arol Kachellek took time out from his busy schedule to drive Damon out to a small private airstrip near the southeastern tip of the island. Damon couldn't help thinking, churlishly, that the gesture had less to do with courtesy than a keen desire to see the back of him, but there was no hostility in his foster father's manner now. The Eliminator broadcast had knocked all the stiffness out of the bioscientist, who was visibly anxious as he bounced his jeep over the potholes in the makeshift road. Damon had never seen him so obviously distressed.
"Bloody road," Karol complained. "All it needs is a man with a shovel and a bucketful of gantzing bacs. He could take the dirt from the side of the road-there's plenty of it. Nobody ever admits responsibility without a fight, and when they have to, it's always going to be done tomorrow-the kind of tomorrow that never comes."
"Wouldn't be tolerated in Los Angeles," Damon agreed, with a slight smile. "If the city couldn't take care of it immediately the corps would race one another to get a man out there. OmicronA would be determined to win, in order to demonstrate that Pico-Con's ownership of the patents is merely an economic technicality. The staff in the California offices pride themselves on being hands-on people, always willing to get involved in local issues."
"I bet they do," Karol muttered tersely. "Nanotech hands by the trillion, at work in every last nook and cranny of the great showcase of the global village-it's different here, of course. No Silicon Valley-type monuments to the Third Industrial Revolution, no social cachet. We're still the backwoods-the kind of wilderness that isn't even photogenic. Nobody gives a damn about what happens out here, especially the people who live here."
"You live here," Damon pointed out. He refrained from adding an observation to the effect that Karol could have packed his own bucket and spade, pausing to repair the potholes on his way back to the lab. After all, Karol was very very busy just now. busy just now.
"Here and hereabouts," Karol admitted grimly.
Damon relented slightly. "Actually," he said, "the corps are selectively blind even on their own doorstep. Until the deconstructionists move into the LA badlands in earnest nobody's going to tidy them up. Filling in a hole downtown counts as an ad-filling one in where the gangs have their playgrounds wouldn't win a nod of approval from anyone. You know how corpthink goes: no approval, no effort."
"If only the world were as simple as that," Karol said sadly. "The real problem is that too many people spend their entire lives sweating blood for the best possible causes and end up being denounced as enemies of mankind."
That was more like the Karol he knew of old, and Damon was perversely glad to see the real man surfacing again, filling in his psychological potholes with great globs of biotech-cemented mud. Karol wasn't sweating yet because the sun was too low in the eastern sky, but Damon knew that he'd be sweating by noon-not blood, to be sure, but beads of good, honest toil. Para-DNA had no chance of keeping its secrets, no matter how fervently it clung to the fugitive backwoods of the global village, and no matter how hard it tried to disguise itself as the detritus of a twentieth-century oil spill. Moves like that couldn't possibly divert the curiosity of a true scientist.
As the jeep lurched onto the lawn beside the strip a flock of brightly colored birds grudgingly flew away, mewling their objections. Damon couldn't put a name to the species but he had no doubt that Karol could have enlightened him had he cared to ask.
The two of them said their good-byes brusquely, as if to make sure that they both understood that their mutual mistrust had been fully restored, but there was a manifest awkwardness in their lack of warmth. Damon suspected that if he'd only known exactly what to say, he might have made a better beginning of the process of reconciliation, but he wasn't certain that he wanted to try. Karol might be showing belated signs of quasi-parental affection, but he hadn't actually told Damon anything significant. Whatever suspicions Karol had about the identity and motives of Silas Arnett's kidnappers he was keeping to himself.
Damon would rather have sat up front in the cockpit of the plane, but he wasn't given the choice. He was ushered into one of the eight passenger seats by the pilot, who introduced himself as Steve Grayson. Grayson was a stocky man with graying temples and a broad Australian accent. Maybe he thought the gray made him look more dignified, or maybe it was a joke reflecting his surname; at any rate, he was certainly no centenarian and he could have had his hair color reunified without recourse to the new generation of rejuvenation techniques. Damon took an immediate dislike to the pilot when Grayson insisted on reaching down to fasten his safety harness for him-an ostensible courtesy which seemed to Damon to be an insulting invasion of privacy.
"We'll be up and down in no time at all," Grayson told Damon before taking his own seat and fastening his own belt. "Might be a little rough in the wind, though-I hope your IT can cope with motion sickness."
"I'll be fine," Damon assured him, taking further insult from the implication that in the absence of his IT he'd be the kind of person who couldn't take a few routine aerial lurches without losing his breakfast.
