Текст книги "Inherit the Earth"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Damon had no alternative but to ask himself the questions demanded by the mysterious Operator. Had Conrad Helier been capable of designing the agents of the plague as well as the instruments which had blunted its effects? If capable, might he have been of a mind to do it?

The answer to the first question, he was certain in his own mind, was yes. He was not nearly as certain that the answer to the second question was no—but he remained uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had never actually knownhis biological father; all he had ever known was the oppressive force of his father’s plans for him and his father’s hopes for him. He had rebelled against those, but his rebellion couldn’t possibly commit him to believing this. In any case, he didknow the other people named by the judge. Karol was awkward and diffident, Eveline haughty and high-handed, but Silas and Mary had been everything he could have required of them. Surely it was unimaginable that they could have done what they now stood accused of doing?

The image cut back to the courtroom, but the moment Damon heard Silas Arnett speak he knew that a lot of time had elapsed. The alteration in the quality of the prisoner’s voice left no doubt that a substantial section had been cut from the tape.

“What do you wantfrom me?” Arnett hissed, in a voice full of pain and exhaustion. “What the fuck do you want?”

It was not the virtual judge who replied this time, although there was no reason to think that the second synthesized voice issued from a different source. “We want to know whose idea it was to launch the Third Plague War,” said the figure to Silas Arnett’s right—the figure who had always occupied center stage but had never claimed it. “We want to know where we can find incontrovertible evidence of the extent of the conspiracy. We want to know the names of everyone who was involved. We want to know where Conrad Helier is now, and what name he is currently using.”

“Conrad’s dead. I saw him die!It’s all on tape. All you have to do is look it up!” Silas’s voice was almost hysterical, but he seemed to be making Herculean efforts to control himself. Damon had to remind himself that everythingon the tape could be the product of clever artifice. He could have forged this confrontation himself, without ever requiring Silas Arnett to be present.

“You did not see Conrad Helier die,” said the accusing voice, without the slightest hint of doubt. “The tape entered into the public record is a forgery, and someone switched the DNA samples in order to confuse the medical examiner who carried out the postmortem. Was that you, Dr. Arnett?”

There was no immediate reply. The tape was interrupted again; there was no attempt to conceal the cut. When it resumed, Silas looked even more haggard; he was silent now, but he gave the impression of having exhausted his capacity for protest. Damon could imagine the sound of Silas’s excised screams easily enough. Only the day before he had listened to poor Lenny Garon recording a tape which it might yet be his privilege to edit and doctor and convert into a peculiar kind of art. Were he to offer to take on that job Lenny Garon would probably be delighted—and would probably be equally delighted to hear his own screams, carefully intensified, on the final cut.

“It was my idea,” Silas said in a hollow, grating voice saturated with defeat. “Mine. I did it. The others never knew. I used them, but they never knew.”

“They allknew,” said the inquisitor firmly.

“No they didn’t,” Silas insisted. “They trusted me, absolutely. They never knew. They still don’t—the ones who are still alive, that is. I did it on my own. I designed the plague and set it free, so that Conrad could do what he had to do. He never knew that the transformers weren’t natural. He died not knowing. He really did die not knowing.”

“It’s very noble of you to take all the guilt upon yourself,” said the other in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “But it’s not true, is it?”

“Yes,” said Silas Arnett.

This time, the editor left in the sound of screaming. Damon shivered, even though he knew that he and everyone else who had managed to download the tape before Interpol deleted it was being manipulated for effect. This was melodrama, not news—but how many people, in today’s world, could tell the difference? How many people would be able to say: It’s just some third-rate pornotape stitched together by an engineer. It’s just a sequence of ones and zeros, like any other cataract of code. It doesn’t mean a thing.

Suddenly, Diana Caisson’s reaction to the discovery that Damon was using her template as a base for the sex tape he had been commissioned to make didn’t seem quite so unreasonable. In using Silas Arnett as the basis of this elaborate fiction the people behind the cartoon judge were not merely exploiting him but destroying him. Silas would never be the same, even if they restored his internal technology. Even if all of this were shown to be a pack of lies, he would never be the same in the eyes of other men—which was where everyone had to live in the world of the Net, no matter how reclusive they chose to be.

The prosecutor spoke again. “The truth, Dr. Arnett, is that at least five persons held a secret conference in May 2095, when Conrad Helier laid out his plan for the so-called salvation of the world. The first experiments with the perfected viruses were carried out in the winter of 2098–99, using rats, mice, and human tissue cultures. When one of his collaborators—was it you, Dr. Arnett?—asked Conrad Helier whether he had the right to play God, his reply was ‘The post is vacant. No one else seems to be interested in taking it up. If we don’t, who will?’ That’s the truth, Dr. Arnett, isn’t it? Isn’t that exactlywhat he said?”

