The Omega Expedition

by Brian Stableford

  “Suppose Adam Zimmerman doesn’t want to go on the grand tour just yet,” I said. “Will your offer remain open?” I was careful to phrase the question ambiguously, so that he wouldn’t be sure whether I was referring to their offer to Adam Zimmerman or their markedly less generous offer to me.

  It was Niamh Horne who answered, although she had to hurry because Davida’s mouth was open yet again, presumably to make some offer of her own. “We’ll give sympathetic consideration to any request you care to make,” she said.

  Davida finally found her opportunity to say: “It might be as well if you were all to remain here for a while,” she said. “We need to monitor your condition, and to make sure that the IT we’ve installed is working properly. You’re very welcome to remain here as our guests indefinitely, but if you do decide to take up an offer of employment on Earth, you’d be wise to delay the move until we’ve completed our own research program. You might also have a useful role to play in the continuation of the project.”

  That was news to Niamh Horne as well as to me.

  “Continuation?” the cyborg repeated. “You intend to bring them all back? Why?”

  I was tempted to ask “Why not?” but I refrained.

  “I don’t know what the Foundation intends,” Davida confessed. “I’m working to instructions — but I had assumed that if the first revivals went to plan…”

  “Whose plan?” Niamh Horne was quick to ask.

  Davida’s little-girl face seemed utterly guileless and deeply confused. “Why, the Foundation’s,” she said.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” the cyborg said, frostily, “no one associated with the Foundation in the Outer System had the slightest inkling that this matter was under serious discussion, let alone that a decision had been taken. Lowenthal tells me that he had the same impression from his acquaintances on Earth. They seem to believe that your people took the decision yourselves, entirely independently.”

  For the moment, they seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Davida was a picture of innocent confusion, but my paranoia warned me that the innocence and the confusion might be every bit as deceptive as her nine-year-old appearance.

  “That’s not possible,” Davida said. “There was no question…”

  “Are you saying that the matter of Adam Zimmerman’s revival wasn’t even under discussion among the Foundation’s Outer System personnel?” I said to Niamh Horne, partly to take the pressure off Davida and partly to serve my own curiosity. “Even though the whole purpose of the Ahasuerus Foundation was to bring him back once the technology existed to make him emortal?”

  Now it was Horne’s turn to look slightly confused. It was Conwin who said: “All Niamh is saying is that the Foundation people we know had not been notified that a decision was imminent. Given that the revival of Adam Zimmerman is, as you say, the Foundation’s perennial central concern, they were surprised — and a little hurt — to find that they had not been consulted.”

  “I can’t imagine…” Davida began.

  I cut her off again, as easily as I might if she really had been a child intruding upon an adult discussion. “So you think Lowenthal’s lying,” I said. “You think the decision was taken on Earth, for reasons that have more to do with Earth’s interests than the Foundation’s?”

  I was glad to discover that I hadn’t lost my touch. That suggestion finally won an expression of sorts from Niamh Horne’s synthetic features. “That’s not what I meant at all,” she said. Then she hesitated, presumably realizing that if she denied any suspicion that Lowenthal had lied to her — a suspicion that she surely ought to be prepared to entertain — she might as well be saying that she was convinced that Davida Berenike Columella was a liar.

  “What are you trying to imply, Mr. Tamlin?” Theoderic Conwin asked, having observed that his boss was floundering.

  “I’m just trying to find out how I got here,” I told them all, flatly. “The fact that none of you seems to know for sure who decided to set the wheels in motion makes me a little wary of the notion that I just happened to be the obvious target for a trial run. I can’t remember why I was put away, and someone seems to have taken the trouble to destroy all the relevant information — so I can’t help wondering whether someone might want me awake again, and might be using Adam Zimmerman’s revival as a cover.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Davida.