While the plane taxied onto the runway Damon watched Karol Kachellek jump back into the jeep and drive away, presumably hastening back to the puzzle of para-DNA. Damon had a puzzle of his own to play with, and he had no trouble immersing himself within it, taking up the work of trying to figure out whether there might might be something in what Karol had said to him that might lead to a fuller understanding of the game that Operator 101 was playing. be something in what Karol had said to him that might lead to a fuller understanding of the game that Operator 101 was playing.
He was so deep in contemplation that he took no notice of the plane's banking as it climbed. He watched the island diminish in size until it was no more than a mere map, but even then it did not occur to him that there was anything strange in the course they were taking. Ten or twelve minutes had elapsed before it finally occurred to him that the glaring light which had forced him to raise his left hand to shield his face should not have been so troublesome. Once Grayson had settled the plane on its intended course the sun ought to have been almost directly behind them, but it was actually way over to port.
"Hey!" he called to the pilot. "What's our course?"
Grayson made no reply.
"Isn't Honolulu due west of Molokai, away to the right?" Damon asked. He was beginning to doubt his knowledge of geography-but when Grayson again failed to turn around and look him in the eye, he knew that something was amiss.
He tested his safety harness and found that it was locked tight. The belt which Grayson had advised him to keep locked couldn't be unlocked; he was a prisoner.
"Hey!" he shouted, determined not to be ignored. "What's going on? What are you doing? Answer me, you bastard."
At last, the pilot condescended to turn his head. Grayson's expression was slightly apologetic-but only slightly.
"Sorry, son," he said. "Just take it easy-when there's nothing to be done, that's what you might as well do."
The homespun philosophy was a further annoyance, but Damon still couldn't unfasten the seat belt. Like Silas Arnett before him-and possibly Surinder Nahal, not to mention Catherine Praill-he was being kidnapped. But why? And by whom? The mystery briefly overwhelmed the enormity of the realization, but the brute fact of what was happening soon fought back, insistently informing him that whoever was responsible, he was in danger in danger. Whether he was in the hands of Eliminators or not, he was being carried off into the unknown, where any fate at all might be waiting for him.
His years of experience on the streets were supposed to have hardened him against fear and dread, but all that seemed futile now. However mean the streets were-and however one might try to dignify them with titles like "the badlands"-they were only a half hour away from the nearest hospital. As he had explained to Lenny Garon, people did die in knife fights-but if one drew back to consider life less narrow-mindedly, there were still a thousand other other ways a man might die, even in the New Utopia. It didn't require a bullet or a bomb, or any act of violence at all. A man might drown, or choke, or. . . . ways a man might die, even in the New Utopia. It didn't require a bullet or a bomb, or any act of violence at all. A man might drown, or choke, or. . . .
He abandoned the train of thought abruptly. What did it matter what might might happen to him? The real question was what he intended to happen to him? The real question was what he intended to do do about the ugly turn of events. about the ugly turn of events.
"Who are you working for?" he called to the pilot.
"Just doing a job," Grayson called back. "Delivering a package. You want explanations, I don't have them-I dare say the man on the ground will have plenty."
"Where are you taking me?"
Grayson laughed, as if he were taking what pleasure he could in holding on to his petty secrets. "You'll see soon enough," he promised.
Damon abandoned the fruitless inquisition for the time being, instructing himself to take more careful stock of his situation.
He could see Maui away to port, and he assumed that if he were seated on the other side of the plane he'd be able to see Lanai as well, but there was nothing directly below but the Pacific. Damon's knowledge of the local geography was annoyingly vague, but he figured that on their present heading-which seemed to be slightly east of south-they'd be over Kahoolawe at much the same time that they ought to have been coming down at Honolulu. If they kept going twice as long they might eventually hit the west coast of Hawaii. How many other islands there might be to which they might be headed Damon had no idea, but there were probably several tiny ones and the plane was small enough to land on any kind of strip.
He tried to make a list of the possibilities. Who might want him out of the way badly enough to bribe Grayson? Surely not Operator 101, who had sent him a note inviting him to investigate-nor Rachel Trehaine, who presumably thought of him as an irrelevance. There was, of course, another and more obvious possibility. Karol Kachellek had hired the pilot-it was most probable, therefore, that he he had decided that Damon ought to be removed from the field of play until the game was over. Grayson might well have been instructed to take Damon to a place of safety, not merely to keep him from harm but also to keep him from asking any more awkward and embarrassing questions. had decided that Damon ought to be removed from the field of play until the game was over. Grayson might well have been instructed to take Damon to a place of safety, not merely to keep him from harm but also to keep him from asking any more awkward and embarrassing questions.
