Herod/Rappaccini burst into mocking laughter, his tumultuous flesh heaving. “Do you think that I have merely human ears, Oscar? You can hardly see yourselves, I know, but you are not hidden from me. Your friend is charming, Oscar, but she is not one of us. She is of an age that has forgotten and erased its past.”
Mad, thought Charlotte. Absolutely and irredeemably mad. She wondered whether she might be in mortal danger, if the man beside her really was the secret designer of all of this.
“Moreau might have approved,” Oscar said, off-handedly, “but his vision always outpaced his capacity for detail. Michi Urashima would not have been satisfied so easily, although I detect his handiwork in some of the effects. Did Gabriel King supply the organisms which hollowed out this Aladdin’s cave, perchance?”
“He did,” answered Rappaccini, squirming in his huge uncomfortable seat like a huge slug. “I have made art with his sadly utilitarian instruments. I have taken some trouble to weave the work of all my victims into the tapestry of their destruction.”
“It’s overdone,” said Oscar, bluntly. “As a show of apparent madness, it is too excessive to be anything but pretense. Can we not talk as civilized men, since that is what we are?”
Rappaccini smiled. “That is why I wanted you here, dear Oscar,” he said. “Only you could suspect me of cold rationality in the midst of all this. But you understand civilization far too well to wear its gifts unthinkingly. You may well be the only man alive who understands the world’s decadence. Have the patient bureaucrats of the United Nations Police Force discovered my true name yet?”
“No,” said Oscar.
“We soon will,” Charlotte interposed, defiantly. The sim turned its bloodshot eye upon her, and she flinched from the baleful stare.
“The final act has yet to be played,” Rappaccini told her. “You may already know my true names, but you will have difficulty in identifying the one which I presently use as my own.” The sardonic gaze moved again, to meet Oscar’s invisible stare. “You will thank me for this, Oscar. You would never forgive me if I were not just a little too clever for you.”
“If you wanted to kill six men,” said Oscar, “why did you wait until they were almost dead? At any time in the last seventy years, fate might have cheated you. Had you waited another month, you might not have found Walter Czastka alive.”
“You underestimate the tenacity of men like these,” Rappaccini replied. “You think they are ready for death because they have ceased to live, but longevity has ingrained its habits deeply in the flesh. Without me to help them, they might have protracted their misery for many years yet. But I am nothing if not loyal to those deserving of my tenderness. I bring them not merely death, but glorious transfiguration! The fact of death is not the point at issue here. Did you think me capable of pursuing mere revenge? It is the manner of a man’s death that is all-important in our day and age, is it not? We have rediscovered the ancient joys of mourning, and the awesome propriety of solemn ceremony and dark symbol. Wreaths are not enough—not even wreaths which are spiders in disguise. The end of death itself is upon us, and how shall we celebrate it, save by making a new compact with the Grim Reaper? Murder is almost extinct, and it should not be. Murder must be rehabilitated, made romantic, flamboyant, gorgeous, and glamorous! What have my six victims left to do but set an example to their younger brethren? And who but I should appoint himself their deliverer, their ennobler, the proclaimer of their fame?”
“I fear,” said Oscar, coldly, “that this performance might not make the impact that you intend. It reeks of falsity.”
Rappaccini smiled again. “You know better than that, Oscar,” he said. “You know in your heart that this marvelous appearance is real, and the hidden actuality a mere nothing. This is no cocoon of hollowed rock; it is my palace. You will see a finer rock before the end.”
“Your representations are deceptive, Dr. Rappaccini,” Charlotte put in. “Your daughter showed us Gabriel King’s head first and foremost, but Kwiatek died before him, and Teidemann was probably dead even before Kwiatek. It was optimistic, too—we’ve already warned Walter Czastka, and if the other one can still be saved, we’ll save him too.”
Rappaccini’s sim turned back to her. She had not been able to deduce, so far, how high a grade of artificial intelligence it had. She did not expect any explicit confirmation of her guess that Magnus Teidemann was a victim, or that the woman really was Rappaccini’s daughter, but she felt obliged to try.
