Architects of Emortality (14 page)

“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 identity 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 trespass. 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 finishing 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 assistance 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 sexual desires were nowadays mostly served within that context, but she had found that there was a certain
frisson
which she could only gain from eye contact with actual human beings. She did not consider herself a slave to fashion 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 lust 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 shifted 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 Gods 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 assured her. “I’m sure that you’ll find them absolutely fascinating.” “A silver would do the actual scanning, of course,” she added, blushing with embarrassment 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 shifted.” “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 passenger 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 assure 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 mass 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 mass production of housing for people who are wealthy enough not to need mass-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 fashionable 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 attitudes 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.