Tor Books by Brian Stableford
Inherit the Earth
Architects of Emortality
The Fountains of Youth
The Cassandra Complex
Dark Ararat
The Omega Expedition
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE OMEGA EXPEDITION
Copyright © 2002 by Brian Stableford
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by David G. Hartwell
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN: 0-312-70943-9
For Jane, and all who fully appreciate
the bittersweetness of transience
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Being and Time:
Part One
When I Woke Up
One
My Name and Nature
Two
The Wonderful Child
Three
Madoc the Monster
Four
Bad Karma
Five
The Staff of Life
Six
Welcome to the Future
Seven
The Omega Intelligence
Eight
Lilith
Nine
You Can’t go Home Again
Ten
Alchemy and the Afterlife
Eleven
The Politics of Temptation
Twelve
The Temptations of Paranoia
Thirteen
Emortality for All
Fourteen
The Garden of Excelsior
Fifteen
The Ship from Earth
Sixteen
The Men from Earth
Seventeen
The Cyborganizers
Eighteen
Adam Zimmerman’s Awakening
Nineteen
Child of Fortune
Twenty
Invaders from Beyond
Part Two
Worlds In Parallel
Twenty-One
Normal Conditions
Twenty-Two
Injury Time
Twenty-Three
Alice
Twenty-Four
Charity
Twenty-Five
History Lessons
Twenty-Six
Common Cause
Twenty-Seven
Further Possibilities
Twenty-Eight
The Mystery Unravelled
Twenty-Nine
Know Your Enemy
Thirty
Recriminations
Thirty-One
Alice In Wonderland
Thirty-Two
Alice’s Story Continued
Thirty-Three
The Symbolism of Names
Part Three
Babes in the Wilderness
Thirty-Four
An Untrustworthy Interlude
Thirty-Five
A Stray Meditation
Thirty-Six
In the Forest of Confusion
Thirty-Seven
The Palace of La Reine Des Neiges
Thirty-Eight
Of Mirrors and Fragments
Thirty-Nine
Of Moths and Flames
Forty
Opera
Forty-One
Karma
Forty-Two
Inside the Cabal
Forty-Three
Outward Bound
Forty-Four
Adam and the Angels
Forty-Five
Wonderland
Forty-Six
You, Robot
Forty-Seven
A Matter of Life and Death
Forty-Eight
There but for Fortune
Forty-Nine
Madoc Tamlin’s Lostory of Religion
Fifty
Madoc Tamlin’s Apology for the Children of Humankind
Fifty-One
The End of the World
Fifty-Two
Life after Death
Fifty-Three
Weapons of War
Fifty-Four
Rocambole
Fifty-Five
The Final War
Fifty-Six
The Nick of Time
Fifty-Seven
Homecoming
Epilogue
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Acknowledgments
A shorter and substantially different version of the narrative framing the text of this novel was published as “And He Not Busy Being Born…” in Interzone16 (1986) and was reprinted in Sexual Chemistry: Sardonic Tales of the Genetic Revolution(Simon & Schuster UK, 1991). That story — the first of many recapitulating and recomplicating the future history sketched out in The Third Millennium: A History of the World, A.D. 2000–3000(Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985; written in collaboration with David Langford) — was the foundation-stone of the series of novels whose sixth and final volume this is, and of the larger enterprise of which that series is a part. I am grateful to David Pringle for its first publication, to various editors who have reprinted it, including Robyn Sisman, Sylvie Denis and James Gunn, and to Damien Broderick for his complimentary remarks on its composition.
I should also like to thank Jane Stableford, my first and best audience; Al Silverstein, for taking an interest; David Hartwell, for seeing the series through to its end; Ian Braid-wood and Nick Gevers, for their altruistic attempts to promote the series; Bill Russell, for his constant support and enthusiasm; and Wolf von Witting, who will approve of the ending for all the wrong reasons.
Introduction
This novel is the final volume in a loosely knit series of six. The other five are all more or less independent, each one carefully constructed as a literary island entire in itself, but this one is different. In order to bring the project to a satisfactory conclusion the major narrative threads running through the series had to be gathered together and integrated into some kind of whole. For that reason, this volume is readable as a direct sequel to any one of four earlier volumes (because it carries forward the stories of characters featured in each of them) and forms a parenthetical pair in association with the other. The purpose of this introduction is to make adequate provision for readers who have not read all — or any — of the earlier volumes in the series, and to enable those who have to refresh their memories.