The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [159]
“You mean,” I said, very slowly, as the import of what she was saying sank in, “that all that desperate babbling was recorded?”
“‘Recorded’!” Emily retorted, disgustedly. “You really don’t understand politics, do you, Morty? We put it out live, almost as soon as we started eavesdropping. While the silver was transmitting the mayday its channels were wide open, even though its eyes and ears had been squelched. We heard everything—and so did the world. Common enterprise, Morty—the very best resources of the Earthbound and the Outer System, focused on a simple mission of mercy, a race against time. We always knew we were going to win, of course, but the audience didn’t—even the ones who’d followed the development of the new generation of smart spaceships. To them, it looked like a long shot, exactly the kind of miracle you thought you needed—and no one aboard had any reason to explain that it was actually a piece of cake.”
“And it helped you?” I queried, uncertainly.
“It certainly did. All our differences were set aside, for the moment. Once things like that have been forgotten, even momentarily, it’s very hard to remember them exactly the way they were. Your little meditation might just have succeeded where everything else had failed, in putting Humpty Dumpty together again and healing the breach in the fabric of the Oikumene.”
“All I did was fall into a hole,” I pointed out.
“Even if that were true,” she said, “I’d be forever grateful for your exquisite timing. But you also kept talking. That’s always been your strong suit, Morty. Whatever happened, you always kept talking. I have to go now—because I have to keep talking too. The ice is broken, if you’ll forgive the pun, but we have a hell of a lot of talking to do before we get the course of history flowing smoothly again. There are a lot of issues that need to be settled. Jupiter’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
I forgave her the ludicrously mixed metaphor as well as the pun. I was in an unusually good mood. In fact, I was alive.
Julius Ngomi came to see me too, though not until much later.
“All history is fantasy,” he said.
“If you hadn’t told me that,” I lied, “my life might have taken a very different path.”
I was a diplomat now, I thought. I owed it to the world to play the silver and tell the man exactly what he needed to hear. Anyway, he was the clever hypocrite who’d once told me that the truth is what you can get away with.
“You’re world famous now,” the clever hypocrite told me. “Also rich—not by my standards or Emily’s, of course, but far richer than you’ve ever been before. Access fees to The History of Death established a new world record within hours of your not-so-final testament being sent out live from the good ship Ambassador. That’s where you are, in case nobody’s mentioned it.”
“So I understand,” I replied. “It’s not everyone who can put the Oikumene back together again just by lying here in bed, but I guess some of us have the gift and some of us have to work instead.”
“It won’t last, you know,” he added, grinning as broadly and as luminously as he could. “Another nine-day wonder. Next week, something else will be news. You’d think that emortals would have more staying power than that, wouldn’t you? But time marches on, sixty seconds to every hour and seven days in every week. Everything that happens live is only really important while it’s happening—and in the end, it all ends up inside mountains, the litter…”
“… that dare not speak its name,” I finished for him. “Do you ever worry that there might come a day when those little habits and catch-phrases might one day be all that’s left of you?”
“I used to,” he said, “but that was before I heard your little homily. If you can teach a low-grade silver to value its own life and personal evolution, who am I to resist the power of your rhetoric? It’s a pity there aren’t any Inuit left to sell ice to.”
“Somehow,” I said, “I get the feeling that you’re not quite as grateful as Emily seems to be for my heroic efforts on behalf of