Inherit the Earth (11 page)

“No, Di,” Madoc said with a contrived sigh. “Actually, it’s not to do with you. Something’s happened to one of his foster fathers, that’s all. The Eliminators may be involved, although it seems to be a kidnap rather than a murder. He just asked me to ask around, see if anyone knew who might have made the snatch or why.”

Madoc could see that Diana was having trouble remembering whether she’d ever been told who Damon’s foster parents were,
but Lenny Garon had no such difficulty. Lenny was a fan, and fans liked to know everything that could be known about their heroes.

“There’s no public record of Damon’s foster parents,” the boy piped up. “I checked . . . a while ago.”

“That’s because he didn’t like to talk about them,” Diana said, her wrath dying back into icy frustration. “Madoc is his
friend
, though. It’s only natural that
Madoc
knows who they were.”

“Can we talk about something else?” Madoc said, because he felt obliged to try. “This stuff is confidential, okay?”

“It’s
not
okay,” Diana said. “You’re supposed to be
my
friend right now, and I don’t like the idea of your going behind my back like this—seeing Damon and not even telling me. They were biotech people, weren’t they? Damon’s foster parents, that is. He fell out with them because they wanted him to go into the same line of work.”

“That’s right,” Madoc said. “But it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care what happens to them. I just have to make some inquiries, see what I can find out.”

“Can I help?” Lenny wanted to know.

“No,” said Madoc. “Nor can you, Diana. It’s best if I handle it myself.”

“Just because I fell out with him,” Diana was quick to retort, with manifest sarcasm, “it doesn’t mean that I don’t care what happens to him. He’s in some kind of trouble, isn’t he?”

“No,” Madoc said automatically.

“Is he?” Lenny asked curiously. It was obvious to Madoc that his blunt denial had been read as a tacit admission, even by the boy.

“Not
exactly
,” Madoc said, immediately retreating to what he hoped was a tenable position. “It’s just Eliminator shit. It means nothing. It’s not even Damon they’re after. Look, can we just let it drop, for now? Damon wouldn’t want me to talk about it
here
. Hospital walls have more eyes and ears than most.”

That argument was sufficient to make Lenny Garon back off, but it had the opposite effect on Diana.

“I want to know what’s going on,” she said ominously. “I have a
right
to know. You were the one who saved the news until we were here.”

“If you hadn’t walked out when you did,” Madoc told her waspishly, “you
would
know what’s going on. You’d still have been there when the cops came to call.”

“All the more reason why you should have told me,” she said. “All the more reason why you should tell me now.”

Madoc raised his eyes to heaven. “Not
here
,” he said. “Lenny, I’m really sorry about all this. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

“You just wanted to make sure that he wasn’t about to quit on you when he realized how dangerous your little games can be,” Diana came back maliciously. “You have to be careful choosing your so-called
friends
, Lenny. Some of them only want to jerk your strings. People die in those backstreets, you know—far more than Eliminators ever kill. Whatever kind of trouble Damon thinks he’s in is nothing compared to the trouble
you’re
in. Always remember—Damon
got out
of your line of work and took up making pornypops and phone link frippery. That’s the example to bear in mind.”

“She’s right, Lenny,” Madoc said, having been given ample time to replan his strategy while the vitriol was pouring out. “Damon got out, and you should aim to get out too—but Damon didn’t get out until he’d
made his mark
. He went out a winner, not a quitter. You can be a winner too, Lenny, if you stick at it.”

“I know that,” the boy in the bed assured him. “I know I can.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Diana disgustedly. “You’ve checked your investment, and it seems to be in working order. They’ll let him go home tonight, if he insists.”

“I’m sorry, Lenny,” Madoc said. “Diana’s under a lot of strain just now. I shouldn’t have brought her with me.” Maybe I shouldn’t have let her through the door, he added beneath his breath, and maybe I shouldn’t let her in again—except that she might be more of a nuisance out of my sight than she will be
where I can keep an eye on her. He followed her out of the room and along the corridor to the elevator.

Diana didn’t say a word until they were back in the car, but she didn’t waste any time thereafter. When he took the controls himself she actually lifted his hands from the keypad and switched on the AP, instructing it to take them home.

“What’s going on?” she wanted to know.

“Damon got a visit from the cops after you left,” he said. “Interpol, not his old friends from the LAPD. They wanted to know if he knew anything that could help them find his foster father. He didn’t so he asked me if I could use my contacts to find out anything. I’m trying to do that. That’s all.”

“Where do the Eliminators come in? They don’t
do
kidnappings.”

“They may have done this one. About the time the foster father went missing some crazy posted a notice about Damon’s biological father.”

“I didn’t know that Damon knew who his biological father was, or that he cared. I don’t even know the name of mine—do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do know my biological father’s name, although it was never a matter of great interest to me. Damon’s case is different—but he didn’t like to talk about it. I guess he wanted to keep all that stuff from cluttering up his relationship with you.”

“I guess he did,” she said bitterly. “If he hadn’t been so determined to keep his stupid secrets, maybe . . . .”

“Maybe nothing,” Madoc said wearily. “It’s over—let it go.”

“It’s over when it’s over,” she told him, trading cliché for cliché. “So tell me—who
was
Damon’s biological father? I can find out on my own, you know—I’m no Webwalker, but it has to be a matter of record, if only someone can be bothered to look hard enough. Interpol must have made the connection.”