  Niamh Horne seemed to agree with her. “I can understand your disorientation,” the cyborg said. “I can understand, too, that you’re looking at the situation from your own peculiar perspective. But Adam Zimmerman’s awakening is the bone of contention here. I can assure you that neither I nor Michael Lowenthal has any particular interest in you, Mr. Tamlin — nor, for that matter, in Christine Caine. Perhaps you should stop searching for conspiracies and simply be grateful for whatever freak of chance brought you here.” She probably meant the last comment, but I was more interested in reading between the lines of what she’d said before.

  “You’re hoping to stop it, aren’t you?” I said. “You and Lowenthal. You’re hoping to persuade Davida to put Zimmerman back into the freezer. Why?”

  Horne and Conwin practically fell over themselves in the rush to deny that. It was painfully obvious that they’d been caught on the hop. They’d come here to greet Adam Zimmerman, not to bury him, and so had Lowenthal — but that was before the two delegations had had an opportunity to compare notes. Lowenthal had told me how much he was looking forward to getting together with Horne, but he hadn’t known then what the outcome of their exchange of views might be. Apparently, it had produced a swift and unexpected result. Someone here was being played for a fool — and they seemed to have no better idea who, or why, than I had.

  “The process can’t be stopped,” Davida said, very firmly indeed. “It’s too far advanced. To attempt to reverse the process now would place him in considerable danger. It’s out of the question.”

  Horne seemed to realize that she had made a mistake. She had seen the opportunity to ask “Whose plan?” and she had seized it reflexively — but the occasion had been inappropriate and the move had been premature. She wanted to get away now, to consult her own people. She and Conwin made their excuses and left.

  Davida made as if to accompany them, then thought better of it. She let them climb into their pods, and then turned back to me. “I’m sorry about that,” she said.

  “Why?” I said, with a smile. “I thought we all got along famously.”

  Davida grinned at that, and her face was instantly transformed into that of a real mischievous child. But she knew that it wasn’t entirely a joking matter.

  “Whatever those two may think,” she said, “my instructions came through the customary channels, and were quite explicit. It’s entirely possible that there is a dispute within the ranks of the Foundation, but I’ve every reason to believe that the decision was proper and authoritative. If there are problems between the UN and the Confederation, I know nothing about them.” She changed tack abruptly then, and asked: “Why did you make the assumption that Solantha Handsel is Michael Lowenthal’s bodyguard?”

  “Because she looks like one,” I told her. “Maybe appearances are deceptive, given the passage of a thousand years, and maybe people nowadays think everything’s just for show, but I’ve seen real bodyguards. The big boys at PicoCon used to take their personal protection very seriously, and it wasn’t the Eliminators they were worried about.”

  Davida was enough of an innocent not to catch the implication of the final remark, so I elaborated. “There was still a certain amount of competition for places on the Ultimate Board,” I told her. “Damon didn’t have to kill anyone in order to step into dead men’s shoes, so far as I knew, but some of his colleagues did. In a world where everyone lives for a long time, people with ambition sometimes have to use unconventional measures to make room for themselves. I assume that’s still the case.”

  “Not on Excelsior,” Davida told me — but the fact that s
he’d put it that way suggested that she wasn’t so sure about Earth and the outer satellites.

  “It’s only ninety-nine years since a whole lot of shoes fell vacant at a stroke,” I reminded her. “I’m a stranger here, but I can’t help wondering how closely Excelsior is in touch with the rest of the solar system. Personally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that Michael Lowenthal is more than a little worried about the way things are back home. Wouldn’t you be anxious, if your world had recently suffered an accident of that magnitude?”

  Davida didn’t answer immediately, but she certainly seemed to take the thought aboard. “Something is going on that I don’t understand,” she confessed. “Somewhere, there’s been a drastic failure of communication. We’ll have to get together with both delegations, to work out exactly who’s been misled, and how…” She broke off then, realizing like Horne before her that these might be matters best not discussed in front of a barbarian refugee from the twenty-third century. “Christine Caine has asked to be allowed to see the interior of the Child of Fortune,” she told me, changing her tone decisively. “I relayed the request to Niamh Horne, who said that she would be pleased to guide a party around the ship — including Mr. Lowenthal and Dr. Gray — as soon as Adam Zimmerman is awake. Would you like to be included?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  Davida nodded. “It should be very interesting,” she observed. “It’s an opportunity I’ve never had myself. The ship that rescued Dr. Gray from the Arctic Ocean must have been similar in kind, but a much older model.” She seemed to be groping toward a point without being entirely clear what it was.

