Architects of Emortality Part 3

"He'll be under close surveillance whether you're with him or not-but if you want to go, you can. I don't need you here. If Lowenthal chooses to go with you instead of sticking with me, it's his choice." Charlotte had no difficulty at all in deducing that Hal would far rather Lowenthal went with her, especially if she led him off on a wild-goose chase for which she had taken sole responsibility. The simple fact was, however, that Hal didn't need her here. Modern police work involved packs of a.s.siduous silver surfers checking objective data, carefully attempting to sort the relevant from the irrelevant, and the real information from misinformation and disinformation.

Talking to people, even on the phone, was a "real-time activity," generally considered by most seasoned policemen to be a terrible imposition and a woefully uneconomic use of precious hours-and if she remained here, talking to people on the phone was exactly what she would be doing.

"I'll go with Wilde," she said. "It's okay-I'll take the blame if it turns out to be a stupid move. I'll just have to hope that Lowenthal will one day find it in his heart to forgive me." Hal smiled, and his eyes expressed wry grat.i.tude-but what he said aloud, for the sake of listening ears, was: "If you think it's necessary." Charlotte collected Oscar Wilde and Michael Lowenthal from her office and brought them into Hal's workplace. The s.p.a.ce was overcrowded with screens and comcons, and there were trails of printout hanging down like creepers from every shelf and desktop-Hal had an absurdly anachronistic and altogether unreasonable fondness for paper-but there were enough workstations for both of them to sit down in reasonable comfort.

"Oscar Wilde, Michael Lowenthal-Hal Watson," she said with awkward formality.

Hal got up to shake hands with both of them, but he took Lowenthal's hand first.

He met the Natural's eyes with an expression of pure professional concern and muttered something about always being appreciative of extra professional help.

Charlotte observed that he was careful to put that particular mask away before greeting Wilde.

"Charlotte tells me that your unique insight into the motives and methods of the man behind Rappaccini Inc. might be of considerable help in the investigation, Dr. Wilde," said Hal, implying by his indifferent tone that he shared his a.s.sistant's skepticism regarding Wilde's usefulness as an amateur detective.

"Call me Oscar," said Wilde smoothly. "I certainly hope so. There are, I think, times when instant recognition and artistic sensitivity might facilitate more rapid deduction than the most powerful a.n.a.lytical engines. I'm a naive invader in your territory, of course-and I confess, as I contemplate this awesome battery of electronic weaponry, that I feel like one of those mortals of old who fell asleep on a burial mound and woke to find himself in the gloomy land of the fairy folk-but I really do feel that I can help you. I have some time in hand before the midnight maglev leaves, if there's anything you'd like to tell me by way of background." "As I say, I'm always grateful for any help I can get," said Hal, still feigning casual indifference. "You're welcome to listen in while I fill Mr. Lowenthal in on some relevant details, provided that he has no objection." "None," said Lowenthal. "I agree that Dr. Wilde's special insights might be valuable. I'm keen to hear what he thinks." Charlotte was glad, but not surprised, to observe that her colleague seemed equally unimpressed by Oscar Wilde's recently renewed handsomeness and Michael Lowenthal's authentically youthful beauty. Hal, whose machine-a.s.sisted perceptions ground up all the richness and complexity of the social world into mere atoms of data, had not the same idea of beauty as common men. In a Webwalker's eyes, the cataract of encoded data which poured through his screens and VE hoods was the only reality. Hal never thought of himself as a man watching a shadow play; he found his aesthetic delights in patterns woven out of information or enigmas smoothed into comprehension, not in the hard and soft sculptures of stone and flesh.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the unshadowy world of hard and superabundant data had yet to be persuaded to explain how it had produced the eccentric masterpiece of mere appearances which was the murder of Gabriel King.

"I'm afraid that the man behind Rappaccini Inc. is proving rather evasive," Hal told his visitors offhandedly, while his eyes continued to scan his screens.

"His business dealings are fairly elaborate, but he's been effectively invisible for a long time. Jafri Biasiolo still holds a flag-of-convenience citizens.h.i.+p in the Kalahari Republic, but he has no recorded residency. There's no record of his death, but he seems to have faded out of fleshy existence by degrees. The currently listed telephonic addresses of his pseudonym are black boxes, and all his financial transactions are conducted by silver-level computer-synthesized simulacra; the implication is that Biasiolo has constructed an entirely new ident.i.ty under a different name. That's not so very unusual these days, of course, especially among those older people whose reflexive response to increasing intensity of observation is to devise ever more elaborate means of hiding. Most of the macabre stories about people dying and n.o.body finding out for years because their sims keep up a ghostly dialogue with the world are exaggerated, but a man who seriously wants to vanish behind a smoke screen of electronic appearances can produce some very dense smoke. Any who then decide to recreate themselves as someone else can just as easily manufacture a new electronic ident.i.ty. My surfers will winkle out the truth about Rappaccini eventually, but it all takes time, and time is the great enemy." "Timing is the essence of any psychodrama," said Oscar Wilde. Michael Lowenthal gave no overt indication that he or his employers felt any particular sense of urgency, but Charlotte knew that he would not be here if they did not.

"The story so far is that Jafri Biasiolo first became manifest as Rappaccini in 2380," Hal continued evenly. "That's when he registered as a member with the Inst.i.tute of Genetic Art in Sydney. He partic.i.p.ated in a number of public exhibitions, including the Great Exhibition of 2405, sometimes putting in personal appearances. Unlike other genetic engineers specializing in flowering plants, Rappaccini never got involved in designing gardens or in the kind of interior decoration that is Dr. Wilde's chief source of income. He appears to have specialized almost exclusively in the design of funeral wreaths, although his unusual patterns of expenditure suggest that he may have been involved in other business activities under other names." "What unusual patterns of expenditure?" Lowenthal wanted to know.

