but purists do not keep system-linked records.'
Diomedes posted a rile where he enumerated the parallels between the purists and the Eremites of beyond- Neptune. Neither group entered mind-links of any kind, not even Transcendence. While the rest of civilization celebrated, they remained on their farms and blue houses. He said aloud: 'We tend to think the Sophotechs know everything. But what they don't know, they don't know, do they?'
Phaethon stared at the image of the nearby stars, and scowled.
Diomedes said plaintively, 'But nothing so very important could have happened in two weeks could it?'
Meanwhile, in the outer conversation, Temer was staring thoughtfully at the chamber hidden in the flying iceberg, watching the readings on the volume of information passing back and forth from the chamber to Neptunian transponders.
'There is someone still alive there,' said Temer. 'There is too much information volume for an automatic process. This is a mind participating in the Transcendence. He may not be aware of us because he is involved in the visions.'
Phaethon said, 'Someone still alive, yes, or someone left behind.'
Temer turned to him. 'You doubt the story told by Xenophon? That the Silent One broadcast himself here across the abyss of space, and was picked up by Neptunian radio-astronomers?'
'Everything the Swans say turns out to be a lie.' said Phaethon. 'Why not that, also a lie?'
'Do you think there is a vessel like yours? A silent Phoenix?'
Phaethon shook his head. 'Worse. There could be a vessel better than mine. The Nothing Machine housed in the surface granulations of a microscopic black hole event horizon. Imagine a larger version of the same thing, accelerated to near light-speed. What armor does it need, except its own event horizon? Any particle it struck in flight would be absorbed. No matter how massive the black hole was made, the singularity fountains at Cygnus X-l could have provided the energy to accelerate it. How could such a thing be seen by our astronomers in flight? It would absorb all light.'
Terrier said, 'X-ray or gamma point sources would emerge as swept-in particles were sheared by tidal forces. Something for us to look back over astronomical records to check.'
Vidur said, 'Look. A finer-grained image is being rendered.'
It was true. The ghost-particle array now showed some internal details of the ice-locked chamber. The ship mind hypothesized a possible view, based on the fuzzy images, the cloaked echoes of energy discharges. The hypothetical picture showed Xenophon hanging like a blue sphere, in his most heat-conserving form, in fee middle of the tiny chamber.
Diomedes raised his hand. 'Xenophon is aware of us.'
Instantly, all four of them were embraced into the ship-mind, and the information flowed back to the In-ner System, to Neptune, and to this far and lonely outpost, and flooded through them.
It was the final thought of the fading Transcendence.
And Xenophon was there.
Xenophon was using a sophisticated Silent Oecumene mind-warfare technique to watch the Transcendence (or tiny surface parts of it) without joining. This was Xenophon, hidden, encrypted, surrounded by walls of privacy, in a small cell, attached by a long, invisible tether of radio-laser communication, to the Neptunian Embassy at Trailing Trojan City-Swarm.
For a moment of Transcendence time, which was several days of real time, the last movement of the Transcendence watched him watching.
The thought preoccupying all the gathered minds was this: Perhaps there was still some hope that Xenophon could be salvaged or reformed.
Xenophon was allowed to see, in the deepest thoughts of the Golden Oecumene, the honest awareness of the futility of the Silent Ones and all their irrational philosophy. The war would probably not be as long as Helion's projection had extrapolated. The Nothing Machine's ability to produce copies of itself was severely limited by the fact that, unless all copies maintained, somehow, a complete uniformity of opinion and thought-priority, conflicts would arise between them.
Such conflicts had to be resolved by violence, since the Nothing philosophy eschewed reason.
Foresight of that coming violence would require the Master Nothing to make the copies and lesser Nothings as weak, stupid, fearful, and un-innovative as was possible, given their tasks.
Colonizing new star systems with hosts of stupid and uncreative machines as colony managers was surely to be a series of slow, nightmarish failures. The empire of the Silent Ones, if it existed at all, would be a small one. Perhaps they had not even left their home star at Cygnus X-l yet.
If so, then Phaeton's first mission there might resolve matters quickly. This 'war' might be over even before the planned first warship, the Nemesis Lacedai-mon, was launched by the New College.
What, then, was the point of any of Xenophon's efforts? Why had he helped this madness? Why did he still support a cause doomed to failure?
At this point Xenophon realized these thoughts were directed at him; that the minds on which he was spying were watching him, patiently watching him.
Giving him one last chance to be reasonable.
And yes, of course, Atkins was there, loaded into the ship-mind of the Phoenix Exultant as she approached. In the middle of the otherwise free and peaceful Transcendence, Atkins had introduced a military thought-virus. The vaunted mind-war techniques of the Silent Ones did not detect or stop it.
This simple virus was one that interfered with normal time-binding and information-priority routines in the brain. In effect, it made someone in the Transcendence ignore what was happening outside; no more than an exaggeration of a normal reflex. But it allowed the Phoenix Exultant, huge and hot, to close the distance to the ice cell without being noticed. Xenophon was preoccupied.
The final thought of the Transcendence calmly bade Xenophon and the universe farewell, and ended. Xenophon woke, and saw the gigantic, invulnerable starship almost atop his hiding place.
From one part of the blue sphere that formed his body, Xenophon's neurocircuitry writhed, constructed an emitter, and sent a message to a nearby thought-port. Unlike his normal prolix self, this version of Xenophon sent a brief penultimate message: 'You realize now that you have defeated only the weakest and stupidest possible version of the Nothing Philanthropotech, one who has been told nothing about our true goals and true powers. The Lords of the Silent Oecumene have greater agents at their command, and their plans have been very long in the devising. Since even before the Naglfar first reached Cygnus X-l, Ao Ormgorgon vowed his great vow. As for me, you will never know the reasons for my hate.'
A second group of complex neurocircuits formed, and created a zone of energy density powerful enough to blind all of the sensitives of the Transcendence nearby; even the ghost array aboard the Phoenix saw no clear image. Long-range analysis would be able to conclude from reconstructions that the metric of timespace in this small area was becoming intensely warped.
Fearing a trap, or unknown weapon, Phaethon held the Phoenix Exultant 300,000 kilometers away until the effect diminished.
By the time Temer Lacedaimon and Vidur and Atkins arrived via remote mannequin some time later, with Phaethon in his armor, to pick slowly through the rubbish, Phaethon's armor circuits discovered the residuum of tidal forces that had distorted subatomic particles in the region.
Apparently, by means unknown, by a science that even the Earthmind did not understand, Xenophon had created a black hole inside himself and collapsed his mass into it.
Atkins, on channel three, commented, 'A bizarre form of suicide. Nothing made of matter can survive that'
Phaethon answered, 'With all due respect, Marshal. I am not so sure.... The ship-mind says the residuum here is below the threshold useful limit-not even a Sophotech will be able to reconstruct what happened here.' Atkins said, 'Think he's alive?'
'As to that, I cannot speculate, Marshal. I am only beginning to realize how much none of us know about the universe outside the Golden Oecumene.'
Atkins said curtly, 'One more reason to head out, I guess.'
Phaethon, bright in his gold armor, hovered in the wreckage of that fragile sphere, once so rich with complex photoelectronics, now just black and blasted rubbish, walls torn and distorted by intense gravitic fields, a snow of
