He vanished into the ether, leaving me staring at a rest-pattern.
I felt suddenly uncomfortable, totally unsure as to how I was supposed to interpret what he’d said. Had he been issuing a cryptic warning? Had he suggested that he could offer “congeniality and freedom of opportunity” because he wanted me to understand that others would want to restrict my freedom and threaten my congeniality? Or was I just being paranoid?
I got rid of the hood again, and got up from my specially commissioned chair. I stretched my limbs, although I didn’t need to. I knew that my every move was being watched, and that my reaction to what Mortimer Gray had said would be carefully measured.
I felt unusually strong, but I knew that was an illusion of the low gravity. I walked back to the picture window. It was still showing the star field, and I wondered what the watchers would read into my decision to keep it that way. I wondered, too, how I should interpret my own action. Did I think I needed to be constantly reminded of the fact that I was a long way from Earth?
I was surprised by Gray’s offer as well as puzzled. I couldn’t help wondering whether he and his fellows might be laboring under a misconception as to who and what I had been before being committed to SusAn. I couldn’t quite believe that it was an offer he’d have extended to any common or garden-variety criminal. The more I thought about it, though, the more the message seemed like a preemptive strike — and the fact that it had come in at the same time as another suddenly ceased to look like a coincidence.
Marveling at the thought that I might be able to start out on a new career path suddenly seemed to be a silly way to waste time. I asked my patient monitors to display the second message in the window, to save me the bother of putting the hood on again.
This one was from the UN executive who was presumably also a member of the Hardinist Cabal: Michael Lowenthal. Unless his sim had been subtly enhanced, he seemed to be a little taller than me, but that might have been an illusion generated by the fact that he seemed to be hovering in empty space “outside” the room. His complexion wasn’t quite as dark as mine, but his neatly sculpted features made him substantially more handsome and his smartsuit was masterpiece enough to make Gray’s, let alone mine, look like the next best thing to a prison uniform. His hair was a neutral shade of brown, but that only served to emphasize the classicism of his features.
Lowenthal introduced himself as the Secretary to the Ecological Planning Department of the World Government, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that he was any mere bureaucrat. Like Gray, he was wrapped up in a cocoon in a flying sardine can, but his sim carried his favorite virtual environment with it. No ancient books for Michael Lowenthal: his background was Amundsen’s central square, with the UN parliament building directly behind him, reduced by a trick of perspective to near insignificance.
“I’m calling ahead to prepare the ground for our first meeting, Mr. Tamlin,” Michael Lowenthal said. “I wanted you to know as soon as possible that the United Nations is not merely willing but eager to facilitate your return to Earth and to provide for your rehabilitation and reeducation. I can assure you that any crimes and misdemeanors you might have committed in the distant past are of no further relevance to anyone alive today, and that we are enthusiastic to make you welcome. We shall be happy to provide you with employment, not in any artificial make-work capacity but as a useful and valued member of society. I look forward to meeting you when the ship docks, and to making provision for your eventual return to Earth. Thank you.” His image froze to a still, but didn’t disappear.
No stray “snowball” had dared to interrupt him, although he had help to avoid any such possibility by keeping his message brief.
Personal though these messages were, I knew that they weren’t private. As soon as Michael Lowenthal had finished, I asked to speak to Davida Berenike Columella. Her image immediately displaced his, but she seemed slightly more incongruous floating “outside,” partly because the background behind her head was a blank wall.
“What was all that about?” I demanded, unceremoniously.
She could have been evasive if she’d wanted to be, but she didn’t. “They both want you to go back with them to Earth,” she said. “I’m not privy to their motives, but I suspect that they’re simply being overcautious. They’re afraid that if they don’t obtain your early agreement to return to Earth you might accept an invitation to visit the outer system — Titan, perhaps.”
“Why wouldn’t they want me to go to Titan?”
“They know that Child of Fortune is heading in from the outer system.Peppercorn Seven should arrive first, but only by a matter of hours. Both sets of passengers seem to be treating it as a race, perhaps for no better reason than that each thinks the other might be treating it as a race. Adam Zimmerman is the real propaganda prize, of course — but Lowenthal obviously feels a need to be careful not to miss out on any possibility.”
“Any possibility? You mean he sent a similar message to Christine Caine? Gray too?”
“I think you ought to ask that question of Miss Caine,” Davida said, primly — which seemed to me to be as good as a yes.
“I wonder if they’ll offer her an academic position as a historian, or as a psychiatrist,” I mused, unable to help myself saying it aloud.
Davida ignored the remark. “You are, of course, welcome to remain here if you so wish,” she told me. “You might think that the least attractive option, given that we cannot offer you any possibility of social assimilation — but that might be a good reason for taking it, at least in the short term. We can offer you an interval for careful thought and self-education. Such an interval might prove immensely valuable.”
I could see that there were several layers of implication concealed within that statement, and I took time out to consider how to proceed. It seemed, in the end, most sensible to go back to basics.
“How, exactly, did we come to be here in Excelsior?” I asked her. “Why aren’t the three of us still on Earth?”
