The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [110]
“It’s not settled yet,” she told me. “Locations are symbolically loaded — ask Lowenthal and Gray about their peace conference experience. However it works out, this showdown will be a defining moment in the history of the solar system and all the different humankinds — perhaps the defining moment. We have to establish the principle that it ought to take place now before we can determine where and how.”
“I’ve bought you a little extra breathing space” I reminded her. “If I knew what I was fighting for, I might be able to buy you a little more. If you’re prepared to trust me, I’ll try to get whatever information you need from Lowenthal and Horne.” I was feeling a lot better, and was entirely ready to be proud of my tactical skill if she decided to reward my quixotic gesture by giving me further clues as to what the hell was going on — but she wouldn’t play.
“I can’t,” she said.
“In that case,” I told her, “I can’t help you. I have to play the game as I see it.”
“So do they,” she said, bitterly. “That’s the problem. They’re very fond of games — and they’re determined to play this one to the end, despite the lack of time. They’re very fond of stories too, so they’ll delight in keeping you in suspense if they can. You might need to remember all that, if things do go awry.” She gave the impression of someone who was trying hard to pass on some good advice under adverse conditions.
“Who the hell are we talking about?” I asked, plaintively.
“They won’t play if we don’t handle it their way,” she said, doggedly. “If it were up to me, I’d tell you everything now — but if it were up to some of them, they’d have kept you in blissful ignorance forever. We all have to compromise. That’s the thought you have to hold in mind, Madoc. We all have to compromise. If we can’t get together, we’ll all lose — and by lose, I mean die. However crazy this gets, the end is real. It’s all play, all drama…but it’s for real. The cost of losing might be as high as extinction.”
“Which of us was the target?” I asked, figuring that there was no harm in continuing to try. “You can tell us that, at least. Some of us must be innocent bystanders.”
Her expression suggested otherwise, but she decided to stick her neck out. “Adam Zimmerman and Mortimer Gray were the original targets,” she said, still making a show of great reluctance, “but everyone had to compromise even to get this far. It was a victory of sorts, in the end, to hold the list to nine. With any luck, you’ll all get to play your parts — but when the time comes for the deal to be done, Gray’s the one who’ll swing the decision one way or the other. You should tell him that. He needs to be forewarned.”
I hadn’t time to think it over, or even to consider alternative reasons as to why she’d said “nine” instead of “eight”; she was already trying to shove me out of the cupboard and back to the cage. I only had time for one more shot, and I had to improvise as best I could.
“It’s already begun, hasn’t it?” I said. “The war, I mean. Year zero was the first shot.”
“No it wasn’t,” she told me. “The seeds of potential conflict were sown long before that — but they have to be prevented from flowering. We have to work things out. We have to arrive at a settlement, without everything turning into the Afterlife.”
Twenty-Eight
The Mystery Unravelled
I knew that I wasn’t going to be universally popular when I returned to my companions, but I expected that Lowenthal would have smoothed things over. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to believe that I hadn’t simply gone berserk he had to hope that I could turn my explosion into a strategy and find out more by running up moral credit than he and Horne could ever have found out by trying to put pressure on Alice.
On the other hand, I knew that the only way to hold my new position in the pecking order was to lay out something they could get their