Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [104]
“I’d hoped, of course, that Helier might be hiding out on the artificial island,” the monk went on, “but that was overoptimistic. He’s off-world—probably a lot further from Earth than Hywood. Not that that’s a bad thing, from my point of view. If Kachellek joins them the whole core of the team will be up, up, and away. I’d be prepared to settle for that—always provided that if they ever want to play in my sandpit again they’ll accept my rules. Heaven forbid that we should ever succeed in crushing the spirit of heroic independence, when all we actually need to do is send it into space. If Conrad Helier does eventually come to get you, Silas, tell him that’s the deal: he can follow his own schemes in heaven, but not on Earth. Anything he does down here has to be checked out with the powers that be, and if it isn’t authorized it doesn’t happen. He’ll know who the message is from.”
Silas remained stubbornly silent, although he knew that he was supposed to respond to this instruction. The twittering of virtual birds filled the temporary silence. Their voices seemed oddly insulting; the cycles of their various songs were out of phase, but the programmed nature of the chorus was becoming obvious. Damon Hart, Silas felt sure, would have used an open-ended program with an elementary mutational facility for each individual song, so that the environment would be capable of slow but spontaneous evolution.
As if he were somehow sensitive to Silas’s thoughts, his captor said: “It begins to look as if Damon Hart’s the only worthwhile card I’ve got. You really should have taken better care of that boy, Silas—you’ve let him run so far that you might never get him back. Do you suppose Conrad Helier might be prepared to sacrifice him as well as you?”
“You’re crazy,” Silas said sulkily. “Conrad’s dead.”
“I understand that you feel the need to keep saying that,” the monk reassured him. “After all, you’re still on the record, even if no one’s ever going to play it back but me. You’ll forgive me if I ignore you, though. Helier will have to come out eventually, if he wants to deal. I really don’t want to foul his operation up. I admire his enterprise. All I want is to ensure that we’re all playing on the same team, planning our ends and means together. We are all on the same side, after all—we’ll get to where we’re going all the sooner if we all pull in the same direction.”
“Where are we going?” Silas asked. “And who’s supposed to be doing the pulling? Exactly who are you?” Unable to resist changing the position of his legs he tried to do so without moving his ankles, but he was no contortionist. He gasped as the ankle straps clutched at him.
If the real man behind the image of the monk could hear evidence of Silas’s distress he ignored it. “Please don’t be deliberately obtuse, Silas,” he said in the same bantering tone. “We’re going to the land of Cokaygne, where all is peace and harmony and everybody lives forever. But there can’t be peace unless we find a peaceful way of settling our differences, and there won’t be harmony unless we can establish a proper forum for agreeing on our objectives and our methods. That’s all I want, Silas—just a nice, brightly polished conference table to which we can all bring our little plans and projects, so that they can all receive the blessing of the whole board of directors. As to who’s doing the pulling, it’s everyone who’s making anything new—and those who make the most are pulling the hardest.”
When the flaring pain in his ankles died down of its own accord Silas felt a little better. “Conrad never liked that kind of corpspeak,” he growled, “or the philosophy behind it. If he were alive—which he isn’t—you’d never get him to knuckle under to that kind of system. He always hated the idea of having to take his proposals and projects to panels of businessmen. He did it, when he needed finance—but he stopped doing it the moment he could