The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [71]
It didn’t.
I had been immersed in solitary visions of Titan and Ganymede for more than two hours when the visitors finally arrived — and when they did, there were only two of them, in addition to Davida Berenike Columella.
At least I was spared the ultimate indignity of talking to a flunky. Niamh Horne had the grace to appear in person. She also had the grace to let Davida perform the introductions in a sensible ceremonial fashion. Her companion was a male named Theoderic Conwin.
Niamh Horne and Theoderic Conwin were both cyborgs, but I saw immediately — if slightly belatedly — what Mortimer Gray had meant about the difference between functional and ornamental cyborganization. I had taken Solantha Handsel for a bodyguard because her modifications had been shaped and coordinated to display the suggestion that she was half fighting machine, but I realized now how ostentatious her adaptations were.
There was nothing manifestly obtrusive or calculatedly suggestive about the modifications that had been made to the two Titanians. It required close and considered inspection to determine that their outer teguments were much thicker than the additional skins Davida and I were wearing, because they were camouflaged to give an appearance of real skin and conventional clothing. Their eyes and ears, though artificial, were similarly formed to resemble their natural counterparts. It was impossible to judge exactly how much their seeming solidity owed to the bulk of their smartsuits, but I formed the impression that within their relatively stout frames there were two unfashionably thin individuals making no effort whatsoever to get out.
“Davida tells me that you don’t want to go home to Earth,” Niamh Horne said, after a few cursory pleasantries. Nobody had taken the trouble to invite Christine in from the adjoining room, although I felt a slight twinge of guilt about my failure to raise the issue.
“I haven’t made any final decision,” I told her. “But I have a certain sympathy with Christine’s view that we’re so radically dislocated anyway that we might as well go somewhere authentically alien.”
“Been there, done that, took the rap,” the cyborg woman quoted. Her tone suggested a wry smile, but her lips didn’t seem to go in for that sort of thing.
“But the terrestrial surface you left behind is very different from the present one,” her male companion pointed out.
“Not in the essentials,” I said. “Atmosphere, gravity…anyway, rumor has it that you people think Earth is hopelessly decadent, incapable of any real change. A rest home for the robotized, holding back the cause of progress.”
It would have been easier to judge their response to that if they had been smilers; as things were, I had to grin at my own joke to defuse it.
“It’s only natural that the Earthbound should be conservative and conservationist,” Theoderic Conwin said, displaying his tolerance proudly. “They’re the custodians of the planet that produced humankind — and our explorations of the galaxy suggest that such worlds are exceedingly rare and precious.”
“Someone has to be prepared to be fanatical in looking after what we have,” Niamh Horne added, with equally ostentatious generosity. “If the Earthbound weren’t able to maintain a safe anchorage for the posthuman project, our own capacity to innovate and experiment might be inhibited. There’s no conflict between the outer satellites and Earth. Our differences of opinion are polite, and entirely healthy.”
I gathered from this speech that she’d been thoroughly briefed on what I’d said to Mortimer Gray. The historian hadn’t denied that there were conflicts, I remembered; he had been content to refute the notion that they could ever become violent. She obviously wanted to ram the point home. Even if I’d been less paranoid than I was I wouldn’t have taken their assurances seriously for a moment.
“Well,” I said, glibly, “I’m glad to be able to add an extra measure, however small, to the posthuman spectrum. I’m sure I’d find cause for discomfort in a world where differences weren’t polite, healthy,