Maria Inacio must have been immune to the endemic chiasmatic transformers—and probably never knew it, until her doctor told her that the strange growth in her abdomen wasn’t a tumor. Her own fosterers must have belonged to an antinanotech cult of some kind; there was one active in Australia at the time whose members called themselves Naturals; had they not selected themselves for rapid extinction, we might have needed a different label for the likes of Mr.

Lowenthal.” “So all this stuff about substitute donations is rubbish,” Charlotte said, to make sure she had it straight. “You’re saying that Walter Czastka impregnated the girl by means of everyday sexual intercourse—intercourse which neither he nor she had the slightest reason to think capable of producing a pregnancy.” “Given that the record says, ‘Father Unknown,’ ” Hal said, “we can probably assume that neither Czastka nor Biasiolo ever knew of the relationship Mr.

Lowenthal’s eager investigators have now brought to light. Given that it has been brought to light, I suppose someone ought to tell Walter Czastka—except, of course, that he’s not answering his phone just now because Dr. Wilde offended him. I’m not entirely happy about merely reporting it to his sim.” “But they must know!” Lowenthal protested. “How else can we begin to make sense of all these connections?” “One of them must know,” Oscar Wilde agreed, his voice animated by a sudden fervor. “I owe you an apology, Michael—your hypothesis, although mistaken in detail, has indeed paved the way to the crucial enlightenment. Walter can know nothing of all this—but Rappaccini must know everything. We have had the vital connection set before us for several hours, but have not realized its significance! Walter is… am I mistaken, or is the sloth driving this vehicle becoming extremely reckless in its speed around these bends?” Charlotte had not bothered to look out of the windows for some time, having become accustomed to the swaying of the vehicle. Now that she did, it seemed to her that Oscar Wilde was understating the case.

Because AI drivers were programmed to the highest safety standards, everyone fell into the habit of trusting them absolutely, but the road on which they were traveling was undoubtedly far too rough and curvaceous to warrant progress at their present velocity. There was no guardrail on their right-hand side, and the scree slope fell away precipitously.

Charlotte remembered the message warning them not to interrogate the driver’s programming. Like Lowenthal and Wilde, she had automatically assumed that this was merely a device to protect the secrecy of their destination—but what if it were not? What if such an interrogation would have revealed that the driver’s safety programming had been carefully and illegally stripped away? She banished Hal’s image from her screen and flicked the switch connecting the comcon to the driver. She typed a rapid instruction to the machine, ordering it to moderate the vehicle’s speed.

There was no immediate response.

She slid her swipecard into the comcon’s confirmation slot and invoked the full authority of the United Nations to back up her instruction. The only effect was that a printed message appeared on the screen: INCREASED SPEED NECESSITATED BY PROXIMITY OF PURSUING VEHICLE.

Charlotte blinked, then tapped in an instruction to open a viewpoint in the rear of the cabin. She and Oscar Wilde turned together to look through it, their heads almost touching as they converged.

The vehicle behind them was not an ordinary car. It was smaller, squarer, and looked as if it were heavily armored. It appeared, in fact, to be some kind of military vehicle. It was also far closer to their rear end than safety regulations permitted. Charlotte knew that it must have an AI driver, because its windscreen was quite opaque, but the sloth in question had obviously been programmed in frank defiance of the law.

“It’s trying to force us off the road!” said Charlotte, hardly able to believe her eyes. In all her years in the police force she had never encountered anything so outrageous.

Her beltphone buzzed, and she lifted it from its holster reflexively, her eyes still fixed on the pursuing vehicle and her cheek less than a centimeter away from Oscar Wilde’s uncannily beautiful face.

“Hal!” she cried. “Someone’s trying to kill us!” “What?” said Hal, his voice as incredulous as her own.

“There’s some kind of jeep trying to smash into us from behind!” The car carrying Charlotte and Wilde swept around a bend, and the resultant lurch bounced their heads together. It was not a bad bump, but the combination of surprise and pain made Charlotte cry out.

“Charlotte!” said Hal, his incredulity replaced by alarm. “What’s happening?” Charlotte had to make an effort to force her train of thought onward through the barrier that pain had erected. She wanted to shout instructions to the people who would by now be monitoring their situation through the car’s sensors.

“Scramble a helicopter!” she wanted to scream. “Send a software bomb! Get us the hell out of here!” As she straightened up again she looked out of the side window at the drop which awaited them if their driver were to be careless enough to let a wheel slide over the edge.

It was a very long drop.

Michael Lowenthal let loose an inarticulate cry of anguish, as befit a potential emortal who was staring death in the face for the first time.

Charlotte gave voice to a wordless cry of her own as they soared around another bend, even sharper than its predecessors. She turned back to the rear viewport, clutching her throbbing head as she did so. She felt a sudden instinctive pulse of hope that the pursuing vehicle might not make it around the bend.

Alas, the jeep did make it. It fell back eight or ten meters in so doing, and Charlotte felt her heart surge as she wondered whether some preventative signal had got through—but then there was a curious rattling noise at the rear end of their own vehicle.

“Hal!” she cried again. “They’re shooting at us, Hal! They’ve got a gun!” “Charlotte!” came the reply. “I’ve got visual patched through from a sat! I’ve got… corruption and corrosion!” Charlotte had never heard Hal use such words before, except in their uninflected and strictly literal forms. Had she been able to find words herself she would have delved even deeper in search of more profound expletives.

They had just taken yet another bend. This time, the pursuing vehicle failed to make the turn—in fact, it seemed to keep going straight ahead: straight over the edge and into empty air.

For almost a second it seemed to hang there, like some absurd toon character in a synthemovie, who would not start to feel the effects of gravity until he became conscious of being unsupported.

Then, with a peculiar gracefulness, the jeep began to fall.

It tumbled over and over as it fell, and when it finally hit the rocky slope two hundred meters below, it exploded like a bomb, sending shards in all directions.

The sloth driving the hire car had applied the brakes the instant that the threat of a damaging collision was removed from the viewport, but it had done so judiciously so as to minimize the risk of skidding.

“Hal,” said Charlotte tremulously, “I think you just got another data trail to follow.” It was, she felt, a very feeble attempt at humor. By now—assuming that this absurdly tilted patch of crumpled wasteland lay within their jurisdiction—the California Highway Patrol’s best silvers would have identified the rogue vehicle, and they would already be tracking down its owner and programmer.

Charlotte shut her eyes and breathed deeply, while the pain in her head ebbed slowly away.

When she opened her eyes again, Oscar Wilde had converted his side window into a mirror, and he was inspecting his own head very carefully. There was a noticeable bluish bump just above the right eyebrow. She could not find it in her heart to regret the temporary damage done to his outrageous good looks, although he obviously felt differently about it.