“The SSC — the Superconducting Super Collider?” A multi-billion-dollar particle-accelerator project that would have been built under a cornfield in Texas, had it not been canned by Congress in the 1990s.
Hiram said, “A whole generation of American particle physicists was hit by that decision. They survived; they found jobs in industry and Wall Street and so forth. Most of them never got over their disappointment, however.”
“But the SSC would have been a mistake. The linear accelerator technology that came along a few years later was far more effective, and cheaper. And besides most fundamental results in particle physics since 2010 or so have come from studies of high-energy cosmological events.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not to these people. The SSC might have been a mistake. But it would have been their mistake. When I traced these guys and offered them a chance to come work in cutting-edge high-energy physics again they jumped at the chance.” He eyed his son. “You know, you’re a smart boy, David.”
“I’m not a boy.”
“You had the kind of education I could never even have dreamed of. But there’s a lot I could teach you even so. Like how to handle people.” He waved a hand at the technicians. “Look at these guys. They’re working for a promise: for dreams of their youth, aspiration, self-fulfilment. If you can find some way to tap into that, you can get people to work like pit ponies, and for pennies.”
David followed him, frowning.
They reached a guardrail, and one grey-haired technician — with a curt, somewhat awed nod at Hiram — handed them hard hats. David fitted his gingerly to his head.
David leaned over the rail. He could smell machine oil, insulation, cleaning solvents. From here he could see that the detector array actually extended some distance below the ground surface. At the centre of the pit was a tight knot of machinery, dark and unfamiliar. A puff of vapour, like wispy steam, billowed from the core of the machinery: cryogenics, perhaps. There was a whirr, somewhere above. David looked up to see a beam crane in action, a long steel beam that extended over the detector array, with a grabbing arm at the end.
Hiram murmured, “Most of this stuff is just detectors of one kind or another, so we can figure out what is going on — particularly when something goes wrong.” He pointed at the knot of machinery at the core of the array. “That is the business end. A cluster of superconducting magnets.”
“Hence the cryogenics.”
“Yes. We make our big electromagnetic fields in there, the fields we use to build our buckyball Casimir engines.” There was pride in his voice — justifiable, thought David. “This was the very site where we opened up that first wormhole, back in the spring. I’m getting a plaque put up, you know, one of those historic markers. Call me immodest. Now we’re using this place to push the technology further, as far and as fast as we can.”
David turned to Hiram. “Why have you brought me out here?”
“…Just the question I was going to ask.”
The third voice, utterly unexpected, clearly startled Hiram.
A figure stepped out of the shadows of the detector stack, and came to stand beside Hiram. For a moment David’s heart pumped, for it might have been Hiram’s twin — or his premature ghost. But at second glance David could detect differences; the second man was considerably younger, less bulky, perhaps a little taller, and his hair was still thick and glossy black.
But those ice blue eyes, so unusual given an Asian descent, were undoubtedly Hiram’s.
“I know you,” David said.
“From tabloid TV?”
David forced a smile. “You’re Bobby.”
“And you must be David, the half-brother I didn’t know I had, until I had to learn it from a journalist.” Bobby was clearly angry, but his self-control was icy.
David realized he had landed in the middle of a complicated family row — worse, it was
Hiram looked from one to the other of his sons. He sighed. “David, maybe it’s time I bought you that coffee.”
The coffee was among the worst David had ever tasted. But the technician who served the three of them hovered at the table until David took his first sip. This is Seattle, David reminded himself; here, quality coffee has been a fetish among the social classes who man installations like this for a generation. He forced a smile. “Marvellous,” he said.
The tech went away beaming.
The facility’s cafeteria was tucked into the corner of the ‘countinghouse,’ the computing center where data from the various experiments run here were analysed. The counting house itself, characteristic of Hiram’s cost conscious operations, was minimal, just a temporary office module with a plastic tile floor, fluorescent ceiling panels, wood-effect plastic workstation partitions. It was jammed with computer terminals, SoftScreens, oscilloscopes and other electronic equipment. Cables and light fibre ducts snaked everywhere, bundles of them taped to the walls and floor and ceiling. There was a complex smell of electrical-equipment ozone, of stale coffee and sweat.
The cafeteria itself had turned out to be a dismal shack with plastic tables and vending machines, all maintained by a battered drone robot. Hiram and his two sons sat around a table, arms folded, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Hiram dug into a pocket and produced a handkerchief sized SoftScreen, smoothed it flat. He said, “I’ll get to the point. On. Replay. Cairo.”
