Michael Lowenthal didn’t let him finish; for once, he was fully engaged with Charlotte. “He could never tell anyone,” the man from the MegaMall said, in answer to her quibble, “but that doesn’t mean that nobody knew what he’d done.
Maybe it wasn’t his own idea.
Maybe it was some kind of challenge, some kind of initiation into a secret society. He was a student, after all—and so were Gabriel King, Michi Urashima, and Paul Kwiatek. Maybe they all knew. Maybe—“ “I fear that your flair for melodrama is getting out of hand, Michael,” said Wilde impatiently, firmly reclaiming center stage. “As Charlotte says, we’re not talking about the Dark Ages—but we are talking about the past. It isn’t in the least surprising that an authentically young woman might have undergone sufficient genetic engineering to reduce an actual consanguinity of fifty percent to an apparent overlap of forty-one, but it’s not plausible that two closely related old men should be that much less similar, unless something very odd had happened. As for this secret-society initiation, it’s the stuff of ancient romance—and it provides no explanation of the timing of the murders. If Walter were Biasiolo’s father, how could the revelation hurt Walter now? Even if everyone who knew it then still remembered it nearly a hundred and seventy years later, why should any of them attach any importance to it?” The list of names that Hal had posted on Charlotte’s screen disappeared, to be replaced by his face. He didn’t look pleased—presumably because he felt that he ought to have been the one to discover the link between Biasiolo and Walter Czastka.
“I hate to break in on such a fevered discussion,” he said, “but I just checked the DNA trace Regina Chai recovered against the record of one Maria Inacio, listed in Jafri Biasiolo’s birth record as his biological mother. The same record says, ‘Father Unknown’—a statement whose significance has only just become apparent to me. The trace recovered from King’s apartment is indeed similar to Inacio’s, and might have been identical were it not for the differentiating effect of the younger woman’s genetic engineering. As I told you before, though, it doesn’t match the record of any living person. According to the register, Maria Inacio was born in 2303 and she died in 2342.” “So she can’t be our murderer,” Charlotte said.
“Nor can she be Jafri Biasiolo’s mother,” Oscar Wilde was quick to put in. “Not, at least, if Michael’s new version of events is correct. If Walter or anyone else had merely substituted his own sperm for a donation drawn from the bank, it would have been used to fertilize an ovum which had come from the same bank, which could not—at least under normal circumstances—have been freshly deposited there by an eighteen-year-old girl.” “If Jafri Biasiolo had been conceived in a Helier hatchery,” Hal Watson said, completing his own revelatory bombshell with evident satisfaction, “the record would have said, ‘Father Unrecorded.’ Perhaps my silver should have picked the discrepancy up on first inspection, but it had no reason to attribute any significance to the datum. Jafri Biasiolo was the product of a late abortion; he wasn’t introduced to a Helier womb until he was three months short of delivery.
Maria Inacio must have been immune to the endemic chiasmatic transformers—and probably never knew it, until her doctor told her that the strange growth in her abdomen wasn’t a tumor. Her own fosterers must have belonged to an antinanotech cult of some kind; there was one active in Australia at the time whose members called themselves Naturals; had they not selected themselves for rapid extinction, we might have needed a different label for the likes of Mr.
Lowenthal.” “So all this stuff about substitute donations is rubbish,” Charlotte said, to make sure she had it straight. “You’re saying that Walter Czastka impregnated the girl by means of everyday sexual intercourse—intercourse which neither he nor she had the slightest reason to think capable of producing a pregnancy.” “Given that the record says, ‘Father Unknown,’ ” Hal said, “we can probably assume that neither Czastka nor Biasiolo ever knew of the relationship Mr.
Lowenthal’s eager investigators have now brought to light. Given that it has been brought to light, I suppose someone ought to tell Walter Czastka—except, of course, that he’s not answering his phone just now because Dr. Wilde offended him. I’m not entirely happy about merely reporting it to his sim.” “But they must know!” Lowenthal protested. “How else can we begin to make sense of all these connections?” “One of them must know,” Oscar Wilde agreed, his voice animated by a sudden fervor. “I owe you an apology, Michael—your hypothesis, although mistaken in detail, has indeed paved the way to the crucial enlightenment. Walter can know nothing of all this—but Rappaccini must know everything. We have had the vital connection set before us for several hours, but have not realized its significance! Walter is… am I mistaken, or is the sloth driving this vehicle becoming extremely reckless in its speed around these bends?” Charlotte had not bothered to look out of the windows for some time, having become accustomed to the swaying of the vehicle. Now that she did, it seemed to her that Oscar Wilde was understating the case.
Because AI drivers were programmed to the highest safety standards, everyone fell into the habit of trusting them absolutely, but the road on which they were traveling was undoubtedly far too rough and curvaceous to warrant progress at their present velocity. There was no guardrail on their right-hand side, and the scree slope fell away precipitously.
