by Hammond, Ray
The young man nodded.
‘Can you verify, please?’
‘Let’s both do it.’
The cameras showed Tye leaning forward and touching the fingerprint reader on his system. Larsson did the same. Three seconds later a message appeared on Larsson’s home screen. ‘Identity of caller confirmed as Thomas Richmond Tye, born 1 July 1966, Boston, USA. Present location undisclosed.’ A second message confirmed that Tye had received reciprocal confirmation from the world’s Digital Certification Authority. Despite his nervousness at communicating with the richest person ever to have lived, Larsson found himself wondering at how handsome and youthful Tye appeared for someone well into middle age. His plastic surgeon must be excellent.
‘Please encrypt, if you don’t find that too funny,’ said Tye. Larsson complied and received confirmation of secure mode.
‘Well, Doctor, you certainly have the right background for it,’ acknowledged Tye, staring straight into his central camera. They had exchanged camera control as had become the custom and courtesy of the time and Larsson zoomed in until the trillionaire’s perfect face filled his central screen. ‘Did you get lucky or do you really have something new?’
Larsson had gone over and over what he might say at this point. Abandoning all his earlier plans, he simply said, ‘It’s something new. Completely new.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘To anybody who understands particle physics or quantum mechanics,’ responded Larsson. ‘Or I can repeat the demonstrations.’
‘Who have you told?’
‘Nobody. It happened just a couple of weeks ago.’
‘I presume you want to sell,’ prompted Tye.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ said Larsson, because he didn’t.
‘Come to Hope Island tomorrow,’ said Tye. ‘Tell nobody, and bring everything you have on it.’
Larsson hesitated. After repeated postponements, he had arranged to see Laila the following day for the first time in four weeks.
‘Well?’
Larsson nodded.
‘I’ll send a jet. Someone will be in touch. Oh . . . and don’t attempt to act on what you know. I’m altering the figures.’
The screens went blank. Larsson sat slumped in his chair for a few moments and then, with shaking hands, got up to make a coffee. He had never felt less like sleep.
Chapter One
Seven Years Later
As usual, there was a moment’s silence when Thomas Tye appeared in the lights. There is a shock in seeing such a famous face and feeling such power in the same room, even when the entrance is anticipated and the room very large.
On either side of the stage two giant screens flickered into life and the audience rose to its feet shouting, clapping and stomping its appreciation, adulation and joy. The corporate rock anthem filled the air and Tye smiled and waved, both arms outstretched, images of his improbably boyish, good-looking face filling the vastness of London’s Earl’s Court arena. His lustrous shoulder-length dark hair shone in the lights and the small diamonds set into his earpieces sparkled as he moved. He wore his customary stage uniform of white T-shirt and black trousers. Subtly, the taste and smell of the air changed.
He stood nodding his appreciation for several minutes as his audience swayed to the beat and reached out towards him. Then, with an extended palm, he silenced the music. His audience howled and he walked to the front of the stage and bowed low; practised, confident and sure. He had always been a natural on stage and, in the early days, he had built his markets by the power of his virtuoso extempore performances. Now he accepted major appearances only when it suited the company, when it fitted with his schedule or when it eased access to the politicians who were now his main concern. But he still loved these performances.
He stood and smiled, his perfect white teeth and infectious grin lighting up his audience. ‘Well, how are you?’
Twelve thousand people erupted again and the beat returned. They stomped and stomped, the drumming of the music and their feet becoming faster and faster until it merged into a rolling crescendo of thunder.
Tye lifted one hand again and there was silence. He held them, the confident cynosure, greeted by thousands of camera flashes as he turned to each sector of the vast hall. Whistles and cries of ‘Tommeee’ broke through the silence he was controlling. The ‘TT’ chant started, low at first, then insistent, then with all the power of 24,000 lungs.
In the wings of the elaborate set, Jack Hendriksen received a message in his ear.
