Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [114]
Perhaps, Damon thought, people had grown so completely accustomed to crowding during the years before the Crash that their long-lived children had had the habit ingrained in their mental pathways during infancy, and there simply weren’t enough children in Lenny Garon’s generation to start a mass migration to fresher fields. That kind of explanation seemed, at any rate, to make more sense than oft-parroted clichés about buildings needing services and the proximity principles of supply and transport.
“I suppose you heard what happened?” Madoc said miserably.
“Yamanaka gave me the brute facts,” Damon admitted. “I talked to Diana, but she had other things on her mind and it wouldn’t have been a good idea to tell me anything the cops didn’t already know. You found a VE pak—have you had a chance to play it through?”
“Sure. I took it all the way to the top—the Old Lady herself—so that we could play it through without anyone else looking in. It shows Silas Arnett being questioned by Surinder Nahal, giving answers very different from those he gave on the tape that was dumped on the Web. Do you want to see it? The Old Lady says it’s just another fake, probably cooked up for Interpol’s benefit.”
“It doesn’t show Nahal being killed?”
Madoc was infinitely more willing than Hiru Yamanaka to display his surprise. “No,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Why would it?”
“That’s what Yamanaka’s expecting. They found Silas dead and a tape that shows him being shot—as if it were an execution.”
“Eliminators?” Madoc asked.
“That’s what it looks like,” Damon said with a sigh, “but we live in a very deceptive world. Unfortunately, the fact that it’s only one more fake cooked up for his benefit won’t make Yamanaka any less anxious to get his hands on the VE pak. Avoiding loss of face is just about the only thing left to him—he must know by now that the people behind this are out of reach. The police might think they’re maintaining the law of the land, just as the Washington Rump still thinks it’s in charge of making it, but the whole system is exhausted. When all appearances can be manufactured, the concept of evidence loses its meaning.”
Madoc released the VE pak from where he’d loaded it into Lenny Garon’s console and passed it over to Damon. “Do you know who’s behind this?” he asked.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Damon admitted. “According to a dream I had when they snatched me away from Karol’s friends, it’s someone who claims to be speaking on behalf of the entire world order, but that might be megalomania or simple overstatement.”
Madoc was so enthusiastic to say what he had to say that he didn’t bother to query Damon’s reference to a dream. “The Old Lady says that it’s someone from PicoCon. Someone high up in the corp structure.” He met Damon’s eyes anxiously, looking for a reaction.
“That would make sense,” Damon conceded. “It has to be someone with access to cutting-edge technology, and PicoCon is the edge beyond the edge. I’m sorry I got you into this, Madoc—I thought at first that it was just a petty thing. Nobody expects to go after an Eliminator Operator and run into the full might of PicoCon.”
“The cops know that I didn’t kill the guy whose body we found, don’t they?” Madoc queried uneasily.
“Sure. Yamanaka knows that the corpse was torched several hours before you got there. His own surveillance team gave you a perfect alibi. If you say the cops spooked you—came in without a proper warning or whatever—you might excuse the blow with the crowbar as a reflexive response. The LAPD will want to pay off some of their grievances against you, but a decent lawyer ought to be able to persuade a judge to take a reasonable view