“All six will go to their appointed doom,” the sim told her.
She wanted to get out now, to transmit a tape of this encounter to Hal Watson, so that he could identify the fifth face, but she hesitated.
“What can these men possibly have done to you?” she asked, trying to sound contemptuous although there was no point. “What unites them in your hatred?”
“I do not hate them at all,” replied the sim, “and the link between them is not recorded in that silly Net which was built to trap the essence of human experience. I have done what I have done because it was absurd and unthinkable and comical. Great lies have been banished from the world for far too long, and the time has come for us not merely to tell them, but to live them also. It is by no means easy to work against the grain of synthetic wood, but we must try.”
And with that, darkness fell, lit only by the tiny star which marked the door through which they had entered the Underworld.
9
Night had fallen by the time Charlotte and Oscar emerged into the open, but there was a three-quarter moon and the stars shone very brightly through the clear, clean air. The car had gone. Charlotte’s hand tightened around the bubblebugs which she had carefully removed from their stations above her eyebrows. She had been holding them at the ready, anxious to plug them into the car’s systems so that their data could be decanted and relayed back to Hal Watson. She murmured a curse.
“Don’t worry,” said Oscar, who had come out behind her. “Rappaccini will not abandon us. A vehicle of some kind will be along very shortly to carry us on our way.”
“Where to?” she asked, unable to keep the asperity out of her voice.
“Westward. We may have one more port of call en route, but our final destination will surely be the island where Walter Czastka is. His death is intended to form the climactic scene of this little drama.”
“Let’s hope it’s not too late to prevent that,” said Charlotte bitterly. “And let’s hope the fifth man is still alive when we get a chance to find out who he is. He may be dead already, of course—your ghoulish friend displayed his victims in the order in which their bodies were discovered, not the order in which they were killed.”
“He was never my friend,” Oscar objected, “and I am not sure that I like his determination to involve me in this. There is an element of mockery in it.”
“Mockery,” she said, tersely, “isn’t a crime. Murder is.” She took out her waistphone and tried to send a signal. There was a chance that the power-cell had enough muscle to reach a relay-station. Nothing happened. She turned back to her enigmatic companion.
“Did you understand all that stuff?” she asked him, point-blank.
“I think so,” Oscar admitted. “My ancient namesake’s Salomé provided the format, but the set owed more to Gustave Moreau’s paintings than Oscar Wilde’s humble play.…” He broke off. His words had gradually been overlaid by another sound, whose monotonous drone now threatened to drown him out entirely.
“There!” said Charlotte, pointing at a shadow eclipsing the stars. It was descending rapidly toward them, growing hugely as it did so. It was a VTOL airplane, whose engines were even now switching to the vertical mode so that it could land helicopter-fashion. Charlotte and Oscar hurried into the shelter of the building from which they had come, to give it space to land.
The plane had only an AI pilot. While Oscar climbed in behind her, Charlotte plugged her waistphone into the comcon and deposited her bubblebugs in the decoder. “Hal,” she said,
as soon as the connection was made. “Data coming in: crazy message from Rappaccini, delivered by sim. Conclusive proof of Rappaccini’s involvement. Pick out the face of the fifth victim and identify it. Send an urgent warning to Walter Czastka. And tell us what course this damn plane is following, when you can track it.” The plane had already taken off again.
Hal acknowledged, but paused only briefly before saying: “I’m sure all this is very interesting, but I’ve closed the file on Rappaccini. We’re concentrating all our efforts on the woman.”
“What?” said Charlotte, dumbfounded. “What do you mean, closed the file? The tape is proof of Rappaccini’s involvement. Have you found out his real name?” Hal was too busy decanting the data and setting up programs to deal with it; there was a frustrating pause. Charlotte looked around. The airplane was a small one, built to carry a maximum of four passengers; there was a frustrating pause. Charlotte looked around. The airplane was a small one, built to carry a maximum, of four passengers; there was a second comcon and a second pair of seats behind the one into which she and Oscar had climbed. Behind the second row of seats there was a curtained section containing four bunks. Oscar was busy inspecting the menu on the food-dispenser, frowning.