Charlotte remembered the message warning them not to interrogate the driver’s programming. Like Lowenthal and Wilde, she had automatically assumed that this was merely a device to protect the secrecy of their destination—but what if it were not? What if such an interrogation would have revealed that the driver’s safety programming had been carefully and illegally stripped away? She banished Hal’s image from her screen and flicked the switch connecting the comcon to the driver. She typed a rapid instruction to the machine, ordering it to moderate the vehicle’s speed.
There was no immediate response.
She slid her swipecard into the comcon’s confirmation slot and invoked the full authority of the United Nations to back up her instruction. The only effect was that a printed message appeared on the screen: INCREASED SPEED NECESSITATED BY PROXIMITY OF PURSUING VEHICLE.
Charlotte blinked, then tapped in an instruction to open a viewpoint in the rear of the cabin. She and Oscar Wilde turned together to look through it, their heads almost touching as they converged.
The vehicle behind them was not an ordinary car. It was smaller, squarer, and looked as if it were heavily armored. It appeared, in fact, to be some kind of military vehicle. It was also far closer to their rear end than safety regulations permitted. Charlotte knew that it must have an AI driver, because its windscreen was quite opaque, but the sloth in question had obviously been programmed in frank defiance of the law.
“It’s trying to force us off the road!” said Charlotte, hardly able to believe her eyes. In all her years in the police force she had never encountered anything so outrageous.
Her beltphone buzzed, and she lifted it from its holster reflexively, her eyes still fixed on the pursuing vehicle and her cheek less than a centimeter away from Oscar Wilde’s uncannily beautiful face.
“Hal!” she cried. “Someone’s trying to kill us!” “What?” said Hal, his voice as incredulous as her own.
“There’s some kind of jeep trying to smash into us from behind!” The car carrying Charlotte and Wilde swept around a bend, and the resultant lurch bounced their heads together. It was not a bad bump, but the combination of surprise and pain made Charlotte cry out.
“Charlotte!” said Hal, his incredulity replaced by alarm. “What’s happening?” Charlotte had to make an effort to force her train of thought onward through the barrier that pain had erected. She wanted to shout instructions to the people who would by now be monitoring their situation through the car’s sensors.
“Scramble a helicopter!” she wanted to scream. “Send a software bomb! Get us the hell out of here!” As she straightened up again she looked out of the side wi
ndow at the drop which awaited them if their driver were to be careless enough to let a wheel slide over the edge.
It was a very long drop.
Michael Lowenthal let loose an inarticulate cry of anguish, as befit a potential emortal who was staring death in the face for the first time.
Charlotte gave voice to a wordless cry of her own as they soared around another bend, even sharper than its predecessors. She turned back to the rear viewport, clutching her throbbing head as she did so. She felt a sudden instinctive pulse of hope that the pursuing vehicle might not make it around the bend.
Alas, the jeep did make it. It fell back eight or ten meters in so doing, and Charlotte felt her heart surge as she wondered whether some preventative signal had got through—but then there was a curious rattling noise at the rear end of their own vehicle.
“Hal!” she cried again. “They’re shooting at us, Hal! They’ve got a gun!” “Charlotte!” came the reply. “I’ve got visual patched through from a sat! I’ve got… corruption and corrosion!” Charlotte had never heard Hal use such words before, except in their uninflected and strictly literal forms. Had she been able to find words herself she would have delved even deeper in search of more profound expletives.
They had just taken yet another bend. This time, the pursuing vehicle failed to make the turn—in fact, it seemed to keep going straight ahead: straight over the edge and into empty air.
For almost a second it seemed to hang there, like some absurd toon character in a synthemovie, who would not start to feel the effects of gravity until he became conscious of being unsupported.
Then, with a peculiar gracefulness, the jeep began to fall.
It tumbled over and over as it fell, and when it finally hit the rocky slope two hundred meters below, it exploded like a bomb, sending shards in all directions.
The sloth driving the hire car had applied the brakes the instant that the threat of a damaging collision was removed from the viewport, but it had done so judiciously so as to minimize the risk of skidding.
“Hal,” said Charlotte tremulously, “I think you just got another data trail to follow.” It was, she felt, a very feeble attempt at humor. By now—assuming that this absurdly tilted patch of crumpled wasteland lay within their jurisdiction—the California Highway Patrol’s best silvers would have identified the rogue vehicle, and they would already be tracking down its owner and programmer.
Charlotte shut her eyes and breathed deeply, while the pain in her head ebbed slowly away.
When she opened her eyes again, Oscar Wilde had converted his side window into a mirror, and he was inspecting his own head very carefully. There was a noticeable bluish bump just above the right eyebrow. She could not find it in her heart to regret the temporary damage done to his outrageous good looks, although he obviously felt differently about it.
“What do you make of that?” she asked him.
“I can only hope that it was simply another vignette in the unfolding psychodrama,” he said grimly. “Perhaps Rappaccini feared that the journey might be a trifle boring, and laid on a measured dose of excitement.” She stared at him for a few seconds. “You mean,” she said slowly, “that the person who hired this car also hired that one—as a practical joke?” Oscar shrugged his shoulders, turning back again to his pained inspection of the damage done to his temple.
