He abandoned the train of thought. This affair seemed to be feeding an unhealthy tendency to melodrama. He reminded himself of what he'd told Diana about the porn tape. By the time the doctor had finished with the recordings there'd be nothing of Lenny Lenny left at all; there'd only be the actions and the reactions, dissected out and purified as a marketable commodity. The fighter on the tape might have Lenny's face and Lenny's pain, but it wouldn't be left at all; there'd only be the actions and the reactions, dissected out and purified as a marketable commodity. The fighter on the tape might have Lenny's face and Lenny's pain, but it wouldn't be him him. It would be an artifact, less than a shadow and nothing like a soul.
The whole thing was in rank bad taste, of course, but it was a living for all concerned. For the first few months after he had quit fighting, it had been his own his own living, and it had been based in talents that were entirely and living, and it had been based in talents that were entirely and exclusively exclusively his own, using nothing that Conrad Helier had left to him-in his will, at least. his own, using nothing that Conrad Helier had left to him-in his will, at least.
Damon had wanted then, and he wanted still, to be his own man.
Madoc Tamlin had moved forward to help the stricken street-fighter, not because he was overly concerned for the boy's health but because he wanted to make certain that the equipment was still in good order. Not until the silvery web had been stripped away were the two fighters handed over to the amateur ambulance drivers waiting nearby. Brady got in under his own steam but Lenny Garon had to be carried.
The crowd drifted away, evaporating into the concrete wilderness.
Damon waited patiently until Madoc's gear was all packed up and the produce of the day had been handed on to the next phase of its development.
"Your place or mine?" Madoc said, waving his hand in a lazy arc which took in both their cars. Damon led the way to his own vehicle and the older man followed. Damon waited until both doors had closed before starting to set out his proposition.
"If this thing turns out to be serious," Damon said, stressing the if if, "I'd be willing to lay out serious credit to pursue it."
"How serious?" Madoc asked, for form's sake.
"I've got some put away," Damon said, knowing that his friend would understand exactly what he meant. He fished a smartcard out of his pocket and held it out. "I'll call the bank in the morning and authorize it for cash withdrawals," he said. "Everything's aboveboard-there's no need to hide the transactions. I'll fix it so that you can draw ten thousand with no questions asked. If you need more, call me-but it had better be worth paying for."
"What am I looking for?" Madoc asked mildly. "Apart from Operator one-oh-one, that is."
"Silas was with a girl named Catherine Praill when he was snatched. The police don't think she was involved, but you'd better check her out. Interpol also mentioned the name of another biotechnologist by the name of Surinder Nahal, recently resident in San Diego. That might also be irrelevant, but it has to be checked. If you can find Silas, or identify the people who took him, I'll pay a suitable finder's fee."
"I'll see what I can do," Madoc said equably. "Are you going to tell me what Operator one-oh-one has posted, or do I have to go trawling through the Eliminators' favorite netboards?"
"He posted a message saying that Conrad Helier is still alive and calling him an enemy of mankind. He also sent me a personal message, which Interpol might not know about."
Damon took the piece of paper from his suitskin's inner pocket and handed it to Madoc Tamlin. Madoc read it and gave it back. "Could be from anybody," he observed.
"Could be," admitted Damon, "but whoever carried it up to the thirteenth floor took the trouble to crash Building Security. A playful move-but sometimes playful is serious in disguise. Somebody's trying to jerk my strings, and I'd like to know who-and why."
Madoc nodded, carefully furrowing his remarkable eyebrows. "Hywood's another of your foster parents, right?"
"Right. Eveline Hywood. Currently resident in Lagrange-Five, allegedly very busy with important experiments of an unspecified nature. I doubt that she'll return my call."
"It won't be easy to check her out. The Lagrangists don't play by our rules, and they have their own playspace way out on the lunatic fringe of the Web."
"Don't worry too much about that. I can't imagine that Eveline's involved in the kidnapping or the Eliminator messages, even if she does have some relevant information. What do you know about Ahasuerus?"
