The ripples of conversation in the room died away, and everyone turned to the digital clock.

The count reached zero.

And nothing happened.

There were events, of course. The track counter racked up a respectable score, showing heavy and energetic particles passing through the detector array, the debris of an exploded wormhole. The array's pixel elements, each firing individually as a particle passed through them, could later be used to trace the paths of debris fragments in three dimensions-paths which could then be reconstructed and analyzed.

Lots of data, lots of good science. But the big wall SoftScreen remained blank. No signal.

David suppressed a sigh. He opened up the logbook and entered details of the run in his round, neat hand; around him his technicians began equipment diagnostics.

Hiram looked into David's face, at the empty 'Screen, at the technicians. 'Is that it? Did it work?'

Bobby touched his father's shoulder. 'Even I can tell it didn't. Dad.' He pointed to the prime-number test sequence. It had frozen on thirteen. 'Unlucky thirteen,' murmured Bobby.

'Is he right? David, did you screw up again?'

'This wasn't a failure. Just another test. You don't understand science, Father. Now, when we run the analysis and learn from this.'

'Jesus Christ on a bike! I should have left you rotting in bloody Oxford. Call me when you have something.' Hiram, shaking his head, stalked from the room.

When he left, the feeling of relief in the room was palpable. The technicians - silver-haired particle physicists all, many of them older than Hiram, some of them with distinguished careers beyond OurWorld - started to file out.

When they'd gone, David sat before a SoftScreen to begin his own follow-up work.

He brought up his favored desktop metaphor. It was like a window into a cluttered study, with books and documents piled in untidy heaps on the floor and shelves and tables, and with complex particle-decay models hanging like mobiles from the ceiling. When he looked around the 'room,' the point at the focus of his attention expanded, opening out more detail, the rest of the room blurring to a background wash. He could 'pick up' documents and models with a fingertip, rummaging until he found what he wanted, exactly where he'd left it last time.

First he had to check for detector pixel faults. He began passing the vertex detector traces into the analog signal bus, and pulled out a blow-up overview of various detector slabs. There were always random failures of pixels when some especially powerful particle hit a detector element. But, though some of the detectors had suffered enough radiation damage to require replacement, there was nothing serious for now.

Humming, immersed in the work, he prepared to move on-

'Your user interface is a mess.'

David, startled, turned. Bobby was still here: still leaning, in fact, against his table.

'Sorry,' David said. 'I didn't mean to turn my back.' How odd that he hadn't even noticed his brother's continued presence.

Bobby said now, 'Most people use the Search Engine.'

'Which is irritatingly slow, prone to misunderstanding and which anyhow masks a Victorian-era hierarchical data-storage system. Filing cabinets. Bobby, I'm too dumb for the Search Engine. I'm just an unevolved ape who likes to use his hands and eyes to find things. This may look a mess, but I know exactly where everything is.'

'But still, you could study this particle-track stuff a lot better as a virtual. Let me set up a trial of my latest Mind'sEye prototype for you. We can reach more areas of the brain, switch more quickly … '

'And all without the need for trepanning.'

Bobby smiled.

'All right,' David said. 'I'd appreciate that.'

Bobby's gaze roamed around the room in that absent, disconcerting way of his. 'Is it true? What you told Dad - that this isn't a failure, but just another step?'

'I can understand Hiram's impatience. After all he's paying for all of this.'

'And he's working under commercial pressure,' Bobby said. 'Already some of his competitors are claiming to have DataPipes of comparable quality to Hiram's. It surely won't be long before one of them comes up with the idea of a remote viewer-independently, if nobody's leaked it already.'

'But commercial pressure is irrelevant,' David said testily. 'A study like this has to proceed at its own pace. Bobby, I don't know how much you know about physics.'

'Assume nothing. Once you have a wormhole, what's so difficult about expanding it?'

'It's not as if we're building a bigger and better car. We're trying to push spacetime into a form it wouldn't naturally adopt. Look, wormholes are intrinsically unstable. You know that to keep them open at all we have to thread them with exotic matter.'

'Antigravity.'

'Yes. But the tension in the throat of a wormhole is gigantic. We're constantly balancing one huge pressure against another.' David balled his fists and pressed them against each other, hard. 'As long as they are balanced, fine. But the smallest perturbation and you lose everything.' He let one fist slide over the other, breaking the equilibrium he'd established. 'And that fundamental instability grows worse with size. What we're attempting is to monitor conditions inside the wormhole, and adjust the pumping of exotic matter-energy to compensate for fluctuations.' He pressed his fists against each other again; this time, as he jiggled the left back and forth, he compensated with movements of his right, so his knuckles stayed pressed together.

'I get it,' Bobby said. 'As if you're threading the wormhole with software.'

'Or with a smart worm.' David smiled. 'Yes. It's very processor-intensive. And so far, the instabilities have been too rapid and catastrophic to deal with.

'Look at this.' He reached to his desktop and, with the touch of a fingertip, he pulled up a fresh view of a particle cascade. It had a strong purple trunk - the color showing heavy ionization - with clusters of red jets, wide and narrow, some straight, others curved. He tapped a key, and the spray rotated in three dimensions; the software suppressed foreground elements to allow details of the jet's inner structure to become visible. The central spray was surrounded by numbers showing energy, momentum and charge readings. 'We're looking at a high-energy, complex event here, Bobby. All this exotic garbage spews out before the wormhole disappears completely.' He sighed. 'It's like trying to figure out how to fix a car by blowing it up and combing through the debris.

'Bobby, I was honest with Father. Every trial is an exploration of another corner of what we call parameter space, as we try different ways of making our wormhole viewers wide and stable. There are no wasted trials; every time we proceed we learn something. In fact many of my tests are negative - I actually design them to fail. A single test which proves some piece of theory wrong is more valuable than a hundred tests showing that idea might be true. Eventually we'll get there ... or else we'll prove Hiram's dream is impossible, with present-day technology.'

'Science demands patience.'

David smiled. 'Yes. It always has. But for some it is hard to remain patient, in the face of the black meteor which approaches us all.'

'The Wormwood? But that's centuries off.'

'But scientists are hardly alone in being affected by the knowledge of its existence. There is an impulse to hurry, to gather as much data and formulate new theories, to learn as much as possible in the time that is left, because we no longer are sure there will be anybody to build on our work, as we've always assumed in the past. And so people take shortcuts, the peer review process is under pressure ... '

Now a red alert light started flashing high on the countinghouse wall, and technicians began to drift back into the room.

Bobby looked at David quizzically. 'You're setting up to run again? You told Dad you only ran one trial a day.'

David winked. 'A little white lie. I find it useful to have a way to get rid of him.'

Bobby laughed.

It turned out there was time to fetch coffee before the new run began. They walked together to the cafeteria.

Bobby is lingering, David thought. As if he wants to be involved. He sensed a need here, a need he didn't understand - perhaps even envy. Was that possible?

It was a wickedly delicious thought. Perhaps Bobby Patterson, fabulously rich, this latter-day dandy, envies me - his earnest, dronelike brother.

Or perhaps that's just sibling rivalry on my part.

Walking back, he sought to make conversation.

'So. Were you a grad student, Bobby?'

'Sure. But at HBS.'

'HBS? Oh. Harvard.'

'Business School. Yes.'

'I took some business studies as part of my first degree,' David said. He grimaced. 'The courses were intended to 'equip us for the modem world.' All those two-by-two matrices, the fads for this theory or that, for one management guru or another ... '

'Well, business analysis isn't rocket science, as we used to say,' Bobby murmured evenly. 'But nobody at Harvard was a dummy. I won my place there on merit. And the competition there was ferocious.'

