by Hammond, Ray
Of the two sisters Felicity had always been the party girl. While Haley had worked ferociously at their state comprehensive school, her sister had partied away her later adolescence. Haley had then delighted the family by winning a place at Cambridge University, while Flick had been grateful to scrape into a communications-design course at one of the lesser-known colleges attached to Cardiff University. It was the same story when the twins were undergraduates: while Felicity enjoyed herself, Haley worked hard and, after securing her much-coveted first-class degree in English, she found a place on the national newspaper that had provided the opportunity to interview Josh Chandler. Felicity had become a production assistant in a network-game production house and, during the following eight years in which Haley experienced only three fairly unsatisfactory relationships, Flick had met, made out and moved on (‘the 3M Syndrome’, as she called it) with more men than Haley could now remember.
But, in their mid-thirties, it seemed as if the polarity of their relationship was reversing. Outside the long periods when she was engrossed in one of her writing projects, Haley had become renowned as a party animal, while her sister was happily settling for family life and domesticity. She and Martin were already planning another child – if Martin ever found enough time away from his dynamic career in the diplomatic service to make it possible.
Haley walked into the kitchen with Toby balanced on her left hip. He was chewing her necklace. She poured herself a glass of apple juice, then poured a second glass for Flick and sat down at the kitchen table for some serious eye contact and, possibly, conversation with Toby. The sisters were in hot competition to be the one to hear him utter his first recognizable word.
Flick touched Haley affectionately on the head as she entered. The sisters never kissed and rarely embraced. They were too close for that.
‘You look wonderful!’ admired Haley, truthfully.
‘Sorted out your publisher yet?’ asked Felicity.
‘What publisher?’ Haley groaned. Toby took the opportunity to stick his hand in her mouth and she nibbled his fingers, mumbling about how good they tasted.
‘Oh. What are you going to do?’
Haley understood the real nature of the enquiry. ‘They’re not asking for their advance back.’
‘Still . . .’
Haley lifted Toby’s bib and wiped some dribble from his chin. ‘I’ll just find another publisher.’
Her voice was sounding hoarse but neither remarked on it. That was how Haley showed stress: she would increasingly lose her voice.
‘Drink your juice and get going,’ Haley ordered. ‘Toby and I want some time alone.’
*
‘How’s he doing?’
The entire island was buzzing with news of the accident and the research scientists had only just left.
Calypso looked up from the boy’s bedside as Jack Hendriksen closed the door behind him.
‘I think he’ll be fine.’ She smiled. ‘It’s just hard to tell how serious the concussion is.’
‘Are we moving him?’
Calypso shook her head, her almond-shaped amber eyes looking troubled.
‘That’s what I planned, so I asked for one of the jet planes to be put on standby to go to Miami. They’ve got a special head-injuries unit there equipped for a craniotomy if it’s needed. But Tom cancelled it.’
‘Yes, I heard. I intended to go with you.’
Jack looked down at the unconscious boy. Despite the neck brace, the oxygen mask and the dense cluster of neural sensors attached to his scalp, he seemed so like his father with his jet-black hair and long eyelashes.
For the hundredth time in the past hour Calypso checked the monitors. Still no change. The scans and computer systems had given her diagnosis a rating of 74.7 per cent probability.
The door of the sanitarium hissed open and Thomas Tye was at the bedside. He had already changed into a dark suit for the reception dinner.
Calypso launched into an apology until Tye silenced her with a gesture. He pushed his face close to hers, white with fury.
‘You knew he was to meet the Russians tonight! He was going to play for them! Swimming was not an authorized activity today. How could you . . .’
Jack stiffened and watched carefully as his boss fought to recover his self-control. Tye’s eyes flicked from Calypso’s shocked face to Jack’s. He swallowed and took a small aerosol from his pocket, turning away to spray the inside of his mouth.
‘Never mind explaining. I’ve seen the replay. Just tell me how he is.’