  “You don’t actually know whose decision it was to wake Adam Zimmerman up, do you?” I asked her, trying to sound sympathetic.

  The way she looked up at me told me that she had begun to doubt it. She and the sisterhood were an Ahasuerus project, not executive directors of the organization. In all likelihood, she had no idea where the real power within the organization was located, or how that power related to the power wielded by Michael Lowenthal’s associates and Niamh Horne’s. When the instructions had come through, she’d been only too glad to obey them, because it had been a great opportunity, and a great honor. She had not interrogated their source — and now she was wondering whether the someone that had been misled, or played for a fool, might be her.

  “It really is the right time,” she said, instead of answering the question. “It’s neither too soon nor too late. And his awakening really is a key event in posthuman history, no matter how hard anyone might try to make light of it.”

  “You don’t need to convince me,” I told her, although I knew that it wasn’t me she was trying to convince. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to qualify as a trial run. Didn’t I?”

  She didn’t answer that one either. She might have thought so before, and if she had she probably still did — but Niamh Horne and I had succeeded in piercing her innocence with a tiny sliver of doubt.

  “We’ll be starting the final phase of the procedure soon,” she said. “I’ll let you know, so that you can watch through the window. That’s what everyone else will be doing. Not only here, but everywhere — just as soon as the light reaches them. We’re expecting an audience of millions, perhaps billions. It might have been a freak of chance that brought you here, but you’ll be in a privileged position.”

  What she was trying to say was that I’d be in the front row of a red hot show. Even if I was just a trial run, my number having been thrown up by the lottery of fate, I’d get to see history in the making at point blank range.

  I knew that I ought to be grateful for that. I knew, too, if Adam Zimmerman did request or require company of his own kind on his grand tour of the modern world, I might have cause to be grateful that I was the nearest thing to his own kind that Excelsior had to offer. It wasn’t just that Adam Zimmerman and I shared the same mortal blood; given the opportunity, I’d have tried to steal the world too. I figured that I was entitled to my front row seat at the big event, perhaps more so than Niamh Horne, or Mortimer Gray, or even Michael Lowenthal.

  “Good luck, Davida,” I said to Davida Berenike Columella, knowing that she was the one who would have to carry the can if anything went wrong with Zimmerman’s awakening.

  “Thank you, Madoc,” she said, with all apparent sincerity.

  Eighteen

  Adam Zimmerman’s Awakening

  I hadn’t fully realized what the process of “awakening” a corpsicle involved, although I was dimly aware that there were probably yucky bits that any sane person would be more than glad to sleep through. Everybody in my day had referred to SusAn, with casual flippancy, as “freezing down,” as if it were merely a matter of popping someone into a powerful refrigerator, but everybody had known that there was a lot more to it. I suppose we’d all been slightly afraid of it — even those of us who were determinedly law-abiding. Who can ever be sure that the weight of the law will not descend upon him?

  At any rate, like most men of my era, I’d never bothered to research the topic in detail. It wasn’t until I watched the later phases of Adam Zimmerman’s revivification that I was able to reconstruct my own experience in my imagination.

  Zimmerman had been put away by means of a slightly less complicated and much less streamlined process than the one that must have been applied to me, but he had to come back through all the same stages. Watching as much of it as I did made me feel distinctly queasy, because I fooled myself into “remembering” similar things being done to me. I was profoundly glad that by the time I was invited to tune in, most of the slow work had already been done.

