The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [98]
“True,” I said. “But something happened back on Excelsior when they first came face to face. That was when Horne started talking about somebody playing somebody for a fool. They don’t trust one another and they don’t trust Davida. Bringing us here doesn’t seem to have been part of Alice’s plans — I got the impression that she’s as much a victim in this as we are, although she and some mysterious companion are trying very hard to be players. I think the hidden players let us wake up because they want to see how Horne and Lowenthal carry their quarrel forward — which is something we need to be interested in too, if we’re to have any chance of figuring out what we’ve been caught up in. All we can be sure of is that whatever plans the sisterhood and Lowenthal’s bosses might have had for us have gone up in smoke. Lowenthal’s not going to like that — bureaucrats always panic when things go awry around them, because they know they’ll have to carry the can whether they were at fault or not.”
“Who actually gave the order to bring us out of the freezer, do you think?” she asked. She’d obviously been doing some hard thinking along lines not dissimilar to the ones I’d been following.
“I don’t know,” was the only reply I could offer her. “I thought at first it had to be Lowenthal’s people, because I thought Ahasuerus had to be in the Cabal’s pocket, no matter how much they might pretend to be a law unto themselves. I’m not so sure now — but whoever originated the order to wake Zimmerman, they didn’t do it for his benefit, let alone ours. No matter what conditions he laid down when he launched the Foundation, they’d have let him rest in peace forever if their hand hadn’t been forced. Now he is back though, and everyone knows it, he’s valuable. He may be the has-been to end all has-beens, but he’s still a potent symbol of the world that was parent to this one. If waking him up was system-wide news, the news that he’s been kidnapped will generate even bigger headlines. If Alice’s Wonderlanders wanted attention, they’ve got it — but if this really is a hijack, Niamh Horne’s people will stop at nothing to find out who stole their beautiful spaceship. When they do, the thieves will have hornets buzzing at them from every direction. Given that they already seem to be arguing among themselves, this business could get very messy.”
Christine nodded. “Anything else I should know?” she asked.
Now it was my turn to hesitate. I knew that I couldn’t trust her, no matter how hard she was working to build a common cause between us, but there were things I couldn’t figure out, and she had lived through an earlier period of history. I dropped my voice even lower to say: “What kind of people were being frozen down in twenty ninety, do you think? In those days, you had to be a murderer, right? Or a volunteer?”
“I guess so,” she said. “Why?”
“Alice says that she’s older than us,” I whispered. “That means she was in the freezer for more than seven hundred years — maybe as long as eight — before they fished her out three centuries ago. It’s the only real clue I’ve got as to who snatched us, and I can’t make head nor tails of it. That and charity.”
“What?”
“Charity. I was in a storage unit. Most of the stuff stowed in there was newly imported, but some wasn’t. The only word I could make out on the old stuff was charity.”
I didn’t really expect a response, but I saw her eyes light up with inspiration. There was nothing false or grudging about the smile that creased her face now. “Shit,” she said. “Is that where we are?”
I put my finger to my lips immediately, fearful of whatever listening devices the Wonderlanders had planted. “Very softly,” I said, meaning the way she had to whisper it in my ear. “And don’t tell the others just yet. First, we need to figure out whose side we’re on.”
She had just enough time to tell me what Charity was before the knock on the door sounded.