Calypso gave him the same information she had given Jack. ‘I still think we should have him checked out in Miami,’ she concluded defiantly. ‘Telemedicine doesn’t work so well when the problem is invisible.’
‘I understand that, probably better than you do, Doctor,’ snapped Tye. ‘A consultant neurosurgeon is landing in . . .’ He checked his LifeWatch. ‘Twenty-five minutes’ time. It’s safer not to move him.’
Without touching his son he turned on his heel and left the room.
Chapter Four
Joseph P. Tinkler added the half-and-half to his fibre and banana flakes and ate breakfast standing beside his kitchen window. He willed the nerves in his stomach to calm. Perhaps the food would help.
Far below, the Manhattan rush hour was getting under way and the first seaplanes from the Hamptons were skimming in to land at the East River Skyport. He had less than an hour to go before he had to face the board and, most importantly, the Old Man, who was probably on one of those planes. Joe wondered if he had stuck his neck out too far this time.
Joe Tinkler was the star fund manager at Rakusen-Webber and, despite his comparative youth, he was one of the bank’s top earners. He had seven hundred and fifty billion dollars under his control and, ignoring long-established standing guidelines against over-concentration, his stock portfolio was heavily biased towards two types of investment: the companies in the Tye group and the quoted companies in which Thomas Tye had a personal stake.
When he had joined the investment bank fresh from Yale, Joe had been its first African-American recruit and, as an analyst, he had lived, breathed and dreamed about the world’s richest corporation and its trillionaire founder. Now, twelve years later, Rakusen-Webber’s many institutional investors had billions of reasons for thanking him for his knowledge, prescience and judgement.
But suddenly the bank’s chief investment officer wanted to remove two-thirds of his fund; to ‘split it for the sake of prudence,’ Morgenstein had said, citing the extremely heavy percentage of Tye Corporation-related investments. Joe knew his fund had grown to be larger than any on Wall Street, but as he had consistently returned between thirty and thirty-seven per cent annual growth, he had expected to increase the funds under his control rather than see them taken away. He knew that if he allowed it to happen there would be all sorts of rumours on the Street within hours, rumours that would be impossible to neutralize and that could seriously damage his reputation and career.
He guessed, rightly, that it was his performance-related bonuses that were the problem. They were larger than those received by any other employee at Rakusen-Webber and, according to gossip, the largest employee-incentive package on the Street. He also guessed that his earnings had overtaken Morgenstein’s – and he was a partner.
Joe had objected strongly and, as was his right, he had insisted on a management board review. He hadn’t guessed that the Old Man would use this opportunity to make one of his rare personal appearances in the bank to hear Joe put his case.
His presentation for the board was complete. He rechecked that the memory card was in his VideoMate and, for the tenth time, looked to ensure that his back-up and the printouts were in his pilot’s bag. He had already dropped a version onto the office server, but he believed in belt and braces when it came to office politics. It had taken him until two a.m. to complete the presentation, checking and rechecking his background information, his figures and his sources’ qualifications and justifica
tions.
Out on the street it was still early enough for the air rising off the river to be cool. As usual in summer, he’d decided to walk the six blocks from Maiden Lane to Wall Street. Although it wasn’t yet 6.30 a.m., the sidewalks were already busy with others planning an early start to their Tuesday.
Joe had got to the corner of Depyster and Pine before he yielded to temptation. He flipped his Ray Ban Electros out of their case and hit the play button on his VideoMate. Once again, he stepped through his presentation.
The telecoms division was the easy bit and the obvious starting point. Thirteen petabytes of new fibre and LaserNet capacity created in the last quarter alone. Would Tye Data Networks slash the wholesale price of data capacity again? Joe was certain they would and he was sure it would be an aggressive move. Ever since the company had gone on a buying spree and absorbed many of the old national telecommunications companies, it had continued to cut costs while improving services. He projected a growth of forty per cent in demand in the next year and predicted that Tye Corp would gain an additional twenty-two per cent share of the enlarged market. Demand for digital communications capacity was both global and insatiable. As the pundits had predicted years before, it was the oxygen of the twenty-first century.
