Hiram pushed his chair back and roared with laughter. “Electronic anaesthesia. How true that is. As long as I’m selling the anaesthetics, of course.” He looked at her directly. “I like you, Ms. Manzoni.”
Liar. “Thank you.”
“Why are you here?”
There was a long silence. “You invited me.”
“Six months and seven days ago. Why now? Are you working for my rivals?”
“No.” She bristled at that. “I’m a freelance.”
He nodded. “Nevertheless there is something you want here. A story, of course. The Wormwood is already receding into your past, and you need fresh triumphs, a new scoop. That’s what people like you live on. Don’t you, Ms. Manzoni? But what can it be? Nothing personal, surely. There is little about me that is not in the public record.”
She said carefully, “Oh, I dare say there are a few items.” She took a breath. “The truth is I heard you have a new project. A new wormhole application, far beyond the simple DataPipes which -”
“You came here grubbing for facts,” said Hiram.
“Come on, Hiram. The whole world is getting wired up with your wormholes. If I could scoop the rest -”
“But you know nothing.”
She bridled. “I’ll show you what I know. You were born Hirdamani Patel. Before you were born your father’s family was forced to flee Uganda. Ethnic cleansing, right?”
Hiram glared, “This is public knowledge. In Uganda my father was a bank manager. In Norfolk he drove buses, as nobody would recognize his qualifications.”
“You weren’t happy in England,” Kate bulldozed on. “You found yourself unable to overcome barriers of race and class. So you left for America. You dumped your given name, adopted an anglicized version. You have become known as something of a role model for Asians in America. And yet you cut yourself off from your ethnic origins. Each of your wives has been a WASP.”
Bobby looked startled. “’Wives’? Dad.”
“Family is everything to you,” Kate said evenly, compelling their attention. “You’re trying to establish a dynasty, it seems, through Bobby here. Perhaps it’s because you abandoned your own family, your own father, back in England.”
“Ah.” Hiram clapped his hands, forcing a smile. “I wondered how long it would be before Papa Sigmund joined us at the table. So that is your story. Hiram Patterson is building OurWorld because he is guilty about his father!”
Bobby was frowning. “Kate, what new project are you talking about?”
Was it possible Bobby really didn’t know? She held Hiram’s gaze, relishing her sudden power. “Significant enough for him to summon your brother back from France.”
“Brother…”
“Significant enough for him to take on Billybob Meeks as an investment partner. Meeks, the founder of RevelationLand. Have you heard of that, Bobby? The latest mind-sapping, money-drinking perversion of religion to afflict America’s wretched population of the gullible.”
“This is irrelevant,” Hiram snapped. “Yes, I’m working with Meeks. I’ll work with anybody. If people want to buy my VR gear so they can see Jesus and His tap-dancing Apostles, I’ll sell it to them. Who am I to judge? We aren’t all as sanctimonious as you, Ms. Manzoni. We don’t all have that luxury.”
But Bobby was staring at Hiram. “My brother?”
Kate was startled, and ran the conversation through her head again. “Bobby… You didn’t know any of this, did you? Not just about the project, but Hiram’s other wife, his other child.” She looked at Hiram, shocked. “How could anybody keep a secret like that?”
Hiram’s mouth pursed, and his glare at Kate was full of loathing. “A half-brother, Bobby. Just a half-brother.”
Kate said clinically, “His name is David.” She pronounced it the French way: Dah-veed. “His mother was French. He’s thirty-two — seven years older than you, Bobby. He’s a physicist. He’s doing well; he’s been described as the Hawking of his generation. Oh, and he’s Catholic. Devout, apparently.”
Bobby seemed — not angry — even more baffled. He said to Hiram, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Hiram said, “You didn’t need to know.”
“And the new project, whatever it is? Why didn’t you tell me about that?”
Hiram stood up. “Your company has been charming, Ms. Manzoni. The drones will show you out.”
She stood. “You can’t stop me printing what I know.”
“Print what you please. You don’t have anything important.” And, she knew, he was right.
She walked to the door, her euphoria dissipating quickly. I blew it, she told herself. I meant to ingratiate myself with Hiram. Instead I had to have my fun, and make him into an enemy.
She looked back. Bobby was still seated. He was looking at her, those strange church-window eyes open wide. I’ll see you again, she thought. Maybe this wasn’t over yet.
The door began to close. Her last glimpse was of Hiram covering his son’s hand with his own, tenderly.
Chapter 3
The wormworks
Hiram was waiting for David Curzon in the arrivals hall at SeaTac.
Hiram was simply overwhelming. He immediately grabbed David’s shoulders and pulled him close. David could smell powerful cologne, synth-tobacco, a lingering trace of spices. Hiram was nearing seventy, but didn’t show it, no doubt thanks to anti-ageing treatments and subtle cosmetic sculpting. He was tall and dark — where David, taking after his mother, was more stocky, blond, leaning to plump.
And here was that voice David hadn’t heard since he was five years old, the face — blue eyes, strong nose — that had loomed over him like a giant Moon. “My boy. It’s been too long. Come on. We’ve got a hell of a lot to catch up on…”
David had spent most of the flight from England composing himself for this encounter. You are thirty-two years old, he told himself. You have a tenured position at Oxford. Your papers, and your popular book on the exotic mathematics of quantum physics, have been extremely well received. This man may be your father. But he abandoned you, and has no hold over you.
You are an adult now. You have your faith. You have nothing to fear.
But Hiram, as he surely intended, had broken through all David’s defences in the first five seconds of their encounter. David, bewildered, allowed himself to be led away.
Hiram took his son straight to his research facility — the Wormworks, as he called it — out to the north of Seattle itself. The drive, in a SmartDrive Rolls, was fast and scary. Controlled by positioning satellites and intelligent in-car software, the vehicles flowed along the freeways at more than 150 kilometres an hour, mere centimetres between their bumpers; it was all much more aggressive than David was used to in Europe. But the city, what he saw of it, struck him as quite European, a place of fine, well-preserved houses with expansive views of hills and sea, the more modern developments integrated reasonably gracefully with the overall feel of the place. The downtown area seemed to be bustling, as the Christmas buying season descended once more.
He remembered little of the place but childhood fragments: the small boat Hiram used to run out of the Sound, trips above the snow line in winter. He’d been back to America many times before, of course; theoretical physics was an international discipline. But he’d never returned to Seattle — not since the day his mother had so memorably bundled him up and stormed out of Hiram’s home.