There was an obvious cut at this point. The next thing Arnett’s image said was: “Who told you about all this? It can’t have been Karol or Eveline. Somebody must have put the pieces together—somebody with expert knowledge and a cunning turn of mind. Who?”
“That’s of no importance,” the other voice said. “There’s only one more matter which needs to be determined, and that’s the identity which Conrad Helier adopted after faking his death. We have reason to believe that he reappeared in the world after an interval of some twenty-five years, having undergone extensive reconstructive somatic engineering. We have reason to believe that he now uses the name Damon Hart. Is that true, Dr. Arnett?”
“Yes,” said the voice which sounded like Arnett’s, ringing false because his head was bowed and his lips hardly moved. “The person who calls himself Damon Hart is really Conrad Helier. It’s true.”
The tape ended there.
“I wonder how many other installments there are to come,” Damon said.
Singh’s lips moved as if he intended to reply, but he choked off the sound of the first syllable as his ears caught another sound, faint and distant.
Damon cocked his own ear, straining to catch and identify the sound. “Helicopters,” he said, when he had leaped to that conclusion. Singh, who was evidently a more cautious man than he, had not yet made the same leap—but when Damon said it he was ready to believe it.
“We have to go down,” Singh said. “There’s no time to lose!”
“They’re only little helicopters,” Damon said, using expertise gained from hours spent watching sportsmen whizz over the beaches of California. “The kind you can fold up and store away in the back of a van. They must be local—they wouldn’t have the range to get here from Lanai.” Instead of obeying Rajuder Singh’s urgent request to go to the elevator he moved toward the window that looked out in the direction from which the noise was coming.
“It doesn’t matter how small they are,” Singh complained, becoming increasingly agitated. “What matters is that they’re not ours. I don’t know how they got here, but they’re not here on any kind of routine business—and if they’re after somebody, it has to be you.”
Seventeen
D
amon knew, deep down, that he ought to do as Rajuder Singh said. The sensible thing to do was to move to the elevator and let it carry him down to the hidey-hole beneath the fake volcano, not merely because that was the way that safety lay, but also because he might find answers down there to some of his most urgent questions. He also knew, however, that Karol Kachellek’s estimation of his reflexive perversity had a good deal of truth in it. Obedience had never been his strong suit.
“There’s plenty of time,” he said to Rajuder Singh, although he knew that there wasn’t.
He peered out of the window, looking up at the crowns of the trees that fringed the flower garden. The thick foliage blocked out the greater part of the sky and anything that might be flying there—but not for long.
When the first tiny helicopter finally came into view, zooming over the topmost branches of the nearest trees, Damon’s first reaction was to relax. The machine wasn’t big enough to carry human passengers, or even a human pilot. The sound of its whining motor was like the buzz of a worker bee, and he knew that the AI guiding it could not be any more intelligent than a worker bee. As it passed rapidly out of sight again, wheeling above the roof of the bungalow, Damon turned back to Rajuder Singh, intending to reassure him—but the expression on the other man’s face told him that Singh was not about to be reassured, and his own composure began to dissolve. In a world of rampant nanotech, small did not mean harmless—far from it.
It occurred to Damon then to wonder where the tiny machine—and its partner, which was already visible—had come from. Such toys had insufficient range to have been launched from Lanai or Kahoolawe, but if they had not come from another island, they must have come from the deck of a ship. What ship? How had it come to be here so soon after his own arrival—unless that arrival had somehow been anticipated?
“Please, Mr. Hart,” said the desperate Rajuder Singh, coming forward as he spoke and reaching for a pouch suspended beside his beltpack. Damon guessed immediately what it was the thin man was reaching for, and was struck by the sudden thought that he didn’t know for sure whose side Rajuder Singh was on. Everything the man had told him had seemed plausible enough—but the fact remained that Steve Grayson had kidnapped him and brought him here against his will. What if it had not been Karol Kachellek who had given the order? What if Karol Kachellek had sent the helicopters in hot pursuit from the deck of the Kite?
As the miniature gun came out of its hiding place Damon reacted with a streetfighter’s instinct. He hadn’t been able to do anything about Grayson’s weapon, but the situation was different now. The blow he aimed with the edge of his right hand was delivered with practiced efficiency, knocking the hand which held the gun aside. That left Singh’s midriff wide open, and Damon lashed out with his right foot, ploughing his heel into the thin man’s solar plexus. The sudden shock put Singh down, as it would have put anyone down, no matter how efficient his internal technology was. Singh’s mouth had been open as he prepared to speak, but all that came out now was a sharp gasp of surprise. Damon pinned the thin man’s right arm to the floor with his foot and knelt down in order to pluck the weapon out of his hand.
The gun was a darter, even less powerful than Grayson’s pepperbox. It was incapable of inflicting any lethal injury, although its darts were presumably capable of inducing paralysis for several minutes, until his internal technology could rally itself to cancel out the effects of the toxin.
Singh pried his right arm loose and tried to grab the gun, wailing: “You don’t understand!”
