“I’ve got twenty-four hours before the last of my protective nanotech is flushed away,” Silas said, trying his utmost to keep his voice level. “A lot can happen in twenty-four hours. People must be searching for me. Even if Catherine was working for you the alarm will have been raised soon enough.”

“You’re right, of course,” the judge informed him. “The police are searching for you with more than their usual diligence—Interpol has taken charge of the investigation, on the grounds that the Eliminators are a worldwide problem. Damon Hart’s unsavory acquaintances are using their less orthodox methods to search for information as to your whereabouts. The Ahasuerus Foundation is also diverting considerable effort to their own investigation. Were all three to pool their resources they might actually stand a chance of finding you before the trial gets under way—but in a world where privacy is fatally compromised by technology, discretion becomes an instinct and secrecy a passion.”

Silas was genuinely astonished by the list of people who were actively searching for him. “Damon?” he echoed suspiciously. “What’s Damon got to do with this? Why on earth should the Ahasuerus Foundation be interested?”

“Damon Hart is involved because I took care to involve him,” the voice replied with a casualness that was almost insulting. “The Ahasuerus Foundation is interested because I took care to interest them. I omitted to mention, of course, that Conrad Helier will also be doing his utmost to find you—but he is hardly in a position to pool his resources with anyone else.”

“Conrad Helier’s been dead for half a century,” Silas said.

“That’s not true,” said the judge, with equal conviction. “Although I will admit to some slight doubt as to whether or not you knowit to be untrue. How soon was he aware, do you suppose, that you would eventually desert his cause? Did he identify you as his Judas before he went to his carefully contrived crucifixion?”

“I only retired from the team ten years ago,” Silas said.

“Of course. The burdens of parenthood served to resensitize you to your own old age. You developed a passion for the company of the authentically young: naive flesh, naive intelligence. In a way, they’re allConrad Helier’s children, aren’t they? All born from his womb—the womb he gifted to humankind after robbing them of all the wombs they already possessed. He appointed you to foster his son, but he surely considers your defection as a kind of betrayal.”

Unable to help himself, Silas stared at his virtual adversary with a new intensity. He had not seen Conrad Helier for forty-six years, and his memories had faded as all memories did, but he was absolutely certain that Conrad Helier was one of the few people in the world who could come to him masked as artfully as any man could be masked and yet be recognizable.

Whoever his interrogator was, he swiftly decided, it could not possibly be Conrad Helier, or even his ghost.

“Torture can make a man say anything,” Silas said, feeling that he ought to say somethingto cover his fearful confusion. “Anything at all. I know well enough how utterly unused to pain I’ve become. I know that as soon as your nanomech armies have smashed mine to smithereens I’ll be utterly helpless. I’ll say whatever you want me to say—but it will all be worthless, and worse than worthless. It won’t be the truth, and it won’t even looklike the truth. No matter how cleverly you edit your tapes, people will know that it’s a fake. Anybody with half a brain will see through the charade—and even if the police don’t find you while I’m still alive, they’ll find you once I’m dead. This is a farce, and you know it. You can’t possibly gain anything from it.”

Even as he made the speech, though, Silas realized that it couldn’t be as simple as that. Whatever game his captor was playing, it wasn’t just a matter of extorting a confession to post on some Eliminator billboard. Damon had been brought into it, and the Ahasuerus Foundation—and Silas honestly couldn’t imagine why . . . unless, perhaps, the sole purpose of the crime had been to prompt its investigation by parties sufficiently interested and sufficiently powerful to uncover realproof of its motive—proof that would be worth far more than any tricked-up tape of a confession. . . .

“Who are you?” he asked, unable any longer to resist the temptation, although he knew that it would be a pointless admission of weakness. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m a judge,” said the voice flatly. “I’m doing this because someonehas to do it. If humankind is to be worthy of immortality, it ought to begin with a clean slate, don’t you think? Our sins must be admitted, and expiated, if they are not to spoil our new adventure.”

“Who appointed youmy judge and executioner?” Silas retorted, miserably aware of the fact that he was still displaying weakness and terror, even though he had not yet been stripped of all his protective armor.

“The post was vacant,” the judge said. “No one else seemed to be interested in taking it up.”

Silas recognized the words and felt their parodic force. “Fuck off,” he said, with feeling. It seemed, suddenly, to be a direly old-fashioned curse: a verbal formula he had brought with him out of Conrad Helier’s ark; a spell which could not have any force at all in the modern world. The existential significance of sexual intercourse had altered since the old world died, and the dirty words connected with it had lost their warrant of obscenity. Shitand its derivatives still retained their repulsive connotations, but the expletives which had once been strongest of all had lost their fashionability along with their force. Habit might preserve them awhile longer, at least in the language of centenarians like himself, but for all the effect they had one might as well make reference to God’s wounds or the Prophet’s beard.

“The charges laid against you are these,” said the machine-enhanced voice as the lips of the caricature face moved in perfect sync. “First, that between 2095 and 2120 you conspired with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, to cause actual bodily harm to some seven billion individuals, that actual bodily harm consisting of the irreversible disabling of their reproductive organs. Second, that you collaborated with Eveline Hywood, Karol Kachellek, Mary Hallam, and others, under the supervision of Conrad Helier, in the design, manufacture, and distribution of the agents of that actual bodily harm, namely the various virus species collectively known as meiotic disrupters or chiasmalytic transformers. You are now formally invited to make a statement in response to these charges.”

“If you had any real evidence,” Silas said stiffly, “you could bring the charges in a real court of law. I don’t have to answer any charges brought by a caricature judge in a cartoon court.”

“You’ve had seventy years to submit yourself to trial by a legitimately constituted court,” said the judge, his mechanical voice dripping acid. “Those who prefer to evade the courts whose legitimacy they acknowledge ought not to protest too loudly when justice catches up with them. This court is the one which has found the means to bring you to trial; it is the one which will determine your fate. You will be given the opportunity to enter your defense before sentence is passed upon you.”

“But you’ve already delivered your verdict, and I doubt that you have it in your power to determine any sentence but immediate execution—which will make you guilty of murder in the eyes of any authentic court in the world.”

“Death is not such a harsh sentence for a man of your kind,” opined the man behind the mask, “when one considers that you—like the vast majority of those previously condemned as unworthy of immortality—have already lived far longer than the natural human life span. One of the principles on which this court is founded is that whatever society bestows upon the individual through the medium of technology, society has every right to withdraw from those who betray their obligations to the commonweal.”