Communion circuits; mind links; thousand-cycle communications-and-relay forms. Whoever stared at this screen, if he had the proper responders built into his nervous system, would merge with a near-Sophotech-level supermind, and control millions or billion of ongoing operations. In this case (what else could it be?) military operations.
Impossible. This simple screen could not be the control and command for whatever weaponry and armament, robotic legions or nanoplagues or fighting machines the Golden Oecumene still possessed? Could it? (If there were still such machines lying around. Daphne had the vague notion the all the old war machines were stored in some museum somewhere, and that there were a very great number of them.)
This spartan room hardly seemed the proper setting for the central command-room. Shouldn’t there be flags and plumes on the walls? Racks of spears? Or big maps with women clerks in snappy uniforms pushing little toy ships across tabletops? Or an auditorium of linked vulture-cyborgs staring coldly at some wide holographic globes, with dark wires leading into their heads? That was the way it always looked in the history romances.
On the fourth wall, facing the door, was a small rack, carrying a musket, and (when he undid it from his sash so that he could sit) the long sword. The musket had a smooth wooden stock, a barrel of dark metal, and a wave guide of polished brass. The sword was in a sheath of hand-tooled leather, and a knot of red silk cord draped from the rings.
The knife stayed in his belt when he sat.
There was no other furniture in the room, except for unornamented woven mats on which they sat, and a short tripod holding a rose translucent bowl of fire.
They sipped tea.
“Do you live here alone?”
He said in a matter-of-fact voice: “My wife left me when I wouldn’t give up the Service.”
The cold, neutral way in which he said that reminded her, for some reason, of Phaethon. It was as if Phaethon had just spoken in her ear, and said: My wife drowned herself when I would not give up the Starship.
“I’m sorry,” Daphne said in a soft voice.
“No matter.”
“May I ask you a personal question?”
“I’d rather you did not.”
“Why do you stay on as a soldier? I mean, isn’t the idea of a soldier in this day and age a little—oh, I don’t know—”
“ ‘Anachronistic’?”
“I was going to say ‘stupid.’ ”
A look of distaste began to harden in his eyes, but then, suddenly, and for no reason she could see, he laughed in good humor. “Miss Daphne Tercius Eveningstar! Aren’t you a piece of work! Blunt, aren’t we?”
She smiled her second most dazzling smile, and spread her hands as if in helplessness. “Most people set their sense-filters to rephrase incoming comments too rude for them to tolerate. I guess I’m not in the habit of watching what I say. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll recover.”
“No one is in the habit of watching what they say, these days. Who said that an unarmed society was a rude society?”
Daphne said, “I think it was someone who was killed in a duel. Hamilton, maybe?”
Atkins snorted, and said, “No one is in the habit of living real life, dealing with limitations, making decisions. You Sinkers all live in little bubbles of perception, and let the mentality carry your lives and loves and thoughts back and forth between the bubbles. You should try being real sometime.”
“Sinkers” was slang to refer to all the people who wore sense-filters by those (usually primitivists) who did not. The implication was that a “sinker” was just one step away from drowning.
Daphne said stiffly, “I was born real, thank you, and I get enough of that sort of preaching from my parents. Reality is overrated, in my opinion.” It was not until after she spoke that a more forceful objection occurred to her: Had it not been for the simulation technology, for mentality recording and mind-edited and other so-called unrealities, she herself, Daphne-doll Tercius, would never had been “born” at all.
Neither would have Phaethon been.
“I disagree, ma’am. Reality is real. And that’s why I stay in the Service.”
“Why—?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s real. It’s like I’m the only real man on the planet. I stand guard so that all the rest of you can play. That’s what I like about your husband. What he’s doing is real, too. A lot less boring than guard duty, too.”
“There hasn’t been a war, or even a fight, since the early Sixth Era.”
“Well.” Sarcasm drawled from his voice. “I wonder why that should be.”
“You think it’s because we’re all in awe and terror of you?”
The line of tension in his cheek, which served him for a smile, showed that this was exactly what he thought. But he said, “You didn’t come here to debate political theory with me, ma’am.”
“I wanted to ask you about my husband.”
“Shoot.”
She covered her mouth with her glove when she burst into giggles.
He said, “Something wrong?”
