Charles McCandliss talks with his murderer:

This passage is from 'Architects of Emortality,' by Brian Stableford, and it one of the most magnificent passages of maybe half a dozen of it's like in the entire book:

This is the several hundred year old murder victim, unwittingly talking to his 22 year old murderess in the guise of his familiar young lover Julia:

START QUOTE:

"Nothing is historically superfluous," Stuart told her sternly. "Nothing is outside the causal process by which the world is made and remade. Art is merely the expression of that process, no matter what individual artists may think."

...

"Even the art of murder?" Julia asked lightly.
"If murder were not an expression of historical causality," Stuart insisted, "it would have to be considered devoid of artistry, even by the most daring interpreter."

Stuart had always considered himself a daring interpreter. His ambition had always been to understand the whole of human historycand the whole of the human world: to hold it entirely in his mind-s eye, as if it were a vast parorama in which every element stood in its proper relation to every other element, a huge seamless whole whose horizons held the promise of infinity. In a way, he had to reckon himself a failure, because he knew well enough that there was a great deal which he did _not_ understand, and never would understand, but he could forgive himself that inadequacy - which was of course and inedequacy he shared with all other living men - because he had at least made the effort. He had never allowed himself to be intellectually _confined_ in the way that men like Urashima and Teidemann had.

...

Although he could no tbring himself to entertain the thought, let alone believe it, Stuart McCandless was fated to die very soon.
It was likely that nothing could have saved him - certainly not a better memory.

...

Sometimes victims collaborate in their own murders, even when they have been forewarned of danger - and why should they not, if they believe that murder and art are mere expressions of historical process, deft feints, and thrusts of causality?

If indiosyncrasy, madness, and genius are no more than tiny waves on a great sullen tide of irresistable causality, even a man forewarned can hardly be expected to defy their force. Stuart McCandless certainly did nothing to avoid his fate, even when the second and far more explicit warning arrived. He simply coul dnot imagine that his pupil coul dbe anything but what she seemed or anyone but who she pretended to be. He was old, and he was complacent. He knew that he was fated to die, but he carried in his consciousness that remarkable will to survive that refuses to recognize death even while it stares death in the face. Nor was he a fool; he was probably as knowledgeable a historian as there was in the world, and as wise a lover.

If those who tried to warn him had been able to explain to him exactly _why_ he was being murdered, he would have laughed aloud in flagrant disbelief. Like the vidveg he affected top despise, and in spite of his claustrophobia, he was a man whose imaginitive horizons were narrower than he knew or could ever have admitted to himself.

END OF QUOTE.