Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [21]
The tape ended, and Hal’s face returned to the screen.
“She was inside for about half an hour,” said Hal, presumably addressing Oscar Wilde. “King was still perfectly healthy when she left, and it wasn’t until some twelve or thirteen hours later that he felt sufficient discomfort to call up a diagnostic program. He never had a chance to hit his panic button; the progress of the plant was too swift. The woman might have had nothing to do with it, but she was the last person to see him alive. Do you have any idea who she might be?” “I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen her before,” Wilde answered. “I fear that I can only offer the obvious suggestion.” “Which is?” Hal said.
“Rappaccini’s daughter.” Hal had nothing to say in reply to that, and neither did Charlotte. They simply waited for clarification.
“It’s another echo of the nineteenth century,” said Oscar, with a slight sigh.
“Rappaccini borrowed his pseudonym from a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne entitled ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter.’ You don’t know the period, I take it?” “Not very well,” Charlotte said awkwardly, when it became obvious that Hal wasn’t about to reply. “Hardly at all” would have been nearer the truth.
“Then it’s as well that I’m here,” the beautiful man said in a manner that surely must be calculated to infuriate. “Otherwise, this exotic performance might be entirely wasted.” The wall unit’s buzzer sounded again.
Charlotte stabbed at it angrily and didn’t give Carnevon the opportunity to open his moudi. “All right!” she snapped, no longer caring whether she was under observation or not. “We’re going. Apart from King’s apartment, everything’s usable—but you’d better remember what I said about leaks, Carnevon, because if any information gets loose from here that might confuse or impede our investigation, I’ll be back.” Then she ripped the plug of her beltphone from the wall and said, “We’d better continue this conversation in the elevator and the car. It would probably be better if we were all back at base when that DNA data begins to come in. Then Hal can get to work on tracing the woman and Dr. Wilde can get to work on the gentemplate of the killer plant—while you and I, Mr. Lowenthal, can rest our weary feet. With luck, we’ll have the killer in custody in time to make the Breakfast News.” “I fear, dear Charlotte,” murmured Oscar Wilde as they all moved toward the open elevator car, “that this might be the kind of case in which luck will not be of much assistance.”
Intermission One: A Lover in the Mother's Arms
Magnus Teidemann was exhausted by the time he got back to the tent, but it was a good kind of exhaustion: the kind that resulted from a long walk through resentful undergrowth, carrying a heavy pack loaded with specimen jars.
The specimen jars had been carefully dug out of the humus-littered forest floor, where they had served as pitfall traps to capture wandering insects and arachnids. As the director of the Seventh Biodiversity Survey, Magnus had a legion of assistarits to carry out such work, but he insisted on taking shifts himself. There was no tokenism about the gesture; the reason he had involved himself with the Natural Biodiversity Movement in the first place was to have the opportunity to work at ground level.
Old though he was, Magnus was not ready to be confined to a laboratory, let alone a desk. A man of his age had to be reckoned to be taking a serious risk if he insisted in isolating himself out here, where help might take ten or twelve hours to reach him if he contrived to send an alarm call and ten or twelve days if he did not, but it was a risk he was prepared to take. Indeed, his dearest and most secret wish was to die in some such place as this, in the humid maternal shadow of the forest giants, where his body would decay in a matter of