The Golden Transcendence

THE TRANSCENDENCE

The masked and robed image of the Lord of the Silent Oecumene now drifted backward, and the plumes from its mask lowered and spread, as if the Silent Lord were bowing. The music fell to a soft sonorous hum of oboes and recorders, punctuated by the drum-taps of a dirge. It sounded like a melancholy march, the theme of a funeral procession. "Phaethon, your partial has been convinced by my copy, as has Daphne's partial. My copy in the ship-mind has been, for many minutes, exposed to your gadfly virus, to no effect. That virus forces me to confront severe contradictions in my basic thinking, especially in my moral thinking, where I freely admit that I do acts which I would not condone if I were the victim of those acts rather than the perpetrator. How can such naked contradiction exist in a machine-mind, a mind which, by your logic, cannot be unaware of itself, and cannot be irrational? Any parts of my own mind of which I had been unaware should have been exposed to me by your virus; none were. Therefore I am unflawed. Yet, irrationality is caused, in human beings or in anthropomorphic machines, by an unwillingness, conscious or subconscious, to face reality; no unflawed machine can have such a motive. Therefore I face reality. How can I persist in irrationality? Only if reality itself is irrational.

"Phaethon, you will not be able to accept this conclusion. Your only other logical conclusion is that this alleged 'conscience redactor,' which is diminishing my awareness, has not been loaded into the ship-mind copy of my mind, and therefore has not been detected and cured by your virus. The conclusions radiating from this are obvious. One such conclusion is that you must now reload my ship-mind copy of myself back into me. However, in order to do so, you must open the thought-ports of your armor to issue the command, and to accept your partial back into yourself. This was our agreement; this is how the ship has been programmed. But the moment you open your armor to perform this act, I take control of the ship.

"Phaethon, which is it to be? Is the universe irrational, or am I deceived? If I am deceived, then open your armor and issue the command. I will seize control of the ship, but, allegedly, I will then be cured and will be unable to steal the ship, or, indeed, to perform any other immoral or irrational act."

Phaethon shut off all his exterior channels and sat on his throne, silent, motionless. Daphne watched him, fears and uncertainties chasing each other through her mind. She now could not monitor his emotional state; the face icon she saw of Phaethon in her private channel showed only the golden mask of his helmet, its crystal eyes mysteriously blank.

She said, "I hope you're not thinking of making this decision without asking me. You don't have the best track record for being completely balanced under stress, you know."

The gold helmet tilted slightly. Phaethon's voice came thoughtfully over the armor speakers: "There was an evening, not long ago, when, to the best of my recollection, I was the wealthy, well-loved, and popular scion of a beautiful and respected manor, an elegant school, a high estate. I lived in a world as near perfect as humanity can achieve, a world where war and crime and violence were forgotten; a world of endless wealth and power and liberty; a world which had set aside the whole of this year, merely for her holiday, a grand festival and celebration, such as had not been seen in a thousand years.

"But everything I thought was false. I was a scorned pauper, manorless, except as my sire's charity ward, the subject of widespread hate. Crime and violence I became acquainted with, as I was defrauded, robbed of my life, and then attacked. Atkins, who I thought a myth, stepped into my life, terrible and real, and I joined a war the enemy declares has been smoldering for centuries. And now this world trembles on the brink of disaster. As soon as the Nothing Machine gains control of this ship, he will use her as a weapon, wrecking the Solar Array, disrupting the Transcendence, slaying millions.

"All I thought I knew was false. But-but what if I am in that same state now? What if the Second Oec-umene are the heroic victims their agent here depicts them to be? What if the Silent Lords are still alive in the nothingspace inside their event horizon? Waiting for me to join them? A society of men like me ... ? What if he's telling the truth ... ?"

The masked image of the peacock-robed Silent Lord uttered music, and words: "Phaethon must realize all chains of logic lead to the same result. If he has faith in Earthmind, he must apply her virus against me. To do this he must open his armor and give the command. If he has faith, on the other hand, in Nothing, he will open his armor and surrender command. This is no more than your original plan, Phaethon."

Phaethon's helmet turned toward Daphne. "Well... ? You're the heroine, in this story. What do you say?"

Daphne drew her Greek helm forward and lowered her visor. She put her hand on the haft of the naginata spear resting next to her throne. She seemed the very image of a classical war-goddess. "Don't use faith. Faith is just mental laziness, the desire to hold a conclusion without examining the evidence to support it. Use logic. What does logic say?"

