Rachel Trehaine took a few moments to weigh that up, presumably employing all her skills as a senior reader. Anyone but a scientific analyst might have challenged his conclusions, or at least pointed out the tentative nature of his inferences, but she was content merely to observe and record.

“Have you spoken to Eveline Hywood?” she asked.

“I’ve tried,” Damon told her. “She isn’t accepting calls at the moment. There’s nothing sinister in that—she tends to get engrossed in her work. She never liked being interrupted. I’ll get through eventually, but she’ll probably tell me that it isn’t my business anymore—that I forfeited any right I might have had to be told what’s going on when I walked out on the Great Crusade to run with the gangs.”

The red-haired woman pondered that information too. Damon judged that she was under real pressure to make sense of this, or thought she was. However lowly her position within the organization might be she was obviously in charge of the Los Angeles office, at least for the moment. She knew that she might have decisions to make, as well as orders to follow from New York.

“The Ahasuerus Foundation’s sole purpose is to conduct research into technologies of longevity,” she said sententiously. “It’s entirely probable that we provided funding to Conrad Helier’s research team if they were involved in projects connected with longevity research. I can’t imagine that there was anything in our dealings to attract the interest of the so-called Eliminators.”

“That is strange, isn’t it?” Damon said, trying to sound insouciant. “The usual Eliminator jargon charges people with being unworthy of immortality—a formula which takes it for granted that your researchers will eventually hit the jackpot. In a way, you and the Eliminators represent different sides of the same coin. If and when you come up with an authentic fountain of youth you’ll be forced into the position of deciding who should drink from it.”

“We’re a nonprofit organization, Mr. Hart. Our constitution requires us to make the fruits of our labor available to everyone.”

“I looked up your constitution last night,” Damon admitted. “It’s an interesting commitment. But I also glanced at the way in which you’ve operated in the past. It’s true that Ahasuerus has always placed its research findings in the public domain, but that’s not the same thing as ensuring equal access to the consequent technologies. Consider PicoCon’s new rejuvenation procedures, for example: there’s no secret about the manner in which the reconstructive transformations are done, but it’s still an expensive process to carry out because it requires such a high level of technical expertise and so much hospital time. Effectively, it’s available only to the rich. It seems highly likely to me that the next breakthrough in longevity research will be a more wide-ranging kind of somatic transformation which will achieve an authenticrejuvenation rather than a merely cosmetic one.

Assuming that it requires even more technical expertise and even more hospital time, it’s likely to be available only to the very rich, at least in the first instance, even if all the research data is in the public domain. If so, the megacorps will still have effective control over its application. Isn’t that so?”

“ In the first instanceis the vital phrase, Mr. Hart,” she informed him, still carefully maintaining the stiffness of her manner. “The early recipients of such a treatment would be those who could most easily afford it, but it would eventually filter through the entire population. The rich are always first in every queue—but that only means that the poor have to be patient, and in the New Utopia even the poor have time enough. Provided that your hypothetical technology of authentic rejuvenationwere to take the form of a treatment that a person need only undergo once—or even if it needed to be repeated at long intervals—there’d be plenty of time to work through the queue. No one has any interest in delaying our work, Mr. Hart—and that includes the lonely and resentful individuals who have nothing better to do with their time than denounce the follies and failures of their fellow men and urge maniacs to attempt murder.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Damon said, although he wasn’t sure that the matter was as simple as she made it out to be. “As I said, I’ve read your constitution. It’s a fine and noble commitment, even if it was written by a man who made his fortune by turning a minor storm in the troubled waters of the world’s financial markets into a full-scale hurricane. But lonely and resentful individuals often nurse paranoid fantasies. Operator one-oh-one might have got it into his head that you’ve already developed a method of authentic rejuvenation, but that you’re keeping it very quiet. Perhaps he thinks that you’rethe real Eliminators, standing by while the people youconsider to be undesirables peacefully pass away, and saving your immortality serum for the deserving few.”

“That’s absolutely untrue,” said Rachel Trehaine, her bright blue eyes as fathomless as the California sky.

“A paranoid fantasy,” Damon agreed readily. “But I did happen to notice, while inwardly digesting your constitution, that although it commits you to releasing the results of the research you fund, it doesn’t actually specify whenyou have to do it. You’re not the only player in the field, of course—I dare say there’s not a single megacorp which doesn’t have a few fingers thrust deep into this particular pie—but you’ve been going for a long time and you have a good deal of expertise. If I were a bookmaker, I’d make you third favorite, after PicoCon and OmicronA, to come up with the next link in the chain that will eventually draw us into the wonderland of true emortality. Some day, someone like you is going to have to decide exactly how and when to let the good news out. Whoever makes that decision runs the risk of making enemies, don’t you think?”

The remark about Ahasuerus being third favorite after the biggest players of all was pure flattery, but it didn’t bring a smile to Rachel Trehaine’s face. “I can assure you,” the red-haired woman said, “that the Ahasuerus Foundation has no secrets of the kind you’re suggesting. You’ve already admitted that this mysterious Operator is deliberately teasing you, trying to draw you into reckless action. If that’s so, you ought to think very carefully about what you say, and to whom. If Operator one-oh-one has paranoid fantasies to indulge and lies to spread, it might be wise to let him be the one to do it.”

Damon would have assured her that he agreed with her wholeheartedly, but before he could open his mouth her attention was distracted. One of her machines was beeping, presumably to inform her that urgent information was incoming. From where he was sitting Damon couldn’t see the screen whose keyplate she was playing with, and he didn’t try to sneak a peep.

“The Ahasuerus Foundation thanks you for bringing this matter to our attention,” the red-haired woman said, reading from the screen. “The Ahasuerus Foundation intends to cooperate fully with Interpol and suggests that you do the same. If the Ahasuerus Foundation can help in any way to locate and liberate Silas Arnett it will certainly do so.”

Damon knew that he was being slyly rebuked for not taking the note straight to Hiru Yamanaka, but he couldn’t guess whether the rebuke was sincere or not. He had no way of knowing whether coming here had made the general situation better or worse—or, for that matter, what might count as “better” or “worse.” When he saw that she was finished, he rose to his feet.

“I’m afraid I have a plane to catch,” he said. He knew perfectly well that he was about to be thrown out, but figured that he might as well seize whatever initiative remained to be seized. “If I hear any further mention of the foundation I’ll be happy to pass the news on. I take it that my discretion wasn’t necessary, and that you won’t mind in the least if I simply use the phone in future?”