‘There’s about two hundred outside the stage door plus the TV crews, journalists and the merchandisers. And the Touchers. We’ve run facial patterns from our video scans. No known combustion risks as far as we can see.’
Jack nodded involuntarily as he listened to the disembodied voice.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘The party will be there in . . .’ He looked at his LifeWatch. ‘Twenty-six minutes. I want a clear passage for Pierre’s team.’
Tye was performing at his best and the technology worked without a hitch. He had quietened the crowd down again and he stepped back from the edge of the stage. The lighting went off Then a spotlight lit a lectern to the left-hand side of the stage and Tye was behind it, waving his right arm. A split second later a follow-spot lit an area in the centre of the stage and another Tye was there, waving with his other hand. The audience looked from one Thomas Tye to the other and back again.
‘Pretty good, isn’t it?’ asked the Tye in the middle of the stage. ‘Tom, turn around, please.’
The figure at the lectern turned slowly, a slightly ethereal quality to its movements.
‘Wave goodbye.’
The Tye at the lectern waved obediently. Its spotlight died and Tye walked to the other side of the stage illuminated by his follow-spot.
‘And now . . .’
The centre of the dark stage was suddenly illuminated and where there had previously been only space, a string quartet in evening dress appeared and began to play the ‘Spring’ movement from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
As Tye stepped his audience through the carefully canned demonstration of the Tye Corporation’s new holographic entertainment system, Jack Hendriksen checked in turn with each of his locally hired observers in the auditorium. The entire audience had been scanned and the building swept twice, but there was always the problem of touts selling last-minute tickets to self-immolators. And today the warm-up team had lifted the crowd to ecstasy.
For two hours before Thomas Tye had appeared, the corporation’s team of international Games Masters had led the crowd through ever-increasing levels of excitement as they re-enacted legendary network war games and space battles in a show of lasers, smoke and music that filled the central roof space of the vast arena. Those who had paid €400 for their first-class tickets followed the action as they sat strapped into hydraulically powered seats that moved with the motion of the spacecraft, the battle armour or the jet planes the imagineers had created for their games. Those who were accessing the event via the networks received similar control feeds for their home HydraChairs and headsets.
Then there had been a wait: a smouldering time of heavy rock music and the first reprise of ‘It’s Our Planet’, a song that had become the corporate anthem and a global Number One. As it played, the scent simulators in the auditorium released a fragrance called ‘Abundance’ into the atmosphere. It was the track’s signature scent and the audience had found themselves inhaling the cleansed air of spring woodland after a rain shower. Their anticipation and excitement grew as they waited for Thomas Tye finally to appear in person.
Over the last decade, Tye’s wealth, power, fame and innate sex appeal had turned him into an idol. As the world’s first trillionaire, he had become an icon with a global following. Because of his good looks, his concern for the planet, his legendary philanthropy, and the careful presentations created by his perception managers, marketing strategists and public relations teams, he was also the first businessman to achieve
real superstar status. Cleverly, he had captured the hearts and minds of the hordes of anarchistic, anti-capitalist, pro-environment, anti-establishment protesters who had used the early Internet to create a contagion with which to ignite demonstrations and violent outbreaks across the globe in the early years of the century. As these retro-1960s rebels, the children of the hippie archetypes, had, in their turn, become parents and homeowners, his corporation had originally offered them a respectable and ethical alternative vehicle by which to grow their wealth. But today, the glister of his fortune meant that his public appearances had also become a rallying point for the world’s truly needy. He had become the focus of hope for millions of physical sufferers as well as for the disturbed, the alienated and the lonely.
Eight years earlier, Tye had shaken hands with a group of disabled fans who had been brought to hear him speak in Mexico City. Within days, the mother of a paraplegic teenager claimed that her daughter’s paralysis had been cured by meeting the great star and entrepreneur. She had paraded the walking miracle on television and a movement had been born, connected and nourished in the byways and private meeting rooms of the networks. Tye’s new followers believed that if they could simply touch their idol, they would be cured of their disabilities or their diseases. The press had soon dubbed them ‘Tye’s Touchers.’
