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.