Centrifugal gravity returned, to about half a gee. This carousel (encompassing, as it did, hundreds of meters of decks and life support) had a diameter wide enough to render Coriolis effects unnoticeable to normal senses.
Hanno said, in Phoenician, 'The dock master welcomes us."
Was the dock master now in exile? But no, he must be a Neptunian, one of those cold, outer creatures who cared nothing for the conventions of the Hortators and the laws of the Inner System.
Sir Francis Drake said, "Does he so? Marry, but our ship be greater than his dock in every measure. 'Tis we should welcome him, and call the whole dockyard to lay alongside and tie up to us!" Phaethon: "Show me." The center energy mirror came to life. Glittering like a crown, the circle of the Neptunian embassy spun, moving with an angular velocity so great that the rotation was visible to the naked eye. Near the hub of the wheel was a second circle, also spinning, but with much less effect. In the outer wheel, under the tremendous gravity which obtained at the Neptunian S-layer "surface," lived whatever Cold Dukes may have been present, as well as that nested construction of neurotechnology known as the Duma. The inner ring, in microgravity, housed the Eremites and Frost Children, at one time, servants, children, and bioconstructs of the Neptunians, but now equal partners in their ventures, intermingled in more ways than one, and indistinguishable, these days, except as a different form of body. These too were part of the strange mass-mind of the Duma, representing the interests of the moons, outer colonies, and those Far Ones who dwelt in the cometary halo. Hanno said, "We are at dock, milord." The Phoenix Exultant was not going to couple with any dock, of course. "Docking" for a ship of her immensity merely meant that she would come to rest relative to the Neptunian station, surrounded by such beacons and warnings as traffic control required to warn other ships away from her volume of space.
Ulysses, pointing to one of the mirrors, exclaimed, "Others vessels close with us. Will they be hospitable or no?"
Armstrong reported, "We have radio contact with Neptunian vehicles. They are initiating docking rendezvous."
Other mirrors showed the view port and starboard. Clusters of radar noise betrayed the presence of ships. Doppler analysis showed they were beginning maneuvers to close with the Phoenix Exultant.
And the sheer number of Neptunian ships was astonishing. There were thousands, some of them over a kilometer in length. Why were so many vessels, equipped with so much mass, closing with him?
Jason, from behind him, spoke up: "Sir. Messages from yonder boats. The Neptunian crew is ready to come aboard." Crew? Come aboard?
Jason said again, "Sir! The Neptunian owner, Neop-tolemous, is ready to take possession of the Phoenix Exultant. He requests you open the channels leading into the ship mind, so that he can load his passwords and routines to configure the mental environment for the disembodied members of the crew. The supply boats are coming alongside, and requesting you open your ports and bay doors. The physical crew are maneuvering to dock. What is your answer?"
Neoptolemous. The combine-entity built from the memories of his friend Diomedes and the Silent One agent Xenophon.
Phaethon saw swarms of enemy closing in on his ship. Perhaps some of them, perhaps most, were merely innocent Neptunians. But the command staff, and Neoptolemous, no doubt were controlled by the Nothing Sophotech. That meant, in effect, that they were all enemies.
Countless jets of light, flickers from maneuvering thrusters, were twinkling near the hundreds of prow air-lock doors, near the scores of midship docking ports, near the four gigantic cargo and fuel bays aft Other energy mirrors, tuned to other frequencies, showed the connection beams radiating from off-board computers and boat minds, pinging against the receivers, radio dishes, and sensory array which ran along the lee edge of the great prow armor. The off-board systems were trying to make contact with the ship mind. Preliminary information packages showed hundreds and thousands of files and partials waiting to download into the ship and into her systems.
All waiting for him. The enemy.
"Sir? What is your answer?"
Phaethon reached over and opened the memory casket.
Inside the memory casket were three cards. They were a drab olive green in hue, with no pictoglyph or emblemry at all upon them. They were labeled "SDMF01-Spaceship Defensive Modification Files.
Government Issue Polystructual Stealth Microcorder and Retrieval (Remote Unit Control)."
Phaethon raised an eyebrow. The Phoenix Exultant was certainly not a mere "spaceship." She was a .star-ship. And what ugly names and colors! Did this Atkins fellow truly have no taste at all? Perhaps the military burned the artistic sections of the brain away and replaced it with a weapon or something.
He looked into the Middle Dreaming, and the information about the stealth remotes flowed into his brain. There were three sets or swarms of remotes. The first was gathered around the air locks; the second had interpenetrated the ship-mind thought boxes and established overrides at all the machine-intelligence switch points and circuit resolves; the third were a group of medical remotes hidden under the floor of the bridge. There were no further instructions or details about the plan.
But there did not need to be. Phaethon was an engineer; he knew tools could only be shaped for one purpose. He studied the specifications on the last group, the medical group, of stealth remotes, and saw the particular modifications that had been made to them, including special combinations to allow them to make transmission connections between Neptunian neurocircuitry and noetic reader circuits.
The grisly and efficient deadliness of the little mili-tary remotes should have horrified him. Instead, for some reason, he found himself admiring the ruthless simplicity of the design.
And so it was not without some relish that Phaethon answered his mannequins.
Phaethon said, "Okay, boys. Open communication. Let's get this show on the road."
The identification channel opened: The radio encryption bore the heraldic code of the Neptunian Duma, but also of the Silver-Gray.
The visual channel opened: a mirror to his left lit with an incoming call. Here was an image of a tall, dark warrior in Greek hoplite armor, a round shield in his left hand, two spears of ashwood in his right.
For a moment of hope, Phaethon thought it was Diomedes. But a subscript to the image introduced this as Neoptolemous, who merely had inherited the right to the icons and images Diomedes once used to represent himself.
"Behemoth of nature," Neoptolemous said, "Exemplar of all this Golden Oecumene, at the zenith of her genius, can produce, Phoenix Exultant] We are impatient for your welcome. Open your doors and locks. We have material, and manpower, gallons of crew-brain-swarms, software, hardware, greenware, wetware, smallware, largeware, sumware, and noware, all waiting now to merge with you. This is a fine day for all Neptunians! Already the Duma consumes parts of itself, and moves the thoughts of your high triumph- and my own-to selected parts of longr-term memory! Come, Phaethon! Welcome me as befits the fashion of the Silver-Gray! We will exchange no brain materials through any pores, but I will form a hand, after the ancient fashions, and curl your fingers around my fingers, and pump your arm first up, then down, to show we bear no weapons, after we have first agreed upon an up-down axis. I suggest that, if we are under acceleration, the direction of motion always be considered 'up'!"
Phaethon was caught between amusement and horror. wonder and fear. Amusement, because this odd speech reminded him somewhat of the dry and ironic humor of Diomedes. But that was Diomedes before his marriage of minds with Xenophon, before he commingled himself to create this creature, Neoptolemous.
And the horror was that Diomedes must have had no notion of what kind of mind he had been marrying. Xenophon, either an agent or a puppet of the Silent Ones, must have had redaction traps and thought worms ready to capture Diomedes, a marriage of minds turned into a brutal rape, with noetic readers primed to rob Diomedes of any useful information, ready to turn his personality, imagination, and memory into tools and weapons useful to the enemy.