Damon had to admit that this was not an unattractive hypothesis, insofar as it suggested that no one was intending to flush out his IT and force him to confess that he was an enemy of humankind, but he felt no relief. To the contrary, as soon as he had convinced himself of its likelihood he felt exceedingly annoyed. The fact that his foster father might think that he had the right, and also the responsibility, to do such a thing was a terrible slur on his adulthood and his ability to look after himself.
"Whatever Karol's paying you," he shouted to Grayson, "I'll double it if you take me to Honolulu."
"Too late, mate," Grayson shouted back. "I'm on the wrong side of the law now-once you cross the border you have to keep on going. Don't worry-nobody's going to hurt you."
"This is for my own good, is it?"
"We all have to lend one another a helping hand," Grayson told him, perhaps faking his malicious cheerfulness in order to cover up his anxiety at the thought that he was indeed beyond the bounds of the law. "If things work out with the IT fountain of youth, we could all be neighbors for a long, long time."
It was difficult to be patient, or even to try, but Damon had no alternative.
It turned out that the journey wasn't that much longer than it would have been had Grayson actually gone to Honolulu, but the plane eventually passed beyond the southern tip of Lanai and missed Kahoolawe too. The pilot headed for a much smaller and more densely forested island top to the west of Kahoolawe. It was dominated by what appeared to be a single volcanic peak, but Damon wasn't convinced that it was genuine.
Back in the early twenty-first century the precursors of today's self-styled continental engineers had enjoyed a honeymoon of fashionability by virtue of the greenhouse effect and the perceived threat of a significant rise in the world's sea level. When global warming hadn't produced a new Deluge, even in Shanghai and the South Seas, they'd deflected the results of their research into building artificial islands aimed at the tourist trade. Such islands had initially had to be anchored to subsurface structures by mechanical holdfasts because Leon Gantz's techniques of biotech cementation hadn't been around in those days, but anyone who cared to employ gantzers on a sufficiently lavish scale could now make better provision. Building mountains underwater was just as easy as building them anywhere else. The ocean hereabouts was full of deep trenches but it wasn't uniformly deep, and even if it were it would only make the task of securing new land more expensive, not more difficult in technical terms.
Even natural islands, Damon knew, had often been personal property back in the buccaneering days of classical capitalism-but all all the artificial islands had been owned by the corps or individuals who had put them in place, and probably still were. That didn't exclude them from the Net, and hence from the global village, but it made them relatively easy to protect from spy eyes and the like. If there was anywhere on Earth that secrets could be kept in reasonable safety, this was probably one of them. the artificial islands had been owned by the corps or individuals who had put them in place, and probably still were. That didn't exclude them from the Net, and hence from the global village, but it made them relatively easy to protect from spy eyes and the like. If there was anywhere on Earth that secrets could be kept in reasonable safety, this was probably one of them.
The plane came down on an airstrip even tinier than the one from which it had taken off, gantzed out of dark earth in a narrow clearing between dense tropical thickets.
When Steve Grayson came back to release Damon from the trick harness he was carrying a gun: a wide-barreled pepperbox. If it was loaded with orthodox shot it would be capable of inflicting widespread but superficial injuries, but it couldn't be classed as a lethal weapon. Were it to go off, Damon would lose a lot of blood very quickly, and it would certainly put him out of action for a while, but his nanomachines would be able to seal off the wounds without any mortal damage being done.
"No need to worry, Mr. Hart," the stout man said. "You'll be safe here until the carnival's over."
"Safe from whom?" Damon asked as politely as he could. "What exactly is the carnival? the carnival? Who's doing all this?" Who's doing all this?"
He wasn't surprised when he received no answers to any of these questions-but the expression which flitted across Grayson's face suggested that the pilot wasn't just tormenting him. Damon wondered whether Grayson had any more idea than he did why he had been paid to bring his prisoner here, or what might be going on.
Damon wondered whether his streetfighting skills might be up to the task of knocking the gun out of the Australian's hand and then kicking the shit out of his corpulent form, but he decided not to try. He didn't know how to activate and instruct the plane's automatic systems, let alone fly it himself, so he had no way of escaping the island even if he could disarm and disable the man.
The air outside the plane was oppressively humid. Damon allowed himself to be guided across the landing strip. A jeep, very similar to the one Karol had used to drive him to the airstrip on Molokai, was parked in the shadow of a thick clump of trees.
A man was waiting in the driving seat of the jeep. He was as short as the pilot but he was much slimmer and-if appearances could be trusted-much older. His skin was the kind of dark coffee color which most people who lived in tropical regions preferred. He didn't have a gun in his hand, but Damon wasn't prepared to assume that he didn't have one at all.