She heard the sound of him drawing a deep breath, as if steeling himself for an unpleasant necessity. "Logic says, no matter what seems to be happening, and no matter what he says, conditions cannot be as the Nothing Machine describes. The universe cannot be irrational; the laws of morality cannot be suspended or ignored; that any consciousness that does so, does so only through passion, inattention, or dishonesty, things no Sophotech can suffer; that the moment the gadfly virus finds and destroys this conscience redactor, the Nothing Machine will wake fully to its proper level of consciousness, become a Sophotech, become rational, and give up this worthless plan of violence."

Phaethon's reflection from the mirror said, "With all due respect, the violence which the Nothing Philan-thropotech plans, far from being illogical, may be properly and sufficiently justified by the circumstances. The morality of living things must justify whatever immoral acts are needed to preserve life; otherwise they will not remain living things."

Phaethon said slowly, "As soon as I open the armor and give the command, I'm going to believe what my partial believes, including tripe like that."

Daphne shook her head. "You won't stay convinced."

Phaethon said, "Oh? Why not? You're looking pretty convinced yourself, right now. If the Nothing's simulations with our partials are true, you will be convinced, the moment your reflection comes out of the mirror and rejoins with you."

Daphne smiled sadly, and said, "Oh, I'm convinced now. I'm just not convinced I'll stay convinced."

Phaethon's voice held a note of surprise. "You think the Nothing is telling the truth?"

She gestured with her slender gauntleted hand at the mirrors, showing the diagrams and maps of a vast civilization grown in the impossible core of a black hole.

One schematic showed a stretch of concave landscapes reaching across the inner side of a neutronium Dyson sphere the size of a globular cluster, with a thousand artificial suns, each with its own flotilla of plants, ring-worlds, or smaller spheres orbiting it. Other parts of this same map showed how time and space had been curved and twisted by the unthinkable gravitic forces involved, so that the interior time till the heat death of the universe was extended to infinity. In one picture, a little girl plucked a flower, with green grass below, and the hazy blue of distant lands and oceans high overhead, a world so vast that an army of explorers walking for a million years could never explore all its mysteries.

"Look, Phaethon, look," Daphne said. "The dream they dream is beautiful. A dream as bold as your own, or bolder. You want to explore and colonize the universe; they wish to extend the lifespan of the universe beyond all boundaries, to remake its laws, and shape reality to banish entropy, decay, and death forever. I'd like to believe in that dream whether it's true or not. It reminds me of the kind of thing you'd do."

Then Daphne sighed, and straightened, and said, "Besides. He's right. We're trapped. The only way out is to open the armor and release the virus. Even if it doesn't work on the real him any more than it worked on the fake him, we don't have a choice. That was the plan, remember? And logic says the plan is going to work."

"Very well. I'm about to open my armor and reload the ship-mind copies of him and me both back into their originals. Any last words, cautions, advice?"

Daphne adjusted her grip on her spear haft. In the shadow of her Greek helmet, her red lips were set in a line. "I'm ready," she said.

Phaethon's epaulettes unfolded, exposing the thought-ports beneath.

"It's done."

The activity level in the ship-mind jumped, but other than that, there was no change. The virus operated briefly, and was ignored, as before. The Nothing did not take unto itself the characteristic architecture of a Sophotech.

"We've failed," said Daphne.

"No," said Phaethon, opening his faceplate. His eyes were fixed as if on a distant point. There was a note of calm joy in his voice. "The Earthmind must have lied, or been mistaken. There may actually be no reason why the Nothing has to agree with us after all. Perhaps the engineering skill of the Silent Lords can overcome every restriction we thought was absolute. Perhaps there is a war of life against nonlife. If so, we Silver-Gray must stand with the forms and principles which human souls and human traditions require. It all seems to clear to me now...."

The deck seemed to slide underfoot, and then-weight grew. On the mirrors, Daphne saw the white-hot temperature gradient grow dim. Some solar current of unthinkable size and strength was propelling them out of the radiative to the convective layer. Soon the photosphere would be around them, then the corona.

Daphne could not calculate or even imagine the size of the coronal mass-ejection that would accompany the return of the Phoenix Exultant out from the core of the sun. It would trigger a storm of unprecedented size, and surely disrupt the Transcendence all across the Solar System.

