Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [93]
“Your father remade and reshaped the world by designing the New Reproductive System,” Yamanaka replied softly. “The corpsmen who thought the world was theirs to make and shape might well have resented that, even if he never disturbed their commercial empire. Men of business always fear and despise utopians, even the ones who pose no direct threat to them. The corpsmen probably resent your father still, almost as much as the Eliminator diehards resent them.”
“He’s been dead for fifty years,” Damon pointed out. “Why would corpsmen want to waste their time demonizing the dead?” He hoped that Yamanaka might be able to answer that one; he certainly had no answer himself.
“His collaborators are still alive,” Yamanaka countered—and then, after a carefully weighed pause, added: “or were, until this plague of evil circumstance began.”
Twenty
B
y the time the two cars reached the local Interpol headquarters Damon had decided to continue the strategy that he had reflexively undertaken while chatting informally to Hiru Yamanaka, and which he had employed in all his previous dealings with the police. He proceeded to deny everything. He told himself that his purpose was to conserve all the relevant information he had for his own future use, but he was uncomfortably conscious of his own inability to decide exactly what was relevant.
The strategy was not without its costs. For one thing, Yamanaka refused to let him speak to Diana Caisson—although Damon wasn’t certain that he needed to rush into a confrontation as awkward as that one would inevitably prove to be. For another, it intensified Yamanaka’s annoyance with him—which would be bound to result in an intensification of the scrutiny to which his life and actions were currently being subjected.
Yamanaka had obviously anticipated that Damon would not respond to his subtle overtures, although he put on a show of sorrow. He soon reverted to straightforward interrogation, although his pursuit of information seemed rather halfhearted. At first Damon took this to be a gracious acceptance of defeat, but by the time the interview was over he had begun to wonder whether Yamanaka might actually prefer it if he were out on the street inviting disaster rather than sitting snugly and safely in protective custody while Interpol chased wild geese.
“The claims made by the so-called real Operator one-oh-one are, of course, receiving a full measure of publicity,” Yamanaka told him, with a dutiful concern that might well have been counterfeit. “They have not gone uncontradicted, but would-be assassins might not be inclined to believe the contradictions. Were you to return to your apartment right away, trouble might follow you. Were you to attempt to disappear into the so-called badlands in the east of the city, you might easily deliver yourself into danger.”
“I can make my own risk assessments and responses,” Damon told him. The fog was lifting now, and he was becoming more articulate by the minute. “You don’t have any evidence at all to connect me to Surinder Nahal’s death. As far as I can tell, you have nothing to connect Madoc and Diana to it either, except that they found the body before the local police. Maybe Madoc got a bit excited when the cops burst in on him, but that’s understandable. It’s not as if they did any real damage. Even if you press ahead with the assault charges, the fact that they might have gone to the place where they found the body on my behalf doesn’t make me an accessory to the assault. Given that you don’t have any charges to bring against me, I think you ought to let me go now.”
“I can hold you overnight if I have reason to believe that you’re withholding relevant information,” Yamanaka pointed out, strictly for form’s sake.
“How could I possibly know anything relevant to the assault?”
“Apparently,” Yamanaka observed serenely, “you don’t even know anything relevant to your own