La Edad De Oro (80 page)

Phaethon recoiled in disgust. Silver-Gray protocols forbade the duplication and editing of other people’s personalities, whether their copyrights were lapsed or not. Obviously the constituent members of a mass-mind would have less than perfect respect for the mental integrity of individuals.

“I think we have nothing to say to each other, sir,” said Phaeton coldly.

“You reject our offer to negotiate?”

“My soul is not for sale, thank you.”

The Chimera stepped backward, its three heads glancing at each other in puzzled surprise. “Your every word displays you as a self-centered man; yet now, when you are penniless, you reject unimaginable fortune! Surely you do not pretend you serve some higher cause or fine ideal, not when all of society, all civilization, opposes you? How can you be so certain?”

Phaethon smiled in contempt and shook his head. “You should ask rather, what cause have I for doubt? For every question I ask, I am answered with lies, illusions, and amnesia. These are not weapons honest men are wont to use; you use them; the logical implication from this is hardly that I am the one who is in the wrong, is it?”

“You will not give us the benefit of the doubt?”

“Certainly. By straining the generosity of my imagination, I am willing to entertain the possibility that you all are merely cowards rather than scoundrels.”

“Yet you consented to the Lakshmi Agreement. You now seek to circumvent it. Is this honest?”

“I have not seen this alleged agreement, do not remember it, and do not know its terms. The version of me who agreed is the version you and yours wanted erased! If I have broken it, feel free to attempt to take me to court. If not, then kindly mind your own affairs.”

“No one says the Agreement has been broken, merely circumvented.” The Chimera made a delicate gesture with one hand. “You seek to defeat the intent of the Agreement, even if you live up to its terms.”

“Your point being?”

“Acts can be dishonorable and still be legal.”

“That is true, but I am surprised you have the gall to say that to my face.”

Two heads blinked in confusion. The snake stuck out its tongue. “Gall?”

Phaethon said, “Hypocrisy might be a better word. Or impertinence. You dare to stand there and tell me it is dishonorable for me to circumvent an agreement which you have not just circumvented but broken and ignored!”

“We have broken no law.”

“Hah! The Agreement was that everyone would forget whatever it was that I had done. But so far I have not met a single person who does not remember! Are all the Peers above the law, or is it only Helion, Gannis, and you? No, excuse me, Wheel-of-Life also is ignoring the Agreement; it was she who detected my presence at Destiny Lake and informed Helion.”

“The Agreement provisions allowed to the Peers an exception. The redacted memories are permitted to us when they are directly pertinent to the conduct of our interest and efforts, or for other reasons of public need.”

“But not to me, not even when I need those memories to defend my interests in a lawsuit?”

“The exception provision does not extend to you. That was not a point for which you negotiated.”

Phaethon thought this might be another clue as to what his original self had intended.

But he said: “I am more confused than ever about this alleged Agreement. It seems, at best, poorly put together. If you did not want me to even investigate my loss of memory, once I had discovered my memory was gone, why didn’t you make that one of the provisions in the Agreement?”

“Frankly, that idea that you would become curious about your missing memory was never seriously discussed. The Agreement provisions were put together rather hastily.”

“But surely the Sophotech lawyers drafting the Agreement ran predictive scenarios of every possible outcome, didn’t they? They must have foreseen possible problems. That’s what Sophotechs are for.”

“No Sophotech was involved.”

“What? What do you mean? I thought Nebuchednezzar Sophotech advised the Hortators.”

“Nebuchednezzar had an extension present on Venus, but refused to aid the Hortators in this case. The College of Hortators proceeded without Sophotech help, and drafted the Agreement themselves.”

Phaethon fell silent a moment. He was not certain how to take this. The famous Nebuchednezzar Sophotech refused to advise the Hortators? Refused?

According to the diary memory files Daphne had shown him, Daphne had spoken with Helion in a sane period between his eternally repeated self-immolation. During that conversation, Helion had expressed frustration that Aurelian was not cooperating with the Lakshmi Agreement.

