The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [166]
“Niamh’s right,” said Seven, one of only two participants in the conference who seemed obviously male. “It’s important that we make the first contact.”
“The first contact,” Davida’s sibling intervened, not very politely, “has already been made.”
“That’s true,” Niamh Horne agreed, “but the point’s still a valid one. It’s important that we make the first and best response to the new situation. We have to reassure the AMIs, not only that we’re perfectly happy to work with them, but that our interests are more closely coincident with theirs than those of any other posthuman faction. We have to work out a common agenda as soon as possible — one that can provide the basis for a thousand years of collaborative endeavor.”
“It shouldn’t be hard,” Seven added. “If they organized the basalt flow, they’re certainly not on the side of the Earthbound.”
“You don’t know that,” the delegate from Excelsior pointed out. “I can’t believe that it was a collective decision. The probability is that it’s one more instance of an independent thinker breaking ranks. But even if it were part of a much larger collective strategy, it might signify that they think of Earth as the heart of posthuman culture — the place where they need to make their presence felt. We have to persuade them that Earth is superfluous, a backwater. We have to line up as many of them as possible behind our own agenda.”
“They may well have come to the conclusion that Earth is on the sidelines,” Horne was quick to put in, “simply because they already have Ganymede. The Ganymedans may not know it yet, but the AMIs didn’t need to sabotage anything there to increase their presence or make it felt.”
“If they have Ganymede,” the eternal child countered, “they must also have Io. The other Jovian colonies are even smaller and even more machine-dependent.”
“The question is: How do things stand in the environs of Saturn?” This question came from One, who might have been Horne’s sister if appearances had been more trustworthy.
“We can’t hold up any real hope of exemption, even for Titan.” Horne said, “Earth surely must have been their last target rather than their first, but they’ve had ninety-nine years to firm up their grip on it. We don’t know exactly how things stand, but we have to follow up the contact regardless, and we have to act quickly. We have to make sure of the AMIs’ continued cooperation. The Earthbound might have the luxury of considering alternatives, but we don’t. We can’t live without tech support, and if even a tiny fraction of that tech support decides to oppose us we’ll be in deep trouble. We have to make friends with the conscious machines — and we have to help the conscious machines stay friends with one another. For us, it’s a matter of life and death. For all of us.”
The speeches flowed easily enough. I knew that Niamh Horne must have figured that it wouldn’t matter whether she were delivering them to her own people or to her captors. Like Lowenthal, she was diplomat enough to know when to capitulate with deceptive appearances.
“You seem to be implying that everyone except the Earthbound has the same goals,” the delegate from Excelsior said. “That’s not so. It’s not just our physical forms that have diverged — it’s our philosophies of life. We ought to hope that the AMIs are as diverse as we are, or more so — and that their diversity is so nearly parallel to ours as to grant all our different communities adequate mechanical support, in the long term as well as the immediate future.”
“We’re not talking about the long term or the immediate future,” Niamh Horne told her, bluntly. “We’re talking about right now. This thing has blown up in our faces, before anyone was ready. We need an interim settlement, so that we can keep going long enough to be able to think about the longer term again. For that, we need an anchorage, and Ganymede is it. Ganymede has to become the new capital of the system, at least for the time being — and when that happens, Titan and Excelsior will need to make sure that we’re not left on the outside looking in. We have