"He was a heavy investor in encephalic augmentation research. So was Gabriel King, it seems." It took Charlotte a second or two to realize that "encephalic augmentation" was the polite term for brain-feed technology. "But that's illegal!" she blurted out, knowing as soon as the words had pa.s.sed her lips that it was a stupid thing to say. Attempts to augment the capabilities of the brain by stimulating the growth of extra neurons which could then be hooked up via synthetic synapses to inorganic electronic equipment were currently hedged around by all manner of legal restrictions, as human genetic engineering had been in the days that Oscar Wilde still remembered less than fondly-but those laws were mostly of recent origin. Gabriel King and Jafri Biasiolo were very old men.

"There's still scope for legitimate inquiry," was all that Hal said in reply.

Charlotte frowned, realizing that he was being deliberately terse. Obviously, this was a link he was still chasing hard. Lowenthal's lovely face was impa.s.sive, but Charlotte wasn't convinced that he thought the detail insignificant.

"Rappaccini Inc.'s flowers have always been grown under contract by middlemen," Hal continued, evidently more than willing to share this aspect of his inquiry.

"Insofar as the corporation can be said to have a home base, it's located in Australia, in a sector of what used to be called the outback that was re-irrigated for conventional use in the days before the advent of Solid Artificial Photosynthesis. We're checking the routes by which seeds used to be delivered to the growing areas, trying to backtrack them to the laboratories of origin. Unfortunately, it seems that Rappaccini Inc. hasn't put anything really new onto the market in forty years, even though the increasing ostentation of funerals has boosted its profits enormously. Nor has Jafri Biasiolo appeared in public during that time. He still has bank accounts drawing royalty credit from the corporation, but n.o.body within the organization has had any personal contact with him since 2430. It's probable that he's been using at least one other name for at least the last sixty-five years-possibly more than one.

"By virtue of his flag-of-convenience citizens.h.i.+p, Biasiolo avoided inclusion in most official records, but there is a DNA print allegedly taken immediately after birth. It doesn't match any other print registered to any living person, but he evidently made a thorough job of building a new ident.i.ty; the print attached to his current name is probably fake. Rappaccini continued to maintain a telephone persona until 2460 or thereabouts, but the sim involved was an elementary sloth. I can't tell whether it was taken off-line or simply broke down. There aren't many programs like that still functioning." "Walter Czastka has one," Charlotte put in.

"The only surprise in that instance," Oscar Wilde adjudged, "is that Walter is still functioning." "Given that he still hasn't returned my call," Charlotte observed, "he might not be." "Have you turned up anything which might suggest a possible motive for King's murder?" asked Lowenthal, who presumably suspected-as Charlotte did-that Hal's concentration on the mystery of Rappaccini's new ident.i.ty might be something of a red herring screening the real substance of his investigation.

"We're delving into King's background, of course," Hal a.s.sured him. "If there's a motive in his financial affairs, we'll find it. We're examining every conversation he's had since coming to New York, and we're examining all activity in opposition to his demolition work. The truly remarkable thing about the murder is, however, the method. If we can understand that, we might be in a better position to understand the motive. Like Sergeant Holmes, I'm disappointed that Walter Czastka hasn't returned our call. If he were to confirm Dr. Wilde's judgment that the flowers were designed by Rappaccini..." "He won't," said Oscar Wilde airily.

"Why not?" asked Charlotte.

"Because the judgment required a sense of style," Wilde said. "Walter has none.

He never had." "According to our database," Hal observed, "he's the top man in the field of flower design-or was, until he retired to his private island to play the Creationist." "Databases are incapable of forming opinions," Wilde stated firmly. "The figures presumably show that Walter has made more money than anyone else out of engineered flowers. That is not at all the same thing as being the best designer. Walter was always a ma.s.s-producer, not an artist. Ancient Nature provided all his models, and such amendments as he made to the stocks extracted from the arks were mere tinkering. I'm afraid that you will be unable to find anyone capable of rea.s.suring you that my identification of Rappaccini as the designer of Gabriel's executioner was not a self-protective lie. The only man I ever knew with sufficient sense of style to be capable of offering an informed opinion is, I fear, Rappaccini himself." He might have said more but was interrupted by a quiet beep from one of Hal's comcons. A silver was reporting news that required Hal's immediate attention.

The conversation lapsed while the Webwalker's fingers raced back and forth across the relevant keyboard for a few seconds. The pregnant silence persisted while Hal stared thoughtfully at a screen half-hidden from Charlotte's view.

Lowenthal had turned back to Wilde, but his expression did not seem to be redolent with suspicion; Charlotte hoped that her own was equally opaque.

After half a minute or so, Hal said: "You might be interested to see this, Dr.

Wilde." He pointed to the biggest of his display screens, which was mounted high on the wall directly in front of them. His fingers danced from one keyboard to another, and then another.

A picture appeared on the left of the screen, covering about a third of the display area. It showed a tall man with silver hair, a dark beard trimmed into a goatee, and a prominent nose.

"Jafri Biasiolo, alias Rappaccini, in 2381," Hal said.

He pressed more keys, and another image appeared in the center of the screen.

This one showed two men side by side, apparently posing for the camera. One of them was clearly the same man whose image was on the left of the screen.

"Isn't that...?" Charlotte began as she recognized the other.

"I fear that it is," said Wilde regretfully. "I looked a lot older then, of course. The photograph was taken in 2405,1 believe, at the Sydney exhibition." "It was 2405," agreed Hal. At the command of his fingers a third picture appeared, again showing Biasiolo alone. This time, Charlotte realized why Hal had taken the trouble to display them.