"The original guy or the foundation?"
"I presume that the reference is to the foundation, rather than the legend," Damon said, refusing to treat the issue as a joke.
"Not much," Madoc admitted. "Been around for the best part of two hundred years. Major players in the longevity game, funding research here, there, and probably everywhere. Reputation ever-so-slightly shady because of a certain bad odor attached to their start-up capital, although it beats me why anybody should care after all this time. Every fortune in the world can be traced back to some initial act of piracy, isn't that what they say? What was it they used to call the Ahasuerus guy, way back when?"
"The Man Who Stole the World," Damon said.
"Yeah-that's right. Zimmer, was it? Or Zimmerman?"
"Zimmerman."
"Right." Madoc nodded, as if he were the one answering instead of the one who'd asked. "Well, if he did did steal the world, we seem to have got it back again, don't we?" steal the world, we seem to have got it back again, don't we?"
Damon didn't want to get sidetracked. "I'll dig up what I can about connections between Ahasuerus and my father," he said, "although it'd be no surprise at all to find that they'd had extensive dealings. Ahasuerus must have had dealings with every biotech team in the world if they've been handing out cash to longevity researchers since the days before the Crash.
Madoc stroked his chin pensively. It seemed that his green eyes now glowed a little more powerfully than they had before. "What that note implies," he said, "is that Arnett was taken because he knows something about Conrad Helier-something dirty. I don't suppose you have any idea what that is, do you?"
"If I did," Damon told him, "I'd probably want to sit on it awhile longer, just in case this business can be wrapped up quickly and quietly-but as it happens, I don't. I was only ever told about Saint Conrad the Savior, in whose holy footsteps I was supposed to follow."
"Were you ever given any cause to think that he might not be dead?"
"Quite the reverse," Damon said. "According to his disciples, it was a major point of principle with Saint Conrad that an overcrowded world of long-lived individuals had to develop an etiquette, if not an actual legal requirement, whereby a dutiful citizen of the New Utopia would postpone the exercise of his-or her-right of reproduction until after death. If my foster parents are to be believed, my very existence is proof of Conrad Helier's demise; if he were still alive, he'd be guilty of an awkward hypocrisy."
"It's Conrad Helier you're really interested in, isn't it?" Madoc suggested, running his neatly manicured fingernails speculatively back and forth along the edge of the smartcard that Damon had given him. "This Arnett guy is a side issue. You want to know if your natural father really is alive, and if the Eliminators really have grounds for resenting his continued presence in the world."
"Concentrate on finding Silas Arnett, for the time being," Damon said flatly.
Madoc nodded meekly. "I'll put the Old Lady herself onto it," he said. "She doesn't take this kind of work normally, but she likes me. I can talk her into it."
"I don't want you hiring someone just because she's a living legend," Damon told him sharply. "I want someone who can get the job done."
"Trust me," Madoc advised him, with the casual air of a man who was as trustworthy as his own artificial graffiti. "Harriet's the best. I know know these things. Have I ever let you down?" these things. Have I ever let you down?"
"Once or twice."
Madoc only grinned at that, refusing to take the complaint seriously. "How are things otherwise?" he asked as he put the smartcard away. "Honest toil living up to your expectations?" Damon knew that what Madoc really wanted to know was whether he and Diana were washed up for good and all-but it wasn't a topic he wanted to discuss.
"I'm thinking of taking a little break," Damon told him. "I have some digging of my own to do tonight, but if I don't get answers to a couple of calls I might have to take a brief excursion to Hawaii tomorrow."
"What for?"
"Karol Kachellek is there, working out of Molokai. Like Eveline, he's pointedly refusing to get back to me. He won't want to tell me anything, even if he knows what all this is about, but if I go in person I might get something something out of him. At the very least, I might unsettle him a bit." out of him. At the very least, I might unsettle him a bit."
