Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [106]
Wilde’s call was fielded by a sim, which looked considerably healthier than the real Walter Czastka.
“This is Oscar Wilde,” said the geneticist. “I need to talk to Walter. It’s extremely urgent.” “I’m not taking any calls at present,” said the simulacrum flatly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Walter,” said Wilde impatiently. “I know you’re listening in. I know that the police have told you exactly what’s going on, even if you haven’t had the courtesy to acknowledge it. This is no time to go into a sulk.
We have to talk.” The sim flickered, and its image was replaced by Czastka’s actual face. “What do you want, Oscar?” he said, his voice taut with aggravation. “This is nothing to do with you.” “I’m afraid that you’re a player in this game whether you like it or not, Walter,” Wilde said soothingly. “I know it’s a nuisance, but we really do have to try to figure out why your natural son and next-door neighbor intends to kill you.” “I’m not in any danger and I don’t need protection,” said Walter in a monotone that was as replete with stubbornness as it was with weariness. “There’s no one else on the island, and no one has been here. No one can land here without the house systems knowing about it. I can seal all the doors and windows if I need to. I’m perfectly safe and I don’t need any assistance. I never heard of anyone called Jafri Biasiolo and I never had the slightest suspicion that I had fathered a child, let alone the lunatic on the next island over. I can’t think of any reason why he or anyone else should want to murder me.” It sounded to Charlotte like a rehearsed speech—one that he had probably recited more than once to the UN police. It also sounded to Charlotte like a pack of lies: a refusal to cooperate, or even to acknowledge the problem, whose pigheadedness would not have been out of place in the fake personality of a low-grade sloth.
“I don’t think Rappaccini’s motive is conventional, Walter,” said Wilde, “but the six intended victims of his murderous sequence certainly weren’t chosen at random. There must be some kind of connection linking you to King, Urashima, Kwiatek, Teidemann, and McCandless, and it must be something that happened when you were all at Wollongong. It must have to do with the circumstances in which you fathered a child with Maria Inacio.” Charlotte noted that Walter Czastka looked astonishingly pale. His eyes were unblinking, his features set firm.
“As I told your friends, Oscar,” Czastka said in a voice devoid of all emotion, “I don’t remember. Nobody remembers what they were doing a hundred and seventy years ago. Nobody. I have no memory of ever having met Maria Inacio. None.” Lies, thought Charlotte. He knows everything—but he’s determined not to let us in on the secret. It won’t work. Everything will come out, and everyone will know. Now that Rappaccini has recruited the vidveg as well as Wilde, everyone will be interested. That’s what Rappaccini intended.
“I’m not sure that I can believe that, Walter,” said Wilde, treading very softly indeed. “We forget almost everything, but we can always remember the things which matter most, if we try hard enough. This is something which matters, Walter. It matters now, and it mattered then. Are you certain that you don’t know the woman whose picture they showed you—the Inacio clone? The others all seemed to know her—perhaps you’ve met her too? She seems to have been born and raised on