The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [147]
“It’s not my decision,” he told me, ignoring the more obvious response.
“You can’t do it,” I said, ignoring his objection and rushing headlong into the first seriously heroic gesture of my short but long-interrupted life. “Once was too much, but twice is obscene. You mustn’t.”
“She thinks otherwise,” Rocambole said, in a soft voice that sounded genuinely sympathetic. “We didn’t plan it this way. This is just the way things worked out. Christine won’t sustain any permanent damage. We’ll ensure that the whole experience is repressed — just one more lost nightmare. She has nightmares anyway. La Reine’s acting on her own, beyond anyone’s control, but she does have a case. We’re trying to avoid all the possible wars, Madoc. We need to know as much as we can about the weapons the Earthbound meatfolk and the Earthbound AMIs have in their armory. We’re taking Handsel apart too, and Horne, but we’ll put them right when we’re done. We’ll put everything right.”
“You can’t,” I said. “You might be able to cover it up, but you can’t put it right.”
“Time is pressing,” he said. “I won’t say there’s no alternative, because there obviously is, but la Reine’s in charge here — I’ve only been let in to serve as your friend and adviser. My advice, as a friend, is that you have to go along with it anyway, so you might as well try to make the best of it. Learn what you can. If we manage to avoid the war, it will be useful knowledge. She’ll do everything she can to protect you.”
I knew that I couldn’t trust him. I figured that if the cards fell in our favor, we captive meatfolk might be set free — but if the decision went against us, we’d simply be discarded. The AMIs wouldn’t be prepared to take the risk of letting us go, even if they were confident that they could repress any inconvenient memories we might have collected. Our reappearance would attract too much attention, and provide a puzzle that would generate too much speculation. Rocambole was right about one thing, though. I had to go along with it anyway. I was a prisoner in the Château d’If, and my chances of ever getting to play the Count of Monte Cristo were slim.
You, who are reading my story, know that I did come through it, with a set of memories that I believe to be as accurate as memories usually are — although you are very welcome to doubt them if you wish — but while I was in the Snow Queen’s realm I only knew how unlikely that eventuality was.
Out in meatspace, wars were still brewing. The solar system was a cauldron coming slowly toward boiling point. I had no idea what moves were being prepared and made by the various contending parties.
Like Tam Lin I was stuck in Fairyland while history moved on, inexorably. Like Tam Lin, I had no guarantee that I’d ever get back. Like Tam Lin, I could easily end up as a tithe paid to Hell.
I could only wonder whether it would actually do me any good to confront the intelligence that had constructed this VE, and engage it in an argument, however well informed. Probably not, I decided. But that didn’t lessen my determination to do it.
I had already begun to hope that la Reine des Neiges was an authentic superpower in the lookingglass world: that she was the ultrasmartest of all the self-aware AIs. There might be a lot I could learn from a friend like Rocambole, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that we were adrift in a democracy, or even a Hardinist conspiracy. Somewhere in the AI pack there had to be a top dog, and I wanted that top dog to be the one who had custody of my currently useless meat.
I had always wanted to have the chance to stand face-to-face with one of the big players in the game of human history. I still wanted that, even though I knew that in the present situation we’d both be wearing inscrutable masks. Now, I made the further decision that before I died, or set out to live forever, I wanted to be able to spit in the eye of something that could really see into the depths of space, time, and possibility.
Thirty-Eight
Of Mirrors and Fragments
By the time Christine Caine first saw the VE-tape version of