Madoc grinned. "You always were good at unsettling people. Is that it?" When Damon nodded, he let himself out of the car.
"Give my regards to Diana," Damon said as Madoc began to walk away. "Tell her I'm sorry, but that it'll all work out for the best."
Madoc nearly turned back in order to follow that up, but he must have judged Damon's mood more accurately than he'd let on. After a moment's hesitation he kept going, answering the instruction with a calculatedly negligent wave.
As soon as the other car had pulled away Damon began to ask himself whether he'd done the right thing. Taking money from the legacy to bankroll Madoc's investigations wasn't really a betrayal of his determination to make his own way in the world-it was surely wholly appropriate that Conrad Helier's money should be used in an attempt to find out what had happened to Silas, especially if it was Silas's association with Conrad Helier that had given his kidnappers their motive. The real problem was whether Madoc's involvement would actually help to solve the mystery, or merely add a further layer of complication. If he found anything damning, he would certainly offer it to Damon first . . . but what might he do with it thereafter? Even if Operator 101 could be thwarted, he might only be the first of many-and if Conrad Helier really had been an enemy of mankind, why should the secret be kept, even if it could be?
Damon checked the alarms on the car's console, just to make sure that their inactivity really was testimony to the fact that neither Karol nor Eveline had replied to his calls.
They were in perfect working order; the silence was real. In fact, now that he was alone at the end of the alley the silence was positively oppressive. The night was clear and the stars were out, but they seemed few and very faint by comparison with the starscape he'd glimpsed in Eveline's phone VE. Each one seemed set in splendid isolation against the cloth of black oblivion-and he had never felt as keenly as he did now that he was alone himself, a mere atom of soul stuff lost in a desert void.
"You're going soft," he told himself, unashamed of speaking the words aloud. "It was what you wanted, after all. No parents, no girlfriend, no opponents wielding knives. Just you, magnificently alone in the infinite wilderness of virtual space."
It was true. The sense of relief he felt as he raced away from the gloomy badlands toward the welcoming city lights seemed far less ambiguous than what he'd felt when Diana had driven off and left him to his own devices.
Six.
F.
irst thing next morning, Damon obtained a reservation on the two o'clock flight to Honolulu. There was no point in taking the earlier flight because he'd only have had to spend an extra two hours in Honolulu waiting for the shuttle to take him on to Molokai.
He called Karol again, to warn him of his imminent arrival; the sim accepted the news impassively, as any AI would have done, but Damon took some small comfort from the fact that Karol would now have cause to regret not having taken the trouble to return his earlier call. Damon reset his own answerphone to make sure that if Karol chose to call back now now he'd be conclusively stalled. He also put in a second call to Eveline Hywood, but he got the same response as before. In Lagrange-5 no one had to worry about frustrated callers deciding to put in a personal appearance. he'd be conclusively stalled. He also put in a second call to Eveline Hywood, but he got the same response as before. In Lagrange-5 no one had to worry about frustrated callers deciding to put in a personal appearance.
It only took his search engine forty seconds to sort through the news tapes and Eliminator netboards for any mention of Silas Arnett, Conrad Helier, Surinder Nahal, or Operator 101, but it took Damon a further hour and a half to check through its findings, making absolutely sure that there was no authentic news. No one of any importance was issuing serious speculations about a possible connection between the Operator 101 posting and Arnett's kidnapping, although a couple of newswriters had been alerted to Surinder Nahal's unavailability by their search-engine synthesizers. So far, everyone in the public arena was whistling in the dark-just like Interpol.
Damon knew that he ought to do some work, but he hadn't the heart to start the tawdry business of recovering Diana's vital stats for the pornypop tape and the only other worthwhile commission he had on hand was an action/adventure game scenario which required him to develop an entire alien ecosphere. It wasn't the sort of job he wanted to start when he knew he'd have to break off in three hours to go to the airport-especially when he had another option. He knew that it was just as likely to turn into a blind alley as trying to place a call to Eveline Hywood, but he figured that it had to be explored, just in case.