'I'm sure it was.' David was puzzled by Bobby's flat tone of voice, his lack of fire. He probed gently. 'I have the impression you feel … underestimated.'

Bobby shrugged. 'Perhaps. The VR division of OurWorld is a billion-buck business in its own right. If I fail, Dad's made it clear he's not going to bail me out. But even Kate thinks I'm some kind of placeholder.' Bobby grinned. 'I'm enjoying trying to convince her otherwise.'

David frowned. Kate? ... Ah, the girl reporter Hiram had tried to exclude from his son's life. Without success, it seemed. Interesting. 'Do you want me to keep quiet?'

'What about?'

'Kate. The reporter.'

'There isn't really anything to keep quiet about.'

'Perhaps. But Father doesn't approve of her. Have you told him you're still seeing her?'

'No.'

And this may be the only thing in your young life, David thought, which Hiram doesn't know about. Well, let's keep it that way. David felt pleased to have established this small bond between them.

Now the countdown clock neared its conclusion. Once more the wall-mounted SoftScreen showed an inky darkness, broken only by random pixel flashes, and with the numeric monitor in the comer dully repeating its test list of primes. David watched with amusement as Bobby's lips silently formed the count numbers: Three. Two. One.

And then Bobby's mouth hung open in shock, a flickering light playing on his face.

David swiveled his gaze to the SoftScreen.

This time there was an image, a disc of light. It was a bizarre, dreamy construct of boxes and strip lights and cables, distorted almost beyond recognition, as if seen through some grotesque fish-eye lens.

David found he was holding his breath. As roe image stayed stable for two seconds, three, he deliberately sucked in air.

Bobby asked, 'What are we seeing?'

'The wormhole mouth. Or rather, the light it's pulling in from its surroundings, here, the Wormworks. Look, you can see the electronics stack. But the strong gravity of the mouth is dragging in light from the three-dimensional space all around it. The image is being distorted.'

'Like gravitational tensing.'

He looked at Bobby in surprise. 'Exactly that.' He checked the monitors. 'We're already passing our previous best ... '

Now the distortion of the image became stronger, as the shapes of equipment and light fixtures were smeared to circles surrounding the view's central point. Some of the colors seemed to be Doppler-shifting now, a green support strut starting to look blue, the fluorescents' glare taking on a tinge of violet.

'We're pushing deeper into the wormhole,' David whispered. 'Don't give up on me now.'

The image fragmented further, its elements crumbling and multiplying in a repeating pattern around the disc shaped image. It was a three-dimensional kaleidoscope, David thought, formed by multiple images of the lab's illumination. He glanced at counter readouts, which told him that much of the energy of the light falling into the wormhole had been shifted to the ultraviolet and beyond, and the energized radiation was pounding the curved walls of this spacetime tunnel.

But the wormhole was holding.

They were far past the point where all previous experiments had collapsed.

Now the disc image began to shrink as the light, falling from three dimensions onto the wormhole mouth, was compressed by the wormhole's throat into a narrowing pipe. The scrambled, shrinking puddle of light reached a peak of distortion.

And then the quality of light changed. The multiple image structure became simpler, expanding, seeming to unscramble itself, and David began to pick out elements of a new visual field: a smear of blue that might be sky, a pale white that could be an instrument box.

He said: 'Call Hiram.'

Bobby said, 'What are we looking at?'

'Just call Father, Bobby.'

Hiram arrived at a run an hour later. 'It better be worth it. I broke up an investors' meeting ... '

David, wordlessly, handed him a slab of lead-glass crystal the size and shape of a pack of cards. Hiram turned the slab over, inspecting it.

The upper surface of the slab was ground into a magnifying lens, and when Hiram looked into it, he saw miniaturized electronics: photomultiplier light detectors for receiving signals, a light-emitting diode capable of emitting flashes for testing, a small power supply, miniature electromagnets. And, at the geometric center of the slab, there was a tiny, perfect sphere, just at the limit of visibility. It looked silvery, reflective, like a pearl; but the quality of light it returned wasn't quite the hard gray of the countinghouse's fluorescents.

Hiram turned to David. 'What am I looking at?'

David nodded at the big wall SoftScreen. It showed a round blur of light, blue and brown.

A face came looming into the image: a human face, a man somewhere in his forties, perhaps. The image was heavily distorted - it was exactly as if he had pushed his face into a fish-eye lens - but David could make out a knot of curly black hair, leathery sun-beaten skin, white teeth in a broad smile.

'It's Walter,' Hiram said, wondering. 'Our Brisbane station head.' He moved closer to the SoftScreen. 'He's saying something. His lips are moving.' He stood there, mouth moving in sympathy. 'I ... see ... you. I see you. My God.'

Behind Walter, other Aussie technicians could be seen now, heavily distorted shadows, applauding in silence.

David grinned, and submitted to Hiram's whoops and bear hugs, all the while keeping his eye on the leadglass slab containing the wormhole mouth, that billiondollar pearl.

Chapter 7 - THE WORMCAM

It was 3 A.M. At the heart of the deserted Wormworks, in a bubble of SoftScreen light, Kate and Bobby sat side by side. Bobby was working through a simple question-and-answer setup session on the SoftScreen. They were expecting a long night; behind them there was a heap of hastily gathered gear, coffee flasks and blankets and foam mattresses.

... There was a creak. Kate jumped and grabbed Bobby's arm.

Bobby kept working at the program. 'Take it easy. Just a little thermal contraction. I told you, I made sure all the surveillance systems have a blind spot right here, right now.'

'I'm not doubting it. It's just that I'm not used to creeping around in the dark like this.'

'I thought you were the tough reporter.'

'Yes. But what I do is generally legal.'

'Generally!'

'Believe it or not.'

'But this - ' He waved a hand toward the hulking, mysterious machinery out in the dark. ' - isn't even surveillance equipment. It's just an experimental high energy physics rig. There's nothing like it in the world; how can there be any legislation to cover its use?'

'That's specious, Bobby. No judge on the planet would buy that argument.'

'Specious or not, I'm telling you to calm down. I'm trying to concentrate. Mission Control here could be a little more user-friendly. David doesn't even use voice activation. Maybe all physicists are so conservative - or all Catholics.'

She studied him as he worked steadily at the program. He looked as alive as she'd ever seen him, for once fully engaged in the moment. And yet he seemed completely unperturbed by any moral doubt. He really was a complex person - or rather, she thought sadly, incomplete.

His finger hovered over a start button on the SoftScreen. 'Ready. Shall I do it?'

'We're recording?'

He tapped the SoftScreen. 'Everything that comes through that wormhole will be trapped right here.'

' ... Okay.'

'Three, two, one.' He hit the key.

The 'Screen turned black.

From the greater darkness around her, she heard a deep bass hum as the giant machinery of the Wormworks came on line, huge forces gathering to rip a hole in spacetime. She thought she could smell ozone, feel a prickle of electricity. But maybe that was imagination.

Setting up this operation had been simplicity itself. While Bobby had worked to obtain clandestine access to the Wormworks equipment, Kate had made her way to Billybob's mansion, a gaudy baroque palace set in woodland on the fringe of the Mount Rainier National Park. She'd taken sufficient photographs to construct a crude external map of the site, and had made Global Positioning System readings at various reference points. That - and the information Billybob had boastfully given away to style magazines about the lavish interior layout - had been sufficient for her to construct a detailed internal map of the building, complete with a grid of GPS references.

