“I’m truly sorry about this, Mr. Hart,” the man in the jeep said, in what seemed to Damon to be an overly punctilious English accent, “but we weren’t sure that we could persuade you to come here of your own accord and the matter is urgent. Until we can get to the people who have Arnett everyone connected with your family may be in danger.” Turning to the pilot he added: “You’d better go quickly, Mr. Grayson. Take the plane to Hilo—then make yourself scarce, just in case.”

“Who are you?” Damon demanded as the Australian obediently turned away and headed back to his cockpit.

“Get in, Mr. Hart,” the thin man said. “My name is Rajuder Singh. I’ve known your foster parents for a long time, but I doubt that any of them ever mentioned me. I’m only support staff.”

“Did Karol Kachellek arrange this?”

“It’s for your own protection. I know how you must feel about it, but it really is a necessary precaution. Please get in, Mr. Hart.”

Damon climbed into the passenger seat of the vehicle and settled himself, suppressing his reflexive urge to offer violent resistance to what was being done to him. The jeep glided into a narrow gap in the trees and was soon deep in a ragged forest of neocycads, thin-boled mock conifers, and a dozen other species that Damon couldn’t classify at all. The road was narrow but it didn’t seem to have any potholes. The island was presumably equipped with a ready supply of men with shovels and buckets, although none was in evidence now.

The forest was quiet, after the fashion of artificially regenerated forests everywhere; the trees, genetically engineered for rapid growth in the unhelpful soil, were not fitted as yet to play host to the overelaborate fauna which ancient tropical forests had entertained before the logger holocaust. A few tiny insects splashed on the windshield of the jeep as it moved through the gathering night, but the only birds whose cries could be heard were seabirds.

“You mustn’t blame Dr. Kachellek, Mr. Hart,” Rajuder Singh told him blandly. “He had to make a decision in a hurry. He didn’t expect you to come to Molokai. Our people should be able to bring the situation under control, given time, but we don’t yet know who we’re up against and things have moved a little too fast for comfort. He wasright to do what he did—I’m afraid that you’re in more danger than you know, and it might not have been a good idea for you to arrive in Los Angeles on a scheduled flight. I’ll show you why in a few minutes’ time.”

“Who, exactly, are our people?” Damon wanted to know.

Rajuder Singh smiled. “Friends and allies,” he said unhelpfully. “There aren’t so many of us left, nowadays, but we still keep the faith.”

“Conrad Helier’s faith?”

“That’s right, Mr. Hart. You’d be one of us yourself, I suppose, if you hadn’t chosen to digress.”

“To digress?That assumes that I’ll be back on track, someday.”

Rajuder Singh’s only answer to that was a gleaming smile.

“Are you saying that there’s some kind of conspiracy involving my foster parents?” Damon asked, unable to keep the aggression from filtering back into his voice. “Some kind of grand plan in which you and Karol and Eveline are all involved?”

“We’re just a group of friends and coworkers,” the dark-skinned man replied lightly. “No more than that—but someone seems to be attacking us, and we have to protect our interests.”

“Might Surinder Nahal be involved with the people attacking you?”

“It’s difficult to believe that, but we really don’t know yet. Until we do know, it’s necessary to be careful. This is a very bad time—but that’s presumably why our unknown adversaries chose this particular moment for their assault.”

Damon remembered that Karol Kachellek had been equally insistent that this was a “very bad time.” Why, he wondered again, was the present moment any worse than any other time?

The sun had climbed high into the clear blue sky and Damon was finding its heat horribly oppressive by the time the vehicle reached its destination. The destination in question was a sizable bungalow surrounded by a flower garden. Damon was oddly relieved to observe that the roof was topped by an unusually large satellite dish. However remote this place might be it was an integral part of the Web; all human civilization was its neighborhood. The flowers were reassuring too, by virtue of the orderly layout of their beds and the sweet odors they secreted. There were insects aplenty here, including domestic bees.

Rajuder Singh showed Damon through the double door of the bungalow into a spacious living room. When Damon opened his mouth to speak, though, the slim man held up his hand. He swiftly crossed the room to a wall-mounted display screen, beckoning Damon to follow.

“This is the same netboard which carried Operator one-oh-one’s earlier messages,” Rajuder Singh said while his nimble fingers brought the screen to life.

Damon stared dumbly at the crimson words which appeared there, reading them three times before he accepted, reluctantly, that they really did say what they seemed to say.

He had not known what to expect, but he could never have expected this. It was as terrible as it was absurd.

The message read:

CONRAD HELIER IS NOT DEAD

CONRAD HELIER NOW USES THE NAME “DAMON HART”

“DAMON HART” IS NAMED AN ENEMY OF MANKIND

FIND AND DESTROY “DAMON HART”

—OPERATOR 101

Fourteen

M

adoc Tamlin had had no alternative but to return to his apartment to gather the equipment he needed for his expedition, but he had known that the necessity was unfortunate.

“I want to go with you,” said Diana Caisson, in a tone which suggested that she intended to have what she wanted no matter what objections Madoc Tamlin might raise. “You owe me that. Damonowes me that.”

“I really need someone here to man the phone,” Madoc lied. “This business is moving too fast and it’s getting seriously weird. If you want to help Damon, here’s where you’d be most useful.”

“I’ve been manning your stupid phone for two solid days,” Diana told him. “What’s the point if you’re always out of touch? This is the first time I’ve clapped eyes on you since we went to visit that idiot boy in the hospital, and I don’t intend letting you out of my sight until I get an explanation of what’s going on and a chance to help. You owe—”

“I don’t owe you anything!” Madoc protested, appalled by her temerity. “Not even explanations. I only let you stay here for old time’s sake—you were supposed to be gone by now. You don’t have any claim on me at all.”

Diana wasn’t impressed. “ Damon Hartowes me explanations. I lived with him for nearly two years. I never knew that he was Conrad Helier’s son, and I certainly never knew that he was Conrad Helier himself, and an enemy of mankind. The day after I gave up trying to make our relationship work I found out I’d been living with a trunkful of mysteries, and they’ve been getting stranger and stranger with every hour that passes. Two years, Madoc! I want to know what I wasted my two years on, and if you’re Damon’s legman in Los Angeles you’re the one who has to start paying me off. Wherever you go, I want to go—and whatever you find out, I want to know.”

“This wasn’t part of the deal,” Madoc told her. “I let you stay for a couple of nights when you walked out on Damon—that’s not the same as taking you into partnership. One of the things Damon is paying me for is discretion. He doesn’t want anyoneknowing what I find out, and he’d certainly include you in that company.”