Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [12]
When the newcomer emerged from the elevator car Charlotte felt a curious sense of deja vu. He was by no means Michael Lowenthal’s twin—his hair was russet brown and flowing, his eyes were green, and his bodily frame was much more abundantly furnished with flesh—but he was exactly the same height, and he had something of the same air about him. Like Lowenthal, he was one of the most beautiful men—handsome would have been the wrong word—Charlotte had ever seen, and like Lowenthal, he was well aware of his beauty. He was wearing a green carnation in the lapel of his neatly tailored jet-black suitskin, whose color was a perfect match for his eyes.
Oscar Wilde bowed to Charlotte with deliberate grace and favored Michael Lowenthal with a slight nod of the head. Then he glanced up, briefly, at the place where a discreet eye would normally have been set in the wall to record the faces of everyone emerging from the lift. The eye in question was in the bag Charlotte was holding, along with all the others, but Wilde couldn’t know that.
Charlotte was puzzled by the glance. Public eyes and private bubblebugs were everywhere in a city like New York, and all city dwellers were entirely accustomed to living under observation; those who had grown up with the situation took it completely for granted. In some WG-unintegrated nationettes it still wasn’t common for all walls to have eyes and ears, but within the compass of the World Government everyone had long since learned to tolerate the ever-presence of the benevolent mechanical observers which guaranteed their safety. Most people ignored them, but Wilde obviously did not belong to the category of “most people.” Might his reflexive glance toward the eye be a tacit admission of guilt? Wilde smiled broadly—and Charlotte realized, belatedly, that she had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Wilde hadn’t glanced at the place where the eye should have been because he resented its assumed presence, but because he welcomed its attention. He had actually adjusted his stance as he moved out of the elevator so that he might better be observed, not merely by her and Lowenthal but by the cameras he supposed to be recording the encounter.
Posturing ape! Charlotte thought, remembering Gabriel King’s muttered aside.
“Mr. Wilde?” she said tentatively. “I’m Detective Sergeant Charlotte Holmes, UN Police Department. This is my, um, colleague, Michael Lowenthal.” “Please call me Oscar,” said the beautiful man. “What exactly has happened to poor Gabriel? Something nasty has happened, has it not? The orotund gentleman downstairs left me in no doubt of it, but would not tell me what it was.” “He’s dead,” Charlotte replied shortly. “I understand from Carnevon that you had an appointment with him. Will you tell me what the purpose of the appointment was to have been?” She winced at the unintentionally clumsy phrasing of the question.
“I’m afraid that I can’t,” Wilde told her smoothly. “The message summoning me here came as text only, with a supplementary fax. I received it about two hours ago. It was an invitation—although it was, I fear, couched more in the manner of a command. I suppose that it was sufficiently impolite to warrant disobethence, but sufficiently intriguing to be tempting. Dead, you say?” “That message wasn’t sent from this apartment,” Charlotte told him, ignoring his teasing prompt.
“Then you must trace it,” Wilde replied affably, “and discover where it did come from. If Gabriel was already dead when it was sent, it would be very interesting to know who sent it in his stead—and why.” Charlotte hesitated. She was not entirely certain what to say next but she wanted to say something lest Michael Lowenthal should decide to step into the breach. She was saved from the hazards of improvisation by Hal Watson, whose image reappeared