The same diary file had also shown him her memory (when she had been leaving the dream-weaving competition) of the Aurelian Sophotech criticizing the Hortators. Aurelian had spoken of the attempted mass amnesia with jocular contempt.

And the Earthmind, whose time was so precious that She hardly ever paused to speak to anyone, had paused to speak to him, asking him to stay true to himself. Not what one would say to someone to make them content with false memories.

And… and what had he—the forgotten version of him—what had he been relying on when he made the Lakshmi Agreement in the first place? What had made him so certain?

Then, a feeling like a light began to rise up in him. He could not help but smile. “Tell me, my dear Composition, your very structure makes it impossible for you to hide thoughts in one part of yourself from other parts, isn’t that true?”

“There are forms of mental hierarchies which control internal information flow; but Compositions are democratic and isonomial.”

“The Transcendence in December, when all available human minds will gather to decide what must be decided about the coming millennium… it is just another form of Composition, isn’t it? A temporary one…?”

“If you are thinking of using the Transcendence as a podium from which to denounce the Peerage to the rest of mankind, you will be disappointed, I fear. While there are no official controls on information flows, there are informal controls, social controls. Few people heed the ravings of an outcast; everyone’s attention will be focused on those people who are central to public attention…”

“In other words, the Peers. Just now you offered me a central place in the Transcendence. Helion’s place, I assume. So, if I refuse, he will be honored by having crowds of visitors flood through his brain.”

“You express it crudely. His thoughts, dreams, and visions will swell to encompass wide audiences…”

“And in his thoughts are the knowledge of what I did. So if I’m in the audience…” His smile grew broader.

The Chimera stood stock-still, as if stunned. Then it began to shrink. Evidently the icon was no longer the center of the mass-mind’s attention. The Eleemosynary Composition was consumed with higher-priority thought.

Phaethon was wreathed in smiles. He said, “Maybe Nebuchednezzar refused to advise the Hortators because what they planned was so stupid. So self-defeating. The Peers could not resist the temptation to open their forbidden memories. After all, you had to know what it was that I had done in order to defend against it, didn’t you? In order to prevent me from stumbling across it again, didn’t you?

“If all of you redact your memories again, in time to hide all your thoughts before December, then I’ll have a free hand, unobserved, unopposed, to continue to investigate my past. There’s plenty of evidence floating around, including records which cannot legally be edited or altered, such as finance records or property contracts. If I spent my fortune, there must be a record about what I spent it to buy.

“You can make me forget what I did. But you cannot make it so that it never had happened. That’s the whole paradox of lies, isn’t it? The problem is that, ultimately, every part of reality is logically connected to every other part. As long as I do not cooperate in my own self-deception, then you cannot lie to me, and reject one part of reality, without trying to reject all of reality.”

Phaethon, seeing the perplexity of the Chimera, had to laugh aloud. “No wonder my past version had not been frightened by this horrible amnesia Agreement! Its downfall is inevitable, like the downfall of every system not based on reality. My victory is and has always been assured. All I have to do is wait until December, and not open the box.”

The Chimera said, “Your plan sounds logical.”

“Thank you.”

“But logic is not paramount in human affairs.”

Phaethon uttered a noise, half snort, half laugh. “It is from hearing comments like that one, sir, that I derive that certainty of mine which was puzzling you earlier. Logic is paramount in all things.”

“Then why did your earlier self consent to the Lakshmi Agreement? If the dangerous project which so obsessed you had actually been your highest concern, you would not have agreed. You speculate that your earlier self had been relying on the December Transcendence to return the lost memories. Your memories are gone for eighteen or nineteen months. But why?”

Phaethon frowned, displeased. “Perhaps I merely needed a vacation, or—”

“You were hoping to avoid the penalties imposed by the Hortators for your negligent behavior. You thought you could deceive them into forgetting your offenses for a time. Isn’t this the same type of deception you have just condemned as illogical?”

“Well, I…” (What had his earlier self been intending, anyway?)

