Charlotte transmitted this information to Hal. The maglev was taking them down the western side of the Sierra Nevada now, and she had to swallow air to counter the pressure on her eardrums.
“By the time we get to San Francisco,” she said, “there won’t be anything to do there except to wait for the next phone call.”
“Perhaps not,” said Oscar. “But even if she’s long gone, we’ll be in the right place to follow in her footsteps.”
The buzzer on Charlotte’s waistphone sounded, and she snatched it up.
“One of Rappaccini’s bank accounts became active,” Hal told her. “A debit went through ten minutes ago. The credit was drawn from another account, which had a guarantee arrangement with the Rappaccini account.”
“Never mind the technical details,” she said. “What did the credit buy? Have the police at the contact point managed to get the user?”
“I’m afraid not. The debit was put through by a courier service. They don’t collect until they’ve actually made delivery. We’ve got a picture of the woman from their spy-eye, looking just the same as she did when she went to Urashima’s apartment, but it’s three days old. It must have been taken before the murder, immediately after she arrived in San Francisco.”
Charlotte groaned softly. “What did she send, and where to?”
“A package she brought in. We don’t know what’s in it. It was addressed to Oscar Wilde, Green Carnation Suite, Majestic Hotel, San Francisco. It’s there now, waiting.”
“We don’t have the authority to open that package without your permission,” Charlotte told Oscar. “Can I send an instruction to the San Francisco police, telling them to inspect it immediately?”
“Certainly not,” Oscar said, without hesitation. “It would spoil the surprise. We’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Charlotte frowned. “You’re inhibiting the investigation,” she said. “I want to know what’s in that package. It could be a packet of seeds.”
“I think not,” said Oscar, airily. “If Rappaccini wished to murder me, he surely wouldn’t treat me less generously than his other victims. If they’re entitled to a fatal kiss, it would be unjust and unaesthetic to send my fleurs du mal by mail.”
“In that case,” she said, “it’s probably another ticket. If we open it now, we might be able to find out where her next destination is in time to stop her making her delivery.”
“I fear not,” said Oscar. “The delayed debit was timed to show up after the event. The third victim is probably dead already. The package is addressed to me and I shall open it. That’s what Rappaccini intended. I’m sure he has his reasons.”
“Mr. Wilde,” she said, in utter exasperation, “you seem to be incapable of taking this matter seriously.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, with a sigh. “I believe that I am the only one who is taking it seriously enough. You seem to be unable to look beyond the mere fact that people are being killed. If we are to come to terms with this strange performance, we must take all its features as seriously as they are intended to be taken. I am as deeply involved in this as the victims, though I cannot as yet understand why Rappaccini has chosen to involve me.”
“You’d better make sure that nothing you do fouls up our investigation,” said Charlotte, ominously, “because we won’t hesitate to throw the book at you if we find a reason.”
“I fear,” said Oscar, sadly, “that Rappaccini has already thrown more than enough books into this affair himself.”
6
The promised package lay on a table in the reception room of the Green Carnation Suite. It was round, about a hundred centimeters in diameter and twenty deep. Charlotte had taken the precaution of arming herself with a spraygun loaded with a polymer which, on discharge, formed itself into a bimolecular membrane and clung to anything it touched.
Oscar reached out to take hold of the knot in the black ribbon which secured the emerald green box. It yielded easily to his nimble fingers, and he drew the ribbon away. He lifted the lid and laid it to one side. As Charlotte had half-expected since seeing the shape of the container, it contained a Rappaccini wreath: an intricate tangle of dark green stalks and leaves. The stalks were thorny, the leaves slender and curly. There was an envelope in the middle of the display, and around the perimeter were thirteen black flowers like none that she had ever seen before. They looked like black daisies.
Oscar Wilde extended an inquisitive forefinger, and was just about to touch one of the flowers, when it moved.
“Look out!” said Charlotte.
