The Light of Other Days

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Suddenly impatient, he rose up further, so that the roadway became a grey ribbon snaking over the land, car windscreens sparkling like a string of diamonds.

  He could see the city laid out before him now. The suburbs were a neat rectangular grid laid over the hills, mist-blurred to grey. The tall buildings of downtown thrust upward, a compact fist of concrete and glass and steel.

  He rose higher still, swooped through a thin layer of cloud to a brighter sunshine beyond, and then turned again — to see the ocean’s glimmer-stained, far from land, by the ominous dark of yet another incoming storm system. The horizon’s curve became apparent, as land and sea folded over on themselves and Earth became a planet.

  David suppressed the urge to whoop. He always had wanted to fly like Superman. This, he thought, is going to sell like hot cakes.

  A crescent Moon hung, low and gaunt, in the blue sky. David swivelled the viewpoint until his field of view was centred on that sliver of bony light.

  Behind him he could hear a commotion, raised voices, running feet. Perhaps it was a security breach, somewhere in the Wormworks. It was none of his concern.

  With determination, he drove the viewpoint forward. The morning blue deepened to violet. Already he could see the first stars.

  •

  They slept for a while.

  When Kate stirred, she felt cold. She raised her wrist and her tattoo lit up. Six in the morning. In his sleep, Bobby had moved away from her, leaving her uncovered. She pulled at the blanket they were sharing, covering her exposed torso.

  The Wormworks, windowless, was as dark and cavernous as when they had arrived. She could see that the WormCam image of Billybob’s study was still as it had been, the desk and rhino skins and the papers. Everything since they had set up the WormCam link had been recorded. With a flicker of excitement she realized she might already have enough material to nail Meeks for good.

  “You’re awake.”

  She turned her head. There was Bobby’s face, eyes wide open, resting on a folded-up blanket.

  He stroked her cheek with the back of one finger. “I think you’ve been crying,” he said.

  That startled her. She resisted the temptation to brush his hand away, to hide her face.

  He sighed. “You found the implant. So now you’ve screwed a wirehead. Isn’t that your prejudice? You don’t like implants. Maybe you think only criminals and the mentally deficient should undergo brain-function modification.”

  “Who put it there?”

  “My father. I mean, it was his initiative. When I was a small boy.”

  “You remember?”

  “I was three or four years old. Yes, I remember. And I remember understanding why he was doing it. Not the technical detail, of course, but the fact that he loved me, and wanted the best for me.” He smiled, self-deprecating. “I’m not quite as perfect as I look. I was somewhat hyperactive, and also slightly dyslexic. The implant fixed those things.”

  She reached behind him and explored the profile of his implant. Trying not to make it obvious, she made sure her own wrist tattoo passed over the metal surface. She forced a smile. “You ought to upgrade your hardware.”

  He shrugged. “It works well enough.”

  “If you’ll let me bring in some microelectronic analysis gear I could run a study of it.”

  “What would be the point?”

  She took a breath. “So we can find out what it does.”

  “I told you what it does.”

  “You told me what Hiram told you.”

  He propped himself up on his elbows and stared at her. “What are you implying?”

  Yes, what, Kate? Are you just sour because he shows no signs of falling in love with you as, obviously, you are falling for this complex, flawed man? “You seem to have — gaps. For instance, don’t you ever wonder about your mother?”

  “No,” he said. “Am I supposed to?”

  “It’s not a question of being supposed to, Bobby. It’s just what most people do — without being prompted.”

  “And you think this has something to do with my implant? Look, I trust my father. I know that everything he’s done has been for my best interest.”

  “All right.” She leaned over to kiss him. “It’s not my business. We won’t talk about it again.”

  At least, she thought with a guilty frisson, not until I get an analysis of the data I already collected from your head stud, without your knowledge, or your permission. She snuggled closer to him, and draped an arm over his chest, protectively. Maybe it’s me who has the gaps in her soul, she thought.