Now, if all went well, those references would be sufficient to establish a wormhole link between Billybob's inner sanctum and this mocked-up listening post.

... The SoftScreen lit up. Kate leaned forward.

The image was heavily distorted, a circular smear of light, orange and brown and yellow, as if she were looking through a silvered tunnel. There was a sense of movement, patches of light coming and going across the image, but she could make out no detail.

'I can't see a damn thing,' she said querulously.

Bobby tapped at the SoftScreen. 'Patience. Now I have to cut in the deconvolution routines.'

'The what?'

'The wormhole mouth isn't a camera lens, remember. It's a little sphere on which light falls from all around, in three dimensions. And that global image is pretty much smeared out by its passage through the wormhole itself. But we can use software routines to unscramble all that. It's kind of interesting. The software is based on programs the astronomers use to factor out atmospheric distortion, twinkling and blurring and refraction, when they study the stars.'

The image abruptly cleared, and Kate gasped.

They saw a massive desk with a globe-lamp hovering above. There were papers and SoftScreens scattered over the desktop. Behind the desk was an empty chair, casually pushed back. On the walls there were performance graphs and bar charts, what looked like accounting statements.

There was luxury here. The wallpaper looked like handmade English stuff, probably the most expensive in the world. And on the floor, casually thrown there, there was a pair of rhino hides, gaping mouths and glassy eyes staring, horns proud even in death.

And there was a simple animated display, a total counting steadily upward. It was labeled CONVERTS: human souls being counted like a fast-food chain's sushi burger sales.

The image was far from perfect. It was dark, grainy, sometimes unstable, given to freezing or breaking up into clouds of pixels. But still …

'I can't believe it,' Kate breathed. 'It's working. It's as if all the walls in the world just turned to glass. Welcome to the goldfish bowl ... '

Bobby worked his SoftScreen, making the reconstructed image pan around. 'I thought rhinos were extinct.'

'They are now. Billybob was involved in a consortium which bought out the last breeding pair from a private zoo in France. The geneticists had been trying to get hold of the rhinos to store genetic material, maybe eggs and sperm and even zygotes, in the hope of restoring the species in the future. But Billybob got there first. And so he owns the last rhino skins there will ever be. It was good business, if you look at it that way. These skins command unbelievably high prices now.'

'But illegal.'

'Yes. But nobody is likely to have the guts to pursue a prosecution against someone as powerful as Billybob. After all, come Wormwood Day, all the rhinos will be extinct anyhow; what difference does it make? ... Can you zoom with this thing?'

'Metaphorically. I can magnify and enhance selectively.'

'Can we see those papers on the desk?'

With a fingernail Bobby marked out zoom boxes, and the software's focus progressively moved in on the litter of papers on the desktop. The wormhole mouth seemed to be positioned about a meter from the ground, some two meters from the desk-Kate wondered if it would be visible, a tiny reflective bead hovering in the air-so the papers were foreshortened by perspective. And besides they hadn't been laid out for convenient reading; some of them were lying facedown or were obscured by others. Still, Bobby was able to pick out sections - he inverted the images and corrected for perspective distortion, cleaned them up with intelligent-software enhancement routines - enough for Kate to get a sense of what much of the material was about.

It was mostly routine corporate stuff-chilling evidence of Billybob's industrial-scale mining of gullible Americans - but nothing illegal. She had Bobby scan on, rooting hastily through the scattered material.

And then, at last, she hit pay dirt.

'Hold it,' she said. 'Enhance ... Well, well.' It was a report, technical, closely printed, replete with figures, on the adverse effects of dopamine stimulation in elderly subjects. 'That's it,' she breathed. 'The smoking gun.' She got up and started to pace the room, unable to contain her restless energy. 'What an asshole. Once a drug dealer, always a drug dealer. If we can get an image of Billybob himself reading that, better yet signing it off. Bobby, we need to find him.'

Bobby sighed and sat back. 'Then ask David. I can swivel and zoom, but right now I don't know how to make this WormCam pan.'

'WormCam'?' Kate grinned.

'Dad works his marketeers even harder than his engineers. Look, Kate, it's three-thirty in the morning. Let's be patient. I have security lockout here until noon tomorrow. Surely we can catch Billybob in his office before then. If not, we can try again another day.'

'Yes.' She nodded, tense. 'You're right. It's just I'm used to working fast.'

He smiled. 'Before some other hot journo muscles in on your scoop?'

'It happens.'

'Hey.' Bobby reached out and cupped her chin in his hands. His dark face was all but invisible in the cavernous gloom of the Wormworks, but his touch was warm, dry, confident. 'You don't have to worry. Just think of it. Right now nobody else on the planet, nobody, has access to WormCam technology. There's no way Billybob can detect what we're up to, or anyone else can beat you to the punch. What's a few hours?'

Her breathing was shallow, her heart pumping; she seemed to sense him before her in the dark, at a level deeper than sight or scent or even touch, as if some deep core inside her was responding to the warm bulk of his body.

She reached up, covered his hand, and kissed it. 'You're right. We have to wait. But I'm burning energy anyhow. So let's do something constructive with it.'

He seemed to hesitate, as if trying to puzzle out her meaning.

Well, Kate, she told herself, you aren't like the other girls he's met in his gilded life. Maybe he needs a little help.

She put her free hand around his neck, pulled him toward her, and felt his mouth on hers. Her tongue, hot and inquisitive, pushed into his mouth, and ran along a ridge of perfect lower teeth; his lips responded eagerly.

At first he was tender, even loving. But, as passion built, she became aware of a change in his posture, his manner. As she responded to his unspoken commands she was aware that she was letting him take control, and-even as he brought her to a deep climax with expert ease - she felt he was distracted, lost in the mysteries of his own strange, wounded mind, engaged with the physical act, and not with her.

He knows how to make love, she thought, maybe better than anybody I know. But he doesn't know how to love. What a cliché that was. But it was true. And terribly sad.

And, even as his body closed on hers, her fingers, digging into the hair at the back of his neck, found something round and hard under his covering of hair, about the size of a nickel, metallic and cold.

It was a brain stud.

In the spring-morning silence of the Wormworks, David sat in the glow of his SoftScreen.

He was looking down at the top of his own head, from a height of two or three meters. It wasn't a comfortable sight: he looked overweight, and there was a small bald spot at his crown he hadn't noticed before, a little pink coin in among his uncombed mass of hair.

He raised his hand to find the bald spot.

The image in the 'Screen raised its hand too, like a puppet slaved to his actions. He waved, childishly, and looked up. But of course there was nothing to see, no sign of the tiny rip on spacetime which transmitted these images.

He tapped at the 'Screen, and the viewpoint swiveled, looking straight ahead. Another tap, hesitantly, and it began to move forward, through the Wormworks' dark halls: at first a little jerkily, then more smoothly. Huge machines, looming and rather sinister, floated past him like blocky clouds.

Eventually, he supposed, commercial versions of this wormhole camera would come with more intuitive controls, a joystick perhaps, levers and knobs to swivel the viewpoint this way and that. But this simple configuration of touch controls on his 'Screen was enough to let him control the viewpoint, allowing him to concentrate on the image itself.

And of course, a corner of his mind reminded him, in actuality the viewpoint wasn't moving at all: rather, the Casimir engines were creating and collapsing a series of wormholes, Planck lengths apart, strung out in a line the way he wanted to move. The images returned by successive holes arrived sufficiently closely to give him the illusion of movement.

But none of that was important for now, he told himself sternly. For now he only wanted to play.

