"I was trying to forget it," Damon told her tersely. "It wasn't relevant."
"It seems to be relevant now 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 other foster father. I'll call again, when I can. We foster father. I'll call again, when I can. We will will talk, if that's what you want." 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 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 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 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 was was the point. "Get to the bottom line, Lenny," he said aloud. "Exactly what have you got to tell me about Catherine Praill?" the point. "Get to the bottom line, Lenny," he said aloud. "Exactly what have you got to tell me about Catherine Praill?"
"Nothing definite definite-but I tried to get in touch with her. I tried hard 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 absolutely sure, but I think sure, but I think she's 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." 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 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 very long time." 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 believe any of that stuff. They any of that stuff. They forced forced Silas to say what he did, if he said it at all. We can't even be sure that it really Silas to say what he did, if he said it at all. We can't even be sure that it really was was his voice. It could all have been synthesized." 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 accusations. 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? 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 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. 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 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?"
"Surinder Nahal was a bioengineer back in the old days," Kachellek said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "His field of endeavor overlapped ours-he was working on artificial wombs too, and there was a difference of opinion regarding patents."
"How strong a difference of opinion? Do you mean that he accused Conrad Helier of obtaining patents that ought to have been his?"
"You don't know what it was like back then, Damon. The queue outside the patent office was always five miles long, and every time a significant patent was granted there were cries of Foul! Foul! all along the line-not that it mattered much, the way the corps were always rushing to produce copycat processes just beyond the reach of the patents and throwing lawsuits around like confetti. The Crash put an end to all that madness-it focused people's minds on matters of all along the line-not that it mattered much, the way the corps were always rushing to produce copycat processes just beyond the reach of the patents and throwing lawsuits around like confetti. The Crash put an end to all that madness-it focused people's minds on matters of real real importance. There's nothing like a manifest threat to the future of the species to bring people together. In 2099 the world was in chaos, on the brink of a war of all against all. By 2110 peace had broken out just about everywhere, and we were all on the same side again. importance. There's nothing like a manifest threat to the future of the species to bring people together. In 2099 the world was in chaos, on the brink of a war of all against all. By 2110 peace had broken out just about everywhere, and we were all on the same side again.
"Sure, back in ninety-nine Surinder Nahal was hopping mad with us because we were ten places ahead of him in the big queue-but it didn't last. Ten years later we were practically side by side in the struggle to put the New Reproductive System in place. There was a little residual bad feeling because he thought he hadn't been given his fair share of credit for the ectogenetic technology that was finally put in place, but nothing serious. I haven't heard of him in fifty years; if I'd ever thought about him at all I'd have presumed that he was retired, like Silas. I can't believe that a man like him could be responsible for all this-he was a scientist scientist, like us. It makes no sense. It must be someone from. . . . " He stopped as soon as he had fully formulated the thought in his own mind.
"Someone from what?" Damon asked sharply-but it was too late. The moment of his foster father's vulnerability had passed, killed by the lengthy development of his judgment of Surinder Nahal. Karol had no intention of finishing his broken sentence; he deliberately turned away so that he didn't have to answer Damon's demanding stare. Whatever conclusion he had suddenly and belatedly jumped to, he clearly intended to act on it himself, in secret. Damon tried to make the charitable assumption that Karol had only stopped dead because he was standing in a room whose walls might easily be host to a dozen curious eyes and ears, but he couldn't help feeling that it was a personal slight nevertheless: a deliberate act of exclusion.
"Is it possible," Damon said, trying not to sound too too hostile, "that the viruses which caused the plague of sterility really were manufactured, by hostile, "that the viruses which caused the plague of sterility really were manufactured, by someone? someone? Was it really a Third Plague War, as the judge said? Could the Crash have been deliberately caused?" He didn't expect an honest answer, but he figured that if a man like Hiru Yamanaka could set such store by eye-to-eye interrogation, there must be something in the theory. Was it really a Third Plague War, as the judge said? Could the Crash have been deliberately caused?" He didn't expect an honest answer, but he figured that if a man like Hiru Yamanaka could set such store by eye-to-eye interrogation, there must be something in the theory.
Karol met his eye again, pugnaciously. "Of course it could," he snapped, as if it ought to have been perfectly obvious. "History simplifies. There weren't two plague wars, or even three-there was only one, and it involved more battles than anyone ever acknowledged. All that stuff about one war launched by the rich against the poor and another by the poor against the rich is just news-tape PR, calculated to imply that the final score was even. It wasn't."
Damon wasn't at all surprised by this judgment, although he hadn't expected to hear it voiced by a man like Karol Kachellek. He was familiar with the thesis that all all wars were waged by the rich, with the poor playing the part of cannon fodder. wars were waged by the rich, with the poor playing the part of cannon fodder.
"Are you saying that all all the new and resurgent diseases were deliberately released?" Damon asked incredulously. "All the way back to AIDS and the superbacs?" the new and resurgent diseases were deliberately released?" Damon asked incredulously. "All the way back to AIDS and the superbacs?"
