Architects of Emortality

by Brian Stableford

  “By virtue of his flag-of-convenience citizenship, 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 identity; 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 identity might be something of a red herring screening the real substance of his investigation.

  “We’re delving into King’s background, of course,” Hal assured 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 mass-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 reassuring 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 assumed the identity of Jafri Biasiolo,” Hal conceded. “It’s possible that he always maintained a second identity 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-fashioned 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 fashionable ideal. We’re checking all the passengers 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 associated 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 accumulated 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, unobtrusive 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 ownership 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, fashion, 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 institution of ownership 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 Assassins, 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 Assassins 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 assassin, 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 assassin 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 competition. 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 massive frame through the narrow gap into which Hal had dispatched him. Hal frowned, obviously having expected his deliberations to take a lot longer.