Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [90]
Charlotte understood, therefore—and was proud of herself for being able to understand—that part of the point of this performance was that one had to try to see it from several different viewpoints: from the viewpoint of some legendary petty ruler of the early Iron Age; from the viewpoint of would-be aesthetes and their rival moralists of the late Iron Age; and from the viewpoint of a double rejuvenate of the middle period of the Genetic Revolution.
After a moment’s hesitation, she added two more hypothetical viewpoints: the viewpoint of an authentically young citizen of the late-twenty-fifth-century United States of North America; and the viewpoint of a nano-tech recording device whose function was to preserve for future reference the sensory experiences of lives which were continually outstripping the resources of inbuilt memory.
With all this to take into account, she thought, the sight of Salome dancing should have been far more interesting that it actually was. In spite of all that she knew, Charlotte simply could not place herself, imaginatively, in the shoes of one of Herod’s courtiers, nor the shoes of one of the original Oscar Wilde’s gentleman friends, nor even the shoes of whatever strange individual had manufactured the mercurially virtual Rappaccini. She doubted that anyone of her era could have done better—not even the flesh-and-blood Oscar Wilde who sat invisibly but not quite intangibly beside her.
Charlotte found the steps of the dance trite and inexpressive; to her it seemed neither stimulating nor instructive, nor even quaintly amusing. The gradual removal of the dancer’s seven veils was merely a laborious way of counting down to a climax that was already expected. And still there was nothing to suggest a purpose for the charade—unless, as she had earlier suspected, all of this was mere distraction, intended to divert attention away from the true substance of the crime and to confuse the investigations being carried out by Hal’s silvers.
If this is mere mockery, she thought, Wilde might soon change his mind about being glad that Lowenthal and I chose to accompany him. If all this is just another joke intended to tease him, he might prefer to have kept it to himself.
As soon as Lowenthal and I decant our bubblebugs, this will be public property—and when the MegaMall gives the go-ahead to the casters, it will be all over the news.
No sooner had she formulated the thought, however, than she realized that she might have got it backward. Perhaps the whole point of the summons to Gabriel King’s appointment, the wreath at the San Francisco Majestic, and the car chase through the mountains had been to make Wilde’s involvement in this matter newsworthy. Perhaps the mystery and melodrama were intended solely to create audience interest in a rough-and-ready artwork which had little enough interest of its own. Perhaps the real intended audience of this play was the vidveg, who would need Wilde as an interpreter. Under ordinary circumstances, the vidveg would not have found it at all interesting, but if it were aired on the news, as an appendix to the tale of three—perhaps four—lurid murders, it would command an eager audience of billions.
Was that what its author craved? Was it conceivable that all of this, including the murders, was a publicity stunt? Salome was almost naked now, and the few encrustations she preserved upon her body were intended to heighten rather than to conceal, but Charlotte could summon up neither any vestige of emotional response nor any twinge of moral panic. All she could sense within herself was a precautionary tension, because she