He frowned to display his disapproval of my unhelpful attitude, but he answered me anyway. Solantha Handsel is a cyborg too, he pointed out, mildly. Given that we started from Earth orbit, Julius Ngomi might be able to obtain news of our difficulties long before anyone on Titan.
Whos Julius Ngomi? I asked.
The only member of the Inner Circle to whom I can confidently put a name, he said, wearily accepting my agenda, presumably in the hope that I would eventually condescend to get back to his. Hes another man who once suggested to me that the conflicts of interest that were growing up within the solar system couldnt be settled with mere words and spontaneous bursts of fellow feeling. There are, I fear, people like him on both sides of the current dispute between Earth and the Confederation.
I put the spoon aside and sipped gruel direct from the bowl. I was beginning to feel better, but I opened the bottle Alice had given me and tipped out a couple of tablets. I used the gruel to wash them down.
The sort of person who might want to bomb all hell out of Titan? I suggested. Partly to punish the people who probably set off the Yellowstone supervolcano, but mainly to let other interested parties know that nobody messes with the cradle of humankind and gets away with it?
Gray shook his head. No, he said. Nobodys that crazy certainly not Julius. When I say that he doesnt approve of mere words, I dont mean to imply that hes a man of violence. Hes a Hardinist through and through. He thinks that ownership and good stewardship are the answers to all human problems. He just wants to settle the question of who owns what. Did you know that theres a stock market on Titan now?
I couldnt help laughing. Do you think he brought Adam Zimmerman out of cold storage to do it again ? I asked, not very seriously.
Not at
all, he replied, keeping his own tone light. But I think he might have brought Adam Zimmerman out of cold storage to remind us all what a great hero he was, and how his cleverness saved the world from the ultimate ecocatastrophe. If he was the one who gave the order to bring Zimmerman out, he must have intended to use him as an instrument of propaganda perhaps to help prepare the way for a strictly nonviolent revolution, whose ultimate aim is to install a judiciously extended Cabal as owners and stewards of the entire solar system.
He was obviously being serious and he was the man who was supposed to understand the way the world worked, far better than I did. If the Earthbound really were stuck in the mud, though, the Hardinist Cabal might have retained the habits it had had in my day, when it had consisted of PicoCon and a few good friends. If so, they might indeed have decided to tackle their problems by widening their circle by welcoming people like Emily Marchant into the fold, on whatever terms were negotiable. Maybe the outer system powers-that-be thought of themselves as the kind of people whod never go for that kind of deal, but Damon Hart had thought of himself that way at one time. So had I.
If Mortimer Gray was right, I thought, and nobody was crazy enough to go to war, the only matter to be settled was the balance of power at the conference table including the question of who was entitled to a seat. Maybe this really was the same kind of game that Damon and I had played before, on a slightly bigger board. If Michael Lowenthal and Niamh Horne were only pretending to be adversaries, while their actual purpose was to get together and wrap up a deal to impose a series of Enclosure Acts on the entire solar system, there might be any number of third parties anxious to get a slice for themselves, as well as any number ambitious to sabotage the whole process.
I hoped that I might be beginning to see the light, but I knew that I was overreaching from a position of almost total ignorance. Gray was in a far better position than I was to guess who was doing what to whom and why.
I was saved from further self-torture by yet another knock on the door. Adam Zimmerman came in, without waiting for an invitation. Mr. Lowenthal wants to call a conference, he said, mildly. He thinks we should discuss our situation, and make what plans we can. Lowenthal had obviously got tired of waiting for Gray to come up with the goods.
I handed my bowl and the empty water bottle back to Mortimer Gray. Reflexively, he took them. Thanks, I said.
Gray wasnt about to be dismissed like that; he hung around to watch the first authentic contact between the man who had once stolen the world and the mysterious monster whose crimes had been erased from the record.
Are you all right now? Adam Zimmerman asked me, solicitously.
Pretty much, I said. Ive been hurt before. How about you? This isnt the kind of welcome you expected when you took your great leap into the unknown.
No, he admitted, it certainly isnt. But it was always a gamble and if I hadnt taken it, Id be dead. I might still get what I wanted unless you know different. His face was old and his eyes seemed weak, but that was all deceptive appearance. His mind was as determined as it ever was. He hadnt been interested in me before but he was interested in me now, because I was the one who had talked to Alice.