As though the first movement was a kind of signal, all the “flowers” began to move. It was a most alarming effect, and Oscar reflexively snatched back his hand as Charlotte pressed the trigger of the spraygun and let fly. When the polymer hit them, the flowers’ movements became suddenly jerky. They thrashed and squirmed in obvious distress. The limbs which had mimicked sepals struggled vainly for purchase upon the thorny green ring on which they had been mounted. Now that Charlotte could count them she was able to see that each of the creatures had eight hairy legs. What had seemed to be a cluster of florets was a much-embellished thorax.
“Poor things,” said Oscar, as he watched them writhe. “They’ll asphyxiate, you know, with that awful stuff all over them.”
“I may have just saved your life,” observed Charlotte, drily. “Those things are probably poisonous.”
Oscar shook his head. “This was no attempted murder. It’s a work of art—probably an exercise in symbolism.”
“According to you,” she said, “the two are not incompatible.”
“Not even the most reckless of dramatists,” said Oscar, affectedly, “would destroy his audience at the end of act one. We are perfectly safe, my dear, until the final curtain falls. Even then Rappaccini will want us alive and well. He surely will not risk interrupting a standing ovation and cutting short the cries of encore!”
Charlotte reached out to pick up the sticky envelope at the center of the ruined display, and contrived to open it. She took out a piece of paper. It was a rental car receipt, overstamped in garish red ink: ANY ATTEMPT TO INTERROGATE THE PROGRAMMING OF THIS VEHICLE WILL ACTIVATE A VIRUS THAT WILL DESTROY ALL THE DATA IN ITS MEMORY. It was probably a bluff, but she didn’t suppose that Oscar Wilde would let her call it—and she still didn’t have any legal reason to overturn his decisions.
As soon as she had updated Hal, she got through to the rental car company and demanded all the information they had. They told her that they had delivered the car to the hotel three days earlier, and that they had no knowledge of any route or destination which might have been programmed into its systems after dispatch. Hal quickly ascertained that the account which had been used to pay for the car had enough credit to cover three days’ storage and a journey of two thousand kilometers.
“That could take you as far north as Juneau or as far south as Guadalajara,” Hal pointed out, unhelpfully. “I can’t tell how many more accounts there might be on which Rappaccini and the woman might draw, but I’ve traced several that are held under other names; it’s possible that one of them is his real name.
“What are they?” Oscar asked.
“Samuel Cramer, Gustave Moreau, and Thomas Griffiths Wainewright.”
Oscar sighed heavily. “Samuel Cramer is the protagonist of a novella by Baudelaire,” he said. “Moreau was a French painter. Wainewright was the subject of a famous essay by my namesake called ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison.’ It’s just a series of jokes, presumably intended to amuse me.”
The car which awaited them was roomy and powerful. Once it was free of the city’s traffic control computers it would be able to zip along the transcontinental at two hundred kph. If they were headed for Alaska, Charlotte thought, they’d be there some time around midnight.
As soon as they were both settled into the back seat, Oscar activated the car’s program. It slid smoothly up the ramp and into the street. Then he called up a lunch menu from the car’s synthesi
zer, and looked it over critically.
“I fear,” he said, “that we are in for a somewhat Spartan trip.”
Charlotte took out her handscreen and began scrolling through some pages of data that one of Hal’s AIs had compiled from various dossiers. It had found many links between Gabriel King and Michi Urashima—more links than anyone could reasonably have expected. It seemed that the construction engineer and the graphic artist had remained in close touch throughout their long lives. Many of Urashima’s experiments had been funded by King, and the two of them had embarked upon several ventures in partnership. Charlotte could see that the AI searches had only just begun to get down into the real dirt. No one whose career was as long as King’s was likely to be completely clean, but a man in his position could keep secrets even in today’s world, just as long as no one with state-of-the-art equipment actually had a reason to probe. It was only to be expected that this murder would expose a certain amount of dirty linen, but this particular collection seemed overabundant. It seemed entirely probable that Gabriel King had been a major stockholder in the clandestine brainfeed business, and that he had not only funded Urashima but had established all kinds of shields to hide his work and its spinoff. Was there a motive for multiple murder in there? But if there was, where did Rappaccini and Oscar Wilde fit in? Why all the bizarre frills? And who was the mystery woman?
