The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [75]
"Then why have you woken me, if the process isn't ready?"
"There isn't one," Da Silva said. "And there won't be, at least not for a long, long time. Afraid we've got other things to worry about now. Immortality's the least of our problems."
"I don't understand."
"You will, Gaunt," Clausen said. "Everyone does in the end. You've been preselected for aptitude, anyway. Made your fortune in computing, didn't you?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "You worked with artificial intelligence, trying to make thinking machines."
One of the vague disappointments hardened into a specif c, life-souring defeat. All the energy he had put into one ambition, all the friends and lovers he had burned up along the way, shutting them out of his life while he focused on that one white whale.
"It never worked out."
"Still made you a rich man along the way," she said.
"Just a means of raising money. What does it have to do with my revival?"
Clausen seemed on the verge of answering his question before something made her change her mind. "Clothes in the bedside locker: they should fit you. You want breakfast?"
"I don't feel hungry."
"Your stomach will take some time to settle down. Meantime, if you feel like puking, do it now rather than later. I don't want you messing up my ship."
He had a sudden lurch of adjusting preconceptions. The prefabricated surroundings, the background hum of distant machines, the utilitarian clothing of his wake-up team: perhaps he was aboard some kind of spacecraft, sailing between the worlds. The twenty-third century, he thought. Time enough to establish an interplanetary civilization, even if it only extended as far as the solar system.
"Are we in a ship now?"
"Fuck, no," Clausen said, sneering at his question. "We're in Patagonia."
He got dressed, putting on underwear, a white T-shirt and over that the same kind of grey overalls as his hosts had been wearing. The room was cool and damp and he was glad of the clothes once he had them on. There were lace-up boots that were tight around the toes, but otherwise serviceable. The materials all felt perfectly mundane and commonplace, even a little frayed and worn in places. At least he was clean and groomed, his hair clipped short and his beard shaved. They must have freshened him up before bringing him to consciousness.
Clausen and Da Silva were waiting in the windowless corridor outside the room. "'Spect you've got a ton of questions," Clausen said. "Along the lines of, why am I being treated like shit rather than royalty? What happened to the rest of the Few, what is this fucked-up, miserable place, and so on?"
"I presume you're going to get round to some answers soon enough."
"Maybe you should tell him the deal now, up-front," Da Silva said. He was wearing an outdoor coat now and had a zip-up bag slung over his shoulder.
"What deal?" Gaunt asked.
"To begin with," Clausen said, "you don't mean anything special to us. We're not impressed by the fact that you just slept 160 years. It's old news. But you're still useful."
"In what way?"
"We're down a man. We run a tight operation here and we can't afford to lose even one member of the team." It was Da Silva speaking now; although there wasn't much between them, Clausen had the sense that he was the slightly more reasonable one of the duo, the one who wasn't radiating quite so much naked antipathy. "Deal is, we train you up and give you work. In return, of course, you're looked after pretty well. Food, clothing, somewhere to sleep, whatever medicine we can provide." He shrugged. "It's the deal we all took. Not so bad when you get used to it."
"And the alternative?"
"Bag you and tag you and put you back in the freezer," Da Silva went on. "Same as all the others. Your choice, of course; work with us, become part of the team, or go back into hibernation and take your chances there."
"We need to be on our way." Clausen