The cafeteria was a showpiece, a spectacular multi-level glass cylinder built around a chunk of bona fide graffiti-laden Berlin Wall. There was, bizarrely, a stream running right through the middle of the hall, with little stone bridges spanning it. Tonight perhaps a thousand guests milled across the glassy floor, groups of them coalescing and dispersing, a cloud of conversation bubbling around them.
Heads turned toward her, some in recognition, and some — male and female alike — with frankly lustful calculation.
She picked out face after face, repeated shocks of recognition startling her. There were presidents, dictators, royalty, powers in industry and finance, and the usual scattering of celebrities from movies and music and the other arts. She didn’t spot President Juarez herself, but several of her cabinet were here. Hiram had gathered quite a crowd for his latest spectacle, she conceded.
Of course she knew she wasn’t here herself solely for her glittering journalistic talent or conversational skills, but for her own combination of beauty and the minor celebrity that had followed her exposure of the Wormwood discovery. But that was an angle she’d been happy to exploit herself ever since her big break.
Drones floated overhead, bearing canapes and drinks. She accepted a cocktail. Some of the drones carried images from one or another of Hiram’s channels. The images were mostly ignored in the excitement, even the most spectacular — here was one, for example, bearing the image of a space rocket on the point of being launched, evidently from some dusty steppe in Asia — but she couldn’t deny that the cumulative effect of all this technology was impressive, as if reinforcing Hiram’s famous boast that OurWorld’s mission was to inform a planet.
She gravitated toward one of the larger knots of people nearby, trying to see who, or what, was the centre of attention. She made out a slim young man with dark hair, a walrus moustache and round glasses, wearing a rather absurd pantomime-soldier uniform of bright lime green with scarlet piping. He seemed to be holding a brass musical instrument, perhaps a euphonium. She recognized him, of course, and as soon as she did so she lost interest. Just a virtual. She began to survey the crowd around him observing their child-like fascination with this simulacrum of a long- dead, saintly celebrity.
One older man was regarding her a little too closely. His eyes were odd, an unnaturally pale grey. She wondered if he had possession of the new breed of retinal implants that were rumoured — by operating at millimetre wavelengths, at which textiles were transparent, and with a little subtle image enhancement — to enable the wearer to see through clothes. He took a tentative step toward her, and orthotic aids, his invisible walking machine, whirred stiffly.
Kate turned away.
“…He’s only a virtual, I’m afraid. Our young sergeant over there, that is. Like his three companions, who are likewise scattered around the room. Even my father’s grasp doesn’t yet extend to resurrecting the dead. But of course you knew that.”
The voice in her ear had made her jump. She turned, and found herself looking into the face of a young man: perhaps twenty-five, jet-black hair, a proud Roman nose, a chin with a cleft to die for. His mixed ancestry told in the pale brown of his skin, the heavy black brows over startling, cloudy blue eyes. But his gaze roamed, restlessly, even in these first few seconds of meeting her, as if he had trouble maintaining eye contact.
He said, “You’re staring at me.”
She came out fighting. “Well, you startled me. Anyhow I know who you are.” This was Bobby Patterson, Hiram’s only son and heir — and a notorious sexual predator. She wondered how many other unaccompanied women this man had targeted tonight.
“And I know you, Ms. Manzoni. Or can I call you Kate?”
“You may as well — I call your father Hiram, as everyone does, though I’ve never met him.”
“Do you want to? I could arrange it.”
“I’m sure you could.”
He studied her a little more closely now, evidently enjoying the gentle verbal duel. “You know, I could have guessed you were a journalist — a writer, anyhow. The way you were watching the people reacting to the virtual, rather than the virtual itself… I saw your pieces on the Wormwood, of course. You made quite a splash.”
“Not as much as the real thing will when it hits the Pacific on May 27, 2534 A.D.”
He smiled, and his teeth were like rows of pearls. “You intrigue me, Kate Manzoni,” he said. “You’re accessing the Search Engine right now, aren’t you? You’re asking it about me.”
“No.” She was annoyed by the suggestion. “I’m a journalist. I don’t need a memory crutch.”
“I do, evidently. I remembered your face, your story, but not your name. Are you offended?”
She bristled. “Why should I be? As a matter of fact -”
“As a matter of fact, I smell a little sexual chemistry in the air. Am I right?”
There was a heavy arm around her shoulder, a powerful scent of cheap cologne. It was Hiram Patterson himself: one of the most famous people on the planet.
Bobby grinned and, gently, pushed his father’s arm away. “Dad, you’re embarrassing me again.”
“Oh, bugger that. Life’s too short, isn’t it?” Hiram’s accent bore strong traces of his origins, the long, nasal vowels of Norfolk, England. He was very like his son, but darker, bald with a fringe of wiry black hair around his head; his eyes were intense blue over that prominent family nose, and he grinned easily, showing teeth stained by nicotine. He looked energetic, younger than his late sixties. “Ms. Manzoni, I’m a great admirer of your work. And may I say you look terrific.”
“Which is why I’m here, no doubt.”
He laughed, pleased. “Well, that too. But I did want to be sure there was one intelligent person in among the air-head politicos and pretty-pretties who crowd out these events. Somebody who would be able to record this moment of history.”
“I’m flattered.”