“No, no,” she said, trying to smother her smile, “It’s just that expression, ‘shoot.’ Coming from you. It’s just sort of funny.”
He looked blank.
Daphne said earnestly, “I wanted to ask you about the invaders chasing my husband. Are they from another star system? I communed with his memory, and found out that you were investigating something along those lines…”
He snorted, and smiled sort of a half smile, and shook his head, and said, “Ma’am, for one thing, I asked your husband not to go telling everyone what I was looking into. For a second thing, there is no invasion. Would I be sitting home alone if there were? At least an invasion would give me something to do.”
“He saw you tracking a Neptunian legate.”
“Maybe the Sophotechs felt sorry for me, or something, and they advised the Parliament to assign me to look into it. I’m not allowed to do police work, mind you, but any investigation that falls under military intelligence—and I guess that includes people pretending to be outside threats—falls into my bailiwick. The whole thing turned out to be a masquerade prank. You may not know, that there are people who really do not like the fact that I am allowed to exist. They don’t like armed men. They don’t like all the bombs and viruses and particle-beam arrays and thought-worms that are all maintained at public expense. Nuclear bombs, supernuclear bombs, neutron bombs, neutrino bombs, quasar bombs, pseudo-matter bombs, antimatter bombs, supersymmetry-reaction bombs. And so, from time to time, people pull tricks on me, or go cry wolf, just to see if I’ll come running.”
“A prank…”
“I can tell you who was behind it this time. Why not? My report to the Parliamentary Warmind Advisory Committee is a matter of public record, even if no one in the public will ever trouble herself to go view it.” He looked her in the eye. “The Nevernexters were the culprits. It was Unmoiqhotep and his crew.”
Daphne was puzzled. “Phaethon said the Golden Oecumene was under attack by creatures from another star, or from a lost colony, or something. How could it be a prank?”
Atkins shrugged, and made the hand sign asking if she wanted more tea. She waved her finger in the negative. He ordered his tea bowl to refill itself.
He said, “You know who Unmoiqhotep is, don’t you? He used to be a she; she was born Ungannis of Io, Gannis’ clone-daughter. Her mother was Hathor-hotep Twenty Minos of the Silver-Grey Manor. Unmoiquotep hates both her parents, hates the Gannis-minds, the Silver-Greys, hates everyone. She never got over the fact that, these days, carrying someone’s genes doesn’t automatically let you inherit all his stuff when he dies and changes bodies, and so she changed her sex and changed her name and eventually became a big wheel among the Nevernext movement.”
“But Phaethon saw you chasing a Neptunian.”
“I was chasing someone who was downloaded into a Neptunian body form, that’s for sure. But it wasn’t a Neptunian. He flew up into the air and went orbital, remember? To make a rendezvous with his pinnace craft? Well, how many Neptunians can afford their own spaceyacht? Most of them come in-system on very-low-thrust orbits, and they just sleep for twenty-five years while they are traveling. Wearing nothing but their own bodies, or maybe a layer of ablative foil. They don’t have many ships. And the name of the pinnace was Cernous Roc. A play on words. As in a nodding, pendulous rock, get it? Now, who ever heard of a Neptunian naming a ship after a mythical bird like a Roc? But someone whose mother was a Silver-Grey might have. All you Silver-Greys name your ships after mythical birds. And this might also explain why Ungannis wanted to involve Phaethon in her prank. He was a Silver-Grey, like her mom, but, unlike Ungannis, Phaethon made his own fortune without ever having to inherit money from Helion. See?”
Daphne said stiffly, “Don’t say ‘all you Silver-Greys,’ please. I am no longer associated with that school. I now patronize the Red Eveningstar Manor.”
“Sorry to hear that. The Silver-Greys aren’t as goofy as the Reds.”
“Did you say ‘goofy’…? ‘Goofy’?”
“Sorry, ma’am. I thought your sense-filter would automatically read-in ‘eccentric,’ or ‘droll,’ or something. My apologies.” His face showed no trace of a smile, but his eyes twinkled.
Daphne said, “But your investigation modules, those little black globes Phaethon saw, one of them said you were detecting nanomachinery indicating advanced Sophotechnology; it estimated that it was a technology of a type that came from the Fifth Era, but had evolved into an unrecognizable form. Isn’t that something which could only come from a colony?”