Damon lifted the weapon out of his captive’s reach but didn’t hit him again. “Nor do you,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
The noise of the whining helicopters was louder now; both machines were hovering close to the house, perhaps coming in to land. They were descending slowly, presumably because the machines were delicate and the available space between the flower beds was by no means generous.
Now there was another sound audible beyond and beneath the whine of the toys: a much deeper drone, of the kind a real helicopter might make. There was no possibility that a real helicopter could have been launched from the deck of the Kite—but there was a possibility that the big machine was in pursuit of the little ones rather than complementing their mission. All was confusion, and confusion heaped upon confusion—and Damon had not the slightest idea what he ought to do next. He only knew that he had to make up his mind very quickly.
Under more relaxed circumstances, Damon might have been able to take advantage of Rajuder Singh’s obvious distress. He felt that if he were to demand answers to his questions under the threat of further violence, he would probably get them. The thin man’s eyes were flickering wildly from side to side, as if he expected to be shot at any moment—but there was no time for questions. Damon had to make his move, and there were only two ways to go: inside or outside.
As he moved toward the double door that would let him out into the tangled forest, the window at which he had been standing mere moments before imploded with a deafening roar. One of the tiny helicopters had shot it out. While Damon and Singh were still ducking away from the blast, arms raised against flying shards, two objects flew through the broken window. As they bounced across the carpet they began pumping out smoke.
Thanks to his misspent youth, Damon was able to recognize the objects and the belching smoke. He knew that he hadn’t time to get through both the doors that stood between him and fresh air—but the elevator door was still wide open, less than three meters away. Singh was already headed for it, without even bothering to come to his feet.
Damon couldn’t beat the dark-skinned man to the open door but he managed a tie. He couldn’t pull the other man back but he hauled him to his feet so that he could reach out a sle
nder finger and punch the button that would close the door behind them.
They had beaten the smoke, although a little of its stench lingered in the trapped air as the elevator began its descent.
Damon still had hold of Singh, and he shoved him up against the back wall of the elevator before pressing the barrel of the darter to his neck. “Don’t ever threaten me again, Mr. Singh,” he growled theatrically. “I really don’t like it.”
“I’m s-sorry,” the slender man gasped, desperate to spit the words out. “I only wanted. . . .”
“I know what you wanted,” Damon said, releasing his hold and lifting his hand reflexively to his face, as if to shield his nose and mouth from the few smoke particles that had accompanied them into the elevator. “You’d already told me what you wanted.”
Singh breathed a deep sigh of relief as he realized that no further violence would be done to him, and that he had achieved his object in spite of all the difficulties. Damon didn’t want him relaxing too much, so he made a show of pointing the gun at him.
“You’re not out of the woods yet,” he said grimly. “If there’s anything I don’t like waiting for us down below, you could still end up with a belly full of needles.”
“It’s all right,” the thin man said quickly. “There’s nothing down below but a safe place to hide. I haven’t lied to you, Mr. Hart! I just had to get you down below, before you were hurt.”
Now that there was time to make the play, Damon pointed the gun at his companion’s face and tried to make his own expression as fearsome as he could. “Who are you really working for?” he demanded.
“Karol Kachellek,” the other said plaintively, with tiny tears at the corners of his frightened eyes. “It’s all true! I swear it. You’ll see in a minute! You’ll . . .”
The agitated stream of words died with the elevator light. The descent stopped with an abrupt lurch.
“Oh shit!” Damon murmured reflexively. This was a development he had not expected. He had assumed—as Singh clearly had—that once the elevator doors had closed they were safe from all pursuit.
“It’s impossible,” Singh croaked, although it clearly wasn’t.
“Is there anyone down below at all?” Damon asked, abruptly revising his opinion as to the desirability of finding a reception committee awaiting his arrival.
“No,” said Singh. “It’s just . . .”
“A safe place to hide,” Damon finished for him. “Apparently, it isn’t.”
“But the systems are secure! They’re supposed to be tamperproof!”
“They might have been tamperproof when they were put in,” Damon pointed out, belatedly realizing the obvious, “but this is the age of rampant nanotechnology. PicoCon’s current products can get into nooks and crannies nobody would even have noticed twenty years ago. They got to Silas, remember—this is mere child’s play to people who could do that. The only question worth asking is how they knew I was here—if it is me they’ve come for. If they have a ship, it must have been here or hereabouts before Grayson took off from Molokai.”
The lights came back on again, and the elevator lurched into motion. Unfortunately, it began to rise. Damon immediately began to regret the delay caused by his stubborn perversity. If he’d only come into the elevator when Singh had first invited him, they’d surely have been able to get all the way to the bottom before his pursuers could stop them. Whether that would have qualified as safety or not he couldn’t tell, but he was certain that he was anything but safe now.
Rajuder Singh must have reached the same conclusion, but he didn’t bother to complain, or even to say “I told you so.”
