Architects of Emortality (25 page)

We’ve now contacted all of them but one—Magnus Teidemann—so we’re fairly certain that any other bodies that turn up will break the pattern.” Michael Lowenthal patched the list through to his own screen, but no sooner had he set it up than his beltphone buzzed. Rather than displace the list, he picked up his handset and put the mike to his ear.

“What!” he said—not very loudly, but with sufficient emphasis to command the attention of his companions.

“What is it?” Charlotte asked—but she had to wait until Lowenthal had lowered the handset again. When he turned in his seat, it was Oscar Wilde that he transfixed with his triumphant gaze.

“I asked my employers to check the record of Jafri Biasiolo’s DNA against Walter Czastka’s,” Michael Lowenthal said proudly, peering back through the gap between the headrests.

“And were they identical?” asked Oscar Wilde, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“No,” said Lowenthal, “they weren’t identical.” Charlotte wondered why, in that case, he looked so immensely pleased with himself—but he had only paused for effect. “The comparison gave much the same initial estimate of similarity as the comparison between Biasiolo’s and the woman’s—forty-some percent. Closer analysis of key subsections, however, suggests a consanguinity of fifty percent, blurred by substantial deep-somatic engineering.” “I’m not sure that lends any support to your hypothesis,” said Wilde. “Indeed, it suggests—” Lowenthal didn’t let him finish. “That’s not all,” he said. “When they uncovered the link between Czastka and Biasiolo, they immediately compared Walter Czastka’s DNA profile with the record Regina Chai obtained from Gabriel King’s bedroom. The overlap’s no better than random. Consanguinity zero!” “But how can that be?” Charlotte complained. “If Czastka and Biasiolo are close relatives, and the woman is Biasiolo’s daughter…” “She’s not!” Lowenthal was quick to say triumphantly. “The only way that Czastka and the woman could each have fifty percent of Biasiolo’s genes without being significantly consanguineous themselves is by being his parents. She’s not Rappaccini’s daughter at all: she’s his mother!—and Walter Czastka’s his father!” “Congratulations,” said Oscar Wilde dryly. “You seem to have found me guilty of an illegitimate inference—and you doubtless feel that if one of my inferences is defective, the rest might be equally mistaken. But you seem to be overlooking the true significance of the finding—” “Wait a second,” Charlotte interrupted. “This doesn’t make sense. It’s perfectly plausible that Walter Czastka had made a sperm deposit while he was still in his teens, but he certainly couldn’t have applied for a withdrawal only two or three years later! We’re not talking about the Dark Ages here, or the aftermath of the Crash. People of his generation never exercised their right of reproduction when they were in their twenties—it’s only in very special circumstances that they exercise them even now, while they’re still alive.” “If Czastka had made any formal application,” Lowenthal agreed, not in the least confounded by her argument, “then his name would be included in Biasiolo’s record. Obviously, he didn’t—but he was training as a geneticist, and he must have had privileged access to a Helier hatchery. He must have substituted his own sperm for a donation which had been legitimately drawn from the bank. He wouldn’t have been the first hatchery tech to do that, nor the first to have got away with it.” “But it doesn’t help your hypothesis that Czastka is the designer behind Rappaccini Inc.,” Charlotte pointed out. “Your original contention was that Biasiolo was a mere phantom, invented by Czastka for the purpose of establishing a separate identity under which he could undertake various clandestine endeavors.” “That’s true,” Lowenthal agreed. “It’s now established that Biasiolo is a real person, not a ghost—but he’s Walter Czastka’s son. Doesn’t that put Czastka behind Rappaccini Inc.?” “But if your scenario is accurate,” Charlotte objected, constructing the argument as she spoke, “he’d never know it—Biasiolo, I mean. I suppose Czastka might have kept track of a substitute donation, if he’d made one, but he could hardly tell the foster parents about it, could he? What he did—according to you—was a criminal offense. He could never tell Biasiolo that he was his biological father.” “You’re still missing—,” Oscar Wilde said.

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 window 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.