The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [111]
“Okay,” I said, “Here’s what I’m sure of, thanks to a little help from Christine. We’re aboard one of the Arks that a bunch of Lowenthal’s predecessors built in the late twenty-first century. The idea was to hitch a ride in a bunch of comets that were passing through the system, but one coupling went wrong so only three left the system. This is the fourth. Alice says that she was frozen down in twenty ninety, which would make her a passenger on one of the other three — almost certainly the one that recontacted Earth when it ended up at Ararat. Whoever’s got hold of us probably came from Ararat, but they seem to be engaged in combative negotiations with several local parties. Alice says they haven’t settled on a venue for the show we’ve been snatched to take part in because whatever location they choose will be symbolically loaded — she told me to ask Lowenthal and Gray about their peace conference experience if I wanted that explained.
“The original targets of the kidnap plan were Zimmerman and Gray, but the rest of us got added in as a result of the negotiations, maybe because that’s the way committee decisions always go. The negotiations must have begun before Christine and I were woken up, so it’s possible that we were specifically chosen to be part of this, but it’s conceivable that they just wanted six more bodies to make up an agreed number. The agreed number appears to be nine rather than eight, which might mean that there’s someone else yet to be added in, or that Alice herself is number nine.
“Whatever the story is, it goes back way beyond year zero. I can’t get Alice’s we and they straight in my mind, but whoever they are she says they love playing games — which is presumably why they’ll be hanging on my every word just as intently as you are. I suspect that they’ve woken us up to watch us, maybe to see whether we can figure this out but more likely because they want to obtain a better idea of where Lowenthal’s and Horne’s masters stand in respect of the problems that currently afflict the solar system.
“In spite of what I said before, I don’t think anyone intends to torture us, but they do seem to want us in our raw state for now, maybe because they intend to instal some elaborate IT of their own. According to Alice, the stuff I was just given is strictly temporary. Alice reckons that Gray’s the key to the whole affair. She says that he’s the one who might be able to swing the big decision one way or the other, and ought to be forewarned of that responsibility. If we get it wrong, the booby prize might be extinction — but that threat might just be part of the game. In fact, all of this might just be part of the game.”
Having said that, I sat down. I wasn’t tired — in fact, I’d never been so tightly wired without powerful chemical assistance — but I figured that it would be an appropriate way to signal that the floor was open.
Lowenthal had been looking at me, but now he looked at Mortimer Gray. Mortimer Gray was studying the table top intently, deep in thought — or determinedly pretending to be deep in thought.
“Is that all?” Niamh Horne asked me.
“All except the rhetoric,” I told her. “Mention was made of defining moments in history. You’d know more about what might qualify than I do. If Lowenthal’s strong right arm had only shown enough judgment to break Gray’s nose instead of mine, he might have been able to get far more out of Alice than I did, and to catch on far more readily to what it might mean; as things are, we’ll just have to make the best of what we’ve got.”
Lowenthal was still looking at Mortimer Gray. The historian finally condescended to raise his head, but instead of meeting Lowenthal’s inquiring gaze he looked at Davida Berenike Columella. “Who gave you the instruction to wake Zimmerman?” he asked.
“It came from Foundation headquarters, on Earth,” she told him — unhelpfully, so far as I could tell.
Now he swung his gaze to Lowenthal. “And who gave the order to the Foundation?” he asked.
Lowenthal