Inherit the Earth (6 page)

He’s implying that I might be in danger too, Damon thought. If he’s right, and the message is connected to Silas’s disappearance, this really might be the beginning of something nasty—even if it’s only a news-tape hatchet job. “I’ll ask around,” he said carefully. “If I discover anything that might help you, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Thank you, Mr. Hart,” the man from Interpol said, offering no clue as to exactly what he understood by Damon’s promise to
ask around
. “I’m grateful for your cooperation.”

When he had closed the door behind his unwelcome visitors Damon pulled the carving knife out of the jamb, wondering what Sergeant Rolfe had made of it. Would Interpol be checking Diana’s record as carefully as they had checked his? Would they find anything there to connect her to the Eliminators? Probably not—but how well did
he
know her? How well had he
ever
known her? And where would she go, now that she was homeless again? Might she too become “untraceable,” like Silas Arnett and Surinder Nahal? Suddenly, he felt an urgent need of someone to talk to—and realized belatedly that since he had quit the fight game he had gradually transferred all his conversational eggs to one basket. Now that Diana was gone, there was no one who regularly passed the time of day with him except the censorious elevator, which didn’t even qualify as a worm-level AI.

All I want is a chance to work, he thought. All I need is the space to get on with my own projects. None of this is anything to do with me. But he knew, even as he voiced the thought within the virtual environment of his mind, that he didn’t have the authority to decide that he was uninvolved in this affair. Nor, he realized—slightly to his surprise—was he able to attain the level of indifference that would allow him simply to turn his back on the mystery. In spite of everything that had happened to spoil the
relationship between himself and his foster parents, he still cared—about Silas Arnett, at least.

Oh, Silas, he thought, what on earth have you done? Who can you possibly have annoyed sufficiently to get yourself kidnapped? And why have the Eliminators turned their attention to a saint who’s been dead for nearly fifty years?

D
amon knew that there was no point searching the apartment for the bugs that Sergeant Rolfe had planted while he was wandering around. Interpol undoubtedly had nanomachines clever enough to evade detection by his antique sweeper. Nor was he about to ask for help—Building Security had better sweepers but they also had a rather flexible view of the right to privacy that they were supposedly there to guarantee. He had enough demerits on his account already without giving formal notification of the fact that he was under investigation by a high-level law enforcement agency.

Instead, he donned his phone hood and started making calls.

It was, as he’d anticipated, a waste of time. Everybody in the world—not to mention everybody off-world—had a beltpack and a personal call-number, but that didn’t mean that anybody in the world was accessible twenty-four hours a day. Everybody in the world also had an AI answering machine, which functioned for most people as a primary status symbol as well as a protector of privacy, and which needed to be shown off if they were to perform that function adequately. The higher a man’s social profile was the cleverer his AI needed to be at fielding and filtering calls. Damon usually had no cause to regret the trend—customizing virtual environments for the AI simulacra to inhabit provided nearly 40 percent of his business—but whenever he actually
wanted to make urgent contact with some people he found the endless routine of stagy reply sequences just as frustrating as anyone else.

Karol Kachellek’s simulacrum was standing on a photo-derived Hawaiian beach with muted breakers rolling in behind him. The unsmiling simulacrum brusquely reported that Karol was busy operating a deep-sea dredger by remote control and couldn’t be disturbed. It warned Damon that his call was unlikely to be returned for several hours, and perhaps not until the next day.

Damon told the sim that the matter was urgent, but the assurances he received in return were patently hollow.

Eveline Hywood’s simulacrum wasn’t even full length; it was just a detached head floating in what Damon took to be a straightforward replication of her lab. The room’s only decoration—if even that could be reckoned a mere ornament—was a window looking out upon a rich star field. It was the kind of panorama which people who lived with five miles of atmosphere above their heavy heads only ever got to see in virtual form, and it therefore functioned as a status symbol, even though Lagrangists were supposed to be above that sort of thing. The sim’s gray hair was trimmed to a mere fuzz, according to the prevailing minimalist philosophy of the microgee colonists, but its features were slightly more naturalistic than those Karol had contrived for his alter ego.

The sim told Damon that Eveline was working on a delicate series of experiments and wouldn’t be returning any calls for at least twenty-four hours. Again, Damon told the sim that the matter was urgent—but the sim looked back at him with a cold hauteur which silently informed him that
nothing
happening on Earth could possibly be urgent by comparison with the labor of a dedicated Lagrangist.

Damon doubted that the news about Silas and the strange declaration of Operator 101 had reached either of his foster parents as yet; unless Interpol had sent someone to see them
face-to-face the information would be stuck in the same queue as his own calls, probably assigned an equally low priority by the two AI filtering devices.

Madoc Tamlin’s simulacrum had a lot more style, as did the surreal backcloth which Damon had designed for it, with a liquid clock whose ripples told the right time and a very plausible phoenix that rose afresh from its pyre every time the sim accepted a call. The sim gave no reason for Madoc’s unavailability, although the expression in its eyes carefully implied that being the kind of rakehell he was he was probably up to no good. Damon knew, though, that its promise that Madoc would get back to him within the hour was trustworthy.

When he lifted the hood again the one thing on Damon’s mind was getting to the bathroom, so it wasn’t until he’d done what he had to do and emerged again that he saw the envelope lying on the floor just inside the apartment door. The absurdity of it stopped him dead in his tracks and almost made him laugh.
Nobody
pushed envelopes under apartment doors—not, at any rate, in buildings as well supplied with spy eyes as this one.

