The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Charlotte felt Oscar Wilde’s hand fall upon hers, but she didn’t need the hint. She was already trying to work out how to phrase the next question. “Who is your visitor, Dr. McCandless?” she asked, in the end.

  “Oh, there’s not the slightest need to worry,” McCandless replied. “I’ve known her for some time. Her name is Julia Herold. I told your colleague in New York all about her.”

  “Could you ask her to come to the phone?” asked Charlotte. She glanced sideways, very briefly, at Oscar.

  “Oh, very well,” McCandless said. He turned away, saying, “Julia?”

  Moments later he moved aside, surrendering his place in front of the camera to a young woman, apparently in her early twenties. The woman stared into the camera. Her abundant hair was golden red, and very carefully sculptured, and her eyes were a vivid green. A wig and a bimolecular overlay, Charlotte thought. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Herold,” she said, slowly. “We’re investigating a series of murders, and it’s difficult to determine what information may be relevant.”

  “I understand,” said the woman, calmly.

  Charlotte felt a strange pricking sensation at the back of her neck. It’s her, she thought. It has to be her. Hal Watson was undoubtedly checking the woman out at this very moment, with all possible speed, and if he found anything to justify action, he would act swiftly—but until he did, there was nothing she could do. She’s playing with us, Charlotte thought. She has McCandless in the palm of her hand and there’s no way we can save him. But she’ll never get away. She can’t make another move without our knowing about it.

  “May I talk to Dr. McCandless again?” she asked, dully.

  They switched places again. Charlotte wanted to say Whatever you do, don’t kiss her! but she knew how stupid it would sound. “Dr. McCandless,” she said, uncomfortably, “we think that something might have happened when you were a student yourself. Something that links you, however tenuously, with Gabriel King, Michi Urashima, Paul Kwiatek, Magnus Teidemann, and Walter Czastka. We desperately need to know what it was. We understand how difficult it is to remember, but…”

  McCandless controlled his irritation. “I’m checking back through my records, trying to turn something up,” he said. “I hardly know Czastka, although he lives close by. The others I know only by repute. I didn’t even know that I was contemporary with Urashima or Teidemann. There were thousands of students at the university. We didn’t all graduate in the same year. We were never in the same place at one time, unless.…”

  “Unless what, Dr. McCandless?” said Charlotte, quickly.

  The dark brow was furrowed and the eyes were glazed, as the man reached for some fleeting, fugitive memory. “The beach party…?” he muttered. Then, the face became hard and stern again. “No,” he said, firmly. “I really can’t remember.”

  Charlotte saw a slender hand descend reassuringly upon Stuart McCandless’s shoulder, and she saw him take it in his own, thankfully. She knew that there was no point in asking what he had half-remembered. He was shutting her out.

  It’s happening now, she thought, before our very eyes. She’s going to kill him within the next few minutes, and we can’t do a thing to stop it. But we can surely stop her before she gets to Walter Czastka.

  “Dr. McCandless,” she said, desperately. “I have reason to believe that you’re in mortal danger. I advise you to isolate yourself completely—and I mean completely, Dr. McCandless.”

  “I know what you mean,” he retorted testily. “I know how the mind of a policeman works. But I can give you my absolute assurance that I’m in no danger whatsoever. Now, may I get on with the work that your colleague asked me to do?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She let him break the connection; she didn’t feel that she could do it herself.

  When the screen blanked, she turned and said: “He’s as good as dead, isn’t he?”

  “The seeds may already be taking root in his flesh,” said Oscar, gently. “It might have been too late, no matter what anyone could have said or done.”

  “What was it that he started to say?” she asked. “And why did he stop?”

  “Something that came to mind in spite of his resistance. Something, perhaps, that Walter might half-remember too, if only he wanted to.…

  Charlotte shook her head, tiredly. She called Hal. “Julia Herold,” she said, shortly. “Have you tied her in with Moreau yet?”

  “No,” said Hal, simply. “She’s a student. Her career seems quite ordinary, all in order. According to the Net, she wasn’t in New York when Gabriel King received his visitor, nor in San Francisco when Urashima was infected. I’m double-checking—if it’s disinformation, I’ll get through it in a matter of hours.”

