The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [72]
“Ganymede might be more appropriate,” she said, somewhat to my surprise.
“I thought Ganymede was the AI Utopia,” I said.
“Exactly,” she came back. “The roles filled there by human beings are relatively menial and less challenging than those available elsewhere. On the other hand, you might be able to adapt more rapidly to a smaller and more easily comprehensible world — one of the belt habitats, for instance.” It would have stung less if she’d smiled, but I had a suspicion that it wasn’t simply the inflexibility of her cheeks that was getting in her way this time.
“I take it that means you won’t be matching Lowenthal’s job offer,” I said, trying to keep my own lips tight.
“You shouldn’t take that one either, in my opinion,” she told me. “Investigate the belt, Mr. Tamlin. That’s where you’re most likely to find a comfortable future.”
“If I’d wanted a comfortable future,” I retorted, “I probably wouldn’t have ended up in the freezer in the first place.”
“That’s not what Adam Zimmerman thought,” Theoderic Conwin put in. I still couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.
“So you’re not going to offer him a job either?” I commented, sardonically.
“We’re going to offer him a tour of the solar system,” Conwin told me.
“May I come too?” I asked.
He had to pass that one along to his boss. “Certainly you may,” Niamh Horne assured me, with what appeared to me to be a total lack of enthusiasm. “Adam Zimmerman may well desire to have company of his own kind. I’m sure you’d find the tour very instructive — but you shouldn’t rush any of the decisions you’ll have to make. There’s no hurry.”
“There is while I’m still mortal,” I pointed out. “If I have to decide what kind of eternal youth to opt for, I need to do it while I’m still young. It’s a difficult choice to make, given that there seem to be so many options — all fraught with risks.”
Davida wanted to answer that one, but she didn’t manage to get her reply in first and she was too polite to compete.
“The risks,” Conwin said, smoothly, “are exaggerated.” There was nothing in his artificial eyes to register annoyance, but I supposed that the risks he had in mind were those at the robotization end of the spectrum, and that the reason he had them in mind was that he was sensitive about the possibility of being mistaken for a victim. I decided to let the matter lie, for now.
“Suppose Adam Zimmerman doesn’t want to go on the grand tour just yet,” I said. “Will your offer remain open?” I was careful to phrase the question ambiguously, so that he wouldn’t be sure whether I was referring to their offer to Adam Zimmerman or their markedly less generous offer to me.
It was Niamh Horne who answered, although she had to hurry because Davida’s mouth was open yet again, presumably to make some offer of her own. “We’ll give sympathetic consideration to any request you care to make,” she said.
Davida finally found her opportunity to say: “It might be as well if you were all to remain here for a while,” she said. “We need to monitor your condition, and to make sure that the IT we’ve installed is working properly. You’re very welcome to remain here as our guests indefinitely, but if you do decide to take up an offer of employment on Earth, you’d be wise to delay the move until we’ve completed our own research program. You might also have a useful role to play in the continuation of the project.”
That was news to Niamh Horne as well as to me.
“Continuation?” the cyborg repeated. “You intend to bring them all back? Why?”
I was tempted to ask “Why not?” but I refrained.
“I don’t know what the Foundation intends,” Davida confessed. “I’m working to instructions — but I had assumed that if the first revivals went to plan…”
“Whose plan?” Niamh Horne was quick to ask.
Davida’s little-girl face seemed utterly guileless and deeply confused. “Why, the Foundation’s,” she said.
“To the best of my knowledge,” the cyborg said, frostily, “no one associated with the Foundation in the Outer System had the slightest inkling that