perate thoughts that had plagued chiefs of state for all of human history. Or
just as likely, mankind had just been lucky, for once.
“Jack, this is getting rather serious,” Golovko said. “By the way, our
officer met with your officers. He reports favorably on them-and thank
you, by the way, for the copy of their report. It included data we did not
have. Not vitally important, but interesting even so. So tell me, do they know
to seek out these rockets?”
“The order went out,” Ryan assured him.
“To my people as well, Ivan Emmetovich. We will find them, never
fear,” Golovko felt the need to add. He had to be thinking the same thing:
the only reason the missiles had not been used was that both sides had pos-
sessed them, because it was like threatening a mirror. That was no longer
true, was it? And so came Ryan’s question:
“And then what?” he asked darkly. “What do we do then?”
“Do you not say in your language, ‘One thing at a time’?”
Isn’t this just great? Now I have afriggin’ Russian trying to cheer me up!
“Thank you, Sergey Nikolay’ch. Perhaps I deserved that as well.”
“So why did we sell Citibank?” George Winston asked.
“Well, he said to look out lor banks that were vulnerable lot tincm N Ihu
•nations,” Gam replied. “He was right. We got out just in tniuv I unk, MV
for yourself.” The trader typed another instruction into his terminal and was
rewarded with a graphic depiction of what First National City Hank slock
had done on Friday, and sure enough it had dropped off the table in one hig
hurry, largely because Columbus, which had purchased the issue in lar^o
quantities over the preceding five weeks, had held quite a bit, and in selling
it had shaken faith in the stock badly. “Anyway, that set off an alarm in our
program-”
“Mark, Citibank is one of the benchmark stocks in the model, isn’t it?”
Winston asked calmly. There was nothing to be gained by leaning on Mark
too hard.
“Oh.” His eyes opened a little wider. “Well, yes, it is, isn’t it?”
That was when a very bright light blinked on in Winston’s mind. It was
not widely known how the ‘ ‘expert systems” kept track of the market. They
worked in several interactive ways, monitoring both the market as a whole
and also modeling benchmark stocks more closely, as general indicators of
developing market trends. Those were stocks which over time had tracked
closely with what everything else was doing, with a bias toward general sta-
bility, those that both dropped and rose more slowly than more speculative
issues, steady performers. There were two reasons for it, and one glaring
mistake. The reasons were that while the market fluctuated every day, even
in the most favorable of circumstances, the idea was to not only bag an occa-
sional killing on a high-flyer, but also to hedge your money on safe stocks-
not that any stock was truly safe, as Friday had proven-when everything
else became unsettled. For those reasons, the benchmark stocks were those
that over time had provided safe havens. The mistake was a common one:
dice have no memory. Those benchmark stocks were such because the com-
panies they represented had historically good management. Management
could change over time. So it was not the stocks that were stable. It was the
management, and that was only something from the past, whose currency
had to be examined periodically-despite which, those stocks were used to
grade trends. And a trend was a trend only because people thought it was,
and in thinking so, they made it so. Winston had regarded benchmark stocks
only as predictors of what the people in the market would do, and for him
trends were always psychological, predictors of how people would follow an
artificial model, not the performance of the model itself. Gant, he reali/ed,
didn’t quite see it that way, like so many of the technical traders.
And in selling off Citibank, Columbus had activated a little alarm in its
own computer-trading system. And even someone as bright as Mark had for-
gotten that Citibank was part of the goddamned model!
“Show me other bank stocks,” Winston ordered.
“Well, Chemical went next,” Gant told, him, pulling up that track as
well. “Then Manny-Hanny, and then others, too. Anyway, we saw it com-
ing, and we jumped into metals and the gold stocks. You know, when the
dust settles, it’s going to turn out that we did okay. Not great, but pretty
okay,” Gant said, calling up his executive program for overall transactions,
wanting to show something he’d done right.’ ‘I took the money from a quick
flip on Silicon Alchemy and laid this put on GM and-”
Winston patted him on the shoulder. “Save that for later, Mark. I can see
it was a good play.”
“Anyway, we were ahead of the trends all the way. Yeah, we got a little
hurt when the calls came in and we had to dump a lot of solid things, but that
happened to everybody-”
“You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what, George?”
“We were the trend.”
Mark Gant blinked his eyes, and Winston could tell.
He didn’t see it.
29
Written Records
The presentation went very well, and at the end of it Cathy Ryan was handed
an exquisitely wrapped box by the Professor of Ophthalmic Surgery from
Chiba University, who led the Japanese delegation. Unwrapping it, she
found a scarf of watered blue silk, embroidered with gold thread. It looked to
be more than a hundred years old.
“The blue goes so well with your eyes, Professor Ryan,” her colleague
said with a smile of genuine admiration. “I fear it is not a sufficiently valu-
able gift for what I have learned from you today. I have hundreds of diabetic
patients at my hospital. With this technique we can hope to restore sight for
most of them. A magnificent breakthrough, Professor.” He bowed, formally
and with clear respect.
“Well, the lasers come from your country,” Cathy replied. She wasn’t
sure what emotion she was supposed to have. The gift was stunning. The
man was as sincere as he could be, and his country might be at war with hers.
But why wasn’t it on the news? If there were a war, why was this foreigner
not under arrest? Was she supposed to be gracious to him as a learned col-
league or hostile to him as an enemy? What the hell was going on? She
looked over at Andrea Price, who just leaned against the back wall and
smiled, her arms crossed across her chest.
“And you have taught us how to use them more efficiently. A stunning
piece of applied research.” The Japanese professor turned to the others and
raised his hands. The assembled multitude applauded, and a blushing Caro-
line Ryan started thinking that she just might get the Lasker statuette for her
mantelpiece after all. Everyone shook her hand before leaving for the bus
that waited to take them back to the Stouffer’s on Pratt Street.
“Can I see it?” Special Agent Price asked after all were gone and the
door safely closed. Cathy handed the scarf over. “Lovely. You’ll have to
buy a new dress to go with it.”
“So there never was anything to worry about,” Dr. Ryan observed. Inter-
estingly, once she’d gotten fifteen seconds into her lecture, she’d forgotten
about it anyway. Wasn’t that interesting?
“No, like I told you, I didn’t expect anything.” Price handed the scarf
back, not without some reluctance. The little professor was right, she
thought. It did go nicely with her eyes. “Jack Ryan’s wife” was all she’d
heard, and then some. “How long have you been doing this?”
‘ ‘Retinal surgery?” Cathy closed her notebook.’ ‘I started off working the
front end of the eye, right up to the time little Jack was born. Then I had an
idea about how the retina is attached naturally and how we might reattach
bad ones. Then we started looking at how to fix blood vessels. Bernie let me
run with it, and I got a research grant from NIH to play with, and one thing
led to another…”
‘ ‘And now you’re the best in the world at this,” Price concluded the story.
“Until somebody with better hands comes along and learns how to do it,
yes.” Cathy smiled. “I suppose I am, for a few more months, anyway.”
“So how’s the champ?” Bernie Katz asked, entering the room and seeing
Price for the first time. The pass on her coat puzzled him.’ ‘Do I know you?”
“Andrea Price.” The agent gave Katz a quick and thorough visual check
before shaking hands. He actually found it flattering until she added, “Se-
cret Service.”
“Where were the cops like you when I was a kid?” the surgeon asked
gallantly.
“Bernie was one of my first mentors here. He’s department chairman