When Charlotte had digested the dossier’s contents, she plugged her waistphone into the car’s transmitter and phoned Hal.
“Anything new on the woman?” Charlotte inquired.
“No identification yet,” said Hal. “We haven’t picked up a visual trace since she left Urashima’s apartment. I’ve loosened up the match criteria, but she must have done a first-rate job of disguising herself. Where are you?”
Charlotte realized, guiltily, that she had not even bothered to take note of the direction in which they were headed. She squinted out of the window, but there was nothing to be seen now except the eight lanes of the superhighway.
“We’re headed south,” said Oscar, helpfully.
“She may have gone south,” Charlotte said to Hal. “Better check all plausible destinations between here and Mexico City.” She signed off.
“It might be as well,” Oscar said, ruminatively, “if I were to have a word with Walter Czastka.”
“No, you don’t!” Charlotte said, suddenly remembering that she should have called Czastka herself, several hours ago. “That’s my job. Walter Czastka may be a suspect.”
“I know Walter,” said Oscar. “He was a difficult man even in his prime, and he’s not in his prime now. It really would be better if I did it. You can listen in.”
She weighed up the pros and cons. It might, she thought, be interesting to see what Oscar Wilde and Walter Czastka had to say to one another. “You’re a free man,” she said, in the end. “Go ahead.” She moved to the edge of her seat, out of range of the tiny eye mounted above the car’s wallscreen. She watched Oscar punch out the codes on the keyboard. He didn’t need to call a directory to get the number.
She could see the image on the screen even though she was out of camera-range. She knew immediately that the face that appeared was that of Walter Czastka himself. No one would ever have programmed so much ostentatious world-weariness into a simulacrum.
“Hello, Walter,” said Oscar.
Czastka peered at the caller without the least flicker of recognition. He looked unwell. Charlotte could not imagine that he had ever been handsome, and he obviously thought it unnecessary to compromise with the expectations of others by having his face touched up by tissue-control specialists. In a world where almost everyone was beautiful, or at least distinguished, Walter Czastka was an anomaly—but there was nothing monstrous about him. His sad eyes were faded blue, and his stare had a rather disconcerting quality. Charlotte knew that Czastka was exactly the same age as Gabriel King and Michi Urashima, but he looked far worse than either of them. Perhaps rejuvenation hadn’t taken properly.
“Yes?” he said.
“Don’t you know me?” asked Oscar, in genuine surprise.
For a moment, Czastka simply looked exasperated, but then his stare changed as enlightenment dawned. “Oscar Wilde!” he said, his tone redolent with awe. “My God, you look … I didn’t look like that after my last rejuvenation! But that must be your third—how could you need…?”
Oddly enough, Oscar did not swell with pride in reaction to this display of naked envy. “Need,” he murmured, “is a relative thing. I’m sorry, Walter; I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You’ll have to be brief, Oscar,” said Czastka, curtly. “I’m expecting the UN police to call—they tried to get past my AI yesterday, but didn’t bother to leave a message to say what they wanted. They’re taking their time about getting back to me. Damn nuisance.”
“The police can break in on us if they really want to,” said Oscar, gently. “Have you heard the news about Gabriel King?”
“No. Is it something I should be interested in?”
“He’s dead, Walter. Murdered by illegal biotechnics—a very strange kind of flowering plant.”
Charlotte couldn’t read Czastka’s expression. “Murdered by a plant?” he repeated, disbelievingly.
“I’ve seen the pictures,” said Oscar. “The police might want you to take a look at the forensic reports. They have a suspicion that you or I might have designed the murder-weapon, but I’m morally certain that it’s Rappaccini’s work. Do you remember Rappaccini?”
