The speech faded out. It was easy enough for Damon to figure out why the clip had been inserted. Recontextualized by the accusations which the anonymous judge had brought against Silas Arnett, it implied that Conrad Helier had thought of the transformer plagues as a good thing: an opportunity rather than a curse.

Damon had no alternative but to ask himself the questions demanded by the mysterious Operator. Had Conrad Helier been capable of designing the agents of the plague as well as the instruments which had blunted its effects? If capable, might he have been of a mind to do it?

The answer to the first question, he was certain in his own mind, was yes. He was not nearly as certain that the answer to the second question was no—but he remained uncomfortably aware of the fact that he had never actually knownhis biological father; all he had ever known was the oppressive force of his father’s plans for him and his father’s hopes for him. He had rebelled against those, but his rebellion couldn’t possibly commit him to believing this. In any case, he didknow the other people named by the judge. Karol was awkward and diffident, Eveline haughty and high-handed, but Silas and Mary had been everything he could have required of them. Surely it was unimaginable that they could have done what they now stood accused of doing?

The image cut back to the courtroom, but the moment Damon heard Silas Arnett speak he knew that a lot of time had elapsed. The alteration in the quality of the prisoner’s voice left no doubt that a substantial section had been cut from the tape.

“What do you wantfrom me?” Arnett hissed, in a voice full of pain and exhaustion. “What the fuck do you want?”

It was not the virtual judge who replied this time, although there was no reason to think that the second synthesized voice issued from a different source. “We want to know whose idea it was to launch the Third Plague War,” said the figure to Silas Arnett’s right—the figure who had always occupied center stage but had never claimed it. “We want to know where we can find incontrovertible evidence of the extent of the conspiracy. We want to know the names of everyone who was involved. We want to know where Conrad Helier is now, and what name he is currently using.”

“Conrad’s dead. I saw him die!It’s all on tape. All you have to do is look it up!” Silas’s voice was almost hysterical, but he seemed to be making Herculean efforts to control himself. Damon had to remind himself that everythingon the tape could be the product of clever artifice. He could have forged this confrontation himself, without ever requiring Silas Arnett to be present.

“You did not see Conrad Helier die,” said the accusing voice, without the slightest hint of doubt. “The tape entered into the public record is a forgery, and someone switched the DNA samples in order to confuse the medical examiner who carried out the postmortem. Was that you, Dr. Arnett?”

There was no immediate reply. The tape was interrupted again; there was no attempt to conceal the cut. When it resumed, Silas looked even more haggard; he was silent now, but he gave the impression of having exhausted his capacity for protest. Damon could imagine the sound of Silas’s excised screams easily enough. Only the day before he had listened to poor Lenny Garon recording a tape which it might yet be his privilege to edit and doctor and convert into a peculiar kind of art. Were he to offer to take on that job Lenny Garon would probably be delighted—and would probably be equally delighted to hear his own screams, carefully intensified, on the final cut.

“It was my idea,” Silas said in a hollow, grating voice saturated with defeat. “Mine. I did it. The others never knew. I used them, but they never knew.”

“They allknew,” said the inquisitor firmly.

“No they didn’t,” Silas insisted. “They trusted me, absolutely. They never knew. They still don’t—the ones who are still alive, that is. I did it on my own. I designed the plague and set it free, so that Conrad could do what he had to do. He never knew that the transformers weren’t natural. He died not knowing. He really did die not knowing.”

“It’s very noble of you to take all the guilt upon yourself,” said the other in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “But it’s not true, is it?”

“Yes,” said Silas Arnett.

This time, the editor left in the sound of screaming. Damon shivered, even though he knew that he and everyone else who had managed to download the tape before Interpol deleted it was being manipulated for effect. This was melodrama, not news—but how many people, in today’s world, could tell the difference? How many people would be able to say: It’s just some third-rate pornotape stitched together by an engineer. It’s just a sequence of ones and zeros, like any other cataract of code. It doesn’t mean a thing.

Suddenly, Diana Caisson’s reaction to the discovery that Damon was using her template as a base for the sex tape he had been commissioned to make didn’t seem quite so unreasonable. In using Silas Arnett as the basis of this elaborate fiction the people behind the cartoon judge were not merely exploiting him but destroying him. Silas would never be the same, even if they restored his internal technology. Even if all of this were shown to be a pack of lies, he would never be the same in the eyes of other men—which was where everyone had to live in the world of the Net, no matter how reclusive they chose to be.

The prosecutor spoke again. “The truth, Dr. Arnett, is that at least five persons held a secret conference in May 2095, when Conrad Helier laid out his plan for the so-called salvation of the world. The first experiments with the perfected viruses were carried out in the winter of 2098–99, using rats, mice, and human tissue cultures. When one of his collaborators—was it you, Dr. Arnett?—asked Conrad Helier whether he had the right to play God, his reply was ‘The post is vacant. No one else seems to be interested in taking it up. If we don’t, who will?’ That’s the truth, Dr. Arnett, isn’t it? Isn’t that exactlywhat he said?”

The cartoon Arnett’s reply to that was unexpected. “Who are you?” he asked, his pain seemingly mingled with suspicion. “I know you, don’t I? If I saw your real face, I’d recognize it, wouldn’t I?”

The answer was equally surprising. “Of course you would,” the other said with transparently false gentleness. “And I know you, Silas Arnett. I know more about you than you can possibly imagine. That’s why you can’t hide what you know.”

At this point, without any warning, the picture cut out. It was replaced by a text display which said:

CONRAD HELIER IS AN ENEMY OF MANKIND

FIND AND IDENTIFY CONRAD HELIER

MORE PROOFS WILL FOLLOW

—OPERATOR 101

Damon stared numbly at the words; their crimson letters glowed eerily against a black background, as if they had been written in fire across the face of an infinite and starless void.

Eleven

D

amon’s first thought was that he had to get in touch with Madoc Tamlin, and that he had to do so privately. He was spared the need to apologize to Karol Kachellek because Karol obviously had calls of his own to make and he too wanted to make them without being overheard. Instead of having to cover his own retreat, Damon found himself being bundled out of the room. He ran all the way back to his hotel, but he went to one of the public booths rather than using the unit in his room.