“He might be right,” said Hal, over the phone link. “The information’s coming through now. The jeep was hired at the same time as the car, although the fee came from an account I hadn’t yet connected to Rappaccini. The local police have no reason to think that anyone was aboard, although they’ll send a crew out to check the debris. It wasn’t carrying a gun—that rattling sound you heard was produced by your own car’s AI.” Charlotte was speechless.
“Are you all okay?” Hal inquired solicitously.
“Physically, we’re fine,” Michael Lowenthal replied. Given that he had not bruised his own head, his entitlement to speak on behalf of his companions seemed a trifle dubious to Charlotte.
“That’s good,” said Hal, his voice reverting instantly to its normal businesslike tone. “I’ve just got some more data in from Bologna, if you want to look at any of it.” “Bologna?” said Charlotte.
“It’s where Kwiatek was killed,” Lowenthal informed her.
“We’ve got another picture of the woman,” Hal said. “We’re fairly certain that she flew to New York on an intercontinental flight from Rome. Do you want to see the tape?” “Not really,” said Charlotte, who was still profoundly shaken by the fake attack—although she was quick enough to add: “Not yet, I mean. Where was she before Bologna?” “Darkest Africa, we think—visiting Magnus Teidemann. His death is still to be confirmed, but we’re not optimistic. Are you sure you don’t want the Kwiatek data?” “Was there a calling card with Kwiatek’s body?” Oscar Wilde put in, shutting his own eyes as if to blank out the image of the bruise.
“I’ll check the tapes,” Hal said. “Give me a couple of minutes.” “There’s no hurry, Inspector,” Lowenthal said, exchanging a sympathetic glance with the shaken Charlotte. “I think we’d all benefit from a moment’s pause.” “Did you look at the list I put up?” Hal asked, evidently seeing no necessity for any such pause. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was addressing Lowenthal or Charlotte.
“I saw it,” Charlotte said wearily. “Was there something significant I should have taken note of?” She knew that she ought not to end sentences with prepositions, but thought that the stress of the situation made the infelicity forgivable.
“Maybe not,” Hal replied. “But I thought Mr. Lowenthal’s eye might have been caught by one of the addresses.” The list reappeared yet again, on all three of the seatscreens. Hal had obviously decided that he would follow his agenda no matter what. This time, Charlotte’s eye was immediately drawn to the word Kami. One Stuart McCandless, ex-chancellor of the University of Oceania, had retired to the island. He had graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2322.
“Can you connect him to Czastka or Biasiolo?” Lowenthal said.
“Is he answering his phone?” asked Charlotte. “If so, it might be helpful to find out what he remembers about his student days.” “He’s alive and well,” Hal said. “He says that he still meets up with Czastka occasionally, when Czastka’s on Kauai, but not for some months. He never met Biasiolo and he doesn’t know anything about Rappaccini. He doesn’t remember anything significant about Walter Czastka’s university career.” While this catalogue of negatives was in transmission, Charlotte glanced out of the side window again as the car swung—slowly and carefully—around a bend.
The road was no longer poised above the sheer slope, and she realized that they were coming into one of the ghost towns whose names were still recorded on the map, in spite of the fact that no one had lived in them for centuries.
The car came to a standstill.
The ancient stone buildings that were all that now remained of the town had been weathered by dust storms, but they still retained the sharp angles which proudly proclaimed their status as human artifacts. The land around them was quite dead, seemingly incapable of growing so much as a blade of grass. It was every bit as desolate as an unspoiled lunar landscape, but the shadowy scars of human habitation still lay upon it.
The sun was reddening against the peacock blue background, and the shadows it cast were lengthening toward the east.
“What now?” Charlotte said to Oscar Wilde. “Do we start looking for another body?” Before they had time to get out of the car, the screens in front of them blanked out. While Charlotte was still wondering what the interruption signified, the car’s sloth relayed a message in flamboyant red letters.
It said: WELCOME, OSCAR: THE PLAY WILL COMMENCE IN TEN MINUTES. THE PLAYHOUSE IS BENEATH THE BUILDING TO YOUR RIGHT.
“Play?” said Charlotte bitterly. “Have we come all this way just to see a play? Hal was right—I should never have left New York.” “I’m sorry that your decision h
as caused you some inconvenience,” said Wilde as he opened the door and climbed out into the sultry heat of the deepening evening, “but I will confess that I’m glad you both decided to come with me. In spite of the entertainment laid on for us as we climbed the mountainside, the journey would have been infinitely more tedious had I been forced to take it alone. I suspect that whatever experience awaits us will benefit from being shared. Do you carry a supply of transmitter eyes in that belt you’re wearing, Charlotte?” “Of course I do,” she said as she moved to the rear of the car to inspect the place where bullets had seemed to strike it. Hal was, inevitably, absolutely right. There were no marks at all. The sound of the shots had been manufactured by the hire car’s sloth, to intensify the fear its passengers felt. The sloth was, of course, far too stupid to be held responsible, but Charlotte cursed it anyway, along with its still-mysterious programmer.
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