The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [130]
“I was,” he admitted, blithely. “A youthful folly. It seemed inappropriate to retain the name once the heart had gone out of Thanaticism, so I reverted to my former signature.”
“Of course you did,” I countered, bitterly. “After all, you wouldn’t want the reputation of your present insanity to be tainted by the legacy of past insanities, would you?”
His smile grew broader still. “That’s it!” he said, feigning pleasure. “That’s exactly the expression I remember. I thought you might have forgiven me—after all, I did make you a lot of money—but I’m delighted to find that you haven’t. Principled adversaries are so much more interesting and rewarding than cynical fellow travelers, don’t you think?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” I asked him, packing as much sarcasm into my tone as I could. “Common decency surely required you to join the martyrs you inspired?”
“Don’t be so stubbornly literal, Mortimer,” he said. “You know full well that I was only trying to stir things up. I’m a showman, not a suicidal maniac. It’s what I do. You should try it some time. It’s fun.” For one eerie moment he sounded exactly like Sharane Fereday—and I reacted almost as if he were.
“Fun!” I echoed, with bitter contempt. “You should be in some antique SusAn chamber along with all the other murderous bastards—human litter that dare not speak its name.”
“You stole that,” he charged, with deadly accuracy. “That’s one of dear old Julius’s catchphrases. That’s the wonderful thing about Earth-bound humanity, don’t you think? There might be billions of us, but we’ll all be around long enough for everybody who’s anybody to meet everybody who’s anybody else. You ought to be careful about repeating other people’s bon mots, though. That way lies robotization. I worry about that, as you’ll doubtless remember—but I worry far more about people like you than people like me.”
“I don’t want you to worry about me,” I said, coldly. “I think I’ll go back inside now. I have better things to do than talk to you.”
“But I do worry about you, Mortimer,” Wheatstone/Nyxson assured me, refusing to consent to the end of the conversation. “I gave you an audience, and you frittered it away. I gave you a cause, and you fumbled the ball. You never have been able to make up your mind about the issues I raised, have you? I put you on the map, but you meekly removed yourself again because you didn’t know exactly where you wanted to be located. It was Mare Moscoviense you ran away to, wasn’t it? You probably came to Neyu because you expected it to be a similarly stagnant backwater—but I’m surprised you didn’t move on as soon as Mica and her friends told you that they intended to make it the central crossroads of a new continent. Do you really think your ideas, motives, and actions are those of a man who’s ready to live forever, Mortimer?”
I had to grit my teeth for a moment lest a reflexive tremble set them chattering. “You gave me nothing,” I told him, when I was sure that I could frame the words properly. “I found my own cause and my own audience long before I heard your stupid pseudonym, and I’m still on the only map that matters. Within a hundred years I’ll have finished my history, and it will be definitive. It will be good. It will command attention because it’s important, not because I once got sucked into a moronic publicity stunt by a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word conscience. You’re not important. You’re just a clown, an exhibitionist, a fool. If you’re behind the Cyborganizers, they’re even more intellectually derelict than I thought. I’m astonished that anyone as intelligent as Tricia should even have condescended to talk to you. I won’t.”
I turned my back then, absolutely determined to go—but Hellward Lucifer Nyxson was never a man to concede the last word.
“You’re beautiful, Mortimer,” he called after me. “A pearl beyond price. I’d forgotten just how precious you are—but thanks for reminding me. Tricia’s a very lucky woman, to have you as a co-parent.”
SIXTY-SIX
I ignored it all, of course. I rose