Damon ostentatiously turned the gun away from Rajuder Singh, pointing it at what would soon be the open space left by the sliding door. He knew that the room would still be filled with poisonous smoke, and that anyone who had got to the console in the middle of the room in order to send a return signal to the elevator would have to be wearing a gas mask, but that didn’t mean that they’d be armored against darts. One shot might be enough, if only he could see a target—and even the larger helicopter which had followed the two miniatures couldn’t have been carrying more than a couple of men. If he could hold his breath long enough, there might still be a chance of getting outside and into the welcoming jungle. It was a one in a million chance, but a chance nevertheless.
“They must have been waiting,” he muttered to Rajuder Singh. “But they couldn’t have known what Karol would do, even if they figured that I’d fly to Molokai. They must have been here because they were keeping watch on you, waiting to take action against you.”
“That’s impossible,” Rajuder Singh said again. “I’m just support staff.”
“But you’re sitting on a secret hidey-hole,” Damon pointed out. “Maybe there isn’t anything down there to interest them—but they don’t know that. Maybe they really do think that Conrad Helier’s there, directing Karol’s operation. Maybe this was always part of their plan, and my presence here is just an unfortunate coincidence. Maybe they don’t give a damn about you or me, and only want access to the bunker. . . .”
Damon could have gone on. His imagination hadn’t even come near to the limit of its inventiveness—but he didn’t have time.
The elevator stopped again, although the lights stayed on this time.
Bitter experience had told Damon to take a long deep breath, and that was what he did. As the doors began to open, before the gas could flood in, he filled his lungs to capacity. Then he threw himself out into the smoky room, diving and rolling as he did so but keeping his stinging eyes wide open while he searched for a target to shoot at.
There was no target waiting; the room was devoid of human presence.
His ill-formed plan was to get to the doors that led outside, and get through them with all possible expedition. He managed to make it to the inner door easily enough and brought himself upright without difficulty—but the door was locked tight. He seized the grip and hauled with all his might, but it wouldn’t budge. He was fairly certain that Singh hadn’t locked it, and he knew that it wouldn’t matter whether the thin man was carrying a swipecard capable of releasing the lock. There wouldn’t have been time, even if the other had been right behind him—which he wasn’t.
Damon immediately turned for the window, even though he knew full well that it wouldn’t be easy to exit past the jagged shards of glass that still clung to the frame. His long stride carried him across the room with the least possible delay, but his eyes wouldn’t stay open any longer and his nose was stinging too. By the time he reached the window he felt that he couldn’t hold on any longer—but he knew that there was fresh air outside.
Damon grasped the window frame with his free hand, steadying himself as he let out his breath explosively. Then he stuck his head out into the open, in the hope of gathering in a double lungful of untainted air, while the hand that held the gun groped for a resting place on the outer sill.
Someone standing outside plucked the dart gun neatly out of his hand. Damon tried his utmost to force his stinging eyes open, but his reflexes wouldn’t let go. He never saw who it was that turned the darter against him and shot him in the chest.
The impact would probably have hurt a good deal worse if Damon hadn’t sucked in just enough smoke to make him gag and befuddle his senses. As it was, he felt almost completely numb as he reeled backward.
The next breath he took was so fully impregnated with smoke that he must have passed out immediately—or so, at least, it seemed when he woke up with a sick headache and found himself lying prone on a ledge, looking down the sheer slope of an incredibly high mountain.
Eighteen
D
amon was no more sensitive to heights than the average man, but the sight confronting him would have shocked anyone into instant acrophobia. He looked downward at a face of bare gray rock that plummeted for miles. The bottom of the chasm was visible because it was lit up like the face of a full moon on a clear night, but it seemed so
very far away that the notion of it’s being connected to his present station by an actual wall of rock was so incredible as to be horrible.
He felt cold sweat break out on his face as terror grabbed him, and he recoiled convulsively, squeezing his eyes shut and pulling his head back from the rim. He rolled over without even caring what might be behind him, but when he was supine he opened his eyes again to look up, and gasped once again in alarm.
The steep slope extending upward from the left-hand edge of the narrow ledge on which he lay was not as extensive as the chasm that lay to his right, and it posed no threat, but there was a certain sinister malignity in its frank impossibility. The mountain was topped by a building that was lit as brightly and as strangely as the chasm floor, so that every detail of its construction stood out sharp and clear against a cloudless and starless sky.
It was a castle of sorts, with clustered towers and winding battlements, but it was compounded out of crystals, as if it had been gantzed from tiny shards of glass and the litter of a jeweler’s workshop. The walls were not transparent, nor were they even straightforwardly translucent; they were shining brightly, but the manner of their shining was an outrage to logic which played tricks with his mind’s procedures of visual analysis. As he stared at the amazing structure he saw that its towers were linked by crisscrossing bridges whose spans were impossibly knotted, and that its ramparts were decorated with ascending and descending staircases which faded into one another in perspective-defying fashion. It was magnificent—all the more so because it was so far above him, separated by a slope so sheer and forbidding.
There was no path up the mountain—no way the castle could be approached without climbing several kilometers of hostile rock face. Its existence was no more plausible than that awful abyss, which would have plunged halfway to Earth’s molten core had it been in the world he knew: the real world.
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