“You can strand him here if you want to,” Lowenthal said, jerking his head in the direction of Oscar Wilde, who was walking to another, somewhat smaller, machine. “He needs clearance for takeoff. You could ground him for the duration.” “Hal could,” Charlotte corrected him as she climbed into the helicopter, taking note of the numerous flitter-bugs clinging to the hull. “I’m just a sergeant. In any case, he might come in useful. Why don’t you take the opportunity to drop out? Your employers surely can’t think that they have any particular cause for concern—and they can watch the whole thing through the flying eyes.” “I talked to them last night,” Lowenthal told her. “They want me to stay with it. They’re still anxious—and that’s as much your fault as anyone’s. All that stuff about advertising for a new generation of Eliminators. They’ve probably had their own PR teams working through the night, figuring out the best way to spin the story once the final shot’s been fired.” The helicopter lifted as soon as they were both strapped in. The automatic pilot had been programmed to take them to Czastka’s island without delay. Charlotte reached into the equipment locker under the seat and brought forth a handgun.

She loaded it and checked the mechanism before clipping it to her belt.

“Do you think you’ll have a chance to use that?” Lowenthal asked. Charlotte noticed that the interpolation of the words a chance put a distinct spin on the question.

“It would be within the regulations,” Charlotte answered tautly. “I couldn’t even be rude to her when I spoke to her at McCandless’s house, but now the proofs in place I’m entitled to employ any practical measure which may be necessary to apprehend her. Don’t worry—the bullets are certified nonlethal.

They’re loaded with knock-out drops. We’re the police, remember.” “Have you ever fired one before?” he asked curiously. “Outside a VE, I mean.” She chose to ignore the question rather than answer it—as honesty would have forced her to do—in the negative.

The copter was traveling at a speed which was only a little greater than that attained by their previous conveyance, but they remained so low that their progress seemed far more rapid. The sea was the deep sapphire blue color renowned in ancient tradition, modestly reflecting the clarity of the cloudless morning sky. The waves, aided by the onrushing downdraft of their blades, carved the roiling water into all manner of curious shapes.

High in the sky above them a silver airship was making its stately progress from Honolulu to Yokohama, but the other police helicopters, dispatched before their arrival on Kauai, were out of sight beyond the horizon. Oscar Wilde’s charter craft was half a kilometer behind them, but it was keeping pace.

Like their previous craft, the helicopter had only one comcon. Charlotte tuned in to a broadcast news report. There were pictures of Gabriel King’s skeleton, neatly entwined with winding stems bearing black flowers in horrid profusion.

They had not come from Rex Carnevon—they were obviously taken from Regina Chai’s footage. Given that Hal would not have released them, they must have been forwarded by somebody he had been obliged to copy in on the investigation: Michael Lowenthal’s employers. The tape had been reedited so that the camera lingered lasciviously over its appreciation of the horrid spectacle.

The King tape was swiftly followed by footage of Michi Urashima’s similarly embellished skeleton. The AI voice-over was already speculating, in that irritatingly insinuating fashion that AI voice-overs always had, that the UN police had been caught napping by the murderous tourist. The word negligence was not actually mentioned, but the tone of the coverage suggested that it would not be long delayed in the wings. Charlotte was tempted to purge the skin of the craft of the news-tape eyes that had hitched a ride thereon, but there was no point. There would be hundreds more flying under their own power.

Charlotte knew that although the information which had passed back and forth between Hal and herself would have been routinely cloaked, it could be uncloaked easily enough if anyone cared to take the trouble. Although the conversation she, Wilde, and Lowenthal had conducted in the restaurant at the UN complex was probably safe from retrospective eavesdroppers, very little they had said to one another since boarding the maglev would be irrecoverable. Their conversational exchanges after they had quit the car in the hills near the Mexican border would all be contained on the bubblebug tapes she had relayed back to Hal Watson—and, of course, to Michael Lowenthal’s employers.

It was anyone’s guess, now, what the casters might think, worth broadcasting if the climax of the chase proved to be sufficiently melodramatic to pull in a big audience. By now, even skyballs might be turning their inquisitive downward gaze in the direction of Walter Czastka’s proto-Eden; the privacy which the genetic engineer so passionately desired to conserve was about to be rudely shattered.

But then what? How would the tentative attention of the vidveg be captured—and how would it be secured? She wondered whether it would be necessary to use the gun—and what effect it would have on her career, her image, and her self-regard if the entire world were to watch her shoot down an uncommonly beautiful unarmed woman, albeit with a certified nonlethal dart.

The newscast flickered as the comcon signaled that a call was incoming from the helicopter trailing in their wake.

“What is it, Oscar?” Charlotte said.

“I tried to call Walter,” said Wilde. “This is what I got.” His own face was immediately replaced by that of Walter Czastka’s silver-animated sim.

“Damn you, Oscar Wilde,” the sim said, apparently without having bothered with any conventional identification or polite preliminary. “Damn you and Rappaccini to the darkest oblivion imaginable.” “That’s not very nice, Walter,” Wilde’s voice countered, although the image on screen was still the sim’s. “We have a responsibility to our AI slaves not to use them in this tawdry way. They can be pleasant on our behalf, but we shouldn’t require them to be insulting. It isn’t worthy of us.” “Damn you, Oscar Wilde,” the sim repeated. “Damn you and Rappaccini to the darkest oblivion imaginable.” “Nor should we lock the poor things into tight loops,” the Wildean voice-over added. “It’s a particularly cruel form of imprisonment.” “Damn you, Oscar Wilde,” said the sim yet again. “Damn you and Rappaccini to the darkest oblivion imaginable.” It was obviously programmed to make that response to anything and everything that Wilde might say. Charlotte cut off the tape and punched out Czastka’s phone code herself.

“Dr. Czastka,” she said when the sim appeared, “this is Sergeant Charlotte Holmes of the UN police. I need to speak to you urgently.” “Damn you, Oscar Wilde,” replied the sim stubbornly. “Damn you and Rappaccini to the darkest oblivion imaginable.” Charlotte restored the link to Wilde’s helicopter. His face had creased into an anxious frown. “I have a horrible suspicion,” Wilde said, “that we might already be too late.” Charlotte looked at the comcon’s timer. They were still thirteen minutes away from their estimated time of arrival at the island. She punched in another code, connecting herself to the commander of the task force whose hovering copters had surrounded the island.

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“No sign of her yet,” the answer came back. “She can’t possibly have landed without being seen. If anything happens, Sergeant, you’ll be the first to know, as per New York’s orders.” The local man did not seem particularly pleased by the fact that he had orders to check all his moves with a mere sergeant. The fact that she was from New York probably added an extra hint of insult to the tacit injury.

“What do you mean, too late?” she said to Wilde, having cut back to him yet again. “If he were dead, it could only be suicide. His phone sim may be the stupidest obsolete sloth still in use, but there must be silver-level smarts somewhere in his systems. If he were actually dead, they’d override the sloth.