With a determined slap at the 'Screen he turned the viewpoint and made it fly straight at the Wormworks' corrugated iron wall. He couldn't help but wince as that barrier flew at him.

There was an instant of darkness. And then he was through, and immersed suddenly in dazzling sunlight.

He slowed the viewpoint and dropped it to around eye level. He was in the grounds which surrounded the Wormworks: grass, streams, cute little bridges. The sun was low, casting long crisp shadows, and there was a trace of dew that glimmered on the grass.

He let his viewpoint glide forward, at first at walking pace, then a little faster. The grass swept beneath him, and Hiram's replanted trees blurred past, side by side.

The sense of speed was exhilarating.

He still hadn't mastered the controls, and from time to time his viewpoint would plunge clumsily through a tree or a rock; moments of darkness, tinged deep brown or gray. But he was getting the hang of it, and the sense of speed and freedom and clarity was sinking. It was like being ten years old again, he thought, senses fresh and sharp, a body so full of energy he was light as a feather.

He came to the plant's drive. He raised the viewpoint through two or three meters, swept down the drive, and found the freeway. He flew higher and skimmed far above the road, gazing down at the streams of gleaming, beetle-like cars below. The traffic flow, still gathering for the rush hour to come, was dense and fast-moving. He could see patterns in the flow, knots of density that gathered and cleared as the invisible web of software controls optimized the stream of SmartDriven cars.

Suddenly impatient, he rose up further, so that the roadway became a gray 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 gray. 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 swiveled the viewpoint until his field of view was centered 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, selfdeprecating. '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.'

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 neighbor 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 kilometer 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 comer, 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 rumor 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.'

T '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 … '

'I know what the FBI is.' Hiram thumped his desk, frustrated. 'One bloody thing after another.'

At last, Kate thought.

Hiram glared at her. 'Just watch what you say to this arsehole.'

She frowned. 'This government-appointed law enforcement arsehole from the FBI, you mean? Even you answer to the law, Hiram. I'll say what I think best.'

He clenched a fist, seemed ready to say more, then just shook his head. He stalked to his picture window, and the blue light of the sky, filtered through the tinted glass, evoked highlights from his bald pate. 'Bloody hell,' he said. 'Bloody, bloody hell.'

Michael Mavens, FBI Special Agent, wore the standard issue charcoal-gray suit, collarless shirt and shoelace tie. He was blond, whiplash thin, and he looked as if he had played a lot of squash, no doubt at some ultracompetitive FBI academy.

He seemed remarkably young to Kate: no more than mid- to late twenties. And he was nervous, dragging awkwardly at the chair Hiram offered him, rumbling with his briefcase as he opened it and dug out a SoftScreen.

Kate glanced at Hiram. She saw calculation in his broad, dark face; Hiram had spotted this agent's surprising discomfort too.

After showing them his badge, Mavens said, 'I'm glad to find you both here, Mr. Patterson, Ms Manzoni. I'm investigating an apparent security breach.'

Hiram went on the attack. 'What authorization do you nave?'

Mavens hesitated. 'Mr. Patterson, I'm hoping we can all be a little more constructive than that'

'Constructive'?' Hiram snapped. 'What kind of answer is that? Are you acting without authorization?' He reached for a telephone icon in his desktop.

Mavens said calmly, 'I know your secret.'

Hiram's hand hovered over the glowing symbol, then withdrew.

Mavens smiled. 'Search Engine. Security cover FBI level three four, authorization Mavens M. K. Confirm please.'

After a few seconds, the Search Engine reported back, 'Cover in place. Special Agent Mavens.'

Mavens nodded. 'We can speak openly.'

Kate sat down opposite Mavens, intrigued, puzzled, nervous.

Mavens spread his SoftScreen flat on the desktop. It showed a picture of a big white-capped military helicopter. Mavens said, 'Do you recognize this?'

Hiram leaned closer. 'It's a Sikorsky, I think.'

'Actually a VH-3D,' said Mavens.

'It's Marine One,' said Kate. 'The President's helicopter.'

Mavens eyed her. 'That's right. As I'm sure you both know, the President and her husband have spent the last couple of days in Cuba at the UN hydrology conference. They've been using Marine One out there. Yesterday, during a short flight, a brief and private conversation took place between President Juarez and English Prime Minister Huxtable.' He tapped the 'Screen, and it revealed a blocky schematic of the helicopter's interior. 'The Sikorsky is a big bird for such an antique, but it is packed with communication gear. It has only ten seats. Five are taken up by Secret Service agents, a doctor, and military and personal aides to the President.'

Hiram seemed intrigued. 'I guess one of those aides has the football.'

Mavens looked pained. 'We don't use a 'football' anymore, Mr. Patterson. On this occasion the other passengers, in addition to President Juarez herself, were Mr. Juarez, the chief of staff, Prime Minister Huxtable and an English security agent.

'All of these people - and the pilots - have the highest possible security clearances, which in the case of the agents and other staff are checked daily. Mr. Huxtable, of course, despite his old-style title, holds an office equivalent to a state governor. Marine One itself is swept several times a day. Despite your virtual melodramas about spies and double agents, Mr. Patterson, modem antisurveillance measures are pretty foolproof. And besides, the President and Mr. Huxtable were isolated in side a security curtain even within the Sikorsky. We don't know of any way those various levels of security can be breached.' He turned his pale brown eyes on Kate. 'And yet, apparently, they were.

'Your news report was accurate, Ms. Manzoni. Juarez and Huxtable did hold a conversation about the possibility of a military solution to England's dispute with Scotland over water supplies,

'But we have testimony from Mr. Huxtable that his speculation about invading Scotland is - was - private and personal. The notion is his, he hadn't committed it to paper or electronic store, or discussed it with anybody, not his Cabinet, not even his partner. His conversation with President Juarez was actually the first time he'd articulated the idea out loud, to gauge the extent of the President's support for such a proposal, if formulated.

'And at the time you broke the story, neither the Prime Minister nor the President had discussed this with anybody else.' He glared at Kate, 'Ms, Manzoni, you see the situation. The only possible source for your story is the Juarez-Huxtable conversation itself.'

Hiram stood beside Kate. 'She's not going to reveal her sources to a goon like you.'

Mavens rubbed his face and sat back. 'I have to tell you, sir, that bugging the Prez is going to land you with a list of federal charges as long as your arm. An interagency team is investigating this matter. And the President is pretty angry herself. OurWorld could be shut down. And you, Ms. Manzoni, will be lucky to evade jail.'

'You'll have to prove it first,' Hiram blustered. 'I can testify that no OurWorld operative has been anywhere near Marine One, to plant a bug or to do anything else. This interagency investigation team you run … '

Mavens coughed. 'I don't run it. I'm part of it. In fact the Bureau chief himself … '

Hiram's mouth dropped open. 'And does he know you're here? No? Then what are you trying to do here, Mavens? Set me up? Or-blackmail? Is that it?'

Mavens looked increasingly uncomfortable, but he sat still.

Kate touched Hiram's arm. 'I think we'd better hear him out, Hiram.'

Hiram shook her away. He turned to the window, hands caged behind his back, his shoulders working with anger.

Kate leaned toward Mavens. 'You said you knew Hiram's secret. What did you mean?'

And Michael Mavens started talking about wormholes.

The map he produced from his briefcase and spread over the table was hand-drawn on unheaded paper. Evidently, Kate thought, Mavens was straying into speculations he hadn't wanted to share with his FBI colleagues, or even commit to the dubious security of a SoftScreen.

