Although he could not bring himself to entertain the thought, let alone believe it, Stuart McCandless was fated to die very soon.
It was likely that nothing could have saved him—certainly not a better memory.
What he took for an illusion of similarity was indeed an illusion, because he had recently been shown a better likeness of his darling Julia than ancient memory could possibly have preserved, and had not recognized it.
Sometimes victims collaborate in their own murders, even when they have been warned of danger—and why should they not, if they believe that murder and art are mere expressions of historical process, deft feints, and thrusts of causality? If idiosyncrasy, madness, and genius are no more than tiny waves on a great sullen tide of irresistible causality, even a man forewarned can hardly be expected to defy their force. Stuart McCandless certainly did nothing to avoid his fate, even when the second and far more explicit warning arrived. He simply could not imagine that his pupil could be anything but what she seemed or anyone but who she pretended to be. He was old, and he was complacent. He knew that he was fated to die, but he carried in his consciousness that remarkable will to survive that refuses to recognize death even while it stares death in the face.
Nor was he a fool; he was probably as knowledgeable a historian as there was in the world, and as wise a lover.
If those who tried to warn him had been able to explain to him exactly why he was being murdered, he would have laughed aloud in flagrant disbelief. Like the vidveg he affected to despise, and in spite of his claustrophobia, he was a man whose imaginative horizons were narrower than he knew or could ever have admitted to himself.
Investigation: Act Five: From Land to Sea
The sun was setting by the time Charlotte and her companions emerged into the open; it remained visible solely because its decline had taken it into the cleft of a gap between two spiry crags.
The car had gone.
Charlotte felt her hand tighten 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. Michael Lowenthal’s exclamation of distress was even louder—and the man from the MegaMall immediately reached for his handset, moving to one side to call for assistance.
Charlotte took out her beltphone and tried to send a signal, although the charge indicator suggested that the battery no longer had enough muscle to reach a relay station or a convenient comsat. Nothing happened. She muttered another curse beneath her breath, and then she turned back to Oscar Wilde.
“I should have…” she began—but she trailed off when she realized that she didn’t know exactly what she should have done, or even what she might have done.
“Don’t worry,” said Wilde. “I doubt that Rappaccini brought us up here simply to abandon us. I suspect that 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.
“I don’t know for certain,” he said, “but I would hazard a guess that our route will be westward. We might have one more port of call en route, but our final destination will surely be the island where Walter Czastka is playing God. He is to be the final victim, and his death is presumably intended to form the climactic scene of this perfervid drama.” “We have to warn him,” said Charlotte. “And we have to identify the fifth man too. If the car were here…” “Walter has already had a warning of sorts,” said Oscar ruminatively. “If Hal has been able to contact him with the news that he may be Rappaccini’s father…” He left the sentence dangling.
“Let’s hope it’s not too late to tell him that we now have clear evidence of Rappaccini’s intention to kill him,” said Charlotte, “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, like Kwiatek and Teidemann. 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, seemingly more than a little disturbed by what he had just witnessed, “and I am not at all sure that I can approve of his determination to involve me in all this.” “You should have challenged him about Czastka.” Michael Lowenthal put in, having despaired of making his own call heard. “You should have told him that we’ve discovered that Czastka’s his father.” “It was only a sim,” Wilde reminded him. “It could not have been startled or tricked into telling us anything it was not primed to tell us. In any case, if the DNA evidence can be trusted, Rappaccini must already know that Walter is his father, even if Walter has not the slightest idea that Rappaccini is his son. As Charlotte pointed out, Rappaccini knew enough to create a modified clone of his mother—a very special stepdaughter—and he must have done so with his present purpose in mind. We must concentrate our attention on the questions I did ask, especially the one to which I received two different but equally enigmatic answers.” “Timing,” said Charlotte, to show that she was now able to keep up. “The sim said that it is your birthday—by which it must mean your third rejuvenation. Is that what triggered this bizarre charade?” “That was the second response,” Wilde pointed out. “It required a repetition of the cue to elicit it, it was markedly different in tone from the other speeches delivered by the sim, and it was the last thing it said before shutting down.
The comment had all the hallmarks of an afterthought—a belated addition to the program. Rappaccini must have known for years approximately when I would attempt my third rejuve, but he can only have known the exact date of my release from the hospital for eight or ten weeks—three months at the most. The real answer to the question must somehow be contained in the earlier and much more circuitous speech.” “How much of that did you actually understand?” she asked him. “I recognized the characters, but a lot of what the Herod effigy said went over my head.” “I understood most of the references,” Oscar said, “if only because so many of them were to works by my ancient namesake—but the meaning hidden between the lines was by no means obvious even to me. There was meaning in it, though—meaning that I am intended to divine, given time. The setting was, of course, an elaboration of one of Gustave Moreau’s paintings of Salome’s dance, and Rappaccini’s Herod made several oblique references to Wilde’s essays, including ‘The Decay of Lying’ and ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison.’ ” Charlotte knew that she had heard the second title before, and was very eager to show that she was still at least one step ahead of Michael Lowenthal. “That’s the one which refers to the Wainewright character Hal listed among Rappaccini’s other pseudonyms,” she said.
“That’s right. My namesake argued there, not without a certain macabre levity, that the fact that Wainewright had been a forger and a murderer should not blind critics to the virtues of his work as a literary scholar. Indeed, the essay suggests that Wainewright’s fondness for subtle murder—he was apparently a poisoner of some dexterity and skill—might be regarded as evidence of his wholeness as a person, and might provide better grounds for critical praise than his admittedly second-rate writings. The argument is not as original as it may seem—as I mentioned when the name first came up, De Quincey had earlier written an essay called ‘Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.’ The relevance of the argument to the present case is abundantly clear, I think; Rappaccini obviously regards his murders as phases in the construction of a work of art and considers them at least as estimable as his ingenious funeral wreaths. He is asking me—although I doubt that he can seriously expect me to comply—to look at them admiringly, in the same light.” Charlotte was tempted to observe that Wilde had seemed hitherto to be complying with some enthusiasm, but she could see that there was more to come and felt obliged to give explanation priority over sarcasm. “What else?” she asked, instead.