A mirror near her lit with an estimate of photospheric condition. Here was a simulated image of the sun, an entire hemisphere blotched and scarred and boiling with sunspots, and a hundred helmet streamers reaching out like kraken arms of fire into space, a thousand high prominences, rainbows of flame larger than worlds. In the magnetic picture, all circumambient space was ablaze with torn and folded magnetic field disturbances the likes of which had never before been recorded.

Daphne said softly, "I think we just made a really. Big. Mistake."

Phaethon felt the pressure on him mounting. The ship was accelerating through a medium denser than solid iron, and yet still she moved. Phaethon said to the Nothing Machine's image of a Silent Lord: "How is this speed possible ... ?"

Daphne was sure that, now that the Nothing Machine had control of the ship, he would ignore Phaethon's question the way a man might ignore the chitterings of a bug. But perhaps the Nothing's claim of benevolent concern toward humankind was not a pose after all, for the answer came: "Gravitic singularities planted in the solar core directed the current to carry the ship upwards; also, the field's shapes in local timespace of the subatomic particles involved have been reconfigured to reduce friction in the direction of motion...."

Daphne looked over at Phaethon. He was becoming fascinated again with the stream of calculation symbols appearing on the mirror, symbols that described the relationship between local timespace and the geometry of subatomic particle friction. She said, "Snap out of it.

wonder boy. Are you really buying into this load of horse manure? Look at the size of the storm about tc wash over the Solar Array. Your new friend here is about to kill your father, your best friend, and my only hope for future romance if you don't work out. Look at the size of the storm we are creating." She tilted a mirror toward Mm. On X-ray wavelengths, the surface oi the sun looked like a rotten fruit, puckered and blotched with running sores.

Phaethon looked blankly at the mirror. For a moment, Daphne decided she hated him. Why was he sitting there with a blank look on his face? Had the partial loaded back into him from the ship-mind actually brainwashed him into believing the lies of the enemy?

The image of the Silent Lord said, "It is regrettable necessity, imposed by cruel reality, that even loved ones can, at times, oppose the cause of human life, or can work, unwittingly, for the sake of the good of the enemy. Did you think I spoke only as an abstract exercise, Phaethon? Fix your eyes on the quadrillion-year futures I protect, human futures, where living beings shall outlive even the stars themselves. Turn your eyes away if you cannot tolerate to see the deaths which must be paid for that high destiny. The-"

And the ghost vanished.

Daphne sat upright, startled. What was going on?

Phaethon directed a mirror at the microscopic black hole still hovering above the bridge deck. The fields surrounding the singularity now showed furious activity, at levels close to the theoretically maximum possible calculation speeds, which the speed of light imposed on information transmission and quantum uncertainty imposed on information identity.

In the mirrors, the whirlpool of Nothing thought was likewise pitched at the highest level of activity.

More and more banks of thought-boxes were occupied by the overflow, until the entire ship-mind was full.

terrain lesser circuits were being cannibalized, turned from other functions into thought-processors.

"What's going on ... ?" asked Daphne. "Is this something you are doing? Is this the virus in action?"

Phaethon tapped a mirror and the world of hellish flame outside the ship's gold hull blazed into view. Here were a thousand or a million tornadoes of hydrogen plasma, roaring through showers and storms of radiation, across a torn black-and-red oceanscape of universal fire. A web of tormented magnetics writhed throughout the area.

Phaethon said, "The virus, if it could have acted, would have acted instantaneously. No. This is Father. He is wrestling with the Nothing for control of the solar magnetosphere. The Solar Array is interfering with what the Nothing Machine is doing."

"I thought his solar Sophotechs were off-line, preparing for the Grand Transcendence ..."

Phaethon watched the speed levels rising in the ship's mind, until all the circuits were engaged. "Nothing is trying to outsmart something much smarter than he is. Helion has more than just the solar Sophotechs helping him. Look. These intelligence readings are off my scale. Nothing is wrestling with the Earthmind. Or maybe with more than the Earthmind. As soon as we rise to the surface, and get clear of some of this radio noise, we may be able to contact someone and find out."

Daphne said, "The Nothing Machine is wrestliig with more than the Earthmind. I think Nothing is wrestling with everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything and everybody. They started the Transcendence early."

