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have understood that. Whoever is using his face must be younger than Conrad, and younger than me-but
not as young as Damon. He surely belongs to the new old, not to the true old.
The scene changed again; this time it was an episode of some popular soap opera, but the characters
were mercifully silent. As they exchanged insults and bared their overwrought souls they were rendered
impotent and absurd by silence. A girl slapped a man across the face; without the sound track there was
no telling why, but the blow wasn't halfhearted. These days, blows rarely were. Nobody pulled their
punches for fear of hurting people, because everybody knew that people couldn't be hurt-even
"primitives" had some degree of artificial insulation from actual bodily harm. Hardly anyone went entirely
unaugmented in the world, and the prevailing view was that if they wanted to do so, they had to accept
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the risks.
All the old inhibitions were dying, Silas reminded himself, in an appropriately grim fashion. A radically
different spectrum of dos and don'ts was establishing itself in the cities of what would soon be the
twenty-third century.
Silas's head, isolated within its own private pocket universe, took off from the cape, mounted atop a
huge sleek rocket. His eyes were looking up into the deepening sky, and the sound which filled his ears
was a vast, angry, undeniable roar of pure power, pure might.
It went on, and on, and on....
In the end, Silas couldn't help but call out to his tormentors, to beg them to answer his questions, even
to lecture him like a recalcitrant schoolboy if they felt the need. He knew as he did it that he was proving
them right, demonstrating that the limits of his freedom extended far beyond the straps binding him to his
ignominy, but he no longer cared. He wanted and needed to know what they were doing to him, and
why, and how long it would last.
He wanted, and needed, to understand, no matter what price he had to pay in patience and humility and
craven politeness.
Sixteen
The message was dumped shortly after you boarded the plane at Kaunakakai," Rajuder Singh told
Damon, when the import of the words displayed on the screen had had time to sink in. "When Karol
decided to send you here instead of Los Angeles he couldn't have foreseen anything as outrageous as
this, but it's better proof than any he could have imagined that his instincts were right."
"If he had such faith in his instincts," Damon said sourly, "why didn't he do me the courtesy of explaining
what he wanted me to do, and why?"
"He thought that telling you his plan would make it impossible to carry through. He seems to be of the
opinion that you always do the opposite of anything he suggests, simply because it's his suggestion."
Damon could understand how Karol Kachellek might have formed that impression over the years, but
he felt that it was an injustice nevertheless. The matters on which he had habitually defied Karol in his
younger days had all been trivial; he was now an adult and this was not a trivial matter. "It's crazy," he
said, referring to the message. "It's completely crazy."
"Yes it is," said the dark-skinned man. "Denials are going out, of course-not just from our people but
from Interpol and the doctors who attended the womb in which your embryo developed. Your progress
from egg to adult has been mapped as scrupulously as that of any individual in the history of the world.
The lie is astonishingly blatant-but that only makes it all the more peculiar. It's attracting public attention
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and public discussion, I'm afraid. Together with Silas Arnett's supposed confession, it's getting coverage
on the worst kinds of current affairs and talk shows. I suppose any man who lives a hundred and twenty
years might expect to make a few enemies, but I can't understand why anyone would want to attack you
in this bizarre way. Can you?"
It occurred to Damon that some of the people he had ordered Madoc Tamlin to investigate might have
resented the fact-and might possibly be anxious that the buying-power of Conrad Helier's inheritance
might pose as great a threat to their plan as Interpol or the friends and allies of Silas Arnett. All he said to
Rajuder Singh, however, was: "No, I can't."
"It'll be a nine-day wonder, of course," Singh observed, "if it even lasts that long. Unfortunately, such
slanders sometimes linger in the mind even after convincing rebuttals have been put forward. It really was
the best course of action to remove you from harm's way as quickly as possible. We're truly sorry that
you've been caught up in all this-it really has nothing to do with you."
"What has it to do with?" Damon asked, his voice taut with frustration. "What are you people up to and
who wants to stop you? Why is this such a bad time for all this to blow up?"
"I can't tell you what we're doing," Singh said, with a note of apology in his voice that almost sounded
sincere, "and we honestly don't know why we're being attacked in this fashion. All I can say is that we're
doing everything we can to calm the situation. It can only be a matter of time before Silas is found, and
then...."
"I'm not so sure of that," Damon said, cutting short the string of platitudes. "Maybe he will be found and
maybe he won't, but finding him and catching the people who took him are two different things. This [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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