were six or seven attempts every century.) Phaethon's notoriety sprang from his position in society. Other men who gave in to moments of rage were usually primitivists or emancipated partials, people without resources, whom the Consta-
bles, guided by Sophotechs, easily could stop before they hurt anything.
But Phaethon was manor-born, who were considered the elite; and the Silver-Gray, in many ways, were the elite of the elite. The manorials had Sophotechs present in their minds, able to anticipate their thoughts, able to defuse violent problems long before they ever arose. No manor-born had ever committed a violent crime. Phaethon was the first.
In his armor, Phaethon could shut off all contact with the Sophotechs; his thoughts could not be monitored; his violent impulses could not be hindered by a police override. In his armor, Phaethon could act independently of any social restrictions. He was in his own private world; a small world, true, but it was all his own.
'The Red Manorials, perhaps, forgave me. But the Curia was not so amused. The penalty they imposed was forty-five minutes of direct stimulation of the pain center of my brain...' (Phaethon winced at the memory) '...but the Court suspended fifteen minutes from my sentence because I agreed to erase the rescue persona. Afterwards, the Curia ordered me to experience the memories and lives of the Constables I had humiliated, so that all their anger and frustration and pain happened to me. The fight did not seem so glorious any longer...
'That punishment I was glad to suffer; I knew I was in the wrong. The Curia and Eveningstar did not bargain, no. But the College of Hortators did.
'It was a devil's bargain. They found me during a moment of weakness. I destroyed my memory. Was I trying to commit suicide?'
'And what about now, young sir? Have you reached the state of resignation and acceptance?'
Phaethon straightened, wiped his face, squared his shoulders. He drew a deep breath. 'I will never be resigned. Perhaps everything is not lost yet. Unless ...' Phaethon looked troubled. 'Am I just fooling myself again? A recurrence of the denial part of the grief cycle?'
'You know I cannot take a Noetic reading of you at this
time. I do not know the state of your mind. You must avoid giving into fear or despair ... but you also must avoid giving in to false hopes.'
'Very well, then. Maybe there are steps I can still take. Put a call in to that girl who is impersonating Daphne. She seems like a good person. Ask her if?'
'I am sorry sir, but she is no longer receiving your calls, nor am I allowed to transmit them.' 'What... ?!'
'None of the major telecommunication or telepresentation services will accept your patronage hereafter. Daphne Tercius has left instructions with her seneschal to refuse your calls, lest she be accused of aiding or comforting you, and therefore fall under the same prohibition under which you now fall.' It took a moment for the implications of that to sink in. Phaethon closed his eyes in an expression of pain. 'I thought that I would have some time to prepare, or that there would be some ceremony, or leavetaking.'
'Normally there would be such, and all the participants in the boycott would exclude you at once. But things are in confusion.'
'Confusion ... ?'
'You must recall that every other memory casket sealed by the Lakshmi Agreement, all across the planet, has opened up. Large sections of the memories of billions of people are returning to them; many are still confounded. All the channels are crowded with signals, young sir. Everyone is sending messages and questions to their friends and
