Geyer raised his hands helplessly. “Given that he also contacted the Ahasuerus Foundation,” he said, “I could hardly help drawing the inference that he was speaking of a technology that would permit the extension of life, but he did not say so in so many words.”

“But that isone of your so-called core concerns, isn’t it?” Smith’s suspicion that Geyer was being evasive was painfully obvious.

“One of them,” Geyer readily conceded. “The founder of the Ahasuerus Foundation was rather narrowly interested in the possibility of human longevity, apparently assuming that human nature could be changed in that single respect without unduly affecting its other components. We have always taken the view that a more general transformation is desirable, of which longevity would not necessarily be the most important aspect.”

“You’re more interested in breeding a master race than in simply helping everyone to live longer,” Smith said, not bothering to employ the kind of inflection that would have turned it into a rhetorical question.

Geyer’s expression hardly changed, but Lisa put that down to stern self-control in the face of naked offensiveness. The pills were taking effect now, and she felt a certain tautness and tone returning to the muscles of her limbs and face. She hoped that the dose wouldn’t prove too great. She needed to have her wits about her; it wouldn’t do any good to be wide awake but too wired to maintain a proper balance.

“If you’ll forgive me saying so, Mr. Smith,” Geyer said smoothly, “that’s the kind of observation one never hears anymore outside of England. Here, as in Germany, there is hardly anyone now alive who first learned to understand the world while Adolf Hitler was still in power. In four years’ time, a whole century will have elapsed since the end of World War Two. It’s time to put away the old insults, don’t you think? The purpose of the Institute of Algeny is to fund research in biotechnology that will assist the cause of human evolution.”

“Point taken,” Smith said easily. “I take it that you’d rather I was equally careful to avoid the use of such terms as übermensch?”

“Yes, I would,” Geyer said equably.

“Even though your own publicity material describes algeny as a Nietzschean discipline and Thus Sprach Zarathustraas one of its inspirational documents?”

“Even so,” Geyer conceded with the ghost of a smile.

“Not that you have anything to hide, of course,” Smith persisted.

“Nothing at all,” Geyer said. “I am merely trying to save time. Our aims are widely misunderstood, and clearing up misconceptions can be a vexatious business. It is true that a few of our intellectual antecedents harbored some very strange hopes, but in the days when there was no technology available to carry forward their aims, they had little alternative but to place optimism above practicality. Now that technology has replaced superstition, we have shed the delusions of the past. Professor Miller did not seem to be confused or dismayed by the kind of slanders that have occasionally been leveled against our organization, and I find it difficult to believe they are relevant to your inquiry—unless you believe that mere contact with us might have been enough to inspire his kidnapping by political extremists.” Geyer seemed to find that possibility amusing, implying by his attitude that the suggestion was absurd.

“I believe that’s possible,” Smith said doggedly. “Has your Institute ever had any links with a movement whose members call themselves Real Women?”

“No,” Geyer said, still manifesting slight but rather contemptuous amusement.

“But you’ve heard of them?”

“Yes. We have nothing against what they refer to, rather oxy-moronically, as natural physical culture. I suppose they might have regarded our endeavors as a kind of unnatural physical culture, but I’m not aware that they ever singled us out for particular criticism.”

“You’re using the past tense,” Smith pointed out.

“My impression is that the feminist movement no longer has any meaningful existence, as a movement,” Geyer said. “If I’m mistaken, I apologize. Is this really relevant?”

“It is if Morgan Miller has been kidnapped by Real Women,” Smith answered sourly.

Geyer turned to look at Lisa again. “You must have discussed Nietzsche with Morgan Miller, Dr. Friemann,” he said. “Perhaps you could advise your colleague that he is taking the wrong inference from his citation in our charter.”

“I’m not so sure that he is,” Lisa replied. She felt strangely calm now that the effect of the pills was no longer manifest as a disturbance. “I haven’t read your charter myself, and I never had the privilege of hearing Morgan’s views on Vril—or, for that matter, on your particular brand of algeny. If it was a recent enthusiasm of his, he’s more likely to have discussed it with Stella Filisetti, his current research assistant. Did he mention her contribution to his experiments, by any chance?”

“I don’t believe so,” Geyer said. “He gave me to understand that he had begun this work before or shortly after the turn of the century. If so, he’d have been far more likely to credit you as a contributor, don’t you think?”

“Did he?” Lisa inquired. She could feel a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, and wondered how long it had been since she had last smiled.

“I fear not,” Geyer admitted. “He implied that it was a sideline to the research on which his early reputation was based—an unexpected spin-off. Perhaps he was reluctant to discuss it with his colleagues until he’d made more tangible progress.”

“You just told us that he’d hinted to you that he hadmade more tangible progress,” Lisa pointed out.

“Perhaps there came a time, quite recently, when he reviewed his results and began to wonder whether they were as disappointing as they had seemed at the time,” Geyer suggested.

“We need detail, Herr Geyer,” Lisa said. “We need to know precisely how this hypothetical research was supposed to make a contribution to the cause of human evolution. If it wasn’t a failed life-extension technology, what was it?”

“I wish I knew,” Geyer said, exuding sincerity with practiced ease. “The puzzle becomes more intriguing with every hour that passes. He did not tell me. But if I were to answer as an Algenist rather than as a mere witness, I would point out that one cannot alter one aspect of human nature without altering others. A man who did not age, and who might live forever if he did not die violently, would differ from you and me in many subtle ways, Dr. Friemann, and perhaps in some not so subtle. Ancient romances of the elixir of life could sidestep such questions, but serious scientists cannot. If someone came to you with a supposed elixir of life, Dr. Frie-mann, you would be bound to ask the awkward questions, would you not? How, exactly, does it work? What, exactly, are its side effects? There are unintended consequences in everything we do, are there not?

“If Morgan Miller had told me in so many words that what he wanted to give me was a technology that would allow people to live longer, those are the questions I would have asked him—but he did not tell me what he had discovered, or why it had not lived up to his expectations, or why his attempts to overcome the problem had come to nothing. If the people who have abducted him had not asked those questions beforehand, they have acted precipitously, perhaps at the risk of bitter disappointment. If they had asked them but had jumped to the wrong conclusions, the depth of their disappointment will be all the greater. Do you see what I mean?”

It was impossible to be certain, of course, but Lisa thought she could see at least part of his meaning. If Matthias Geyer had reached the same tentative hypothesis that she had, he’d had more time to think about its implications, with fewer distractions. Smith’s reference to Real Women hadn’t seemed to come as any surprise to him, which reinforced Lisa’s suspicion that Leland and the Institute of Algeny were hand in glove—but while Leland had seized upon the apocalyptic aspects of the Real Woman’s speech, Geyer might have taken the same view as Lisa as to its actual import.