Michi was wise enough to understand the kinds of fear which his experiments had inspired in those who condemned him. He knew now that there was real cause for anxiety in their nightmarish visions of people made into robotic puppets by external brainfeed equipment, either by operant conditioning or straightforward usurpation of the command links to the nervous system. He had responded to those fears in the same speech, appropriating the defense offered by the pioneers of the Genetic Revolution. “All technologies can be used for evil ends as well as good ones,” he had said, “but willful ignorance is no protection. Biotechnology provided the means for hideous wars, but it also provided the defenses which prevented their devastations from becoming permanent and freed humankind from the oppressions of the Old Reproductive System. What we require, as we face a future of limitless opportunity, is not blind fear and denial but a clear-sighted sense of responsibility, and the means to undo all the evils of oppression—including the oppressions of our imperfect evolutionary heritage.” That too had been true—but it had not been sufficient then to lay the fears of others to rest, and it was not sufficient now to quell his own anxieties.

The simple fact was that he had not, in the end, succeeded in freeing himself from the oppressions of his imperfect evolutionary heritage. His purpose had been to add to the sum of human freedom by increasing the power which individual consciousness had over its own recalcitrant wetware, and he had indeed added to that sum, but his own freedom had been lost, and not merely by imprisonment. He had never been intimidated by the fears of those who believed that brainfeed equipment would provide new technologies of enslavement and new technologies of punishment, preferring to concentrate his own efforts on the pursuit of empowerment and pleasure—but in the end, he had lost more than he had expected, and gained less than he had hoped.

Whatever the woman said, and whatever she believed, he was what he was, and it was not enough.

In the hope of shaking himself out of his lachrymose mood, Michi stood up and went to the wall fitting in which the young woman had placed the golden flowers.

He noticed for the first time that there was a card nestling within the bouquet—and the observation reminded him yet again of the vague impression he had formed of the bouquet’s kinship to a funeral wreath.

Michi reached out to read what was written on the card, and saw with a slight shock that it bore the “signature” of Rappaccini Inc.—but it did not seem to be a condolence card. The legend on the card was a poem, or part of a poem. The corporation was evidently attempting to broaden its commercial scope, albeit somewhat enigmatically.

The words read: Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!” Why on earth, Michi wondered, had the woman selected such a peculiar message? Was she suggesting that he had killed the things he loved? If so, she was more closely in tune with his morbid mood than any indication she had given in word or gesture. Had it been so obvious, the first time he accepted her kiss, that he was a coward? Had she known all along that she would find him impotent? Had the few flattering words he had contrived to produce, in poor recompense for hers, wounded her with their feebleness? He replaced the card, cursing himself for his folly in searching for hidden meanings. It was, he vaguely recalled, a very old poem; she must have chosen it because it was a time-honored classic, more beautiful in its antiquity than in its sentiment.

“Who wrote these words?” he asked his dutiful sloth, reciting them for the benefit of the machine. The sloth had no answer in its own memory, of course, but it had wit enough to consult the reference sources available on the Web.

“Oscar Wilde,” it replied, after a few moments’ pause.

Michi was astonished until he remembered that there had been more Oscar Wildes in the world than one. The coincidence of names must have been what inspired the young woman to pick this particular card.

A whole bouquet of Oscar Wildes! he thought. Well, better that than a whole bouquet of Walter Czastkas. He remembered that he had known Walter Czastka when the old bore was still in the full flush of youth, although Kwiatek had known him better. They had all been pioneers in those days, but they had all been as stupid as sloths, too young by far to realize that one cannot be a pioneer until one has mastered what has gone before. That had not stopped them hatching all manner of mad schemes, of course. Even Czastka! What was it that he had found which had seemed to him the making of a new era? He had sucked Kwiatek into it, and others too.

Why, Michi thought, with sudden astonishment, that must have been the very first time that I became an outlaw, and I cannot even remember what I did, or why. Who would have thought it? Paul was an outlaw through and through, even then—and that rascal King too, already well on his way to becoming a sly lackey of the MegaMall. But what on earth can stolid Walter Czastka have found that turned him around so completely, if only for a moment? What was it that he tried to do, that seemed so daring and so desperate? For a moment, as he touched the petals of the golden flowers, Michi almost remembered—but it had all taken place too long ago. He was a different man now, or a different half-man.

“I am,” he murmured. “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 IT.” He spelled out the final acronym, pronouncing it “eye tee.” Then he laughed. What could it possibly matter now what deliciously illicit assistance he and Kwiatek had rendered to Walter Czastka at the dawn of all their histories? He could not know, of course, that he had already begun to die because of it.

Investigation: Act Four: The Heights and the Depths

It may be just coincidence, of course,” Hal Watson said, referring to the possible connection between Walter Czastka and Rappaccini that had been exposed by his indefatigable silver surfers. “The supplies could have been delivered to a different island—the boatmaster doesn’t keep electronically available records—so they may have been intended for a rival exercise in Creationism. Even if we could prove that Czastka is more intimately linked to Rappaccini than other appearances suggest, the only hard evidence linking Rappaccini to the murders is the fact that the woman is drawing money from bank accounts fed by income generated by the corporations which seem to be his. She’s the one we have to identify and locate before we can proceed any further.” “I disagree,” said Oscar Wilde, before Charlotte could reply. “Given that the flowers are victim-specific, their designer must be regarded as the actual murderer. The woman is delivering them, but she may not have been aware that they were lethal until news broke of Gabriel King’s death—and even now she may not be certain that she was responsible, unless the news tapes have publicized the manner of his death.” “They haven’t,” Michael Lowenthal put in. “Those dogs won’t be let off the leash until the early evening news. After that, it’ll be a free-for-all.” “I’m sure the UN will be very grateful for your employers’ discretion,” Charlotte said sourly. She turned away slightly as she said it, embarrassed by her own temerity.

There was nothing visible through the window but a concrete blur speckled with racing vehicles. She had to squint slightly in order to refocus her eyes on the rim of jet-black SAP systems that topped the superhighway’s sound-muffling walls. It was an inner sensation of deceleration rather than any visual cue which told her that the hire car’s driver was responding to an instruction in its secret programming. It was changing lanes, moving to the inside. As the vehicle slowed and Charlotte’s eyes adjusted, the blur of uncertainty began to resolve itself into a much clearer image. The road markings appeared out of the sun-blazed chaos of the surface, and the other cars on the road became discrete and distinct.