Damon picked the envelope up. It wasn’t sealed.

He drew the enclosed piece of paper out and unfolded it curiously. The words printed on it might have been put there by any of a million near identical machines. They read:

DAMON
IT IS TRUE
CONRAD HELIER IS ALIVE
ARNETT WILL BE RELEASED WHEN HE HAS TESTIFIED
AHASUERUS AND HYWOOD HAVE THE REMAINING ANSWERS
OPERATOR 101

This time, Damon
did
laugh. This made the whole affair seem suddenly childish, like a silly game. He remembered the way Yamanaka had carefully called his attention to the unusual features of the original message, implying that it wasn’t
really
an Eliminator
who had posted it. This was surely confirmation of the fact—no authentic Eliminator would post personal messages under someone’s door. This had to be a joke.

Damon slipped back under the hood and called Building Security.

The call was answered by a real person, just as the lease specifications promised. “This is thirteen four seven,” he said reflexively, although she could have read that from the automatic display.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Hart?” said the real person gravely. She had a broad halo of honey blond hair, a superabundance of facial jewelry, and an anxious expression, none of which were properly coordinated with her sober gray uniform.

“Somebody just slipped something under my door—within the last thirty minutes. Could you decant me the spy-eye tape that gives the clearest picture?”

He took her assent so much for granted that he almost severed the connection before she said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Hart, but that won’t be possible. We’ve suffered a slight system failure.” She sounded very embarrassed, as well she might. Setting aside such routine antisocial behavior as jamming the elevator open for a couple of minutes, the misdemeanor rate within the building was so low that Security was having a hard time justifying its proportion of the lease tax.

“What do you mean, a
slight system failure?
” Damon asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

“Well,” said the blond woman unhappily, “to tell the truth, it’s not that slight. In fact, it’s fairly general.”

Damon considered the implications of this news for a few moments before saying: “General enough to allow someone to walk into the building, take the elevator to the thirteenth, push something under a door, take the elevator back down again, and walk out undetected?”

“It’s possible,” she conceded, quickly adding: “It’s a
very
unusual situation, Mr. Hart. I’ve never known anything like it.”

Damon judged from her tone that she had encountered similar situations several times before, but had been instructed not to admit the fact to the tenants. This wasn’t the kind of building that software saboteurs would target, but it wasn’t the kind they’d leave alone either. Damon had crashed similar systems in the days when he’d been in training to be an all-around juvenile delinquent and taken pride in it. The only authentically unusual thing about this particular act of sabotage was that someone had taken advantage of it to pay a personal call. The blond woman, who was waiting impatiently for him to break the connection and let her get on with her work, obviously hadn’t cottoned on to that.

“Thanks,” he said reflexively. He didn’t give her time to say “You’re welcome,” although she probably wouldn’t have bothered.

When he’d slipped off the hood, Damon devoted a few moments to wondering who might want to make a joke at his expense, and why. Diana hadn’t had time to set it up, and it wasn’t her style—although she certainly knew enough amateur saboteurs capable of crashing Building Security. Madoc Tamlin knew many more, and he was one of the few people to whom he’d confided his original surname and his reasons for changing it, but Madoc wouldn’t stoop so low.

Eventually, he came around full circle. What if it
weren’t
a joke? Interpol seemed to be taking it seriously enough, even though they didn’t think it was authentic Eliminator action—and something
had
happened to Silas Arnett.

He wondered whether he ought to tell the police about the note. He had no particular reason to conceal it, although its sender presumably intended it for his eyes only. He decided to keep his options open, at least for the time being, and tackle the matter himself. That had always been his natural inclination—an inclination which, if it was hereditary, had very probably been gifted to him by his long-dead father. He put the envelope in a drawer and the note into the inside pocket of his suitskin. Then he went to get something to eat.

Just as Damon finished his meal the alarm he’d set to notify him of any response to his various calls began beeping. He ducked under the phone hood and displaced his AI answering machine, which was in the middle of telling Madoc Tamlin that he was on his way. The VE which surrounded them was a lush forest scene whose colorful birds and butterflies were the product of a spontaneous ecology rather than a simple tape loop; it was unnecessarily elaborate but it served as an ad for his VE engineering skills.

“Is this about Diana?” Madoc said—which at least solved the minor mystery of where Diana had gone after storming out of Damon’s life. It made sense; she had known Tamlin a good deal longer than she had known Damon, and she was on no better terms with her foster parents than Damon was with his.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s business. Have you heard anything about a kidnap up the coast?”

Madoc raised a quizzical eyebrow. His eyebrows were as black as his hair and as neatly shaped; they made an interesting contrast with his pale eyes, which had been tinted a remarkably delicate shade of green. “Haven’t seen the news,” he said. “Anyone you know?”

“My foster father. There may be an Eliminator connection.”

The quizzical expression disappeared. “Not good,” Madoc said—then waited, expecting more.

“I’ve got a proposition that might interest you,” Damon said carefully.

“Yeah?” Madoc knew better than to ask for details over the phone. “Well, I won’t be back at the apartment for quite a while, and that might not be a good place, all things considered. You can find me in the alley where we shot your second-to-last fight. You remember where that is, I suppose?”