'My what?'
'Mr. Yewen None Stark, human base unmodified, uncom-oposed, with puritan gland-and-reaction censors, Stark Realism School, Era 10033, and his wife, Mrs. Ute None Stark, base...'
'I know who they are!' Daphne blazed. Then, in a small, sad voice: 'They called? They don't use phones or ghosts ...'
'They walked. They are both waiting in the field beyond the groves. You understand that they will not step onto any property owned by Eveningstar Mansion.'
'But-' and now her voice was very small indeed. 'Don't they know I'm just the doll? The copy? Their real daughter is Daphne Prime.'
'As to that, I cannot say what they believe. However, Mrs. Stark was overheard to say that any harlot who sold her mind into dreamland, was no true daughter of theirs. Perhaps you have the qualities or the strength of character they regard as proper for the woman they wanted their daughter to be. You will have to talk with them to find out.'
Daphne winced. She really was not looking forward to seeing her parents. It had been an ugly scene when she ran away to join the Warlocks. (And the knowledge that that scene had happened to Daphne Prime, and not to her, meant nothing. Implanted or not, the memories were a part of her.)
'OK. I'll see them. But-'
'Yes?'
'One last question ... ?'
'Actually, this is your third last question.'
'Is Phaethon correct? Are there external enemies? Invaders? Another civilization? An evil Sophotech?'
'I doubt that there can be such a thing as an evil Sophotech. Humans are capable of evil because they are capable of illogic. They can ignore their true motives, they can justify their crimes with specious reasons. A Sophotech built to be capable of such thinking would have to be unaware of its own core consciousness, hindered from self-examination, unwilling to pursue a thought to its logical conclusions, and so on. This would severely limit its capacities.'
'And invaders?'
'Harrier Sophotech is examining the possibility. I am aware of no supporting evidence; but then again, it's not my area. If external invaders were responsible for the brain-rape of Phaethon, then this would be an act of war, and the matter would be in the hands of Shadow Administers or the Parliament; and it would be out of our hands. We are not part of your government.'
'And-'
'Yes ... ?'
Daphne asked softly: 'Do you think I will make it back, Rhadamanthus? You must have calculated every possible outcome of what will happen, haven't you?'
Rhadamanthus spoke in a voice more remote and cold than she had ever heard him use before. 'Overconfidence would be a mistake at this time, Miss Daphne.'
And the ring on her finger called out, in a cheerful, chipper voice: 'Be brave!'
Daphne hiked the reservation for several days, sleeping nights in a tent of mothwing fiber, which permitted slow- or fast-moving air to pass, so that the night breeze blew on her only as she wished. Her stove was the size of her palm, and the infrared output was adjustable, so that she could gather twigs and make a campfire, igniting it with a directed-energy discharge from the stove cell, just like (so she imagined) primitive hunter-gatherers did back in the Era of the First Mental Structure. For food, she plucked leaves from trees, confident that the specialized microbes in her stomach could break down the cellulose, and she adjusted her sense-filter to make the taste of whatever she fancied. She had breakfast spikes designed to be buried overnight, to suck up soil chemicals and combine them (as plants did, albeit more swiftly) into proteins and carbohydrates; but Daphne was saving her limited supply.
Once she caught a trout with a spear she made (with some prompting from her librarian's ring) practically all by herself. She was clumsy at the hand-eye motions needed, so she let her little ring take over her gross and fine- motor functions during the hunt. The ring also had to advise her how to scale the fish, which was a tedious business, as the nanite paste she used to remove the bones and scales had to be programmed manually, and told which parts of the fish to convert, and which to leave for her to eat. The palm stove changed shape, gathered up the fish, and cooked it for her without being asked.
Daphne munched on the spicy golden flakes of fish, feeling like a cavegirl at the dawn of time.
On she marched, day after day. Some of the trees had changed colors. Leaves of brilliant red and gold whirled and rode the fresh-scented autumn air. She had not noticed the turning seasons before; it came as a shock. And yet it was getting late in September.
Daphne was deep into the area where no advanced technology was permitted, when, to her delight, she came across a wild stallion in a high mountain valley. The magnificent maverick stood among the pines and wiry grasses, snorting, mistrustful, arrogant, trotting disdainfully upslope whenever Daphne attempted to close the distance. Then he would pause, crop a leisurely mouthful of grass, and wait for her to get close again before he trotted lightly away.
But Daphne had put a backdoor command in all her designs. Once she got close enough, she shouted the secret word, and the magnificent tawny bay drooped his ears, lost his disdain, and came gamboling up to her, obedient, tame, and ready.
She really should not have used any of her precious nanomaterial to make a saddle, bit, and bridle, and she really should not have burned part of the brick into sugar for the horse to nibble on. Of course, at that point, it did not take all that much more to synthesize proper riding boots, breeches, and a jacket. But maybe she did use a little too much. More than a little too much.
It only took a very little more to make a hat.
But now she was mounted. Ahorse, she made much better time.
Daphne had been expecting desert. Her knowledge of the Rocky Mountains came from historical romances and Victorian 'penny-dreadful' Westerns, none of which were set in any post-Fifth-Era Reclamation periods. She was disappointed. The pyramids were still in Aegypt, weren't they? Why not preserve the Painted Desert Sand Sculpture from the late Fourth Era?
Instead, as she approached her destination, she saw, framed between tall trees, a valley far below, green with redwood and pseudoredwood. In the distance, the gleam of water betrayed the presence of Heavenfall Lake, in the crater formed when an early orbital city had disintegrated in some forgotten dark age between the Third and Fourth Eras.
A cottage not far from her overlooked this magnificent view. It rose between a rock garden and a victory garden. Here and there throughout this high meadow were some objects she recognized: a stone lantern atop a post stood alone in the grass. Farther away a track of beaten dirt surrounded a target, a quintain, and, farther yet in the distance, a long low roof, held on the heads of armed telamons, protected a fencing strip. Farther away, she was delighted to see the corner of a barn and paddock. Yet something in the quiet of the place told her the barn was long deserted.
Near at hand, the cottage itself was very small, simple, sparse, and clean, made of well-sanded beams of pale wood, paneled in rice paper and brown ceramic sheet. The roof was shingled in hand-grown solar-collection crystal, dark azure in hue. The eaves of the shingles had been meticulously trimmed, as if by a master of the handicraft, and each shingle was rigidly identical in size and shape, except, of course, the gable piece.
A man slid open the screen of the cabin and stepped out upon the sanded deck. He wore a tunic and split- legged skirts of dark fabric, printed with a simple white-bamboo-leaf pattern. A wide sash circled his waist, in which were thrust two sheaths, holding a sword and a knife of a design Daphne did not recognize. The weapons were slender, slightly curved, and lacked any guard or crosspiece.
The man's hair was shaved close to his skull. His face was calm, bony-cheeked, large-nosed. Grim muscle ringed his mouth. His eyes were like the eyes of an eagle.
She rode forward.
He saluted her with a gesture she did not recognize, raising a fist but closing his left palm atop it.
'Ma'am?'
There was no Middle Dreaming here to prompt her. How was she supposed to return that salute?