  “She was there,” said Charlotte. “Whatever the superficial data-flow says, she was there. It’s all in place, Hal—everything except the reason. You’ve got to stop her leaving the island. Whatever else happens, you mustn’t let her get to Czastka.”

  “Who’s her father?” Oscar put in. “Whose child is she?”

  “Egg and sperm were taken from the banks,” said Hal. “Both donors long-dead. Six co-parents filed the application—no traceable link to anyone involved in this. The sperm was logged in the name of Lothar Kjeldsen, born 2355, died 2417. The ovum was Maria Inacio’s, born 2402, died 2423. No duplicate pairing registered, no other posthumous offspring registered to either parent. I’m checking for disinformation input, in case the entire Herold identity is virtual.”

  “The mother was born at the same time as the men on the victim list. Could she have known them?”

  “It’s possible. She was an Australian resident at the appropriate time. There’s no trace of her in the University records, but she might have been living next door. What would it prove if she was? She’s been dead for a hundred and thirty years. She drowned in Honolulu—presumed accidental, possibly a suicide. This isn’t getting us anywhere, Dr. Wilde, and I have a whole panel lighting up on me—I’m cutting off.”

  The screen went blank yet again.

  “She’s Rappaccini’s daughter,” said Oscar, softly. “I don’t know which bit of the record’s been faked, or how, but she’s Rappaccini’s daughter. And she’ll get to Walter, even if she has to swim.”

  10

  Charlotte stared out of the viewport beside her. Behind them, in the east, the dawn was breaking. Ahead of them, in the west, the sky was still dark and ominous. Beneath them, the sea was only just becoming visible as fugitive rays of silvery light caught the tops of lazy waves. In these latitudes, the sea was almost unpolluted by the vast amount of synthetic photosynthetic substances which were daily pumped out from the artificial islands of the Timor Sea; even by day it did not display the defiant greenness of Liquid Artificial Photosynthesis. Even so, this region of the ocean could not be reckoned a marine wilderness. The so-called seven seas were a single vast system, now half-gentled by the hand of man. The Continental Engineers, despite the implications of their name, had better control of evolution’s womb than extinction’s rack. Even the wrathful volcanoes which had created the Hawaiian islands were now sufficiently manipulable that they could be forced to yield upon demand the little virgin territories which the likes of Walter Czastka and Oscar Wilde had rented for their experiments in Creation.

  “In my namesake’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar said, ruminatively, “the eponymous anti-hero made a diabolical bargain, exchanging fates with a portrait of himself, with the consequence that his picture was marred by all the afflictions of age and dissolution while the real Dorian remained perpetually young. He cast aside all conventional ideas of morality, determined to savor the entire gamut of pleasurable sensation.”

  “I’m sure it’s great fun,” said Charlotte, ironically.

  Oscar ignored the remark. “At that time, of course,” he said, “the story of Dorian Gray was the purest of fantasies, but we live in a different era now. It is perhaps too early to declare that yours is the la
st generation which will be subject to the curse of aging, but I am living proof of the fact that even my generation has set aside much of the burden with which ugliness, disease, and the aging process afflicted us in days of old. We are corruptible, but we also have the means to set aside corruption, to reassert, in spite of all the ravages of time and malady, the image which we would like to have of ourselves. Nowadays, everyone who has the means may have beauty, and even those of limited means have a right of access to the elementary technologies of rejuvenation. I am young now for the fourth time, and no matter how often doctors and doubters tell me that my flesh is too weak to weather a fourth rejuvenation, I will not be prevented from attempting it. Nothing will induce me to become like Walter Czastka when I might instead gamble my mortality against the chance of yet another draught from the fountain of youth.”

  “So what?” said Charlotte. “Why tell me?”