"No, of course I'm not," Karol said, scrupulously reining in his cynicism. "There were real problems. Species crossovers, antibiotic-immune strains, new mutations. There really was a backlash against early medical triumphs, generated by natural selection. I don't doubt that there were accidental releases of engineered organisms too. There's no doubt that the first free transformers were spontaneous mutations that allowed genetherapy treatments to slip the leash of their control systems and start a whole new side branch in the evolutionary tree. Maybe ninety-nine out of every hundred of the bugs that followed in their wake were products of natural selection-and nine out of ten were perfectly harmless, even benign-but the people who made good transformers by the score were perfectly capable of making not-so-good ones too."
"And they could get paid to do it, I suppose? They weren't too proud to take defense funding."
"Everybody took defense funding in the twenty-first century, Damon. Purely for the good of science, you understand-for the sake of the sacred cause of progress. There must have been thousands who wrung their hands and howled their lamentations all the way to the bank-but they took the money anyway. That's not the point. The point is that nobody knows for sure where took defense funding in the twenty-first century, Damon. Purely for the good of science, you understand-for the sake of the sacred cause of progress. There must have been thousands who wrung their hands and howled their lamentations all the way to the bank-but they took the money anyway. That's not the point. The point is that nobody knows for sure where any any of the bad bugs came from-not even the ones whose depredations were confidently labeled the First and Second Plague Wars. The principal reason why the Crash wasn't called a plague war at the time was that nobody was excluded from it. No one seemed to have any defense ready; everybody seemed to be a victim. That doesn't mean that no one had any reason to release viruses of that type. As Conrad said in that clip the Eliminator dropped into his little comedy, it of the bad bugs came from-not even the ones whose depredations were confidently labeled the First and Second Plague Wars. The principal reason why the Crash wasn't called a plague war at the time was that nobody was excluded from it. No one seemed to have any defense ready; everybody seemed to be a victim. That doesn't mean that no one had any reason to release viruses of that type. As Conrad said in that clip the Eliminator dropped into his little comedy, it forced forced us to do what we'd needed to do for a hundred years but never contrived to do-to bring human fertility under careful control." us to do what we'd needed to do for a hundred years but never contrived to do-to bring human fertility under careful control."
"Not so much a war of the rich against the poor, then, as a war of the few against the many."
"No. If it was any kind of plague war at all it was a war to end that kind of warfare. It was humankind against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse-the last stand against the negative Malthusian checks."
"So if it was was deliberate, the people responsible would have had your wholehearted support?" deliberate, the people responsible would have had your wholehearted support?"
"You don't understand, Damon," Karol said, in a tone of voice that Damon had heard many times before. "People don't talk about it nowadays, of course, because it's not considered a fit topic for polite conversation, but the world before the Crash was very different from the one in which you grew up. There were a lot of people prepared to say that the population explosion had had to be damped down one way or another-that if the sum of individual choices didn't add up to voluntary restraint, then war, famine, and disease would remain necessary factors in human affairs. People were already living considerably longer, as a matter of routine, than their immediate ancestors. PicoCon and OmicronA were only embryos themselves in those days, but their mothercorps were already promising a more dramatic extension of the life span by courtesy of internal technology. It was easy enough to see that matters would get very fraught indeed as those nanotechnologies became cheaper and more efficient. to be damped down one way or another-that if the sum of individual choices didn't add up to voluntary restraint, then war, famine, and disease would remain necessary factors in human affairs. People were already living considerably longer, as a matter of routine, than their immediate ancestors. PicoCon and OmicronA were only embryos themselves in those days, but their mothercorps were already promising a more dramatic extension of the life span by courtesy of internal technology. It was easy enough to see that matters would get very fraught indeed as those nanotechnologies became cheaper and more efficient.
"The world was full of new viruses. A lot of them were arising naturally-more than ten billion people crammed into polluted supercities constitute a wonderland of opportunity for virus evolution-and a lot more were being tailored in labs for use as transgenic vectors, pest controllers, so-called beneficial fevers, and so on. All kinds of things came out of that cauldron, far more of them by accident than by design. It really doesn't matter a damn, and didn't then, how the Crash was started; started; the brute fact of it forced us all to concentrate our attention and energies on the problem of how to the brute fact of it forced us all to concentrate our attention and energies on the problem of how to respond respond to it. to it.
"We came through it, and we got the world moving again. It's a changed world and it's a better world, and Conrad Helier was one of its chief architects. Maybe you think we made a lot of money out of the world's misfortune, but by comparison with PicoCon, OmicronA, and the other cosmicorps we've always been paupers. What we did, we did for the common good. Conrad was a fine man-a great great man-and this crazy attempt to blacken his name is the product of a sick mind." man-and this crazy attempt to blacken his name is the product of a sick mind."