"This is 2430," Hal said. "Rappaccini's last personal appearance in the corridors of his own organization." There was hardly any difference between the three images of Jafri Biasiolo. The man had evidently not undergone a full rejuvenation between 2381 and 2430, although he must surely have employed conventional methods of light cosmetic reconstruction to maintain the appearance of dignified middle age.

"If he really was born in 2323 he seems to have delayed rejuvenation far longer than was usual," said Lowenthal pensively.

"He must have had a comprehensive rejuve very soon after the last picture was taken," Hal agreed. "He probably came out with a very different appearance as well as a new name-but now we know the approximate date, I can set a silver to trawl all the records." "On the other hand," Lowenthal suggested, "he could have used purely cosmetic somatic engineering to appear older than he actually was in 2381." "If he was actually born considerably later than 2323 he might have falsely a.s.sumed the ident.i.ty of Jafri Biasiolo," Hal conceded. "It's possible that he always maintained a second ident.i.ty alongside his manifestations as Rappaccini and merely reverted in 2430 to being the person he's really been all along. It's a pity that picture-search programs are so unreliable-very messy data. That's why it's proving so difficult to track the woman who visited Gabriel King's apartment. There are plenty of cameras on those streets, and the silvers which are interrogating them are state-of-the-art, but a little old-fas.h.i.+oned paint and powder and a wig can cause a great deal of confusion when half the people on the street have modified themselves to fit a currently fas.h.i.+onable ideal. We're checking all the pa.s.sengers who took the maglev to San Francisco during the twenty-four hours after she left the apartment, of course." There was another beep. Charlotte knew immediately, by virtue of the expression of relief that formed on Hal's face, that it was Regina Chai's forensic report.

Hal immediately began printing out a gentemplate, presumably that of the flowers which had consumed Gabriel King's flesh, but he didn't watch its emergence from the printer's mouth. His fingers were dancing with what seemed to Charlotte to be impossible rapidity, and he was watching a virtual display whose detail she could not make out at all.

"We've got a good DNA print of the woman from the bedsheet detritus," he said eventually, sounding far less enthusiastic than he should have. "Unfortunately, we can't get a match with the print of any living person. Ordinarily, that would imply that she must be much older than she seems-" "But in this case," said Oscar Wilde, "it might mean that I was wrong to suggest that it would be impossible to raise a child in absolute seclusion in today's world." "What do you mean by ordinarily?" Charlotte asked Hal, judging from his expression that he had not even considered Wilde's caveat.

Hal glanced at Michael Lowenthal before replying. "Regina says that the woman's DNA trace also shows evidence of some rather idiosyncratic somatic engineering.

It's possible that the tissues which left the traces on King's bedsheets have been deliberately modified to obscure the print-to make sure that it wouldn't match the woman's natal record. We're conducting a more detailed search for near matches, but I don't know how far we can narrow down the field of suspects, or how fast." Michael Lowenthal nodded, as if the bad news was not unexpected.

"Did you check the print against Rappaccini's?" asked Wilde.

"It's been very carefully checked against Biasiolo's, in toto and piece by piece," said Hal carefully. "The basic similarity index is only forty-one percent, but inspection of individual key sequences suggests that it might well have been fifty percent before the somatic modifications were made. If so, the woman could be Biasiolo's daughter, even though there's no official record of his ever having fathered, or even fostered, a child." Wilde nodded sagely, as if this datum confirmed every impression he had so far formed about the nature and twisted logic of the crime.

Hal handed Wilde the other gentemplate, which had now printed out in full with all its a.s.sociated annotations. "Your sense of style has taken you as far as it can, Dr. Wilde," he said. "It's time for some hard work now. We need your expert opinion as a genetic engineer-everything you can tell us about the nature of the plant and the level of biohazard it poses. Do you want a workstation here, or would you rather use a private cubbyhole?" "I'll need access to my own records," Wilde said in a thoroughly businesslike manner. "Any VE hood will do; I won't be distracted by conversation." "I think it's best if you're privacy-screened anyway," said Hal, for reasons which Charlotte was easily able to deduce. "If you'll come this way, I'll get you set up." Charlotte and Michael Lowenthal looked on as Hal guided the awkwardly oversized Wilde through an inconveniently narrow gap in his labyrinth. Charlotte knew that she ought to say something, if only for the sake of conversation, but she didn't know what, so she kept silent. Lowenthal didn't step in to fill the gap.

Charlotte made herself busy picking up streamers of printout from Hal's machines, scanning the data acc.u.mulated by his silvers. She couldn't help nurturing the frail hope that there might be something there which Hal had considered too trivial to mention but which might in the fullness of time prove to be the nub of the case. She looked for a streamer holding data relating to Oscar Wilde, but none came readily to hand. She did, however, pick up a stray sheet which contained cross-correlated data on Gabriel King and Michael Lowenthal-and instantly lowered her head lest her expression attract the interest of her companion.

The page revealed that Lowenthal and King had been simultaneously involved-along with dozens of others-in a series of Web conferences relating to the plans for New York's reconstruction. Lowenthal had been present in the capacity of an observer, allegedly reporting to the boards of eight different corporations.

Five of the names were unfamiliar to Charlotte, but that was irrelevant; the fact that Lowenthal was reporting to all eight implied that they were mere parts of a greater whole: the huge cartel which was the engine of the world economy.

