‘They aren’t going to give you a rough ride. The financials are superb.’
‘It’s not that.’ He glanced around the room warily. ‘How can I put this? Before the WormCam, business was a closed game. Nobody knew my cards-my competitors, my employees, even my investors and shareholders if I wanted it that way. And that gave me a lot of leverage, for bluff, counterbluff.’
‘Lying?’
‘Never that,’ Hiram said firmly, as Bobby knew he had to. ‘It’s a question of posture. I could minimize my weaknesses, advertise my strengths, surprise the competition with a new strategy, whatever. But now the rules have changed. Now the game is more like chess-and I cut my teeth playing poker. Now-for a price-any shareholder or competitor, or regulator come to that, can check up on any aspect of my operation. They can see all my cards, even before I play them. And it’s not a comfortable feeling.’
‘You can do the same to your competitors,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve read plenty of articles which say that the new open-book management will be a good thing. If you’re open to inspection, even by your employees, you’re accountable. And it’s more likely valid criticism is going to reach you, and you’ll make fewer mistakes … ‘
The economists argued that openness brought many benefits to business. Without any one party holding a monopoly of information there was a better chance of closing a given deal: with information on true costs available to everybody, only a reasonable level of profit-taking was acceptable. Better information flows led to more perfect competition; monopolies and cartels and other manipulators of the market were finding it impossible to sustain their activities. With open and accountable cash flows, criminals and terrorists weren’t able to squirrel away unrecorded cash. And so on.
‘Jesus,’ Hiram growled. ‘When I hear guff like that, I wish I sold management textbooks. I’d be making a killing right now.’ He waved his hand at the downtown buildings beyond the window. ‘But out there it’s no business-school discussion group.
‘It’s like what happened to the copyright laws with the advent of the Internet. You remember that? … No, you’re too young. The Global Information Infrastructure-the thing that was supposed to replace the Berne copyright convention-collapsed back in the nought-noughts. Suddenly the Internet was awash with unedited garbage. Every damn publishing house was forced out of business, and all the authors went back to being computer programmers, all because suddenly somebody was giving away for free the stuff they used to sell to earn a crust.
‘Now we’re going through the same thing all over again. You have a powerful technology which is leading to an information revolution, a new openness. But that conflicts with the interests of the people who originated or added value to that information in the first place. I can only make a profit on what OurWorld creates, and that largely derives from ownership of ideas. But laws of intellectual ownership are soon going to become unenforceable.’
‘Dad, it’s the same for everybody.’
Hiram snorted. ‘Maybe. But not everybody is going to prosper. There are revolutions and power struggles going on in every boardroom in this city. I know, I’ve watched most of them. Just as they have watched mine. What I’m telling you is that I’m in a whole new world here. And I need you with me.’
‘Dad, I have to get my head straight.’
‘Forget Heather. I’m trying to warn you that you’ll get hurt.’
Bobby shook his head. ‘If you were me, wouldn’t you want to meet her? Wouldn’t you be curious?’
‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘I never went back to Uganda to find my father’s family. I never regretted it. Not once. What good would it have done? I had my own life to build. The past is the past; it doesn’t do any bloody good to examine it too closely.’ He looked into the air, challengingly. ‘And all you leeches who are working on more exposes of Hiram Patterson can write that down too.’
Bobby stood up. ‘Well, if it hurts too much, I can just turn the switch you put in my head, can’t I?’
Hiram looked mournful. ‘Just don’t forget where your true family is, son.’
A girl stood at the door; slim, no taller than his shoulder, dressed in a harsh electric blue shift with a glaring Pink Lincoln design. She scowled at Bobby.
‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘You’re Mary.’ Heather’s daughter by her second marriage. Another half-sibling he’d only just found out about. She looked younger than her fifteen years. Her hair was cut brutally short, and a soft-tattoo morphed on her cheek. She was pretty, with high cheekbones and warm eyes; but her face was pursed into a frown that looked habitual.
