The Light of Other Days

intellectual synaesthesia. He said slowly, “David, you’re telling me that distances in space and time are somehow equivalent. Right? Your wormholes span intervals of spacetime rather than simply distances. And that means that if you do succeed in stabilizing a wormhole big enough to reach Saturn, across eighty light-minutes -”

“Yes?”

“Then it could reach across eighty minutes. I mean, across time.” He stared at David. “Am I being really dumb?”

David sat in silence for long seconds.

“Good God,” he said slowly. “I didn’t even consider the possibility, I’ve been configuring the wormhole to span a spacelike interval, without even thinking about it.” Feverishly, he began to tap at his SoftScreen. “I can reconfigure it from right here. If I restrict the spacelike interval to a couple of metres, then the rest of the wormhole span is forced to become timelike…”

“What would that mean? David?”

A buzzer rang, painfully loudly, and the Search Engine spoke. “Hiram would like to see you, Bobby.”

Bobby glanced at David, flooded with sudden, absurd fear.

David nodded curtly, already absorbed in the new direction of his work. “I’ll call you later, Bobby. This could be significant. Very significant.”

There was no reason to stay. Bobby walked away into the darkness of the Wormworks.

•

Hiram paced around his downtown office, visibly angry, fists clenched. Kate was sitting at Hiram’s big conference table, looking small, cowed.

Bobby hesitated at the door, for a few breaths physically unable to force himself into the room, so strong were the emotions churning here. But Kate was looking at him — forcing a smile, in fact.

He walked into the room. He reached the security of a seat, on the opposite side of the table from Kate. Bobby quailed, unable to speak. Hiram glared at him. “You let me down, you little shit.”

Kate snapped, “For Christ’s sake, Hiram.”

“You keep out of this.” Hiram thumped the tabletop, and a SoftScreen in the plastic surface lit up before Bobby. It started to run fragments of a news story: images of Bobby, a younger Hiram, a girl-pretty, timid-looking, dressed in colourless, drab, outdated fashions and a picture of the same woman two decades later, intelligent, tired, handsome. The Earth News Online logo was imprinted on each image.

“They found her, Bobby,” Hiram said. “Thanks to you. Because you couldn’t keep your bloody mouth shut, could you?”

“Found who?”

“Your mother.”

Kate was working the SoftScreen before her, scrolling quickly through the information, “Heather Mays. Is that her name? She married again. She has a daughter, you have a half-sister, Bobby.”

Hiram’s voice was a snarl. “Keep out of this, you, manipulative bitch. Without you none of this would have happened.”

Bobby, striving for control, said, “None of what?”

“Your implant would have stayed doing what it was doing. Keeping you steady and happy. Christ, I wish somebody had put a thing like that in my head when I was your age. Would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. And you wouldn’t have shot off your mouth in front of Dan Schirra.”

“Schirra? From ENO?”

“Except he didn’t call himself that, when he met you last week. What did he do, get you drunk and maudlin, blubbing about your evil father, your long-lost mother?”

“I remember,” Bobby said. “He calls himself Mervyn. Mervyn Costa. I’ve known him a long time.”

“Of course you have. He’s been cultivating you, on behalf of ENO, to get to me. You didn’t know who he was, but you kept your reserve — before, when you had the implant to help you keep a clear head. And now this. It’s open season on Hiram Patterson. And it’s all your bloody fault, Manzoni.”

Kate was still scrolling through the news piece and its hyperlinks. “I didn’t screw and dump this woman two decades ago.” She tapped at her SoftScreen, and an area of the table before Hiram lit up. “Schirra has corroborative evidence. Look.”

Bobby looked over his father’s shoulder. The Screen showed Hiram sitting at a table — this table, Bobby realized with a jolt, this room — and he was working his way through a mound of papers, amending and signing. The image was grainy, unsteady, but clear enough. Hiram came to a particular document, shook his head as if in disgust, and hastily signed it, turning it face down on a pile to his right.

After that the image reran in slo-mo, and the viewpoint zoomed in on the document. After some focusing and image enhancement, it was possible to read some of the text.

“You see?” Kate said. “Hiram, they caught you signing an update of the payoff agreement you made with Heather more than twenty years ago.”

Hiram looked at Bobby, almost pleading. “It was over long ago. We came to a settlement. I helped her develop her career. She makes documentary features. She’s been successful.”

“She was a brood mare, Bobby,” Kate said coldly. “He’s kept up his payments to keep her quiet. And to make sure she never tried to get near to you.”

Hiram prowled around the room, hammering at the walls, glaring at the ceiling. “I have this suite swept three times a day. How did they get those images? Those incompetent arseholes in Building Security have screwed up again.”

