had blended into a continuous pounding.
Walking along, taking in all the sights, all the sounds, all the smells, Masayuki found himself feeling wistful; endings were always sad. Still, he tried to etch everything in his mind—so that someday he’d be able to tell his grandchildren what China had been like.
twenty-two
Hume entered the lobby of Octahedral Software. The receptionist’s counter was made of polished white marble, and behind her there was a large poster of the company’s logo: an eight-sided yellow die. Seeing it made Hume smile as he remembered his own university days as a D&D Dungeon Master. The logo, and the company’s name, were relics of a different era—when games were played with boards, cards, dice, and lead miniatures; all of Octahedral’s current games were first-person shooters, mostly for Wii and Xbox systems.
“I’m looking for Simonne Coogan,” Hume said.
“You just missed her,” said the receptionist, who had hair as red as Hume’s own although he doubted hers was natural given her olive complexion.
There was a large digital clock on the wall next to the logo. “Does she normally leave this early?”
“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist. “You are?”
Hume fished out his Pentagon ID.
“Oh!” said the receptionist. “Um, I could get Pedro to come down here; he’s the creative director for Hillbilly Hunt—he’s Simonne’s boss.”
“No, that’s okay. But do you know where she went?”
“No. Some guy came by not half an hour ago, and asked to see her—just like you did.”
“Anyone you’d ever seen before?”
“Never.”
“Did he sign in?”
“No. I have no idea who he was. But she left with him.”
“Willingly?”
“Um, yeah. Sure. Seemed that way, at least.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Big.”
“You mean tall or fat?”
“Tall. And buff. Tough-looking.”
“White? Black?”
She was finally getting the hang of it. “White. Maybe six-two, two hundred pounds or so. Mid-thirties, I’d say. Bald—shaved bald, not old bald.”
“Did you overhear anything he said to Miss Coogan?”
“Just one thing—as the elevator doors were closing.”
“Yeah?”
“He said, ‘It’ll all be over soon.’ ”
Having heard Pearson’s name during her tour of the United Nations, Caitlin and Barb stopped to look at one of the busts of him inside the airport. Prior to serving as Canada’s prime minister, Pearson had been President of the UN General Assembly and had received the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to resolve the preceding year’s Suez crisis.
It was dark by the time Caitlin and her mother got their car and started the boring seventy-five-minute highway drive to Waterloo. They had the car radio on—CHFI, “Toronto’s Perfect Music Mix”—which played songs that were agreeable to both of them, bopping between Shania Twain and Lady Gaga, Phil Collins and Lee Amodeo, Barenaked Ladies and Taylor Swift.
“Thanks for coming to New York, Mom,” Caitlin said.
“I wouldn’t have missed it. It’s been—God, twenty years, I guess—since I saw a Broadway play.”
“Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Caitlin.
“It
“But, um, Helen’s dad… before the war ended, he kept slaves,” Caitlin said.
Her mother nodded. “I know.”
“But he seemed like a good man. How could he have done that?”
“Well, not to forgive him, but we have to judge people by the morals of their time, and morality improves as time goes by.”
“I know it changes,” Caitlin said, “and for sure freeing slaves was an improvement. But you’re saying it
“Oh, yes. There’s a definite moral arrow through time—and, as a matter of fact, it’s all due to game theory.”
They were passing a giant truck. “How so?” asked Caitlin.
“Well, remember what Webmind said at the UN. There are zero-sum games and nonzero-sum games, right? Tennis is zero-sum: for every winner there’s a loser. But a cooperative venture can be nonzero-sum: if we hire a contractor to finish the basement”—Caitlin knew this was a sore point between her parents—“and we’re happy with the work that’s done, well, everybody wins: we get a finished basement, and the contractor gets paid fairly for his work.”
“Okay,” Caitlin said.
“Clearly, cooperation is all for the good. But members of primitive societies rarely cooperated with anyone outside their close personal circles; they saw anyone else as not fully human—or, to put it more technically, as not worthy of moral consideration. When the Old Testament said, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ it only meant Israelites should get along with other Israelites; it didn’t mean you should accord moral consideration to non-Israelites— that’d be crazy talk. But as we move forward through time, we see a widening of who deserves moral consideration until today most people in most places agree that all humans, regardless of geographic location, ethnicity, religion, or what have you, deserve it. Like I said, a definite moral arrow to time.”
“But what’s that got to do with nonzero-sumness?” asked Caitlin. They were exiting Milton now.
“Oh, sorry: that’s the point. The trend toward nonzero-sumness affects our morality toward others. When we think of somebody as having rights of their own, we say we’re giving them moral consideration, and, well, it turns out we mostly only consider worthy of moral consideration those with whom we can envision nonzero-sum interactions. And, over time, we’ve come to consider such interactions possible with just about everyone on Earth. In fact…”
“Yes?”
A car sped past them. “Well, remember back when I was teaching at the University of Texas—filling in for that lecturer who was on maternity leave?”
Her mother had spent most of Caitlin’s childhood volunteering at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, but Caitlin vaguely recalled the period she was alluding to. “Uh-huh.”
“Well,” her mother went on, “I got in trouble back then, because I used a
“A what?”
“Sorry. You know newspapers run comic strips, right? Well, there used to be a popular one called
