She put down her teacup so that it smacked against the saucer, slopping tea over the side. But her voice was calm and smooth: "Why pursue this? Why not be content with the life you have?"
"It's too easy to be content. Where's the glory in that? I'd rather do something hard."
"I respectfully disagree. It is quite easy to be a stubborn fool, darling. Look at how many of them there are in the world."
Phaethon spread his hands and smiled slightly. "Well, as long as I can go about being a stubborn fool with a certain amount of grace and intelligence, maybe I can do a good job of it. Don't you see how important this is? How much of my life is missing?"
Daphne tried not to look impatient. "Sweetheart, what standard are you using to measure importance? Length of time? The Bellipotent Composition ruled the Eastern Hemisphere for far longer than you've been alive. And they produced nothing but ninety generations of evil and pain. I would not trade one second of your life for their entire hegemony. So why do you spend even one second of your life on something which can only make you miserable? Darling, listen to me. You have no real mystery, no puzzle worth solving. If those memories were ones you did not want, what does it matter how much time they occupied? Has it never occurred to you that, back when you made this choice, you knew what you were doing?"
"Actually, that's the part which puzzles me the most...." Phaethon thoughtfully sipped his tea.
Daphne leaned forward, her green eyes bright.
"You then must have foreseen this present. You, then, knew that you, now, would suffer the pain of curiosity. You then decided the pain of knowledge was the worse of two evils. Can't you just trust that that decision was correct? Can't you accept anyone's judgment without question? Not even your own? You know now that you back then knew more!"
Phaethon smiled half a smile. "Let me understand your argument. You want me to take on faith that I have always had the strength of character to never to take things on faith. But if I give in to your argument, don't I show, by that example, that such faith is misplaced? My past self might have
been, for all I know, convinced by an argument not unlike this one."
"Very cleverly worded!" she blazed. "You may just be clever enough to talk yourself into exile and disgrace!"
Phaethon gazed, absorbed, at the fire of her eyes, the way her red lips parted as she drew a sharp breath, the flare of her nostrils, the flush in her cheeks. Then she subsided, and lowered her gaze to stare moodily to one side. Phaethon studied the curve of her neck, the perfection of her profile, and the delicate lashes, long and black, which almost brushed her cheeks. What had he done to acquire this vivid and fascinating woman?
What should he do to make certain he did not lose her?
No matter. He could not be other than he was, not and still be Phaethon.
A slight wind came up, tousling Daphne's hair, and she held one hand delicately atop her hat to keep it in place. She was looking upward now at the white tumbled clouds and blue skies. These were the skies of ancient Earth, faithfully reproduced. There was no glimmer of the ring-city above the southern horizon, no blinding speck of Jupiter burning, and the Evening Star would appear in her accustomed place, determined by Venus's old orbit.
She said, "The navicular races are soon to begin, out in Vancouver Bay; Telemoan Quatro is challenging his older self Telemoan Quintcux, and they say he's certain to outdo himself. But Ao Ymmel-Eendu, the Warlock who combined himself out of his own twin brains, comes to challenge them both."
Now she became more animated; excitement thrilled in her voice: "Ymmel-Eendu, now that they have made themselves into one person, has been living in his navis body now for forty years, training and preparing, and the rumor channel says he did not step on dry land once in all that period! For years at a time, he would shut off his linear and linguistic brain segments, living among dolphins and cetaceans, an animal of the sea himself, moving from one oceanic dream to
another, so that he attains a mystic communion with sea and wind and wave!
"Then, there is going to be a pancrateon near Mount Washington in the late afternoon, between Bima and Arcedes, and two hundred years of rivalry will be settled. The loser has promised to change sex and serve the victor as a harem slave for a year and a day. A disgusting conceit, I think, but who can fathom the minds of athletes and somatic performers?
"This evening at Hawthorn House, there will be a Ball, and, at midnight, a Stimulus. A codicil discovered in the living will of Mancusioco the Neuropathist directs that he be resurrected for the Millennial Celebration; rumor reports that he has completed his Opus Number Ten, the Unfinished Arrangement. Everyone is eager to discover how he resolves the famous disputed sensation passage; tonight we shall learn! Mancusioco himself will lead us from one altered state of mind to another, through the full cycle of consciousness, and who knows what new expressions of thought, new insights, or new forms might arise from his adroit manipulations of our nervous systems? Will you go, Phaethon? Will you go?"
For a moment he was strongly tempted.
If he wanted not to be bothered with this mystery for an evening, or for a month, or a decade, he could visit a redactor and put the memories related to his discovery today in storage. He could spend a pleasant evening with his wife, something he had not in far too long. He could have a pleasant and untroubled life. All he had to do was ask.
But he wondered if he had done this before. What if, every time he discovered a blank in his memory, he made himself forget that discovery? What if he had done this yesterday? Or every day?
He could have a pleasant life. Just for the asking. Except it would not be his.
Phaethon said: "These celebrations are beginning to pall on me. I would much rather be doing the things which make life worth celebrating. But I am haunted by the thought that my past self, as you say, must have known what he was doing. Suppose I underwent this amnesia merely to get to go to this
Celebration. That would imply that my going was part of his plan. But a plan for what? What could he hope to gain? He must have had absolute faith that I would continue to act in a predictable way...."
"Darling, this is beginning to sound like crazy talk. People don't make plans and schemes that way. Why not just relax, and come with me to the navicular races?"
But Phaethon was not listening. He was recalling something Rhadamanthus had said. The only way a man's actions could be truly predictable could be if he were truly moral. Phaethon imagined some past version of himself, with more than 250 years of memories, willing to commit a type of suicide; to go into storage, to be forgotten, merely on the strength of a hope that the unknowing, amnesia-afflicted future version of himself would have the strength and perseverance, without ever once being asked, to rescue him from oblivion. The image was a chilling one.
Phaethon stood up. "Daphne, my memories have been dismembered. I feel as if I've been mutilated. Perhaps there was a good reason for it. But I'll be damned if I'll live my life without trying to find out just what that reason was. You know more than you are saying. Your casket says you know the reason for my amnesia. It says you benefit from it. What's that reason? What's that benefit?"
"Why try to remember a forgotten crime? Let it rest." "The tag on your memory casket says that I had done nothing; that I was suppressed merely for something I had planned
to do."
"Perhaps that is why you escaped true punishment. Perhaps the crime was not complete. But I have put those memories
aside."
"Yet you know well the benefit you enjoy. What is that
benefit?"
"My life is happy beyond any hope I ever had for happiness." She looked down and would not meet his gaze.
"That is no answer."
"Nonetheless, it is all the answer you shall have from me. Be content."
"You really don't want to tell me the truth?" He paused while she said nothing. He continued: "Do our marriage vows mean so little to you, then? When our friends Asatru and Hellaine got married, all they did was exchange recorded copies of themselves with their intendeds. He edited and adapted the personality of his wife-doll till it suited him; and she did the same to her version of him. Most of our friends are like that. Sferanderik Myriad Ffellows sends his dolls to marry any woman who experiences one of his tasteless love-romance dramas he writes; every schoolgirl has one of him in her harem. I should be offended by such conduct. As if a husband were to make a gigolo for his wife, and she to hire a prostitute for him; and them both to celebrate that as holy matrimony! I am not offended only because the general society has made the whole thing as trivial as exchanging Commencement Mementos. But I thought we were devoted to the Silver-Gray ideal, you and I. To realistic traditions, realistic stimulations, realistic lives. I thought our tradition stood for truth. I thought our marriage stood for love."