out and up, so they make-pretend. Make-pretend they are rich, make-pretend they are loved-up, make-pretend they are wise and kind and good-good. Ashores. All of them Ashores. They hate all us right full deep, you know. You too.'
'Us? What defines us as a group?'
'Afloats.'
'I fear I don't understand.'
'Is simple as simple is. Ashore live ashore. They may live. Their sentence is measured; a year, six year; hundred year, what-have-you. When time is done, they get their lives again, they get up-and-out. Can buy from Orpheus. Can buy live-forever machines. Land they live on, is rented to them; once they get lives back, they pay back. All fair. All square.'
'And the Afloats, I assume, live afloat... ?'
'Live on sea as sea is free. No rent on water.'
'You have houseboats?'
'We got rafts. Drag dead houses out to sea. Is trash; no one stop us.' He shrugged. 'Man at local thought- shop revive house-mind for small fee, you know.'
'And your term of exile, unlike those of the Ashores, is permanent?'
'We here till we not here no more. Here till we die. Is Death Row.' And he extended his cupped hand, palm up, a beggar's gesture. 'Name's Oshenkyo. What've ye got for us, eh?'
And Phaethon took a daub of his precious, limited supply of black nanomachine material and applied it to the scar on Oshenkyo's head where there had once been an ear. Phaethon drew upon the ecological and medical routines he had in his thoughtspace, set the daub to take a gene sample, and he set it to reconstitute the missing ear.
The bay was surrounded on three sides by cliffs. The cliffs were overgrown by a Cerebelline life-garden, which may or may not have been part of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea. Pharmaceutical vines and adaptive fibers clung to the rocks, tended by weaver birds and tailor birds. Suits and outfits finished by the tailor bird hung flapping in the sea breeze, awaiting shipping dolphins.
In the middle of the bay, strangely silent and dark, were houses shaped like gray and blue-brown seashells, standing on spider legs that gripped floats and buoys beneath the water. Dozens of dangling ropes, ladders, and nets hung between the house shells, like webs, or dropped to crude docks floating in the houses' shadows.
In the middle of the irregular floating mass of house shells rose an old barge, streaked with barnacles and rust. On the flat upper surface of the barge towered a group of tents and pavilions made of cheap diamond synthetics, in three tiers, one above the other. From the crown of the upper tier, rose a false-tree with limbs of steel, and many solar collectors like leaves. Banners of material, and globes like fruit hung from the tree limbs. Phaethon could see where fruit or banners had dropped into the nets and cupolas of the tents below, quickly gathered up by scurrying spider-gloves and waldoes.
'It's quieter here,' said Phaethon, looking down from the cliff into the bay. He had put his gold armor back on and had tuned some of the surface area in his black nanomaterial cape to catch and analyze some of the scents on the breeze. Mingled in the scents of green leaves, sunshine, and sea, were the command-pheromones and tiny nanomachine packages, smaller than pollen spores, which complex Cerebelline activity had as its by-product. Invisible clouds of these microspores extended far out to sea; the Cerebelline called Old-Woman was deep in thought.
Next to him, Oshenkyo was skipping and skylarking, waving and weaving his hands in the air, snapping his fingers in both ears, and smiling at the stereo-auditory noise. 'Much quiet! Buckets of quiet! Know why? No ads.' Oshenkyo smiled, humming.
'What of the advertisement you wear? Why is it silent?'
'Not silent! Just our ears not hear it.' Oshenkyo explained that certain advertisers were trying to sell services and philosophy-regimen to a Cerebelline consciousness (a daughter of Old-Woman-of-the-Sea) that occupied the cliffs and kelp beds throughout the area, and who, having once, long ago, been part of the Venereal Terraforming Effort, had been heartbroken when that effort finally achieved success. The Daughter departed once Venus was towed to a new orbit, but had never altered her perceptions back to standard frequencies, time-rate, and aesthetic conventions of Earth. Hence, her 'eyes' were tuned to the shortwaves and subsonic pulses the dark advertisement banners gave off.
The other banners would display advertisements meant for humans only when asked, and then only from advertisers who could not afford to, or did not bother to, prevent an exile from experiencing them.
'We use them, you know, semaphore. Or listen to jingles. Or for light. Or as sails for boats. No one mind, as long as ads get shown.'
'But you do not use them to search out useful products and services?'
'No one sells to Afloats. Almost no one. No one, we'd be dead. Almost no one, almost dead. Look it.' And he pointed above the central barge.
Phaethon was still not accustomed to how bad his eyesight was. There was no amplification when he squinted. He saw a swarm of darting and hovering specks, glittering gold, like bees, above and around the pavilions and tents rising above the barge. But he could not resolve them into clear images. 'I cannot make out what is out there.'
Oshenkyo was seated on the wide, low limb of a gold-extraction bush, cupping his hands over his ears, then covering, listening to the changes in sound. He spoke absently: 'Vulpine First Ironjoy on yonder barge runs a thought-shop. We get work, sometime. Can get buffers and tangle lines to reach deviants and dark markets through the Big Mind.' By which he meant the mentality.
Phaethon was intrigued. Work? The boycott of the Hortators evidently had enough holes and gaps to enable these people to live.
Then Phaethon smiled sadly at his own thought. 'These people' ... ? Did he still think of himself as somehow apart from the other exiles?
Phaethon said: 'No, I can see the barge. But what are those miniature flying instruments swarming around the area here?'
'Constables. Tinee-tiny. About so big.' Oshenkyo held up his thumb.
'So many?'
'Zillions. They watch us all time. Good thing, too. Otherwise, we club each other right quick dead.'
'Indeed? Are we all so violent, then?'
Oshenkyo shrugged a broad, one-shoulder shrug. 'All us crazy, filthy people. Got nothing to lose.'
'Why are there such a number of police?'
Oshenkyo squinted at him. 'We still got rights. No thieving, no killing, no broke words.'
'What about lying?'
Oshenkyo stared out at the bay, sniffed, gave another one-shouldered shrug. 'Fib till your tongue falls out. No one here to buy a thought-read machine. We not like other folk: we don't know what goes on inside other people head. Just like long-ago days, eh? But swaps, bargains, work, all that: very sacred. You give word, can't take back. You got?'
Evidently contract laws were still enforced. 'I got.'
But Phaethon realized that it would be a dangerous system, since the Oecumene law, with no emotion and no favoritism, would enforce any bargain struck, no matter how foolish, no matter how risky. Had he had access to Sophotech foresight and advice, the risks would have been small. He didn't. Had he been raised in a society where suspicion and care were normal, he could have been in the habit of mistrusting his fellowmen, and of striking careful bargains. He wasn't.
Oshenkyo squinted up at him. 'All be clear as clear once you sign our Pact. You join up, be one of us, eh? Otherwise, not so great live here. Nowhere else to go but sea.'
This did nothing to calm Phaethon's qualms. But he smiled in joy and relief. If he had qualms, that meant he had plans, he had a goal. He was young and in good health, and he had a supply of nanomaterial which could be adapted to medical geriatrics. He might live long enough to outlive the Hortators' term of exile; the political circumstance of the Oecumene might change. Who could tell?
'... Or maybe the horse could learn how to sing.' Phaethon murmured.
'Eh? What's that?'
