of your ship.'
Phaethon smiled, and sent the smile onto the ship channels, so that the two wardens could see it through his faceplate. 'Gentlemen, I am honored; and yet I cannot entirely overlook the fact that, for good or for ill, I will be beyond the reach of the applause, or the censure, of the College of Hortators, in a very little time from now. I plan to return only once more to Earth, to finish resupplying, and to pick up crew.'
Temer said, 'You are young yet, Phaethon. Eventually, you will return from star voyaging, or human civilization, in ships yet unbuilt, of designs yet undreamed, will overtake you. It may be a thousand years from now, or ten thousand, or a hundred; but you and I will meet again. You will not be the only one to travel among the stars, I promise you that.'
Phaethon saw Vidur smile at Temer's comment. Young? Phaethon supposed that to a man not yet properly born, the difference between a four-thousand-year-old and an eleven-thousand-year-old did not seem that great.
The ship-mind said, 'We are approaching the alleged source of the ghost-particle signals.'
Diomedes was not physically present, but an image of him was projected from the ship-mind space where he lived into the sense-filters of the men on the bridge. Being a collateral member of the Silver-Gray, Diomedes had his image enter through the air lock, had it cast a shadow, gave his footsteps echoes, and had it walk across the whole length of the bridge to approach the three men, and so on, rather than having a self-image fade in out of nowhere. The image was dressed in the normal costume of the Silver-Gray; coat, tie, jacket, shoes.
Diomedes said, 'I've made a second copy of myself, so I can still participate in the Transcendence while helping you here, Captain-may I call you Captain?'
Phaethon said, 'Certainly. But you will not get paid until you sign my articles.'
'Be that as it may; my 'upper-brother' still in the Transcendence has done a much more thorough analysis than I have done. Hmph. He had help. Mars-mind invented new analytical tools for combing through the data....'
Phaethon said, 'Does he confirm our results?'
'He does. Ghost particles from this point in space are being rotated into virtuality, transmitted to variable broadcast receivers around Triton and Nereid, and rotated back into reality. Xenophon was meshed with the Neptunian Duma when the Duma was brought into the Transcendence.'
'Is Xenophon still there?' asked Phaethon. 'In the Transcendence?'
Diomedes said, 'My upper self and I think so. Look.''
The mirrors on the bridge came to life. Most remained blank: heat and paniculate matter, electromagnetic energy, was the same as the normal background of empty space here. But the Silent Oecumene-built ghost-particle array aboard the Phoenix Exultant was receiving pulses of seminonexistent waves from an area less than one AU distant. A repeated image technique allowed a shadowy picture to form in one mirror.
Here was a hermit cell, webbed with antidetectioa gear, floating in space, hidden inside a ball of ice half a mile across, a cometary head.
The gear detected a ghost-particle array, perhaps as small as several yards across, exchanging signals with a transponder near Neptune.
Vidur scowled. 'So Xenophon has already seen the next ten thousand years of our plans and goals, assessed our strength, counted our troops.'
Temer said, 'The disadvantage of life in a free and open society-we've forgotten how to lock our doors.''
Diomedes held up a single finger. 'One. We've only got one trooper. Don't need to be a Sophtech to count that high.'
Phaethon said, 'If one were equal to one according to the math of these Swans from Cygnus, we'd have less trouble from them.'
Diomedes said, 'The Transcendence did not predict that the Silent Ones could maintain a full-scale war against us for any length of time. Um. At least what an entity to whom a thousand years is but a day regards as 'a long time.' ...'
Vidur spoke with the certainty very young men tend always to have: 'Our predictions were unduly optimistic, I am sure, and made the spy to smile.'
Temer said, 'He would smile just as much if our predictions overestimated the Silent Oecumene strength as underestimated.'
Phaethon said, 'He must have seen this ship, even at this distance. We are huge, and we make a lot of noise, and our stern is toward him as we decelerate. What is be thinking? Is this a trap?'
Temer said, 'Suppose he had an escape ship-the Phoenix should be able to outrun anything in space. And how far could he go? I think he is saving fuel. He is going to be caught in any case.'
Diomedes looked sidelong at Phaethon, and raised a hand to hide a discreet cough. This was one of the Silver-Gray traditions, indicating a wish for a private word or two.
Phaethon's sense filter linked with Diomedes. An imaginary solarium appeared around them. It did not quite have the usual Silver-Gray attention to detail. Instead of an English garden scene appearing outside the eastern windows of the porch, an image of Phaethon on his throne, continuing a conversation with Vidur and Temer, appeared, so that the two men could track what was happening in the outer reality.
Diomedes sat. 'You seem troubled, friend.'
Phaethon poured himself a cup of imaginary tea. He sipped it, staring moodily into the middle distance. He said, 'I wish I could remember what it was I had been thinking during the Transcendence. My body, acting more or less on its own, sent the Phoenix Exultant out here. It seemed like a good idea at the time.'
Diomedes said, 'There is no mystery. The Golden Oecumene has only one operating ghost-particle array. And it is aboard this ship.'
'Is Atkins aboard?'
'I am sure he must be.'
'The ship brain is still half-asleep. I don't even know what is really going on.'
Diomedes leaned across the table and patted Phaethon's arm in a friendly fashion. 'Don't fret so! Once the Transcendence is concluded, and all are restored to their normal states, communication lines will be restored, records will be set back in order. In the meanwhile, look at the fine gifts we all got! You now have something like Helion's multiple parallel brain compartments, but with no speed loss; I have a mechanism for interpreting Warlock-type intuitions using a subroutine. See how insightful I am these days?'
Diomedes leaned back and inspected his friend. 'Hm. My intuition tells me you are still uneasy.'
Phaethon sighed. 'I am getting tired of always acting on blind faith. When I do not have gaps in my memory, I have gaps in my knowledge. I always seem to be forced to trust that either my old self, or some Sophotech, has thought out the details of what I am about to do, and has already arranged everything to come out right-it is a childish way to behave. I am tired of being a child.'
Diomedes made his eyes crinkle up with a smile. 'You are so impatient to leave this 'utopia'?'
'It was never a Utopia. It is a good system. Maybe the best system. But in reality, everything has a cost. The cost of living in a system with fairly benevolent giant superintellects, frankly, is that you have to live as I have done. Blindly.'
He tuned one of the windows in the solarium to a view of the nearby stars. Like jewels, they glittered against the velvet dark.
He said, 'I yearn for the solitude of empty spaces, Diomedes. There, finally, I shall stand on my own; and if I fall, the fault will be mine and mine alone.'
Diomedes said, 'I take it there is still something missing from your life?'
Phaethon said, 'There is still a gap in my memory. A period of two weeks from seventy years ago is gone; even Rhadamanthus does not have a record of it. I visited a colony of purists living to the east of Eveningstar Manor. Records show I shipped a container to Earth, to the enclave where Daphne was originally born. Telemetry data indicate there may have been biological material aboard. A fortnight. It's a blank. Even the Transcendence could not fill in what was missing. I was aboard ship and cut off from all communication.'
'The canister? You have no medical officers or in-spection services on Earth?'
'We are not Neptunians, my good Diomedes. Who would be so rude as to open up someone else's private container? I suppose the purists could have hired any inspectors they wished to examine their packages for them;