He packed his overnight bag and deposited it in the trunk of his car. Then he instructed the automatic pilot to find out where the nearest offices of the Ahasuerus Foundation were located and offer him an ETA. Given the size of the world-or even the USNA-he could easily have got an ETA that was the day after tomorrow, but the display assured him that he could be there long before noon.
The offices in question were close enough, and in territory familiar enough, for him to take the controls himself, but driving in downtown traffic was bad for his stress level at the best of times, and these were definitely not the best of times. He told the machine to set a course, but he didn't retreat into the safe haven of the VE hood the way most nondrivers did. He just sat back with eyes front, rehearsing the questions he intended to ask, if it turned out that there was anyone prepared to give him some answers. He tilted his seat back slightly so that the traffic wouldn't be too distracting.
The effect of the slight tilt was to fix his eyes on the shifting skyline way ahead of the traffic stream. At first, while the car seemed to be turning at every second intersection, the skyline kept changing, but once the pilot had found a reasonably straight route by which to follow its heading the Two Towers stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs-or a gateway to which the vehicle was being inexorably drawn.
The symbolism of the illusory gateway was not lost on Damon. The whole world was steering a course into the future with OmicronA on the left and PicoCon on the right. Ostensibly archrivals, the two megacorps and their various satellites were an effective cartel controlling at least 70 percent of the domestic nanotech business and 65 percent of the world's. Now that PicoCon had the Gantz patents stitched up, its masters probably had 70 percent of the domestic biotech business too, insofar as it made any sense to separate biotech from nanotech when the distinction between organic and inorganic molecular machines was becoming more and more blurred with every year that went by.
Possession of the Gantz patents entitled PicoCon to the slightly higher tower, so the edifice that reared up on the right was just a little more massive than the one to the left, but both had been forged out of ocean-refined sand and both architects had done their utmost to take advantage of sparkling salt in catching and reflecting the sun's bright light. Although PicoCon was the larger, it wasn't necessarily the brighter. There was a curious defiance about the glow of OmicronA which refused to accept the metaphorical shade-but Damon knew that it was only an optical illusion. As a beacon signaling the advent of tomorrow the two corps were flames of the same furious fire.
Needless to say, the offices of the Ahasuerus Foundation weren't in the same league. Ahasuerus didn't even have its own building-just a couple of floors in one of the humbler structures right across the road from the PicoCon tower. By comparison with its taller neighbor the building looked as if it had been gantzed out of an unusually objectionable mudslide; there was not a glimmer of sea salt about its stern exterior and its windows were tinted brown. Most of its neighbors were equipped for a measure of continuing accretion, so that salt from windblown spray had had accumulated on their slightly blurred surfaces, giving each of them a curious glittering sheen, but the building housing Ahasuerus had been comprehensively accumulated on their slightly blurred surfaces, giving each of them a curious glittering sheen, but the building housing Ahasuerus had been comprehensively finished finished, and it seemed utterly self-satisfied in its relative dullness-although some observers might have reckoned it sinister as well as stern. Its car park was certainly dimmer and dingier than fashion prescribed.
Damon had already decided that the best course of action was to throw the burden of secrecy onto the foundation's own security, so he simply marched up to the reception desk and summoned a human contact. When a smartly dressed young man eventually emerged from the inner offices Damon gave him the folded note.
"My name's Damon Hart," he said. "I'm the biological son of Conrad Helier and the foster son of Silas Arnett and Eveline Hywood. It might be to the advantage of the foundation if someone in authority were to read this document. It might also be to the advantage of the foundation if lesser mortals-including yourself-refrained from reading it. Personally, I don't care at all; if you or anyone else wants to take the risk of looking at it, you're welcome."
That, he figured, should get the item as far up the chain of command as was feasible without the contents of the enigmatic message becoming common knowledge.