The media division was always the hardest to call. Four major new film releases in the next quarter but only one that looked like a blockbuster. The global film servers were still doing a great job on back-catalogue sales and rentals but that was a mature business. Live news was Tye Corp’s weakest area although it was gaining ground with Halcyon, a new global weather channel. This service was proving particularly accurate and reliable but TNN – the Tye Network News channel – was still running a definite third to CNN and DBT News. Profits were unchanged.
Aerospace was very strong: over 300 successful commercial satellite launches last year from Cape Hope, the island’s shuttle base, and from the corporation’s two leased launch sites in South America. The company had a waiting list of sixty-two months for customers hoping for a launch slot. And Tye Aerospace had a ten-year contract from the World Space Agency for Orbit Management – the systems developed to prevent the thousands of satellites from cannoning into each other. For this division he had revised his profits contribution estimate upwards by thirty per cent, although the corporation was ploughing back much of its surplus into a deep-space location network, for reasons that were as yet undisclosed.
Consumer electronics: Joe’s Electro viewpers threw the categories in front of his eyes. The eighth generation of LifeWatches was due in a few months and his sources were very excited. They whispered that in addition to carrying microstores of adrenalin, angiotensin and digitalis the new models would include a secret new anti-fibrillation compound as well as enlarged ambulatory data storage. The LifeWatch was finally becoming the ‘physician on the wrist’ that Tye had promised eleven years ago at the launch of its original version. And then there was the astonishing potential value of the medical data warehouses and the boost these would give to the corporation’s trove of intellectual capital.
Joe quickly flipped through his media on the market growth for VideoMates, HouseNets, BodyNets and viewpers – still no hint when the 3D entertainment system would be launched.
A heavy weight hit the fund manager between the shoulders and he fell onto a fire hydrant. His large bag went flying.
‘Hey, man. I’m sorry.’ The tall white man in a pinstriped suit circled to a fast stop on his rollerblades. He reached out to help Joe up. ‘You OK?’
Joe nodded. He’d probably have a bruised thigh, but nothing more.
‘My wife was giving me shit,’ said the rollerblader, as he took off his Armani viewpers and waved them. ‘I just can’t get away from her.’
‘I know, I know,’ smiled Joe. He checked his LifeWatch. Everything normal. ‘I’m fine.’ No need to trade identities.
‘Sorry,’ repeated the rollerblader as he took off again, more slowly this time. Joe retrieved his case and slipped his own Electros off. Although their video projections onto his retinas appeared as a transparent overlay in front of his eyes, he knew how easy it was to block out the images of the real world.
Almost everybody else on the sidewalk was wearing personal viewpers of one brand or another. Most of them, he guessed, were watching the news, talking to someone, gambling, scanning e-mails and v-mails or, like him, going over their work. Many of them were ‘attending’ meetings in different time zones, different climates, different seasons: some of them would be involved in more than one. All of them walked more slowly, more absently, than people had when he was a kid in Manhattan and all of them seemed to be talking to themselves. Once again Joe realized that while their bodies were on the streets, their minds were in the networks.
*
‘Is it time to wake up?’ asked the red caterpillar.
Tommy and his Furry were inseparable and Calypso had asked for the companion to be sent over from the house.
The boy yawned and stretched, puzzled that he wasn’t in his bedroom.
‘Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,’ sang Jed and waited. Tommy didn’t feel like singing. His head hurt so much he wanted to cry.
Calypso stepped quietly into the room. She walked over to the bed and stroked Tommy’s hair. Despite her written orders of employment that forbade such intimacy, she bent and kissed him gently on the forehead.
‘Welcome back, Tommy,’ she said quietly. She could guess how he must be feeling.
Tommy looked up. ‘My head hurts, Calypso. Where am I?’
‘You had a fall and banged your head, my darling. Can you remember where it happened?’