The industrial/entertainment complex which most people nowadays referred to as the MegaMall was a constant preserice in Charlotte's life, as it was in everyone's, but it had always been a background, un.o.btrusive precisely because it was so all-pervasive. She had learned in school, if not actually at the manifold knees of her foster mothers, that the MegaMall was a private corporation, and that effective owners.h.i.+p of the world's entire means of production had long rested in the hands of a few hundred individuals, but the thought had never crossed her mind that one day she might actually meet a flesh-and-blood individual who belonged-however peripherally or provisionally-to that intimate inner circle. Nor had it occurred to her that the MegaMall's administrators, whether reckoned as the Hardinist Cabal or any of the ironic alternatives that Hal had proffered, must already have set plans in place to hand over their empire to a favored few of the New Human Race. Now, though, she tried to force her attention away from the infuriating Oscar Wilde in order to focus her thoughts on the quieter of her new companions, and the question of exactly what his interest in this puzzling affair might be.

She had just made up her mind to ask Lowenthal directly when Hal returned-at which point Lowenthal made his own belated bid for the center-stage position.

"Is there any sign of a Decivilizationist connection?" he asked bluntly.

"Not that I can see, as yet," Hal told him. "Do your own investigators have any particular reason to think that there might be?" "No, but we're anxious about the possibility. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to make this murder newsworthy-such gaudy display is an obvious bid for attention. Wilde may well be right to see it as some kind of theatrical performance." "I can understand that your employers might be jealous of their monopoly on the art of window dressing," Hal said mildly, "but I can't quite see the prophets of Decivilization as serious rivals." "Don't mistake my meaning, Inspector Watson," Lowenthal said with equal mildness. "My employers approve of the Decivilization movement. Stability Without Stagnation has always been their motto. They approve wholeheartedly of change, novelty, fas.h.i.+on, and eccentricity. They even approve of social movements opposed to their own ideals, whose leaders disapprove of their very existence. An element of challenge is a healthy thing in a society, always provided that it doesn't get out of hand. It's a thin line that separates challenge from conflict, reform from revolution-and there are a good many people here in New York who wonder whether the Decivilization movement might have been granted too many concessions." "None of the movement's spokesmen has ever criticized the inst.i.tution of owners.h.i.+p or the logic of Global Hardinism," Hal pointed out. "Their attacks on the idea of civilization have always been narrowly focused on the supposedly stultifying effects of city life and city landscapes. They're essentially a bunch of aesthetes, not too different in kind from the flamboyant Dr. Wilde. If they did have anything to do with the murder of Gabriel King, they're more likely to have done it because he was a crude utilitarian than because he was an accessory to the supposed tyranny of the MegaMall. If you have any evidence that the Decivilization movement is fostering a revival of the Eliminators, or the Robot a.s.sa.s.sins, I'd very much like to see it-but if not, I think you might be wasting your time chasing that particular hare." "Not if that plant's as dangerous as your Dr. Chai thinks it might be," Lowenthal countered. "That could be a powerful agent of Decivilization." "Dr. Chai's paid to be supremely cautious," Hal retorted. "We'll know more when we get Wilde's report, but my guess is that there's no danger of an epidemic. If the people who designed and deployed it wanted to start a new plague war, they would have gone about the work in a very different way." "And if they only wanted to threaten to start a new plague war?" Lowenthal asked.

Hal laughed. "I thought that the MegaMall never gave in to blackmail," he said.

"According to history, it never has-but I suppose history would say that, given that it's just as much a MegaMall product as Solid Artificial Photosynthesis." Charlotte was surprised by the provocatively naked cynicism of the comment, although she had heard Hal express similarly skeptical opinions before, when he had occasion to despair of the quality of old data. If the Web's vast tree of knowledge really was infested with disinformation, it was more likely to have been placed there by its owners than its detractors. She realized that Hal must be more resentful of Lowenthal's intrusion than she had supposed.

"No one sensible ever gives in to blackmail," Lowenthal replied lightly.

"Capitulation gives out the wrong signals. It's difficult enough coping with hobbyist vandals and software saboteurs without fostering the illusion that there's profit in malevolence. I don't suppose, by any chance, that your industrious silvers have turned up any connection between Rappaccini Inc. and any eccentric political organizations?" "Not unless the organizations sponsoring encephalic augmentation count as political," said Hal. "Have yours?" Lowenthal merely smiled at that, as if to say that if they had, he wouldn't have bothered to ask.

Charlotte didn't imagine for a moment that she understood all the implications of Lowenthal's involvement in the investigation, but she was beginning to see some of them.

Perhaps it was the fact that politically motivated murders had become so very rare since the demise of the Robot a.s.sa.s.sins that was causing the Natural's employers to examine the possibility so carefully. If King's murder turned out to be merely personal, there was no need for the MegaMall to be concerned about it, but if it was not-and now she came to think about it, Gabriel King might be exactly the kind of person that the ancient Eliminators might have regarded as "unworthy of immortality"-then the killing might be an early warning of far worse to come. The Decivilization movement's front men were harmless enough, but every such movement had its lunatic fringe-and the encouragement that had been given to the movement's official agenda might well have enthused those with more radical ideas.

The biohazard aspect of the case was especially worrying, if it was indeed the opening shot of some kind of campaign. The apparent use of an untraceable a.s.sa.s.sin, whose DNA print could not be matched to that of any living person, also seemed ominous. If someone else was already dead in San Francisco, awaiting discovery by Oscar Wilde, this affair was likely to escalate-and whether Rex Carnevon tipped anyone the wink or not, the newscasters would catch hold of it soon enough. If the a.s.sa.s.sin had gone to San Francisco immediately after killing King, she might already have left, continuing westward. If any more bodies were to turn up, she might soon qualify as a terrorist.