“It all depends what you mean by a real name,” said Hal, finally. “He really was born Jafri Biasiolo. The dearth of information about Biasiolo is the result of poor data-gathering toward the end of the Aftermath. After his first rejuvenation—which changed his appearance to the one that we saw earlier—he began to use the name Rappaccini for all purposes. Later, as he approached his second rejuve, he established half a dozen fake identities under various pseudonyms, including Gustave Moreau. After the rejuve, when he had his appearance considerably modified again, he began using the Moreau name as a primary, and Rappaccini became exclusively virtual. Moreau leased an islet west of Kauai, where he’s spent most of the last twenty-five years, never leaving for more than four or five weeks at a time. There’s no evident connection between Moreau and the victims, except that Walter Czastka’s his nearest neighbor. So far as we know, Biasiolo never had any connection with the university at Wollongong.”
“I don’t understand,” said Charlotte. “Surely we have enough to arrest Moreau, with all the stuff I’ve just sent through. Why close the file?”
“Because he’s dead,” Hal replied, smugly. “Ten weeks ago in Honolulu. Details of his birth might be lost in the mists of obscurity, but every detail of his death was scrupulously recorded. There’s no doubt that it was him. The common links to his island were closed down before that—he’s been shipping equipment and material back to Kauai for over a year. There’s nothing there now except the ecosystem which he built. The island’s off-limits until the UN can get an inspection team in.”
“But he’s still responsible for all this,” Charlotte protested. “He must have set it all up before he died. He and the girl—his daughter.”
“Moreau never had a daughter in any of his incarnations. He was sterilized before his first rejuve—even though it wasn’t actually a legal requirement back then, it was a point of political principle. He made the customary deposits in a reputable sperm bank, but they’ve never been touched.”
“Oh, come on, Hal! He’s a top-class genetic engineer—his sterilization doesn’t mean a thing. Look at the tape. She’s playing Salomé to his Herod!”
“That’s not evidence,” said Hal, sharply. “Anyhow, the exact relationship of the girl to Moreau is neither here nor there. The point is that she’s the active mover in all this. She’s the only one we can put on trial, and she’s the one we need to find before the newscasters start billing this mess as the Crime of the Century. If there’s any real help you can give me, I’d be grateful, but all this theatrical stuff is just more news-fodder, which we can do without. Okay?”
Charlotte could understand why Hal was edgy. News of how Gabriel King and the others had died must have leaked out, and he was very sensitive about cases being publicized before arrests had been made. It wasn’t his image or his reputation within the department that he was worried about; it was a point of principle, a private obsession.
“We are helping, aren’t we?” she whispered, after the inset had disappeared. The question, by necessity, was addressed to Oscar Wilde.
“He won’t find her before we do,” Oscar said softly. “We’ve been given the fast track to the climax of the psychodrama. And she is his daughter—if not a literal daughter, then a figurative one. I see now why the simulacrum said that we’d have difficulty identifying his true name. Moreau was his true name, by then, but he knew that the coincidence would make me assume that it was a mere pseudonym. I must talk to Walter again.”
Before he could touch the keyboard, however, another call came in.
“The fifth face is Stuart McCandless,” said Hal’s voice. “We’ve spoken to him once but we’re trying to get through to him again; his house AI’s sent out a summoner. Your plane’s heading west, on course for Kauai. You might be able to speak to him in person soon.”
Charlotte placed her fingers on the rim of the keyboard, but Oscar put his hand on top of hers, gently insistent. “I have to call Walter,” he said. “Dr. Watson will have priority on the call to McCandless.”
She let him go ahead, although she knew that she shouldn’t let her authority slip away so easily. She, after all, was the investigator. She no longer thought that Oscar was a murderer, but that didn’t affect the fact that he was the one who was only along for the ride.
Oscar’s call was fielded by a sim, which looked considerably healthier than the real Walter had. “Oscar Wilde,” he said, curtly. “I need to talk to Walter urgently.”
