Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [32]
The “new” UN complex built in 2431 was now under sentence of death, along with every other edifice on Manhattan Island, but it was intended to remain functional for at least another year while its multitudinous departments were relocated on a piecemeal basis. Charlotte thought that its loss would be a pity, given that it had so much history attached to it—the complex embraced the site of the original building, which had been demolished in 2039—but the MegaMall and the Decivilizers both saw the matter in a different light.
Charlotte had only the vaguest notion of how the Decivilization movement had come to be so influential, but she could see perfectly well that it was a matter of fashion rather than ideological commitment. Perhaps people had been huddled into the old cities for far too long, and perhaps the populations of the New Human Race ought to be more diffusely distributed if they were really to develop new and better ways of life, but that didn’t mean that history ought to be forgotten and all its artifacts rendered down into biotech sludge. What would happen when the fashion passed, and “Decivilization” ceased to be a buzzword? Would the Naturals then begin to restore everything that Gabriel King had demolished? There had once been talk of the UN taking over the whole of Manhattan, but that had gone the way of most dream schemes during the still-troubled years of the late twenty-second century. Now, an even more grandiose plan to move the core of the UN bureaucracy to Antarctica—the “continent without nations”—was well advanced and seemed likely to proceed to completion. Fortunately, that was unlikely to include the Police Department. Charlotte didn’t want to relocate to a penguin-infested wilderness of ice.
Oscar Wilde mentioned to Charlotte as they transferred from her car to the elevator that he had visited the UN complex many times before but had never penetrated into the secret sanctum of the Police Department. He seemed to find the prospect of a visit to Hal’s lair rather amusing. Charlotte was confident that he would be disappointed by the clutter; Hal was not a tidy man, and Wilde’s manner of dress suggested that he valued neatness.
“How well did you know Gabriel King, Dr. Wilde?” she suddenly asked as they stepped across the threshold of the elevator. Having seen and understood what had happened last time, she was determined to seize the initiative before the ascent commenced.
“We used to meet for business reasons at infrequent intervals,” Wilde replied, apparently having given up on his attempt to achieve first-name status, “and we must have been in the same room on numerous social occasions. I think of myself as belonging to a different generation, but the world at large presumably considers us to be of equivalent antiquity. I haven’t spoken to Gabriel for more than twenty years, although I would undoubtedly have bumped into him sometime soon had I remained in New York and had he remained alive. I’ve supplied his company with decorative materials for various building projects, but we were never friends. He was one of the great bores of his era, and not for want of competition, but I had nothing else against him. Even a man of my acute aesthetic sensibilities would not stoop so low as to murder a man merely for being a bore.” “And how well do you know Rappaccini?” she followed up doggedly.
“I haven’t seen him in the flesh for more years than I can count. I know the body of his work far better than I know the man behind it, but there was a period immediately before and after the Great Exhibition when we used to meet quite frequently. We were often bracketed together by critics and reporters who observed a kinship in our ideas,