“In ‘The Decay of Lying,’ my namesake laments the dominance of realism in the artwork of his own day. He argues—again, rather flippantly—that there is no virtue at all in fidelity of representation, and that the glory of art lies in its unfettered inventiveness. Art, he argues, should not endeavor to be truthful or useful, nor should it limit itself to the kinds of petty deception which are committed by vulgar everyday liars—salesmen and politicians. He proposes that art should lie with all the extravagance and grandiosity of which the human imagination is capable. That is why Rappaccini asked me to judge him as a true liar. But the word decay is also very significant, and you will doubtless recall that the simulation said that I, of all people, should understand the world’s decadence. That, I think, is a subtler—” He broke off as Charlotte suddenly turned away, looking up into the sky. While Oscar had been speaking, his words had gradually been overlaid by another sound, whose clamor was by now too insistent to be ignored. Its monotonous drone threatened to drown him out entirely.
“There!” she said, pointing at a dark blur only half-emerged from the dazzling face of the sun. It was descending rapidly toward them, growing hugely as it did so.
The approaching craft was a light aircraft, whose engines were even now switching to the vertical mode so that it could land helicopter-fashion.
Charlotte followed Wilde and Lowenthal as they hurried into the shelter of the building from which they had come, in order to give the machine space to land.
The plane was, of course, pilotless—and the first thing Charlotte saw as she hurried to the passenger cabin was a message displayed on its one and only screen which said: ANY ATTEMPT TO INTERROGATE THE PROGRAMMING OF THIS VEHICLE WILL ACTIVATE A VIRUS THAT WILL DESTROY THE DATA IN QUESTION.
She had expected that and was sufficiently glad to have access to an adequately powerful comcon. For the moment she did not care exactly where the machine might be headed. While Oscar Wilde and Michael Lowenthal climbed in behind her she plugged her beltphone into the comcon and deposited her bubblebugs in the decoder.
As soon as the doors were closed, the plane began to rise into the air.
“Hal,” said Charlotte as soon as the connection was made. “Sorry to be out of touch. Vital data coming in—crazy message from Biasiolo, alias Rappaccini, delivered by sim. It’s conclusive proof of Rappaccini’s involvement. Pick out the face of the fifth victim and identify it for me. Send an urgent warning to Walter Czastka. And tell us what course this damn plane is following, if you can track it from orbit.” Hal Watson acknowledged the incoming information, but paused only briefly before saying: “I’m sure all this is very interesting, but I’ve closed the file on Jafri Biasiolo, alias Rappaccini, alias Gustave Moreau. We’re now concentrating all our efforts on the woman. We assume that she’s a modified clone of Maria Inacio, illegally and secretly created by Biasiolo before his death.” “Death!” Charlotte echoed, dumbfounded by the news. “When? How?” Unfortunately, Hal was busy decanting the data from her bubblebug and didn’t reply immediately. There was a long, frustrating pause. Wilde and Lowenthal were waiting just as raptly as she was.
Charlotte filled in time by looking around the cabin. The airplane was a small one, built to carry a maximum of four passengers. Again, Lowenthal had been left to play odd man out. Behind the second row of seats there was a curtained section, but the curtains were drawn back, allowing her to see the four bunks it contained. That implied that they were in for a long flight—and the plane’s engine seemed distinctly fainthearted. They were traveling no faster than they had on the maglev or the transcontinental superhighway.
“Hal!” she said as soon as her colleague’s image appeared on the inset screen.
“What do you mean, you’ve closed the file? The tape is proof of Rappaccini’s involvement.” “He’s dead, Charlotte,” Hal repeated, calmly emphasizing the crucial word. “He’s been dead all along. I found the new identity he took up after his rejuvenation, with the aid of a much-changed appearance, as soon as I’d cut through the obfuscations in the leases pertaining to the artificial islands in the vicinity of Kauai. Actually, he’d established half a dozen fake identities under various pseudonyms, but the one he appears to have used for everyday purposes is the late Gustave Moreau. As Moreau, Biasiolo leased an islet west of Kauai; he’s been Walter Czastka’s nearest neighbor for the last forty years. He’s spent most of the last quarter century on the islet, never leaving it for more than three or four weeks at a time. According to the official records, he was alone there, but we now presume that he was taking advantage of the quarantine gifted to all Creationists in order to bring up his mother’s clone. All of this was carefully obscured, of course, but it was just a matter of digging down. We’ve touched bottom now—everything’s in place except the location and arrest of the woman.” “The late Gustave Moreau,” Charlotte repeated, glancing sideways at Oscar Wilde.
It had been Wilde, she remembered, who had said that the Moreau name was just part of a series of jokes, not worth taking seriously—but that was before they had seen the “play” whose stage set was based on a painting by the original Gustave Moreau. Was it possible, she wondered, that Biasiolo/Rappaccini/Moreau had gone out of his way to involve Wilde in this comedy simply because he, like Wilde, had taken the name of a nineteenth-century artist fascinated by the legend of Salome? “That’s right,” Hal replied patiently. “Gustave Moreau, alias Rappaccini, alias Jafri Biasiolo, died six weeks ago in Honolulu. The precise details of his conception might be lost in the mists of obscurity, but every detail of his death was scrupulously recorded before the body was released. According to the boatmaster who handled Moreau’s supplies, the corpse was shipped back to the islet—where the mysterious foster daughter presumably took delivery of it.
There’s no doubt that the dead man was Biasiolo; I’d have found the DNA match if I’d only thought to check Biasiolo’s record against the register of the dead as well as the living. It was the same error of omission I initially made with the woman’s DNA, delaying her identification as an Inacio clone.” “The comcon links to Moreau’s island haven’t been closed down, but there’s no one answering at present. The boatmaster says that he’s been shipping equipment and bales of collapsed LSP from the islet to Kauai for over a year, every time he’s made a supply drop. According to him, there’s virtually nothing left on the islet except for the ecosystem which Moreau built—and, presumably, his grave.
The UN will send a team in to examine and record the ecosystem. Under normal circumstances it would probably take three months or so to put the people together and another three before they finished the job, but in view of the biohazard aspect of the case I’ve put Regina Chai in charge and I’ve asked her to make all possible speed. She and her team will be there before the end of the week.” “But Biasiolo’s still responsible for all this, isn’t he?” Charlotte protested, again glancing sideways at Oscar Wilde. Wilde was staring upward with an expression of annoyance on his face which strongly implied that he was mentally kicking himself for failing to deduce that it was Rappaccini’s death which had determined the timing of this remarkable posthumous crime. “He must have set it all up before he died. The woman is obviously implicated, but what we just saw in that cellar must have been put in place years ago—and it must have taken years to build up, if what you say about Biasiolo never leaving the islet for more than a month at a time is true.” “Agreed,” said Hal. “But we can’t charge a dead man. She’s the one we want—the one we need. The evening news broke the full story of the sequence of murders—the story so far, at any rate. I don’t know how much the MegaMall will hold back, but now that they know for sure that this isn’t aimed at them, however obliquely, I suspect they’ll just sit back and enjoy the show along with everybody else. The news tapes haven’t identified the killer, of course, but they know what’s going on. By now there’ll be a whole swarm of hoverflies heading for Kauai and Biasiolo’s island.” Charlotte turned to look at Michael Lowenthal, who did indeed have the air of a man who had decided to sit back, even if the remainder of the show afforded him little enjoyment. His face was a picture of misery—presumably because even he had now been forced to accept that Walter Czastka was not the guilty party.