Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [95]
“Someone is evidently intent on blackening your father’s name,” Eveline told him, with an airy wave of her slender hand. “I can’t imagine why. These self-appointed Eliminators seem to be getting completely out of hand. There are none up here, mercifully; L-Five isn’t perfect, but it’s a haven of sanity compared to Earth. I think it’s because we’re building a new society from scratch, without nations or corporations; because we have no history we feel no compulsion to maintain such ancient traditions as rebellion, hatred, and murder.”
Damon didn’t bother to question her certainty as to whether L-5 was really Eliminator-free, or corporation-free. It had taken so long to get through to her that he didn’t want to waste any time. He knew perfectly well that he wasn’t going to get any straight answers, but he wanted to know where he stood, if she was prepared to tell him.
“Why is it happening now, Eveline?” he asked softly. “What brought your adversaries crawling out of the woodwork after all this time?”
“I have no idea,” she said. Damon had to presume that she was lying, but that was only to be expected, given that this was far from being a secure call. They both had to proceed on the assumption that anyone with any interest in this convoluted affair might be listening in. If she wanted to give him any clues, she would have to do it very subtly indeed. Unfortunately, he and Eveline had been virtual strangers even while they were living under the same roof; they had no resources of common understanding to draw on.
Damon had opened his mouth to ask the next question before he realized that Eveline had only paused momentarily. “You might be better able to guess than I am,” she added. “After all, this whole affair is really an attack on you, isn’t it?”
“It seems to have turned out that way,” he admitted. But it didn’t start like that, he thought. That’s a deflection, a diversionary tactic—for which you and my father’s other so-called friends are partly responsible. You called the bet and raised the stakes. I’m just caught in the crossfire.
“Please be careful, Damon,” Eveline said. “I know that we’ve had our differences, but I really do care about you a great deal.”
Damon was glad to hear it. It was an encouragement to continue. Eveline could have shut him out completely, but it seemed that she didn’t want to do that—or didn’t dare to. “Could it have something to do with this stuff that you and Karol are investigating—these para-DNA life-forms?” he asked, biting the bullet. He expected her spoken answer to be a denial, of course, but he also expected it to be a lie. So far as he could judge, Karol’s dabbling with the black deposit on the rocks of Molokai’s shoreline was the only thing which could possibly make this a “very bad time.”
“How could it have anything to do with that?” Eveline asked, frowning as if in puzzlement—but her synthesized stare was gimlet sharp. A flat denial would have instructed him to let the matter lie; the question was actively inviting further inquiry. Damon knew that he had to select his words very carefully, but he felt slightly reassured by the fact that his foster mother might be making a vital concession.
“I’m not sure,” he said, in a calculatedly pensive manner. “Karol said there were two possibilities regarding its origins: up and down. He was looking at the bottom of the sea while you’re looking for evidence of its arrival from elsewhere in the solar system.” But he had a third alternative in mind when he said it, Damon left unsaid, and there is a third alternative, isn’t there? The third alternative was sideways, and he searched Eveline’s steady gaze for some confirmatory sign that she knew what he was driving at.
“That’s right,” Eveline said conversationally. “We’re expecting two of our probes to start relaying valuable information back from the outer solar