“All a hoax. Ungannis was feeding false info into my network.”
Daphne paused, looking skeptical. “The prank actually was interfering with military computer systems…?”
“Pardon my language, ma’am, but my military systems are crap. The taxpayers don’t want to pay for expensive systems for me; my hardware is a century out of date, and some of my software is a week behind the latest breakthrough. Your husband was able to break in on my secure line and crack my code in about half a second. So why should it have been any harder for Ungannis? Then the Earthmind came and gave me a new system, one that was more secure. If you’ve read Phaethon’s memories, you must’ve seen when that happened. When that new system came on-line, I was able to find out what was really going on, without any prankster interference.”
“So … none of it was real…?”
“Don’t get me wrong. Unmoiqhotep is going to be severely punished. Interfering with government military equipment, even in peacetime, is a felony, and exposes the perpetrator to capital-level pain, if they are convicted. You don’t even want to think about some of the horror scenarios the Curia can make a convict experience, when it comes to military crimes.”
“Is it like the fire-emergency scenarios?” Daphne had heard, once, of a prankster convicted of interfering with Fire Brigade software, being condemned to be burnt to death, over and over, or watching loved ones bum, in every possible worst-case scenario of every person he might have endangered.
“Don’t even think about it, ma’am. Spoil your day.” Atkins ordered his tea bowl to dissolve into a spray of perfume, and stood up in one quick, graceful unfolding of his legs. “I’m afraid that’s about all I can do for you, ma’am.”
Daphne looked up, “But you haven’t done a damn thing!”
Atkins eyes narrowed into a type of smile. “I’m the least free man in all of the Golden Oecumene, ma’am. No one else has so many restrictions on his behavior. What I say, how I act, what I imply, everything is covered by the regulations. It’s because I’m dangerous. You don’t want to live in a society where the armed forces can just jump up and go off and do whatever they please. I have been entrusted with immense powers. I could crack the planet in half and fry it like an egg, with some of the weapons systems I’m trained on. But only if the Parliament declares war, and the Shadow Administers approve. You see? I’m not a cop. I’m not here to help you. I can’t. Not in the way you want.”
Daphne stood up, feeling defeated. “Do you have any advice for me?”
“Officially? No. I don’t set policy. Unofficially? Go see your husband, if you can find out where he’s hiding, and get him to take a noetic examination. The public records all show that the College of Hortators has to reinstate him back in society if he had a good reason to break his word and open his memory box. Thinking you’re being invaded by a foreign power seems like a damn good reason to me. It’ll come eventually.”
Daphne was adjusting her lace cravat. Now she looked up, surprised. “You believe that?”
“That Earth will be attacked someday? Sure. Bound to happen. Maybe not soon. Give it a million years. I’ll still be here. Things’ll heat up. This slow period can’t last forever.”
“Well—I guess I wish you luck—no. No, actually I don’t. I hope you stay bored and idle forever!”
“Yes, ma’am. You said it, ma’am.” Some ancient habit, or ritual, made him take up his sword again, now that he was standing, and he thrust the scabbard through his sash.
Now he stepped toward the door with her. They stood on the deck in front of the cottage. Daphne’s wild horse was cropping the grass nearby. The wind was fresh and sweet. Autumn leaves rippled along far treetops.
Atkins said, “I’ve heard some people say that this isn’t really a paradise we live in. They don’t know jack.”
Daphne looked at him sidelong. What a strange man. “If you like all this peace and plenty, then why are you a fighter?”
“You’ve answered your own question.”
“But we don’t have any enemies. No insanity, no poverty (except as a form of social punishment) no diseases, no violent crime. No enemies.”
“Not yet.”
She called a command to the horse, who trotted over and nuzzled her. Atkins backed up. Daphne was amused. Was the big and strong last warrior in the world nervous around horses? How ironic. She petted the maverick’s nose.
She mounted up. Then, she leaned down, saying, “One last question, Mr. Atkins. In your investigation, was Unmoiqhotep rich enough to carry out all this complex foolery by himself? Or did he have help?”
“You can read my report. A lot of the material and software Unmoiqhotep used came from Gannis.”
“With his knowledge or without it? Was Gannis helping his child?”