against first-degree murder does not hold that those who cannot prove their humanity are subject to instant and arbitrary death.'
The joke seemed particularly cruel to Phaethon, since he himself, by pursuing this call, might be exposing himself to instant and arbitrary death. What if the agents of the Silent Ones were listening?
'Can you give me a precis of who is presently in charge of, or wields the most prestigious and influence in, the Neptunian Duma?' The 'Duma' was the Neptunian name for their main social organization. It was made of partial minds and client minds beamed in by Neptunians, who were too scattered to represent themselves by any direct means. The partials combined and evolved in a seething, tangled mass of vigorous conflict, to form a consensus entity, or, rather, successive sets of consensus entities, whose proclamations influenced the course of Neptunian dialogue and society. The Duma was more like a clearinghouse and central marketplace of ideas rather than like a parliament.
Neptunians were highly individualistic and eccentric, and so they instructed their representatives to place a higher value on obdurate zeal than on rational compromise. Consequently, the Duma was often insane, pursuing several contradictory goals at once, overreacting or underreacting with no sense of proportion to the petitions, ideas, and new lines of thought that the Neptunians, from time to time, introduced. The Neptunians had never yet reprogrammed the Duma to behave with logic; this baroque form of social government apparently amused the Cold Dukes and Eremites of Neptune far more than a rational one would have.
The messenger-tree said: 'The Silver-Grey School has recently won wide acceptance among the Duma. It is presently the dominant school, followed, but not closely, by the Patient Chaos School.'
Phaethon leaned forward, eyes wide. 'The Silver-Grey? How is this possible?' As far as Phaethon knew, there had never been any Silver-Grey among the mad things of Neptune.
The messenger-tree continued: 'Many thought-chains and dialogues within the Duma are consumed with topics prompted by Diomedes of Nereid, who recently shamed the Hortators of Earth, and who, by being poor, tricked them into giving him great wealth. Diomedes and Xenophon mingled to create out of themselves a temporary mind named Neoptolemous, who outwitted the Cerebelline named Wheel-of-Life. Neoptolemous now owns the titanic starship called Phoenix Exultant. Trillions of tons of metallic antihydrogen, chrysad-mantium, biological and nanobiological material, are aboard, and the shipmind is a million-cycle entity with a vast wealth in routines and capacity. This victory brought great prestige to Diomedes and to his son Neoptolemous. Diomedes, in his Living Will, set aside a fund of that prestige to promote a Silver-Grey School among the Duma. He did this in memorial for a friend of his, who was unjustly treated by the College of Hortators, and sent to his death in exile.'
'May I send a message to Diomedes? Can you speak on his behalf?'
'I have templates from most of the major chains of thought among the active Duma members, including Diomedes, and therefore I can pretend to be him and form responses based on my anticipation of what he would say if he were here. When this message is transmitted back to the Neptunian embassy, Diomedes will have the option either to reject or accept the representations made as his own. If he should accept, this messenger will be implanted into his own memories, so that he will thereafter believe he himself was here and made these comments. However, I am required to warn you that Diomedes, as of last assembly, no longer existed as a separate entity. He was still a part of the Diomedes partial-composition. The actors for Diomedes and Xenophon fell into dispute over which parts of Neoptolemous belonged to Diomedes and which belonged to Xenophon. Neoptolemous' thoughts have not yet been untangled and resolved back into two separate entities. In other words, Neoptolemous has not yet made up his minds.'
'What is the basis for the dispute? Is it the ship?'
'The Patient Chaoticists are eager to dismantle the ship and distribute the wealth among the starving hosts beyond Neptune; the Silver-Grey urge the ship be used for an expedition to establish colonies at nearby stars. The Patient Chaos plan would bring money into the starved Neptunian economy; whereas to fund an expedition such as the one which Half-Neoptolemous Semi-Diomedes proposes would drain the economy. Didactions from Patient Chaos assert that the present ruination of the economy was caused, in large part, by investments made into Phaethon's Expeditionary Effort.'