“The directors of the Ahasuerus Foundation thought it politic to remove Adam Zimmerman from Earth in the 2540s, following the Coral Sea Catastrophe,” she told me. “Tens of thousands of SusAn chambers were lost at that time, and the moon seemed a much safer environment. The facility in which Zimmerman’s chamber was then held had charge of several hundred other cryonic chambers, some of which were Ahasuerus personnel following in their founder’s footsteps, others — Christine Caine’s among them — having been accepted from correctional facilities following…unfortunate accidents.”
The pause before the final phrase was so profound that you could have flipped a coin into it and never heard the clink.
“You mean that the corpsicles of criminals were popular targets of sabotage or calculated neglect,” I deduced. I had no reason to suppose that the rhetoric underlying Eliminator activity had ever died out, even though it had presumably ceased to be fashionable.
“There were occasional security problems,” was all Davida would admit. “The Foundation was asked to move the government-sponsored chambers of which it had temporary custody along with those for which it had sole responsibility. Eventually, the directors decided that the moon was not the ideal environment either and a specialist microworld was commissioned. In order to make the project economically viable the Foundation offered to take over various other consignments of SusAn chambers from several locations on Earth. It was at that point, I believe, that your own chamber was added to the stock. After several changes of location, the microworld was established in the Counter-Earth Cluster. Excelsior is another Ahasuerus project, and we have all the necessary equipment, so it was the logical base from which to launch the revivification plan.”
“So you sought out the two next-oldest corpsicles for your trial runs,” I recapped. “But you still have hundreds — maybe thousands — of sleepers parked next door.”
“Thousands,” she agreed.
“And who decides when they get to wake up?”
“Tha
t’s a matter of some dispute,” she admitted. “Our own position is that the Ahasuerus Foundation has the sole responsibility and authority. The World Government in Amundsen has a different view, but…” She left the sentence dangling.
“But possession is nine points of the law,” I finished for her. “Is that why Lowenthal’s so keen to take us back to Earth?”
“It’s probably a factor.”
“But why should he or anyone in the outer system care who has custody of Christine or me? What interest do they have in us, or in the thousands like us who remain unthawed?”
“The Earthbound have a view on everything,” Davida told me, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “That view, simply put, is that everything that can be left undone should be left undone — but that if something has to be done, they ought to be the ones to say when, how, and by whom. It’s almost reflexive. Anything new, or anything slightly unusual, is always regarded with suspicion on Earth. The people of the outer system, on the other hand, delight in thinking of themselves as the great pioneers of all the new frontiers. They consider the Earthbound to be decadent — a retardant force holding back the cause of progress — and can usually be relied on to disagree with any position the Earthbound take up. If the Earthbound have decided that they want you back on Earth, under their control, the people aboard Child of Fortune will almost certainly offer to take you elsewhere, for any reason they can think of or none at all.”
“And where do you stand?” I asked.
Either she misunderstood the question or she decided that she had an agenda of her own to set out first. “Many outer-system folk see the remoter inhabitants of Earth orbit and the inner system as potential political allies,” she said, “although as many people on Earth think of us as their natural allies. Adam Zimmerman is potentially capable of becoming a significant factor in that ideological conflict, and the Ahasuerus Foundation is his creation. Unfortunately, the Foundation is no longer the closely knit community that it once was, and the Earthbound element of the Foundation doesn’t seem to have been unanimous in approving the decision to revive its founder. Excelsior’s view is that ours is the posthuman community best equipped to fulfill the Foundation’s mission, and we intend to do that if Adam is agreeable.”
“Do you really think he’ll want to be remade as one of you?” I asked, astonished by the seeming absurdity of the possibility.
“He’s a free individual,” Davida said, flatly. “We shall do everything within our power to ensure that he makes an informed decision.”
“But whatever he decides, you’ll want to practice on me — or Christine?”
“Not unless you volunteer,” she assured me. “We were unable to seek your informed consent before releasing you from your long imprisoment, but we had no reason to think that you would raise any objection. Now that you are available for consultation, however, we would not dream of subjecting you to any further treatment without your full cooperation. We shall be pleased to assist you in securing your own emortality when you have considered the opportunities open to you, as recompense for the services you have already rendered.”
I took the inference that she wouldn’t be overly disappointed if Christine and I decided to go to Earth, or set off for the outer system, before seeking any further bodily modification. Adam Zimmerman was the prize on which her own eyes were fixed — but for that very reason, I realized, he was also the prize for which the other contingents would fight hardest.
I wondered how much it mattered, and to whom. I wondered, too, how flattered I ought to be that Mortimer Gray and Michael Lowenthal were at least prepared to pretend an interest in me.
“Lowenthal must be one of the oldest of the emortals,” I remarked, judiciously.
She took the bait. “He is. He has a well-deserved reputation for careful dealing.”
“He’s not just a UN functionary then — he’s a key member of the Inner Circle?”
“The Zaman Transformation was an Ahasuerus project, initially,” Davida observed, again coming at my question from a tangential angle, “but the whole Foundation was Earthbound then, and the terms of our operation were controlled externally. Michael Lowenthal was one of the very first generation of true emortals — but he wasn’t one of ours.”
