Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [107]
“And if they won’t?” Silas wanted to know.
“They have to. The position of God isn’t vacant anymore. The privilege of Creation has to be determined by negotiation. Conrad Helier may be a hundred and thirty-seven years old, but he’s still thinking and still learning. Once we get through to him, he’ll understand.”
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” Silas said, having finally become incapable of guarding his tongue so carefully as never to let any implication slip that Conrad Helier might not be dead.
“There’s time,” his captor assured him. “But not, I fear, for any further continuation of this conversation. I don’t know who, for the moment, but somebody has finally managed to locate you. I hope we’ll meet again, here or in some other virtual environment.”
“If we ever meet in real space,” Silas hissed with all the hostility and bravado he could muster, “you’d better make sure that your IT is in good shape. You’ll need it.”
The woodland blanked out, leaving him adrift in an abstract holding pattern. He heard a door crash inwards, battered down by brute force, and he heard voices calling out the news that he was here. He felt a sudden pang of embarrassment as he remembered that he was nearly naked, and knew that he must present a horribly undignified appearance.
“Get me out of this fucking chair!” he cried, making no attempt at all to censor the pain and desperation from his voice.
The hood was raised from his eyes and tilted back on a pivot, allowing him to look at his cell and his rescuer. The light dazzled him for a moment, although it wasn’t very bright, and he had to blink tears away from the corners of his eyes.
There was no way to identify the man who stood before him, looking warily from side to side as if he couldn’t believe that there were no defenders here to fight for custody of the prisoner; the newcomer’s suitskin had a hood whose faceplate was an image-distorting mask. He was carrying a huge handgun that didn’t look like a standard police-issue certified-nonlethal weapon.
“I think it’s okay,” Silas told the stranger. “They left some time ago. Just cut me loose, will you?”
The stranger must have been looking him directly in the face, but no eyes were visible behind the distorting mask.
“Who are you?” Silas asked as it dawned on him belatedly that his troubles might not be over.
The masked man didn’t reply. A second man came into the room behind him, equally anonymous and just as intimidatingly armed. Meanwhile, the first man extended his gun—holding its butt in both hands—and fired at point-blank range.
Silas hadn’t time to let out a cry of alarm, let alone to feel the pain of the damage that must have followed the impact or to appreciate the full horror of the fact that without his protective IT even a “certified-nonlethal” shot might easily be the death of him.
Twenty-three
D
amon was intending to call Interpol anyway, so the fact that his phone hood lit up like a firework display commanding him to do exactly that didn’t even make a dent in his schedule. It did worry him, though; no one got a five-star summons like that unless there was something far more important on the agenda than his ex-girlfriend’s bail bond.
Hiru Yamanaka took Damon’s incoming call personally. Interpol’s phone VE was stern and spare but more elaborate than Damon had expected. Mr. Yamanaka was reproduced in full, in an unnaturally neat suitskin uniform, sitting behind an imposing desk. The scene radiated calm, impersonal efficiency—which meant, Damon thought, that it was as inaccurate in its implications as the most blithely absurd of his own concoctions.