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.And,from another branch, a third image led away: the sound from outside had beenshut off, not like a door closing but like a communication link being turnedoff.Which, in fact, it was.Phaethon discovered that this was the unconsciousthought that was making him uneasy.Uneasy, because he realized that heactually was in a sort of a casket, namely, in a public hospice telepresencebox.If he did not go to visit his wife in person, there would be a signal goingfrom his brain to some mannequin or remote, and back again.That signal timewould have to be bought with Helion's money, and the signal content might berecorded.Or distorted? Or edited? If and only if he went in person, and saw her withhis own eyes, could he be sure the signals entering his brain were unedited.What if this forgotten Lakshmi Agreement had put sense-filters on publicchannels to forbid Phaethon from seeing certain objects? (It had happened tohim at Destiny Lake; he almost had not seen the Observationist Schoolastronomer who told him about Helion's solar disaster.)With the index open, Phaethon saw his tension levels jump again.Evidentlythoughts about Helion were, at this moment, very upsetting to him.Upsetting,because he really did not know whether the version of Helion who was stillalive was his Helion.Should he be in mourning over a dead father, grief-stricken? Or should he belaughing with exasperation because a mistake of minor protocol, some fluke ofoverly zealous law, was trying to cheat Helion out of his entire fortune?There was only an hour missing from the present Helion's memory: that hardlyconstituted enough change to consider him a new and separate person, no matterwhat the law said.Phaethon saw in the remote section of the index what he was really thinking,deep down.He wanted to talk to Helion about his problems.He wanted fatherly advice and support.From the bottom of the index box, where links to deeper brain sectionsglimmered like strands of smoke, came an image from memory.The picture was this: Helion, dressed in armor white as ice, with a darkgorget covering his throat and shoulders, stood proud and tall on stairs ofblue lapis lazuli.Behind him rose doors of burnished gold, tall and shining,inset with panels of black marble.The panels were carved with eight symbolsPage 106 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlof the rights and duties of manhood: a sheathed sword, an open book, a sheafof ripe grain, a bundle of rods containing an ax, a cogwheel, a floral weddingtrellis, a stork, a Gnostic eye.Phaethon remembered those doors well.These symbols represented the right andduty of self-defense, freedom from censorship and the duty to learn, theobligation to labor and the right to keep the fruits thereof, civil rights andcivic duties, and the rights and duties associated with cybernetic progress,sexual alliances, reproduction, and self-mutagenesis.Those who passed through those doors, and passed the Noetic philosophic andpsychiatric integration of their memory paths and thought chains, wererecorded as full members of the Rhadamanthine mind structure, grantedcommunion and ascendance.While they might have been voting adults in the eyesof the law and of the Parliament long before, the scholum of the manor-borndid not accept that a child was fully adult until he was proven to be fullysane and honest.That took longer.On the day when he had turned five-and-seventy years of age, Phaethon hadreached his majority.He and Helion had been staying on Europa at the time,negotiating some last details of the Circumjovial Moon effort.The ceremonyhad been somewhat rough and impromptu, but no less stirring to Phaethon forall that.Helion's Lieutenants and the High Vavasors of Rhadamanth had radioedupdated copies of themselves across the solar system to be present; the copiescould be later reintegrated with the primary memories, to create the illusionthat Helion's friends, employees and allies had attended.The palace they usedhad been grown overnight out of smart-crystal, not properly adjusted forEuropa's light gravity, so that the spires and towers emerged as elongatedfairy shapes, lacy and fantastic; irregularities were masked with morpheticillusions or pseudo-matter.There had been no Yule tree, so the gifts wererecorded on disks and ornaments hanging from a squat detoxification bush oneof Phaethon's remotes found in their drop-ship.And there had not been enoughtime to give the chorus properly thought-out pseudo-personalities for thecomic reenactments of Phaethon's youth which traditionally preceded the Noeticsubmergence ceremony, so Helion had peopled the play stages with charactersfrom popular novels, Jovian history, and ancient myth, and whomever else hecould find cheaply on the local area channels.The reenactments, normallyaustere with a restrained dry wit, turned into bizarre, anachronisticbuffoonery.Phaethon loved it nonetheless, every minute.In his memory, he saw once again how Helion had looked as he stood before thegolden doors of the submergence chamber.The semi-Helions, his partials, hadbowed and stepped aside, and there was Helion himself, the original, standingon the stairs, gleaming in his white armor.(This armor, at that point, wasstill an extrapolation; completion of the Solar Array project was still fivehundred years in the future.No one really knew what architecture ofinterfaces would have to be built into such armor, or what the solardeep-station environment would be like.)Helion had put one hand on Phaethon's shoulder and, with his other hand, hadstopped the official count of time.The partials and computer-generated peoplearound them froze.Helion had leaned and said, "Son, once you go in there, the full powers andtotal command structures of the Rhadamanth Sophotech will be at your command.You will be invested with godlike powers; but you will still have the passionsand distempers of a merely human spirit.There are two temptations which willthreaten you.First, you will be tempted to remove your human weaknesses byabrupt mental surgery.The Invariants do this, and to a lesser degree, so dothe White Manorials, abandoning humanity to escape from pain.Second, you willbe tempted to indulge your human weakness.The Cacophiles do this, and, to alesser degree, so do the Black Manorials.Our society will gladly feed everysin and vice and impulse you might have; and then stand by helplessly andwatch as you destroy yourself; because the first law of the Golden Oecumene isthat no peaceful activity is forbidden.Free men may freely harm themselves,Page 107 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlprovided only that it is only themselves that they harm."Phaethon knew what his sire was intimating, but he did not let himself feelirritated.Not today.Today was the day of his majority, his emancipation;today, he could forgive even He-lion's incessant, nagging fears.Phaethon also knew that most Rhadamanthines were not permitted to face theNoetic tests until they were octogener-ians; most did not pass on their firstattempt, or even their second.Many folk were not trusted with the full powersof an adult until they reached their Centennial.Helion, despite criticismfrom the other Silver-Gray branches, was permitting Phaethon to face the testsfive years early.Phaethon had been more than pleased to win his sire'svalidation and support; but now, perhaps, Helion was wondering if his criticsafter all had been correct
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