  “Because,” he said, tolerantly, “that’s why Rappaccini expects me to understand what sort of artwork he is designing. That’s why he expects me to become its interpreter and champion, explaining to the world what it is that he has done. Because I’m Oscar Wilde—and because I’m Dorian Gray. Men like the first Oscar Wilde and the first Gustave Moreau were fond of likening their own era to the days of the declining Roman Empire, when its aristocracy had grown effete and self-indulgent, so utterly enervated by luxury that its members could find stimulation only in orgiastic excess. They argued that the ruling class of the nineteenth century had been similarly corrupted by comfort, to the extent that anyone among them who had any sensitivity at all lived under the yoke of a terrible ennui, which could only be opposed by sensual and imaginative excess. All that remained for men of genius to do was mock the meaningless of conformity and enjoy the self-destructive exultation of moral and artistic defiance.

  “They were right, of course. Theirs was a decadent culture, absurdly distracted by its luxuries and vanities, unwittingly lurching toward its historical terminus. The ‘comforts’ of the nineteenth century—hygiene, medicine, electricity—were the direct progenitors of what we now call the Devastation. Few men had the vision to understand what was happening, and even fewer had the capacity to care. Addicted to their luxuries as they were, even terror could not give them foresight. Blindly and stupidly, they laid the world to waste, and used all the good intentions of their marvelous technology to pave themselves a road to Hell. In the Aftermath, of course, the work of renewal began. Collective control of fertility was achieved, and the old world of hateful tribes was replaced by the world of the Net, which bound the entire human race into a single community. And we were able once again to cultivate our comforts … to the extent that Rappaccini seemingly believes that the revolution is complete, and that the wheel has come full circle.”

  “But that’s nonsense!” said Charlotte. “There’s no way that there could be another Devastation. There couldn’t possibly be another population explosion, or another plague war.”

  “That’s not what Rappaccini fears,” said Oscar. “What he’s trying to make us see, I think, is the horror of a world inhabited entirely by the old: a world made stagnant by the dominion of minds that have lost their grip on memory and imagination alike, becoming slaves to habit, imprisoned by their own narrow horizons. He’s telling us that, in one way or another, we must kill our old men. The argument of his artwork is that if we can’t liberate our renewable bodies from the frailty of our mortal minds, then the technological conquest of death will be a tragedy and not a triumph. He has undertaken to murder six men who are nearing a hundred and fifty years of age, not one of whom has dared to risk a third rejuvenation, even though it would seem that they have little or nothing to lose—and he has chosen for his audience a man who has taken that gamble, hopefully soon enough to avoid the kind of mental sclerosis which has claimed his victims. Can you begin to see what he’s about?”

  “I can see that he’s stark, staring mad,” said Charlotte.

  Oscar smiled wryly. “Perhaps he is,” he said. “His fear is real enough—but perhaps the threat isn’t as overwhelming as he seems to think. Perhaps the old men will never take over the world, no matter how many they are or how old they grow. Old age is, after all, self-defeating. Those who lose the ability to live also lose the will to live. But the creative spark can be maintained, if it’s properly nurtured. The victory of ennui isn’t inevitable. If and when we really can transform every human egg-cell to equip it for eternal physical youth, those children will discover ways to adapt themselves to that condition by cultivating eternal mental youth. My way of trying to do that is, I admit, primitive—but I am here to help prepare the way for those who come after me. They will be the true children of our race: the first truly human beings.”

  Charlotte felt her eyes growing heavy; she felt drained. If only she had been more alert, she thought, she might have obtained a firmer grasp on Oscar Wilde’s arguments. After all, she too retained an echo of the 1890s in her name. Could the small phonetic step which separated “Charlotte” from “Sherlock” really signify such a vast abyss of incomprehension? She knew that she needed sleep, and she felt in need of a soporific. Unfortunately, she was four thousand kilometers away from the ingenious resources of her intimate technology. She looked uncertainly at Oscar Wilde. He was watching her, with a serious expression in his liquid, luminous eyes.

  “We ought to get some sleep,” Charlotte said. “It’ll be late tomorrow before we get to Hawaii.” She hesitated, wondering how to proceed, her gaze drifting to the curtain which screened the cabin’s bunkspace.

