“How’s your ecosphere coming along, Walter?” asked Oscar softly. Charlotte frowned at the change of subject Czastka didn’t answer the question. “What do you want, Oscar?” he asked rudely.

“I’m busy. If you want to slander Rappaccini to the UN police, go ahead, but don’t involve me. I told them all I know—about the plant, about everything. I just want to be left alone. If this is going to carry on, I’m going to disconnect permanently. If anyone wants to talk to me, they can get the boat from Kauai.” Charlotte wondered when Czastka had last been rejuvenated. He looked as if his second rejuvenation had somehow failed to take—as if he were degenerating rapidly. He looked as if he couldn’t possibly have long to live, and he looked as if he knew it.

“I’m sorry, Walter,” said Oscar soothingly, “but I do need to talk to you. We have a problem here, and it affects us both. It affects us generally, and specifically. Genetic art may have come a long way since the protests at the Great Exhibition, but there’s still a lot of latent animosity to the kind of work we do, and the Green Zealots won’t need much encouragement to put us back on their hate list. Neither of us wants to go back to the days when we had to argue about our licenses, and had petty officials demanding to look over our shoulders while we worked. When the police release the full details of this case there’s going to be a lot of adverse publicity, and it’s going to hurt us.

That’s the general issue. More specifically, there’s a great deal of confusion about who planned these murders and why. I’m in a car with Sergeant Charlotte Holmes of the UN police and a man named Michael Lowenthal, who represents certain commercial interests. We all have our various theories about the affair, and I think you’re entitled to be copied in on them. To be brutally frank, I think Rappaccini is behind the murders, Charlotte thinks I’m behind them, and Michael thinks you’re the guilty party—so it really is in your interest to help us sort things out.” “Me!” said Czastka. If his outrage wasn’t genuine, it was the best imitation Charlotte had ever seen. She only wished that Michael Lowenthal could see it “Why on earth would I want to kill Gabriel King or Michi Urashima?” “And Paul Kwiatek,” Wilde added. “Maybe Magnus Teidemann too. Nobody knows, Walter—but if this goes on, you might soon be the only survivor of that select band of famous men who graduated from Wollongong University in the early 2320s.” Czastka’s face had a curious ocherous pallor as he stared at his interlocutor.

Charlotte noted that Czastka’s eyes had narrowed, but she couldn’t tell whether he was alarmed, suspicious, or merely impatient.

“I don’t remember anything about those days,” Czastka said stubbornly. “Nobody does. It was too long ago. I hardly knew Kwiatek. I never knew any of them, really—not even King. I’ve had some dealings with his companies, just as I’ve had some dealings with Rappaccini Inc., but I haven’t set eyes on King for fifty years, and I haven’t seen Rappaccini since the Great Exhibition. I’ve seen Urashima’s work and I heard about the wireheading scandals, but that’s all.

Leave me alone, Oscar, and tell the police to leave me alone too. You know perfectly well that I couldn’t kill anyone—and I don’t know anything about Rappaccini that you don’t already know.” “What about his daughter?” said Wilde quickly.

If he intended to catch the other man by surprise it didn’t work. Czastka’s stare was stony and speculative, with more than a hint of melancholy. “What daughter?” he said. “I never met a daughter. Not that I remember. It was all a long time ago. I can’t remember anything at all. Leave me alone, Oscar, please.” So saying, the old man cut the connection.

Charlotte could see that Oscar Wilde was both puzzled and disappointed by the other man’s reaction.

“That was a mistake, wasn’t it?” she said, unable to resist the temptation to take him down a peg. “Did you really think he’d rather talk to you than to us? He doesn’t even like you. You should have left him to Hal—you’ve upset him now, maybe so badly that he won’t even take Hal’s calls, and you didn’t learn anything at all.” “Perhaps not,” Oscar agreed. “I certainly didn’t expect him to freeze up like that. On the other hand…” He trailed off, evidently uncertain as to what kind of balancing factor he ought to add.

“Have you changed your mind about the possibility of Czastka having set up the Biasiolo/Rappaccini identity?” Charlotte asked Michael Lowenthal.

“I don’t know,” said Lowenthal guardedly. “But I do wish you hadn’t told him about my suspicions, Dr. Wilde, however absurd you may think them.” “I’m sorry,” Wilde said, still taken aback by the nature of Czastka’s response to his call. “But if he were our stylish murderer, why would he react so churlishly to my inquiries? Surely he’d have made better preparation than that.” “Would he?” Lowenthal parried.

Hal’s face reappeared on Charlotte’s screen. “I just got notification of your little conversation, Dr. Wilde,” he said. “What on earth do you think you’re playing at? I tried to ring Czastka, and I got that bloody sloth again, telling me that he’s unavailable, even though I know he’s sitting right there at his antique desk!” “I couldn’t stop him!” Charlotte complained.

“It wasn’t Charlotte’s fault,” Wilde obligingly added—although she could see that the intervention didn’t improve Hal’s mood at all.

“Well,” Hal said, “you’d better pray that this won’t cost us time and effort.

You might care to know that the money trail is getting clearer by the minute.

Some of Rappaccini’s pseudonymous bank accounts have been used over the years to purchase massive quantities of materials that were delivered for collection to the island of Kauai—that’s in Hawaii.” “So the man behind Rappaccini must live on Kauai,” Charlotte deduced, trying to remember the context in which she had heard the place name mentioned not ten minutes before. She could tell from the way that Michael Lowenthal had reacted to the name that he remembered—and as soon as she had mentally reviewed that observation, she remembered too. It was too late to say anything; Hal was already speaking again.

“Not necessarily,” he was saying. “The supplies were collected by boat. There are fifty or sixty islets west and south of Kauai, some natural but most artificial. Over half of them are leased to Creationists for experiments in the construction of artificial ecosystems. Oscar Wilde’s private island is half an ocean away in Micronesia.” “But Walter Czastka’s isn’t,” said Michael Lowenthal with evident satisfaction.

“That’s right,” said Hal. “All the supplies that Czastka purchases in his own name are forwarded from Kauai, by the same boat that forwarded the equipment purchased by the pseudonymous accounts we’ve just connected to Rappaccini Inc.

Perhaps, Mr. Lowenthal, your wild hypothesis isn’t as wild as it first seemed.”

Intermission Three: A Mind at the End of Its Tether

Michi Urashima was having trouble with time again. He had lost all sense of it and couldn’t remember what day it was, or what year, or how many times he had grown young and then old again. None of that would have been of much significance had he not had the vague impression that there was something he ought to be doing, some important project that needed attention. He could not remember whether or not he was still forbidden to leave his house, or whether or not there was anywhere else he might want to be.

When he asked what year it was, the silken voice of his household sloth dutifully informed him that it was 2495, but Michi could not remember whether 2495 was the present or the past, so he could not tell whether or not he had suffered an existential slippage. There was no point in asking the sloth whether or not he had lost his mind, because the sloth was too stupid to know.