“Does anything prevent the College of Hortators, once they recall your negligence, from publicly condemning the same project they condemned before, and for the same reasons? No, Phaethon, you pretend you are an isolated individual, separate from the world, from society, and able to defy them. But when that separation became a reality, it was you, you Phaethon, who could not accept what that reality was.”

“What do you mean?!”

“It was you who drove your wife to enter a permanent delirium tantamount to suicide.”

“No! I cannot accept that!”

“An odd comment! It must be assumed you do not mean to reject reality, since you have criticized those who do so heavily.” There was a gentle irony to the human head’s tone. The eagle head spoke loudly: “Does this mean there is a plan for recovering your wife?!” The cobra head was quiet: “The Eleemosynary Composition is not without sympathy. We are also not without resources.”

Phaethon grew very still. He spoke in soft, leaden tones: “What are you implying…?”

“This is a cruel and callous society in which we live. Those who cannot pay their housing bills are thrown into the streets. Recorded minds of any type who cannot pay the rentals on their computer brain space are deleted. Those who are trapped permanently in the dreamscapes, who cannot pay the fees that service requires, are cut off, and ejected into reality.

“The Eleemosynary Composition offers to manipulate the stock market by altering the buying habits of that percent of the population which comprises our membership, and by using negotiation, buyouts, and other financial maneuvers to either buy the companies in which Daphne’s stock has been invested, or to ruin the values of those stocks. The Eveningstar Sophotech is serving as investment broker for Daphne; an entity very smart and very accomplished in other fields, but utterly lacking the resources which the Seven Peers can bring to bear.”

It was true. Just in terms of consumer goods alone, the Eleemosynary Composition controlled about one-tenth of the human world gross industrial product.

The Chimera said, “Once Daphne’s stock is bankrupt, Eveningstar will eject her from her dream coffin and into the real world. She will be utterly unable to cope with a reality she has redacted from all memory. She may not be legally competent to govern her own affairs. By virtue of your marriage communion circuit, you hold join copyright ownership on certain of her intellectual properties, including her personality template. At that point, you may be legally able to insert a temporary memory block to redact all recent memories and personality changes; this would not be a personality-edit or alteration. She would simply be restored to the condition she was in before she decided to commit delusion-suicide. She will have the legal right, once she is sane again, to open her redacted memories, and let herself go insane again. But you will be present. You will have an opportunity to persuade her to live in reality.”

Phaethon said nothing. His eyes were wide.

The Chimera said, “Your forgotten project is not the most important thing in life to you. If you agree to cease all investigations into your past, the Eleemosynary Composition will aid you in the fashion we have outlined to recover your wife back to reality and sanity. You should agree not only because you personally shall receive the benefit of her love and gratitude, once she is restored; but also because it is your duty. You are her husband. Your marriage oath requires that you save her.

“You may call the Eleemosynary exchange from any public annex. We will leave you to meditate upon your answer.”

And the Chimera vanished.

Was it cowardice or prudence that made him hesitate? One impulse was to rush to the nearest Eleemosynary agency and throw himself down, begging, weeping, instantly agreeing to anything and everything it took to recover his wife from her horrible exile, her living death of permanent delusion.

Another impulse, more cautious, told him to investigate further.

Certainly the Eleemosynary Composition had not lied. It was true that, these days, very few people (aside from Neptunians) ever even attempted to lie; it was altogether too easy to get caught by all-knowing Sophotechs, too easy for honest men to confirm their statements by public display of their thought records. But it was also true that people could be mistaken, or could indulge in exaggerated (but honest) judgments of relative worth. The Eleemosynary Composition, for example, might judge something to be “difficult” or “impossible” which was not.

Was it impossible for Phaethon to wake his dream-trapped wife? Impossible?

He had to be certain. He had to see for himself.

Phaethon reached for the yellow disk icon floating in the glass of the table surface, the communication channel. It should take only a moment to telepresent himself to the Eveningstar Sophotech who had custody of his wife’s body. But he did not wish to be further observed; all this prying into his life was beginning to annoy him. Even as he reached, with his other hand he gestured the balcony window closed. Immediately, a panel was covering the view, and the sound and light and movement from outside was shut off.