Lord of All Things

by Andreas Eschbach

  When they got back, however, they had their worst argument yet when Gary found out Charlotte had been accepting money from her parents. His masculine pride was wounded and he simply wouldn’t calm down, even though she swore never to do it again.

  “You did this behind my back!” he raged at her. “If we’re to have a life together, then we have to share our fate as well. But that can’t happen if you’re always pulling on your parents’ purse strings. That tells me you don’t really care whether our life works out, because you can just climb in your lifeboat and leave. I can’t.”

  She didn’t quite understand what he meant, but she was distraught to see him so angry. The worst of it was that while they were together in Istanbul, a hot tip had landed in his mailbox from a Spanish source he had: a 1770 harpsichord was up for sale in Barcelona that had supposedly belonged to the great Antonio Soler. Gary had to set off again straightaway. Charlotte stayed unhappily at home, trying to calm by cleaning the apartment from top to bottom, waiting for Gary to call. He didn’t. Instead, he came back two days later, explaining he had bought the instrument on the basis of the documents the dealer had shown him.

  “Solid affidavits from experts in the field,” he declared. “It would have just been a waste of money to fly you out to Barcelona.”

  As it turned out, though, the waste of money had been buying the instrument.

  “It’s not from 1770,” Charlotte said as soon as Gary had unpacked the harpsichord from its shipping crate. She went closer, put her hand on it, and closed her eyes. She could feel the irritation of the man who had built it. Something had not gone according to plan. “It’s Italian, built in 1955.”

  Gary shot her a withering look. “You’re only saying that to get back at me. You’re upset I bought it on my own.”

  Charlotte took her hand away and stepped back. “Just take a look. He had to use some screws that weren’t the genuine article.”

  Gary fell silent, shut himself away in his workshop, and didn’t emerge for the rest of the day. When he showed his face that evening, he was devastated. “Socket screws on the keyboard frame,” he groaned. “Anchored in with screw nuts. That method was only invented in 1911. I only saw them when I took off the front casing.”

  Charlotte looked at him, heartbroken. The soup steamed on the table between them. She felt as though the house had burned down around her ears. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m in the red again. It means that the last five years’ work has all been for nothing.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “I was mad to put all my money into that instrument.” He said it accusingly, as though it were her fault he had acted so recklessly.

  Gary spent all of the next day making phone calls and finally came up with a solution: he would take a job as a restorer for a big auction house in London that specialized in musical instruments. He would spend two weeks in London and then come home for a week at a time to work on his own instruments. He would save money in London by living in a house in Hackney with six others.

  “Does it have to be this way?” Charlotte asked cautiously. “I mean, the harpsichord’s still a good instrument, never mind those screws.”

  “It just isn’t worth as much. That’s how it is.” Gary shook his head, his mind made up. “And I won’t do it. I won’t claim that an instrument is older than I know it to be.”

  Left to her own devices in Belcairn, Charlotte spent hours at a time in front of the television. She could feel her brain cells dying away as she sat there but couldn’t rouse herself to do anything else. Sometimes she mustered the energy to go for a long walk in the fields, but as winter approached the rains came, long, soaking downpours, and she stopped going out. Once, she went into Gary’s workshop. She wandered around among the instruments, looking at the shimmering strings and stroking the deep glow of varnished wood. She picked out a tune on some of the keyboards. She could feel their history. How proud the owners had been to have these instruments. How bored the children had been, practicing. And the long, empty years when they had stood forgotten somewhere, years that felt like death. And then overlaid on all this she could feel Gary, fresh impressions of the love and care he put into his work, his concentration. The satisfaction it gave him.

  It made her sad. There was something wrong with the world. Gary was so exceptionally good at what he did, so devoted to it, he knew so many things, and put his heart and soul into his work—why couldn’t he make a living from it? She had met so many people who hated their work, who cut corners and generally did a bad job but who still managed to make a living. People who gave nothing to the world even half as valuable as what Gary could give but who were swimming in money. Why was that? Why was money so important? And how could money kill love? Why did people let that happen?

  An evening or two later the telephone rang, shattering the dull silence in the house. Charlotte picked up quickly, thinking it must be Gary calling.

  “It’s me,” said a voice she had not heard for an eternity. “Hiroshi.”

  Charlotte had to sit down. “You?”

  “I told you once that I knew what to do so that everybody could be rich. Do you remember?” His words came from far away. There was a strange echo on the line.

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

  “Are you still interested in how it works?”

  Charlotte put her hand to her head. What a time to call and talk about it! It was as though he could read her mind. How did he even have her number?

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m still interested.”

  “Good,” Hiroshi replied. “I’m ready to show you.”

  HIROSHI’S ISLAND

  1

  Normally Charlotte had no trouble sleeping on flights, but on the way to Manila she didn’t get a wink of sleep. Too many thoughts were chasing around in her head. What it would be like to see Hiroshi after all this time. Memories of Harvard, of Boston.

  And, of course, thoughts of Gary.

