Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [126]
By the time she switched the viewport back to transparency, the island toward which they had been headed was below them, and their plane was descending toward the trees, preparing to alter the orientation of its engines so that it could complete its descent in helicopter fashion.
Like all the Hawaiian islands, Kauai had been blighted by the ecocatastrophes of the twenty-first century and the fallout from the plague wars. Most of its ecosystems had been stripped down almost to the prokaryot level, but it was small enough to have been comprehensively rehabilitated. The biodiversity loss had been enormous, and the current genetic variety of the island was probably only a few percent of what it had been in pre-Crash days, but the painstaking work done by natural selection in the cause of diversification was beginning to bear fruit on a prolific scale. The trees over which the aircraft passed while making for the landing field almost qualified as authentic wilderness.
Charlotte checked the equipment in her belt, making dutiful preparations for the dash from one vehicle to another. She had already invited Oscar Wilde to accompany her rather than taking the helicopter chartered by the late Gustave Moreau, but he had declined the offer. She was not displeased by the thought of putting a little distance between herself and one of her annoying companions—although, had she been given a choice, she would have kept Wilde and banished Lowenthal.
As soon as they had set down at the heliport, Charlotte opened the cockpit door and leapt down to the blue plastic apron. Michael Lowenthal made haste to follow her, but Wilde had perforce to take his time. Uniformed officers hurried toward her, directing her to a police helicopter that was waiting less than a hundred meters away. Its official markings were a delight to Charlotte’s eyes, holding as they did the impression of authority. From now on, she told herself, she would no longer be a passenger but a determined pursuer: an active instrument of justice.
One of the local men tried to tell her that there was no need for her to join the dragnet, and that she could watch it all on screens, but there was no way she was going to be turned aside now. She strode toward the police helicopter very purposefully, brushing off the attentions of the Kauai men as if they were buzzing flies, and Michael Lowenthal trotted along in her wake, barely keeping pace with her in spite of the fact that his stride was longer.
“You can strand him here if you want to,” Lowenthal said, jerking his head in the direction of Oscar Wilde, who was walking to another, somewhat smaller, machine. “He needs clearance for takeoff. You could ground him for the duration.” “Hal could,” Charlotte corrected him as she climbed into the helicopter, taking note of the numerous flitter-bugs clinging to the hull. “I’m just a sergeant. In any case, he might come in useful. Why don’t you take the opportunity to drop out? Your employers surely can’t think that they have any particular cause for concern—and they can watch the whole thing through the flying eyes.” “I talked to them last night,” Lowenthal told her. “They want me to stay with it. They’re still anxious—and that’s as much your fault as anyone’s. All that stuff about advertising for a new generation of Eliminators. They’ve probably had their own PR teams working through the night, figuring out the best way to spin the story once the final shot’s been fired.” The helicopter lifted as soon as they were both strapped in. The automatic pilot had been programmed to take them to Czastka’s island without delay. Charlotte reached into the equipment locker under the seat and brought forth a handgun.
She loaded it and checked the mechanism before clipping it to her belt.
“Do you think you’ll have a chance to use that?” Lowenthal asked. Charlotte noticed that the interpolation of the words a chance put a distinct spin on the question.