  With shocking suddenness, torchlight burst over them.

  Kate hastily grabbed the blanket to her chest, feeling absurdly exposed and vulnerable. The torchlight in her eyes was dazzling, masking the group of people beyond. There were two, three people. They wore dark uniforms.

  And there was Hiram’s unmistakable bulk, his hands on his hips, glaring at her.

  “You can’t hide from me,” Hiram said easily. He gestured at the WormCam image. “Shut that bloody thing off.”

  The image turned to mush as the wormhole link to Billybob’s office was shut down.

  “Ms. Manzoni, just by breaking in here you’ve broken a whole hatful of laws. Not to mention attempting to violate the privacy of Billybob Meeks. The police are already on their way. I doubt if I’ll be able to get you imprisoned — though I’ll have a bloody good try — but I can ensure you’ll never work in your field again.”

  Kate kept up her defiant glower. But she felt her resolve crumble; she knew Hiram had the power to do just that.

  Bobby was lying back, relaxed.

  She dug an elbow in his ribs. “I don’t understand you, Bobby. He’s spying on you. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  Hiram stood over her. “Why should it bother him?”

  Through the dazzle she could see sweat gleaming on his bare scalp, his only sign of anger. “I’m his father. What bothers me is you, Ms. Manzoni. It’s obvious to me you’re poisoning my son’s mind. Just like…” He stopped himself.

  Kate glared back. “Like who, Hiram? His mother?” But Bobby’s hand was on her arm.

  “Back off Dad. Kate, he was bound to figure this out sometime. Look, both of you, let’s find a win-win solution to this. Isn’t that what you always told me, Dad?” He said impulsively, “Don’t throw Kate out. Give her a job. Here, at OurWorld.”

  Hiram and Kate spoke simultaneously. “Are you mad!”

  “Bobby, that’s absurd. If you think I’d work for this creep.”

  Bobby held his hands up. “Dad, think about it. To exploit the technology you’re going to need the best investigative journalists you can find. Right? Even with the WormCam you can’t dig out a story without leads.”

  Hiram snorted. “You’re telling me she is the best?”

  Bobby raised his eyebrows. “She’s here, Dad. She found out about the WormCam itself. She even started to use it. And as for you, Kate…”

  “Bobby, it will be a cold day in hell…”

  “You know about the WormCam. Hiram can’t let you go with that knowledge. So, don’t go. Come work here. You’ll have an edge on every other damn reporter on the planet.” He looked from one to the other. Hiram and Kate glared at each other.

  Kate said, “I’d insist on finishing my investigation into Billybob Meeks. I don’t care what links you have with him, Hiram. The man is a sham, potentially murderous and a drug runner. And…”

  Hiram laughed. “You’re laying down conditions!”

  Bobby said, “Dad, please. Just think about it. For me.”

  Hiram loomed over Kate, his face savage. “Perhaps I have to accept this. But you will not take my son away from me. I hope you understand that.” He straightened up, and Kate found herself shivering. “By the way,” Hiram said to Bobby, “you were right.”

  “About what?”

  “That I love you. That you should trust me. That everything I have done to you has been for the best.”r />
  Kate gasped. “You heard him say that?” But of course he had; Hiram had probably heard everything.

  Hiram’s eyes were on Bobby. “You do believe me, don’t you? Don’t you?”