  I now know — and am capable of shuddering at the thought — that after I’d been put into an artificially induced coma my metabolic activity had been quieted even further, until all the DNA in my cells had wrapped itself up snugly and all the mitochondria had fallen idle. Only then had the first stage of temperature depression begun, to facilitate the vitrification process that would work outwards from the soft organs and inwards from the the gut and skin. Not until the vitrification was complete and uniform had my body temperature been lowered, by very careful degrees, all the way from minus seven degrees Celsius to seven degrees absolute — and even then there had been a further stage of “encasement” in a cocktail of ices not so very different from the stuff of which comets are made.

  That was what I had gone through in order to get to my present destination: a journey to the dark land of the dead, whose fairy queen had far more in common with Christine Caine’s cold-hearted Snow Queen than Shakespeare’s Titania or Spenser’s Gloriana.

  By the time Davida Berenike Columella put the operation on the screen, Zimmerman’s corpsicle had been out of its icy cocoon for some time. The temperature of the vitrified body had already been raised to minus seven Celsius so that nanobot-aided devitrificaton could begin. What Davida’s multitudinous audience watched was the final stage of the long process, which would turn Adam Zimmerman’s protoplasm from glassy gel to membranously confined liquid.

  A host of nanobots delivered enthusiastic progress reports regarding the miraculous state of Zimmerman’s individual cells, but everyone knows that nanobots are constitutionally incapable of seeing the big picture, so no one took their reportage to imply that the whole system would click into gear automatically.

  The most crucial phase of the awakening would be the one that would ease Zimmerman from physical inertia into controlled coma, rebuilding brain activity from the bottom up. That would turn effective death into dreamless sleep, then into the kind of sleep that could sustain dreaming. The nanobots couldn’t measure the subjective component of a dream; some part of the emotions associated with it, and all of its imagery, were forever beyond their reach. The external sensors collated their information, assuring the operators and watchers alike that all was well at the physiological level, but there was an inevitable margin of uncertainty that kept us all on edge while the long minutes ticked by. />
  Christine Caine was keeping me company again, but she seemed unusually subdued as we sat through the suspenseful phase. I assumed that she was experiencing the same self-centered feelings as me, but when she finally broke her silence with something more than a grunt it was to express astonishment at Zimmerman’s appearance.

  “He’s so old,” were her exact words.

  It was trivially true, of course, but that wasn’t what she meant. I had only been thirty-nine years old when I was frozen down, but it wouldn’t have made much difference to my face if I’d been seventy-seven. People of my generation didn’t suffer from wrinkles, or gray hair, or any of the other traditional appearances of “old age.” We needed elaborate Internal Technology and periodic deep tissue rejuvenation to keep us going even for a mere hundred and fifty years, but the superficial appearances of aging were easier to overcome than the invisible record of intracellular damage and nucleic acid copying errors.

  Adam Zimmerman hadn’t had our advantages. He wasn’t old, even by the standards of Christine Caine’s day, if one left his millennium in limbo out of the account, but he certainly looked it.

  I had seen the superficial signs of old age before. One of my closest associates in the criminal fraternity had worn them almost as a badge of pride. It should not have been a surprise to see them manifest in Adam Zimmerman’s face and figure, but there seemed something not quite right about the matter. It would not have been impossible, or even particularly difficult, to apply a little somatic engineering to the texture of the skin while the devitrification procedure was proceeding. Although the whole point of the exercise was to bring him back exactly as he had been when he went into SusAn — save for supportive IT and a very smart suit of clothes — it seemed to me that a certain amount of cosmetic work would not have been inappropriate. No doubt he would make his own decision about that, when the time came to make informed decisions about the particular technologies of emortality that he would adopt, but I couldn’t believe that he would not have relished the prospect of waking up rejuvenated. “It’s mainly a matter of showmanship,” I said to Christine, when I’d thought it over. “They’re displaying him to the whole solar system as a work of art. This is just the beginning of the story. They want all the phases to be visible, to demonstrate the true significance of what they’re doing.”