"I think we should send someone out to Walter Czastka's island," she said, on a sudden impulse. "I'm worried about the fact that he never returned my call." Hal turned to look at her. "Old men are often fiercely jealous of their privacy," he said. "Creationists especially. Designing an entire self-enclosed ecosystem is an intricate business, and they're all desperately secretive about it because they all feel that they're involved in a compet.i.tion. Every islet in those parts, natural or engineered, has been taken over by some semiretired engineer avid to turn it into his own little Garden of Eden. It's a large-scale replay of the run-up to the Great Exhibition, when every genetic engineer in the world was paranoid about his best ideas being stolen. Anyway, it's only been a matter of hours, and it's still daylight in the Pacific. If Czastka hasn't checked in by midnight, our time, I'll ask the Hawaiian police to send out a drone." Hal and Lowenthal turned again as Oscar Wilde reappeared, carefully maneuvering his ma.s.sive frame through the narrow gap into which Hal had dispatched him. Hal frowned, obviously having expected his deliberations to take a lot longer.

"You can't possibly have finished," Hal said.

"Indeed not," said Wilde. "But I have temporarily abandoned the detailed work to a trusted silver, who will report in due course on the precise capabilities of the murderous organism. In the meantime, given that it's nearly nine o'clock, and that rejuvenation always sharpens my appet.i.te, I wonder if I might give you my preliminary observations over dinner? I presume that even policemen have to eat." He didn't seem entirely certain of this conclusion; his inquiring expression implied that he might be wondering whether there were some kind of intravenous feeding mechanisms concealed in the back of Hal's chair.

"There's a restaurant upstairs," said Charlotte. "We can eat there." Oscar looked at her, raising his eyebrow just a fraction.

"Upstairs?" he queried. "I had thought of the Carnegie, or perhaps Gautier's.

Quail en croute was my first inspiration, but if..." "The restaurant here is as good as any in the city," she a.s.sured him. "We have a first-rate synthesization service, and there's an excellent dining room." "I can't leave my workstation," Hal said, "but if you leave a phone link open so that I can ask questions..." "Of course," said Wilde. "Will you join us, Mr. Lowenthal?" "Certainly," said the man from the MegaMall.

"Excellent. I should rea.s.sure you immediately, of course, that there is absolutely no need to panic regarding the possibility of a random outbreak of homicidal flowers-less need, in fact, than even I had feared. This particular weapon will never be used again, because it was designed expressly to consume the flesh of Gabriel King. It is what the parlance of the old plague wars called a smart agent-far smarter, in fact, than any agent then devised. It may well qualify as the most narrowly targeted weapon in history." Hal and Lowenthal absorbed this information silently. Even Charlotte knew enough about genetics to be astonished by it.

"Perhaps I ought also to say," Oscar went on, "that although I remain absolutely convinced that the plant's designer was Rappaccini, it appears to have been derived from a natural template that Rappaccini has never actually used-a temporarily extinct species that was recovered from a twenty-first-century seed bank by another person, and which has so far been developed for the marketplace exclusively by that person." "Which person?" Hal asked-although Charlotte presumed that he must already have guessed.

"Me," said Oscar Wilde. "Although the finished product bears little enough resemblance to its model, the gentemplate makes it clear that the original was a globoid amaranth of the genus Celosia-once popularly known, my research a.s.sures me, as the c.o.c.ks...o...b.. That is as far as facts can take us. If I am to make more of the information I have gleaned, I shall have to make use of intuition-and I intuit far more effectively on a full stomach. There is nothing like good food and a bottle of fine wine to liberate the power of the imagination." Hal Watson would undoubtedly have protested that what was required of an expert witness was scrupulous attention to fact rather than indulgence of the imagination, but he was distracted by two beeping sounds, which immediately entered into compet.i.tion for his attention. While he tried to deal with both of them, a third commenced its siren song, and he was forced to begin juggling all three data streams.

"Go," he said. "I'll be listening." "It's good to know," Wilde observed as Charlotte led her two companions toward yet another elevator, "that there are so many silvery recording angels sorting religiously through the mult.i.tudinous sins of mankind. Alas, I fear that the capacity of our fellow men for committing sins may still outstrip their best endeavors." "Actually," Charlotte observed as she pressed the b.u.t.ton to summon the car, "the crime rate is still going down-as it always has while the number of spy eyes and bubblebugs embedded in the walls of the world has increased." "I spoke of sins, not crimes," said Wilde as they moved into the empty car.

"What your electronic eyes do not see, the law may not grieve about, but the capacity for sin will lurk in the hearts and minds of men long after its expression has been banished from their public actions." "People can do whatever they like in the privacy of their virtual environments," Charlotte retorted. "There's no sin in that. The point is that what lurks in the darker corners of their hearts and minds shouldn't-and mostly doesn't-affect the way they conduct themselves in the real world." "If there were no sin in our adventures in imagination," Wilde said, evidently reluctant to surrender the last word even in the most trivial of arguments, "there would be no enjoyment in them. While we are as vicious at heart as we have ever been, and are encouraged to remain so by the precious freedom of virtual reality, we cannot be entirely virtuous even in the real world. The ever-presence of potential observers will, of course, make us exceedingly careful-but in the end, that will only serve to make all murders as intricate and ingenious as the one we are investigating. If you do not understand that, my dear Charlotte, I fear that you will not be comfortable in your chosen career." Charlotte tried hard not to be infuriated by his condescension, but it wasn't easy. It wouldn't have been easy even if she hadn't formed the impression that Michael Lowenthal was amused by her distress. She wondered whether it might be natural that so-called Naturals would find amus.e.m.e.nt in the petty quarrels of mere mortals.

As they left the car two uniformed officers got in, one of them a sergeant in whose company Charlotte had gone through basic training.