“Come on, Hiram,” Kate said evenly, evidently enjoying herself. “Think about it. There’s no way ENO could bug your headquarters. Any more than you could bug theirs.”

“But I wouldn’t need to bug them,” Hiram said slowly. “I have the WormCam… Oh.”

“Well done.” Kate grinned. “You figured it out. ENO must have a WormCam as well. It’s the only way they could have achieved this scoop. You lost your monopoly, Hiram. And the first thing they did with their WormCam was turn it on you.” She threw back her head and laughed out loud.

“My God.” Bobby said. “What a disaster.”

“Oh, garbage,” she snapped. “Come on, Bobby. Pretty soon the whole world will know the WormCam exists; it won’t be possible to keep a lid on it any longer. It has to be a good thing if the WormCam is prized out of the hands of this sick duopoly, the federal government and Hiram Patterson, for God’s sake.”

Hiram said coldly, “If Earth News have WormCam technology, it’s obvious who gave it to them.”

Kate looked puzzled. “Are you implying that…”

“Who else?”

“I’m a journalist,” Kate flared. “I’m no spy. The hell with you, Hiram. It’s obvious what happened. ENO just figured out that you must have found a way to adapt your wormholes as remote viewers. With that basic insight they duplicated your researches. It wouldn’t be hard; most of the information is in the public domain. Hiram, your hold on the WormCam was always fragile. It only took one person to figure it out independently.”

But Hiram didn’t seem to be hearing her. “I forgave you, took you in. You took my money. You betrayed my trust. You damaged my son’s mind and poisoned him against me.”

Kate stood and faced Hiram. “If you really believe that, you’re more twisted than I thought you were.”

The Search Engine called softly, “Excuse me, Hiram. Michael Mavens is here, asking to see you. Special Agent Mavens of…”

“Tell him to wait.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t an option, Hiram. And I have a call from David. He says it’s urgent.”

Bobby looked from one face to the other, frightened, bewildered, as his life came to pieces around him.

•

Mavens took a seat and opened a briefcase.

Hiram snapped, “What do you want, Mavens? I didn’t expect to see you again. I thought the deal we signed was comprehensive.”

“I thought so too, Mr. Patterson.” Mavens looked genuinely disappointed. “But the problem is, you didn’t stick to it. OurWorld as a corporation. One employee specifically. And that’s why I’m here. When I heard this case had turned up, I asked if I could become involved. I suppose I have a special interest.”

Hiram said heavily, “What case?”

Mavens picked up what looked like a charge sheet from his briefcase. “The bottom line is that a charge of trade-secret misappropriation, under the 1996 Economic Espionage Act, has been brought against OurWorld: by IBM, specifically by the director of their Thomas J. Watson research laboratory. Mr. Patterson, we believe the WormCam has been used to gain illegal access to IBM proprietary research results. Something called a synaesthesia-suppression software suite, associated with virtual-reality technology.” He looked up. “Does that make sense?”

Hiram looked at Bobby.

Bobby sat transfixed, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, with no real idea how he should react, what he should say.

Kate said, “You have a suspect, don’t you, Special Agent?”

The FBI man eyed her steadily, sadly. “I think you already know the answer to that question, Ms. Manzoni.”

Kate appeared confused.

Bobby snapped, “You mean Kate? That’s ridiculous.”

Hiram thumped a fist into a palm. “I knew it. I knew she was trouble. But I didn’t think she’d go this far.”

Mavens sighed. “I’m afraid there’s a very clear evidentiary trail leading to you, Ms. Manzoni.”

Kate flared. “If it’s there, it was planted.”

Mavens said, “You’ll be placed under arrest. I hope there won’t be any trouble. If you’ll sit quietly, the Search Engine will read you your rights.”

Kate looked startled as a voice — inaudible to the rest of them — began to sound in her ears.

Hiram was at Bobby’s side. “Take it easy, son. We’ll get through his shit together. What were you trying to do, Manzoni? Find another way to get to Bobby? Is that what it was all about?” Hiram’s face was a grim mask, empty of emotion: there was no trace of anger, pity, relief — or triumph.

And the door was flung open. David stood there, grinning, his bear-like bulk filling the frame; he held a rolled-up SoftScreen in one hand. “I did it,” he said. “By God, I did it… What’s happening here?”

Mavens said, “Doctor Curzon, it may be better if -”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re doing, it doesn’t matter. Not compared to this.” He spread his SoftScreen on the tabletop. “As soon as I got it I came straight here. Look at this.”

The SoftScreen showed what looked superficially like a rainbow, reduced to black and white and grey, uneven bands of light that arced, distorted, across a black background.

“Of course it’s somewhat grainy,” David said. “But still, this picture is equivalent to the quality of images returned by NASA’s first flyby probes back in the 1970s.”