Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [97]
“Yes,” Watson had replied, as if there were nothing even slightly unreasonable about the policy. “Everyone who’s still alive.” “You can’t possibly think that this lunatic intends to murder everybody who happened to be at university with him!” “That’s not the point,” the policeman had told him, as if he were the one who was being obtuse. “Until we know more about his motive, we have no idea how he’s selecting out his victims. All we know for sure is that the people killed so far were all at Wollongong in that year. Until we know exactly what links Gabriel King, Michi Urashima, Magnus Teidemann, and Paul Kwiatek, we can’t figure out which of their contemporaries might have to be added to the list. One of the reasons we’re contacting everybody is the hope that somebody who was there at the time might be able to identify the connection for us. Can you think of any such connection, Professor McCandless?” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Stuart had said. “It was more than a hundred and seventy years ago. Nobody can remember that far back—and it’s preposterous to think that anyone might start killing people in 2495 because of something that happened in 2322.” “The person actually delivering the fatal blow seems to be a much younger person,” Watson had admitted. “We’re having trouble tracking her movements because she keeps changing her appearance. I’m posting three images now—please look at them very carefully, Professor McCandless, and tell me if you recognize this person. Please bear in mind that if she is known to you, she will have confronted you with an appearance as subtly different from these as they are from one another.” “That’s even more ridiculous,” Stuart had told him, becoming even angrier.
“Every woman nowadays aspires to one or other of the conventional ideals of beauty, Inspector, and every one has access to the technologies which allow her to secure it. As a university administrator, I’ve been in contact with young people all my life, and I must have known thousands of young women who sculpted their faces along those general lines. This is a small island, and there can only be a few hundred authentically young women residents here, but at least half of them could pass for one of these three if she put her mind and cosmetic skills to work on the problem. The same is true of any woman who’s just undergone a first rejuve.” Watson had tried to assure him that it wasn’t true, and that if he would only look carefully enough he would be able to discern certain distinguishing features, but Stuart hadn’t had the time to waste. As a university administrator, he’d long grown used to seeing young people in quantity, as a kind of undifferentiated mass. Their academic records varied, but in person they were merely segments of an infinite crowd. Things were different now, of course; since retiring from administrative work to concentrate on research he no longer saw young people at all, except for Julia—but that only proved the point. Julia could have made herself look like the woman in Watson’s pictures with no difficulty at all, and there was nothing unusual about Julia.
Even so, he had looked up the four victims named by the policeman, to jog his memory as to who they were and what their accomplishments had been. He had also taken a second look at the pictures, just in case he could discern something meaningful therein.
There wasn’t anything meaningful. They could have been anyone. They could even have been Julia.
Stuart knew that he had to put the whole matter out of his mind now and concentrate his mind on the sea, and on infinity—but it wasn’t easy. The puzzle was too intriguing. What could possibly link Gabriel King the demolition man, Michi Urashima the brainfeed buccaneer, Magnus Teidemann the econut, and Paul Kwiatek the software engineer turned VE veg? Stuart had known them all by reputation, although he hadn’t previously realized that they had all been at Wollongong at the same time, and he’d needed the encyclopedia to