The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [69]
“I read up on it,” I confirmed. “I understand the argument that a common threat makes it necessary for potential enemies to work together — but I’m not convinced. In my day, as you presumably know, there was a school of thought which held that social contracts were only reliable because men were mortal and prey to pain. In a world of true emortals with efficient IT, the theory went, there could be no effective sanctions forcing people to fulfill their obligations and keep their promises. One corollary of the theory was that a world of emortals would be more prone to conflict, not less.”
He found the notion too alien to be threatening. “But the truth is exactly the opposite, as history has proved,” he protested. “People who might live for a very long time in the company of their peers have very powerful reasons for honoring their obligations, because there’s no way to escape the consequences of failure. We have to deal honestly with one another, because we can’t afford the consequences of being exposed as liars, let alone the consequences of violent behaviour. You really need to understand that, Mr. Tamlin — and I’m sure you will, given time.”
I would have taken more comfort from his words if he’d glanced sideways at Christine Caine while he was closing his argument, but he didn’t. He kept right on looking me in the eyes as he pronounced words like “liars” and “violent behavior.” He wasn’t scared of me — he would have thought the suggestion that he might need a bodyguard absurd — but he wasn’t laboring under any delusion that I was a man like him. When he said that he and I weren’t so very different, he was talking about a narrow range of emotional responses, not about the extent of our evolution beyond Neanderthal brutality.
“So there isn’t going to be a war?” I said, meeting his gaze squarely.
“No,” he said, flatly. I couldn’t tell whether he was so definite because he was genuinely convinced, or because he desperately wanted to believe it. Paranoid as I was, I favored the latter hypothesis. In any case, I thought it best to change the subject.
“You said that I’ve yet to decide which particular form of posthumanity to embrace,” I reminded him. “I don’t suppose anyone cares what decision I make — but Adam Zimmerman must be a different proposition. Lots of people must be interested in his decision, given that he had to change the course of history in order to give himself the chance to make it.”
“People are interested, of course,” Gray said, a little warier now of where the conversation might be heading, “but not as much as you might suppose. Adam Zimmerman didn’t actually change the course of history. If he hadn’t done what he did, someone else would have. The timing might have been slightly different, but the eventual result would have been the same.”
“Is it just Adam Zimmerman,” I asked, genuinely interested in the question, “or don’t you believe in pivotal individuals at all? Would the eventual result have been the same if Conrad Helier had been an early casualty of the plague wars — or if you hadn’t saved Emily Marchant’s life in the Coral Sea Disaster?”
He raised his eyebrows in frank astonishment. “We can all make a difference, Mr. Tamlin,” he said. “It’s because so many of us can that none of us has the power to change everything. I do hope you’ll consider the offer of employment I made — you might be even more useful to us as a window into the past than we had hoped. An account of your personal history would be fascinating.”
It was supposed to be a compliment, but I couldn’t take it that way. He was telling me that I appeared to be an even freakier freak than his friendly