Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [79]
He noticed for the first time that there was a card nestling within the bouquet—and the observation reminded him yet again of the vague impression he had formed of the bouquet’s kinship to a funeral wreath.
Michi reached out to read what was written on the card, and saw with a slight shock that it bore the “signature” of Rappaccini Inc.—but it did not seem to be a condolence card. The legend on the card was a poem, or part of a poem. The corporation was evidently attempting to broaden its commercial scope, albeit somewhat enigmatically.
The words read: Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!” Why on earth, Michi wondered, had the woman selected such a peculiar message? Was she suggesting that he had killed the things he loved? If so, she was more closely in tune with his morbid mood than any indication she had given in word or gesture. Had it been so obvious, the first time he accepted her kiss, that he was a coward? Had she known all along that she would find him impotent? Had the few flattering words he had contrived to produce, in poor recompense for hers, wounded her with their feebleness? He replaced the card, cursing himself for his folly in searching for hidden meanings. It was, he vaguely recalled, a very old poem; she must have chosen it because it was a time-honored classic, more beautiful in its antiquity than in its sentiment.
“Who wrote these words?” he asked his dutiful sloth, reciting them for the benefit of the machine. The sloth had no answer in its own memory, of course, but it had wit enough to consult the reference sources available on the Web.
“Oscar Wilde,” it replied, after a few moments’ pause.
Michi was astonished until he remembered that there had been more Oscar Wildes in the world than one. The coincidence of names must have been what inspired the young woman to pick this particular card.
A whole bouquet of Oscar Wildes! he thought. Well, better that than a whole bouquet of Walter Czastkas. He remembered that he had known Walter Czastka when the old bore was still in the full flush of youth, although Kwiatek had known him better. They had all been pioneers in those days, but they had all been as stupid as sloths, too young by far to realize that one cannot be a pioneer until one has mastered what has gone before. That had not stopped them hatching all manner of mad schemes, of course. Even Czastka! What was it that he had found which had seemed to him the making of a new era? He had sucked Kwiatek into it, and others too.
Why, Michi thought, with sudden astonishment, that must have been the very first time that I became an outlaw, and I cannot even remember what I did, or why. Who would have thought it? Paul was an outlaw through and through, even then—and that rascal King too, already well on his way to becoming a sly lackey of the MegaMall. But what on earth can stolid Walter Czastka have found that turned him around so completely, if only for a moment? What was it that he tried to do, that seemed so daring and so desperate? For a moment, as he touched the petals of the golden flowers, Michi almost remembered—but it had all taken place too long ago. He was a different man now, or a different half-man.
“I am,” he murmured. “I was not what I am, but was not an am, and am not an am even now. I was and am a man, unless I am a man unmanned, an it both done and undone by IT.” He spelled out the final acronym, pronouncing it “eye tee.” Then he laughed. What could it possibly matter now what deliciously illicit assistance he and Kwiatek had rendered to Walter Czastka at the dawn of all their histories? He could not know, of course, that he had already begun to die because of it.
Investigation: Act Four: The Heights and the Depths
It may be just coincidence, of course,” Hal Watson said, referring to the possible connection between Walter Czastka and Rappaccini