Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [107]
Wilde didn’t react to the unexpected outburst. “What about you and Gustave Moreau, Walter?” he asked soothingly. “You obviously didn’t know that Moreau was Rappaccini, let alone that he was your son, but how did you get on with him as a neighbor? Was there some special hostility between you? Why did you describe him as a lunatic just now?” “I’ve hardly ever seen Moreau,” said Czastka, his annoyance almost incandescent.
“His island may be nearer to mine than any other, but it’s still way over the horizon. I may have bumped into him on Kauai a couple of times, but I never said more than half a dozen words to him. He has a reputation for eccentricity among the islanders, but so does every Creationist. I shouldn’t have echoed the opinion of the ignorant by calling him a lunatic just because I’ve got sick of hearing the jokes—you’d probably appreciate the humor in them, but I never have.
The Island of Dr. Moreau—get it? You’ve probably even read the damn thing. We all keep ourselves to ourselves out here—surely you understand that. All I want to do is to keep myself to myself. Do you get the message, Oscar? I don’t want protection from the UN police and I certainly don’t want you interfering in my business. I just want to be left alone.” There was a brief silence while Oscar Wilde paused for thought.
“Do you want to die, Walter?” he asked finally. It was not an aggressive question, and the inflection suggested that it was not rhetorical.
“No,” said Czastka sourly. “I want to live forever, like you. I want to be young again, like you. But if I do die, I don’t want flowers by Rappaccini at my funeral, and I don’t want anything of yours. If I do die, I want all the flowers to be mine. Is that clear?” “Given that he must have known for a long time what you never did—that he was your biological son—why should Rappaccini have hated you?” Wilde asked, trying as hard as he could to make the question seem innocuous, although it was obviously anything but.
“I don’t know,” Walter Czastka said resentfully. “I don’t hate anyone. It’s not in my nature to hate. It’s not supposed to be in anyone’s nature anymore, is it? Didn’t we leave the era of hatred behind after the Crash, when Conrad Helier and PicoCon saved the world with the New Reproductive System and dirt-cheap longevity? We don’t hate one another anymore because we don’t expect other people to love us, and we don’t feel slighted when they don’t. This is the Era of Courtesy, the Era of Common Sense, when all emotion is mere histrionic display. I was born a little too early to adapt myself fully to its requirements, but you and Rappaccini always seemed to me to have mastered the art completely. I don’t even hate you, Oscar. I don’t hate you, I don’t hate Rappaccini, I don’t hate Gustave Moreau, and I certainly don’t expect any of you to hate me. You don’t hate me, do you, Oscar? You might despise me, but you don’t hate me. You wouldn’t want to kill me—why should you take the trouble, when you think I’m hardly alive to begin with? Why should anyone take the trouble?” The heat of Czastka’s bitterness had faded while he spoke, its near incandescence cooling into ashen SAP black, but Charlotte couldn’t begin to figure out why the Creationist had felt the need to say all that.
“I think we’re on our way to see you, Walter,” said Oscar Wilde placidly. “I don’t know how long it will take us to get there—quite some time, I expect, given the stately progress we’re making at present. I hope everything will be all right when we get there. We can talk then.” “Damn you, Oscar Wilde,” said the old man. “I don’t want you on my island. You stay away, do you hear? I don’t want to talk to you. I’ve said everything I have to say. You stay away from me. Stay away!” He broke the connection without waiting for any response.
Oscar turned sideways to look at Charlotte. His face looked slightly sinister in the dim light of the helicopter’s cabin.