The fetcher-and-carrier disappeared into the inner offices again, leaving Damon to his own devices for a further ten minutes.
Eventually, a woman came to collect him. She had silky red hair and bright blue eyes. For a moment Damon thought that she was genuinely young, and his jaw tightened as he concluded that he was about to be fobbed off, but the hair and eye colors were a little too contrived and a slight constriction in her practiced smile reassured him that she had undergone recent somatic reconstruction of the kind that was misleadingly advertised as "rejuvenation." Her real age was likely to be at least seventy, if not in three figures.
"Mr. Hart," she said, offering him the piece of paper, still folded, in lieu of a handshake. "I'm Rachel Trehaine. Won't you come through."
The corridors behind the security wall were bare; the doors had no nameplates. The office into which Rachel Trehaine eventually led Damon was liberally equipped with flat screens and fitted with shelves full of discs and digitapes, but it had no VE hood. "Perhaps I'd better warn you that I'm only a senior reader," she said as she waved him to a chair. "I don't have any executive authority. I've had an encrypted version of your document relayed to New York, but it may take some time to get a response from them. In the meantime, I'd like to thank you for bringing the matter to our attention-we had not been independently informed."
"You're welcome," Damon assured her insincerely. "I hope you'll show me the same courtesy of bringing to my attention any pertinent matters of which I might not have been independently informed." He winced slightly as he heard the pomposity in his tone, realizing that he might have overrehearsed his opening speech.
"Of course," said Rachel Trehaine, with the charming ease of a practiced dissembler. "I don't suppose you have any idea-if only the merest suspicion-who this mysterious Operator might be, or why this attack on your family has been launched?"
"I thought you might know more about that than I do," Damon said. "You'll have complete records of any dealings between Ahasuerus and Conrad Helier's research team."
"When I say that I'm a senior reader," she told him mildly, "I don't mean that I have free access to the foundation's own records. My job is to keep watch on other data streams, selecting out data of interest, collating and reporting. I'm a scientific analyst, not a historian."
"I meant you plural, not you singular," Damon told her. "Someone in your organization must be able to figure out which particular closeted skeleton Operator one-oh-one intends to bring out into the open. Why else would he have sent me to you?"
"Why would he-or she-have sent you anywhere at all, Mr. Hart? Why send you a personal message? It seems very odd-not at all the way that Eliminators usually operate."
The delicate suggestion was, of course, that Damon was the source of the message-that he himself was Operator 101. As a scientific analyst Rachel Trehaine would naturally have considerable respect for Occam's razor.
"That's an interesting question," Damon said agreeably. "When Inspector Yamanaka referred to the situation as a puzzle he was speaking metaphorically, but that message implies that the instigator of this series of incidents really is is creating a puzzle, dangling it before me as a kind of lure-just as I, in my turn, am dangling it before you. Operator one-oh-one wants me to go digging, and he's offering suggestions as to where I might profitably dig. Given that Conrad Helier is dead, he can't possibly be the Eliminators' real target-and if their promise that Silas Arnett will be released after he's given them what they want is honest, he isn't the real target either. If the note is to be taken at face value, Operator one-oh-one might be building a file on Eveline Hywood, with particular reference to her past dealings with your foundation." creating a puzzle, dangling it before me as a kind of lure-just as I, in my turn, am dangling it before you. Operator one-oh-one wants me to go digging, and he's offering suggestions as to where I might profitably dig. Given that Conrad Helier is dead, he can't possibly be the Eliminators' real target-and if their promise that Silas Arnett will be released after he's given them what they want is honest, he isn't the real target either. If the note is to be taken at face value, Operator one-oh-one might be building a file on Eveline Hywood, with particular reference to her past dealings with your foundation."
Rachel Trehaine took a few moments to weigh that up, presumably employing all her skills as a senior reader. Anyone but a scientific analyst might have challenged his conclusions, or at least pointed out the tentative nature of his inferences, but she was content merely to observe and record.
"Have you spoken to Eveline Hywood?" she asked.
