Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [39]
“Did you check the print against Rappaccini’s?” asked Wilde.
“It’s been very carefully checked against Biasiolo’s, in toto and piece by piece,” said Hal carefully. “The basic similarity index is only forty-one percent, but inspection of individual key sequences suggests that it might well have been fifty percent before the somatic modifications were made. If so, the woman could be Biasiolo’s daughter, even though there’s no official record of his ever having fathered, or even fostered, a child.” Wilde nodded sagely, as if this datum confirmed every impression he had so far formed about the nature and twisted logic of the crime.
Hal handed Wilde the other gentemplate, which had now printed out in full with all its associated annotations. “Your sense of style has taken you as far as it can, Dr. Wilde,” he said. “It’s time for some hard work now. We need your expert opinion as a genetic engineer—everything you can tell us about the nature of the plant and the level of biohazard it poses. Do you want a workstation here, or would you rather use a private cubbyhole?” “I’ll need access to my own records,” Wilde said in a thoroughly businesslike manner. “Any VE hood will do; I won’t be distracted by conversation.” “I think it’s best if you’re privacy-screened anyway,” said Hal, for reasons which Charlotte was easily able to deduce. “If you’ll come this way, I’ll get you set up.” Charlotte and Michael Lowenthal looked on as Hal guided the awkwardly oversized Wilde through an inconveniently narrow gap in his labyrinth. Charlotte knew that she ought to say something, if only for the sake of conversation, but she didn’t know what, so she kept silent. Lowenthal didn’t step in to fill the gap.
Charlotte made herself busy picking up streamers of printout from Hal’s machines, scanning the data accumulated by his silvers. She couldn’t help nurturing the frail hope that there might be something there which Hal had considered too trivial to mention but which might in the fullness of time prove to be the nub of the case. She looked for a streamer holding data relating to Oscar Wilde, but none came readily to hand. She did, however, pick up a stray sheet which contained cross-correlated data on Gabriel King and Michael Lowenthal—and instantly lowered her head lest her expression attract the interest of her companion.
The page revealed that Lowenthal and King had been simultaneously involved—along with dozens of others—in a series of Web conferences relating to the plans for New York’s reconstruction. Lowenthal had been present in the capacity of an observer, allegedly reporting to the boards of eight different corporations.
Five of the names were unfamiliar to Charlotte, but that was irrelevant; the fact that Lowenthal was reporting to all eight implied that they were mere parts of a greater whole: the huge cartel which was the engine of the world economy.
The industrial/entertainment complex which most people nowadays referred to as the MegaMall was a constant preserice in Charlotte’s life, as it was in everyone’s, but it had always been a background, unobtrusive precisely because it was so all-pervasive. She had learned in school, if not actually at the manifold knees of her foster mothers, that the MegaMall was a private corporation, and that effective ownership of the world’s entire means of production had long rested in the hands of a few hundred individuals, but the thought had never crossed her mind that one day she might actually meet a flesh-and-blood individual who belonged—however peripherally or provisionally—to that intimate inner circle. Nor had it occurred to her that the MegaMall’s administrators, whether reckoned as the Hardinist Cabal or any of the ironic alternatives that Hal had proffered, must already have set plans in place to hand over their empire to a favored few of the New Human Race. Now, though, she tried to force her attention away from the infuriating Oscar Wilde in