The cartoon Arnett’s reply to that was unexpected. “Who are you?” he asked, his pain seemingly mingled with suspicion. “I know you, don’t I? If I saw your real face, I’d recognize it, wouldn’t I?”

The answer was equally surprising. “Of course you would,” the other said with transparently false gentleness. “And I know you, Silas Arnett. I know more about you than you can possibly imagine. That’s why you can’t hide what you know.”

At this point, without any warning, the picture cut out. It was replaced by a text display which said:

CONRAD HELIER IS AN ENEMY OF MANKIND

FIND AND IDENTIFY CONRAD HELIER

MORE PROOFS WILL FOLLOW

—OPERATOR 101

Damon stared numbly at the words; their crimson letters glowed eerily against a black background, as if they had been written in fire across the face of an infinite and starless void.

Eleven

D

amon’s first thought was that he had to get in touch with Madoc Tamlin, and that he had to do so privately. He was spared the need to apologize to Karol Kachellek because Karol obviously had calls of his own to make and he too wanted to make them without being overheard. Instead of having to cover his own retreat, Damon found himself being bundled out of the room. He ran all the way back to his hotel, but he went to one of the public booths rather than using the unit in his room.

He checked his incoming mail in case there was anything important awaiting his attention, although he had set alarms to sound if Madoc or Eveline Hywood had called. The only name that caused him to pause as he scanned the list was Lenny Garon. He almost took a look at that message, just in case Madoc had decided to send some item of information by a roundabout route for security reasons, but it seemed more sensible to go directly to the source if it were feasible.

Unfortunately, Madoc seemed to be lying low. Tamlin’s personal number should have reached his beltpack, but it didn’t; the call was rerouted to Madoc’s apartment, where Diana Caisson fielded the call. She didn’t take it in the VE that Damon had designed, though; she must have had the machine set up so that any call would automatically be switched to the caller’s VE. The booth had set the image of Damon’s head and shoulders against a simple block pattern—one of the most primitive still in use in the USNA.

“Going back to the basics, Damon?” Diana asked, although she must have had a readout to inform her that he was calling from a public phone in Kaunakakai. After she’d finished the contrived sneer she looked him defiantly in the eye, as if to say that it was about time he made a start on his apologies.

“Never mind the smart remarks, Diana,” Damon said. “I need to get hold of Madoc as soon as possible.”

“He’s out,” she said sourly. Her face blurred slightly as she moved back from her own unit’s camera, reflexively trying to cover her realization that he hadn’t called to talk to her.

“I know that. I also know that he doesn’t want to be located, even by me—but I need to get a message to him with the least possible delay. Will you do that for me, please?”

Damon could see that Diana was tempted to tell him where to put his message, but she thought better of it.

“What message?” she asked curiously.

“Can you tell him that in view of recent developments I really need that package we discussed. He’ll understand what I mean and why. I’ve authorized him to draw more cash on the card I gave him, so that he can pull out all the stops. I’ll be flying back tonight or early tomorrow, and I need to know what he’s dug up as soon as I land. If he can meet me at the airport that would be good, but not if it takes him away from significant investigations. Have you got all that?”

“Of course I’ve got it,” she snapped back. “Do you think I’m stupid or something? What’s all this shit about recent developmentsand the package we discussed?Why are you trying to hide things from me?We had a row, that’s all!”

Damon had to suppress an impulse to react in kind, but he knew that matching wrath with wrath would only escalate the conversation into a shouting match. Instead, he found the most soothing tone he could and said: “I’m sorry, Di—I’m a bit wound up. I’m not trying to keep secrets from you, but this isa public booth. Just ask Madoc to do what he can, and tell him he has extra resources if he needs them to speed things along. I really need you to do this for me, Diana. In a couple of days, if you want to, we can talk—but right now Silas Arnett is in bad trouble, and I have to do everything I possibly can to help find him. Bear with me, please. I have to go now.”

“I know what’s going on,” she said quickly. She didn’t want him to cut the connection.

“That’s okay, Di,” he said reassuringly. “It’s no big secret—but it’s not something I want broadcast, certainly not in the direction of the news tapes. If you’re keeping up with the news, you’ll realize why I’m in a hurry.”

Her perplexed expression told him that she hadn’t been monitoring the Web for new information regarding Silas Arnett, although Madoc must have been alerted to the new Operator 101 package at least as quickly as Karol Kachellek’s assistants. Perhaps Madoc had deliberately killed the alarms in the apartment because Diana was there—although it was careless of him, if so, to have allowed his calls to be automatically diverted from his beltpack to his home phone.