“No, you’re not,” Hiram said bluntly. “You’re being ironic. You’ve heard the buzz about what I’m going to say tonight. You probably even generated some of it yourself. You think I’m a megalomaniac nutcase.”
“I don’t think I’d say that. What I see is a man with a new gadget. Hiram, do you really believe a gadget can change the world?”
“But gadgets do, you know! Once it was the wheel, agriculture, iron-making — inventions that took thousands of years to spread around the planet. But now it takes a generation or less. Think about the car, the television. When I was a kid computers were giant walk-in wardrobes served by a priesthood with punch cards. Now we all spend half our lives plugged into SoftScreens. And my gadget is going to top them all… Well. You’ll have to decide for yourself.” He studied Kate. “Enjoy tonight. If this young waster hasn’t invited you already, come to dinner, and we’ll show you more, as much as you want to see. I mean it. Talk to one of the drones. Now, do excuse me…” Hiram squeezed her shoulders briefly, then began to make his way through the crowd, smiling and waving and glad-handing as he went.
Kate took a deep breath. “I feel as if a bomb just went off.”
Bobby laughed. “He does have that effect. By the way -”
“What?”
“I was going to ask you anyhow before the old fool jumped in. Come have dinner. And maybe we can have a little fun, get to know each other better…”
As his patter continued, she tuned him out and focused on what she knew about Hiram Patterson and OurWorld.
Hiram Patterson — born Hirdamani Patel — had dragged himself out of impoverished origins in the fen country of eastern England, a land which had now disappeared beneath the encroaching North Sea. He had made his first fortune by using Japanese cloning technologies to manufacture ingredients for traditional medicines once made from the bodies of tigers — whiskers, paws, claws, even bones — and exporting them to Chinese communities around the world. That had gained him notoriety: brickbats for using advanced technology to serve such primitive needs, praise for reducing the pressure on the remaining populations of tigers in India, China, Russia, and Indonesia. (Not that there were any tigers left now anyhow.)
After that Hiram had diversified. He had developed the world’s first successful SoftScreen, a flexible image system based on polymer pixels capable of emitting multi-coloured light. With the success of the SoftScreen Hiram began to grow seriously rich. Soon his corporation, OurWorld, had become a powerhouse in advanced technologies, broadcasting, news, sport and entertainment.
But Britain was declining. As part of unified Europe — deprived of tools of macroeconomic policy like control of exchange and interest rates, and yet unsheltered by the imperfectly integrated greater economy — the British government was unable to arrest a sharp economic collapse. At last, in 2010, social unrest and climate collapse forced Britain out of the European Union, and the United Kingdom fell apart, Scotland going its own separate way. Through all this Hiram had struggled to maintain OurWorld’s fortunes.
Then, in 2019, England, with Wales, ceded Northern Ireland to Eire, packed off the Royals to Australia — where they were still welcome — and had become the fifty-second state of the United States of America. With the benefit of labour mobility, interregional financial transfers and other protective features of the truly unified American economy, England thrived. But it had to thrive without Hiram. As a U.S. citizen, Hiram had quickly taken the opportunity to relocate to the outskirts of Seattle, Washington, and had delighted in establishing a new corporate headquarters here, at what used to be the Microsoft campus. Hiram liked to boast that he would become the Bill Gates of the twenty-first century. And indeed his corporate and personal power had, in the richer soil of the American economy, grown exponentially.
Still, Kate knew, he was only one of a number of powerful players in a crowded and competitive market. She was here tonight because — so went the buzz and as he had just hinted — Hiram was to reveal something new, something that would change all that.
Bobby Patterson, by contrast, had grown up enveloped by Hiram’s power.
Educated at Eton, Cambridge and Harvard, he had taken various positions within his father’s companies, and enjoyed the spectacular life of an international playboy and the world’s most eligible bachelor. As far as Kate knew he had never once demonstrated any spark of initiative of his own, nor any desire to escape his father’s embrace — better yet, to supplant him.
Kate gazed at his perfect face. This is a bird who is happy with his gilded cage, she thought. A spoilt rich kid.
But she felt herself flush under his gaze, and despised her biology.
She hadn’t spoken for some seconds; Bobby was still waiting for her to respond to his dinner invitation.
“I’ll think about it, Bobby.”
He seemed puzzled — as if he’d never received such a hesitant response before. “Is there a problem? If you want I can -”
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
Every head turned; Kate was relieved.
Hiram had mounted a stage at one end of the cafeteria. Behind him, a giant SoftScreen showed a blown-up image of his head and shoulders. He was smiling over them all, like some beneficent god, and drones drifted around his head bearing jewel-like images of the multiple OurWorld channels. “May I say, first of all, thank you all for coming to witness this moment of history, and for your patience. Now the show is about to begin.”
The dandy-like virtual in the lime green soldier suit materialized on the stage beside Hiram, his granny glasses glinting in the lights. He was joined by three others, in pink, blue and scarlet, each carrying a musical instrument — an oboe, a trumpet, a piccolo. There was scattered applause. The four took an easy bow, and stepped lightly to an area at the back of the stage where a drum kit and three electric guitars were waiting for them.
Hiram said easily, “This imagery is being broadcast to us, here in Seattle, from a station near Brisbane, Australia — bounced off various comsats, with a time delay of a few seconds. I don’t mind telling you these boys have made a mountain of money in the last couple of years — their new song
“
Bobby leaned closer. “You don’t like the V-Fabs?”