Thomas Tye had immediately released a video statement to the twenty-four-hour news channels disclaiming all such healing powers, but the believers would not be dissuaded. The Tye Corporation’s international perception-management consultancy sensed the potential for a serious public-relations catastrophe and, on its advice, Tye started asking for a token number of visibly disabled people to be present at his public engagements. His PM team ensured that they were always placed in the front row. Before, during or after his appearances, Tye made the time to shake each hand and further rumours about miraculous cures began to circulate.
A few months later a freelance reporter with a smattering of scientific knowledge provided the world with yet another example of irresponsible journalism. Her article, which was published in a networked popular-science magazine, revealed that a subsidiary of the Tye Corporation had patented a biochip that, when worn under the skin, monitored and rebalanced the electrochemical processes of the human central nervous system. She claimed that Tye had personally been beta-testing the chip for two years and it was contact with this new radiesthetic conductive and corrective force that was producing the purported cures. The movement became a cult.
Then, during a major performance in the Dynasty Auditorium in Manila, one of the many wheelchair-bound Touchers in the audience set herself alight. At the peak of the carefully orchestrated excitement, the fifteen-year-old girl had doused her clothes in petrol and the shaking figure in the chair had disappeared inside an inferno of flame before the hall’s security staff had had a chance to reach her. The President of the Philippines had been watching from the Presidential Box at the time and the incident was caught live by TV cameras broadcasting the event throughout Asia. Within minutes, the recording was being replayed on the world’s global news networks. The victim had left an e-mail with a friend that simply read ‘For the Planet’. The girl had told her friends in a Thomas Tye network community that it was better to die in the presence of her idol than to use the planet’s precious resources to extend her life of suffering.
Four months later it happened again, this time in Santiago. Then it happened in a detached home in a quiet tree-lined street in a suburb of Munich, Germany. This quadriplegic fan persuaded a friend to strap her into a HydraChair, feed her a hyper-analgesic and douse her with petrol before leaving her with a mouth-operated battery ignition system and a network connection to a Thomas Tye appearance in Sydney, Australia. Supporters in a Thomas Tye chat room on the networks sat with her during the build-up and, when the time came, helped her find the courage. Then, in tribute, they posted a video record of her sacrifice in their community’s meeting space.
Once again it was ‘For the Planet. Thank you, Tom.’
Inevitably, the tabloid press dubbed this new breed of fanatic fans ‘Tye’s Torches’ and preventing the possibility of further acts of hysterical self-immolation became a high priority during all public appearances.
This morning, Jack Hendriksen’s plants in the Earl’s Court audience reported nothing suspicious.
Tye was into his wrap, dancing along with a holo-image recreation of a young Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band as they performed ‘It’s Our Planet’. The venerable star’s brand-extension agency had graciously granted a licence for his youthful voice and image to be sampled and morphed for the recording.
Jack flicked on the head-up display in his viewpers. He switched from camera to camera checking backstage, the artists’ corridor, the stage door and the throng outside. The police had the large crowd penned behind crush barriers and he could see that the members of Pierre’s PPT – the Presidential Protection Team – were in place and the motorcade was waiting.
As director of corporate security for the Tye Corporation, Jack was rarely on the road with the PPT but he believed that spot checks and surprise visits were the best way to keep his infield teams from becoming complacent. His presence in London had given him the first opportunity in months to observe Pierre Pasquier’s detail and, despite a growing sense of inarticulated unease about the organization that employed him, he was pleased to see the machine was well oiled and at a high condition of readiness.
Then it was over. Tye walked to the front of the stage and acknowledged the applause to the right, the centre, the left and to the cameras in the pit. He leaned forward and touched the line of outstretched hands at the edge of the stage – the hands of a few dozen physically disabled fans allowed to sit in elevated positions for this televisual opportunity.