"Any progress, Charlotte?" the sergeant asked, his inquisitive gaze sliding sideways to examine her two companions.

"Not yet, Mike," Charlotte said as breezily as she could, "but all the bloodhounds are out." "Newshounds too," Mike murmured. "They don't know the details yet, but King's big enough to make them chase hard. Watch out for hoverflies." Charlotte nodded, glad that she had been adamant that they ought to eat within the building. Even police headquarters couldn't be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure, but eating in any public restaurant would have been tantamount to hiring a loudhailer.

Once they were seated, Oscar Wilde decided that what his appet.i.te demanded was toumedos bearnaise with saute potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. He informed Lowenthal, while Charlotte was busy acknowledging other greetings from sympathetic colleagues, that he had had an unusually taxing day for one so recently restored to youth, and that the solidity of beef would serve his needs better than the delicacies of quail. He decided on a bottle of Saint Emilion to go with it-the occasion, he declared, cried out for a full-bodied wine.

Lowenthal agreed to take the same dish and share the wine, but Charlotte punched out an individual order for tuna steak and salad, with water to drink.

The police restaurant's food technology was, of course, easily adequate to the task of meeting Wilde's requirements. Its beef was grown by a celebrated local tissue culture which had long rejoiced in the pet name of Baltimore Bess: a veritable mountain of muscle which was fiercely guarded by traditionalists from the strong compet.i.tion offered by SAP-derived "meat." The Saint Emilion was wholly authentic, although the Bordeaux region and its immediate neighbors had been replanted from gene banks as recently as 2330, when connoisseurs had decided that the native rootstocks had suffered too much deterioration in the tachytelic phase of ecospheric deterioration which had followed the environmental degradations of the Crash.

The dispenser delivered fresh bread, still warm from the oven, and a selection of hors d'oeuvres. Charlotte took some bread but left the rest to her companions; she had never liked excessively complicated food.

Hal had been silent while they made their way to the restaurant, but as soon as Charlotte had opened a link from the table's screen he took up the theme of Wilde's observations about the murder weapon. "According to my records," he said, "no one but you has ever withdrawn specimens of this particular globoid amaranth from the bank-which implies that you must have supplied the stocks from which the weapon was developed." "Supplied seems a trifle exaggerated," Wilde objected. "My amaranths have been on open sale for decades. Tens of thousands of people have fertile specimens growing in their walls and gardens." "I wasn't implying that you intended to supply the raw material for a murder weapon," Hal said disingenuously. "I've set one of my silvers to collaborate with one of yours in sorting through your records. I'd be obliged if you'd keep track of them, just in case some idiosyncratic modification of yours can be traced through a particular customer to the murder weapon." "I'll do that," Wilde promised, although his tone suggested that he didn't expect a result. Hal nodded, and his face disappeared from the screen.

"a.s.suming that it would be relatively easy, once the basic pattern was in place, to modify this kind of smart weapon for other targets," Michael Lowenthal put in pensively, "I a.s.sume that it would also be relatively easy to plant individually targeted b.o.o.by traps in gardens and hotel rooms all over the world." Charlotte inferred that he was still pondering the possibility that King's murder was just a warning shot, and that the murderer's next target might be closer to the Inner Circle.

"It's an intriguing possibility," Wilde agreed, "although the involvement of Rappaccini suggests that b.o.o.by-trapped funeral wreaths might be more likely-as well as more artistic-than b.o.o.by-trapped gardens." Lowenthal didn't react to the reference to artistry, and Charlotte stifled her own objection. Wilde had hesitated, but he obviously had more to say.

"The idea of plants which take root in animal or human flesh, consuming living bodies as they grow, is very old," the geneticist went on, "but it's a trick that no natural species ever managed to pull off. There are fungi which grow in flesh, of course, but fungi are saprophytic by nature. Flowering plants are late products of the evolution of multicelled photosynthesizers. Legend and rumor have always alleged that they flourish with unaccustomed exuberance and luxury when planted in graveyards or watered with blood, but the motif is sustained by macabre notions of aesthetic propriety rather than by observation. The person who adapted my Celosia to develop in such a remarkable environment did so by a complex process of hybridization, much more elaborate than anything routinely attempted by specialist engineers. He has taken genes from nematode worms and cunningly grafted them onto the Celosia gentemplate. That's extremely difficult to do. We're all familiar with tired old jokes about genetic engineers crossing plants and animals to make fur coats grow on trees and produce flower heads with teeth, but in actuality those kinds of chimeras are almost impossible to generate.

"The artworks which Rappaccini showed at the Great Exhibition of 2405 were certainly bizarre, but they were not nearly as ambitious as this. If he really did take on a new ident.i.ty fifty or sixty years ago, he must also have taken on a new lease of intellectual and creative life. He has made inroads into realms of innovation in which no one else has dared to trespa.s.s. Michael is right to conclude that once the basic pattern was in place, targeting the weapon at a particular individual could be regarded as a secondary matter, but we should not lose sight of the fact that this plant was designed purely and simply for the purpose of murdering Gabriel King. Given the complexity of the modified Celosia, it seems almost certain to me that this plot-including the selection of its victim-must have been hatched at least half a century ago, and probably long before. My instinct also tells me that no matter how reluctant I may be to accept the fact, Rappaccini must be the actual murderer, not merely the supplier of the weapon. Its deliverer, I feel sure, is his daughter. I only wish that I could divine his motive." Wilde took a careful sip of wine after finis.h.i.+ng this speech, but his eyes were on his companions, waiting for a reaction. Before he obtained one, however, the dispensary signaled that their main courses were now ready.