  Chapter 8

  Scoops

  From OurWorld International News Hour, 21 June, 2036:

  Kate Manzoni (to camera): …The real possibility, revealed exclusively here, of armed conflict between Scotland and England — and therefore, of course, involving the United States as a whole — is the most significant development in what is becoming the central story of our unfolding century: the battle for water. The figures are stark. Less than one percent of the world’s water supply is suitable and accessible for human use. As cities expand, and less land is left available for farming, the demand for water is increasing sharply. In parts of Asia, the Mideast and Africa, the available surface water is already fully used, and groundwater levels have been falling for decades. Back at the turn of the century ten percent of the world’s population did not have enough water to drink. Now that figure has tripled, and it is expected to reach a startling seventy percent by 2050. We have become used to seeing bloody conflicts over water, for example in China, and over the waters of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Ganges and the Amazon, places where the diminishing resource has to be shared, or where one neighbour is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as having more water than it requires. In this country, there have been calls in Congress for the Administration to put more pressure on the Canadian and Quebecois governments to release more water to the U.S., particularly the desertifying Midwest. Nevertheless the idea that such conflicts could come to the developed Western world — just to repeat our exclusive revelation, that an armed incursion into Scotland to secure water supplies has been seriously considered by the English state government — comes as a shock…

  •

  Angel McKie (v/o): It is night, and nothing is stirring.

  This small island, set like a jewel in the Philippine Sea, is only a half kilometre across. And yet, until yesterday, more than a thousand people lived here, crammed into ramshackle dwellings which covered these lowlands as far as the high-tide line of the sea. Even yesterday, children played along the beach you can see here. Now nothing is left. Not even the bodies of the children remain.

  Hurricane Antony — the latest to be spun off the apparently permanent El Nino storm which continues to wreak havoc around the Pacific Rim — touched here only briefly, but it was long enough to destroy everything these people had built up over generations.

  The sun has yet to rise on this devastation. Not even the rescue crews have arrived yet. These pictures are brought to you exclusively by an OurWorld remote news-gathering unit, once again on the scene of breaking news ahead of the rest.

  We will return to these scenes when the first aid helicopters arrive — they are due from the mainland any minute now — and in the meantime we can take you to an underwater view of the coral reef here. This was the last remnant of a great community of reefs which lined the Tanon Strait and the southern Negros, most of it long destroyed by dynamite fishing. Now this last survivor, preserved for a generation by devoted experts, has been devastated…

  •

  Willoughby Cott (v/o): …now we can see that goal again as we ride on Staedler’s shoulder with OurWorld’s exclusive As-The-Sportsman-Sees-It feature.

  You can see the line of defenders ahead of Staedler pushing forward as he approaches, expecting him to make a pass which would leave Cramer off-side. But Staedler instead heads away from the wing into deeper midfield, beats one defender, then a second — the goalkeeper doesn’t know which threat to counter, Staedler or Cramer — and here you can see the gap Staedler spotted, opening up at the near post, and he puts on a burst of acceleration and shoots!

  And now, thanks to OurWorld’s exclusive infield imaging technology, we are riding with the ball as it arcs into that top corner, and the Beijing crowd is ecstatic…

  •

  Simon Alcala (v/o): …coming up later, we bring you more exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures of Russian Tsarina Irum’s visit to a top Johannesburg boutique and what was Madonna’s daughter having done to her nose in his exclusive Los Angeles cosmetic-surgery clinic?

  OurWorld Paparazzi: we take you into the lives of the famous, whether they like it or not!

  But first: here’s a General Assembly we’d like to see more of! Lunchtime yesterday, UN Secretary General Halliwell took a break from UNESCO’s World Hydrology Initiative conference in Cuba.

  Halliwell thought this rooftop garden was secure. And she was right. Well, almost right. The roof is covered by a one-way mirror — it allows in the sun’s soothing rays, but keeps out prying eyes. That is, everyone’s eyes but ours!

  Let’s go on down through the roof now — yes, through the roof — and there she is, certainly a sight for sore eyes as she enjoys the filtered Caribbean sunlight au naturel. Despite the mirrored roof Halliwell is cautious — you can see here she is covering up as a light plane passes overhead — but she should have known she can’t hide from OurWorld!

  As you can see Mr. Gravity has been kind to our SecGen; Halliwell is as much a knockout as when she shimmied across the stages of the world all of forty years ago. But the question is, is she still all the original Halliwell, or has she accepted a little help?…

  Chapter 9

  The agent

  When the FBI caught up with Hiram, Kate felt a rush of relief.