He said, 'This is a map of the route Marine One took yesterday, over the suburbs of Havana. I've marked time points with these crosses. You can see that when the key Juarez-Huxtable onboard conversation took place - it only lasted a couple of minutes - the chopper was here.'

Hiram frowned, and tapped a hatched box highlighted on the map, right under the Sikorsky's position at the start of the conversation. 'And what's this?'

Mavens grinned. 'It's yours, Mr. Patterson. That is an OurWorld DataPipe terminal. A wormhole mouth, linking to your central facility here in Seattle. I believe the DataPipe terminal under Marine One is the mechanism you used to get your information from the story.'

Hiram's eyes narrowed.

Kate listened, but with growing abstraction, as Mavens speculated - a little wildly - about directional microphones and the amplifying effects of the gravitational fields of wormhole mouths. His theory, as it emerged, was that Hiram must be using the fixed DataPipe anchors to perform his bugging.

It was obvious that Mavens had stumbled on some aspects of the truth, but didn't yet have it all.

'Bull,' said Hiram evenly. 'There are holes in your theory I could fly a 747 through.'

'Such as,' Kate said gently, 'OurWorld's ability to get cameras to places where there is no DataPipe wormhole terminal. Like those hurricane-struck Philippine islands. Or Secretary-General Halliwell's cleavage.'

Hiram glared at Kate warningly. Shut up.

Mavens looked confused, but dogged. 'Mr. Patterson, I'm no physicist. I haven't yet figured out all the details. But I'm convinced that just as your wormhole technology is your competitive advantage in data transmission, so it must be in your news-gathering operations.'

'Oh, come on, Hiram,' she said. 'He has most of it.'

Hiram growled, 'Damn it, Manzoni. I told you I wanted plausible deniability at every stage.'

Mavens looked inquiringly at Kate.

She said, 'He means, cover for the existence of the WormCams.'

Mavens smiled. 'WormCams. I can guess what that means. I knew it.'

Kate went on, 'But deniability wasn't always possible. And not in this case. You knew it, Hiram, before you approved the story. It was just too good a lead to pass on ... I think you should tell him what he wants to know.'

Hiram glared at her. 'Why the hell should I?'

'Because,' said Mavens, 'I think I can help you.'

Mavens stared wide-eyed at David's first wormhole mouth, already a museum piece, the spacetime pearl still embedded in its glass block. 'And you don't need anchors. You can plant a WormCam eye anywhere, watch anything ... And you can pick up sound too?'

'Not yet,' Hiram said. 'But the Search Engine is a pretty good lipreader. And we have human experts to back it up. Now, Special Agent. Tell me how you can help me.'

Reluctantly, Mavens set the glass block down on the table. 'As Ms. Manzoni deduced, the rest of my team is only a couple of steps behind me. There will probably be a raid on your facilities tomorrow.'

Kate frowned. 'Then surely you shouldn't be here, tipping us off.'

'No, I shouldn't,' Mavens said seriously. 'Look, Mr. Patterson, Ms. Manzoni, I'll be frank. I'm arrogant enough to believe that on this issue I can see a little more clearly than my superiors, which is why I'm stepping over the mark. Your WormCam technology - even what I was able to deduce about it for myself - is fantastically powerful. And it could do an immense amount of good: bringing criminals to justice, counterespionage, surveillance.'

'If it was in the right hands,' Hiram said heavily.

'If it was in the right hands.'

'And that means yours. The Bureau's.'

'Not just us. But in the public domain, yes. I can't agree with your reporting of the Juarez-Huxtable conversation. But your exposure of the fraudulent science behind the Galveston desalination project, for example, was a masterful piece of journalism. By uncovering that particular scam alone you saved the public purse billions of dollars. I'd like to see responsible news-gathering of that kind continue. But I am a servant of the people. And the people-we-need the technology too, Mr. Patterson.'

'To invade citizens' privacy?' Kate asked.

Mavens shook his head. 'Any technology is open to abuse. There would have to be controls. But - you may not believe it, Ms. Manzoni - on the whole we civil servants are pretty clean.

'And we need all the help we can get. These are increasingly difficult times, as you must know, Ms. Manzoni.'

'The Wormwood.'

'Yes.' He frowned, looking troubled. 'People seem reluctant to take responsibility for themselves, let alone for others, their community. A rise in crime is being matched by a rise in apathy about it. Presumably this will only grow worse as the years go by, as the Wormwood grows closer.'

Hiram seemed intrigued. 'But what difference does it make if the Wormwood is going to cream us all anyhow? When I was a kid in England, we grew up believing that when the nuclear war broke out we'd have just four minutes' warning. We used to talk about it. What would you do with your four minutes? I'd have got blind drunk and … '

'We have centuries,' said Mavens. 'Not just minutes. We have a duty to keep society functioning as best we can, as long as possible. What else can we do? And sir, meanwhile - as has been true for decades - this country has more enemies than any nation in the world. National security may have a higher priority over issues of individual rights.'

'Tell us what you're proposing,' Kate said.

Mavens took a deep breath. 'I want to try to set up a deal. Mr. Patterson, this is your technology. You're entitled to profit from it. I'd propose that you'd keep the patents and industry monopoly. But you'd license your technology to the government, to be used in the public interest, under suitably drafted legislation.'

Hiram snapped, 'You have no authority to offer such a deal.'

Mavens shrugged. 'Of course not. But this is obviously a sensible compromise, a win-win for all concerned-including the people of this country. I think I could sell it to my immediate superior, and then ... '

Kate smiled. 'You really have risked everything for this, haven't you? It's that important?'

'Yes, ma'am, I believe it is.'

Hiram shook his head, wondering. 'You bloody kids and your sentimental idealism.'

Mavens was watching him. 'So what do you say, Mr. Patterson? You want to help me sell this? Or will you wait for the raid tomorrow?'

Kate said, 'They'll be grateful, Hiram. In public, anyhow. Maybe Marine One will come collect you from the helipad on your lawn so the Prez can pin a medal on your chest. This is a step closer to the center of power.'

'For me and my sons,' Hiram said.

'Yes.'

'And I'd maintain my commercial monopoly?'

'Yes, sir.'

Abruptly Hiram grinned. His mood immediately switched as he accepted this defeat and started to revise his plans. 'Let's do it, Special Agent.' He reached across the table and shook Mavens' hand So the secrecy was over; the power the WormCam had granted Hiram would be counterbalanced. Kate felt an immense relief.

But then Hiram turned to Kate, and glared. 'This was your foul-up, Manzoni. Your betrayal. I won't forget it.'

And Kate - startled, disquieted - knew he meant it.

Chapter 10 - THE GUARDIANS

Extracted from National Intelligence Daily, produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, recipients Top Secret Clearance and Higher, 12 December 2036:

... WormCam technology has proven able to penetrate environments where it is impractical or impossible to send human observers, or even robotic roving cameras. For example, WormCam viewpoints have given scientists a completely safe way to inspect the interior of waste repositories in the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where for decades plutonium has been spilling into the soil, air and river. WormCams (operated under strict federal operative supervision) are also being used to inspect deep nuclear waste sites off the coast of Scotland, and to study the cores of the entombed Chernobyl-era reactors which, though long decommissioned, still litter the lands of the old Soviet Union- inspections which have turned up some alarming results (Appendices F-H) ...

