The map disappeared from Charlotte’s screen, replaced by a list which Hal Watson had posted there.

“There are twenty-seven names here,” Hal said. “So far as we can ascertain, it’s a complete list of living men and women who attended the University of Wollongong while King, Urashima, Kwiatek, and Czastka were also in attendance.

We’ve now contacted all of them but one—Magnus Teidemann—so we’re fairly certain that any other bodies that turn up will break the pattern.” Michael Lowenthal patched the list through to his own screen, but no sooner had he set it up than his beltphone buzzed. Rather than displace the list, he picked up his handset and put the mike to his ear.

“What!” he said—not very loudly, but with sufficient emphasis to command the attention of his companions.

“What is it?” Charlotte asked—but she had to wait until Lowenthal had lowered the handset again. When he turned in his seat, it was Oscar Wilde that he transfixed with his triumphant gaze.

“I asked my employers to check the record of Jafri Biasiolo’s DNA against Walter Czastka’s,” Michael Lowenthal said proudly, peering back through the gap between the headrests.

“And were they identical?” asked Oscar Wilde, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“No,” said Lowenthal, “they weren’t identical.” Charlotte wondered why, in that case, he looked so immensely pleased with himself—but he had only paused for effect. “The comparison gave much the same initial estimate of similarity as the comparison between Biasiolo’s and the woman’s—forty-some percent. Closer analysis of key subsections, however, suggests a consanguinity of fifty percent, blurred by substantial deep-somatic engineering.” “I’m not sure that lends any support to your hypothesis,” said Wilde. “Indeed, it suggests—” Lowenthal didn’t let him finish. “That’s not all,” he said. “When they uncovered the link between Czastka and Biasiolo, they immediately compared Walter Czastka’s DNA profile with the record Regina Chai obtained from Gabriel King’s bedroom. The overlap’s no better than random. Consanguinity zero!” “But how can that be?” Charlotte complained. “If Czastka and Biasiolo are close relatives, and the woman is Biasiolo’s daughter…” “She’s not!” Lowenthal was quick to say triumphantly. “The only way that Czastka and the woman could each have fifty percent of Biasiolo’s genes without being significantly consanguineous themselves is by being his parents. She’s not Rappaccini’s daughter at all: she’s his mother!—and Walter Czastka’s his father!” “Congratulations,” said Oscar Wilde dryly. “You seem to have found me guilty of an illegitimate inference—and you doubtless feel that if one of my inferences is defective, the rest might be equally mistaken. But you seem to be overlooking the true significance of the finding—” “Wait a second,” Charlotte interrupted. “This doesn’t make sense. It’s perfectly plausible that Walter Czastka had made a sperm deposit while he was still in his teens, but he certainly couldn’t have applied for a withdrawal only two or three years later! We’re not talking about the Dark Ages here, or the aftermath of the Crash. People of his generation never exercised their right of reproduction when they were in their twenties—it’s only in very special circumstances that they exercise them even now, while they’re still alive.” “If Czastka had made any formal application,” Lowenthal agreed, not in the least confounded by her argument, “then his name would be included in Biasiolo’s record. Obviously, he didn’t—but he was training as a geneticist, and he must have had privileged access to a Helier hatchery. He must have substituted his own sperm for a donation which had been legitimately drawn from the bank. He wouldn’t have been the first hatchery tech to do that, nor the first to have got away with it.” “But it doesn’t help your hypothesis that Czastka is the designer behind Rappaccini Inc.,” Charlotte pointed out. “Your original contention was that Biasiolo was a mere phantom, invented by Czastka for the purpose of establishing a separate identity under which he could undertake various clandestine endeavors.” “That’s true,” Lowenthal agreed. “It’s now established that Biasiolo is a real person, not a ghost—but he’s Walter Czastka’s son. Doesn’t that put Czastka behind Rappaccini Inc.?” “But if your scenario is accurate,” Charlotte objected, constructing the argument as she spoke, “he’d never know it—Biasiolo, I mean. I suppose Czastka might have kept track of a substitute donation, if he’d made one, but he could hardly tell the foster parents about it, could he? What he did—according to you—was a criminal offense. He could never tell Biasiolo that he was his biological father.” “You’re still missing—,” Oscar Wilde said.

Michael Lowenthal didn’t let him finish; for once, he was fully engaged with Charlotte. “He could never tell anyone,” the man from the MegaMall said, in answer to her quibble, “but that doesn’t mean that nobody knew what he’d done.

Maybe it wasn’t his own idea.

Maybe it was some kind of challenge, some kind of initiation into a secret society. He was a student, after all—and so were Gabriel King, Michi Urashima, and Paul Kwiatek. Maybe they all knew. Maybe—“ “I fear that your flair for melodrama is getting out of hand, Michael,” said Wilde impatiently, firmly reclaiming center stage. “As Charlotte says, we’re not talking about the Dark Ages—but we are talking about the past. It isn’t in the least surprising that an authentically young woman might have undergone sufficient genetic engineering to reduce an actual consanguinity of fifty percent to an apparent overlap of forty-one, but it’s not plausible that two closely related old men should be that much less similar, unless something very odd had happened. As for this secret-society initiation, it’s the stuff of ancient romance—and it provides no explanation of the timing of the murders. If Walter were Biasiolo’s father, how could the revelation hurt Walter now? Even if everyone who knew it then still remembered it nearly a hundred and seventy years later, why should any of them attach any importance to it?” The list of names that Hal had posted on Charlotte’s screen disappeared, to be replaced by his face. He didn’t look pleased—presumably because he felt that he ought to have been the one to discover the link between Biasiolo and Walter Czastka.

“I hate to break in on such a fevered discussion,” he said, “but I just checked the DNA trace Regina Chai recovered against the record of one Maria Inacio, listed in Jafri Biasiolo’s birth record as his biological mother. The same record says, ‘Father Unknown’—a statement whose significance has only just become apparent to me. The trace recovered from King’s apartment is indeed similar to Inacio’s, and might have been identical were it not for the differentiating effect of the younger woman’s genetic engineering. As I told you before, though, it doesn’t match the record of any living person. According to the register, Maria Inacio was born in 2303 and she died in 2342.” “So she can’t be our murderer,” Charlotte said.

“Nor can she be Jafri Biasiolo’s mother,” Oscar Wilde was quick to put in. “Not, at least, if Michael’s new version of events is correct. If Walter or anyone else had merely substituted his own sperm for a donation drawn from the bank, it would have been used to fertilize an ovum which had come from the same bank, which could not—at least under normal circumstances—have been freshly deposited there by an eighteen-year-old girl.” “If Jafri Biasiolo had been conceived in a Helier hatchery,” Hal Watson said, completing his own revelatory bombshell with evident satisfaction, “the record would have said, ‘Father Unrecorded.’ Perhaps my silver should have picked the discrepancy up on first inspection, but it had no reason to attribute any significance to the datum. Jafri Biasiolo was the product of a late abortion; he wasn’t introduced to a Helier womb until he was three months short of delivery.