At that point, he was interrupted by a chime. The wall-panel to the left slid back to reveal the image of the nest-of-snakes face of Antisemris. 'Pardon me for interrupting, but, as a major investor who just entrusted you with a good deal of money, I was just wondering why you were wasting my investment chatting with a Neptunian machine about politics. We bought you this messenger so you could read the help-wanted advertisements it carries! And don't bother to tell me that you were investigating their market needs. All you need to know is what kind of grunt-work of line-checking they need done; its not as if their internal politics affects the kind of short-markets we are looking for!'
Phaethon said sharply: 'Your intrusion is most unwarranted and perhaps illegal. Is this the fashion in which you have chosen to display the fact that you are spying on me? Do not bother to answer. Our mutual association will soon end.'
'Hah! Climb off your fat pride! Semris and Notor will not deal with you either, once they find out how you spend our money!'
'I have dealt with Neptunians before, and you have not. They also use their messenger to update their negotiation databases. Because you have rudely chosen to interrupt, rather than to consult with me privately later, the messenger, who overhears all we are saying now, has no doubt classified our needs and our bargaining position. This has limited our options considerably, and prejudiced our future dealings with the Neptunians. If you cannot be polite, sir, then at least be quiet, before you harm your interests and my own more than you have so far done.'
Antisemris uttered a dozen notes of hissing laughter. 'Don't try to wax me with that polish! Keep talking to your Nepto friend. But I'm not transmitting him back to the embassy. As of this moment, you are cut off from the funds and line to the orbital radio-laser we established.'
'You have no such authority, not without the concurrence of Semris and Notor. I, of course, need their concurrence to exclude you from all future business dealings, but I do not think I shall have any difficulty convincing them, once they see the end-result of the conversation you so foolishly interrupted.'
Antisemris writhed, several heads opening their mouths and displaying their fangs. 'Ho ho. Go ahead. Finish your little conversation and earn a million grams. Surprise me.'
Phaethon turned back to the center screen. 'Messenger! I assume the major expense to your proposed interstellar expedition is the Neptunian lack of skilled technical personnel.'
'Correct. The Hortators have forbidden any Inner Planet libraries from selling us the templates or mind-sets we need for terraformers, paraluminal astronomers, high-energy physicists, or Celeritologists. We have no pilot. Furthermore, the ship interfaces were designed for a base neuroform, and are not proper for Neptunian crewmen, who have different neural architecture, thought conventions, and time regulations. The ship's interfaces would have to be changed, one routine at a time, and in some cases, one line at a time, before the ship would be comfortable for a Neptunian crew. Without a So-photech, this would require long amounts of tedious effort, which we cannot expend. Therefore, without expert help, we cannot fly the ship at the intended velocities for which she was designed. This, of course, is the major flaw in the proposed plan Diomedes had put forward.'
'What if I could get you cheap labor to do your interface translation to the Neptunian formats?'
'With proper interfaces, then Neptunian minds and personae could be stored in the crew segments of the shipmind, and smart-habitats be programmed to sustain any somatic forms the crew would care to manifest. However, the ship's flight characteristics, mass, and length, will considerably transform (according to external frames of reference) as she approaches light-speed. The external universe (from the ship's frame of reference) will undergo like transformation. This will affect any objects and particles aboard (such as communications and sensory circuits) that must interact with the external universe, including drive by-products and foreign-object-damage controls. It would require a special branch of tachyceleric study to rediscover the findings of the original designer. That information does not seem to have been stored in the ship's brain. We cannot provide the information.'
'I have that information.'
'Then the formatting can be accomplished and a Neptunian crew be recorded. But such formatting would be a pointless exercise without a trained operator to run the celestial navigation, xeno-terraforming, and high-energy physics routines.'
'I can pilot the ship. I have test-flown her.'