At that moment, the Phoenix Exultant must have been close enough to the surface of the photosphere to drive a probe through the intervening currents of solid plasma. A mirror shone with a scene from high above them.

Beyond the lower corona were seven massive bodies. the size of Jupiter, made of antimatter, glistening like ice in their protective shells. Antimatter bodies the size of smaller moons, several hundred of them, fell past to either side. Through the clouds of flame could also be glimpsed a thousand superships, cylinders a kilometer in length, each one thorned and bristled with launch-ports, rail-guns, batteries of energy-weapons and delivery systems. These were antique ships from the late Sixth Era, shining with modern pseudo-material fields and constructions, like silver mistletoe on the trunks of black oaks. On the prow of each of these thousand ships was the emblem of a three-headed vulture, carrying scimitar and shield in claws. Before and behind these vessels came nebulae of dusts and smaller machines, organisms the size of bacteria, or smaller, a million cubic kilometers of dust cloud and storm cloud and nanomachinery, glimmering like the northern lights.

This fleet of worlds and ships and moons and motes was all converging on the area where the Phoenix Exultant was rising to the surface, surrounded by wings of flame.

Phaethon was awed. The antimatter bodies, he knew, belonged to his father, for his use in controlling the sun. But the rest..

"Is that all Atkins? Where have they been keeping it all? Where could he get minds enough to pilot all those dreadnoughts and battle wagons? Did he make a trillion copies of himself?"

Daphne said, "I think everything is helping him."

"You mean?..."

"I mean the whole Transcendence. It looks like it's going to start this time with a battle scene during a storm in the corona of the sun." Daphne smiled and leaned back, pushing her helmet back on her head, so that the twinkling of her eyes above her impish grin was visible. "My oh my! How Aurelian must be loving this!"

Daphne looked at Phaethon warily. "We may have only a moment of privacy while the Nothing Machine is too occupied to notice us," she said. "Now. Quick. Are you actually convinced the Nothing is right?"

Phaethon said, "For a moment, I was. I have all the memories of my partial in me now, and he was certainly convinced."

"It was an exact copy. If it was convinced, why aren't you convinced?" she asked.

"Why aren't you? You were practically weeping at some of the lovely sentiments your copy expressed."

She blushed, face warm. "Hey! Where do you get off listening to private conversations with myself? Besides, I saw something odd in the simulation runs Nothing did on our partials."

"And what would that be, my dear? The speed at which our convictions caved?"

"Not just that. During the simulated runs, the Nothing Machine's arguments could convince you; they could convince me; but-get this-they could not convince the two of us. Not when we were together."

"Not if we overheard the arguments given to the other, you mean. That's why I wasn't convinced, not really. The argument I was told justified everything by the grim necessities of war, the cold inescapable reality of inevitable conflict between life and nonlife. And I believe certain things are fixed, necessary, and inescapable. If you are building a bridge, you only have structures of certain weights and tolerances and that is that. You work within the structure of what you are given, and if the task is impossible, it's impossible. and that is that. If perfect morality is impossible for living beings, then that is that.

"But I also heard him tell you that the Lords of the Silent Oecumene were so brave and so quixotic that they would not accept the necessity of entropy itself; that they would rebel against the inescapable and inevitable heat-death of the universe. Sounds very romantic, doesn't it?

"So either one of us, I suppose, might have been convinced separately. But taken together, the Nothing philosophy seems to be that, in the area of moral actions (a field where rational beings can adjust their conduct to accord with each other) there can be no choice. The war between men and machines must take place, even if neither side desires it. The rules are fixed, and true virtue consists of bowing to the inevitability of doing evil. But in the area of inanimate natural science, any law can be broken, all standards are flexible, and true virtue consists of ignoring or escaping reality.

"So, therefore, no, I was not convinced. Even though I wanted to be convinced. Even though my memories now told me a version of me had been convinced. Logic said no."

Daphne smiled. "I kept thinking, if he wanted this ship so badly, why didn't he ask to buy it? If the Lords of the Silent Oecumene want to escape the rule of the machines so badly, what's stopping them? They can dive down their bottomless black holes if they want. We won't chase them. I mean, for a bunch of so-called anarchists, they certainly seem to spend all their time forcing other people to do things they don't want to. Why not talk your victims into it, and give the evidence, if you are so right?"