  “How my namesake’s heart would have warmed to our Virtual Realities and the wonders of our intimate technology!” Oscar said, as though continuing his reverie. “I fear, though, that we have not yet learned to use our intimate technologies as fully or as consciencelessly as we might. Even in a world of artificial wombs and long-dead parents, we cling to the notion that sexual intercourse is essentially a form of communication, or even communion, rather than an entirely personal matter, whose true milieu is the arena of fantasy, where all idiosyncrasies may be safely unfettered.”

  Charlotte couldn’t help blushing, although she presumed that he had pre-empted her proposition mainly in order to spare her blushes.

  “Thanks for telling me,” she said, sharply. “I suppose that if Rappaccini had you on his list of victims, you’d be in no danger.”

  “Not so,” he said. “A kiss is, after all, just a kiss—and I can appreciate a lovely face as well as any man. It is only in matters of true passion that I am an exclusive and unrepentant Narcissus.”

  11

  When Charlotte awoke, the sun was high, but Oscar had darkened the viewports in order to conserve a soft crepuscular light within the cabin of the speeding plane. She sat up and drew the curtain aside to look over the backs of the seats. Her waistphone was still plugged in to the comcon; data was parading across the main screen at the command of Oscar’s deft fingertips.

  “Good morning,” he said, instantly aware of her movement although he had not turned. “It is still morning, thanks to the time-harvesting effects of westward travel. We’re less than half an hour from Kauai, but I fear that we’ll be unable to do much there except bear witness to the completion of the fifth phase of Rappaccini’s grand plan.”

  Because she was slightly befuddled by sleep, it took her a second or two to work out what he meant. “McCandless is dead!” she said, finally.

  “Quite dead,” he confirmed. “The local police had him removed to an intensive-care unit as soon as he showed signs of illness, but there was absolutely nothing to be done for him. The progress of his devourers will be tracked with infinite patience by a multitude of observers—the doctors have sent a fleet of nanocameras into his tissues—but to no avail. What remains of Teidemann’s body has been found too.”

  Charlotte donned the tunic of her police uniform. “What about Julia Herold? Have they got her in custody?”

  “Alas, no.”

  Charl
otte knew that she ought to have been astonished and outraged, but all that she really felt was a sense of bitter resignation.

  “How could they possibly fail to intercept her?”

  “She had already left when McCandless began to show signs of distress,” said Oscar, who did not seem overly disappointed. “She went for a moonlight swim, and never surfaced again. The eyes set to follow her were mounted on flitterbugs, and by the time suitable submarine eyes entered the water she was beyond reach. Flying eyes are, of course, watching avidly for her to surface, but she must have had breathing apparatus secreted off-shore, and some kind of mechanized transport.”

  “A submarine?” said Charlotte, incredulously.

  “More likely a towing device of some kind. The officer in charge of the failed operation pointed out that there was little more he could have done without a warrant for her arrest. One has now been issued. The Kauai police have sent helicopters to lie in wait for her, but Walter has forbidden them permission to land, and they’re not empowered to override his wishes unless and until they actually see her. There’s one more police helicopter awaiting our arrival on Kauai.”

  “Have you talked to Czastka?”

  “No. He’s refusing all calls. He presumably still thinks that all he needs to do is keep his house sealed. ‘Julia Herold,’ by the way, is a fiction of disinformation. Your Dr. Watson has proved that the person in McCandless’s house was indeed the same one who visited Gabriel King in New York and Michi Urashima in San Francisco. He is confident that he will be able to prove that she delivered the fatal flowers to Teidemann and Kwiatek too. He assures me that it is only a matter of time before he discloses an authentic personal history.”

  “Is that everything?”

  “By no means. It required all my skills as an organizer to present these edited highlights so economically.”

  Charlotte looked resentfully at the bright and beautiful young man, who seemed unafflicted by the least sign of weariness. She switched the nearest viewport to reflector mode so that she could straighten her hair, and studied the faint wrinkles that were becoming apparent in the corners of her eyes. They could be removed easily enough by the most elementary tissue-manipulation, but they still served as a reminder of the biological clock that was ticking away inside her. Thirty years to rejuve number one, she thought, and counting. It was not a kind of paranoia to which she was usually prone, but she could not help comparing her flawed features with Oscar’s fully-restored perfection.