Architects of Emortality (26 page)

They had just taken yet another bend. This time, the pursuing vehicle failed to make the turn—in fact, it seemed to keep going straight ahead: straight over the edge and into empty air.

For almost a second it seemed to hang there, like some absurd toon character in a synthemovie, who would not start to feel the effects of gravity until he became conscious of being unsupported.

Then, with a peculiar gracefulness, the jeep began to fall.

It tumbled over and over as it fell, and when it finally hit the rocky slope two hundred meters below, it exploded like a bomb, sending shards in all directions.

The sloth driving the hire car had applied the brakes the instant that the threat of a damaging collision was removed from the viewport, but it had done so judiciously so as to minimize the risk of skidding.

“Hal,” said Charlotte tremulously, “I think you just got another data trail to follow.” It was, she felt, a very feeble attempt at humor. By now—assuming that this absurdly tilted patch of crumpled wasteland lay within their jurisdiction—the California Highway Patrol’s best silvers would have identified the rogue vehicle, and they would already be tracking down its owner and programmer.

Charlotte shut her eyes and breathed deeply, while the pain in her head ebbed slowly away.

When she opened her eyes again, Oscar Wilde had converted his side window into a mirror, and he was inspecting his own head very carefully. There was a noticeable bluish bump just above the right eyebrow. She could not find it in her heart to regret the temporary damage done to his outrageous good looks, although he obviously felt differently about it.

“What do you make of that?” she asked him.

“I can only hope that it was simply another vignette in the unfolding psychodrama,” he said grimly. “Perhaps Rappaccini feared that the journey might be a trifle boring, and laid on a measured dose of excitement.” She stared at him for a few seconds. “You mean,” she said slowly, “that the person who hired this car also hired that one—as a practical joke?” Oscar shrugged his shoulders, turning back again to his pained inspection of the damage done to his temple.

“He might be right,” said Hal, over the phone link. “The information’s coming through now. The jeep was hired at the same time as the car, although the fee came from an account I hadn’t yet connected to Rappaccini. The local police have no reason to think that anyone was aboard, although they’ll send a crew out to check the debris. It wasn’t carrying a gun—that rattling sound you heard was produced by your own car’s AI.” Charlotte was speechless.

“Are you all okay?” Hal inquired solicitously.

“Physically, we’re fine,” Michael Lowenthal replied. Given that he had not bruised his own head, his entitlement to speak on behalf of his companions seemed a trifle dubious to Charlotte.

“That’s good,” said Hal, his voice reverting instantly to its normal businesslike tone. “I’ve just got some more data in from Bologna, if you want to look at any of it.” “Bologna?” said Charlotte.

“It’s where Kwiatek was killed,” Lowenthal informed her.

“We’ve got another picture of the woman,” Hal said. “We’re fairly certain that she flew to New York on an intercontinental flight from Rome. Do you want to see the tape?” “Not really,” said Charlotte, who was still profoundly shaken by the fake attack—although she was quick enough to add: “Not yet, I mean. Where was she before Bologna?” “Darkest Africa, we think—visiting Magnus Teidemann. His death is still to be confirmed, but we’re not optimistic. Are you sure you don’t want the Kwiatek data?” “Was there a calling card with Kwiatek’s body?” Oscar Wilde put in, shutting his own eyes as if to blank out the image of the bruise.

“I’ll check the tapes,” Hal said. “Give me a couple of minutes.” “There’s no hurry, Inspector,” Lowenthal said, exchanging a sympathetic glance with the shaken Charlotte. “I think we’d all benefit from a moment’s pause.” “Did you look at the list I put up?” Hal asked, evidently seeing no necessity for any such pause. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he was addressing Lowenthal or Charlotte.

“I saw it,” Charlotte said wearily. “Was there something significant I should have taken note of?” She knew that she ought not to end sentences with prepositions, but thought that the stress of the situation made the infelicity forgivable.