The three diners disposed of the plates which they had so far been using and took delivery of larger ones. Charlotte's meal was accommodated easily enough, but Wilde and Lowenthal took their time dividing up their vegetables. While waiting for them to catch up, Charlotte studied their faces soberly, comparing their different styles of beauty. Even in an age of inexpensive off-the-peg glamour they were both striking, but Lowenthal's beauty was more conventional, more carefully respectful of the popular ideal. Lowenthal's face might well have benefited from the a.s.sistance of a first-rate somatic artist, but she felt sure that Wilde must have designed his own features before hiring an expert technician to execute his plan. It was rare to see such flamboyant femininity in the lines of a male face. Charlotte had to admit that it not only suited Wilde particularly well but also subjected her own appreciative sensations to a unique agitation.

Charlotte kept all the usual intimate technology at home, and her s.e.xual desires were nowadays mostly served within that context, but she had found that there was a certain frisson frisson which she could only gain from eye contact with actual human beings. She did not consider herself a slave to fas.h.i.+on and did not care at all whether real partners were in or out just now. She had not the slightest interest in joining an aggregate household, because she could not bear the thought of sacrificing all the joyous luxuries of solitude, so she was reasonably well accustomed to the tactics of forming occasional temporary liaisons. She could not help considering such a possibility while she bathed in the slight thrill of l.u.s.t awakened by Wilde's perfect features, even though she was more than half-convinced that he was a murderer whose present occupation was trying to make a fool of her. which she could only gain from eye contact with actual human beings. She did not consider herself a slave to fas.h.i.+on and did not care at all whether real partners were in or out just now. She had not the slightest interest in joining an aggregate household, because she could not bear the thought of sacrificing all the joyous luxuries of solitude, so she was reasonably well accustomed to the tactics of forming occasional temporary liaisons. She could not help considering such a possibility while she bathed in the slight thrill of l.u.s.t awakened by Wilde's perfect features, even though she was more than half-convinced that he was a murderer whose present occupation was trying to make a fool of her.

"Can you make, an antidote?" said Michael Lowenthal suddenly, as he finally finished spooning broccoli from the serving dish to his plate.

The question obviously s.h.i.+fted Wilde's train of thought onto a new track, and for a moment or two he looked puzzled. Then he said: "Oh, of course! You mean a generic antidote-one that could be used to protect anyone and everyone against the possibility of encountering an amaranth tailored to consume his own flesh.

Yes, Mr. Lowenthal, I could-and so could any halfway competent doctor now that we have the fundamental Celosia gentemplate. A problem would arise if another natural species had been used as a starting point for a similar weapon, but given the complexity of the project that seems unlikely. One would, of course, have to be able to identify the individuals who might require such protection, unless one were to administer the antidote to the whole population." Not if you were only concerned with defending a small minority, Charlotte thought. As long as the Knights of the Round Table could be protected, and the G.o.ds made safe in their Olympian retreat, the rest of us could take our own risks. She knew as she formed the thought, however, that the judgment was unfair. What the proprietors of the MegaMall would actually be enthusiastic to do would be to put the antidote on the market as soon as their faithful newscasters had wound public alarm up to its highest pitch. She even found time to wonder whether it was conceivable that the MegaMall might commission the murder of a high-profile target in order to stimulate the market for a product that might otherwise seem unnecessarily expensive-but she dismissed the idea as a monstrous absurdity.

"You met the man who posed as Rappaccini more than once," Charlotte said, trying to return her wandering mind to more fruitful areas of conjecture. "Did he seem to you then to be a madman-a potential murderer?" "I must confess that I rather liked him," Wilde replied. "He had an admirable hauteur, as if he considered himself a more profound person than most of the exhibitors at the Great Exhibition, but he did not strike me as a violent or vengeful person. I dined with him several times, usually in the presence of others, and I found him to be a man of civilized taste and conversation. He appeared to like me, and we shared a taste for antiquity-particularly the nineteenth century, to which we were both linked by our names. Memory is such a feeble instrument that I really cannot remember in any detail what we discussed, but I may have some recordings in my private archives. It would be interesting, would it not, to know whether we talked about nineteenth-century literature in general, and Baudelaire in particular?" "We'll need access to those archives," said Charlotte.

"You are more than welcome," Wilde a.s.sured her. "I'm sure that you'll find them absolutely fascinating." "A silver would do the actual scanning, of course," she added, blus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment over the reflex that had caused her to state the obvious.

"How sad," Wilde replied teasingly. "Artificial intelligence is admirable in so many ways, but even its so-called geniuses have never quite mastered the sense of humor, let alone a sense of style. A human eye would find so much more to appreciate in the record of my life." "Do you remember anything useful?" Charlotte asked, her voice suddenly sharp with resentment of the fact that he was making fun of her. "Anything at all which might help us to,identify the parallel existence which Biasiolo must have maintained alongside his life as Rappaccini, and into which he subsequently s.h.i.+fted." "Not yet," Wilde replied, taking another appreciative sip of the Saint Emilion.

"I am trying, but it was a long time ago, and our memories were not shaped by evolution to sustain themselves over a life span of a hundred and thirty years.

I have preserved my mental capacity far better than some of my peers-but not, it seems, as well as Rappaccini." Charlotte's beltphone buzzed and she picked up the handset. "Yes, Hal," she said.