There was nothing faint about her meaningful emphasis, but I wasn’t sure how much she was trying to imply. I wondered if she had known, even before I mentioned it to Christine Caine, that I had been instrumental — albeit in a very minor capacity — in tying Ahasuerus down in the days when the entire Foundation was a loose cannon rolling around PicoCon’s well-scrubbed deck. In a world of emortals, I realized, people might hold grudges for a very long time. Davida Berenike Columella was never going to say it in so many words, but the people behind her were probably still at odds with the people behind Michael Lowenthal, and might be for a long time to come.
“So the people in the outer system probably wouldn’t give a damn about any of us,” I said, to make sure I was keeping up with the news, “except for the fact that the Earthbound do have an ax to grind — for which reason, the outer system folk might want to throw a monkey wrench in the works. You only give a damn about Adam Zimmerman, so you don’t care whether either the two ships takes Christine and me off your hands, although you’ll be very pissed off indeed if Zimmerman elects to go too.”
Davida paused before answering, perhaps needing to consult her friendly neighborhood data bank as to what a monkey wrench was or what being pissed off involved. Then, speaking rather grudgingly but with all apparent honesty, she said: “There are a great many people in the outer system who regard Adam Zimmerman as a hero and a bold pioneer. The delegates aboard Child of Fortune may regard him as a kindred spirit, at least potentially. If he were to ally himself with one or more of their most cherished causes, they might have reason to be delighted. Lowenthal must know that too.” I realized then that she wasn’t just trying to keep me informed — she was talking to me like this because she was trying to work through a few uncertainties of her own.
I thought about that for a moment, then said: “You don’t have a clue which way he’s going to jump, do you? Neither does anyone else.”
“Adam Zimmerman is, admittedly, something of a mystery to us…as he is to anyone born in this era.”
“But perhaps not to me,” I pointed out, grasping the opportunity to restate my own case for further involvement in the scheme of which I had unwittingly become a part, “or even to Christine Caine. Is that why Lowenthal took the trouble to talk to me? He must think — rightly — that I might be better placed to get through to Zimmerman than you, or him, or his rivals from Titan. So why hasn’t anyone working for the other side contacted me yet?”
“Are you certain that they haven’t?”
I figured that I’d have been told if there were any more messages waiting, so I couldn’t see what she was getting at for a moment. Then I did.
“But Gray’s Earthbound, like Lowenthal,” I said, when I had twigged. “Why would he be playing for the other side?” Thinking back, I realized that he hadn’t actually said that the “association of academic interests” he supposedly represented was Earthbound.
“Gray’s as thoroughly Earthbound as anyone in his attitudes,” Davida agreed. “But he has some very influential friends on the frontier. I know of no reason why you shouldn’t take his offer of employment at face value — but I doubt that the representatives of the World Government would be prepared to trust Mortimer Gray to act in what they see as Earth’s best interests. He saved Emily Marchant’s life in the Coral Sea Disaster, and she’s used him as a propaganda tool before.”
I hadn’t a clue who Emily Marchant was, but I figured that I could look her up. I certainly intended to investigate Michael Lowenthal. The plot of which I was a part seemed to be thickening around me, and I didn’t know whether to be glad or annoyed. Christine Caine, I supposed, would reckon it one more blessing to count or one more irony to chuckle at, but I was as different from her as I
was from Adam Zimmerman. If my assistance proved to be a tradeable asset, that might be to my advantage — but if my interference were to be reckoned a possible nuisance by Michael Lowenthal or anyone else, that might place me in peril. Having already served a sentence of a thousand years plus for misdemeanors I couldn’t even remember, I figured that I could do without any disadvantages or prejudices hovering over the inception of my second slice of life.
I had to educate myself quickly, but it wasn’t going to be easy to work out what I needed to know, if everyone who offered to help me had their own vested interests — however slight — to look after.
“Thanks,” I said to Davida Berenike Columella.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, the phrase falling from her tongue as if she’d never used it before and did not expect ever to need its like again.
Twelve
The Temptations of Paranoia
Throughout my former life I had always taken pride in maintaining a level of paranoia appropriate to my various professions. As I began my second span, however, I was acutely conscious of the fact that I had not been paranoid enough to anticipate that I might end up in the cooler, or that once I was there my custodians — not to mention my friends — would allow me to languish indefinitely. Knowledge of this failure, I must admit, made me a trifle oversensitive to the direr possibilities implicit in my new situation. The research that I contrived to do during the next few hours of wakefulness was guided by a fervent desire to figure out why my hosts might be lying to me.
I knew, of course, that there was a possibility that Davida Berenike Columella was telling me the truth and nothing but, but it seemed safer and wiser to work from the opposite assumption. If there really were thousands of corpsicles stored in a gargantuan coffin ship somewhere in the Counter-Earth Cluster, I reasoned, the probability that Christine Caine and I just happened to be the nearest contemporaries of Adam Zimmerman was slight. If we weren’t his nearest contemporaries, then we must have been selected for awakening on different grounds — and even if we were, there were still question marks hanging over the matter of our revival, and Adam Zimmerman’s too.
The Omega Expedition Page 12