David watched the ’Screen. He saw, through a succession of brief scenes, some kind of medical emergency unfolding in sun-drenched Cairo. Egypt: stretcher-bearers carrying bodies from buildings, a hospital crowded with corpses and despairing relatives and harassed medical staff, mothers clutching the inert bodies of infants, screaming.
“Dear God.”
“God seems to have been looking the other way,” Hiram said grimly. “This happened this morning. Another water war. One of Egypt’s neighbours dumped a toxin in the Nile. First estimates are two thousand dead, ten thousand ill, many more deaths expected.
“Now.” He tapped the little ’Screen. “Look at the picture quality. Some of these images are from handheld cams, some from drones. All taken within
“I keep camera crews and stringers all around the world, at considerable expense. I have local agents on every street corner across the planet. But we can’t be everywhere. And if we aren’t there it can take hours, days even to get a crew in place. In the twenty-four-hour news business, believe me, being a minute late is fatal.”
David frowned. “I don’t understand. You’re talking about competitive advantage? People are dying here, right in front of your eyes.”
“People die all the time,” said Hiram harshly. “People die in wars over resources, like in Cairo here, or over fine religious or ethnic differences, or because some bloody typhoon or flood or drought hits them as the climate goes crazy, or they just plain die. I can’t change that. If I don’t show it, somebody else will. I’m not here to argue morality. What I’m concerned about is the future of my business. And right now I’m losing out. And that’s why I need you. Both of you.”
Bobby said bluntly, “First tell us about our mothers.”
David held his breath.
Hiram gulped his coffee. He said slowly, “All right. But there really isn’t much to tell. Eve — David’s mother — was my first wife.”
“And your first fortune,” David said dryly.
Hiram shrugged. “We used Eve’s inheritance as seedcorn money to start the business. It’s important that you understand, David. I never ripped off your mother. In the early days we were partners. We had a kind of long range business plan. I remember we wrote it out on the back of a menu at our wedding reception… We hit every bloody one of those targets, and more. We multiplied your mothers fortune tenfold. And we had you.”
“But you had an affair, and your marriage broke up,” David said.
Hiram eyed David. “How judgemental you are. Just like your mother.”
“Just tell us, Dad,” Bobby pressed.
Hiram nodded. “Yes, I had an affair. With your mother, Bobby. Heather, she was called. I never meant it to be this way… David, my relationship with Eve had been failing for a long time. That damn religion of hers.”
“So you threw her out.”
“She tried to throw
David leaned forward. “But you cut her out of your business interests. A business you had built on her money.”
Hiram shrugged. “I told you I wanted a settlement. She wanted it all. We couldn’t compromise.” His eyes hardened. “I wasn’t about to give up everything I’d built up. Not on the whim of some religion-crazed nut. Even if she was my wife, your mother. When she lost her all-or-nothing suit, she went to France with you, and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Or tried to.” He smiled, “It wasn’t hard to track you down.” Hiram reached for his arm, but David pulled back. “David, you never knew it, but I’ve been there for you. I found ways to, umm, help you out, without your mother knowing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you owe everything you have to me, but -”
David felt anger blaze. “What makes you think I wanted your help?”
Bobby said, “Where’s your mother now?”
David tried to calm down. “She died. Cancer. It could have been easier for her. We couldn’t afford -”
“She wouldn’t let me help her,” Hiram said. “Even at the end she pushed me away.”
David said, “What do you expect? You took everything she had from her.”
Hiram shook his head. “She took something more important from me.
“And so,” Bobby said coldly, “you focused your ambition on me.”
Hiram shrugged. “What can I say? Bobby, I gave you everything — everything. I’d have given both of you. I prepared you as best I could.”
“
Hiram thumped the table. “If Joe Kennedy can do it, why not Hiram Patterson? Don’t you see, boys? There’s no limit to what we can achieve, if we work together…”
“You are talking about politics?” David eyed Bobby’s sleek, puzzled face. “Is that what you intend for Bobby? Perhaps the Presidency itself?” He laughed. “You are exactly as I imagined you, Father.”
“And how’s that?”
“Arrogant. Manipulative.”
Hiram was growing angry. “And you are just as I expected. As pompous and pious as your mother.”
Bobby was staring at his father, bemused.
David stood. “Perhaps we have said enough.”
Hiram’s anger dissipated immediately. “No. Wait. I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t drag you all the way over here to fight with you. Sit down and hear me out. Please.”
