“The empire of nature ended with the development of language,” the fake Arnett replied. “Ever since then, human beings have been the product of their technology. All talk of human nature is misguided romantic claptrap. The history of human progress has been the history of our transcendence and suppression of the last vestiges of instinctive behavior. If there was any maternal instinct left in 2070, its annihilation was a thoroughly good thing. To blame any present unhappiness or violence on the loss or frustration of any kind of genetic heritage is both stupid and ridiculous.”

There was an obvious cut at this point. The next thing Arnett’s image said was: “Who told you about all this? It can’t have been Karol or Eveline. Somebody must have put the pieces together—somebody with expert knowledge and a cunning turn of mind. Who?”

“That’s of no importance,” the other voice said. “There’s only one more matter which needs to be determined, and that’s the identity which Conrad Helier adopted after faking his death. We have reason to believe that he reappeared in the world after an interval of some twenty-five years, having undergone extensive reconstructive somatic engineering. We have reason to believe that he now uses the name Damon Hart. Is that true, Dr. Arnett?”

“Yes,” said the voice which sounded like Arnett’s, ringing false because his head was bowed and his lips hardly moved. “The person who calls himself Damon Hart is really Conrad Helier. It’s true.”

The tape ended there.

“I wonder how many other installments there are to come,” Damon said.

Singh’s lips moved as if he intended to reply, but he choked off the sound of the first syllable as his ears caught another sound, faint and distant.

Damon cocked his own ear, straining to catch and identify the sound. “Helicopters,” he said, when he had leaped to that conclusion. Singh, who was evidently a more cautious man than he, had not yet made the same leap—but when Damon said it he was ready to believe it.

“We have to go down,” Singh said. “There’s no time to lose!”

“They’re only littlehelicopters,” Damon said, using expertise gained from hours spent watching sportsmen whizz over the beaches of California. “The kind you can fold up and store away in the back of a van. They must be local—they wouldn’t have the range to get here from Lanai.” Instead of obeying Rajuder Singh’s urgent request to go to the elevator he moved toward the window that looked out in the direction from which the noise was coming.

“It doesn’t matter how small they are,” Singh complained, becoming increasingly agitated. “What matters is that they’re not ours. I don’t know how they got here, but they’re not here on any kind of routine business—and if they’re after somebody, it has to be you.”

Seventeen

D

amon knew, deep down, that he ought to do as Rajuder Singh said. The sensible thing to do was to move to the elevator and let it carry him down to the hidey-hole beneath the fake volcano, not merely because that was the way that safety lay, but also because he might find answers down there to some of his most urgent questions. He also knew, however, that Karol Kachellek’s estimation of his reflexive perversity had a good deal of truth in it. Obedience had never been his strong suit.

“There’s plenty of time,” he said to Rajuder Singh, although he knew that there wasn’t.

He peered out of the window, looking up at the crowns of the trees that fringed the flower garden. The thick foliage blocked out the greater part of the sky and anything that might be flying there—but not for long.

When the first tiny helicopter finally came into view, zooming over the topmost branches of the nearest trees, Damon’s first reaction was to relax. The machine wasn’t big enough to carry human passengers, or even a human pilot. The sound of its whining motor was like the buzz of a worker bee, and he knew that the AI guiding it could not be any more intelligent than a worker bee. As it passed rapidly out of sight again, wheeling above the roof of the bungalow, Damon turned back to Rajuder Singh, intending to reassure him—but the expression on the other man’s face told him that Singh was not about to be reassured, and his own composure began to dissolve. In a world of rampant nanotech, small did not mean harmless—far from it.

It occurred to Damon then to wonder where the tiny machine—and its partner, which was already visible—had come from. Such toys had insufficient range to have been launched from Lanai or Kahoolawe, but if they had not come from another island, they must have come from the deck of a ship. What ship? How had it come to be here so soon after his own arrival—unless that arrival had somehow been anticipated?

“Please, Mr. Hart,” said the desperate Rajuder Singh, coming forward as he spoke and reaching for a pouch suspended beside his beltpack. Damon guessed immediately what it was the thin man was reaching for, and was struck by the sudden thought that he didn’t know for surewhose side Rajuder Singh was on. Everything the man had told him had seemed plausible enough—but the fact remained that Steve Grayson had kidnappedhim and brought him here against his will. What if it had notbeen Karol Kachellek who had given the order? What if Karol Kachellek had sent the helicopters in hot pursuit from the deck of the Kite?

As the miniature gun came out of its hiding place Damon reacted with a streetfighter’s instinct. He hadn’t been able to do anything about Grayson’s weapon, but the situation was different now. The blow he aimed with the edge of his right hand was delivered with practiced efficiency, knocking the hand which held the gun aside. That left Singh’s midriff wide open, and Damon lashed out with his right foot, ploughing his heel into the thin man’s solar plexus. The sudden shock put Singh down, as it would have put anyone down, no matter how efficient his internal technology was. Singh’s mouth had been open as he prepared to speak, but all that came out now was a sharp gasp of surprise. Damon pinned the thin man’s right arm to the floor with his foot and knelt down in order to pluck the weapon out of his hand.

The gun was a darter, even less powerful than Grayson’s pepperbox. It was incapable of inflicting any lethal injury, although its darts were presumably capable of inducing paralysis for several minutes, until his internal technology could rally itself to cancel out the effects of the toxin.

Singh pried his right arm loose and tried to grab the gun, wailing: “You don’t understand!”

Damon lifted the weapon out of his captive’s reach but didn’t hit him again. “Nor do you,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

The noise of the whining helicopters was louder now; both machines were hovering close to the house, perhaps coming in to land. They were descending slowly, presumably because the machines were delicate and the available space between the flower beds was by no means generous.

Now there was another sound audible beyond and beneath the whine of the toys: a much deeper drone, of the kind a realhelicopter might make. There was no possibility that a realhelicopter could have been launched from the deck of the Kite—but there wasa possibility that the big machine was in pursuit of the little ones rather than complementing their mission. All was confusion, and confusion heaped upon confusion—and Damon had not the slightest idea what he ought to do next. He only knew that he had to make up his mind very quickly.

Under more relaxed circumstances, Damon might have been able to take advantage of Rajuder Singh’s obvious distress. He felt that if he were to demand answers to his questions under the threat of further violence, he would probably get them. The thin man’s eyes were flickering wildly from side to side, as if he expected to be shot at any moment—but there was no time for questions. Damon had to make his move, and there were only two ways to go: inside or outside.