“There is nothing I value more than my genius,” Wilde replied, having finished the eggs duchesse and inserted the plate into the recycling slot, “and I would never knowingly risk my clarity and agility of mind. That doesn’t mean, of course, that I disapprove of anything that Michi Urashima and his associates did. They were not infants, in need of protection from themselves. Michi could not rest content with his early fascination with the simulation of experience.

For him, the building of better virtual environments was only a beginning; he wanted to bring about a genuine expansion of the human sensorium, and authentic augmentations of the human intellect and imagination. If we are ever to make a proper interface between natural and artificial intelligence, we will need the genius of men like Michi. I am sorry that he was forced to abandon his quest, and very sorry that he is dead—but that is not what concerns us now. The question is, who killed him—and why?” While completing this speech he refilled his coffee cup, then ordered two rounds of lightly buttered white wholemeal bread, slightly salted Danish butter, and coarse-cut English marmalade.

“So it is,” said Charlotte. “Did you know that Michi Urashima was at university with Gabriel King—and, for that matter, with Walter Czastka?” “Not until Michael communicated the fact to me,” he replied calmly. “I had already suggested, if you recall, that the roots of this crime must be deeply buried in the fabric of history. I immediately asked him where this remarkable institution was, and whether Rappaccini was also at the same institution of learning. He told me that it was in Wollongong, Australia, and that there is no record of Jafri Biasiolo ever having been there. If it were Oxford, or the Sorbonne, even Sapporo, it would be far easier to believe that the alma mater might be the crucial connection, of course, but it is difficult to believe that anything of any real significance can ever have occurred in Wollongong. I could believe that Walter, who is an impressively dull man, learned everything he knew in such a place, but I would not have suspected it of Michi—or even of Gabriel King. Even so, it is a very interesting coincidence.” He collected his toast and began to spread the butter, evening it out so carefully that the knife in his hand might have been a sculptor’s.

“When did Lowenthal tell you about the Wollongong connection?” Charlotte asked, although the answer was obvious. She remembered belatedly that one thing she had forgotten to check up on was the contents of Wilde’s earlier conversation with Lowenthal. Now, it seemed, she had missed a second and even more significant one.

“We exchanged a few notes last night, after you had retired,” Wilde explained airily.

“You exchanged a few notes” Charlotte echoed ominously. “It did occur to you, I suppose, that I’m the police officer in charge of this investigation, not Lowenthal.” “Yes, it did,” he admitted, “but you seemed so very intent on following up your hypothesis that I am the man responsible for these murders. Because I know full well that I am not, I felt free to ignore your efforts in order to tease a little more information out of Michael. Unfortunately, he seems to have no interest at all in the most promising line of inquiry, which derives from the interesting coincidence that both King and Rappaccini had invested heavily in Michi’s specialism. Indeed, he was so uninterested in it that I suspected him of deliberately trying to steer me away from it. I presume that one of the reasons the MegaMall decided to monitor this investigation is that they did not like the idea of Hal Watson digging too deeply into the murkier aspects of Gabriel King’s past—which suggests to me that in putting money into brainfeed research Gabriel was a mere delivery boy. Alas, Michael seems intent on trying to build the Wollongong connection into grounds for establishing Walter Czastka as a key suspect. He will be of little help to the investigation, I fear—but I daresay that you will not be too disheartened to hear that.” Charlotte regarded her companion speculatively, wondering how carefully his flippancy was contrived. “What other little nuggets of information did he throw your way?” she asked, keeping her voice scrupulously level, as if in imitation of his own levity.

“He showed me a copy of the second scene-of-crime tape,” Wilde admitted. He was as scrupulous in distributing his marmalade as he had been with the butter.

“We’re still trying to figure out where the woman went after she left Urashima,” Charlotte said, to demonstrate that she had not been idle in this particular matter. “Hal’s set up silvers to monitor every security camera in San Francisco.

If she’s still there, we’ll find her in a matter of hours. If she’s already gone, we ought to be able to pick up her trail by noon. She’s presumably altered her appearance again in order to confuse the standard picture-search programs, but we’ll check every possible match, however tentative. If she moved on quickly enough, though, she might have had time to deliver more packages.” “We must assume that she did move on,” Wilde said, licking a crumb from the corner of his mouth. “You noted, of course, that my name came up in the conversation, as her presentation of the bouquet of amaranths was doubtless intended to ensure. The poem inscribed on the condolence card caused it to be repeated. I do hope that you will not read too much into that.” Charlotte blushed slightly. If he had not caused the card to be placed at the scene of the crime, could he possibly have reacted so calmly? And if he had placed the card there, would he have dared to react so calmly? Reflectively, Wilde quoted in a reverent but rather theatrical whisper: The vilest deeds like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison-air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol was, of course, the only thing my poor namesake published after the humiliation of his trial and subsequent imprisonment—which was, of course, far harsher and even more unjust than the punishment visited on Michi Urashima. Perhaps that was why Rappaccini thought the poem particularly apposite.“ “What did you make of the last words he spoke?” Charlotte asked, not wishing to waste any more time in discussing the murderer’s taste in poetry.

“Could you possibly jog my memory by displaying the tape on the wallscreen here?” Wilde countered.

Charlotte shrugged. She punched out a code number to connect the table’s wallscreen to UN headquarters, and sorted through the material that Hal had left for her until she found the tape. Like the one she had displayed for Oscar outside Gabriel King’s apartment, it had been carefully edited from the various spy eyes and bubblebugs which had been witness to Michi Urashima’s murder. She cut to the end.

“I am,” said Urashima’s voice, curiously resonant by virtue of the machine’s enhancement. “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 I-T.” “Alas,” said Wilde, “I have no idea what it might mean. Could you wind the tape back so that I could take another look at the woman?” Again, Charlotte obliged him, glad of the opportunity to take a more leisurely look herself.

The similarity between the two records was almost eerie. The woman’s hair was silvery blond now, but still abundant. It was arranged in a precipitate cataract of curls. The eyes were the same electric blue, but the cast of the features had been altered subtly, making her face slightly thinner and more angular. The complexion was different too. The changes were, sufficient to deceive a normal picture-search program but because Charlotte knew that it was the same woman she could see that it was the same woman. There was something in the way her eyes looked steadily forward, something in her calm poise that made her seem remote, not quite in contact with the world through which she moved.