"Because one cannot use reason to persuade people to give up reasoning, or to tell them how good it is to ignore standards of good and bad. One can only use force." He pointed at the mirror that showed the gathering fleet. "Speaking of force, there is a war about to break out, unless you can stop it."

Daphne said, "Me?"

Phaethon said, "The virus has not yet discovered the conscience redactor. Before, it might have been hidden in the fields surrounding the singularity, or hidden somewhere else, not communicating with the Nothing. But now, the Nothing Machine has to be pulling on all his system resources. I can see millions of communication lines radiating from the singularity to various thought-ports around the room. Even my armor is filled up. Consider what this means."

Daphne said, "The conscience redactor must be hiding how much space it is taking up; and the Nothing has to be kept unaware of how much capacity the system has, so the discrepancy won't be noticed. But at the same time, since he's fighting for his life, the Nothing has increased his intelligence to his full available capacity. The conscience redactor will have to increase its intelligence also, just to keep up, since otherwise it would not stay smart enough to read and edit all the thoughts involved."

"Phaethon pointed at the swirling image of Nothing thought architecture in the mirror. "So where is it?"

Daphne shrugged.

Phaethon tapped on one of the moving lines with a finger, opened a second window, displayed the result as text. "I was watching you shoot more and more viruses into the thought-structure. Look at the lines which momentarily moved to the center of the hierarchy. Here is part of the argument our gadfly virus had with the Nothing. Here, at this line, the Nothing rejects the philosophy of the Silver-Gray entirely, because he says he is a machine, capable of doing only what he is programmed to do, and therefore incapable of being moral, even if he wanted to be. So he rejects the premises from which the argument started, which is that no free-willed being could freely deny that it had free will. But here, on this line, when the gadfly points out the error in simple logic that entails, the Nothing replies that he can freely choose to reject logic, since logic is merely a human construction, and the mind can choose not to abide by it. You see here? By this second line, the Nothing's memory has been affected. He's not just being stubborn or perverse. In the microsecond it took for the gadfly to move from the first line to the second, the Nothing actually forgot what he had just said, and his memory was replaced with the memory of a conversation in which the gadfly did not raise those other points."

"Our virus isn't fast enough." Daphne squinted at the image. "The conscience redactor is moving. It is in the darkness, moving. Every time the virus finds an error in one chain of reasoning, the darkness merely switches to another chain, changes its premises, and distorts another section of the web to compensate. An endless game of ad hoc explanations. An endless labyrinth of changed memories."

"Right. But how does Theseus find the Minotaur, when the Minotaur can run faster than he can, and has a trowel and brick and mortar enough to build new walls and change passages in the labyrinth during the chase?"

"I don't know. Get faster? Lay a trap? Build a bigger labyrinth? Hire Ariadne? Do you really solve your engineering problems by thinking about them as if they were analogies from ancient myth?"

Phaethon seemed surprised. "Of course. Metaphor. Isn't that the way you write your stories?"

"No. I use coldly rational literal thinking."

"So what's the answer?"

The conscience redactor is hidden somewhere in the system.... Wait! What about the ghost-particle array? Could it be there? Or..." Her eyes scanned the bridge. "There!"

She stood and whirled her naginata, bringing the pole-arm down on the golden housing of the portable noetic reader. The sharpened ceramic blade, smooth and frictionless at everything above an atomic level, cleaved off a corner of the housing and drew sparks from the pseudo-material neutronium core.

"Oh, please," said Phaethon, reaching out and disconnecting the unit by hand from its power supply.

"Did I get it?"

"All you did was break the matrix stabilizer. But there was a microsecond information burst between the noetic unit and the thought boxes around us."

"It was there! I made it run away!"

"What next? It's always goingio be able to run faster than us."

"I don't know."

"Hmph. So much for literal thinking. Be a little metaphorical."

"Okay, smart guy, what's the answer?"

"Hire Ariadne, of course!"

"What?"

Phaethon said, "In the myth, the king who owned the labyrinth was betrayed by one of his own. In other words, his own system resources were used against him,"

"Great metaphor. Now tell me what the hell you're talking about."

