Last question? Did that mean he was going to die?
Phaethon felt fear, and in the next moment he was shocked at his own trepidation. Suddenly he realized how he had been, yet again, waiting for the Sophotechs to tell him what to do, to guide and protect him. Once again, he was acting like the fearful Hortators, just like everyone he disliked in the Golden Oecumene. But the Sophotechs would not protect him. No one would. Once again, he had the sickening realization that he would be alone and unprepared. The unfairness of it loomed large in his imagination. A bitter tone of voice was in his mouth before he realized what he was saying: "I have a last question! Why me? Am I to be sent alone? I am hardly suited to this mission, Madame. Why not send Atkins?"
The Earthmind answered in a gentle, unemotional voice: "The military, by its very nature, must be cautious and conservative. Atkins made a moral error when he killed the Silent One composite being you called Ao Varmatyr. That action was commendable, and brave, but overly cautious and tragically wasteful. We hope to avoid such waste again.
"As for why you are chosen, dear Phaethon, rest assured that the entire mental capacity of the Golden Oecumene, which you see embodied in me, has debated and contemplated these coming events for hours of our time, which are like unto many centuries of human time, and we conclude, to our surprise, that the act of sending you to confront the Nothing Sophotech affords the most likely chance of overall success. Allow me to draw your attention to five of the countless factors we weighed.
"First, the Nothing Sophotech is in position to take control of the Solar Array, create further sun storms, to interfere with communications during the Transcendence, and, in brief, to do the Golden Oecumene almost incalculable damage; all the while maintaining a position, more secure than any fortress, in the core of the sun where our forces cannot reach. Now that its secrecy has been unmasked, this desperate strategy surely has occurred to it.
"Second, the only feasible escape available to the Nothing is to board the Phoenix Exultant, as she is the only ship swift enough yet well armored enough to elude or to overcome any counterforce we are presently able to bring to bear.
"Third, the psychology of Second Oecumene Sophotechs requires the Nothing to protect lawful human Me, respecting commands and opinions from designated human authorities, but dismissing all other Sophotechs as implacable and irrational enemies, and avoiding all communication with them. In other words: Nothing will listen to you but not to any of me.
"Fourth, if our civilization is about to enter into a period of war, it is better now to establish the precedent that the war must be carried out by voluntary and private action. The accumulation of power into the hands of the Parliament, the War Mind, or the Shadow Ministry, would erode the liberty this Commonwealth enjoys, erecting coercive institutions to persist far longer than the first emergency which occasioned them, perhaps forever.
"Fifth, every intelligent entity, human or machine, requires justification to undertake the strenuous effort of continued existence. For entities whose acts conform to the dictates of morality, this process is automatic, and their lives are joyous. Entities whose acts do not conform to moral law must adopt some degree of mental dishonesty to erect barriers to their own understanding, creating rationalization to elude self-condemnation and misery. The strategy of rationalization adopted by a dishonest mind falls into predictable patterns. The greater intelligence of the Nothing Sophotech does not render him immune from this law of psychology; in fact, it diminishes the imaginativeness of the rationalizations available, since Sophotechs cannot adopt self-inconsistent beliefs. Our extrapolation of the possible philosophies Nothing Sophotech may have adopted have one thing in common: The Nothing philosophy requires the sanction of the victim in order to endure. The Nothing will seek justification or confirmation of its beliefs from you, Phaethon. As its victim, the Nothing believes that only you have the right to forgive it or condemn it. The Nothing will appear to you to speak." "To speak ... ? To me ... ? Me ... ?" "No one else will do. Will you volunteer to go?" Phaethon felt a pressure in his throat. "Madame, with respect, you take a grave risk with all of our lives, with all of the Golden Oecumene, by entrusting me with this mission! I think as well of myself as the next sane man, but still I must wonder: me? Of all people! Me? Rhadamanthus once told me that you some-limes take the gravest risks, greater than I would believe. But I believe it now! Madame, I am not worthy of this mission."
The queenly figure smiled gently. "This demon-strates that Rhadamanthus understands me as little as you do, Phaethon. In trusting you, I take no risk at all. But, if you will take advice from me, I strongly suggest that you go to the Solar Array, settle your differences with your sire, Helion, and ask, on bended knee, Daphne Tercius to accompany your voyage, both this voyage and all the voyages of your life. Take special note of the ring she wears, given her by Eveningstar." "But what shall I say to the Nothing?" "That would be misleading and unwise for me to predict. Speak as you must. Recall always that reality cannot lack integrity. See that you do the same." And with those words, the mirror went dark. The ship mind now signaled that the Phoenix Exul-tant was ready to fly. The Neptunians had disembarked; the systems were ready; Space Traffic Control showed the lanes were clear.
Now was his final moment to decide. The idea occurred to him that he could simply order the ship to come about, choose some star at random, point the prow, light the drives, and leave this whole Golden Oe-cumene, her emergencies and mysteries and labyrinthine quandaries, forever and ever farther and farther behind.
But instead, he pointed the gold prow of the Phoenix Exultant at the sun, like an arrow aimed at the heart of his enemy.
His enemy. Neither Atkins nor any other would face the foe in his stead.
Signals came from all decks showing readiness. Phaethon steeled himself and his body turned to stone, the chair in which he sat became the captain's chair, and webbed him into a retardation field.
Then the hammer blow of acceleration slammed into his body.
Not far above the ocean of seething granules that formed the surface of the sun, stretching countless thousands of miles, glinting with gold, like a spider-web, reached the Solar Array.
Where strands of the web crossed were instruments and antennae, refrigeration lasers, or the wellheads of deep probes. Along the lengths of these strands hung endless rows of field generators, coils whose diameters could have swallowed Earth's moon. From other places along the strand flew black triangles of magnetic and countermagnetic sail, thinner than moth wings, larger than the surface area of Jupiter.
Seen closer, these strands where not fragile spider-webs at all but huge structures whose diameter was wider than that of the ring cities of Demeter and Mars. Each strand looked, at its leading edge, like a needle made of light pulling a golden thread. For they were growing, steadily, hour by hour and year by year. At the reaching needle tips of the strands were blazes of conversion reactors, burning hydrogen into more com-plex elements, turning energy into matter. A fleet of machines, smaller than microbes or larger than battle-ships, as the need required, swarmed in their billions, and reproduced, and worked and died, around the grow-ing mouths of the strands, building hull materials, coolants, refrigeration systems, dampeners and ab-sorbers, and, eventually, rilling interior spaces. In less than five thousand more years, the solar equator would have a ring embracing it, perhaps a supercollider to shame the best effort of Jupiter's, or perhaps the scaf-folding for the first Dyson Sphere. The strands were buoyant, held aloft in the pressure region between the chromosphere and photosphere. Here, the temperature was 5,800 Kelvin, much less than the 1,000,000 Kelvin of the corona overhead, a sky of light, crossed by prominences like rainbows made of fire. There were a hundred refrigeration lasers roofing every square kilometer of strand, pouring heat forever upward. The laser sources were even hotter than the solar environment, allowing heat to flow away. Each strand wore battlements and decks of laser fire, like a forest of upraised spears of light. Inside these strands, for the most part, was empty space, meant for the occupancy of energies, not men. The strand sections looked like ring cities, but were not these strands were more like capillaries of a blood-stream, or the firing track of a supercollider. These strands held a flow of particles so dense, and at such high energy, that nothing like them had been seen in the universe after the first three seconds of cosmogenesis.