Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [135]
On the other hand, he may simply, have decided that he had been a closely kept secret for far too long, and that he ought to be remembered for what he truly was: a unique man, and a unique artist. Perhaps he became determined to shout from the rooftops that which Walter and his coconspirators were so determined to keep quiet, by way of compensation for his own betrayal. By the time the casters have unraveled the thread of this plot, everyone in the world will know what Jafri Biasiolo was, and what he made of himself.” By the time that Gustave Moreau’s green-clad island came in view, Charlotte had placed a bubblebug on her forehead in preparation for the landing. Hal Watson would be able to use it as an eye as long as she stayed within a few hundred meters of the copter. Given that Moreau’s island was more or less identical in size and shape to Walter Czastka’s, it seemed unlikely that she would have to stray beyond that limit.
The flight of the giant bird had now become slightly drunken, although it was still gliding. Every slight adjustment of its wings seemed exaggerated, and it was losing height inexorably. Huge though it was, the weight of an adult human being and the instability induced by her awkward position were making it difficult for the monster to complete its task. Charlotte wondered whether the creature had sufficient strength left to make a successful landfall.
It was clear to Charlotte that the woman’s murders must have been planned in such a way as to lay a trail, and that it was Moreau’s island, not Czastka’s, that had always been the end point of that trail. Thanks to the special provision which Moreau had made for Oscar Wilde, she and Lowenthal had been able to follow the trail’s most scenic route and had arrived at the appointed destination ahead of any other actual persons—but every news service in the world must have scrambled every available flying eye by now.
It wasn’t every day that the vidveg had the chance to see a police helicopter chase come unstuck because a roc had abducted a beautiful female serial killer.
Nor did Charlotte need Oscar Wilde to tell her that she was about to attend an exhibition: an exhibition which was presumably designed to put the so-called Great Exhibition of 2405 to shame. Most of the exhibits, she suspected, would be illegal—which was one reason why the exhibitor had chosen this peculiarly flamboyant method of issuing invitations. Moreau’s roc had already demonstrated that he was a genetic engineer of genius—perhaps the greatest genetic engineer the world had ever known—but its function was merely to attract attention. In her own way, the “daughter” that Moreau had produced by cloning his mother and then modifying her genome in as-yet-unspecified ways was equally astonishing, and Charlotte assumed that the island would be abundantly stocked with similar miracles.
Moreau was clearly a man for whom the impossible was merely routine, and the miraculous that which could confidently be scheduled for the week after next. He was also a man whose real work had been kept secret for a century and more, while he had been content to restrict his public dealings to the design and supply of funeral wreaths.
Charlotte watched the bird summon up the last vestiges of its strength for its landing maneuver. It banked to the left, its wings curving to catch the air; then the gargantuan limbs flapped once, twice, and thrice as the creature fell toward the silver strand where the waves were breaking over Dr. Moreau’s island.
Charlotte’s helicopter followed, then Oscar Wilde’s. The five copters from Kauai were still in attendance, but they had already received orders to keep their cabins sealed after landing lest their occupants become vectors of unknown biocontamination.