“Why didn’t you tell me that your father was Conrad Helier?” Diana demanded, still trying to stop him from breaking the connection.

“I was trying to forget it,” Damon told her tersely. “It wasn’t relevant.”

“It seems to be relevant now,” she said.

“It’s Silas Arnett’s kidnapping that’s relevant to me,” he retorted. “I’ve got to go, Di. I have to talk to my foster father—my otherfoster father. I’ll call again, when I can. We willtalk, if that’s what you want.”

“I might not be here,” she informed him without much conviction. “I have better things to do than provide Madoc’s answering service.”

“Good-bye, Di,” Damon said—and cut the connection before she could string the exchange out any further.

He reached out to the door of the booth, but then thought better of it. He called up the message that Lenny Garon had left for him. It was a simple request for him to call. Still figuring that it might be Madoc’s way of steering information around Diana’s inquisitive presence in his apartment, Damon made the call.

Lenny answered his own phone, but his machine was also rigged to use the caller’s VE—presumably because the boy didn’t like to advertize the fact that he didn’t have a customized VE of his own. The block-patterned VE didn’t bother him at all, though—when his image formed, his eyes were still fixed on the virtual readout telling him where the call was coming from.

“Damon!” he said, as if Damon were someone he’d known all his life. “What are you doing in Kaunakakai?” He stumbled over the pronunciation of the last word, but that was probably because he was excited rather than because he didn’t have a clue where Kaunakakai might be.

“Personal business,” Damon said. “Why did you want me to call, Lenny?”

“Yeah. Personal business. Sure . . . yeah, about that.”

“About what?”

“About personal business. Madoc came to see me in hospital today—I got carved up a bit in the fight . . . internal damage. Nothing serious, but . . . well, anyhow, Madoc mentioned you were worried about a snatch—your foster father.”

“Did Madoc give you a message?” Damon put in impatiently.

“No, of course not,” the boy said. “He didn’t want to talk about it at all—but that woman with him wouldn’t let up. He wasn’t talking about you, Damon, honestly—he just let slip that your foster parents were biotech people. When I got back here a little while ago, it wasn’t difficult to put snatch and biotech together and come up with Silas Arnett’s name. I’m not trying to interfere or anything . . . it’s just that being a fan and all . . . I had no idea that I’d find anything I knew something about . . . but when I did I thought you’d want to know. It may be nothing. Probably is.”

“What are you talking about, Lenny?” Damon said as patiently and as politely as he could.

“Cathy Praill,” the boy replied, coming abruptly to the point.

It took Damon a second or two to remember that Catherine Praill was the young woman who’d been with Silas when he was abducted.

“What about her?” he asked.

“Well, like I say, nothing really. It’s just that I know her. Sort of.”

“How?”

“Silly, really. It’s just that we’re the same age—both seventeen, although I guess she’s nearer eighteen than I am, probably past her birthday by now. Kids the same age, even approximately, are pretty thin on the ground. Foster parents tend to shop around their acquaintances making contacts, so that the kids can get together occasionally. You know the sort of thing—a couple of hundred adults getting together for a big party so that a dozen kids can socialize with their peers.”

Damon did know, but only vaguely. It wasn’t the sort of thing his own foster parents had ever gone in for. They’d never worried about his social isolation and lack of peer-group interaction because they thought of him as one of a kind. In their eyes—even Mary’s eyes and Silas’s eyes—Heliers had no peers. Most groups of foster parents these days, at least in California, were ten or twelve strong, and they usually did their parenting strictly by the book. They took care to ensure that their children had other children to interact and bond with. It was possible that Lenny Garon had at some stage in his brief life made contact with every other person of his own age within a hundred miles.

“How well do you know her?” Damon asked.

“Not that well,” Lenny admitted. “It must be two years since I actually saw her—but she was still posting to the Birthdate 2175 Webcore when I dropped out of all that.”

She was only just eighteen, Damon thought. Silas was a hundred and ten years older than she was. What on earth was the point . . . ? He strangled the thought. It was obvious what the point was. The fact that they were a hundred and ten years apart wasthe point. “Get to the bottom line, Lenny,” he said aloud. “Exactly what have you got to tell me about Catherine Praill?”