“It’s not exactly a matter of
public
record,” said Madoc unhappily.
He knew, though, that even a rank amateur like Diana could probably turn up the information eventually, if she had motive enough to try. Damon’s change of name wasn’t likely to confuse her for long. Anything Interpol could find out, anyone could find out—given a reason to make the effort.

“I have friends too,” she said firmly. “You know Webwalkers, I know Webwalkers. I bet you’ve asked that mad cow Tithonia to help out—but who needs
her?
Suppose Damon’s
fans
were to find out that there’s a mystery which needs solving?”

“One of them already did, thanks to you,” Madoc pointed out.

“So tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help you—but I can only do that if you let me in.”

“I already let you in,” Madoc muttered. “When I opened the door, I didn’t know all this was going to blow up, or . . . well, given that it
has
blown up and that I
did
let you in . . . Damon’s original name was Helier. His father was Conrad Helier.”

Diana thought about that for a full minute. “The Conrad Helier who invented the artificial womb?” she said eventually. “The one who made it possible for us all to be born? The man who saved the human race from extinction?”

“The very same. Except that he didn’t exactly
invent
the artificial womb—he just perfected it. It isn’t as if the sterility transformers would have put an end to the human race if Helier hadn’t been around. One way or another, we’d all have been born. Given the urgency of the demand, someone else was bound to have come up with the answer within a matter of months. Some say that Helier was just the guy who beat the others in the race to the patent office, like Bell with the telephone. A guy named Surinder Nahal reckoned that he should have been there first, and I dare say he wasn’t the only one.”

“But Conrad Helier
did
get there first,” said Diana, who was far from slow when it came to certain kinds of calculation. “Which means that he must have got rich as well as famous. Damon is his biological son—and
knows
that he’s his biological son.”

“That’s right,” said Madoc shortly—although he knew that it was useless to try to stop now.

“And he’s
your
friend,” Diana went on inexorably. “Just like that poor kid lying in the hospital. And he’s
still
your friend, even though he doesn’t even doctor tapes for you anymore.”

“I
do
have friends!” Madoc protested. “
Real
friends. People who know they’ll always be let in if they come knocking on my door.”

The barbed comment didn’t bother her at all. “You’ve already started digging, haven’t you?” she said. “You must have been high as a kite when he
asked
you to do it. You think there’s a game to be won here—a
rich
game.”

“You don’t know me at all, do you?” Madoc retorted bitterly. “You think I’m just a hustler, incapable of genuine loyalty—but you’re wrong. Damon knows me better than that.”

“Damon doesn’t even know what day it is if there isn’t someone there to remind him,” she sneered. “Without me, he’s just an innocent abroad. If I’d only known that he was about to get into trouble. . . .”

If you’d only known that he had millions stashed away, Madoc thought—but he didn’t dare say it aloud, and he knew that it would have been unfair. The fact that Diana
hadn’t
known, and still felt bad about the split, proved that she loved him for himself, not his fortune. The fortune just added insult to injury.

“Damon knows I can be trusted,” Madoc said. “He’s known me a long time. He told me who he really was way back at the beginning. It never affected our friendship. I’ve always respected his privacy and his wishes. I never expected anything like this to come up, but now that it has I intend to play it straight. I’ll do everything I can to find out what Damon wants to know, and I would have done the best I could even if he hadn’t put up the money. So would the Old Lady, who isn’t mad and isn’t a cow. You don’t understand this, Di. Just let me get on with it in my own way, will you?”

“I’ve known you longer than Damon has,” she pointed out. “I
probably know you better than you know yourself. I want to help. I’m entitled to help. I still have Damon’s best interests at heart, you know. Just because he’s a pigheaded fool who’s impossible to live with, it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

Before Madoc had a chance to respond to this catalogue of half-truths the car came to an abrupt stop. When he looked around he saw that all the emergency lights in the street had come on, and that they were all blazing red. They were only a couple of hundred meters from home, and the foul-up wouldn’t take more than ten minutes to sort out—a quarter of an hour if the crash was a
really
big one—but it somehow seemed like the very last straw.

“Oh
shit
,” Madoc groaned, with feeling, “not
again
.”

“It’s probably friends of
yours
,” Diana opined, not needing sarcasm to ram home the irony of it. “Maybe even fans.”

S
ilas Arnett dreamed that he was in a lab somewhere: a strange, dilapidated place full of obsolete equipment. He was hunched over a screen, squinting at meaningless data which scrolled by too fast to allow his eyes to keep up. He was working under pressure, desperately thirsty, with a head full of cotton wool, wishing that he were able to concentrate, and wishing also that he could remember what problem he had been put here to solve and why it was so urgent. . . .

At first, when he realized that he was dreaming, he was relieved.

He was relieved because he felt that he could relax, because the problem—whatever it was—was unreal.

Unfortunately, he was wrong. The consciousness into which he descended by slow degrees was a more complex web of discomforts and restraints than the dream he had fled.

His internal technology was dulling all the nastiest sensations, but there was an awkward tangibility about its anesthetic efforts, as if the nanomachines were working under undue pressure with inadequate reserves of strength and ingenuity. He wondered whether it might be his IT that had been keeping him unconscious—there was only so much the most benevolent nanotech could do without suppressing awareness itself—and why, if so, it had released him to wakefulness now. If the nanomachines
had done their work properly, he ought to have been feeling far better than he was and he ought to have been lying down in a comfortable bed.