Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [40]
It was all bluster, but Silas took what comfort he could from its insincerity. Whoever had come to seize him had come well equipped, and however ridiculous this virtual court might be on the surface it was no joke, no merely amateur affair. Someone was taking this business very seriously—whatever the business in question really was. He had to try to figure that out, even if figuring it out couldn’t save him from pain and death. If his sentence were already fixed, and if the police were unable to find him, the only meaningful thing he could do with what remained of his life was to find out who was doing this to him and why—and why now, when it had all happened so long ago.
“You still have time to make a clean breast of it,” the voice informed him, refusing to respond to his insults. “No one can save you, Dr. Arnett, except yourself. Even if your trial were to be interrupted, you would still stand condemned. We are an idea and an ideal rather than an organization, and we can neither be defeated nor frustrated. When human beings live forever, no one will be able to evade justice, because there will be all the time in the world for their sins to find them out. We really do have to be worthy of immortality, Dr. Arnett. You, of all people, should understand that. This is, after all, a world which you helped to design—a world which could not have come into being had you not collaborated in the careful murder of the world which came before.”
Silas didn’t want to engage in philosophical argument. He wanted to stick to matters of fact. “Will you answer me one question?” he asked sharply.
“Of course I will,” the judge replied, with silky insincerity. “We have no secrets to conceal.”
“Did Catherine set me up? Did she rig the house’s systems to let your people in?” He didn’t imagine that he would be able to trust the answer, but he knew that it was a question that would gnaw away at him if he didn’t voice it.
“As a matter of fact,” the other replied, taking obvious pleasure in the reply, “she had no idea at all that she was carrying the centipedes which insinuated themselves into your domestic systems. We used her, but she is innocent of any responsibility. If anyone betrayed you, Dr. Arnett, it was someone who knew you far better than she.”
Silas hoped that he would be able to resist the lure offered by that answer, but he knew that he wouldn’t. Someone had set him up for this, and he had to consider everyone a candidate—at least until the time came for him to play the traitor in his turn, when his trial by ordeal began in earnest.
Nine
D
amon stood on the quay in Kaunakakai’s main harbor and watched the oceanographic research vessel Kite sail smoothly toward the shore. The wind was light and her engines were silent but she was making good headway. Her sleek sails were patterned in red and yellow, shining brightly in the warm subtropical sunlight. The sun was so low in the western sky that the whole world, including the surface of the sea, seemed to be painted in shades of crimson and ocher.
Karol Kachellek didn’t come up to the deck until the boat was coming about, carefully shedding speed so that she could drift to the quay under the gentle tutelage of her steersman. Kachellek saw Damon waiting but he didn’t wave a greeting—and he took care to keep his unwelcome visitor waiting even longer while he supervised the unloading of a series of cases which presumably held samples or specimens.
Two battered trucks with low-grade organic engines had already limped down to the quayside to pick up whatever the boat had brought in. Kachellek ostentatiously helped the brightly clad laborers load the cases onto the trucks. He was the kind of man who took pride