Architects of Emortality (38 page)

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“No sign of her yet,” the answer came back. “She can’t possibly have landed without being seen. If anything happens, Sergeant, you’ll be the first to know, as per New York’s orders.” The local man did not seem particularly pleased by the fact that he had orders to check all his moves with a mere sergeant. The fact that she was from New York probably added an extra hint of insult to the tacit injury.

“What do you mean, too late?” she said to Wilde, having cut back to him yet again. “If he were dead, it could only be suicide. His phone sim may be the stupidest obsolete sloth still in use, but there must be silver-level smarts somewhere in his systems. If he were actually dead, they’d override the sloth.

We’ve put the whole island on full alert!” “Even if he is not dead,” Wilde said stubbornly, “we may still be too late. That is what Rappaccini intends.” There was nothing to do but wait and see, so Charlotte sat back in her seat and stared down at the agitated waves, letting the minutes tick by. Michael Lowenthal did not attempt to engage her in conversation.

They were still two minutes short of their ETA when the voice of the local commander came back on-line. “We have visual contact with the woman,” he said.

“Relaying now.” When the picture on the copter’s screen cleared, it showed a female figure in a humpbacked suitskin walking out of the sea, looking for all the world as if she were enjoying a leisurely stroll after a few minutes in the water.

“We’re going in,” said the commander.

“Not yet!” said Charlotte. “We’re coming in now! Don’t set down until I do.

Leave her to me.” She was not entirely sure why she had told him to wait, but she was acutely aware of the responsibility of enacting Hal Watson’s authority—and it was, after all, her investigation too.

Charlotte watched raptly as the woman who looked like Julia Herold paused at the high-tide line and began detaching the hump on her suitskin, which presumably contained a built-in paralung. The camera eye zoomed in, not because it was refocusing but because the helicopter carrying it was moving closer. Obedient to Charlotte’s order, however, the machine did not complete its touchdown, hovering a meter or so above the sand. Over the voice link, Charlotte could hear the sound of loudhailer-magnified voices instructing the woman to stand still.

The woman did not seem to see the slowly settling helicopters or hear the loudhailers. She pushed back the hood of her suitskin and shook loose her long tresses. Her hair had changed color again; it was now a gloriously full red-gold, which seemed luminously alive as it caught the rays of the rising sun.

The assassin knelt beside the discarded augmentation of her suitskin, removing something from a pocket. She made no attempt to move from the spot where she had been instructed to remain, but she swiftly unwrapped whatever it was that had been bound up with the paralung in the bi-molecular membrane.

“What’s she doing?” Charlotte murmured as her own copter nudged its way into a gap in the surrounding ring.

“I don’t know,” Michael Lowenthal answered.

Over the voice link they could still hear the officer who had spoken to them. He was instructing her to desist from whatever she was doing and raise her hands above her head.

Charlotte’s copter settled on the sand, thirty meters closer to the woman’s position than any of the others, and Charlotte threw open the door. She stepped down onto the beach, conscious of the fact that hundreds of flying eyes would now be focused on her.

Suddenly the air around the red-haired woman was filled by a haze of what looked like smoke. As she came back to an erect position, the haze dispersed.

“Artificial spores,” Michael Lowenthal guessed. He was still in the copter, but he had moved to Charlotte’s seat in order to get a better view. “Millions of them—she knew she’d never get to kiss Czastka, so she’s casting them adrift on the wind.” “Where’s Czastka?” Charlotte shouted, turning up the mike on her beltphone in the hope that the task-force commander might still be able to hear her—but the thrum of the slowing helicopter blades was still too loud to allow her to be heard. She hoped that the Creationist was still inside, his walls sealed tight against any form of biological invasion.

Charlotte took three steps toward the young woman, then raised her gun, holding it in both hands, and pointed it. The noise of the copters was fading fast, and she was certain that she would be heard if she shouted.

“Raise your hands!” she yelled.

The woman was standing perfectly still now, but she had to turn through ninety degrees to face Charlotte. The expression on her face was unreadable, and Charlotte was not at all sure that the woman could see her, let alone hear her—but as she turned she meekly raised her hands high above her head. By the time her bright green eyes met Charlotte’s, she was still, impassive, and seemingly harmless.

Charlotte felt a wave of thankfulness sweep through her tense frame. She took her left hand off the stock of the gun and beckoned to the woman.

“Come to me!” she instructed. “Slowly, now.” From the corners of her eyes Charlotte could see uniformed men dismounting from the other helicopters, but they simply stepped down to the ground, watching and waiting. The sound of the copter blades was a mere hum by now, but Charlotte’s ears had been numbed by the cacophony, and she was not sure how loud the sound was. She could hear the distant whine of Oscar Wilde’s copter, though. It had turned to circle the beach rather than coming in to land.

The woman showed not the slightest sign of obeying Charlotte’s last order. She stood where she was, un-moving. Her arms were still upraised in a gesture of surrender, but the gesture suddenly seemed to Charlotte to be slightly mocking.

The murderess had apparently done what she came to do, and had accepted that it was all over—but she did not seem to be in any hurry to place herself in custody and climb aboard the helicopter that would ferry her to judgment.

“Come this way!” Charlotte repeated, shouting in case the woman had not been able to hear the first command. “Walk toward the helicopter, slowly.” She lifted the handset from her beltphone and spoke into it. “Better get your men back into the copters,” she said to the task-force commander. “The stuff she’s released is probably harmless to anyone but Czastka, but there’s no point in taking risks.

When we get back to Kauai, everyone goes through decontamination.” “As you wish, Sergeant,” said the officer sourly.

