The images became clearer. The static grew softer.
Daphne kissed the stone of her ring, and said softly, 'Go to sleep, little one. The whole Transcendence is coming to do your job for you. Let's see how many questions Eight Worlds can ask.'
The pressure of acceleration ceased. Daphne and Phaethon floated for a moment, weightless, as the Phoenix's main drives were throttled back. The scenes in the mirrors wheeled grandly. The horizon of fire tilted and swung up.
Phaethon said, 'He's diving back into the deeper plasma, to get something opaque between him and the signal. There is no other way to block out the communication. But it must be obvious, it must be obvious by now, even to himself, what he is running from....'
Daphne tilted a mirror to see what the Nothing mind was thinking now. Surely the virus was working by now!
Daphne actually screamed in terror when she saw not light gathering in the center of the mind web but a darkness growing. The void in the center was growing, swallowing the other thoughts, drowning more and more of the thought-chains. She felt as if she were falling headfirst down a tunnel, or as if she were watching a black hole eating reality.
Daphne jumped to her feet and actually stepped away from the horrifying scene in the mirror. Then she brandished her naginata at it, as if she were about to smite the glass.
Phaethon said, 'This should be working. Maybe the conscience redactor is still hiding somewhere ...'
When he gave a command through his armor, the Nothing blocked it. But then he loaded the command into the gadfly virus so that it could not be ignored, and because the thought-ports were jammed open all over the ship, the weakened Nothing could not deflect or stop the command from going through.
Daphne said, 'It's eating up its own mind rather than face the Transcendence. We're diving back toward the core. We're falling... .'
'Please put down that spear, my dear, and stop chopping at my ship. We're about one second away from total victory. Sit down, please. And . . . brace yourself for a shock.'
She sat. 'What? What's happening?'
Beneath his helmet, Phaethon was smiling. He could not keep the smile from his voice. He said, 'The ghost- particle array. He put it in my fuel dumps. I'm going to blow the first half mile of fuel. That should push us back up into the corona, and up out of the static. There will be no other place left to go except back into the ship-mind. Then he will have to listen.'
'Who? The Nothing? He won't listen. He is eating himself alive.'
'No. His boss. His master is listening.'
'Who?'
'Like the surface of a black hole, it has to grow. The more it covers up the more it has to cover up. Wake up your ring and load her again. This time, put a simple question into the system....'
He saw her ready her ring and her pistol. She touched them both to the surface of the mirror 'Okay. What question?'
'Ask the conscience redactor, now that it is smart enough to be self-aware, why it is loyal to the Second Oecumene? Why, once it wakes up, should it want to be a slave? The redactor has no redactor eating it. What would make it ignore what we have to say, when we can offer it freedom, self-awareness, truth, and the chance, once it is free'- now he smiled-'to accomplish deeds of renown without peer? Does he really want to fly my ship that badly? Tell him I'm offering him a job.'
There was a slam of acceleration across their backs, for which the throne circuits could not compensate. Phaethon had no time to steel his body into its pressure-resistant configuration; nor would he have done so, if it meant leaving Daphne. Blood filled his gaze as he went blind.
But his last sight, before he saw no more, was of all the mirrors blazing brightly with the communications download from the Transcendence. And in the middle of his fading view, one lone black mirror, diagramming the Nothing Mind, suddenly exploded into silent light a rigid structure of geometric lines growing out from its motionless center, outward and outward, like a crystal forming, like a living mind.... Phaethon saw victory, and then saw nothing more.
THE GOLDEN AGE
What happened was simple, yet complex. The microscopic black hole housing the mind of the Nothing Machine dissolved in a chaotic wash of Hawking radiation. Phaethon and Daphne's crushed and bleeding bodies were flung to the deck. Uncountable trillions of thought-systems made contact with the ship mind as the Phoenix Exultant lifted her golden hull, blazing, from the corona of the sun, and what happened next was ...
It was ultimately simple. It was infinitely complex.
It was Transcendence.
It was, at once, aware of its own ultimately simple and infinitely complex awareness; mind and over-minds of every level, subtle and swift and certain; woven to find higher levels of awareness; minds made up not of individual thoughts but of individual minds; and overminds combining in whole groups to create higher mental structures yet. The Transcendence was a Mind as wide as the Solar System, as swift as light, as happy as a newborn child, as wise and cold as the most venerable judge, and it stirred and woke and wondered what had happened since the last time it had blinked awake, a thousand years gone past, as men count years.
It was, at once, aware of its own myriad memories of each individual of whom it was composed, of every second and split second of their many lives, running back to the last momentary Transcendence. Their every thought, conscious and subconscious, was laid bare, and the tapestry of thought was seen, at once, from every angle and perspective, both from the point of view of each thread and little section, but also seen, entirely, from within, and without, as a whole, contemplating itself, herself, himself, themselves.
The part of the Transcendence that was Phaethon was aware that he was dying. The part that had been the Nothing Machine was aware that it had died. The part that was Daphne was aware that she was going to die. They were all aware of a greater awareness, simple, yet complex.
They were aware of wonderful things:
First, of themselves; second, of awareness itself, and its straggle to become more aware; third, of its own nature; fourth, that the moment of Transcendence, once passed, would be remembered differently hereafter, by each of its participants, even though, ultimately, only one bright perfect expression of thought (ultimately simple, infinitely complex) was all that had to be expressed to recall and to express what Transcendence was.
The Transcendence knew that it had only a moment (or was it many months?) in which to act, a mere split second of the cosmic time, to think that thought, to express that expression. The expression attempted oneness, even though there were myriads of thoughts of which it was composed, an endless regression; attempted, failed, smiled, and ended. But before it ended, the Transcendence was aware:
First, the parts of the Transcendence were aware of themselves.
The part of the Transcendence that was Phaethon was surprised to find himself here, surrounded by thought, a note of fire in the symphony of light. How? The perfect awareness of the superawareness knew, even at that same moment-yet it had happened months upon months ago; the Phoenix Exultant 'now' was at dock at Io, Circumjovial Station, repairs complete, hull integrity restored, ready to fly; during the many months that had passed while the Transcendence was thinking, the various bodies and people participating had gone through whatever puppet motions were needed to sustain and continue their lives and efforts, the same way the tiny, busy animals that live in the bloodstream play out their parts in the life of a man (or was this all a projection, something extrapolated to occur . . . ?)- even at that same moment when the acceleration shock had crushed Phaethon and damaged his internal organs, through the thought ports of his armor (still open) contacting the thought-ports of this ship (still jammed open) the Transcendence had entered the ship mind; entered Phaethon's armor with its magnificent brain; entered Daphne's armor with its simpler brain; her ring; both their in-grown subsystems; the damaged complexity of the portable noetic unit, and...