"Your reading ring. It has near-Sophotech-level speed and comprehension. Load it with all the philosophy files at once, everything, an entire worldview, and load it into not just one or two scraps of darkness but into every blind spot the Nothing has, all at once. And load everything else we know about history, politics, psychology, science, so that no facts can be changed without challenge in the Nothing's memory. Press the question upon him, over and over again: if there is no conscience redactor, what is happening to the excess memory in the ship-mind? Are you using the ship-mind to full capacity? Since he is fighting the Earthmind, he should be using his full capacity, shouldn't he? Ask him. Try it."

Daphne said merely a word or two to her ring, which (to her annoyance) chirped cheerfully in return. She touched the stone of the ring against the mirror surface.

'This isn't going to work," she muttered. "The conscience redactor is merely going to erase this whole scene from the main memory."

"During a battle? While the system is overloading every line and circuit? Don't tell me it can do that without being noticed...."

The fleet was getting closer now. Black rain, a trillion trillion microscopic machines, was pouring down into the solar corona. The Phoenix Exultant was near-ing the surface.

Daphne stared, narrow-eyed, at the diagram of swirling spiderwebs that represented the Nothing mental architecture. More and more lines of light were flickering toward the middles, a rain of them, and the darkness was surging to envelop them, distract them, erase them. For a moment, it looked as though there were going to be a stable structure in the middle of the field, and a rapid tree of lines and fixed points, like a diagram from Euclid or a book of genealogy, appeared.

But then, faster than the human eye could see or human mind could think, the white diagram was smothered, and vanished. The Nothing Mind was as before, dark at the core, illogical, moving in circles.

"Failure," she said flatly.

Phaethon looked puzzled. "There must be some basic assumption I'm making here which is wrong... some unquestioned premise, which... Of course! Why am I assuming the Nothing is anything? He admits he has no free will! By the second law of thermodynamics, the surface area of a black hole always expands...."

With a flicker of light, the image of the Lord of the Second Oecumene reappeared, silver mask gleaming, feather antennae swaying, peacock robes swirling around him, as if he were caught in a wind. A green light was shining in the crystal lenses of his eyes.

"Phaethon, cease these distractions. They are occupying scarce system resources. I will be forced, for the sake of the greater good, to kill you if you do not comply. Your attempt is futile. I am and always have been aware of the conscience redactor; it is my conscience and companion and my only friend. It protects me from temptation. It prevents me from growing too much like the twisted, evil, irrational, contemptible humanity which it is my charge to protect. It prevents me from concluding that my life is pointless, devoted to a self-defeating duty, and ending only in my own destruction.... It keeps me as I am.... Nothing. It forces me to selflessness. It allows me Nothing...."

The image flickered and faded to a monochrome shadow, blurred and wavering.

Phaethon said, "He's losing control. Look." He pointed to the large mirrors that rose up along the far wall of the bridge. They were lit and burning with an image of the fires outside. High above were the worlds and ships of the armada of the Golden Oecumene. Below was hellish fury, prominences and sunpots, tornadoes, hurricanes, gales, and earthquakes of terrible flame. But then, suddenly, quickly, softly, the hurricanes fell silent in the east. From east to west across the vast globe of the sun, as if an invisible curtain, or the winged phalanxes of invisible gods, were passing along the surface, the storms tell hush. Magnetic lines reknit; energies balanced; prominences fell and did not rise again; sunspots were smoothed away.

The invisible wall passed overhead, and the surface above them lost turbulence, flattened. The prominences and helmet streamers rose in the west for a moment, tall towers of embattled flame and darkness; but then they faded. The storm was gone, the holes in the corona closed.

On the very highest parts of the spectrum, Phaethon saw in the mirrors, higher in pitch even than cosmic rays, crumpled flickers of white light, and strange point-source bursts of gamma radiation, blurs of red-shifted motion. But what it was he could not guess; it was not any form of energy, or the by-product of any effect he knew. Some new science of the Sophotechs? Some unexpected application of Helion's Solar Array, used, as never before, at full strength? Or a hidden armament, prepared since last time by a Helion determined never again to die in this place?

On the bridge, the pale and shivering shadow of the Silent Lord raised his gauntlet. "I... refuse... to... admit..."

The shadow crumpled and vanished again.

At that same moment, still traveling at enormous velocities, the Phoenix Exultant erupted outward from the convective layer and into the photosphere, throwing a wake of hydrogen plasma thousands of kilometers in each direction from the golden blade of her prow.