  They had argued when she left. And she still didn’t understand what the argument had really been about. After Hiroshi’s offer, she had slept on it; once she had decided she would accept his invitation, she had called Gary. He had sounded very strange on the telephone, so she waited until he got home and explained it all to him again. He had raised his voice, worked himself up into a temper, and hurled all kinds of accusations at her—but why? Envy? She had assured him he had nothing to fear, that he was the one she loved. But she hadn’t been able to get through to him for some reason.

  “Gary,” she had said at last, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t go. You’re constantly flying off without me, so now I’m going without you. All we ever do is argue about nothing these days. I can’t even begin to understand why. Maybe we should take a little break from each other.”

  “A break?” Gary practically spat the word out. “You know how that will end.”

  “What do you mean?” She didn’t understand. She was upset Gary had become so paranoid and possessive lately, showing her a new side of him she didn’t like one bit. She didn’t know whether she could get used to him like this.

  The plane descended into a bright, sunlit afternoon in the Philippines. Her next flight was on a propeller airplane with twelve seats, all occupied. A sturdy-looking woman put a crate of tomatoes in the overhead luggage compartment, and a weather-beaten man with calloused hands who looked like a fisherman spent the whole flight reading an American computer magazine. The Pacific glowed deep blue, but as they flew on the color grew lighter, turning an incredible turquoise.

  Just when Charlotte had finally dozed off they landed on an island. It was dusk. At some point she had known what this island was called, but now she couldn’t remember. The airport building had a jolly little roof that looked like three blue tents standing in a row. A breathtakingly handsome man in uniform was waiting for her at the foot of the gangway
. He had brown skin and a neatly trimmed moustache.

  “Miss Malroux?” he asked, checking her passport when she said yes. He led her over to a helicopter at the other end of the airfield. It was painted in blue and silver, with the words GU ENTERPRISES on the side. Below the words was a string of Chinese characters, probably the same name, and above was a stylized dragon’s head.

  The two pilots hardly spoke. One of them gave her two little balls of wax and pointed to his ears.

  “This will get loud,” he said.

  Earplugs. She obediently pressed them in, climbed aboard, and let the pilot buckle her in while the copilot loaded her luggage.

  So this was what a helicopter flight felt like. She could have lived quite happily without ever finding out. It took off, howling and shaking, and tilted forward. The island disappeared behind them as twilight fell. They seemed to be in a hurry. Good, Charlotte thought. The sooner it was over, the better.

  After about an hour she saw another island below; its shape reminded her of a Y chromosome for some reason. Charlotte bent forward. What was that? Part of the island was covered with what looked like yellow foam. It was too dark to see anything more, but whatever it was, it wasn’t any ordinary sort of tropical vegetation. There were bright lights at the end of the longest arm of the island. She saw the large H of their landing pad, and next to it a jetty leading out to sea with two boats alongside it. On the other side of the helipad was a tent village. And somebody standing at the edge of the landing field. She knew straightaway it could only be Hiroshi.

  The helicopter dropped, shuddering so much that Charlotte felt a little sick. Finally, it settled down right in the center of the big H. The bone-shaking roar of the turbines died down to a whine. As she unbuckled her seatbelt, she suddenly understood why so many people kissed the tarmac at airports. The pilot who had strapped her in opened the door, but Hiroshi was there before him to help her down.

  “At last!” he called.

  “We can’t all just jet off around the world at the drop of a hat!” she yelled back and ducked reflexively. The rotors were still turning, and a blade passed over her like a headsman’s sword in search of its allotted task. “I had to talk to Gary about it first.”

  Hiroshi looked blank and then laughed out loud. “Oh no! I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking of before, of the first time I told you about my idea, back in the garden.”

  Charlotte nodded. “We were on the swings. That’s to say I was actually swinging, and you were just sitting there talking riddles.” She looked around, wondering what had happened to her luggage. Ah, there it was. One of the pilots was loading it onto a cart, along with several cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes, all labeled in Chinese. “And when I said I didn’t believe a word of it, you told me to wait and see.”

  “How long ago was that? Almost twenty years.” Hiroshi’s eyes gleamed. “And now I’m ready! That’s what I meant just now when I said ‘at last.’ An extra day or two really makes no difference by now.”

  They left the landing pad and the cloud of oily exhaust from the helicopter. Electric lanterns hung low along a path that led to the tent village she had seen from the air. On the far side she could just make out the dark silhouettes of bushes, trees, and cliffs. The farther they got from the helicopter, the louder the sound of the Pacific on either side, the lazy, powerful slap of waves against the shoreline. A gentle night breeze blew. The air smelled of salt, of unfamiliar flowers, of tropical island—and every now and again there was a pungent jab of rotten decay. An unpleasant smell that struck Charlotte as strangely familiar.

  “So this is where you’ve been the whole time,” she said. “On a hidden South Sea island. Not bad.”

  “We’ve actually only been here six weeks, to be precise,” Hiroshi corrected her. “I spent the years before that on islands as well, but I wouldn’t call them exactly hidden. Well defended, perhaps.”