... Scientists are seeking approval to use a WormCam to delve without intrusion into a new giant freshwater lake found frozen deep in the Antarctic ice. Ancient, fragile biota have been entombed in such lakes for millions of years. In complete darkness, in water kept liquid by the pressure of hundreds of meters of ice, the trapped species follow their own evolutionary paths, completely distinct from those of surface forms. The scientific arguments appear strong; perhaps this investigation will prove to be truly non-intrusive, and so spare the ancient, fragile life-forms from immediate destruction even as their habitat is breached as notoriously happened early in the century, when overzealous scientists persuaded international commissions to open up Lake Vostok, the first such frozen world to be discovered. A commission reporting to the President's Science Advisor is considering whether the matter can be progressed, with results being made available for proper scientific peer review, without making the WormCam's existence known outside the present restricted circles ...

... The recent rescue of Australian King Harry and his family from the wreck of their yacht during the Gulf of Carpentaria storms has demonstrated the WormCam's promise to transform the efficacy of emergency services. Search-and-rescue operations at sea, for instance, should no longer require fleets of helicopters sweeping large areas of gray, stormy water at great risk to the crews involved; SAR operatives working in the safety of land-based monitoring centers will be able to pinpoint accident victims in a few minutes, and immediately focus rescue effort-and unavoidable risk-where it is required ...

... This fundamentalist Christian sect intended to 'commemorate' the two thousandth anniversary (as they had calculated it) of Christ's assault on the moneylenders in the Temple by setting off an electromagnetic pulse nuclear warhead in the heart of every major financial district on the planet, including New York, London, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Agency analysts concur with the headline writers that, if successful, the attack would have been an electronic Pearl Harbor. The ensuing financial chaos - with bank transfer networks, stock markets, bond markets, trading systems, credit networks, data communication lines all badly disrupted or destroyed - could, according to analysts, have caused a sufficiently powerful shock to the interdependent global financial systems to trigger a worldwide recession. Largely thanks to the use of WormCam intelligence, that disaster has been avoided. With this one success alone, the deployment of the WormCam in the public interest has saved estimated trillions of dollars and spared untold human misery in poverty, even starvation ...

Extracted from 'Wormint: The Patterson WormCam as a Tool for Precision Personal Intelligence and Other Applications.' by Michael Mavens, FBI; published in Proceedings of Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (Intelligence Community), Tyson's Comer, Virginia,

12-14 December, 2036: WormCams were first introduced on a trial basis to federal agencies under the umbrella of an interagency steering and evaluation group on which I served. The steering group contained representatives from the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI, CIA, the Federal Communications Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Institutes of Health. The power of the technology has quickly become apparent, however, and within six months, before completion of the formal pilot, WormCam capabilities are being rolled out to all the major pillars of our intelligence enterprise, that is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

What does the WormCam mean for us?

The WormCam - a surveillance technology which can't be tapped or jammed - cuts through the surveillance and encryption arms race we have been waging since, conservatively, the 1940s. Essentially the WormCam bridges directly across space to its subject, and is capable of providing images of unquestionable authenticity-images, for example, which could be reproduced in the courtroom. By comparison no photographic image, however relevant, has been admissible as evidence in a U.S. court of law since 2010, such has been the ease of doctoring such images.

Domestically WormCams have been used for customs and immigration, food and drug testing and inspection, verification of applications to federal positions, and a variety of other purposes. As regards criminal, justice, though the drafting of a legal framework regarding privacy rights to cover the WormCam's use in criminal investigations remains pending, FBI and police teams have already been able to score a number of spectacular successes- for example, uncovering the plans of lone anarchist Subiru, F. (incidentally claiming to be a second generation clone of twentieth-century musician Michael Jackson) to blow up the Washington Monument.

Let me just remark that in 2035 only an estimated one-third of all felonies was reported and of that third, only a fifth was cleared by arrest and filing of charges. A fifth of a third; that's around seven percent. The balance of the deterrence equation was tipped toward ineffectiveness. Now, though full figures from the trial period arc not yet in, we can already say that apprehension rates will be unproved by orders of magnitude. Ladies and gentlemen, it may be that we arc approaching an age when, for the first time in human history, it can truly be said that crime does not pay ...

Now regarding external affairs: in 2035 the gathering and analysis of foreign intelligence cost $75 billion. But much of this intelligence was of little value; our collection systems were electronic suction systems, picking up much chaff along with the wheat. And in an age in which the threats we face- in general emanating from rogue states or terrorist cells-are precision-targeted, it has long been apparent that our intelligence needs to be precision targeted also. Merely mapping an enemy's military capability, for instance, tells us nothing of his strategic thinking, and still less of his intentions.

But many of our opponents are as sophisticated in technology as we are, and it has proven difficult or impossible to penetrate with conventional electronic means to the heart of their operations. The solution to this has been a renewed reliance on human intelligence, the use of human spies. But these, of course, are difficult to place, notoriously unreliable, and highly vulnerable.

But now we have the WormCam.

A WormCam essentially enables us to locate a remote camera (in technical terms a 'viewpoint') anywhere, without the need for physical intervention. WormCam intelligence.'Wormint,' as the insiders are already calling it-is proving so valuable that WormCam posts have been set up to monitor most of the world's political leaders, friendly and otherwise, the leaders of sundry religious and fanatic groups, many of the world's larger corporations, and so on.

WormCam technology is intimate and personal. We can watch an opponent in the most private of acts, if necessary. The potential for exposure of illicit activities, even blackmail if we choose, is obvious. But more important is the picture we are now able to build up of an enemy's intentions. The WormCam gives us information on an opponent's contacts-for instance weapons suppliers-and we can assess knowledge factors like his religious views, culture, level of education and training, his sources of information, the media outlets he uses.

Ladies and gentlemen, in the past the geography of the physical battlefield was our crucial intelligence target. With the WormCam, the geography of our enemy's mind is opened up ...

Before I move on to some specific early successes of the WormCam teams, I want to touch on the future.

The present technology offers us a WormCam which is capable of high-resolution visual-spectrum imaging. Our scientists are working with the OurWorld people to upgrade this technology to allow the capture of nonvisual-spectrum data-particularly infrared, for nighttime working-and sound, by making the WormCam viewpoint sensitive to physical by-products of sound waves, so reducing our present reliance on lipreading. Furthermore, we aim to make the remote viewpoints fully mobile, so we can shadow a target in motion.

WormCam viewpoints are in principle detectable and federal/OurWorld tiger teams are investigating hypothetical 'anticams,' ways in which an enemy might detect and perhaps blind a WormCam. This might conceivably be done, for instance, by injecting high-energy particles into a viewpoint, causing the wormhole to implode. But we don't believe that this will be a serious obstacle. Remember, a WormCam placement is not a one-off event, lost on detection. Rather, we can place as many WormCam viewpoints as we like in a given location, whether they are detected or not.

And besides, at present U.S. agencies have a monopoly on his technology. Our opponents know we have achieved a remarkable upgrade in our intelligence-gathering capabilities, but they don't even know how we are doing it. Far from developing capabilities to obstruct a WormCam, they don't yet know what they are looking for.

But, of course, our edge in WormCam technology cannot last forever, nor can the technology remain covert. We must begin to plan for a transformed future in which the WormCam is public knowledge, and our own centers of power and command are as open to our opponents as theirs have become to us ...

From OurWorld International News Hour, 28 January, 2037:

Kate Manzoni (to camera): in an eerie rerun of the Watergate scandal of sixty years ago, White House staff reporting to President Maria Juarez have been publicly accused of burgling the campaign headquarters of the Republican Party, thought to be Juarez's main opponents at the upcoming Presidential election of 2040.