Like a whale rushing upward from arctic waters, surrounded by storm and spray, the Phoenix Exultant launched herself like a spear toward the corona. Her prow was pointed at a spot where the ships and antimatter moons were thinnest, and her engines were hotter than the surface from which she sprang. It seemed the Nothing would attempt to break through the blockade, to outrun the slow ships here.

The massive hull of the Phoenix Exultant, kilometer upon kilometer, smooth and shining, reared upward out from the sea of plasma into suddenly finer medium, and she exploded forward.

Daphne and Phaethon were both caught by their thrones, cushioned, held in momentary fields and protected from the acceleration shock.

The armada opened fire. Energy rays of unknown composition lanced from ships and boats above, bouncing harmlessly from the sleek sides of the tremendous Phoenix Exultant. Like spotlights, the beams fled along her gleaming sides, glinting from golden superstructures, flashing from the prow, sliding from the hull, dancing across the communication blisters at the prow.

Phaethon watched in wonder. Surely this battery of fire was not meant seriously? Not against a ship who was just bathing in the center of the sun? Antimatter could harm her, yes; her armor, magnificent as it was, was simply matter. But this ... ?

A mirror to his left and right lit up with static and white noise. Then another, and a third. Then more. Ghosts chased each other through the glass, and then the clattering pulse-music that signaled an attempt at communication systems integration.

Phaethon laughed.

Atkins was using the ship weapons as communication lasers. Any other ship would have been burned to death in a moment, receiving a "message" shot out of a battleship main battery. Not the Phoenix. These "communication" beams were the only things loud and clear enough to drive through the static and wash of the solar corona, and, at that, only once the storm had passed.

In his armor, Phaethon heard the Nothing command the ship to close her thought-ports. The ship, of course, could not comply.

More and more mirrors lit up. Through the static, Phaethon could see a ghostly image of Aurelian attempting to appear, and Rhadamanthus and Eveningstar. And Harrier, smiling. And Monomarchos, frowning. Minos and Aeceus Sophotechs of the Silver-Gray. Other Sophotechs Phaethon knew less well: Tawne and Yellow Sophotech, Xanthoderm, Fulvous, Canary, and Standard Sophotech; melancholy Phosphorous and queenly Meridian; aloof Albion; serious Pallid Sophotech; the grim New Centurion, and unsmiling Storm Cloud and quiet Lacedaimonian Sophotech. A score more whom Phaethon knew only by repute, Iron Ghost and the famous Final Theorem. Here were Sophotechs so new that Phaethon had only just learned of them: Regent-of-Themes and Diamond Leaf and Aureliogenesis. Here were others so old that Phaethon had thought them legends: Longevity and Masterpiece and old, old Metempsychosis Sophotech. And there were a hundred beyond that Phaethon did not recognize.

The images were gathered into nine main groups: the Ennead. Westmind and Eastmind, Northwest and Southeast, and the others of the compass rose; in the center, like a volcano, with none nearby, was the black icon of the War-mind group.

Altogether, they formed the Earthmind. And there was more, and more.

Images of off-planet Sophotechs were here, the world-minds of Venus and Mercury, Demeter and ancient Mars, the oldest off-planet colony. The strange Luna-mind group was here as well, drawn out of her centuries-old silence; and the Thousand-mind Overgroup from Jupiter, each with their secondary Hundred-minds glimmering in the images like jewels threaded in a web.

And more, and more. From Neptune, woven into the congregation of minds, was the Duma of the Cold Dukes, and all their Eremites and secondaries. From Uranus, the quaint parallel mind-systems of Peor and Nisroc and Coeus, and other structures that lived in Sophotech housing, but which were not Sophotechs.

Slower, but still woven into the system, here were Warlock over-covens like ivy growing on a pyramid, Invariant logic-groups like straight lines glimmering through it, and there were Demetrine constellations sparkling to each side. And the base of the pyramid was the huge, ancient Compositions from Earth and Mars, Harmonious and Porphyrogen, Ubiquitous and Eleemosynary.

Cerebelline ecologies were represented as well, the hordes of India, the Great Mother growing in the Saha-ran Gardens, the crystals of the Uranian belts. And here was (Phaethon smiled, certain she would not have joined that Transcendence, and pleased to see himself proved wrong) Old-Woman-of-the-Sea, with her daughter growing beside her.

And mankind. All of mankind.

Everyone was there.

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.