“Maybe not,” Hal replied. “But I thought Mr. Lowenthal’s eye might have been caught by one of the addresses.” The list reappeared yet again, on all three of the seatscreens. Hal had obviously decided that he would follow his agenda no matter what. This time, Charlotte’s eye was immediately drawn to the word Kami. One Stuart McCandless, ex-chancellor of the University of Oceania, had retired to the island. He had graduated from the University of Wollongong in 2322.

“Can you connect him to Czastka or Biasiolo?” Lowenthal said.

“Is he answering his phone?” asked Charlotte. “If so, it might be helpful to find out what he remembers about his student days.” “He’s alive and well,” Hal said. “He says that he still meets up with Czastka occasionally, when Czastka’s on Kauai, but not for some months. He never met Biasiolo and he doesn’t know anything about Rappaccini. He doesn’t remember anything significant about Walter Czastka’s university career.” While this catalogue of negatives was in transmission, Charlotte glanced out of the side window again as the car swung—slowly and carefully—around a bend.

The road was no longer poised above the sheer slope, and she realized that they were coming into one of the ghost towns whose names were still recorded on the map, in spite of the fact that no one had lived in them for centuries.

The car came to a standstill.

The ancient stone buildings that were all that now remained of the town had been weathered by dust storms, but they still retained the sharp angles which proudly proclaimed their status as human artifacts. The land around them was quite dead, seemingly incapable of growing so much as a blade of grass. It was every bit as desolate as an unspoiled lunar landscape, but the shadowy scars of human habitation still lay upon it.

The sun was reddening against the peacock blue background, and the shadows it cast were lengthening toward the east.

“What now?” Charlotte said to Oscar Wilde. “Do we start looking for another body?” Before they had time to get out of the car, the screens in front of them blanked out. While Charlotte was still wondering what the interruption signified, the car’s sloth relayed a message in flamboyant red letters.

It said: WELCOME, OSCAR: THE PLAY WILL COMMENCE IN TEN MINUTES. THE PLAYHOUSE IS BENEATH THE BUILDING TO YOUR RIGHT.

“Play?” said Charlotte bitterly. “Have we come all this way just to see a play? Hal was right—I should never have left New York.” “I’m sorry that your decision has caused you some inconvenience,” said Wilde as he opened the door and climbed out into the sultry heat of the deepening evening, “but I will confess that I’m glad you both decided to come with me. In spite of the entertainment laid on for us as we climbed the mountainside, the journey would have been infinitely more tedious had I been forced to take it alone. I suspect that whatever experience awaits us will benefit from being shared. Do you carry a supply of transmitter eyes in that belt you’re wearing, Charlotte?” “Of course I do,” she said as she moved to the rear of the car to inspect the place where bullets had seemed to strike it. Hal was, inevitably, absolutely right. There were no marks at all. The sound of the shots had been manufactured by the hire car’s sloth, to intensify the fear its passengers felt. The sloth was, of course, far too stupid to be held responsible, but Charlotte cursed it anyway, along with its still-mysterious programmer.

All very amusing for you, she thought, but we could have been killed if we’d gone off the road, and we could have died of fright. When we catch up with you… “I suggest that you place a few transmitters about your person,” Wilde said to her, his own equanimity seemingly restored. “You too, Michael. I only have a bubblebug, incapable of live transmission—but I’ll mount it on my forehead, so that I may preserve the moment for my own future reference.” Charlotte turned to stare at the building to their right. It did not look in the least like a theater. To judge by its display window—empty now of glass, and shutterless—it must once have been a primitive general store. It was roofless now and seemed to be nothing more than a gutted shell.

“Why bring us out here to the middle of nowhere?” she demanded angrily. “If it’s just a tape, why didn’t he just run it in a theater in San Francisco—or New York?” As she spoke, she planted two electronic eyes on her own head, one above each eyebrow. One of them had power enough to transmit a signal to the car, provided that nothing substantial got in the way, and the car’s power system would hopefully boost the signal sufficiently for it to be picked up by a relay sat and copied all the way to Hal Watson’s lair. Whether Hal would bother to watch the transmission as it came in she had no idea, but she took the trouble to give him notice of its imminent arrival.