The woman still had not moved. She stood statue-still, looking up into the brilliant blue sky. It seemed that Charlotte had no alternative but to go to her.

Charlotte replaced the handset of her beltphone and took two steps forward, saying: “My name is Detective Sergeant Charlotte Holmes of the UN police. I’m arresting you on suspicion—” She was interrupted by a cry of alarm from the helicopter that had settled on the far side of the woman’s position. The uniformed men had been obediently climbing back aboard, but the last one had paused and turned—and now he was pointing, apparently at the two women.

“Look out!” he cried.

Charlotte’s right hand tensed about the handle of the gun, and her left moved back to support it. Her forefinger curled around the trigger—but the red-haired woman hadn’t moved a muscle, and there was no evident threat. Charlotte heard a strange squawking sound emanating from the region of her hip and realized that someone was trying to attract her attention by shouting over the voice link to her handset. She lowered her left hand again, rather uncertainly, and plucked the handset from its holster. “It’s okay,” she said impatiently. “She has no weapon. It’s all under control.” “Look behind you!” screeched the unrecognizable voice, still trying to shout at her although the volume control on the beltphone was automatically compensating.

“Corruption and corrosion, woman, look behind you!” Uncomprehendingly, Charlotte looked behind her.

Gliding toward her from the vivid brightness of the climbing sun was a broad black shadow. At first she could judge neither its breadth nor its exact shape, but as it swooped down upon her the truth became abundantly and monstrously clear.

She could not believe the evidence of her eyes. She knew full well that what she was seeing was impossible, and her mind stubbornly refused to accept the truth of what she saw. She understood, as her unbelief stupefied and froze her, why the voice had been trying so hard to achieve an appropriate level of amplification. In addition to the need to warn her that she was in danger, there had been a need to express shock, horror, and sheer terror.

It was a bird—but it was a bird like none which had ever taken to the skies of Earth in the entire evolutionary history of flight. Its wingspan was larger than the reach of the helicopter blades that were already spinning again as the automatic pilots prepared for flight. Its vast wings were black, but they glinted like the wings of starlings; their pinion feathers somehow reminded Charlotte of scimitars and samurai swords. Its enormous and horrible head was naked, like a vulture’s, and its eyes were the size of basketballs; they were crimson in color, but as they caught the sunlight it seemed that they were all aglow with a sulphurous inner light.

The creature’s raptorial beak was fully agape, and it cried out as it swept over her head. Its call was a terrible inhuman shriek, which put Charlotte in mind of the wailing of the damned in some ancient mythical hell. She felt as if she had been frozen in place, like a pillar of salt, to await her doom as that terrible beak closed upon her tender flesh—but the beak passed her by, and the huge claws too. Their talons were aimed at the other woman: Rappaccini’s unnatural daughter.

Charlotte’s momentary petrifaction came to an end. Even as she perceived that she was not the target of the monster’s dive, panic took hold of her and threw her aside like a rag doll. She had no time to realign and fire her gun, nor even to think about realigning and firing it. Her reflexes rudely cast her down, tumbling her ignominiously onto the silvery sand.

Rappaccini’s daughter, if that were indeed what she deemed herself to be, did not change her position in the slightest. Her hands were still lifted high into the air. Her eyes were unconcerned, apparently entranced.

Charlotte understood now—how obvious it was, now!— that the meek raising of those arms had not been a gesture of surrender at all; the woman had merely been making preparations for the arrival of her appalling rescuer. Charlotte twisted her body so that she could watch, but her limbs still hugged the ground, as if they were trying to bury into the warm and welcoming sand.

And this is going out live to half the population of the world! Charlotte thought. What a way to win a ratings war! As though with an ease induced by long and patient practice, the woman who had been Rappaccini’s murderous instrument interlaced the fingers of both her hands with the reaching talons of the huge bird and was lifted instantly from her feet.

Charlotte was still conscious of the fact that what she was seeing was, according to all the most reliable authorities, quite impossible. No bird could lift an adult human being from the ground, and rumors of eagles of old which had been able to lift children and sheep were confidently judged by historians and naturalists to have been wildly exaggerated. No bird which had ever been shaped by natural selection to fly above the surface of the earth could lift such a weight in addition to its own. But how much did this monstrosity weigh? More than a helicopter, and as much as the aircraft which Rappaccini had provided to fly Charlotte and her two companions to Kauai? Its metabolism must be highly unorthodox, or it would not be able to take off—but it was gliding now, and any man-made glider of similar dimension could have carried several passengers. It was possible, because it was happening. Somehow, it was possible.

The bird was already climbing again, soaring on the thermal which rose from the warm morning sea. It beat its fabulous night black wings with extravagant majesty—once, twice, and again—but then it banked and circled around into the dazzling halo of brilliance which surrounded the tropical sun, whence its awesome dive had come. A moment later, as Charlotte shielded her eyes, it flew out of the fire again, like a phoenix reborn.

Charlotte reached up her free hand to take the one which Michael Lowenthal was extending to her, having appeared as if by magic at her side. Her right hand returned the dart gun to its clasp as she was raised to her feet.

“Best get back if we intend to chase it,” he said.

He let go of her hand and she had to hurry along behind him, stumbling in the soft surface. The other helicopters were already taking off, the sound of their many blades escalating into a hideous roar.

“She didn’t get Czastka!” Lowenthal shouted as he stopped by the copter’s landing rail, letting Charlotte pass him before shoving her from behind to help her into the cabin.

Didn’t she? Charlotte wondered, not bothering to speak the words aloud. She did what she came to do—that much is certain.