“Nothing definite—but I tried to get in touch with her. I tried hard, Damon. I talked to some of the others—other Birthdate 2175 people, that is. Interpol had already talked to a couple of them, the ones who were her closest friends. Damon, it’s not on the news and I can’t be absolutelysure, but I think she’sdisappeared too. She’s not at home, and she’s not anywhere else she’d be likely to be. Her foster parents are covering, but it’s obvious they’re worried. The other Birthdaters said that she couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with Arnett being taken by the Eliminators, but they’re as certain as I am that her foster parents don’t have the slightest idea where she is—and it isn’t because she left home to run with the gangs, like I did.”

“Does Madoc know this?” Damon asked.

“Probably—but I can’t get through to him. I didn’t want to say too much to that woman. She doesn’t seem to be on your side, even though she says she’s your girlfriend.”

“That’s okay. Keep trying to get through to Madoc, though. He must be in some place where he can’t take calls right now, but he’s bound to move on. Give him what you can when you can—and thanks for your help. I have to go now.”

“Wait!” The boy’s expression was suddenly urgent—as if he feared that this would probably be the last chance he ever had to talk to his hero, or at least his last chance to have the advantage of just having done his hero a small favor.

Damon didn’t have the heart to cut him off. “Make it quick, Lenny,” he said, with a slight sigh.

“I just want to know,” the boy said. “Madoc says that I can be good at it—that I show promise, even though Brady cut me up so easily. He says that if I keep at it . . . but he would, wouldn’t he? He gets the tapes whether I win or lose, to him it’s just raw material—but you’re a real fighter and you don’t have any reason to lie. Just tell me straight, Damon. Am I good enough? Can I make it, if I give it everything I’ve got?”

Damon suppressed a groan. Even though Lenny had given him little or nothing he felt that he really did owe the boy an answer. In any case, this might be one of the few instances in his life when what he said could make a real difference.

“I can only tell you what I think, Lenny,” he said, in what he hoped was a man-to-man fashion. “However good you are, or might become, fighting is a fool’s game. I’m sorry that I ever got involved in it. It was just a way of signaling to the world and my foster parents that I was my own person, and that I didn’t have to live according to their priorities. It was the clearest signal I could send, but it was a stupid signal. There are other ways, Lenny. I know you think the money looks good, and that the IT it buys will more than compensate for the cuts you take, but it’s a false economy—a bad bet.

“If Madoc’s given you the same spiel he gave me he’ll have told you that the human body renews itself every eight years or so—that all the cells are continually being replaced, on a piecemeal basis, to the extent that there’s hardly an atom inside you now that was there when you were nine years old, and hardly an atom that will be still with you when you’re twenty-five. That’s true—but the inference he intends you to take, which is that it doesn’t matter what you do to your body now because you’ll have a brand-new one in ten years’ time is false and dangerous. That constant process of reproduction isn’t perfect. It’s like taking a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy—every time an error or flaw creeps in it’s reproduced, and gradually exaggerated.

“Your internal technology will increase the number of times you can photocopy yourself and still be viable, but the errors and flaws will still accumulate—and everything you do to create more flaws will cost you at the far end of your life. In a few days’ time you won’t be able to see the scars that Brady’s knife left, but you should never make the mistake of thinking that you’ve been fixed up as good as new. There’s no such thing. If you want my advice, Lenny, give it up now. It doesn’t matter how good you might become—it’s just not worth it.”

The expression on the boy’s face said that this wasn’t the kind of judgment he had expected. He had braced himself against the possibility of being told that he might not be good enough to make the grade, but he hadn’t braced himself against this. He opened his mouth, but Damon didn’t want to know what he was going to say.

“Don’t blow your chance to ride the escalator all the way to true emortality, Lenny,” he said. “The ten-year advantage you have over me could be vital—but not nearly as vital as looking after your tender flesh. Maybe neither of us will get there, and maybe both of us will die in some freak accident long before we get to our full term, but it makes sense to do the best we can. Getting the IT a little bit sooner won’t do you any good at all if you give it less to work with when it’s installed. Nanotechnology is only expensive because PicoCon takes so much profit; in essence, it’s dirt cheap. It uses hardly any materials and hardly any energy. Everything goes to the rich first, but after that the price comes tumbling down. The best bet is to look after yourself and be patient—that’s what I’m doing now, and it’s what I’ll be doing the rest of my life, which I hope will be a verylong time.”

Damon knew that the lecture was rushed, but he didn’t have time to fill in all the details and he didn’t have time to take questions. Lenny understood that; his face had become more and more miserable while Damon spoke, but he was still determined to play it tough. The boy waited for Damon to close the conversation.

“I really have to go, Lenny,” Damon said as softly as he could. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can talk again, about this and other things, but not now.” He broke the connection. Then he got out of the booth and went in search of Karol Kachellek.