“I’m not taking any calls at present,” said the simulacrum, flatly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Walter,” said Oscar, impatiently. “This is no time to go into a sulk.”
The sim flickered, and its image was replaced by Czastka’s actual face. “What do you want?” he said, his voice taut with aggravation.
“You’re a player in this game whether you like it or not, Walter,” Oscar said, soothingly. “We really do have to try to figure it out.”
“I’m not in any danger,” said Walter, tiredly. “There’s no one else on the island, and no one can land without the house systems knowing about it. I’m perfectly safe. I never heard of anyone called Biasiolo, I’ve never met Moreau, and I know of no connection between myself and the other names the police gave me that could possibly constitute a motive for murder.”
“I don’t think the motive is conventional,” said Oscar. “This whole business is a publicity stunt, a weird artistic statement, but there must be some kind of connection—something that happened at Wollongong.”
Czastka looked ominously pale. “I told your friends, Oscar—I don’t remember. Nobody remembers what they were doing a hundred and thirty years ago. Nobody.”
“I don’t believe that, Walter,” said Oscar, softly. “We forget almost everything, but we can always remember the things which matter most, if we try hard enough. This is something which matters, Walter. It matters now, and it mattered then. If you try, you can remember.”
“I can’t.” The word was delivered with such bitterness and anguish that Charlotte flinched.
“What about you and Gustave Moreau, Walter?” Oscar asked. “Didn’t you know he was your neighbor?”
“I’ve never even seen the man,” said Czastka. “All I know about him is the joke the wise guys on Kauai keep repeating. The island of Dr. Moreau, get it? You must—you’ve probably even read the damn thing. You must know, too, that we keep ourselves to ourselves out here. All I want is to keep to myself. I just want to be left alone.”
Oscar paused for thought. “Do you want to die, Walter?” he asked, finally. His inflection suggested that it was not a rhetorical question.
“No,” said Czastka, sourly. “I want to live forever, just like you. I want to be young again, just like you. But when I do die, I don’t want flowers
by Rappaccini at my funeral, and I don’t want anything of yours. When I die, I want all the flowers to be mine. Is that clear?”
“I think we’re on our way to see you,” said Oscar, placidly. “We can talk then.”
“Damn you, Wilde,” said the old man, vehemently. “I don’t want you on my island. You stay away, you hear? Stay away!” He broke the connection without waiting for any response.
Oscar turned sideways to look at Charlotte. His face looked slightly sinister in the dim light of the helicopter’s cabin. “Your turn,” he said. His smile was very faint.
It didn’t take as long to get through as Charlotte had expected. Evidently, whoever had called on Hal’s behalf had been brisk and businesslike. Stuart McCandless wasn’t answering his phone in person, but when Charlotte fed his sim her authority codes it summoned him without delay.
“Yes?” he said, his dark and well-worn face peering at her with slightly peevish surprise. “I’ve hardly begun on the data you people dumped into my system. It’s going to take some time to look at it all.”
“I’m Charlotte Holmes, Dr. McCandless,” she said. “I’m in an airplane that has apparently been programmed by Gustave Moreau, alias Rappaccini. He seems intent on providing my companion—Oscar Wilde—with a good seat from which to observe this unfolding melodrama. We’re heading out into the ocean from the American coast. We’re heading your way and I thought we ought to talk. Have you ever met Moreau?”
McCandless shook his head vigorously. “I’ve already answered these questions,” he said, irritably.
“Have you looked at the tapes of the girl who visited Gabriel King and Michi Urashima? Do you recognize her?”
“I’d be able to study your tapes more closely if you’d allow me time to do it, Ms. Holmes. I’m looking at them now, but in these days of changing appearances it’s almost impossible to recognize anyone. I don’t know whether the person in those pictures is twenty years old or a hundred. I’ve had dozens of students who were similar enough to be able to duplicate her appearance with a little effort. There’s a visitor here now who could only need a little elementary remodeling.”
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 97