He frowned.
‘Ten little speckled frogs,’ sang Jed until Tommy squeezed him.
‘We were in the pool,’ he said. ‘You were cheating.’
‘Was not,’ smiled Calypso, a rush of relief sweeping over her. The scans had shown no internal bleeding. The consultants from Miami were certain there had been no intracranial haematoma, but, well, you could never be sure. She had treated many cases of concussion during her internship in Chicago and she knew nothing was sure until consciousness returned.
She ran her eyes across the read-outs on the wall screen. Pulse a little elevated, otherwise everything was normal.
‘Let’s make the headache go away,’ she said, taking an air-pressure syringe from her coat pocket. Almost by instinct she had worn a physician’s coat from the moment she had brought her precious patient in to the clinic. It felt good to dress like a doctor again and she needed to underline to the visiting consultants her professional status as an MD and a paediatric psychiatrist. It also brought back all her guilt about focusing her long years of training and her specialist knowledge on one healthy child, no matter who he was. But there was also her mother to think about.
Calypso had been the first of her family to make the break – to emerge from the grinding poverty of life on a banana island in the eastern Bahamas. She had her father’s Scottish belief in education, the strict little mission school he founded, and her astounding looks to thank for her escape, she acknowledged. She had been crowned Miss Americas and then Miss World. She was the first ‘Miss World’ to come from the West Indies since Cindy Breakspear had won the title nearly fifty years earlier and Calypso was determined to make the best use of the money and travel opportunities the title had brought with it. Cindy had leveraged her brief fame to gain the ‘privilege’ of bearing Bob Marley’s son; Calypso used hers to make good on her breathlessly blurted ambition to become a doctor. When she was done with her duties for the sponsors and had finished her year on the celebrity lecture circuit, her savings had bought her nine years of medical training in the United States.
And now she was back home – well, almost. Life on Hope Island certainly bore little resemblance to conditions on its near neighbours, but her contract with the Tye Corporation guaranteed her one round trip home and back by company helicopter every two weeks. With her older brother
s long gone to seek their livings in the States and in Europe, who else was there to visit Mum and oversee her care, now that her ageing parent was starting to lose her sight and become semi-housebound? Thank God Calypso made more than enough money to provide twenty-four-hour help for the old lady.
Calypso positioned the syringe on her small charge’s pale white arm and, with a little puff of compressed gas, the analgesic entered his bloodstream.
The wall screen beeped and displayed a familiar icon.
‘Accept,’ said Calypso, as she removed the injection nozzle from the syringe.
Her employer’s face filled the screen. ‘How’re you feeling, son?’ asked Tye gently.
‘I’m OK,’ mumbled Tommy.
‘I got the alert he was conscious. Thank you, doctor.’ It was the closest he would come to an apology.
‘Everything looks OK, Tom. Full short-term memory recovery, no haemorrhaging, all the vital signs are normal. Do you want to talk to Doctor Henoch or Doctor Bowlby – I think they’re still sleeping?’
‘No. Just keep me informed.’
‘Are you coming to see me?’ asked Tommy quietly.
‘I can’t, son. I’m in São Paulo. In Brazil. I’ll be back tonight.’
The boy nodded and the screen flipped off.
Calypso cradled the boy’s head. ‘Is it still hurting?’
Tommy nodded and leaned into her. Calypso stroked his hair and wondered how best she could offset the attachment damage that had already been caused by so many broken connections with hired nannies and temporary care-givers. Children need constant love from a single source if they are to develop trust in relationships. The door opened and the biologists returned with their probes and scanners.
*
Joe Tinkler came to the first of his carefully-orchestrated crescendos.
‘I’m certain they’re talking down the situation in almost all areas,’ he declared. ‘In fact, everywhere except in the media division. I’m sure the actual results will beat all forecasts for all the other divisions. Except for my forecasts, that is. I think we’ll probably see earnings of four dollars thirty a share.’