“We have several hours in hand before midnight,” Charlotte said to Oscar Wilde, feeling a little better now that she had actually made an executive decision.

“Even if Hal hasn’t cracked the case by then, he’s sure to have turned up a wealth of useful information. If you really have been invited to the party in order to give us the benefit of your expertise, you’ll doubtless be able to give us a better idea of what it might all mean than any impression we can form on our own behalf.” “I certainly hope so,” he replied warmly. “You can count on my complete cooperation—and, of course, on my absolute discretion.” And you, Charlotte said silently, can count on being instantly arrested, the moment Hal digs up anything that will stand up in court as evidence of your involvement in this unholy mess. If you’re trying to run rings around us, you’d better not count on our getting dizzy.

The “new” UN complex built in 2431 was now under sentence of death, along with every other edifice on Manhattan Island, but it was intended to remain functional for at least another year while its multitudinous departments were relocated on a piecemeal basis. Charlotte thought that its loss would be a pity, given that it had so much history attached to it—the complex embraced the site of the original building, which had been demolished in 2039—but the MegaMall and the Decivilizers both saw the matter in a different light.

Charlotte had only the vaguest notion of how the Decivilization movement had come to be so influential, but she could see perfectly well that it was a matter of fashion rather than ideological commitment. Perhaps people had been huddled into the old cities for far too long, and perhaps the populations of the New Human Race ought to be more diffusely distributed if they were really to develop new and better ways of life, but that didn’t mean that history ought to be forgotten and all its artifacts rendered down into biotech sludge. What would happen when the fashion passed, and “Decivilization” ceased to be a buzzword? Would the Naturals then begin to restore everything that Gabriel King had demolished? There had once been talk of the UN taking over the whole of Manhattan, but that had gone the way of most dream schemes during the still-troubled years of the late twenty-second century. Now, an even more grandiose plan to move the core of the UN bureaucracy to Antarctica—the “continent without nations”—was well advanced and seemed likely to proceed to completion. Fortunately, that was unlikely to include the Police Department. Charlotte didn’t want to relocate to a penguin-infested wilderness of ice.

Oscar Wilde mentioned to Charlotte as they transferred from her car to the elevator that he had visited the UN complex many times before but had never penetrated into the secret sanctum of the Police Department. He seemed to find the prospect of a visit to Hal’s lair rather amusing. Charlotte was confident that he would be disappointed by the clutter; Hal was not a tidy man, and Wilde’s manner of dress suggested that he valued neatness.

“How well did you know Gabriel King, Dr. Wilde?” she suddenly asked as they stepped across the threshold of the elevator. Having seen and understood what had happened last time, she was determined to seize the initiative before the ascent commenced.

“We used to meet for business reasons at infrequent intervals,” Wilde replied, apparently having given up on his attempt to achieve first-name status, “and we must have been in the same room on numerous social occasions. I think of myself as belonging to a different generation, but the world at large presumably considers us to be of equivalent antiquity. I haven’t spoken to Gabriel for more than twenty years, although I would undoubtedly have bumped into him sometime soon had I remained in New York and had he remained alive. I’ve supplied his company with decorative materials for various building projects, but we were never friends. He was one of the great bores of his era, and not for want of competition, but I had nothing else against him. Even a man of my acute aesthetic sensibilities would not stoop so low as to murder a man merely for being a bore.” “And how well do you know Rappaccini?” she followed up doggedly.

“I haven’t seen him in the flesh for more years than I can count. I know the body of his work far better than I know the man behind it, but there was a period immediately before and after the Great Exhibition when we used to meet quite frequently. We were often bracketed together by critics and reporters who observed a kinship in our ideas, methods, and personalities, and tended to oppose us to a more orthodox school headed by Walter Czastka. The reportage created a sense of common cause, although I was never sure how closely akin we really were, aesthetically speaking. Our conversations were never intimate—we discussed art and genetics, never our personal histories and ambitions.” Charlotte would have pursued the line of questioning further, but the elevator had reached its destination.

Oscar Wilde did not seem in the least surprised or reluctant to comply when Charlotte asked her two companions to wait in her office for a few minutes while she consulted her colleague in private, but Michael Lowenthal almost voiced an objection before deciding better of it. She could not tell whether he was being scrupulously polite, or whether he thought that there might be more advantage in remaining with Wilde. As soon as she had shown Wilde and Lowenthal into her room, the two of them fell into earnest conversation again, seemingly losing interest in her before she closed the door on them.

Charlotte made a mental note to review the tape before she went to bed, even if she had to do it in a sleeper on the maglev.

Charlotte saw no point in beating about the bush when she presented herself to her superior officer.

“I brought Wilde with me,” she said brusquely. “I think he did it. I think this whole mad scheme is a bizarre game. He may be a victim of mental disruption caused by excessive use of repair nanotech within the brain. He’s older than he looks.” Even in the dim light of Hal’s crowded quarters Charlotte was easily able to see the expression of amusement which flitted across the inspector’s face, but all he actually said was: “I know how old he is. Less than one-fifty, and already he’s risked a third rejuve—but every test they applied at the hospital says that he’s still in possession of a mens sana in corpore sano. I’ve checked his records.” “He knows far too much about this business for it to be mere coincidence,” Charlotte insisted, wishing that her argument hadn’t collapsed quite as feebly on exposure to the oxygen of publicity. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think he set this whole thing up and then turned up in person to watch us wrestle with it.” “So you think his introduction of Rappaccini’s name is just a red herring?” “He’s been careful not to say that Rappaccini’s guilty of the murder,” she pointed out. “When he told us that silly story about Rappaccini’s daughter, he pointed out that the murderer, if there was one, was a jealous rival. Wilde’s a flower designer, like Rappaccini—and he put on a convincing show of being offended when I told him that our first choice of expert witness was Walter Czastka. If this Biasiolo character hasn’t been glimpsed for decades, it’s possible that Wilde has actually taken over the Rappaccini pseudonym from its original user.” “It’s an interesting hypothesis,” said Hal, with an air of affected tolerance that was almost as excruciating as Oscar Wilde’s. “But my surfers haven’t found a jot of evidence to support it.” Charlotte hesitated but decided that it would be best not to continue. She’d put her suspicions on the record; the best thing to do now was to follow them up herself, as best she could. She figured that it would be sensible to change the subject of the present conversation—and there was a question she had been longing to ask.