“Damon’s back,” Harriet replied, raising her white eyebrows a fraction, as if she had only just realized that he didn’t know. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to her that a young man on the run couldn’t keep his fingers on the pulse of things quite as easily as an old lady in hiding.

“Since when?” Madoc asked.

“Since this morning. That tap I put into Ahasuerus told me—not that they were trying to keep it a secret. As soon as Trehaine found out that it was Damon she’d been sent out to find she called Interpol. Catherine Praill was with him. She’s probably irrelevant, but the people who took Damon clearly wanted him back in play as soon as possible. That’s why I’m fairly sure they won’t hurt him. It’s possible that he now knows far more than I do. Interpol will have him under a microscope, of course—it won’t be easy for you to get to him without being picked up.”

“I’ve got to get the tape to him,” Madoc said, “and anything else you can give me. Who’s doing this, Harriet? Who’s jerking us all around?”

Harriet shrugged her narrow shoulders. “PicoCon,” she said flatly. “OmicronA might be in it too, but PicoCon’s board likes to keep these little adventures in-house. It’s a matter of style. What I can’t figure out is what they’re so annoyedabout and why they’re tackling it in such a roundabout way. Compared with their irresistible juggernaut, Eveline Hywood’s organization is a mere ant, which could be crushed underfoot on a whim. Ahasuerus might be a flea, but it’s a flea that’s already in their pocket, moneywise. This can’t be everyday commercial competition, and it must be something that they find interesting, or they’d just stamp on it—but if it isn’t about money . . ..” She left the sentence unfinished.

“PicoCon,” Madoc repeated wonderingly. “ PicoConkidnapped Silas Arnett and tried to frame Conrad Helier for causing the Crash? PicoConblew up Kachellek’s boat, torched Surinder Nahal’s body, and strewed forged tapes and Eliminator bulletins all over the Net?”

“They’re also handily placed for pushing messages under people’s doors hereabouts—but for what it’s worth, I don’t think PicoCon did allof that. They just started the ball rolling. This business with the burned body and the VE pak is a counter-punch. I think Hywood’s people did that—and I think they rigged the second confession too. They were supposed to roll over and beg for mercy, but they fought back instead. You have to admire them for it, but it might be unwise. Just because PicoCon used gentler methods first time around it doesn’t mean that they won’t use brute force to settle the matter. That’s why I’m worried about you. If Kachellek really was blown up, you might be next on the list.”

“I can’t believe that cosmicorps play games like this,” Madoc said wonderingly. “PicoCon least of all—they’ve got more than enough real work to occupy them.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Harriet told him drily. “You could say that there’s a point at which any successful corporation becomes so big and so powerful that the profits take care of themselves, leaving the strategists with nothing to do butplay games. Serious games, but games nevertheless. Attacking Conrad Helier’s memory seems a trifle unsporting, though—terrible ingratitude.”

“Ingratitude? Why? Helier’s team was always strictly biotech, as far as I can work out. I thought PicoCon’s fortune was based on inorganic nanotech. What did he ever do for them?”

“He gave them the world on a plate. PicoCon may be the engine churning out the best set pieces nowadays, but the New Reproductive System stabilized the board for them. The Crash put a belated end to unpoliced population growth, but Helier’s artificial wombs made certain that the bad old days would never come back again. If Helier hadn’t got the new apparatus up and running in time to become the new status quo, some clown would have engineered a set of transformer viruses to refertilize every woman under the age of sixty-five and we’d have been back to square one. You probably think the Second Plague War was a nasty affair, but that’s because you read about it in the kind of history books which only tell you what happened and skip lightly over all the might-have-beens. If it hadn’t been for Conrad Helier, you’d probably have had to live through the thirdround of the Not-Quite-Emortal Rich versus the Ever-Desperate Poor—and PicoCon would have spent the last half-century pumping out molecular missiles and pinpoint bombs instead of taking giant strides up the escalator to trueemortality.”

Madoc had to think about this for a minute or two, but he soon saw the logic of the case. New technologies of longevity were an unqualified boon in an era in which population had ceased to grow, even though access to them was determined by wealth. In a world whose poorer people were still producing children in vast numbers, those same technologies would inevitably have become bones of fierce contention, catalysts of allout war.

“You don’t suppose,” he mused, “that Hywood and Kachellek might have done just that—engineered a set of viruses to refertilize the female population?”

“No, I don’t,” said Harriet. “Even if they were silly enough to work on the problem, they’d have the sense to bury their results. Anyway, the world now has the advantage of starting from a position of relative sanity instead of rampant insanity—if some such technology did come along I think ninety-nine women in every hundred would have the sense to say no. It would be interesting to know what Hywood and Kachellek havedone—but it might be safer not to try to find out. As I said before, if they really did blow Kachellek’s boat to smithereens with him in it. . . .”

“If?” Madoc queried.

“It really is a game, Madoc. Bluff and counterbluff, lie and counterlie. The one thing of which we can be certain is that nothing is what it seems to be—not just on the surface but way down through the layers. PicoCon is making a big issue out of the possibility that Conrad Helier is only playingdead. Maybe Kachellek’s playing dead too. Maybe Surinder Nahal is only playing dead.”

“If that burned body really was his,” Madoc murmured, “he was putting on a very convincing act.”

“That might be the whole point of the exercise. Do you want me to get a message to Damon for you?”

“Can you do that? Without the cops knowing, I mean.”

“I think so—but you can’t bring him here. I’ve used up so much borrowed time that I’ll be dying way beyond my means whenever I go, but I still like to be careful. It’s a matter of professional pride. You’ll have to figure out a safe place—and he’ll have to figure out how to get there without dragging Interpol in his wake. I’ll set it up for you—but if you want my advice, you’ll tell him to put the rest of his money back in the bank and call it quits, so that you can start playing Three Wise Monkeys. We’re out of our league here. Nobody can fight PicoCon and win.”

If you never play out of your league, Madoc thought, you never get promoted. All he said aloud, though, was: “Okay—I need to get a meeting set up as soon as possible. Damon will want the tape, and everything else I’ve got, whether he intends to fight or not.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Harriet advised him soberly. “Things have moved fast—he might not be in the same frame of mind as he was when he sent you off on this wild goose chase. Now that he’s had his little holiday, he might want to play Three Wise Monkeys too, and he might be prepared to cut you adrift and leave you to PicoCon’s tender mercies—or to the LAPD’s.”

Her concern seemed genuine, but Madoc couldn’t imagine that he needed it. You might know PicoCon, Old Lady, he thought, but you don’t know Damon. He’d never change sides on me. Madoc was as certain of that as he needed to be—and even if he hadn’t been, what choice did he have?