‘Take care of our planet – you hear!’ he told the audience. ‘We hear! WE HEAR!’ they shouted – the conditioned response to his famous parting imperative and they roared their approval. He turned back to them one more time: ‘And come visit our booth in the show.’
He waved goodbye with both hands stretched high. The huge consumer electronics expo in adjacent halls would open the moment he left the stage.
He waved again and then he was gone. Even before he had left the darkened stage he had thrust his hands deep into his pockets where the fingers that had done the touching could break open antiseptic capsules. Then he was backstage and in Pierre’s protection and he turned off into a specially built bathroom in the wings. Pierre, a six feet, six inches tall former officer of France’s Direction et Surveillance du Territoire, stood guard across the door.
Tye carefully locked the door and checked twice that it was secure. He stripped off all his clothes, threw them on the floor and flipped through his vital signs on his LifeWatch. Then he washed his hands once in a bactericide and then again in a bacteriostatic, carefully scrubbing under his fingernails each time. He dried his hands on paper towels that he threw into a large trash can. He tore open sealed plastic bags and removed fresh underpants and socks. He tugged these on and peeled a long tape fastener from a hermetically sealed clothes carrier hanging behind the door. Here he found a fresh white shirt and a pair of dark trousers. When he had buttoned and zipped himself into these he took a new pair of shoes from the bottom of the container. He slipped into them and then picked up a small aerosol and sprayed his face, mouth and throat with isoprophyl alcohol for extra protection. He pulled a brush through his long hair, checked his appearance in the mirror and took a deep breath. Holding it, he stepped out of the room and into the care of Pierre’s team.
Then he was walking rapidly in the middle of a phalanx of five. Perfect formation, thought Jack as he followed a few yards behind. The bodyguards were all immaculately dressed in sharp, dark business suits made from flame-resistant material. They moved forward like a super-taut Olympic relay team passing a radioactive baton: each knew precisely where the other was and how he would react to a slip.
Pie
rre’s height allowed him to see over Tye’s head to scan all events to the front. He was responsible for the most vital exit route, the escape to the rear. He would physically pick Tye up and run with him if he had to. At Jack’s insistence he had even made the trillionaire suffer the indignity of repeated rehearsals.
Out in the daylight and powerful heat of a London June morning there was pandemonium, as usual. Reporters shouted questions as the cameras rolled. The Touchers reached out over the heads of those in front, imploring their hero to stop and shake hands or merely to touch their fingers. Some threw flowers.
Suddenly two small figures squeezed between the crush barriers and dipped under the interlocked arms of the police officers. One had a microphone in her hand, the other was operating a video camera. The first thrust the microphone in Thomas Tye’s face with a shouted question.
Tye knocked the microphone out of his path without a glance.
‘It’s OK, OK, keep moving,’ ordered Pierre in the team’s earpieces as he stepped forward to shield his boss from the intrusion. From the rear Jack saw the small incident brought under control and then the phalanx had moved forward and he was left to confront the interlopers.
The two women looked identical. Both were short and dark, but Jack saw that the one with the microphone had a short elfin haircut while her twin had long hair. The elf looked from her disappearing quarry to Jack and thrust an envelope towards him. He ran an instant head-to-toe scan of the small, attractive woman.
‘Give these to him, please,’ she urged, her dark eyes wide as she pressed the envelope against Jack’s chest.
His training told him not to touch it, to let the package fall, to avoid any legal liability. In his present disaffected mood his instinct said the opposite.
Jack nodded, stuffed the envelope into his inside pocket, caught up with the party and climbed into the rear of the fourth limo. He saw Pierre wave control over to the leader of the police outriders and the motorcade of electronically shielded and battle-armoured limousines pulled away. Jack searched back through the digital video recording his pinhole cameras had captured. Her face was not in the database of known Touchers. But he held the image in front of him, studying it. The convoy slowed as it neared the venue for Tye’s next engagement.