Charlotte began to regret having given Oscar Wilde permission to make this call. Perhaps it would have been better to ask Czastka to make a separate judgment. If both of them, without collusion, identified Rappaccini as the designer … but how could she be sure that they weren’t in collusion already?
“Of course I remember Rappaccini,” snapped Czastka. “I’m not senile, you know. Specializes in funeral wreaths—a silly affectation, I always thought. I dare say you know him better than I do, you and he being birds of a feather. Are you saying that he murdered Gabriel King?”
“Michi Urashima is dead too,” Oscar said. “He and Gabriel were killed by seeds which grew inside them and consumed their flesh. This is important, Walter. Genetic art may have come a long way since the protests at the Great Exhibition, but the green zealots wouldn’t need much encouragement to put us back on their hate list. Neither of us wants to go back to the days when we had petty officials looking over our shoulders while we worked. When the police release the full details of this case, there’s going to be a lot of adverse publicity. I’m trying to help the police find Rappaccini. I wondered whether you might remember anything that might provide a clue to his real identity.”
Czastka’s face had a curious ochreous pallor as he stared at his interlocutor. “King and Urashima—both dead?” He didn’t seem to be keeping up with Oscar’s train of thought.
“Both dead,” Oscar confirmed. “I think there might be others. You knew Gabriel and Michi from way back, didn’t you?”
“So what?” said Czastka, grimly. “I didn’t know Urashima as well as you did, and all my dealings with King were strictly business. We were never friends—or enemies.” Charlotte noted that Czastka’s eyes had narrowed, but she couldn’t tell whether he was alarmed, suspicious, or merely impatient.
“No one’s accusing you of anything,” said Oscar, carefully. “I’ve told the police that you couldn’t possibly be the man behind Rappaccini—and I think they’re more inclined at present to suspect that I might be. We all need to find out who he really is. Can you help?”
“No,” said Czastka, without hesitation. “I never knew him. I’ve had some dealings with his company, but I haven’t set eyes on him since the Great Exhibition.”
“What about his daughter?” said Oscar, abruptly.
If he intended to surprise the other man, it didn’t work. Czastka’s stare was as stony as it was melancholy. “What daughter?” he said. “I never met a daughter—not that I reme
mber. It was all a long time ago. I can’t remember anything at all. It’s nothing to do with me. Leave me alone, Oscar—and tell the police to leave me alone!”
Charlotte could see that Oscar Wilde was both puzzled and disappointed by the other man’s reaction. As Czastka closed the connection, Oscar’s face wrinkled into a frown.
“That wasn’t much help, was it?” she said, unable to resist the temptation to take him down a peg. “He doesn’t even like you.”
“As soon as I told him about the murders, he froze,” Oscar said, thoughtfully. “He’s hiding something, but I can’t imagine what—or why. I would never have thought it of him. There’s something very strange about this. Perhaps your clever associate and his indefatigable assistants should start attacking the problem from the other end.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.
“The Wollongong connection. We ought to find out how many other people there are in the world who were at Wollongong at the relevant time. Walter and the two victims are uncommonly old men, even in a world where serial rejuvenation is commonplace. It’s possible that such a list might contain the names of other potential victims—and the university records might offer a clue as to a possible motive.”
Charlotte called Hal to relay the suggestion, but he scornfully informed her that he had already put two AIs to work on it. “One more thing,” he added. “Rappaccini’s pseudonymous bank accounts have been used over the years to purchase materials that were delivered for collection to the island of Kauai, in Hawaii. They were collected by boat. There are fifty or sixty islets west and south of Kauai, natural and artificial. Some are leased to Creationists for experiments in the construction of artificial ecosystems.” Charlotte had already turned to look at Oscar, and was on the point of forming a predatory grin when Hal continued: “Oscar Wilde’s island is half an ocean away in Micronesia—but Walter Czastka’s is nearby. All the supplies that Czastka purchases in his own name are picked up from Kauai, by boat.”
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 95
