“Yes, Charlotte, I certainly have,” he said, casually accepting the compliment.

“Walter Czastka, alas, has not. He had the seed of the gift, but he lost it—or killed it. He let it shrivel within his soul, out of shame, or guilt, or fear, or petty regret. Though his heart still beats within his withered frame, he has already begun to rot. Rappaccini’s worms are feeding on his carcass.” “But what was he trying to do with Maria Inacio?” Charlotte asked.

“The one thing worth attempting, at that time and in that context,” Wilde said, with a heavy sigh. “Walter must already have known, even though the rest of the world was only just beginning to realize and had not yet openly admitted, that the nanotech escalator had stalled. Human emortality could not be attained by means of nanotech and superficial somatic engineering; it required genetic engineering in embryo. What Walter attempted was a transformation of the kind that was not perfected for a further century and more: a Zaman transformation.

Alas, its effects were purely cosmetic; Jafri Biasiolo retained the appearance of dignified maturity longer than his contemporaries, but he remained as mortal as they. He must have known soon after the Great Exhibition that he was little different from other men.” “And that’s why Rappaccini decided to kill Czastka and all his accomplices? Because they failed?” Charlotte was incredulous. That seemed to her like monstrous ingratitude.

“I doubt that it was as simple as that. Rappaccini was too sensible and sensitive a man to condemn a fellow scientist for an experiment that produced a negative result. Perhaps he decided to kill his Creator and all the accomplices in his Creation because, having failed in their bold attempt to be midwives of a new era, they gave up. Perhaps Rappaccini the scientist and Rappaccini the artist could forgive them their failure, but not their repentance. Perhaps he hoped that his Creator might return to the true path, and in the end despaired.

On the other hand, he may simply, have decided that he had been a closely kept secret for far too long, and that he ought to be remembered for what he truly was: a unique man, and a unique artist. Perhaps he became determined to shout from the rooftops that which Walter and his coconspirators were so determined to keep quiet, by way of compensation for his own betrayal. By the time the casters have unraveled the thread of this plot, everyone in the world will know what Jafri Biasiolo was, and what he made of himself.” By the time that Gustave Moreau’s green-clad island came in view, Charlotte had placed a bubblebug on her forehead in preparation for the landing. Hal Watson would be able to use it as an eye as long as she stayed within a few hundred meters of the copter. Given that Moreau’s island was more or less identical in size and shape to Walter Czastka’s, it seemed unlikely that she would have to stray beyond that limit.

The flight of the giant bird had now become slightly drunken, although it was still gliding. Every slight adjustment of its wings seemed exaggerated, and it was losing height inexorably. Huge though it was, the weight of an adult human being and the instability induced by her awkward position were making it difficult for the monster to complete its task. Charlotte wondered whether the creature had sufficient strength left to make a successful landfall.

It was clear to Charlotte that the woman’s murders must have been planned in such a way as to lay a trail, and that it was Moreau’s island, not Czastka’s, that had always been the end point of that trail. Thanks to the special provision which Moreau had made for Oscar Wilde, she and Lowenthal had been able to follow the trail’s most scenic route and had arrived at the appointed destination ahead of any other actual persons—but every news service in the world must have scrambled every available flying eye by now.

It wasn’t every day that the vidveg had the chance to see a police helicopter chase come unstuck because a roc had abducted a beautiful female serial killer.

Nor did Charlotte need Oscar Wilde to tell her that she was about to attend an exhibition: an exhibition which was presumably designed to put the so-called Great Exhibition of 2405 to shame. Most of the exhibits, she suspected, would be illegal—which was one reason why the exhibitor had chosen this peculiarly flamboyant method of issuing invitations. Moreau’s roc had already demonstrated that he was a genetic engineer of genius—perhaps the greatest genetic engineer the world had ever known—but its function was merely to attract attention. In her own way, the “daughter” that Moreau had produced by cloning his mother and then modifying her genome in as-yet-unspecified ways was equally astonishing, and Charlotte assumed that the island would be abundantly stocked with similar miracles.

Moreau was clearly a man for whom the impossible was merely routine, and the miraculous that which could confidently be scheduled for the week after next. He was also a man whose real work had been kept secret for a century and more, while he had been content to restrict his public dealings to the design and supply of funeral wreaths.

Charlotte watched the bird summon up the last vestiges of its strength for its landing maneuver. It banked to the left, its wings curving to catch the air; then the gargantuan limbs flapped once, twice, and thrice as the creature fell toward the silver strand where the waves were breaking over Dr. Moreau’s island.

Charlotte’s helicopter followed, then Oscar Wilde’s. The five copters from Kauai were still in attendance, but they had already received orders to keep their cabins sealed after landing lest their occupants become vectors of unknown biocontamination. Charlotte had already reconciled herself to the prospect of a period in quarantine.

The copter’s safety-minded silver pilot gave the beached roc a wide berth, putting Charlotte and Lowenthal down a full sixty meters from the point where the woman had been dropped. The fugitive had already picked herself up and had disappeared into the trees which fringed the beach.

Charlotte unplugged her beltphone from the helicopter’s comCon without bothering to sign off, and put the handset in its holster. Hal would be able to see what was going oh, but she didn’t want him babbling in her ear. It had fallen to her to make the final arrest, with the world looking on, and she didn’t want it to look as if she were merely a marionette, dancing to New York’s tune.

She did not attempt to approach the roc, although she took a long look at the chimerical creature before turning to follow the red-haired woman. The bird peered back at her dolefully from one unnaturally large and bloodily crimson eye; the other was hidden by the bulk of its naked head. It did not look so horrid now that it seemed helpless. It looked mournful, and rather tragic.

Michael Lowenthal came abreast of her as she paused, and Oscar Wilde was already running across the sand to join the two of them.

“You shouldn’t have got out,” she said to Wilde as lightly as she could. “You’ll have to be quarantined now.” “You know perfectly well, dear Charlotte,” Wilde replied, not quite breathlessly, “that I could not possibly be content to watch the final act of the comedy through an artificial eye mounted on the brow of a police officer.” “It’s a comedy now, is it?” said Lowenthal sourly. “I can’t quite see the joke.” “It is,” Wilde intoned, puffing himself up with false dignity, “a divine comedy.

If we can read it rightly, all of modern life’s metaphysical frame will be shown to us here: our land of darkness, our purgatory, our paradise.” Charlotte and her two companions walked side by side to the place where Moreau’s murderous agent had disappeared, keeping a wary eye on the roc while they did so. The bird made no move toward them; its wings were still outstretched, and it seemed to be in considerable distress. It must have been created, Charlotte realized, merely in order to make that single flight; it had served its purpose and might never fly again. As she glanced back for the last time before moving into the trees, Charlotte saw the bloody eyes eclipsed by wrinkled lids.