Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [12]
“There’s really no need to be so defensive,” Yamanaka told him. “We find ourselves confronted by a puzzle, and we hope that you might be able to help us to understand what’s going on.”
The sergeant, meanwhile, had begun to drift around the apartment, looking at the pictures on the wall, scanning the discs on the shelves and eyeing Damon’s VE equipment as if its abundance and complexity were a calculated affront to his stubborn fleshiness.
“A puzzle?” Damon echoed sceptically. “Crossword or jigsaw?”
“May I?” Yamanaka asked, refusing to echo Damon’s sarcasm. His neatly manicured finger was pointing to the main windowscreen.
“Be my guest,” Damon said sourly.
Yamanaka’s fingers did a brief dance on the windowscreen’s keyboard. The resting display gave way to a pattern of words etched in blue on a black background:
CONRAD HELIER IS NAMED AN ENEMY OF MANKIND
CONRAD HELIER IS NOT DEAD
FIND AND IDENTIFY THE MAN WHO WAS CONRAD HELIER
PROOFS WILL FOLLOW
OPERATOR 101
Damon felt a sinking sensation in his belly. He knew that he ought to have been able to regard the message with complete indifference, but the simple fact was that he couldn’t.
“What has that to do with me?” he asked combatively.
“According to the official record,” Yamanaka said smoothly, “you didn’t adopt your present name until ten years ago, when you were sixteen. Before that, you were known as Damon Helier. You’re Conrad Helier’s natural son.”
“So what? He died twenty years before I was born, no matter what that crazy says. Under the New Reproductive System it doesn’t matter a damn who anybody’s natural father was.”
“To most people,” Yamanaka agreed, “it’s a matter of complete indifference—but not to you, Mr. Hart. You were given your father’s surname. Your four foster parents were all close colleagues of your father. Your father left a great deal of money in trust for you—an inheritance which came under your control two years after you changed your name. I know that you’ve never touched the money and that you haven’t seen any of your foster parents for some years, apparently doing your utmost to distance yourself from the destiny which your father had planned out for you—but that doesn’t signify indifference, Mr. Hart. It suggests that you took a strong dislike to your father and everything he stood for.”
“So you think I might do something like this? I’m not that stupid, and I’m certainly not that crazy. Who told you I might know something about this? Was it Eveline?”
“No one has named you as a possible suspect,” the inspector said soothingly. “Your name came up in a routine data trawl. We know that Operator one-oh-one always transmits his denunciations from the Los Angeles area, and you’ve been living hereabouts throughout the time he’s been active, but—”
Damon cut him off in midsentence. “I told you—I’m not that kind of lunatic, and I try never to think about Conrad Helier and the plans he had for me. I’m my own man, and I have my own life to lead. Why are you so interested in a message that’s so patently false? You can’t possibly believe that Conrad Helier is still alive—or that he was an enemy of mankind, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
“If you had let me finish,” Yamanaka said, his voice still scrupulously even although he was obviously becoming impatient, “I’d have emphasized yet again that you’re not under suspicion. Although the local police have an extensive file on your past activities there’s nothing in it to suggest any involvement with the Eliminators. I’m afraid this is a more complicated matter than it seems.”
Now Damon wondered whether Yamanaka might want to recruit him as an informant—to use his contacts as a means of furthering their investigation. He wanted to interrupt again, to say that he wasn’t about to do that, but he knew that the conclusions he’d jumped to had so far only served to slow things down. He figured that if he held his tongue, this might be over much sooner.
“Before going on to the other aspect of our inquiry,