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 developments and 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 is a 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 other foster father. I’ll call again, when I can. We will talk, 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 p
osting 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 was the 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 absolutely sure, but I think she’s disappeared 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 very long 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.
Twelve
K
arol Kachellek was still in the workroom where he and Damon had watched the tape of Silas Arnett’s mock trial. When Damon came back he was under the phone hood and the room was unlit, but he came out as soon as he realized that he wasn’t alone and brushed the light-switch on his console. Damon hadn’t managed to catch the last few words Karol had spoken before signing off but he blushed slightly anyway, as if walking into a darkened room were an infallible sign of stealthy intent.
Damon was all set for more verbal fencing, but the bioscientist was in a very different state of mind now.
“I’m sorry, Damon,” Kachellek said, with unaccustomed humility. “You were right. This business is far more complicated than I thought—and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
“What’s it all about, Karol?” Damon asked quietly. “You do know, don’t you?”
“I only wish I did.” The unprecedented plaintiveness in his foster father’s voice made Damon want to believe that he was sincere. “You mustn’t worry, Damon. It will all be sorted out. I don’t know who’s doing this, or why, but . . . . ” As the blond man trailed off, Damon stared at him intently, wondering whether the red flush about his brow and neck was significant of anger, anxiety, embarrassment, or some synergistic combination of all three.
Karol reddened even more deeply under his foster son’s steady gaze. “It’s all lies, Damon,” he said awkwardly. “You can’t possibly believe any of that stuff. They forced Silas to say what he did, if he said it at all. We can’t even be sure that it really was his voice. It could all have been synthesized.”
“It doesn’t much matter whether it’s all lies or not,” Damon told him grimly. “It’s going to be talked about the world over. Whoever made that tape is cashing in on the newsworthiness of the Eliminators, using their crazy crusade to ensure maximum publicity for those accusation
s. The tape doctor didn’t even try to make them sound convincing. He settled for crude melodrama instead, but that might well be effective enough for his purposes if all he wants is to kick up a scandal. Why put in those last few lines, though? Why take the trouble to include a section of tape whose sole purpose is to establish the possibility that Silas might have known his captor? What are we supposed to infer from that?”
“I don’t know,” Karol said emphatically. His manner was defensive, but he really did sound sincere. “I really don’t understand what’s happening. Who would want to do this to us, Damon? Why—and why now?”
Damon wished that he had a few answers to offer; he had never seen any of his foster parents in such a state of disarray. He felt obliged to wonder whether the tape could have been quite as discomfiting if there had been no truth at all in its allegations, but he was certain that Karol’s blustering couldn’t all be bluff. He really didn’t understand what was happening or who was behind it, or why they’d chosen to unleash the whirlwind at this particular time. Maybe, given time, he could work it all out—but for the moment he was helpless, to the extent that he was even prepared to accept guidance from Damon the prodigal, Damon the betrayer.
“Tell me about Surinder Nahal,” Damon said abruptly. “Does he have motive enough to be behind all this?” He was avid to seize the chance to ask some of the questions he’d been storing up, hoping that for once he might get an honest reply, and that seemed to be the best item with which to begin. Karol was far more likely to know something useful about a rival gene-tweaker than the disappearance of an eighteen-year-old girl.
However far Karol was from recovering his usual icy calm, though, he still had ingrained habit to come to his aid. “Why him?” he parried unhelpfully.
“Come on, Karol, think,” Damon said urgently. “Silas isn’t the only one who’s gone missing, is he? If nothing was wrong, Madoc would have found Nahal by now and let me know. If he isn’t part of the problem, he must be part of the solution. Maybe his turn in the hot seat is coming next—or maybe he’s the one feeding questions to the judge. How bad is the grudge he’s nursing?”
Inherit the Earth Page 12