The Republicans have claimed that revelations made by Juarez's people-concerning possible rule-breaking campaign-funding links between the GOP and various high-profile businesspeople- could only be based on information gathered by illegal means, such as a wiretap or a burglary.

The White House in response have challenged the Republicans to produce hard evidence of such an intrusion. Which the GOP has so far failed to do ...

Chapter 11 - THE BRAIN STUD

As Kate watched, John Collins flew into Moscow Airport.

At the airport Collins met a younger man. The Search Engine quickly pattern-recognized him as Andrei Popov. Popov, a Russian national, had links to armed insurgency groups operating in all five countries bordering the Aral Sea-Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Kate was getting closer.

With a growing sense of exhilaration, she flew the WormCam viewpoint alongside Collins and Popov as they traveled across Moscow-by bus, by subway, in cars and by foot, even through a snowstorm. She glimpsed the Kremlin and the old, ugly KGB building, as if this was some virtual tourist adventure.

But the poverty of the place was striking. Despite his choice of profession, Collins was an archetypal American abroad; Kate saw his mounting frustration with mobile phone dropouts, his amazement at seeing subway ticket vendors using abacuses to compute change, his disgust at the filth he encountered in public toilets, his disbelieving impatience when he tried to call up the Search Engine and received no reply.

She felt a profound relief when Collins reached a small suburban Moscow airport and boarded a light plane, and she was able to initiate the system she thought of as the autopilot.

Here in the gloom of the Wormworks, sitting before a SoftScreen, she was flying the viewpoint using a joystick and some intelligent supporting software. Ingenious though the system was, ghosting a person's movements through a foreign city was intense, unforgiving work; a single slip of concentration could unravel hours of labor.

But WormCam tracking technology had advanced to the point where she could hook the remote viewpoint to various electronic signatures-for instance of Collins' aircraft. So now her WormCam viewpoint hovered, all but invisible, in the airplane cabin-still at Collins' shoulder-as the plane lofted into the deepening Russian twilight, tracking her quarry without her intervention.

It ought to get easier. The Wormworks teens were working on ways of having a viewpoint track an individual person without the need for human guidance ... All that for the future.

She pushed back her chair, stood up and stretched. She was more tired than she'd realized; she couldn't remember when she'd last taken a break Absently she scanned the continuing WormCam images. Night was falling over central Asia, and through the plane's small windows she could see how the landscape was scarred, swaths of it brown wasteland, still uninhabitable four decades after the fall of the Soviet Union with its ugly contempt for the landscape and its people-

There was a hand on her shoulder, strong thumbs massaging a knot of muscles there. She was startled, but the touch was familiar, and she couldn't help but relax into it

Bobby kissed the crown of her head. 'I knew I'd find you here. Do you know what time it is?'

She glanced at a clock on the SoftScreen. 'Late afternoon?'

He laughed. 'Yes, Moscow time. But this is Seattle, Washington, western hemisphere, and on this side of the planet it's just after 10 A.M. You worked through the night. Again. I have the feeling you're avoiding me.'

She said testily, 'Bobby, you don't understand. I'm tracking this guy. It's a twenty-four-hour job. Collins is a CIA operative who seems to be opening up lines of communication between our government and various shadowy insurrectionists in the Aral Sea area. There's something going on out there the Administration doesn't want to tell us about.'

'But,' Bobby said with mock solemnity, 'the WormCam sees all.' He was wearing casual ski country gear, bright, colorful, thermal-adaptive, very expensive; in the warmth of this corner of the Wormworks, she could see how its artificial pores had opened up, revealing a faint brown sheen of tanned flesh. He leaned toward the SoftScreen, studied the image and her scribbled notes. 'How long will Collins' flight take?'

'Hard to say. Hours.'

He straightened up. 'Then take some time off. Your target is stuck in that plane until it lands, or crashes, and the WormCam can happily track him by itself. And besides he's asleep.'

'But he's with Popov. If he wakes up … '

'Then the recording systems will pick up whatever he says and does. Come on. Give yourself a break. And me.'

... But I don't want to be with you, Bobby, she thought. Because there are things I'd rather not discuss.

And yet ...

And yet, she was still drawn to him, despite what she now knew about him.

You're getting too complicated, Kate. Too introverted. A break from this cold, lifeless place will indeed do you good.

Making an effort to smile, she took his hand.

It was a fine, still day, a welcome interval between the storm systems that now habitually battered the Pacific coast.

Cradling beakers of latte, they walked through the garden areas Hiram had built around his Wormworks. There were low earthworks, ponds, bridges over streams, and unfeasibly large and old trees, all of it imported and installed in typical Hiram fashion, thought Kate, at great expense and with little discrimination or taste. But the sky was a clear, brilliant blue, the winter sun actually delivered a little heat to her face, and the two of them were leaving a trail of dark footsteps in the thick silver layer of lingering dew.

They found a bench. It was temperature-smart and had heated itself sufficiently to dry off the dew. They sat down, sipping coffee.

'I still think you've been hiding from me,' Bobby said mildly. She saw that his retinal implants had polarized in the sunlight, turning silvery, insectile. 'It's the WormCam, isn't it? All the ethical implications you find so disturbing.'

With an eagerness that shamed her, she jumped on that lead. 'Of course it's disturbing. A technology of such power.'

'But you were there when we came to our agreement with the FBI. An agreement that put the WormCam in the hands of the people.'

'Oh, Bobby ... The people don't even know the damn thing exists, let alone that government agencies are using it against them. Look at all the tax defaulters that suddenly got caught, the parents cheating on child support, the Brady Law checks on gun buyers, the serial sex offenders.'

'But that's all for the good. Isn't it? What are you saying-that you don't trust the government? This isn't the twentieth century.'

She grunted. 'Remember what Jefferson said: 'Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.' ... And what about the Republican burglary? How can that be in the people's interest?'

'You can't know for sure that the White House used the WormCam for that.'

'How else?' Kate shook her head. 'I wanted Hiram to let me dig into that. He threw me off the case immediately. We've made a Faustian bargain, Bobby. Those guys in the Administration and the government agencies aren't necessarily crooks, but they're only human. And by giving them such a powerful and secret weapon. Bobby, I wouldn't trust myself with such power. The Republican spying incident is just the start of the Orwellian nightmare we're about to endure.

'And as for Hiram, have you any idea how Hiram treats his employees, here at OurWorld? Job applicants go through screening all the way to a DNA sequence. He profiles all his employees by searching credit databases, police records, even federal records. He already had a hundred ways to measure productivity and performance, and check up on his people. Now he has the WormCam, Hiram can keep us under surveillance twenty-four hours a day if he chooses. And there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it. There have been a whole string of court cases that establish that employees don't have constitutional protection against intrusive surveillance by their bosses.'

'But he needs all that to keep the people working,' Bobby said dryly. 'Since you broke the Wormwood, absenteeism has rocketed, and the use of alcohol and other drugs at work, and … '

'This has nothing to do with the Wormwood,' she said severely. 'This is a question of basic rights. Bobby, don't you get it? OurWorld is a vision of the future for all of us, if monsters like Hiram get to keep the WormCam. And that's why it's important the technology is disseminated, as far and as fast as possible. Reciprocity: at least we'd be able to watch them watching us ... ' She searched his insectile, silvery gaze.

He said evenly, 'Thanks for the lecture. And is that why you're dumping me?'

She looked away.

'It's nothing to do with the WormCam, is it?' He leaned forward, challenging her. 'There's something you don't want to tell me. You've been this way for days. Weeks, even. What is it, Kate? Don't be afraid of hurting me. You won't.'

