Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [34]
“I have friends too,” she said firmly. “You know Webwalkers, I know Webwalkers. I bet you’ve asked that mad cow Tithonia to help out—but who needs her? Suppose Damon’s fans were to find out that there’s a mystery which needs solving?”
“One of them already did, thanks to you,” Madoc pointed out.
“So tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help you—but I can only do that if you let me in.”
“I already let you in,” Madoc muttered. “When I opened the door, I didn’t know all this was going to blow up, or . . . well, given that it has blown up and that I did let you in . . . Damon’s original name was Helier. His father was Conrad Helier.”
Diana thought about that for a full minute. “The Conrad Helier who invented the artificial womb?” she said eventually. “The one who made it possible for us all to be born? The man who saved the human race from extinction?”
“The very same. Except that he didn’t exactly invent the artificial womb—he just perfected it. It isn’t as if the sterility transformers would have put an end to the human race if Helier hadn’t been around. One way or another, we’d all have been born. Given the urgency of the demand, someone else was bound to have come up with the answer within a matter of months. Some say that Helier was just the guy who beat the others in the race to the patent office, like Bell with the telephone. A guy named Surinder Nahal reckoned that he should have been there first, and I dare say he wasn’t the only one.”
“But Conrad Helier did get there first,” said Diana, who was far from slow when it came to certain kinds of calculation. “Which means that he must have got rich as well as famous. Damon is his biological son—and knows that he’s his biological son.”
“That’s right,” said Madoc shortly—although he knew that it was useless to try to stop now.
“And he’s your friend,” Diana went on inexorably. “Just like that poor kid lying in the hospital. And he’s still your friend, even though he doesn’t even doctor tapes for you anymore.”
“I do have friends!” Madoc protested. “Real friends. People who know they’ll always be let in if they come knocking on my door.”
The barbed comment didn’t bother her at all. “You’ve already started digging, haven’t you?” she said. “You must have been high as a kite when he asked you to do it. You think there’s a game to be won here—a rich game.”
“You don’t know me at all, do you?” Madoc retorted bitterly. “You think I’m just a hustler, incapable of genuine loyalty—but you’re wrong. Damon knows me better than that.”
“Damon doesn’t even know what day it is if there isn’t someone there to remind him,” she sneered. “Without me, he’s just an innocent abroad. If I’d only known that he was about to get into trouble. . . .”
If you’d only known that he had millions stashed away, Madoc thought—but he didn’t dare say it aloud, and he knew that it would have been unfair. The fact that Diana hadn’t known, and still felt bad about the split, proved that she loved him for himself, not his fortune. The fortune just added insult to injury.
“Damon knows I can be trusted,” Madoc said. “He’s known me a long time. He told me who he really was way back at the beginning. It never affected our friendship. I’ve always respected his privacy and his wishes. I never expected anything like this to come up, but now that it has I intend to play it straight. I’ll do everything I can to find out what Damon wants to know, and I would have done the best I could even if he hadn’t put up the money. So would the Old Lady, who isn’t mad and isn’t a cow. You don’t understand this, Di. Just let me get on with it in my own way, will you?”
“I’ve known you longer than Damon has,” she pointed out. “I probably know you better than you know yourself. I want to help. I’m entitled to help. I still have Damon’s best interests at heart, you know. Just because he’s a pigheaded fool who’s