Gannis was staring thoughtfully at Phaethon. "If I may reserve my objections, without prejudice, for a later time, I shall do so, Your Lordships. The Court may have been amused by Monomarchos's little antics, but I am not. He is betting that Helion will not be able to prove his identity when he comes before this court three months hence. Whereas I agreed to these terms only because I am certain Helion Relic shall be indistinguishable from Helion Prime in far less than three months. Whatever happened to him during that last hour of his life, it will have no effect on the ultimate decision of this case. Furthermore, I do not believe Phaethon will have the self-control not to open the memory casket until after that date. He has always been a reckless fellow."
Phaethon had been rather put out by Monomarchos's hostility. So it was with a touch of malice that he impersonated Gannis's tone of voice, and said, "I would like Your Lordships to note that my learned opposition has just expressed
the belief that I am one and the same with the original Phaethon."
The central cube said, "He is not testifying, nor is his opinion dispositive in this case. We are now in recess."
The cubes ceased to radiate their sense of brooding pressure. Phaethon turned to say some further word to Mono-marchos, but the silver cube had turned entirely dark and cold, and was beginning to disintegrate its substance back into the wall.
Phaethon turned to Gannis, but he had already stalked away, the tentacles and tassels from his baroque costume twitching irritably.
He turned to Atkins. "Did you understand what's going on?"
Atkins spread his hands. "I'm just the bailiff, sir. I'm not supposed to give legal advice. Here, let me turn your armor back on."
Atkins inserted a probe at the armor's neckpiece. While he worked, he spoke in an offhand fashion. "But, you know, I thought what happened was pretty obvious. You're now Phaethon Relic in the eyes of the law. If you open your old memories, you turn into Phaethon Prime, and you'll inherit all of Helion's stuff. But then you get kicked out. If you don't open those memories, you'll inherit whatever Phaethon Prime would have owned, because you made out your will to yourself just now. If the Gannis from Jupiter cannot prove that Helion Relic is one and the same with Helion Prime, you get everything. If he does prove it, you are in the same position you're in now, and you lose nothing. So your hotshot lawyer figured out how to get you everything you wanted for no risk; either you win or you break even. Right? And him clearing out all your debts was just an added bonus, icing on the cake. I thought it was pretty slick, actually. All you have to do is follow orders, and keep your memories tucked away for ninety days. So go back to the party, it's going to go on at least for that long, sit back, and relax. You've got it made."
Phaethon thanked him, and walked back up the stairs with a heavy footstep.
As he reached the top of the stair, he was aware of the feeling of discontent gnawing at him. It just did not seem like a victory.
He slid upward through the rock. There was a crowd of monsters and grotesqueries gathered on the grass outside. When they saw Phaethon, they cheered.
Since Phaethon's sense-filter was still not turned on, he could not read the placards and hypertext the cheering crowd waved and broadcast. All he could see, at the moment, were faces of ghastly ugliness or lopsided asymmetry grinning at him. Claws waved, hands fluttered, wings, polyps, brachial attachments made a dizzying motion as the creatures leaped and capered.
The foremost, no doubt the leader, was an immense rugose cone. Four wide tentacles sprang from the apex of its body, terminating in pincers, manipulators, or clusters of sense organs, eyeballs or ear trumpets. It made an eye-defeating gesture of complex loops, knotting and unknotting. with all four tentacles at once. "Greetings! O Greetings, adventurous, beauteous, all-destroying Phaethon! We greet you with a thousand million greetings, and express the boundless hope that your terror-inspiring victory of this day will send the leaden and oppressive weight of the Eldest Generation (The Long-Dead Generation, as I like to call them) quaking and shivering into well-deserved oblivions! At last the Wheel of Progress, albeit with much squeaking, has made a millionth-inch turn upon its eternally rusted axle! The Golden Oecumene (The Rusted Oecumene, as I like to call her) has seen the first of many such revolutions: that is our fervid hope!"
Phaethon was not sure what these people intended. At this
thought, his golden helmet unfolded from his gorget and cov-
, ered his face. A tissue of black nanomachinery unfolded like
a cloak from his backplate, and he swirled it across his limbs
and shoulders as he folded his arms, to make a protective
barrier against any microscopic foulnesses these dirty creatures might give off.
"I don't believe I've had the pleasure, sir," said Phaethon. He recognized them as Never-Firsts, from the generation born during and after Orpheus perfected Noumenal Recording, and members of Neomorphic and nonanthropomorphic schools.
A hooting laughter passed through the crowd. The leader flapped his tentacles in comic display. "Hoy! Listen to his stiff-arsed, high-nosed twang! Eh, eh, Phaethon, you are among friends and close companions of the heart! Our goals are your goals! We offer you adoration, endless love! We ask only that you allow our schools to take you on as a mascot and ultimate hero! Come! We prepare a love-feast in your honor."
To the rear, Phaethon saw an organism shaped like a sloppy pile of internal organs, all mucus and twisted intestines, passing out pleasure-needles to those around him. These needles were tuned to direct pleasure-center stimulation, Phaethon saw by the looks of glassy nirvana that usurped the eyes of the deformities and grotesques. Also, they must have had their sense-filters tuned to reject any evidence of the damage their hedonism did, for he saw the creatures stepping blindly on or over the prone body of a she-monster, stupefied with pleasure.
Phaethon fought down his sense of disgust. Without Rhad-amanthus to help control his bodily reactions, the task was not easy. But he told himself these people might know the secret of his past; they said he was their hero. Perhaps they had information he could use.
He said, "I am flattered that you call me so heroic. Surely you can see that all I do now is no more than a natural outgrowth of my past acts?"
The creature flopped its tentacles in a energetic pumping motion. "What is the past but a pile of dead meat, already slick with flies? No, no, it is the future ('Our' Future, as I like to call it) to which we turn our eager eyes, bright and glistening with promise!"
But another part of the creature's body (or perhaps it was a second creature, a parasite) leaned up and presented a rank
fungoid tendril toward Phaethon. In the sucker-disks of the tendril was a card.
The creature said, "Here! Lookit! Take! This contains everything you need to know about your past accomplishments, and our assessment of their relative worth."
Phaethon took the card in his gauntlet. It was blank, meant to load a file directly into his brain from the Middle Dreaming. Should he open an unknown file into himself without Rhadamanthus here to check it first?
On the other hand, who would dare commit a prank on the steps of the courthouse door, with Atkins standing in earshot? And it may have information about his past....
He opened a temporary sense-filter (one not connected through Rhadamanthus) and looked through the Middle Dreaming at the card.
The card was black, empty as the void, and radiated a sensation of painful cold. In strokes of angular ice-white dragon sign, the glyph on the card read "NOTHING."
The blackness flowed out from the surface of the card toward his face, filled his vision. There was a sensation of pain in his eyes, a whirl of movement, of falling, of giddy motion.