"'We'... ?"
Phaethon drew a deep breath. He thought about this mighty ship of bis, and the mighty dream that had inspired it. He thought of all he had been willing to leave behind him-wife, father, home. He wondered what duty, if any, he had running to that society which had, because of that dream, ostracized and exiled him.
He asked, "Marshal-honestly, do you have any ship, any vehicle at all, which might be able to make a ran into the outer core of a middle-sized sun? Any weapon which can reach there? Any way to hunt this monster if I do not lend my Phoenix Exultant to you?"
"The only weapon I have which could reach there would take sixty years to finish its firing action, and it would probably snuff out the sun in the process. That would not be my first choice."
"Then it is 'we' after all."
"Well. I'm not sure I want to take you into a fight. We could just-"
"No. I saw how badly you played me when you were me. I think you need the real me to run this ship properly. I will ready the ship for flight. But-" Now Phaethon raised his hand. "But I want no part of the killing which will need to be done! I will be there as I was here, hidden in a dog, perhaps, or under a couch. I will bring you to the battlefield, Marshal, but no more. I will do what needs to be done, but war is not my work. I have other plans for my life and other dreams for this ship."
Atkins said grimly, "If you do what's needed, that's fine. I didn't expect more from you."
Diomedes raised a finger, and said, "I hate to be an obstructionist, but we do not have legal title to the ship at the moment. I realize that it is quite heroic and graceful, in the operas, for invigilators and knights-errant merely to seize whatever they need whenever they wish, or to just steal golden fleeces, other men's wives, parked motor carriages, or communal thoughtspace as the emergency justifies. But this is not an opera."
Atkins said to Diomedes, "The threat is real, the need is present. If we can't use this ship, what do you suggest we do?"
"Me? I would steal the ship, of course! But, after all, I am a Neptunian, and when my friends send infected files to corrupt my memory or make me drunk, I take it as a joke. A little random vandalism can do a man a world of good. But you? I thought you Inner System people were filled with nothing but endless respect for every nuance of the law. Have you become Neptunians?"
Phaethon raised his hand, "The point is moot. As pilot of the ship, my instructions from the owner allow me to refuel under what circumstances and conditions I deem necessary. I hereby deem it necessary. Tell the crew to disembark, and that I am taking the ship for a practice run down below the surface of the sun."
Diomedes smiled. "You are asking me to lie? I thought, in these days, with so many noetic machines at hand, that type of thing was out of fashion."
"I am asking you to trick them. You are a Neptunian, after all, are you not?"
Diomedes had gone off to oversee the disembarkation and mass migration of the crew. He had been more than amused by the fact that, in a human body, he could not merely send parts or applications of himself away to do the work. And so he had gone away across the bridge deck, seeking the bathhouse on the lower level of the carousel, to find a dreaming-pool from which he could make telerepresentations. He had gone skipping and leaping and running, much as a little boy might go, having never before been in a body that could skip, or leap, or run.
The energy mirrors to the left and right displayed the status of the great ship as she prepared herself for flight, redistributing masses among the fuel cells, preparing the drive core, erecting cross-supports both titanic and microscopic, putting some decks into hibernation, dismantling or compressing others.
These procedures were automatic. Phaethon and Atkins sat at the wide wood-and-ivory table, both reluctant to bring up the topic on which they both, no doubt, were dwelling.
It was Atkins who broke the embarrassed silence.
Atkins took out from his pouch two memory cards, and slid them with his fingers across the smooth surface of the table toward Phaethon. "Here," Atkins said. "These might as well be yours, if you want them."
Phaethon looked at the cards without touching them. A description file appeared in his sense filter. They contained the memories Atkins had suffered when he had been possessed by Phaethon's personality. He was offering, in effect, that Phaethon could graft the memories into his own, so that the events would seem to Phaethon as if they had happened to him, and not to someone else.
Phaethon's face took on a hard expression. He looked skeptical, and perhaps a little sad, or bored, or hurt. He put out his hand as if to slide the cards back to Atkins without comment, but then, to his own surprise, he picked them up and turned them over.
The summary viewer in the card surface lit up, and Phaethon watched little pictures and dragon signs flow by.
He put the card down. "With all due respect, Marshal, this was not a good depiction of me. I don't wish for a weapon in my hands the first thing when I wake up in confusion, I can do rapid astronomical calculations in my head, and I would have been very interested, and I still am, in the technical details of the ghost-particle array Xenophon built."
Atkins said, "I just thought it would be nice if-" And then he stopped.
Atkins was not a very demonstrative man. But Phaethon suddenly had an insight into his soul. The person who had defied the Silent One on the bridge of the Phoenix Exultant, the person who had had Phaethon's memories but Atkins's instincts, had been denied the right to live, and had been erased, replaced by Atkins when Atkins's memories were automatically restored.
And Atkins did not necessarily want that person, that false-Phaethon, that little part of himself, entirely to die.
Phaethon thought about his sire. A very similar thing had happened to Helion once. And it was not, perhaps, uncommon in the Golden Oecumene. But it had never happened to Phaethon before. No one had ever wanted to be him and stay him before.
And that Phaethonized version of Atkins, with Daphne's name on his lips at the last moment of existence, had passed away, still crying out that he wanted to remain as he was.
Phaethon said, "I'm sorry."
Atkins snorted, and said in voice of bitter amusement: "Spare me your pity."
"I only meant... it must be difficult for you ... for any man ... to realize that, if he were someone else, he would not necessarily desire to be himself again."
"I'm used to it. I found out a long time ago, that everyone wants an Atkins to be around if there's trouble, but no one wants to be Atkins. It's just one more little thing I have to do."
Phaethon's imagination filled in the rest of the sentence: "... in order to keep the rest of you safe."
The picture in Phaethon's mind was of a solitary man, unthanked and scorned by the society for which he fought, who, because he was devoted to protecting a Utopia, could himself enjoy few or none of its pleasures. The picture impressed him deeply, and an emotion, shame or awe or both, came over him.
Atkins spoke in a low voice: "If you don't want those memories, Phaethon, destroy them. I have no use for them. But I have to say not all the emotions and instincts that went on were mine. Those weren't my instincts talking."
"I am not sure I understand your meaning, sir.... ?"
Atkins leaned back in his chair and looked at Phaethon with a careful, hard, judicious expression. He said in an icy-calm tone of voice: "I only met her but once. I was impressed. I liked her. She was nice. But. To me, she was no more than that. I certainly would not have turned back from the most important mission in my life for her. And I wouldn't break the law for her, and I wouldn't have tried to ruin my life when I lost her the first time. But I'm not you, am I? Think about it."
Atkins stood up. "If you need me, I'll be in the medical house, preparing myself for the acceleration burn. If the War-mind calls, put it through to me there." And he turned on his heel smartly and marched off.