"I've tried," Damon told her. "She isn't accepting calls at the moment. There's nothing sinister in that-she tends to get engrossed in her work. She never liked being interrupted. I'll get through eventually, but she'll probably tell me that it isn't my business anymore-that I forfeited any right I might have had to be told what's going on when I walked out on the Great Crusade to run with the gangs."
The red-haired woman pondered that information too. Damon judged that she was under real pressure to make sense of this, or thought she was. However lowly her position within the organization might be she was obviously in charge of the Los Angeles office, at least for the moment. She knew that she might have decisions to make, as well as orders to follow from New York.
"The Ahasuerus Foundation's sole purpose is to conduct research into technologies of longevity," she said sententiously. "It's entirely probable that we provided funding to Conrad Helier's research team if they were involved in projects connected with longevity research. I can't imagine that there was anything in our dealings to attract the interest of the so-called Eliminators."
"That is strange, isn't it?" Damon said, trying to sound insouciant. "The usual Eliminator jargon charges people with being unworthy of immortality unworthy of immortality-a formula which takes it for granted that your researchers will eventually hit the jackpot. In a way, you and the Eliminators represent different sides of the same coin. If and when you come up with an authentic fountain of youth you'll be forced into the position of deciding who should drink from it."
"We're a nonprofit organization, Mr. Hart. Our constitution requires us to make the fruits of our labor available to everyone."
"I looked up your constitution last night," Damon admitted. "It's an interesting commitment. But I also glanced at the way in which you've operated in the past. It's true that Ahasuerus has always placed its research findings in the public domain, but that's not the same thing as ensuring equal access to the consequent technologies. Consider PicoCon's new rejuvenation procedures, for example: there's no secret about the manner in which the reconstructive transformations are done, but it's still an expensive process to carry out because it requires such a high level of technical expertise and so much hospital time. Effectively, it's available only to the rich. It seems highly likely to me that the next breakthrough in longevity research will be a more wide-ranging kind of somatic transformation which will achieve an authentic authentic rejuvenation rather than a merely cosmetic one. rejuvenation rather than a merely cosmetic one.
Assuming that it requires even more technical expertise and even more hospital time, it's likely to be available only to the very rich very rich, at least in the first instance, even if all the research data is in the public domain. If so, the megacorps will still have effective control over its application. Isn't that so?"
"In the first instance is the vital phrase, Mr. Hart," she informed him, still carefully maintaining the stiffness of her manner. "The early recipients of such a treatment would be those who could most easily afford it, but it would eventually filter through the entire population. The rich are always first in every queue-but that only means that the poor have to be patient, and in the New Utopia even the poor have is the vital phrase, Mr. Hart," she informed him, still carefully maintaining the stiffness of her manner. "The early recipients of such a treatment would be those who could most easily afford it, but it would eventually filter through the entire population. The rich are always first in every queue-but that only means that the poor have to be patient, and in the New Utopia even the poor have time enough time enough. Provided that your hypothetical technology of authentic rejuvenation authentic rejuvenation were to take the form of a treatment that a person need only undergo once-or even if it needed to be repeated at long intervals-there'd be plenty of time to work through the queue. No one has any interest in delaying our work, Mr. Hart-and that includes the lonely and resentful individuals who have nothing better to do with their time than denounce the follies and failures of their fellow men and urge maniacs to attempt murder." were to take the form of a treatment that a person need only undergo once-or even if it needed to be repeated at long intervals-there'd be plenty of time to work through the queue. No one has any interest in delaying our work, Mr. Hart-and that includes the lonely and resentful individuals who have nothing better to do with their time than denounce the follies and failures of their fellow men and urge maniacs to attempt murder."
