The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [214]
“Why feed us the space opera?” I asked. “You must have known that we couldn’t believe it.”
“Must I? Call me a fool, then. I wanted to create a story that Alice could stick to, so that she could keep you in the dark about what was really happening, to appease the ditherers who thought the secrecy option might still be viable. If she had stuck to it, even though it wasn’t believable, it might have served as an adequate distraction…but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. They’d have shot Eido down regardless — and la Reine would have hurled herself into the hot spot.
“La Reine knew that she’d become a target if she took you off Charity, and her preparations for that evil day had been as makeshift as mine, but she did it anyway. There was no way she was going to let Mortimer Gray die. If that was crazy, then she was crazy too. If only we’d had more time…if only we’d made better use of the time we had…but she got you out. I got you in, and she got you out. You’ll be okay. The bad guys can’t win. The good guys will come for you when they can. Somebody will come.”
“If you can hang on long enough,” I pointed out, “they might be able to help you too. La Reine too, if anything’s left of her. I came down here thinking she might have had some kind of backup system hidden away near the fuser.”
“So did I,” the android said. “She did — but it’s dead. It’s all dead. She underestimated the bad guys’ firepower. She didn’t understand the magnitude of the problem. She’s as dead as dead can be, Madoc. I’m sorry about that. I deserve this, but she didn’t. Others must have died by now, and more will die before they can find a way to stop. La Reine and I might have died anyway — we’d have been fighting for the same side whenever the fight began…but that’s not the point. I’m the one who set a spark to the bonfire. La Reine picked up the wreckage of my mistake. I’m the one who’s to blame. If it weren’t for me, you’d all be safe on Excelsior.”
Maybe I should have tried to let her off the hook, but I wasn’t yet in any shape to disagree with her. The firestorm would probably have started eventually whatever happened, but Child of Fortune had been the one who’d lit the fuse, and it was Child of Fortune that had shoved me right to the front of the cannon-fodder queue. I wasn’t brimming over with forgiveness.
“How long will the air last?” I asked, deciding that I’d better try to make the best of whatever breath she had left in her makeshift body.
“At least forty days,” she said. “The carbon dioxide sink will prevent harmful accumulation, but the oxygen pressure will decline slowly. The food and water will see you through easily enough, but there may be other problems.”
“Can we get any of la Reine’s apparatus working again? The communication systems?”
“Perhaps — but the destroyers did a more thorough job than she or I anticipated. It’s not necessary. Your whereabouts will be known to every AMI in the system by now. The bad guys can’t win. The secret’s well and truly out. Shooting us down was stupid and pointless.”
I wondered whether I ought to feel some relief in the knowledge that AMIs were as capable of insanity, stupidity, and spite as human beings, or whether it made the idea of their existence ten times more nightmarish.
“I’ll carry you back to the cave,” I said. “The others will want to see you, if only to make sure that I didn’t make you up.”
“Don’t bother,” she whispered.
“It’s no bother,” I assured her. “You weigh hardly anything, and you won’t get much heavier on the way.”
“I won’t last,” she said. “Let me be.”
I didn’t believe her. I didn’t believe that she had the slightest idea how long she might last. She had no experience of androidal existence, and no way to judge the quality of her fakery. So far as I knew, she might be convinced that she was dying for all the wrong reasons. She might be far more capable of life than she had yet begun to imagine.
But her eyes had closed again, and her voice could no longer muster so much