"Waiting to be brought out again.
"Waiting, suspended, because the alternative was slow degeneration and decay. It was our oldest custom: to orbit adjacent to our black hole any who were sick beyond hope until a cure could be found. Our society was sick and getting sicker.
"The Nothing had to kill itself in order that no Sophotechnology would be present to tempt them when they reemerged. There will be no further immortality, not for them.
"Instead, there will be a ship, a ship like no other.
Not a spaceship, not a multigeneration ship, but a starship.
"She will be a starship loaded with equipment and biological materials enough to bring life to the dead habitats, palaces, and worldlets of the Silent Oecumene. A starship with an engineer aboard skilled enough to rebuild and restart the silent singularity fountains. And, with the energy of those fountains, a starship with power and with ship-mind circuitry enough to recall the noumenal signals which hold the souls of all my people up out of the warped space near the black hole. A star-ship to be the first model, and the flagship, of the fleet of ships to be made from her design; a fleet no one here has wealth or vision enough to build.
"When my Oecumene fell silent, only I was left behind to carry this message. Think of me as both the messenger and the message, the mental virus, the self-reproducing belief system, which had to be imposed upon the peoples of the Second Oecumene; because they were people who would not and could not otherwise have understood this plan, which was the only hope of humanity against the all-embracing tyranny of machines.
"They fought, some of them. Till the very last, I, Ao Varmatyr, the one of me who made the Last Broadcast, struggled against the part of me that was this thought virus with horror. Until I was told the plan, until I understood.
"And yes, the most grotesque imaginable violence was used against us to put the information of this plan into our brains. But I do not blame the Nothing Mentality for that; it was a machine, built to carry out orders, and it was ordered to use force, not to persuade.
"But the plan was wise despite all that.
"Our only possible action was to wait, until some ship or signal reached us from someone curious enough to inquire into the pretended death of the Silent Oecumene. I was not discovered by the Sophotech-run fly-by probes, of course not; I hid. I was waiting for a signal from someone who was not ruled by the machines. That someone was Xenophon, alone in his isolated, but free, Farbeyond Station. He was the spark. In his memory I saw the fire from which that spark had come. A fire of the spirit; a man with means and will and wit enough to go to the Silent Oecumene, to wake those waiting there, to become the captain of that promised fleet.
"You, Phaethon, are the one for whom the Silent Oecumene has been waiting. You share our dreams of freedom; you are one of us. Only you can save us; only we, the children of colonists ourselves, will embrace your dream, a dream of human life spread everywhere among the stars, a dream that all others will despise, oppose, and strangle.
"You thought you were alone, good Phaethon. You thought no one else dreamed what you dreamed or loved what you loved. You were mistaken. There are a billion of us. We are waiting for you.
"Fly your ship to Cygnus X-l. Save the Second Oecumene. Father a million million Oecumenes more."
Phaethon examined the blue pool of motionless Neptunian body substance. His noetic machine could not interpret the meanings of the electron flows of the cell surfaces in the creature's neurocircuitry, could not resolve them into thought. He had a subsystem in his armor correlating the Silent One's words with its brain actions, seeking patterns, in an attempt to learn how to decipher those thoughts. Even a partial deciphering would have allowed him to do something analogous to reading the face expressions of Base humaniforms, or watching the insect agitation in a Cerebelline gardener, and guess at the emotions or the honesty of his prisoner.
But there was no result yet. The Silent One was opaque. Phaethon sent: "And what should I do with you now?"
"Keep me or kill me as you please. My mission, and the need of my life, is complete. You are now at the helm of the Phoenix Exultant, I ask only that you depart, without delay, before your Sophotechs attempt to stop you; that you travel to Cygnus X-l; that you save my people and scatter mankind among the stars. What is my life compared to that? But I think you are suspicious of me still." "Shouldn't I be?"
"Your disorientation is understandable. You came here expecting danger and violence from me; instead, I have handed you the crown of victory. Pause not! Wait for nothing! Do not delay, but go!"
Was it victory? Phaethon was beginning to find his suspicions hard to maintain. Supposing the story told by Xenophon and the ghost possessing him to be false, what would be the point of such falsehood? Was there a Silent Phoenix, an enemy spaceship waiting somewhere, waiting for Xenophon to lead Phaethon into an ambush? It seemed unlikely. The Phoenix Exultant could achieve 99 percent of light-speed after three days of acceleration at ninety gravities. Who could intercept such a vehicle in the vastness of deep space? And what weapon could penetrate her hull? Antimatter could breach the hull, of course, but not without destroying everything held within.
And yet if destruction of the Phoenix was Xenophon's goal, why not simply sell the vessel to Gannis for scrap? Where else could an ambuscade wait if not in deep space? Perhaps at the Silent Oecumene itself, at Cygnus X-l. It was hard to imagine a person (but not hard to imagine a machine intelligence) waiting the decades and centuries it might take to lure a victim into a trap. But what assurance would Xenophon imagine he had that Phaethon would actually go there?
Unless the story were true. Unless Xenophon, or the ghost of Ao Varmatyr, was simply so desperate, so convinced of the malice of the Golden Oecumene Sophotechs, that he had risked everything on the hope that Phaethon would be so curious, and so compassionate, and so eager for the future which Varmatyr envisioned, a future of a thousand Phoenices founding a million worlds, that Phaethon would certainly go to Cygnus X-l.
But if the story were actually true, then it was not an ambush. There would be no trap at Cygnus X-l, only a grateful population who needed rescuing, and who would have at hand the resources to create the Phoenix fleet.
Phaethon thought about it. The Silent Oecumene would have the resources, in fact, to create a fleet which would begin the long-dreamt-of and long-delayed great diaspora of man throughout the universe; a diaspora which would never end as long as the stars still burned.
The vision was a stirring one. Yet it did not touch Phaethon as deeply as he would have thought. Perhaps he was more suspicious, more conscious of his duty, than he had ever known himself to be before.
Because he did have a duty here.
Phaethon signaled to the bridge crew to change the course of the Phoenix Exultant. In the energy mirrors, stars swam dizzyingly from left to right, and the great ship's prow came about. The deck seemed to tilt as side accelerations played across the vessel.
The Silent One sent: "What is your decision? What new course is this?"
"I am returning to the Inner System. Naturally, you will have to stand to account for your crimes. No matter what your motives, good motives do not excuse bad acts, nor ends justify means."
The Silent One sent: "You are deluded. I have explained the situation; if you continue in your present course, you will be betrayed by the Sophotechs. Think about what I have said! No other tale explains the facts! The Sophotechs conspire against you; your failure is part of their calculation. Don't your own suspicions, your own desires, tell you that what I say is true?"