"I couldn't agree more," Damon said, although he wasn't sure that the matter was as simple as she made it out to be. "As I said, I've read your constitution. It's a fine and noble commitment, even if it was written by a man who made his fortune by turning a minor storm in the troubled waters of the world's financial markets into a full-scale hurricane. But lonely and resentful individuals often nurse paranoid fantasies. Operator one-oh-one might have got it into his head that you've already developed a method of authentic rejuvenation, but that you're keeping it very quiet. Perhaps he thinks that you're you're the real Eliminators, standing by while the people the real Eliminators, standing by while the people you you consider to be undesirables peacefully pass away, and saving your immortality serum for the deserving few." consider to be undesirables peacefully pass away, and saving your immortality serum for the deserving few."
"That's absolutely untrue," said Rachel Trehaine, her bright blue eyes as fathomless as the California sky.
"A paranoid fantasy," Damon agreed readily. "But I did happen to notice, while inwardly digesting your constitution, that although it commits you to releasing the results of the research you fund, it doesn't actually specify when when you have to do it. You're not the only player in the field, of course-I dare say there's not a single megacorp which doesn't have a few fingers thrust deep into this particular pie-but you've been going for a long time and you have a good deal of expertise. If I were a bookmaker, I'd make you third favorite, after PicoCon and OmicronA, to come up with the next link in the chain that will eventually draw us into the wonderland of true emortality. Some day, someone like you is going to have to decide exactly how and when to let the good news out. Whoever makes that decision runs the risk of making enemies, don't you think?" you have to do it. You're not the only player in the field, of course-I dare say there's not a single megacorp which doesn't have a few fingers thrust deep into this particular pie-but you've been going for a long time and you have a good deal of expertise. If I were a bookmaker, I'd make you third favorite, after PicoCon and OmicronA, to come up with the next link in the chain that will eventually draw us into the wonderland of true emortality. Some day, someone like you is going to have to decide exactly how and when to let the good news out. Whoever makes that decision runs the risk of making enemies, don't you think?"
The remark about Ahasuerus being third favorite after the biggest players of all was pure flattery, but it didn't bring a smile to Rachel Trehaine's face. "I can assure you," the red-haired woman said, "that the Ahasuerus Foundation has no secrets of the kind you're suggesting. You've already admitted that this mysterious Operator is deliberately teasing you, trying to draw you into reckless action. If that's so, you ought to think very carefully about what you say, and to whom. If Operator one-oh-one has paranoid fantasies to indulge and lies to spread, it might be wise to let him be the one to do it."
Damon would have assured her that he agreed with her wholeheartedly, but before he could open his mouth her attention was distracted. One of her machines was beeping, presumably to inform her that urgent information was incoming. From where he was sitting Damon couldn't see the screen whose keyplate she was playing with, and he didn't try to sneak a peep.
"The Ahasuerus Foundation thanks you for bringing this matter to our attention," the red-haired woman said, reading from the screen. "The Ahasuerus Foundation intends to cooperate fully with Interpol and suggests that you do the same. If the Ahasuerus Foundation can help in any way to locate and liberate Silas Arnett it will certainly do so."
Damon knew that he was being slyly rebuked for not taking the note straight to Hiru Yamanaka, but he couldn't guess whether the rebuke was sincere or not. He had no way of knowing whether coming here had made the general situation better or worse-or, for that matter, what might count as "better" or "worse." When he saw that she was finished, he rose to his feet.
"I'm afraid I have a plane to catch," he said. He knew perfectly well that he was about to be thrown out, but figured that he might as well seize whatever initiative remained to be seized. "If I hear any further mention of the foundation I'll be happy to pass the news on. I take it that my discretion wasn't necessary, and that you won't mind in the least if I simply use the phone in future?"
"We have nothing to hide," said Rachel Trehaine as she came to her feet, "but that doesn't mean that we don't appreciate your discretion, Mr. Hart. Privacy is a very precious commodity in today's world, and we value it as much as anyone."
Damon took that to mean that she would definitely prefer it if he exercised the utmost discretion in passing on any further information, but that she wasn't about to feed anyone's paranoid suspicions by saying so explicitly.