  She looked him up and down, baffled by the way they were talking as though no time at all had passed since they’d last seen each other. It had been five years. More than that—almost five and a half. It didn’t feel anything like so long. For a mad moment Charlotte doubted her own memory. But Hiroshi had grown older. She could see it. He seemed more serious—even more so than before—and was tanned brown, making the fine lines around his eyes more noticeable. He wore shorts, sandals, and a gray T-shirt with no image or logo. For an MIT graduate, that was practically unheard of. But, of course, he hadn’t graduated. He had simply vanished without a trace, just a few days after they had…it all came back to her. The memories, the mutual attraction. She knew all she would have to do was hold out her hand for him to take. And that Hiroshi was waiting for her to do just that. But she would have been cheating on Gary, and she wouldn’t do that. It was over now, all in the past. She and Hiroshi were just old friends now. Childhood friends.

  “How did you get my number?” she asked. It was one of the many questions she had thought of during the journey.

  “From your mother,” Hiroshi answered, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “From my—I beg your pardon?” She stopped walking for a moment until the penny dropped. Obvious, really. It wouldn’t have been hard. There weren’t that many French ambassadors in the world.

  She spent the next few moments trying to imagine how Hiroshi had managed to talk to her mother, who still couldn’t speak English well, when a skinny man wearing the thickest pair of glasses she had ever see came scurrying out from among the tents. He peered at Charlotte and mumbled a greeting, then gabbed at Hiroshi about camera angles and some other details she didn’t catch. He held a clipboard with diagrams under Hiroshi’s nose. Hiroshi looked at it for a while and then nodded and said, “Okay. We’ll do it that way. Number fifteen over there, aiming southwest, and number nine up on the cliffs.”

  “Okay.” The man gave Charlotte another shy smile and then turned away, flitting off into the darkness.

  “That was Miroslav,” Hiroshi explained. “My right-hand man. He’s also worth at least two fingers of my left hand.”

  “You don’t give your people any time off, do you?”

  “No,” Hiroshi remarked dryly. “I only hire people who work till they drop.”

  They reached the camp. The tents were the very latest high-tech models, snow-white domes that reminded her of a science-fiction film set. They must be easy to put up, she reflected, and they were sure to withstand even tropical storms without any trouble.

  Hiroshi steered her toward one of the larger tents and drew aside the flaps at the entrance, bowing her in. “Please. This is where I work, sleep, and live. I haven’t really changed my habits since Boston in that respect.”

  Charlotte hesitated. “I haven’t even taken care of my luggage.”

  “You don’t have to. Your tent is over there”—he pointed off to where three smaller tents stood together—“and they’ll take your things straight there.” He smiled delightedly. “And while they’re doing that, I’ll tell you the idea Hiroshi Kato had when he was ten years old.”

  It was as though he had last been in this office only yesterday. That had been two years ago, though. Two years during which he had only spoken to Roberta Jacobs on the periphery of larger meetings or briefly in the hallway, when he hardly had a chance to say anything more than hello. And now here he sat. She was wearing the same necklace as before, a heavy thing with lapis lazuli stones. She seemed not to have aged at all in the meantime. Roberta Jacobs was one of those women who never shows her age.

  Bill Adamson leaned back, feeling curiously calm and confused all at once. It seemed only yesterday he had been here to give his status report, but something was different. He just couldn’t put his finger on what.

  “It’s about your friend,” the director began, folding her hands over a thick document folder. “Hiroshi Kato.”

  “Ah.” Adamson raised his eyeb
rows. He hadn’t been expecting this. “I see.”

  “I have to confess I was skeptical at first,” she said, looking at him expressionlessly. “I filed away the sheet you gave me, but for some reason my thoughts kept coming back to it. Then I happened to be sitting next to the head of the CIA in a session of the National Security Council, and you know how it is, you have to talk about something during the breaks. So I told him about your friend. He wrote down the name and said he’d have a look.”

  Adamson nodded slowly. That was probably how these things worked. In all the time he had been at DARPA, he had learned one thing at least: that the US’s gigantic military apparatus was by no means as focused and effective and dedicated to the nation’s good as Hollywood would have you believe.

  Roberta Jacobs tapped the folder in front of her. “Well, this is what came up. James put a few people on the case, and they found your Mr. Kato. In Hong Kong.”

  Adamson felt triumphant, vindicated. China! The greatest rising challenge to the United States. There must be alarm bells ringing in one or two departments right about now. Under certain circumstances it might even cause a stir at the very top. That was good. Now all he had to do was make sure nobody forgot who had put the security services on this trail. Note to self: keep my name going round.

  “Hong Kong,” the director repeated. She was glancing at a small jotter sheet on top of her folder. “Hiroshi Kato has spent the last few years working for a company called Gu Enterprises. It’s a multinational, based in Hong Kong, manufacturing electronics, among other things. It supplies the US market with camping TV sets, cheap MP3 players, that kind of stuff.” Another glance at her notes. “The founder is one Larry Gu, born in Hong Kong and old as the hills by now, but that doesn’t stop him from taking an active role in running his company. He started out as a smuggler and gray-market entrepreneur but built up his fortune with property deals. When Hong Kong reverted to China, he had the option of emigrating to Australia, but he seems to have come to some sort of arrangement with the regime in Beijing. In any case, he’s turned up on the CIA’s radar often enough helping the Chinese secret service with industrial espionage.”