Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [43]
As they left the car two uniformed officers got in, one of them a sergeant in whose company Charlotte had gone through basic training.
“Any progress, Charlotte?” the sergeant asked, his inquisitive gaze sliding sideways to examine her two companions.
“Not yet, Mike,” Charlotte said as breezily as she could, “but all the bloodhounds are out.” “Newshounds too,” Mike murmured. “They don’t know the details yet, but King’s big enough to make them chase hard. Watch out for hoverflies.” Charlotte nodded, glad that she had been adamant that they ought to eat within the building. Even police headquarters couldn’t be guaranteed to be 100 percent secure, but eating in any public restaurant would have been tantamount to hiring a loudhailer.
Once they were seated, Oscar Wilde decided that what his appetite demanded was toumedos bearnaise with saute potatoes, carrots, and broccoli. He informed Lowenthal, while Charlotte was busy acknowledging other greetings from sympathetic colleagues, that he had had an unusually taxing day for one so recently restored to youth, and that the solidity of beef would serve his needs better than the delicacies of quail. He decided on a bottle of Saint Emilion to go with it—the occasion, he declared, cried out for a full-bodied wine.
Lowenthal agreed to take the same dish and share the wine, but Charlotte punched out an individual order for tuna steak and salad, with water to drink.
The police restaurant’s food technology was, of course, easily adequate to the task of meeting Wilde’s requirements. Its beef was grown by a celebrated local tissue culture which had long rejoiced in the pet name of Baltimore Bess: a veritable mountain of muscle which was fiercely guarded by traditionalists from the strong competition offered by SAP-derived “meat.” The Saint Emilion was wholly authentic, although the Bordeaux region and its immediate neighbors had been replanted from gene banks as recently as 2330, when connoisseurs had decided that the native rootstocks had suffered too much deterioration in the tachytelic phase of ecospheric deterioration which had followed the environmental degradations of the Crash.
The dispenser delivered fresh bread, still warm from the oven, and a selection of hors d’oeuvres. Charlotte took some bread but left the rest to her companions; she had never liked excessively complicated food.
Hal had been silent while they made their way to the restaurant, but as soon as Charlotte had opened a link from the table’s screen he took up the theme of Wilde’s observations about the murder weapon. “According to my records,” he said, “no one but you has ever withdrawn specimens of this particular globoid amaranth from the bank—which implies that you must have supplied the stocks from which the weapon was developed.” “Supplied seems a trifle exaggerated,” Wilde objected. “My amaranths have been on open sale for decades. Tens of thousands of people have fertile specimens growing in their walls and gardens.” “I wasn’t implying that you intended to supply the raw material for a murder weapon,” Hal said disingenuously. “I’ve set one of my silvers to collaborate with one of yours in sorting through your records. I’d be obliged if you’d keep track of them, just in case some idiosyncratic modification of yours can be traced through a particular customer to the murder weapon.” “I’ll do that,” Wilde promised, although his tone suggested that he didn’t expect a result. Hal nodded, and his face disappeared from the screen.
“Assuming that it would be relatively easy, once the basic pattern was in place, to modify this kind of smart weapon for other