"Just thought you'd like to know," he said. "Walter Czastka called in. He's alive and well. I sent him the data Wilde's been looking over, so we should have a second take on that by morning. We have a highly probable link between the suspect and a pa.s.senger who boarded a maglev two hours after she left the Trebizond Tower. Her ticket was booked in the name of Jeanne Duval. The ID's fake and the account is a cash-fed dummy, but I've got a flock of surfers chasing every last detail down. It could be the vital break." "Thanks," said Charlotte. Polite discretion had presumably dissuaded Hal from simply reappearing on the table's screen and interrupting their meal-unless he was using politeness as an excuse for leaving Michael Lowenthal out of the loop for a few minutes. If so, she thought, she had better be careful. Hal would, of course, have to copy Lowenthal's employers in on the results of his chase-but if it were possible, he would infinitely prefer to catch the quarry first. In a race like this, minutes might make all the difference, and the reputation of the UN police was on the line.

"We reached Walter Czastka," Charlotte informed Wilde as she picked up her fork again. "He's alive and well-and he's double-checking your work." "You might have made contact with him," Wilde said waspishly, "but I doubt that anyone has actually reached Walter for half a century or more." "You don't seem to like Walter Czastka," Charlotte observed. "A matter of professional jealousy, perhaps?" Wilde hesitated briefly before responding, but decided to ignore the insulting implication. "I don't dislike Walter personally" he said carefully. "I will admit, however, to a certain distaste for the idea that we're two of a kind, equal in our expertise. He's an able man, in his way, but he's a hack; he has neither the eye nor the heart of a true artist. While I have aspired to perfection, he has always preferred to be prolific. He will identify the Celosia and will doubtless inform you that it is based on a gentemplate of mine, but he will not be able to see Rappaccini's handiwork in the final product. I hope that you will not read too much into that omission." "But Czastka must have artistic ambitions of his own," Michael Lowenthal observed. "While you've been in New York, undergoing a third rejuvenation which most people would consider premature, he's been laboring away on his private island, patiently building his personal Eden." "Walter has Creationist ambitions, just as I have," Wilde admitted, "but that's not what you're interested in, is it? You're exploring the possibility that Walter might be the man behind Gabriel King's murder, and wondering whether I might be underestimating him. You're wondering whether he knows what I think of him-and whether, if so, he might have involved me in his criminal masterpiece merely in order to make a fool of me. You're wondering whether he might have planned this magnificent folly to show the world how absurdly wrong I have been in my estimate of his abilities. I almost wish that it were conceivable, Michael, but it is not. I'll gladly stake my reputation on it." "Walter Czastka knew Gabriel King quite well," Lowenthal observed mildly. "They were both born in 2301, and they attended the same university. Czastka has done a great deal of work for King, on various building projects-far more than you ever did, Dr. Wilde. They seem to have been on good terms, but they've had plenty of time to generate a motive for murder. Most murders involve people who know one another well." He had obviously done some background work on this hypothesis, presumably while Charlotte had failed to engage him in conversation in Hal's office.

"I daresay that nothing I can say will affect your pursuit of this line of inquiry," said Wilde wearily, "but I a.s.sure you that it is quite sterile. Walter has not sufficient imagination to have committed this crime, even if he had a motive. I doubt that he did have a motive; Walter and Gabriel King are-or were, in the latter case-cats of a similar stripe. Like Walter, Gabriel King might have been a true artist, but like Walter, he declined the opportunity." "What do you mean by that?" Lowenthal asked.

"A modern architect, working with thousands of subspecies of gantzing bacteria and shamirs, can raise buildings out of almost any material, shaped to almost any design," Wilde pointed out, reverting to quasi-professorial mode. "The integration of pseudoliving systems to provide water and other amenities adds a further dimension of creative opportunity. A true artist could make buildings that would stand forever as monuments to contemporary creativity, but Gabriel King's main interest was always in productivity-in razing whole towns to the ground and reerecting them with the least possible effort. His business, insofar as it is creative at all, has always been the ma.s.s production of third-rate homes for second-rate people. Walter has always been the first choice to provide those third-rate homes with third-rate interior and exterior floral decorations." "I thought the original purpose of bacterial cementation processes was to facilitate the provision of decent homes for the very poor," said Charlotte.

"Gabriel King was a structural bioengineer, after all, not an architect." "Even so," Wilde said, "I find it infinitely sad to see modern methods of construction being applied so mechanically to the ma.s.s production of housing for people who are wealthy enough not to need ma.s.s-produced housing. The building of a home, or a series of homes, ought to be part of an individual's cultivation of his own personality, not a matter of following convention-or, even worse, some briefly fas.h.i.+onable fad, like so-called Decivilization. Like education, making a home will one day be one of the things every man is expected to do for himself, and there will be no more Gabriel King houses with Walter Czastka subsystems." "We can't all be Creationists," objected Charlotte.

"Oh, but we can, Charlotte," Wilde retorted. "We can all make every effort to be whatever we can be-even people like us, who have not Michael's inbuilt advantages." "Even the members of the New Human Race still die in the end," said Charlotte.

"Lowenthal might be able to have ten careers, or twenty, instead of a mere handful, but there are thousands of different occupations-and as you pointed out yourself, our memories are finite. The human mind can only hold so much expertise." "I'm talking about att.i.tudes rather than capacities," said Oscar. "The men of the past had one excuse for all their failures-man born of woman had but a short time to live, and it was full of misery-but it was a shabby excuse even then.

Today, the cowardice that still inhibits us is far more shameful. There is no excuse for any man who fails to be a true artist and declines to take full responsibility for both his mind and his environment. Too many of us still aim for mediocrity and are content with its achievement-" He would undoubtedly have continued the lecture, but Charlotte's beltphone began to buzz again. She put the handset to her ear again.

"s.h.i.+t hits fan," said Hal tersely. "The worst-case scenario just kicked in." By the time Charlotte put the handset down again Wilde and Lowenthal knew that something important had happened. Wilde was still cradling his last gla.s.s of Saint Emilion, but he wasn't drinking. He was waiting for the bad news.