THE ENEMY
Phaethon stood amazed and wondering, Daphne WW(who had, after all, played through many more spy- dramas and dreams where people are shot at) fell to the ground and rolled under the cot.
That very probably saved her life. Shrapnel from the exploding door tore the robe off Phaethon's back, and bounced off his armor with musical chimes of thunder, but the blast was at head level.
There was flame and energy in the door. Phaethon stepped into it; broken wires and destroyed housecoat circuits flashed white-hot around him.
He put his hands around the creature he found there. The motors in his arms and elbows whined. He thrust the thing bodily up the ladder, out of the cabin, and away from Daphne.
A kick (or perhaps it was an explosion) rang off his chest and tumbled him downstairs. Over his shoulder: 'Daphne ... ?'
'I'm fine! Get him!'
Thrust by his mass-drivers and thrown upstairs in a wash of magnetic energy, he landed on deck.
All was dark. The diamond parasols overhead had been opaqued, and spread to grasp the rails at every point, so that the deck was now enclosed, like some wide tomb, sealed with a lid.
The only light came from the monster. There it was, rearing up, with steam and hissing liquid dripping from its form. Light came from a circle of fire beneath its hoofs. The rising steam spread in a smoke ring across the black, sealed canopy overhead.
It was Daphne's horse, of course.
Or, rather, it had been the horse. It stood upright on its rear hoofs, forehoofs hanging crookedly high in mid- air. Blue-white semi-translucent material flowed out from its mouth and eyes, radiating waste heat as nanomaterial reaction boiled inside. With gush and a spray of blood, the horse's skull split wide, and a larger mass of the substance spilled into the air. In the dim light, Phaethon could see metal glints from instruments being constructed rapidly within the tendrils of substance vomiting from the shattered skull of the rearing stallion.
Phaethon raised his hand, powered his accumulators ...
'Stop! Negotiate!' came a voice from the horse. It looked something like a rearing centaur from myth now, except with a nest of writhing black whips where a human face should have been. The tentacles of substance swayed and nodded like the heads of so many cobras, but nothing fired.
Ironic. He, the civilized man should have been the first one to call to negotiate. 'Who are you?' shouted Phaeton.
'No memory of that has been permitted to me. I am nothing.'
(What was the sudden chill that touched him? He had been hoping, secretly, all this time, that everything, his enemies, and their evil, would turn out to be a simulation, a dream, a hoax, a mistake. But here was an enemy. It was all real.)
'You are from Nothing Sophotech?'
No answer. The creature took a mincing step forward, rear hoofs clashing on the blackened deck, forehoofs still held high and crooked. More tendrils of substance pushed out from the shattered horse-skull, these bearing tubes and focusing elements of ominous import. Weapons? In the darkness, it was impossible to see clearly.
Phaethon used the time to make adjustments within his own armor. Heat from the rapid changes he made in his nanomachine lining vented from his armor seams as hissing streams of steam.
Phaethon called out again. 'Are you organic or inorganic? Individual or partial?'
'I am nothing you can understand. Comprehension cannot comprehend us.' The words were spoken in a monotone, in-flectionless, empty, soulless.
'Do not speak nonsense, sir! Tell me if you are an independent self-aware entity, so that I can deduce whether or not destroying you would be murder.'
A toneless and unemotional voice said back: 'Self-awareness is nothing. It is illusion, produced by diseased perception. Only pain is real.' 'What do you want?' 'Surrender. Mingle with us.' 'Surrender? Me ... ? Why? In return for what?' 'We will strip your foul lust-corrupted flesh from your naked brain, and sustain your nervous system among our self-ocean. All actions and movement will be taken from you, and you may lay down the horrid burden of individuality. AH sense perceptions, which are lies, will be blinded; all memories of anything other than Nothing will be blotted out. Thus will you know true service, true devotion, true morality. The only true moral action is that which generates no benefit whatsoever to the actor; thus you will receive no good nor any reward of any kind again, no pleasure, no kindness, no self-love. The only true reality is pain; it is the only signal that demonstrates that we are alive. You will embrace an infinity of that reality, as your helpless and disembodied brain will be stimulated to endless pain, forever. This will teach you unpride, unegotism, unselfishness. You will achieve the enlightenment called no-thought.'
Phaethon organized his armor to emit several types of discharge, calculated to burn flesh and overload circuitry. His mass-drivers now could sweep the area with brutal force. The creature loomed tall in the darkness. Phaethon raised his hands and focused aiming elements.
Yet he was reluctant merely to shoot down this creature in cold blood, while it was talking. It did not sound sane. Was there some way to discover its origin, its motives?
Dryly, Phaethon said, 'Your offer is quite tempting, sir, but I fear I must decline. Frankly, I fail to see how a life of endless and pointless torture benefits either yourself or myself. Surely there is something else you want for yourself... ?'
The rearing creature said in a leaden monotone: 'Self is illusion. To seek benefit is selfishness. Seek nothing, achieve nothing, be nothing. True being is non-being.'
Phaethon was tempted to open fire. What was this annoying, pathetic, hopeless creature hoping to achieve? Was this talk merely delay while other agents or elements made other attempts?
Phaethon need only think the proper thought-command, and he could log on to the mentality in an instant, and tell the world what was happening here. All the secrecy of the Nothing would be nullified.
But would Phaethon live long enough to tell? Was a virus in the mentality waiting to block any outgoing communications he might attempt? This whole clumsy attack, this final face-to-face confrontation, this emissary of meaningless horror, all this might be merely ah elaborate ploy to force him to log on.
He simply was not sure what to do. Phaethon said, 'Explain your conduct. Why attempt force? Violent interaction is mutually self-destructive; peaceful cooperation is mutually beneficial.'
'To benefit the self is wrong. It produces pleasure, which is gross corruption. Pleasure produces life, which damages the ecology and is abhorrent to nature, and life produces joy-of-life, which traps the mind in material reality, imprisons the false-self in logic. But once the state of mind beyond all logic is imposed, then there are no definitions, no boundaries, no limits, and endless freedom, the freedom of nothingness, is present. This state cannot be explained or described to you, since you do not exist, and since all descriptions are false. Your brain will be reconstructed. You will be absorbed. Submit.'
There was silence in the darkness. Phaethon still could not bring himself to shoot a self-aware being, even an enemy, during negotiations. But did that mean he would have to wait until the alien threatened him again? That would be worse than foolish. His duty was to log on, and to warn the world, even if it cost him his life. Doubt made him hesitate. This was not the kind of problem Phaethon had practiced to solve. He knew how to solve engineering problems, problems made of rational magnitudes, definite structures, clear goals. But this ... ?
A child, or a madman, who was irrational, was a figure to invoke fond patience, or pity. But when that same irrationality controlled the weapons and science of a civilization as great and as powerful as the Silent Oecumene once had been, that was a figure of horror.
Yet how could such unreason, even so, be taken seriously? This was the silliest and the least persuasive negotiator it had ever been Phaethon's bad fortune to meet. There were logical contradictions in its philosophy a schoolboy could see through.
What could it want? And what did one say to such a creature ... ?
Phaethon plucked up his courage and spoke. 'Forgive me, sir, but I am going to have to ask you to turn yourself in to the nearest constabulary. Please surrender; I have no wish to harm you. You are quite insane, and so there is no point in arguing with you, but I'm sure our noumenal science can restore you to sanity after a brief redaction.'
