Not, I must add, that the girls seem to need such stimulants. On this occasion the weather was both warm and dry, a rarity for western Ireland. Our meal would be served outside, on crude wooden tables in the south-facing fenced courtyard that leads to a broad and level meadow of close-cropped grass.
I did not, then or ever, regret my choice of western Ireland. The selection had been made carefully. Just as the remoter regions of Ireland had been left behind in the world’s twenty-first century surge of technological progress, so the living standards there had been less affected by the Alpha Centauri supernova. I judged that the same was likely to be true in the devastation caused by the coming particle storm, and I rarely felt nostalgic for the vanished amenities of my former life.
The bench where Michel Darboux and I had placed ourselves sat in the shade of an old horse chestnut. The tree was too close to the inn for safety, and should long ago have been pruned or removed. Today, however, its leafy curtain was welcome. Even where we sat, the volume of noise that the girls generated was considerable. Their enjoyment of their games served as partial compensation for the fact that we were out in the open air, and I was for that reason a little uncomfortable.
I sipped, did my best to relax, and firmly resisted Alyson and Lucy-Mary’s adjurations to join them in an activity that they described as a game, but which seemed to consist mostly of a pile of girls sitting on top of each other and screaming. At the same time I had my eye on the line of village lads beyond the fence. They were watching my darlings, while pretending to be busy with other matters. The older girls were very aware of them. The gestures of Gloria and Bridget, and to a lesser extent Katherine and Darlene, possessed an exaggerated quality, with screams, tossed-back hair, and bare limbs much in evidence. They were playing to the crowd of their admirers.
Who would know, watching them at careless sport, that even the youngest of my darlings was fluent in three languages and had scientific training and knowledge beyond the average educated sixteen-year-old? Not, I felt sure, the row of pimpled teenage males at the fence.
Darboux was watching, too, over the rim of his glass. He caught my eye. “You are a brave man, m’sieur. Your children are very beautiful. It will not be long before older men will come knocking at your door.”
The idea that this type of behavior could only become worse with adolescence was not one to bring me comfort. I noticed that when Bridget and Katherine were close to the boys they were deliberately showing off their legs.
Michel Darboux had seen the same thing. “Perhaps it will happen sooner than you think,” he said. “Your girls can provide sweet nectar for many bees. The men will fly to them — especially if the girls encourage it.”
The suggestion was truly alarming. I had known, as he could not, all the girls in their original incarnations. Before I rescued them, Amity and Bridget and Darlene and Katherine had been child prostitutes, as had Crystal and Alyson (eight years old today and still, thank God, far from puberty). I had saved them from that fate, bringing them anew into a world with every advantage of education and opportunity that I could provide. Only at the genetic level were they what they had once been.
But genetics might be too much. The old debates of nature versus nurture, heredity versus environment, had ended in a standoff. Neither factor could be ignored; either might dominate in an individual case.
Darboux was touching my arm. “M’sieur, we are ready to serve lunch. If you would summon your young ladies . . .”
I nodded. My attention was divided: the clatter of serving dishes behind me; in front of me the girls, seeing or smelling food and standing up to smooth flowered skirts over strong young limbs; off to my right the ogling audience of youths, knowing that the show was over but reluctant to leave. It was at that strange and inopportune moment, when murder, mayhem, and mystery seemed farthest from my mind, that I grasped the nature and dark motive of the Sky City killer.
I did not yet have an identity, but the information to provide that should be readily available. As soon as we returned to the castle, I would download certain Earth-based financial and genealogical data. And then, at last, I would be able, like Shakespeare’s poet, to give “to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.”
How sure was I of my answer? It may sound implausible if I say that I was utterly sure. Yet I was. Like Poincare, the solution had come to me with such “characteristics of brevity, suddenness, and immediate certainty” that I had no doubts at all.
I cannot pretend that I enjoy meetings with Seth Parsigian, either in person or at a distance. His intelligence is not in question, but there is a rude directness to the man that I find hard to tolerate. Rarely, as now, did I look forward to a call from him.
Which, with the perversity of events, did not come when expected. According to our agreement I would call Seth only in an emergency, but he could call me anytime. That was not as unreasonable as it sounds. I hated to make outgoing calls from the castle, and would do so only on a voice-only line. He, however, was out on the front line of Sky City, juggling permits and people and equipment (his RV jacket was finicky and sometimes unreliable), while I was “sittin’ safe at home laughin’ and scratchin’.”
Scratching I was not; itching I certainly was-itching to tell Seth what I knew. Half an hour’s work at the general data banks after we returned from the birthday party had been enough. I knew the name of the murderer.
What I did not have was proof. Worse than that, I saw no way for Seth and me ever to obtain proof unless there was another killing, which seemed, for good and sufficient reasons, unlikely to occur.
When the call came it was past three in the morning. I was not asleep. Excitement at my discovery kept me awake, along with another growing concern arising from the events of the day. It had been my original intention for my darlings to reach the biological age of fourteen, and remain there indefinitely. I now knew that was impossible. The telomod protocols that I myself had pioneered made it a simple task to reset the telomeres of each chromosome to any length, from that of newborn babe to octogenarian. That was not the problem. At issue was the wisdom and feasibility of my plan. Even if no one else discovered the existence of eighteen girls forever in the bloom of early womanhood, my darlings themselves would certainly notice. They had the disposition to demand answers from me, plus the intelligence to dismiss evasions and falsehood.
The alternatives were equally unappealing. Oliver Guest, serial killer of young girls, might seek to do what he had done before: remove them from the world as they came to puberty, and begin with new clones. Except that was now unthinkable; the misery and degradation of their sometime existence was no longer a justification for such an action.
The other option was to allow the girls to age naturally, and thus inevitably to lose them when they became full adults. It occurred to me, as never before, that this was the plight of every parent. I pondered, I agonized, and I discovered no acceptable answer. Seth’s call, when it finally came, was doubly welcome.
It was also surprising. The RV link was on, but I could see Seth’s face against the background of the one-room apartment that he had rented for use on Sky City.
“Oh, yeah,” he said at my question. “I keep the earpiece in all the time, but I don’t wear the RV jacket at night ’cause it’s too hot. It’s hung on the wall over there, an’ you’re gettin’ its picture.”
It was, in fact, a rather superior picture. The suit was in a fixed position, which removed the need for image motion compensation and restoration.