No stray “snowball” had dared to interrupt him, although he had help to avoid any such possibility by keeping his message brief.

Personal though these messages were, I knew that they weren’t private. As soon as Michael Lowenthal had finished, I asked to speak to Davida Berenike Columella. Her image immediately displaced his, but she seemed slightly more incongruous floating “outside,” partly because the background behind her head was a blank wall.

“What was all that about?” I demanded, unceremoniously.

She could have been evasive if she’d wanted to be, but she didn’t. “They both want you to go back with them to Earth,” she said. “I’m not privy to their motives, but I suspect that they’re simply being overcautious. They’re afraid that if they don’t obtain your early agreement to return to Earth you might accept an invitation to visit the outer system — Titan, perhaps.”

“Why wouldn’t they want me to go to Titan?”

“They know that Child of Fortuneis heading in from the outer system. Peppercorn Sevenshould arrive first, but only by a matter of hours. Both sets of passengers seem to be treating it as a race, perhaps for no better reason than that each thinks the other might be treating it as a race. Adam Zimmerman is the real propaganda prize, of course — but Lowenthal obviously feels a need to be careful not to miss out on any possibility.”

“ Anypossibility? You mean he sent a similar message to Christine Caine? Gray too?”

“I think you ought to ask that question of Miss Caine,” Davida said, primly — which seemed to me to be as good as a yes.

“I wonder if they’ll offer her an academic position as a historian, or as a psychiatrist,” I mused, unable to help myself saying it aloud.

Davida ignored the remark. “You are, of course, welcome to remain here if you so wish,” she told me. “You might think that the least attractive option, given that we cannot offer you any possibility of social assimilation — but that might be a good reason for taking it, at least in the short term. We canoffer you an interval for careful thought and self-education. Such an interval might prove immensely valuable.”

I could see that there were several layers of implication concealed within that statement, and I took time out to consider how to proceed. It seemed, in the end, most sensible to go back to basics.

“How, exactly, did we come to be here in Excelsior?” I asked her. “Why aren’t the three of us still on Earth?”

“The directors of the Ahasuerus Foundation thought it politic to remove Adam Zimmerman from Earth in the 2540s, following the Coral Sea Catastrophe,” she told me. “Tens of thousands of SusAn chambers were lost at that time, and the moon seemed a much safer environment. The facility in which Zimmerman’s chamber was then held had charge of several hundred other cryonic chambers, some of which were Ahasuerus personnel following in their founder’s footsteps, others — Christine Caine’s among them — having been accepted from correctional facilities following…unfortunate accidents.”

The pause before the final phrase was so profound that you could have flipped a coin into it and never heard the clink.

“You mean that the corpsicles of criminals were popular targets of sabotage or calculated neglect,” I deduced. I had no reason to suppose that the rhetoric underlying Eliminator activity had ever died out, even though it had presumably ceased to be fashionable.

“There were occasional security problems,” was all Davida would admit. “The Foundation was asked to move the government-sponsored chambers of which it had temporary custody along with those for which it had sole responsibility. Eventually, the directors decided that the moon was not the ideal environment either and a specialist microworld was commissioned. In order to make the project economically viable the Foundation offered to take over various other consignments of SusAn chambers from several locations on Earth. It was at that point, I believe, that your own chamber was added to the stock. After several changes of location, the microworld was established in the Counter-Earth Cluster. Excelsior is another Ahasuerus project, and we have all the necessary equipment, so it was the logical base from which to launch the revivification plan.”

“So you sought out the two next-oldest corpsicles for your trial runs,” I recapped. “But you still have hundreds — maybe thousands — of sleepers parked next door.”

“Thousands,” she agreed.

“And who decides when theyget to wake up?”

“That’s a matter of some dispute,” she admitted. “Our own position is that the Ahasuerus Foundation has the sole responsibility and authority. The World Government in Amundsen has a different view, but…” She left the sentence dangling.

“But possession is nine points of the law,” I finished for her. “Is that why Lowenthal’s so keen to take us back to Earth?”

“It’s probably a factor.”

“But why should he or anyone in the outer system care who has custody of Christine or me? What interest do they have in us, or in the thousands like us who remain unthawed?”

“The Earthbound have a view on everything,” Davida told me, with a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “That view, simply put, is that everything that can be left undone should be left undone — but that if something has to be done, they ought to be the ones to say when, how, and by whom. It’s almost reflexive. Anything new, or anything slightly unusual, is always regarded with suspicion on Earth. The people of the outer system, on the other hand, delight in thinking of themselves as the great pioneers of all the new frontiers. They consider the Earthbound to be decadent — a retardant force holding back the cause of progress — and can usually be relied on to disagree with any position the Earthbound take up. If the Earthbound have decided that they want you back on Earth, under their control, the people aboard Child of Fortunewill almost certainly offer to take you elsewhere, for any reason they can think of or none at all.”

“And where do youstand?” I asked.

Either she misunderstood the question or she decided that she had an agenda of her own to set out first. “Many outer-system folk see the remoter inhabitants of Earth orbit and the inner system as potential political allies,” she said, “although as many people on Earth think of us as theirnatural allies. Adam Zimmerman is potentially capable of becoming a significant factor in that ideological conflict, and the Ahasuerus Foundation is his creation. Unfortunately, the Foundation is no longer the closely knit community that it once was, and the Earthbound element of the Foundation doesn’t seem to have been unanimous in approving the decision to revive its founder. Excelsior’s view is that ours is the posthuman community best equipped to fulfill the Foundation’s mission, and we intend to do that if Adam is agreeable.”

“Do you really think he’ll want to be remade as one of you?” I asked, astonished by the seeming absurdity of the possibility.

“He’s a free individual,” Davida said, flatly. “We shall do everything within our power to ensure that he makes an informed decision.”

“But whatever he decides, you’ll want to practice on me — or Christine?”

“Not unless you volunteer,” she assured me. “We were unable to seek your informed consent before releasing you from your long imprisoment, but we had no reason to think that you would raise any objection. Now that you are available for consultation, however, we would not dream of subjecting you to any further treatment without your full cooperation. We shall be pleased to assist you in securing your own emortality when you have considered the opportunities open to you, as recompense for the services you have already rendered.”

I took the inference that she wouldn’t be overly disappointed if Christine and I decided to go to Earth, or set off for the outer system, before seeking any further bodily modification. Adam Zimmerman was the prize on which her own eyes were fixed — but for that very reason, I realized, he was also the prize for which the other contingents would fight hardest.