Given that we had no functional biotech at all, let alone a nursery full of Helier wombs, our chances of becoming the founding fathers of a new posthuman tribe seemed to me a good deal worse than remote although I wasnt entirely sure what Alice Fleury might be capable of, reproduction-wise, if she were forced to extremes.
If only those SusAn cocoons had been isolated and self-sufficient, Lowenthal lamented, we could have woken up when it was all over.
Maybe, I said. But self-sufficiency is relative. Wed all have died in our sleep within a year, unless we could be taken down to six degrees Absolute.
In deep space, he reminded me, thats not so very difficult. It could have been rigged, if Mortys old friend had bothered to put in the time and effort. I thought that a trifle ungrateful, given that la Reine had been working under difficult conditions but Mortimer Gray wasnt within earshot, so Lowenthal wasnt guarding his words as carefully as usual.
So Christine, Adam, and I might have slept for another thousand years, I said, carrying the flight of fancy forward, and woken up in an even stranger world. You and I would be equals then, wouldnt we? Youd be getting job offers from students of ancient history too.
I offered you a job myself, he reminded me. The offers still open if you want it.
And Christine? I asked.
Her too, he confirmed.
She didnt want to go to Earth last time I asked.
Do you?
I shrugged. I wouldnt mind, I said. But it might be best for we freezer vets to stick together.
Adam Zimmerman will come back with me, he assured me, with the air of one whos checked his facts. hes not ready for robotization, Tyre, or Excelsior just yet. He wants to come home.
It occurred to me, when I eventually took my opportunity to make the same check, while we were both hiding out in the tunnels for the sake of a dose of clean air, that Adam Zimmerman and I had never even been properly introduced.
You cant go home, I advised him. It isnt home any more.
Yes it is, he told me. It always will be. No matter how much it changes, itll always be home. I know theyve decivilized Manhattan three times over, but itll always be Manhattan to me. It has the air, the gravity, the oceanand the history. Theres Jerusalem too.
Jerusalems a bomb crater, I told him. The only fusion bomb ever to be exploded on the surface. A monument to suicidal hatred. Even the latest Gaean Restoration left it untouched.
Yes, I know, he said. But its still Jerusalem.
It seemed more diplomatic not to mention the Via Dolorosa. And the Hardinist Cabal is still grateful for what you did for them twelve hundred years ago, I said, instead. We all inherit our history, whether we like it or not.
He looked me in the eye then, and said: Whatever you
may have heard, I really did do it. Without me, theyd never have contrived such a steep collapse or cleaned up so efficiently. I really was the only man who understood the systems well enough to pull off the coup. They thought they were using me, but they werent. I was using them their money, their greed, their ambition. They were just the means I used to commit the crime. I really am the man who stole the world.
And all because you were afraid of dying, desperate to reach the Age of Emortality.
A perfect crime requires a perfect motive, he told me. But at the end of the day, all art is for arts sake. Just between you and me, I did it because I could, and because I was the only one who could. You can understand that, cant you, Madoc? The others dont, but you do.
He was a good judge of character. Id always prided myself on the quality, as well as the careful modesty, of my criminal mind. Id have done the same myself, I assured him. But youll never be able to do it again, will you? It was a once-in-a-lifetime performance.
No one will ever be able to do it again, he told me, with quiet satisfaction. I got in just in the nick of time. Within another ten years, whether it was done or not, the smart software would have become too smart to cheat. I was the last of the human buccaneers, Madoc, the last of the authentic soldiers of fortune. Now, Ill have to find something else assuming they can get to us before the stink kills us all.
Theyll still expect a decision, you know, I told him. Theyll still want to know who wins the golden apple in the beauty contest: Davida, Alice, or the Snow Queen.
He understood the allusion. Paris was an idiot, he said. He should have named his own price. Thats what Ill do. The hell with Aphrodite.
Me too, I told him. What did you have in mind?
At present, he said, theres nothing on my mind but shit, even while Im way down here. I think Ill wait till I have a clearer head before making any important decisions.
Wise move, I agreed. Even if theres time to try everything, its as well to get your priorities in order.
Later, I raised the same point with Christine Caine, more by way of distraction than anything else. I told her about the beauty contest, and asked her whether, in view of what she now knew about her essentially unmurderous self, she was still determined to head away from Earth and into the great unknown.