The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [187]
The last phrase was a repetition of something Mortimer had already said, but it was no less potent for that — perhaps even more so.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Mortimer said, speaking as though he were becoming short of breath — as, indeed, he probably was.
“I’m not allowed to be glad that you’re here,” the silver told him, with what might easily have been taken, in retrospect, for a hint of irony “but if I were, I would be. And if I could, I’d hope with all my heart for that miracle we both need. As things are, though, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that particular burden to your heart.”
“It’s doing its best,” Mortimer said, his voice sinking to a mere whisper. “You can be sure that it’ll carry on beating, and hoping, as long as it possibly can.”
No sooner had he said this, however, than his eyes lit up in surprise. He had been sinking into a torpor, but a fresh draught of oxygen had startled his lungs.
“What’s that?” he asked. “A miracle?”
“No sir,” said the silver. “I merely improvised a chemical reaction in certain equipment that is superfluous to our present requirement, whose effect was to release a little extra oxygen. It will not prolong our lives, but it will enable you to remain conscious for a while longer, if that is your wish.”
I had known men who would have preferred to go peacefully to sleep in such circumstances, but I was not one of them. Nor was Mortimer Gray.
“That’s good,” he said. “Not that there’s anything constructive to do or say, of course — but time is always precious, even to an emortal. I haven’t always been sufficiently grateful for the time I’ve had, or for the opportunities for communication that time has allowed, but I’m wiser now than I used to be. I know how important it was that Emily and I talked so incessantly when we were aboard that life raft in the Coral Sea. I told myself at the time that I was talking for her sake, to take her mind off the awfulness of our situation, but I knew I wasn’t being honest with myself.”
“What did you talk about?” asked the silver — except that it wasn’t the silver.
I wouldn’t have guessed if Rocambole hadn’t whispered in my ear, but he was enthusiastic to be my friend: a duty which included doing what was necessary to keep me up to speed. “This is new,” he said. “The first time around, he fell unconscious. This is what might have happened if there really had been a chemical reaction to be improvised that would release more oxygen.”
I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that la Reine had got the idea from me. On the contrary, I assumed instead that she had known all along what I would do in response to seeing Christine Caine reenact her past. All of this was part of the same game.
“How widely are you broadcasting this?” I asked, remembering that the unwitting Mortimer had had an audience of billions the first time around. “Are the posthumans listening in as well as the AMIs?”
“I certainly hope so,” said Rocambole, “but there are no guarantees. We don’t know whether the communication systems will cooperate. In any case, light being the slowcoach it is, the entire audience will be hours behind us. We don’t know yet who might have heard what we’ve already put out, or what the spectrum of their reactions might have been — we’re just taking it for granted that they’re hungry for more. Whatever the situation is, the show must go on.”
And the show did go on.
Forty-Eight
There But for Fortune
We talked about everything,” was Mortimer’s reply to la Reine’s question. “I can’t remember the conversation in any detail, but I know that we said a lot about the future prospects of the colonization of the solar system, the colonization of the galaxy. Reports from the stars had just begun to come back from the kalpa probes. We talked about the future development of the solar system; the Type 2 crusaders were just then enjoying one of their brief bursts of publicity. Emily said that she wanted to go into space when she was older. She said it as if it were