Damon reminded himself that Karol Kachellek had been born in 2071, only four years after Silas Arnett but fifteen years after Conrad Helier. Karol was only thirty years short of the current world record for longevity, but he still thought of Conrad Helier as the product of an earlier generation: a generation that was now lost to history. Conrad Helier had been a more powerful father figure to Karol Kachellek than he ever could have been to Damon.
"Were you actually present when my father died, Karol?" Damon asked quietly.
"Yes I was. I was by the side of his hospital bed, watching the monitors. His nanomachines were at full stretch, trying to repair the internal damage. They were PicoCon's best, but they just weren't up to it. He'd suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and there were more complications than I could count. We like to think of ourselves as potential emortals, but we're not even authentically immune to disease and injury, let alone the effects of extreme violence. There are dozens of potential physiological accidents with which the very best of today's internal technology is impotent to deal. Kids of your generation, who feel free to take delight in savage violence because its effects are mostly reparable, are stupidly playing with fire. The proximal cause of your father's death was a massive stroke-but if the lunatic who made that tape intends to build a case on the seeming implausibility of that cause of death he's barking up the wrong tree. If Conrad had wanted to fake his death, he'd have chosen something far more spectacular."
"How did you know he was dead?" Damon asked. He couldn't help comparing the lecture that Karol had just given him with the one he'd given Lenny Garon; the depth of his estrangement from his foster parents didn't seem quite so abyssal now.
"I told you," Kachellek replied, with ostentatious patience. "I was watching the monitors. I also watched the doctors trying to resuscitate him. I wasn't actually present at the postmortem, but I can assure you that there was no mistake."
Damon didn't press the point. If Conrad Helier had faked his death, Karol Kachellek would surely have been in on the conspiracy, and he was hardly likely to relent in his insistence now.
"I'm going back to Los Angeles as soon as I can," Damon said quietly. "Maybe you ought to come with me. The people who took Silas might have designs on you too. Interpol can offer you far better protection on the mainland than they can in a desolate and underpoliced spot like this."
"I can't possibly go to Los Angeles," Karol said mulishly. "I've got important work to do here here."
I have work to do too, Damon thought. I know what skills it took to put that tape together, technically and in terms of its narrative implications. Through Madoc I have access to some first-rate outlaw Webwalkers, including Old Lady Tithonia herself. I can get to the bottom of this, if I try hard enough, no matter how insistent Karol and Eveline are in trying to keep me out of it. Maybe I can get to the bottom of it sooner than Interpol. Maybe I can get to the bottom of it quickly enough to take a hand in the game myself.
That bold and positive thought was, however, quickly followed by a host of shadowy doubts. Perhaps he could get to the bottom of the matter faster than Interpol-but might that not be exactly what Operator 101 wanted? Why would the mysterious Operator bother to push a note under his door unless he was intended intended to take a hand in the game? What, exactly, did the writer of that note want him to do? Might he not be lending unwitting assistance to the persecutor of his foster parents, collaborating in the assassination of his biological father's reputation? Rebel though he certainly was, did he really want to take his rebellion to the point of joining forces with his family's enemies-and if not, how could he be sure that he wouldn't do so simply by uncovering the truth? to take a hand in the game? What, exactly, did the writer of that note want him to do? Might he not be lending unwitting assistance to the persecutor of his foster parents, collaborating in the assassination of his biological father's reputation? Rebel though he certainly was, did he really want to take his rebellion to the point of joining forces with his family's enemies-and if not, how could he be sure that he wouldn't do so simply by uncovering the truth?
The night air was surprisingly cold, given that the day had been so hot. The wind was brisker than it had been earlier, and it had reversed its direction now that the sea was warmer than the land. The palm trees planted in a neat row in the forecourt of the hotel were waving their fronds murmurously.
Once he was back in his room Damon tried to book a seat to Honolulu on the first flight out in the morning, but it wasn't scheduled to leave until eleven and he didn't want to wait that long. He called Karol to ask about the possibility of arranging a charter.
"No problem," Karol said, showing evident relief at the thought that he wouldn't have to face any more of Damon's questions. "Name your time."
Damon was tempted to name first light, but he was too tired. His IT was supposed to have the capacity to keep him going for seventy-two hours without sleep, if necessary, but when he'd tried to use the facility in the past it had brought home to him the truth of the adage that the flesh was not the person. His mind needed rest, even if his body could be persuaded that it didn't. Whatever faced him tomorrow, he wanted to be fully alert and mentally agile.
"Make it eighty-thirty," he said.
"It'll be waiting," Karol promised-and then added: "It will will be all right, Damon. Silas will be okay. We all will." be all right, Damon. Silas will be okay. We all will."
Even though he knew full well that the promises were empty, Damon was glad that Karol had taken the trouble to make them.
Eveline Hywood wouldn't have bothered-or, if she had, would certainly have affected an infinitely more patronizing tone.
"Sure," Damon said. "Thanks. I'm sorry I got under your feet-but I'm glad I came."
"So am I," said Karol-and he might even have meant it.
Thirteen.
K.