With a deliberate motion of his hand, he pushed open the door.
Beyond was light, noise, the sounds of crowds. Phaethon blinked, blinded for a moment, unable to make himself step into the rectangle of light framed by the doorway.
There was a sharp noise in the near distance, like the shot of rail gun, or perhaps the snap of a short-range energy weapon. Phaethon, certain that his enemies had found him, flinched back, hand before his face.
He crouched there in the dark, waiting for pain.
None came.
He realized that it had just been some noise from the crowd of people in the concourse beyond; a slap of water in a fountain, or the bark of a child's ear-toy. Or perhaps the snap of a circuit in some ill-tended machine. In a world hidden by sense-filters, there was little need to make all noise muffled, or to keep all public engines in repair.
He tried to lower his hands, to straighten up, but the sensation gripped his throat for a long, shameful moment: loneliness, self-pity, fear, the degrading physical terror that he would be killed, and die the final death.
Mingled with this was the more subtle oppression of knowing he had no place to go, no home, no shelter, and no friendand no real destination....
That moment passed. With a snort, Phaethon straightened up. He sardonically added an entry to his negative asset column: "More easily frightened than expected."
In his asset column, he noticed the listing of how much directed energy per square inch his armor could withstand. Then he uttered a harsh laugh. "Good luck to you, my assassins," he murmured half-aloud. They would need an energy output equal to a b-type star even to scratch him; they could blow the planet to asteroids beneath his feet without even
jarring him. Even if they pushed him into a pit of frictionless, superconductive slime, his internal ecological structures would remain intact for years upon years.
And yet, the enemy must be aware of all this. They would be prepared. A charge of antimatter would burn through his armor, as it would through any normal atomic structure, heavy or light.
With Sophotechs helping them, these enemies, whoever they were, could outthink him, anticipate his moves, create better weapons, have more resources at their command
No one would raise a hand to help him. No one else even believed these foes existed.
In the positive assets column, he added, grimly, with no trace of a smile: "And I alone, out of a whole world of deluded and forgetful men, know and recall the truth about this matter. I love truth more than happiness; I will not rest."
Squinting, he stepped into the light.
Here ends volume I, to be concluded in volume II, The Phoenix Exultant.
scanned by bec Nov 2004