  She had been happy enough to be scooping the world — but she had been doing that anyhow, with or without WormCams. And she’d become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that such a powerful technology should be exclusively in the hands of a sleazy megalomaniac capitalist like Hiram Patterson.

  As it happened, she was in Hiram’s office the day it all came to a head. But it didn’t turn out the way she expected.

  •

  Kate paced back and forth. She was arguing with Hiram, as usual.

  “For God’s sake, Hiram. How trivial do you want to get?”

  Hiram leaned back in his fake-leather chair and gazed out of the window at downtown Seattle, considering his reply.

  Once, Kate knew, this had been the presidential suite of one of the city’s better hotels. Though the big picture window remained, Hiram had retained none of the grand trimmings of this room; whatever his faults, Hiram Patterson was not pretentious. The room was now a regular working office, the only furniture the big conference table and its set of upright chairs, a coffee spigot and a water fountain. There was a rumour that Hiram kept a bed here, rolled up in a compartment built into the walls. And yet there was a lack of a human touch, Kate thought. There wasn’t even a single image of a family member — his two sons, for instance.

  But maybe he doesn’t need images, Kate thought sourly. Maybe his sons themselves are trophy enough.

  “So,” Hiram said slowly, “now you’re appointing yourself my bloody conscience, Ms. Manzoni.”

  “Oh, come on, Hiram. It’s not a question of conscience. Look, you have a technological monopoly which is the envy of every other news-gathering organization on the planet. Can’t you see how you’re wasting it? Gossip about Russian royalty and candid-camera shows and on-the-field shots of soccer games… I didn’t come into this business to photograph the tits of the UN Secretary General.”

  “Those tits, as you put it,” he said dryly, “attracted a billion people. My prime concern is beating the competition. And I’m doing that.”

  “But you’re turning yourself into the ultimate paparazzo. Is that the limit of your vision? You have such — power — to do good.”

  He smiled. “Good? What does good have to do with it? I have to give people what they want, Manzoni. If I don’t, some other bastard will. Anyway I don’t see what you’re complaining about. I ran your piece on England invading Scotland. That was genuine hard-core news.”

  “But you trivialized it by wrapping it up in tabloid garbage! Just as you trivialize the whole water-
war issue. Look, the UN hydrology convention has been a joke.”

  “I don’t need another lecture on the issues of the day, Manzoni. You know, you’re so pompous. But you understand so little. Don’t you get it? People don’t want to know about the issues. Because of you and your damn Wormwood, people understand that the issues just don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how we pump water around the planet, or any of the rest of it, because the Wormwood is going to scrape it all away anyhow. All people want is entertainment. Distraction.”

  “And that’s the limit of your ambition?”

  He shrugged. “What else is there to do?”

  She snorted her disgust. “You know, your monopoly won’t last forever. There’s a lot of speculation in the industry and the media about how you’re achieving all your scoops. It can’t be long before somebody figures it out and repeats your research.”

  “I have patents.”

  “Oh, sure, that will protect you. If you keep this up you’ll have nothing left to hand on to Bobby.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you talk about my son. You know, every day I regret bringing you in here, Manzoni. You’ve brought in some good stories. But you have no sense of balance, no sense at all.”

  “Balance? Is that what you call it? Using the WormCam for nothing more than celebrity beaver shots?”

  A soft bell tone sounded. Hiram lifted his head to the air. “I said I wasn’t to be interrupted.”

  The Search Engine’s inoffensive tones sounded from the air. “I’m afraid I have an override, Mr. Patterson.”

  “What kind of override?”

  “There’s a Michael Mavens here to see you. You too, Ms. Manzoni.”

  “Mavens? I don’t know any…”

  “He’s from the FBI, Mr. Patterson. The Federal Bureau of…”