The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [204]
“So Handsel said,” she told me. “She seemed to know what she was doing, so we let her get on with it.” By this time she had managed to maneuver herself into a situation which was as close to face-to-face as was feasible. I moved closer to the nearest pile of crates so that I could use its mass to steady myself a little.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” she said.
I knew what she meant, so I just nodded my head.
“Thanks,” she said. “I already knew — I mean, I’d worked it out when I went through it for the second time — but it really helped me to get a grip on things. None of the other stories ever really worked. It was good to hear the one that did retold.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “They fixed me up the same way, but my friends froze me down before I was used. That’s why they brought us back. The AMIs may be ultrasmart, but they don’t know how much they don’t know about the world before their advent. They brought us back because they wanted to know about the kinds of weapons that had been hidden away long before they had a chance to take notes, and never dusted off in the interim.”
“I know,” she said. “I worked it out.” She wasn’t trying to show off her cleverness — she was sympathizing with me, because she knew what I must have gone through when I figured it out.
Somehow, I got into the clothes. I knew that I ought to take a shower first, but I had to take things one step at a time.
“We have light and elementary life support,” she told me, “but it’s all emergency backup. All the smart systems are dead, even the sloths. This cave seems to be the only empty space of any size hereabouts, although there’s a network of tunnels we haven’t begun to explore. All the surfaces are covered in machinery housed in some kind of glassy fabric, and there are masses of machinery in what used to be other rooms, but it’s all dead. There’s a com system of sorts, but it’s useless. We can’t even send a mayday, unless Lowenthal and Horne can repair it and power it up. They’re trying.”
“Others know we’re here,” I told her. “By now, that must include people as well as other machines. Every smart spaceship in the system knows our location, and I’m as sure as I can be that they’re on our side. The bad guys can’t win in space, no matter how much damage they can do in the wells. They killed Eido and they killed the Snow Queen, but someone will come for us. It’s just a matter of time.”
“We hope,” she said. She spoke as if she were humoring me, so I knew that some of what I’d said had come across as gibberish. She probably thought that I’d had a bad dream.
I looked down again at the cocoon from which I had been wrenched. It had died while I was nestling in its womb, and it had not had time to wake me before spitting me out. My expulsion had not been an easy birth, and might have been counted a stillbirth if Michael Lowenthal’s faithful servant hadn’t been on hand to force me back to life. The other pods arranged alongside it were in an equally parlous state, but none was sealed and there were no corpses littering the parts of the floor that I could see.
I looked away, satisfied that all was well, but suddenly looked back, having become aware that something was not quite right. I counted the pods, then counted them again.
There were ten. All ten showed every evidence of having disgorged a living body.
“We noticed that too,” Christine confirmed. “The extra man doesn’t seem to be in the cave — but the people who started hollowing out the asteroid dug a lot of tunnels. We can’t tell how far the maze extends. I hope it’s a long way, because that would mean that we have a lot of oxygen to spare, and the carbon dioxide won’t build up too rapidly, even though the recycling equipment is worse than crude. I don’t suppose you have any idea who the extra person might have been.”
“Rocambole,” I murmured. It seemed to be the most obvious jumpable conclusion.
“Who?”
“More likely a what than a who,” I told her. “But that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t take the precaution of equipping himself with the kind of body that could survive…”
That was