"I'm truly sorry about this, Mr. Hart," the man in the jeep said, in what seemed to Damon to be an overly punctilious English accent, "but we weren't sure that we could persuade you to come here of your own accord and the matter is urgent. Until we can get to the people who have Arnett everyone connected with your family may be in danger." Turning to the pilot he added: "You'd better go quickly, Mr. Grayson. Take the plane to Hilo-then make yourself scarce, just in case."
"Who are you?" Damon demanded as the Australian obediently turned away and headed back to his cockpit.
"Get in, Mr. Hart," the thin man said. "My name is Rajuder Singh. I've known your foster parents for a long time, but I doubt that any of them ever mentioned me. I'm only support staff."
"Did Karol Kachellek arrange this?"
"It's for your own protection. I know how you must feel about it, but it really is a necessary precaution. Please get in, Mr. Hart."
Damon climbed into the passenger seat of the vehicle and settled himself, suppressing his reflexive urge to offer violent resistance to what was being done to him. The jeep glided into a narrow gap in the trees and was soon deep in a ragged forest of neocycads, thin-boled mock conifers, and a dozen other species that Damon couldn't classify at all. The road was narrow but it didn't seem to have any potholes. The island was presumably equipped with a ready supply of men with shovels and buckets, although none was in evidence now.
The forest was quiet, after the fashion of artificially regenerated forests everywhere; the trees, genetically engineered for rapid growth in the unhelpful soil, were not fitted as yet to play host to the overelaborate fauna which ancient tropical forests had entertained before the logger holocaust. A few tiny insects splashed on the windshield of the jeep as it moved through the gathering night, but the only birds whose cries could be heard were seabirds.
"You mustn't blame Dr. Kachellek, Mr. Hart," Rajuder Singh told him blandly. "He had to make a decision in a hurry. He didn't expect you to come to Molokai. Our people should be able to bring the situation under control, given time, but we don't yet know who we're up against and things have moved a little too fast for comfort. He was was right to do what he did-I'm afraid that you're in more danger than you know, and it might not have been a good idea for you to arrive in Los Angeles on a scheduled flight. I'll show you why in a few minutes' time." right to do what he did-I'm afraid that you're in more danger than you know, and it might not have been a good idea for you to arrive in Los Angeles on a scheduled flight. I'll show you why in a few minutes' time."
"Who, exactly, are our people? our people?" Damon wanted to know.
Rajuder Singh smiled. "Friends and allies," he said unhelpfully. "There aren't so many of us left, nowadays, but we still keep the faith."
"Conrad Helier's faith?"
"That's right, Mr. Hart. You'd be one of us yourself, I suppose, if you hadn't chosen to digress."
"To digress? digress? That assumes that I'll be back on track, someday." That assumes that I'll be back on track, someday."
Rajuder Singh's only answer to that was a gleaming smile.
"Are you saying that there's some kind of conspiracy involving my foster parents?" Damon asked, unable to keep the aggression from filtering back into his voice. "Some kind of grand plan in which you and Karol and Eveline are all involved?"
"We're just a group of friends and coworkers," the dark-skinned man replied lightly. "No more than that-but someone seems to be attacking us, and we have to protect our interests."
"Might Surinder Nahal be involved with the people attacking you?"
"It's difficult to believe that, but we really don't know yet. Until we do know, it's necessary to be careful. This is a very bad time-but that's presumably why our unknown adversaries chose this particular moment for their assault."
Damon remembered that Karol Kachellek had been equally insistent that this was a "very bad time." Why, he wondered again, was the present moment any worse than any other time?
The sun had climbed high into the clear blue sky and Damon was finding its heat horribly oppressive by the time the vehicle reached its destination. The destination in question was a sizable bungalow surrounded by a flower garden. Damon was oddly relieved to observe that the roof was topped by an unusually large satellite dish. However remote this place might be it was an integral part of the Web; all human civilization was its neighborhood. The flowers were reassuring too, by virtue of the orderly layout of their beds and the sweet odors they secreted. There were insects aplenty here, including domestic bees.
Rajuder Singh showed Damon through the double door of the bungalow into a spacious living room. When Damon opened his mouth to speak, though, the slim man held up his hand. He swiftly crossed the room to a wall-mounted display screen, beckoning Damon to follow.
"This is the same netboard which carried Operator one-oh-one's earlier messages," Rajuder Singh said while his nimble fingers brought the screen to life.
Damon stared dumbly at the crimson words which appeared there, reading them three times before he accepted, reluctantly, that they really did say what they seemed to say.
He had not known what to expect, but he could never have expected this this. It was as terrible as it was absurd.
