The Light of Other Days. Stephen Baxter

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 AD.’

      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 walkin 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 multicoloured 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, inter-regional financial transfers and other protective features of the truly unified American economy, England thrived.

      But it had to thrive without Hiram.

      As a US 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 СКАЧАТЬ