The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [73]
For the moment, they seemed to have forgotten that I was there. Davida was a picture of innocent confusion, but my paranoia warned me that the innocence and the confusion might be every bit as deceptive as her nine-year-old appearance.
“That’s not possible,” Davida said. “There was no question…”
“Are you saying that the matter of Adam Zimmerman’s revival wasn’t even under discussion among the Foundation’s Outer System personnel?” I said to Niamh Horne, partly to take the pressure off Davida and partly to serve my own curiosity. “Even though the whole purpose of the Ahasuerus Foundation was to bring him back once the technology existed to make him emortal?”
Now it was Horne’s turn to look slightly confused. It was Conwin who said: “All Niamh is saying is that the Foundation people we know had not been notified that a decision was imminent. Given that the revival of Adam Zimmerman is, as you say, the Foundation’s perennial central concern, they were surprised — and a little hurt — to find that they had not been consulted.”
“I can’t imagine…” Davida began.
I cut her off again, as easily as I might if she really had been a child intruding upon an adult discussion. “So you think Lowenthal’s lying,” I said. “You think the decision was taken on Earth, for reasons that have more to do with Earth’s interests than the Foundation’s?”
I was glad to discover that I hadn’t lost my touch. That suggestion finally won an expression of sorts from Niamh Horne’s synthetic features. “That’s not what I meant at all,” she said. Then she hesitated, presumably realizing that if she denied any suspicion that Lowenthal had lied to her — a suspicion that she surely ought to be prepared to entertain — she might as well be saying that she was convinced that Davida Berenike Columella was a liar.
“What are you trying to imply, Mr. Tamlin?” Theoderic Conwin asked, having observed that his boss was floundering.
“I’m just trying to find out how I got here,” I told them all, flatly. “The fact that none of you seems to know for sure who decided to set the wheels in motion makes me a little wary of the notion that I just happened to be the obvious target for a trial run. I can’t remember why I was put away, and someone seems to have taken the trouble to destroy all the relevant information — so I can’t help wondering whether someone might want me awake again, and might be using Adam Zimmerman’s revival as a cover.”
“That’s absurd,” said Davida.
Niamh Horne seemed to agree with her. “I can understand your disorientation,” the cyborg said. “I can understand, too, that you’re looking at the situation from your own peculiar perspective. But Adam Zimmerman’s awakening is the bone of contention here. I can assure you that neither I nor Michael Lowenthal has any particular interest in you, Mr. Tamlin — nor, for that matter, in Christine Caine. Perhaps you should stop searching for conspiracies and simply be grateful for whatever freak of chance brought you here.” She probably meant the last comment, but I was more interested in reading between the lines of what she’d said before.
“You’re hoping to stop it, aren’t you?” I said. “You and Lowenthal. You’re hoping to persuade Davida to put Zimmerman back into the freezer. Why?”
Horne and Conwin practically fell over themselves in the rush to deny that. It was painfully obvious that they’d been caught on the hop. They’d come here to greet Adam Zimmerman, not to bury him, and so had Lowenthal — but that was before the two delegations had had an opportunity to compare notes. Lowenthal had told me how much he was looking forward to getting together with Horne, but he hadn’t known then what the outcome of their exchange of views might be. Apparently, it had produced a swift and unexpected result. Someone here was being played for a fool — and they seemed