The message read:
CONRAD HELIER IS NOT DEAD.
CONRAD HELIER NOW USES THE NAME "DAMON HART"
"DAMON HART" IS NAMED AN ENEMY OF MANKIND FIND AND DESTROY "DAMON HART"
-OPERATOR 101
Fourteen.
M.
adoc Tamlin had had no alternative but to return to his apartment to gather the equipment he needed for his expedition, but he had known that the necessity was unfortunate.
"I want to go with you," said Diana Caisson, in a tone which suggested that she intended to have what she wanted no matter what objections Madoc Tamlin might raise. "You owe me that. Damon Damon owes me that." owes me that."
"I really need someone here to man the phone," Madoc lied. "This business is moving too fast and it's getting seriously weird. If you want to help Damon, here's where you'd be most useful."
"I've been manning your stupid phone for two solid days," Diana told him. "What's the point if you're always out of touch? This is the first time I've clapped eyes on you since we went to visit that idiot boy in the hospital, and I don't intend letting you out of my sight until I get an explanation of what's going on and a chance to help. You owe-"
"I don't owe you anything!" Madoc protested, appalled by her temerity. "Not even explanations. I only let you stay here for old time's sake-you were supposed to be gone by now. You don't have any claim on me at all."
Diana wasn't impressed. "Damon Hart owes me explanations. I lived with him for nearly two years. I never knew that he was Conrad Helier's son, and I certainly never knew that he was Conrad Helier himself, and an enemy of mankind. The day after I gave up trying to make our relationship work I found out I'd been living with a trunkful of mysteries, and they've been getting stranger and stranger with every hour that passes. owes me explanations. I lived with him for nearly two years. I never knew that he was Conrad Helier's son, and I certainly never knew that he was Conrad Helier himself, and an enemy of mankind. The day after I gave up trying to make our relationship work I found out I'd been living with a trunkful of mysteries, and they've been getting stranger and stranger with every hour that passes. Two years Two years, Madoc! I want to know what I wasted my two years on, and if you're Damon's legman in Los Angeles you're the one who has to start paying me off. Wherever you go, I want to go-and whatever you find out, I want to know."
"This wasn't part of the deal," Madoc told her. "I let you stay for a couple of nights when you walked out on Damon-that's not the same as taking you into partnership. One of the things Damon is paying me for is discretion discretion. He doesn't want anyone anyone knowing what I find out, and he'd certainly include you in that company." knowing what I find out, and he'd certainly include you in that company."
"It's okay for me to carry his messages," she pointed out. "It's okay for me to pass on messages from your pet streetfighter. What's not not okay for me to know? What is it that your apprentice Webwalkers have turned up that even Interpol isn't supposed to know?" okay for me to know? What is it that your apprentice Webwalkers have turned up that even Interpol isn't supposed to know?"
The problem, Madoc knew, was time. What Interpol didn't know yet, they might very soon find out-and they'd find out all the sooner if he were fool enough to start blabbing to Diana Caisson, even in the privacy of his apartment or his car. It was easier for him to turn up evidence of work done through illegal channels than it was for officers of the law, but this case was now a triple disappearance, with a rich icing of crazier-than-usual Eliminator antics. The police would be making a very big effort now, even if they hadn't before. Whoever had stirred up this hornet's nest had done a thorough job. He had no time to argue with Diana, and the only way to shut her up was to give in on something something.
Anyway, he rationalized, if he forced her to stay behind that would only increase the danger that she might do something really inconvenient by way of getting her own back-like calling up the LAPD and sending them after him.
"It could be dangerous," he said, knowing that it wouldn't serve as a deterrent.
"It'll probably be less dangerous," she countered, "if we both know exactly what we're trying to do. What have you found?"
Before answering, Madoc collected the last of the crude mechanical tools he'd come back to gather. The men who had broken into Silas Arnett's house hadn't needed cutting gear and crowbars, but Madoc hadn't got the kind of technical backup they must have had, and he was heading for a different kind of house. If it was a fortress, it was likely to be a brute brute fortress, not a sophisticated affair of anxious eyes, clever locks, and mazy software. He was able to shut Diana up with a gesture-but only because the gesture implied that he'd pick up the conversation later. fortress, not a sophisticated affair of anxious eyes, clever locks, and mazy software. He was able to shut Diana up with a gesture-but only because the gesture implied that he'd pick up the conversation later.
Finally, he led her to the door of the apartment and let her follow him out. He signaled once again that he couldn't speak, for fear of the eyes and ears with which the walls were undoubtedly sown, and she had perforce to wait until they got into the car. Even then, he insisted on bringing the vehicle out into the street before relaxing slightly.