Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [28]
“I meant you plural, not you singular,” Damon told her. “Someone in your organization must be able to figure out which particular closeted skeleton Operator one-oh-one intends to bring out into the open. Why else would he have sent me to you?”
“Why would he—or she—have sent you anywhere at all, Mr. Hart? Why send you a personal message? It seems very odd—not at all the way that Eliminators usually operate.”
The delicate suggestion was, of course, that Damon was the source of the message—that he himself was Operator 101. As a scientific analyst Rachel Trehaine would naturally have considerable respect for Occam’s razor.
“That’s an interesting question,” Damon said agreeably. “When Inspector Yamanaka referred to the situation as a puzzle he was speaking metaphorically, but that message implies that the instigator of this series of incidents really is creating a puzzle, dangling it before me as a kind of lure—just as I, in my turn, am dangling it before you. Operator one-oh-one wants me to go digging, and he’s offering suggestions as to where I might profitably dig. Given that Conrad Helier is dead, he can’t possibly be the Eliminators’ real target—and if their promise that Silas Arnett will be released after he’s given them what they want is honest, he isn’t the real target either. If the note is to be taken at face value, Operator one-oh-one might be building a file on Eveline Hywood, with particular reference to her past dealings with your foundation.”
Rachel Trehaine took a few moments to weigh that up, presumably employing all her skills as a senior reader. Anyone but a scientific analyst might have challenged his conclusions, or at least pointed out the tentative nature of his inferences, but she was content merely to observe and record.
“Have you spoken to Eveline Hywood?” she asked.
“I’ve tried,” Damon told her. “She isn’t accepting calls at the moment. There’s nothing sinister in that—she tends to get engrossed in her work. She never liked being interrupted. I’ll get through eventually, but she’ll probably tell me that it isn’t my business anymore—that I forfeited any right I might have had to be told what’s going on when I walked out on the Great Crusade to run with the gangs.”
The red-haired woman pondered that information too. Damon judged that she was under real pressure to make sense of this, or thought she was. However lowly her position within the organization might be she was obviously in charge of the Los Angeles office, at least for the moment. She knew that she might have decisions to make, as well as orders to follow from New York.
“The Ahasuerus Foundation’s sole purpose is to conduct research into technologies of longevity,” she said sententiously. “It’s entirely probable that we provided funding to Conrad Helier’s research team if they were involved in projects connected with longevity research. I can’t imagine that there was anything in our dealings to attract the interest of the so-called Eliminators.”
“That is strange, isn’t it?” Damon said, trying to sound insouciant. “The usual Eliminator jargon charges people with being unworthy of immortality—a formula which takes it for granted that your researchers will eventually hit the jackpot. In a way, you and the Eliminators represent different sides of the same coin. If and when you come up with an authentic fountain of youth you’ll be forced into the position of deciding who should drink from it.”
“We’re a nonprofit organization, Mr. Hart. Our constitution requires us to make the fruits of our labor available to everyone.”
“I looked up your constitution last night,” Damon admitted. “It’s an interesting commitment. But I also glanced at the way in which you’ve operated in the past. It’s true that Ahasuerus has always placed its research findings in the public domain, but that’s not the same thing as ensuring equal access to the consequent technologies. Consider PicoCon’s new rejuvenation procedures, for example: there’s no secret about the manner in which the reconstructive