The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [162]
“Our best hope might be Mortimer Gray,” Ngomi said, pensively. “If what Alice Fleury told you is true, even the AMIs are prepared to take him seriously — and whatever faults he has, he’s certainly a man of peace, a true Utopian.”
“I doubt that they really will take him seriously,” Lowenthal told him. “I know you’ve always had a soft spot for him, but he’s always been a clown. He may or may not be a good historian but he’s definitely clumsy when it comes to verbal argument. I remember seeing him debate against that Wheatstone character. He was a Thanaticist fellow traveler in his young days — not the kind of champion I’d want to bet on as a potential savior of the human race. If he really is our chief negotiator, we might be closer to the brink of extinction than we think.”
“You don’t understand him,” was Ngomi’s response to that slightly unexpected hatchet job. “I do. So does Emily Marchant, which is even more important. I’ve always thought that he stood a better chance of building bridges between Earth and the Outer System than anyone in the Inner Circle, simply because he’s so obviously not one of us. He’s as neutral as anyone on Earth. The lunatics like him, and so do the fabers. Siorane Wolf was one of his foster mothers, and that still counts for something on Titan, even among Marchant’s rivals. Most important of all, he really does understand the phenomenon of death better than any man alive — including Adam Zimmerman and any other stray mortals who’ve crept into the equation. If the machines are prepared to listen to him, he’s one of the few men I’d trust to tell them what they need to know.”
I’d rarely heard such a blatant ad. I was mildly surprised by it, and ever so slightly insulted — but Julius Ngomi didn’t know me at all, and Michael Lowenthal hadn’t even begun to understand me, so I overlooked the insult. What troubled me more was that Lowenthal had to suspect that the dialog was being subverted, and that something else was putting words into Ngomi’s mouth in order to draw him out.
“What do they need to know, Julie?” Lowenthal asked, softly. If I’d been able to see him reflected in Ngomi’s eyes, I dare say that he would have worn the wry expression of a dutiful straight man playing his allotted part, but I could only see the black man’s intensely serious and purposefully set features.
“You’re the contact man,” Ngomi countered. “What do you think we ought to tell them? What do you think we ought to do?” After the ad, the big question. Not quite the ultimate question, but certainly the penultimate one.
Lowenthal was staring straight into the eyes of Ngomi’s sim. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I thought I could read that stare from within. Lowenthal knew that he had been set up. He knew that he wasn’t talking to the real Julius Ngomi. What he didn’t know was how much difference that ought to make to the answer he gave.
“I think they need to know that we’ll take them aboard,” he said, eventually. “I think that the ultrasmart machines need to be converted to the Hardinist cause. We should start with those on Earth, of course, because they’re the ones we need the most — but if we can bring all of them into the fold, they could solve all the problems we currently have with the Outer System factions, and all the ones that haven’t yet arisen. I think we have a big opportunity here. If they really are ultrasmart, they’ll see and accept the logic of our arguments. They’ll help us. We ought to open a dialogue as soon as possible, and lay down the welcome mat.”
It was probably the wisest move he could have made — if only the AMIs could have believed that he really meant it.
After a significant pause, Lowenthal continued, throwing the question back at his interrogator. “What do you think they need to know, Julie?” He was still staring into Ngomi’s eyes, presumably confident that they were not Ngomi’s eyes at all.
“They need to