He forced a smile. ‘Your mother is …’
‘Expecting you. I know.’ She looked past him at the clutch of reporters. ‘You’d better come in.’
He wondered if he should say something about her father, express sympathy. But he couldn’t find the words, and her face was hard and blank, and the moment passed.
He stepped past her into the house. He was in a narrow hallway cluttered with winter shoes and coats; he glimpsed a warm-looking kitchen, a lounge with big SoftScreens draped over the walls, what looked like a home study.
Mary poked his arm. ‘Watch this.’ She stepped forward, faced the reporters and lifted her shift up over her head. She was wearing panties, but her small breasts were bare. She pulled the shift down, and slammed shut the door. He could see spots of color on her cheeks. Anger, embarrassment?
‘Why did you do that?’
‘They look at me the whole time anyway.’ And she turned on her heel and ran upstairs, her shoes clattering on bare wooden boards, leaving him stranded in the hallway.
‘ … Sorry about that. She isn’t adjusting too well.’
And here, at last, was Heather, walking slowly up the hallway to him.
She was smaller than he had expected. She looked slim, even wiry, if a little round-shouldered. Her face might once have shared Mary’s elfin look-but now those cheekbones were prominent under sun-aged skin, and her brown eyes, sunk deep in pools of wrinkles, were tired. Her hair, streaked with gray, was pulled back into a tight bob.
She was looking up at him, quizzically. ‘Are you okay?’
Bobby, for a few heartbeats, didn’t trust himself to speak. ‘ … Yes. I’m just not sure what to call you.’
She smiled. ‘How about ‘Heather’? This is complicated enough already.’
And, without warning, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his chest.
He had tried to rehearse for this moment, tried to imagine how he would handle the storm of emotion he had expected. But now the moment was here, what he felt was …
Empty.
And all the while he was aware, achingly aware, of a million eyes on him, on every gesture and expression he made.
She pulled away from him. ‘I haven’t seen you since you were five years old, and it has to be like this. Well, I think we’ve put on enough of a show.’
She led him into the room he had tentatively identified as a study. On a worktable there was a giant SoftScreen of the finely grained type employed by artists and graphic designers. The walls were covered with lists, images of people, places, scraps of yellow paper covered with spidery, incomprehensible writing. There were scripts and reference books open on every surface, including the floor. Heather, brusquely, picked a mass of papers up off a swivel chair and dumped it on the floor. He accepted the implicit invitation by sitting down.
She smiled at him, ‘When you were a little boy you liked tea.’
‘I did?’
‘You’d drink nothing else. Not even soda. So, you’d like some?’
He made to refuse. But she had probably bought some specially. And this is your mother, asshole. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
She went to the kitchen, returned with a steaming mug of what proved to be jasmine tea. She leaned close to give it to him. ‘You can’t fool me,’ she whispered. ‘But thanks for indulging me.’
Awkward silence; he sipped his tea.
He indicated the big SoftScreen, the nest of paper. ‘You’re a filmmaker. Right?’
She sighed. ‘I used to be. Documentaries. I regard myself as an investigative journalist.’ She smiled. ‘I won awards. You should be proud. Not that anybody cares about that side of my life anymore, compared to the fact that I once slept with the great Hiram Patterson.’
He said, ‘You’re still working? Even though.’
‘Even though my life has turned to shit? I’m trying to. What else should I do? I don’t want to be defined by Hiram. Not that it’s easy. Everything has changed so fast.’
‘The WormCam?’
‘What else? … Nobody wants thought-through pieces anymore. And drama has been completely wiped out. We’re all fascinated by this new power we have to watch each other. So there’s no work in anything but docusoaps: following real people going through their real lives-with their consent and approval, of course. Ironic considering my own position, don’t you think? Look.’ She brought up an image on the SoftScreen, a smiling young woman in uniform. ‘Anna Petersen. Fresh out of the Navy college at Annapolis.’