The notice proved to be premature. Oscar Wilde had already located a downward-leading flight of stone steps inside the derelict building. It was obvious almost as soon as they had begun the descent—with Charlotte planting head-high nanolights every six or seven steps to illuminate their passage—that it had been hollowed out using bacterial deconstructors far more modern than the building itself. By the time they reached the foot of the flight, Charlotte knew that there must be several meters of solid rock separating her from the car. Her transmitter eye was useless, except as a recording device; no signal could reach the car’s sloth.

At the bottom of the stairway there was a very solid door made from some kind of synthetic organic material. It had neither handle nor visible lock, but as soon as Wilde touched it with his fingertips it swung inward.

“All doors in the world of theater open to Oscar Wilde,” Michael Lowenthal muttered sarcastically.

Beyond the doorway was a well of impenetrable shadow. Charlotte automatically reached up to the wall inside the doorway, placing another nanolight there, but the darkness seemed to soak up its luminance quite effortlessly, and it showed her nothing but a few square centimeters of matte black wall. The moment Wilde took a tentative step forward, however, a small spotlight winked on, picking out a two-seater sofa upholstered in black, set a few feet away from them.

“Very considerate,” said Oscar dryly. “Had you not been here, dear Charlotte, I would have been obliged to distribute myself in a conspicuously languid fashion.

As things are, one of us will be obliged to stand.” “I’ll stand,” said Lowenthal. “I’ve been sitting down too long.” Charlotte had to imagine the expression that must have been on his face as he looked at the sofa. There was no dust on it, but it was conspicuously cheap as well as very old. No modern MegaMall outlet would have stocked anything so tawdry.

“Shall we?” said Wilde. He invited Charlotte to move ahead of him, and she did, although she moved a little hesitantly through the darkness, unable to see the floor beneath her feet. There was an interval of five or six seconds after they were seated, and then the spotlight winked out.

Charlotte could not suppress a small gasp of alarm as they were plunged into a darkness which would have been absolute had it not been for the single nanolight she had set beside the door, which now shone like a single distant star in an infinite void.

When light returned, it was very cleverly directed away from them; Charlotte quickly realized that she could not make out Oscar Wilde’s form, nor the contours of her own body. It was as if she had become a disembodied viewpoint, like a tiny bubblebug, looking out upon a world from which her physical presence had been erased.

She seemed to be ten or twelve meters away from the event which unfolded before her eyes, but she knew well enough that the distance—like the event itself—was an illusion. Cinematic holograms of the kind to which Michi Urashima had devoted his skills before turning to more dangerous toys were adepts in the seductive art of sensory deception.

The illusory event did not seem to be a “play” at all, according to Charlotte’s reckoning, but merely a dance, performed solo. The hologrammatic dancer was a young woman. Charlotte had no difficulty at all in recognizing her, because her bronzed features were made up to duplicate the appearance that the image’s living model had presented to Michi Urashima’s spy eyes. Her hair was different, though; it was now long, straight, and jet-black. Her costume was different too and did not seem to be the conventional artifice of a suitskin. The dancer’s bare flesh was ungenerously draped with soft, sleek, and translucent chiffons of many colors, secured at various strategic points of her lissome form by glittering gem-faced catches.

The music to which she danced—lithely and lasciviously—was raw and primitive, generated by virtual drums and reedy pipes.

“Salome,” whispered Oscar Wilde.

“What?” said Lowenthal uncomprehendingly. “I don’t—” “Later!” was Wilde’s swift response to that. “Hush now—watch!” Two days ago the name would have meant absolutely nothing to Charlotte, but thanks to the background reading she had done in the maglev couchette, she now knew that Oscar Wilde—the original Oscar Wilde—had written a play called Salome.