Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [43]
“A common cause which I deserted,” Damon said, taking up the apparent thread of the argument, “in spite of all the grand plans which Conrad Helier had for me. Is that why you and Eveline are trying to freeze me out of this? Is that why you resent my trying to stir things up?”
“I’m trying to do what your father would have wanted,” Karol told him awkwardly.
“He’s dead, Karol. In any case, you’re not him. You’re your own man now. You and I are perfectly free to build a relationship of our own. Silas could see that—Mary too.”
“Fostering you was a job your father asked me to do,” Karol retorted bluntly. “I’d have continued doing it, if there had been anything more I could do. I will continue, if there’s anything I can do in future—but you can’t expect me to forget that what you wanted was to get away, to abandon everything your father tried to pass on to you in order to run wild. You ran away from us, Damon, and changed your name; you declared yourself irrelevant to our concerns. Maybe it’s best if you stick to that course and let us stick to ours. I don’t know why you’re so interested in this Eliminator stuff, but I really do think it’s best if you let it alone.”
Damon didn’t want to become sidetracked into discussions of his irresponsible adolescence, or his not-entirely-respectable present. “Why should anyone accuse Conrad Helier of being an enemy of mankind?” he asked bluntly.
“He’s dead, Damon,” Karol said softly. “Nobody can hurt him, whatever lies they make up.”
“They can hurt you and Eveline. Proofs will follow, they say. Whatever they’re planning to say about Conrad Helier will reflect on you too—and would even if he were just another colleague you happened to work with once upon a time, to whose fate you were now indifferent.”
“Conrad never did anything that I would be ashamed of,” Karol said, his voice becoming even softer.
Damon let a second or two go by for dramatic effect and then said: “What if he were alive, Karol?”
The blond man had sufficient sense of drama to match Damon’s pregnant pause before saying: “If he were, he’d be able to work on the problem which faces us just now. That would be good. He’s present in spirit, of course, in every logical move I make, every hypothesis I frame, and every experiment I design. He made me what I am, just as he made the whole world what it is. You and I are both his heirs, and we’ll never be anything else, however hard we try to avoid the consequences of that fact.” He tried to fix Damon with a stern gaze, but stern gazes weren’t his forte.
The blond man paused before a rocky outcrop which was blocking their path, and knelt down as if to duck any further questions. Miming intense concentration, he scanned the tideline which ran along the wave-smoothed rock seven or eight centimeters above the ground. It was a performance far more suited to his natural inclinations than stern fatherly concern.
The wrack which clung to the rock was slowly drying out in the sun, but the incoming tide would return before it was desiccated. In the meantime, the limp tresses provided shelter for tiny crabs and whelks. Where the curtains of weed were drawn slightly apart barnacles had glued themselves to the stony faces and sea anemones nestled in crevices like blobs of purple jelly. The barer rock above the tide line was speckled with colored patches of lichen and tarry streaks which might—so far as Damon could tell—have been anything at all.
Karol took a penknife from his pocket and scraped some of the tarry stuff from the rock into the palm of his hand, inspecting it carefully. Eventually, he tipped it into Damon’s hand and said: “That’s far more important than all this nonsense about Eliminators.”
“What is it?” Damon asked.
“We don’t have a name for the species yet—nor