Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [136]
The copter’s safety-minded silver pilot gave the beached roc a wide berth, putting Charlotte and Lowenthal down a full sixty meters from the point where the woman had been dropped. The fugitive had already picked herself up and had disappeared into the trees which fringed the beach.
Charlotte unplugged her beltphone from the helicopter’s comCon without bothering to sign off, and put the handset in its holster. Hal would be able to see what was going oh, but she didn’t want him babbling in her ear. It had fallen to her to make the final arrest, with the world looking on, and she didn’t want it to look as if she were merely a marionette, dancing to New York’s tune.
She did not attempt to approach the roc, although she took a long look at the chimerical creature before turning to follow the red-haired woman. The bird peered back at her dolefully from one unnaturally large and bloodily crimson eye; the other was hidden by the bulk of its naked head. It did not look so horrid now that it seemed helpless. It looked mournful, and rather tragic.
Michael Lowenthal came abreast of her as she paused, and Oscar Wilde was already running across the sand to join the two of them.
“You shouldn’t have got out,” she said to Wilde as lightly as she could. “You’ll have to be quarantined now.” “You know perfectly well, dear Charlotte,” Wilde replied, not quite breathlessly, “that I could not possibly be content to watch the final act of the comedy through an artificial eye mounted on the brow of a police officer.” “It’s a comedy now, is it?” said Lowenthal sourly. “I can’t quite see the joke.” “It is,” Wilde intoned, puffing himself up with false dignity, “a divine comedy.
If we can read it rightly, all of modern life’s metaphysical frame will be shown to us here: our land of darkness, our purgatory, our paradise.” Charlotte and her two companions walked side by side to the place where Moreau’s murderous agent had disappeared, keeping a wary eye on the roc while they did so. The bird made no move toward them; its wings were still outstretched, and it seemed to be in considerable distress. It must have been created, Charlotte realized, merely in order to make that single flight; it had served its purpose and might never fly again. As she glanced back for the last time before moving into the trees, Charlotte saw the bloody eyes eclipsed by wrinkled lids.
“Will it die?” she asked of Oscar Wilde.
“I hope not,” he replied. “It would be unfortunate were such a magnificent creation to lose its life in the interests of a mere coup de theatre. On the other hand, one cannot push back the limits of the possible without sacrifice—and Rappaccini has shown little sign of compunction in that regard.” Together, they moved into the forest.
Charlotte found herself leading the way along a narrow grassy pathway, which had the appearance of an accident of nature but which must in fact have been designed with the utmost care. As Charlotte looked from side to side the whole scene seemed remarkably focused, clear and sharp in every detail. It seemed that every leaf on every tree had been not merely designed but arranged with excessive scrupulousness.
There were no mock palms here. This forest was very different from any that Charlotte had ever seen before. The trunk of every tree had grown into the shape of something else, as finely wrought in bronze-barked wood as any sculpture. No two were exactly alike: here was the image of a dragon rampant, here a mermaid, here a trilobite, and here a shaggy faun. Many were the images of beasts which natural selection had designed to walk on four legs, but all of them stood upright here, rearing back to extend their forelimbs, separately or entwined, high into the air. These upraised forelimbs provided bases for spreading crowns of many different colors: all the greens and coppery browns of Ancient Nature; all the purples, golds, and blues that Ancient Nature had never quite mastered; even the graphite black of Solid Artificial Photosynthetic