strategy formulator in the stealth remotes had noticed this prisoner as a possible ally.
It was Diomedes.
Motionless, helpless, betrayed and trapped in hell by this enemy.
Phaethon decided there was no reason to continue any pretense after all.
The energy mirrors erupted with fire, with concentrated scalpel lasers aimed at specific nerve clusters, with more general washes of electric and focused high-energy particles meant to burn out sense organs, cripple legs and motor control, disrupt links between and through the Neptunian body.
At the same time, twenty-five gravities of acceleration flattened all loose objects in the room, hurling Xenophon and his ally bodies against the far wall. It looked just as if the whole huge room had just wildly been thrown over on its side. Actually, the carousel of the ring in which the bridge was held could not reorient quickly enough to keep the local deck perpendicular to the sudden thrust. Fields made of pseudo-matter, not unlike the retardation fields in-terwebbing Phaethon's body on the captain's chair, trapped every cell of the Neptunian bodies in place. Those webs allowed only those biochemical functions to continue that the stealth remotes did not classify as potentially threatening. Consciousness was not one of them.
For now, Phaethon wanted prisoners, not corpses. The higher centers of the brain and associated neurocir- cuitry had bioelectrical patterns in the Neptunian modes imposed upon them by the lurking stealth remotes, patterns, which, in a base neuroform, would have been fourth-stage delta waves, deep, dreamless sleep.
In that same split instant of time (long before Xenophon's scalded, blinded, crippled, and stunned body could hit the far bulkhead), the portable noetic reader to Phaethon's left came to life. Despite the storm of energies lashing the chamber, it retrieved the information from the stealth remotes, positioned in and around the Neptunian's main nerve channels, were pinpoint-beaming to the reader heads.
By the time direction of gravity returned to deck-perpendicular as the straining carousel reoriented all the rooms and chambers in the ring (including the bridge) to right angles, Phaethon had a working copy of Xenophon's brain trapped in the noetic reader. It was, after all, also a noumenal mentality recorder.
But now for the important part.
The stealth remotes monitoring the ship mind indicated that the virus-infected sectors had been dumped, a new mind reestablished, and that the full computing power of the ship was at his command. He signaled to his mannequins. 'What communications or signals have left this chamber or this ship? Track and trace them.'
The Jason mannequin reported that no transmission, of any type of energy the ship instruments could detect, had left the chamber, or the ship, nor was there any breach in the hull, such as a collision with antimatter might produce.
The Byrd mannequin brought up views of the other Neptunians everywhere on the ship, where they had been caught by the sudden, unexpected, tremendous acceleration. Those who the stealth remotes had concluded were not allies of Xenophon had been given enough warning to find pseudo-material retardation fields, to survive the shock; others had been downloaded into more pressure-resistant brain boxes, since the Neptunian neuroform allowed for rapid transmission and storage of neural information, and survived even if their bodies were crushed. Many had been injured; none had been damaged beyond the point of recovery. Resurrection teams were already being formed in the ship mind and telerepresented to the severely injured. But, so far, there was no panic, no outrage. Being Neptunians, their bodies were insensitive to pain, except when they chose to feel it, and as for their minds, they chose to regard all this as some huge prank, or hoax.
But there were no transmissions detected coming from any of them, either, nor was there any activity at all coming from the body masses Xenophon had left behind on the ship-mind decks, or in the fuel axis.
The estimator from the stealth remotes said, 'There are no transmissions detected from any source. Xenophon either has no ability to transmit to his superior during an emergency, or prepared no deadman switch or alternate-despite that he must have known he was walking into a trap-or else has no superior, and he himself is the Silent One in charge.'
But the Ulysses mannequin said, 'With all due respect, sir, the readings are not complete. We ourselves have opened the hull ports to extend antennae, detectors, and to send signals to and from the attendant ships which are circling us, watching for transmissions. Also, the drive is operating-'
Phaethon said: 'Wait!'
Because, at that moment, red status lights lit on the neotic unit. Phaethon looked at the golden tablet through the ship's Middle Dreaming, and understood that the noetic reader could not analyze or interpret certain sections of Xenophon's mind. Some of the brain segments had been encrypted, thinking by a means, or in a formation, utterly unknown to the builders of the noetic unit. This was a thought formation, a mental language, so to speak, that the neotic unit could not decode.
These encrypted segments could not be decrypted by any key or process known to the legible parts of Xenophon's mind.
The encrypted segments of the brain had not been located in the cortex or main consciousness circuits of the neural architecture. Which meant they had not been located in the brain sections targeted for nar-coleptic paralysis. Which meant...
Phaethon focused a communication beam from his armor to the remotes now attached to Xenophon's nervous system. 'You are not unconscious.'
The answer came back along the same beam: 'No. This one was curious as to your actions. They seem to be without meaning. You will explain.'
'Your speech pattern has changed again. Are you Xenophon, or someone else?'
'Questions of identity are meaningless. By what right do you hold me here, discomforted, limited? You are not a Constable, you have no warrant, you have not obeyed the forms and procedures. Do you suppose me to be a prisoner of what you call war, perhaps? But you have not treated me according to the civilized formalities to which you pretend to adhere. Explain your conduct.'
Phaethon increased the pressure of the retardation fields webbing the Neptunian body, and sent the medical remotes to sever any nerve trunks they thought were suspicious. Little flashes of laser-scalpel fire appeared in the Neptunian's brain. Phaethon sent no answer except: 'Where are your superior officers? What are your strengths and resources, goals and means? Where is your starship? What are your motives? Where is your Sophotech?'
'Irrelevant. These inquiries refer to fictional entities. There is no Sophotech, no starship, no superior officers. No strengths, no means, no resources.'
Phaethon thought this answer was a lie. 'Decode your thoughts and allow my noetic unit to read them.'
'Impossible. The encryption system is based on the nonrational mathematics which obtain within the interior of a black-hole event horizon. That mathematics cannot be translated into yours by any means. The premises of that mathematics were transmitted. Your society has rejected these beyond-truths.'
'Are you referring to the undefined mathematics terms in the Last Broadcast? Infinity divided by infinity, zero raised to the exponential power of zero, and all that?'
'To us, it is your mathematics which are not defined. Your mathematics does not depict the conditions which obtain beyond the event horizon of rationality. Likewise, your laws and your morality lack both universal application and self-consistency. I have committed no act of aggression, threatened no one, harmed no one. This ship was turned over to me, and the identities I now embrace were given to me, entirely in accord with your laws and customs.'
'You sent that thing inside of Daphne's horse to attack me. You tried to kill her.'
'False. The actions of that other unit cannot be attributed to me; it was a separate and complete entity. It is true that I equipped it with a philosophy and outlook which would render it likely, ready, and able to perform a suicide mission, but I issued no orders. The concept of orders and of control is entirely alien to those of my Oecumene and civilization. We do not even have a word for it.
'And furthermore, Phaethon is the one who opened fire first. I have killed no one. Only Atkins has killed. You are in violation of proper conduct. Release me, make amends, restore me.'
Phaethon sat motionless in the captain's chair, held in place by a retardation field. A much stronger field pinned the Neptunian body in place, and the gravity pressure had flattened it against the deck. Arming beams and low-level charges, like the beams of searchlights, reached from the energy mirrors to either side and glinted across the glistening blue body surface. All the internal organs, nerve circuitry, and biomechanic tissues had settled to the bottom of the body mass and were flattened.
Now what? Should he argue with the Silent One, threaten him, torture him? So far it had seemed not