Probably not, she thought. And that, poor, dear Bobby, is the whole trouble.

She turned to face him. 'Bobby, the stud. The implant Hiram put in your head when you were a boy.'

'Yes?'

'I found out what it's for. What it's really for.'

The moment stretched, and she felt the sunlight prickle on her face, laden with UV even so early in the year. 'Tell me,' he said quietly.

The Search Engine's specialist routines had explained it all to her succinctly. It was a classic piece of early twenty-first-century neurobiological mind-tinkering.

And it had nothing to do with any dyslexia or hyperactivity, as Hiram had claimed.

First, Hiram had suppressed the neural stimulation of areas in the temporal lobe of Bobby's brain that were related to feelings of spiritual transcendence and mystical presence. And his doctors tinkered with parts of the caudate region, trying to ensure that Bobby did not suffer from symptoms relating to obsessive-compulsive disorder which led some people to a need for excessive security, order, predictability and ritual, a need in some circumstances satisfied by the membership of religious communities.

Hiram had evidently intended to shield Bobby from the religious impulses that had so distracted his brother. Bobby's world was to be mundane, earthy, bereft of the transcendent and the numinous. And he wouldn't even know what he was missing. It was, Kate thought sourly, a Godectomy.

Hiram's implant also tinkered with the elaborate interplay of hormones, neurotransmitters and brain regions which were stimulated when Bobby made love. For example, the implant suppressed the opiate-like hormone oxytocin, produced by the hypothalamus, which flooded the brain during orgasm, producing the warm, floating, bonding feelings that followed such acts.

Thanks to a series of high-profile liaisons - which Hiram had discreetly set up and encouraged and even publicized - Bobby had become something of a sexual athlete, and he derived great physical pleasure from the act itself. But his father had made him incapable of love and so, Hiram seemed to have planned, free of loyalties to anyone but his father.

There was more. For instance, a link to the deep portion of Bobby's brain called the amygdala may have been an attempt to control his propensity for anger. A mysterious manipulation of Bobby's orbito-frontal cortex might even have been a bid to reduce his free will. And so on.

Hiram had reacted to his disappointment with David by making Bobby a perfect son: that is, perfectly suited to Hiram's goals. But by doing this Hiram had robbed his son of much that made him human.

Until Kate Manzoni found the switch in his head. She took Bobby back to the small apartment she'd rented in downtown Seattle. There they made love, for the first time in weeks.

Afterward, Bobby lay in her arms, hot, his skin moist under hers where they touched: as close as he could be, yet still remote. It was like trying to love a stranger. But at least, now, she understood why. She reached up and touched the back of his head, the hard edges of the implant under his skin. 'You're sure you want to do this?'

He hesitated. 'What troubles me is that I don't know how I'll be feeling afterwards ... Will I still be me?'

She whispered in his ear. 'You'll feel alive. You'll feel human.'

He held his breath, then said, so quietly she could barely make it out: 'Do it.'

She turned her head. 'Search Engine.'

'Yes, Kate.'

'Turn it off.'

... and for Bobby, still warm with the afterglow of orgasm, it was as if the woman in his arms had suddenly turned three-dimensional, solid and whole, had come to life. Everything he could see, feel, smell - the warm ash scent of her hair, the exquisite line of her cheek where the low light caught it, the seamless smoothness of her belly - it was all just as it had been before. But it was as if he had reached through that surface texture into the warmth of Kate herself. He saw her eyes, watchful, full of concern-concern for him, ,he realized with a fresh jolt. He wasn't alone anymore. And, before now, he hadn't even known he had been.

He wanted to immerse himself in her oceanic warmth. She touched his cheek. He could see that her fingers came away wet.

And now he could feel the great shuddering sobs that racked his body, an uncontrollable storm of weeping. Love and pain coursed through him, exquisite, hot, unbearable.

Chapter 12 - SPACETIME

The inner chaos didn't subside.

He tried to distract himself. He resumed activities he had relished before. But even the most extravagant virtual adventure seemed shallow, obviously artificial, predictable, unengaging.

He seemed to need people, even though he shied away from those close to him, he was a moth fearing the candle flame, he thought, unable to bear the brightness of the emotions involved. So he accepted invitations he wouldn't otherwise have considered, talked to people he had never needed before.

Work helped, with its constant and routine demands for his attention, its relentless logic of meetings and schedules and resource allocation.

And it was a busy time. The new Mind'sEye VR headbands were moving out of the testing labs and approaching production status. His teams of technicians had, suddenly, resolved a last technical glitch: a tendency for the headbands to cause synaesthesia in their users, a muddling of the sensory inputs caused by cross talk between the brain's centers. It was a cause for long celebration. They knew that IBM's renowned Watson research lab had been working on exactly the same problem; whoever cracked the synaesthesia issue first would be the first to reach the market, and would have a clear competitive edge for a long time to come. It now looked as if OurWorld had won that particular race.

So work was absorbing. But he couldn't work twenty-four hours a day, and he couldn't sleep the rest of the time away. And when he was awake, his mind, unleashed for the first time, was rampaging out of control.

As his car's SmartDrive him to the Wormworks, he cowered in fear from the high-speed traffic. An unremarkable tabloid news item - about vicious killings and rapes in the burgeoning Aral Sea water war - moved him to harsh tears. A Puget Sound sunset, glimpsed through a broken layer of fluffy black clouds, filled him with awe simply at being alive.

When he met his father, fear, loathing, love, admiration tore at him - all overlying a deeper, unbreakable bond.

But he could face Hiram. Kate was different. The surging need he felt - to cherish her, possess her, somehow consume her - was completely overwhelming. In her company he became inarticulate, as out of control of his mind as much as his body.

Somehow she knew how he was feeling; and, quietly, she left him alone. He knew she would be there for him when he was ready to face her, and resume their relationship.

But at least with Hiram and Kate he could figure out why he felt the way he did, trace a causal relationship, put tentative labels to the violent emotions that rocked him. The worst of all were the mood swings he seemed to suffer without discernible cause.

He would wake up crying without reason. Or, in the middle of a mundane day, he would find himself filled with an indescribable joy, as if everything suddenly made sense.

His life before seemed remote, textureless, like a flat, colorless pencil sketch. Now he was immersed in a new world of color and texture and light and feeling, where the simplest things - the curl of an early spring leaf, the glimmer of sunlight on water, the smooth curve of Kate's cheek - could be suffused by a beauty he had never known existed.

And Bobby - the fragile ego that rode on the surface of this dark inner ocean - would have to learn to live with the new, complex, baffling person he had suddenly become.

That was why he had come to seek out his brother. He took great comfort from David's stolid, patient presence: this bearlike figure with his bushy blond hair, hunched over his SoftScreens, immersed in his work, satisfied with its logic and internal consistency, scribbling notes with a surprising delicacy. David's personality was as massive and solid as his body; beside him Bobby felt evanescent, a wisp, yet subtly calmed.

One unseasonably cold afternoon they sat cradling coffees, waiting for the results of another routine trial run: a new wormhole plucked out of the quantum foam, extending further than any had before.

'I can understand a theorist wanting to study the limits of the wormhole technology,' Bobby said. 'Pushing the envelope as far as you can. But we made the big breakthrough already. Surely what's important now is the application.'

'Of course,' David said mildly. 'In fact the application is everything. Hiram has a goal of turning wormhole generation from a high-energy physics stunt, affordable only by governments and large corporations, into something much smaller, easily manufactured, miniaturized.'

'Like computers,' Bobby said.

'Exactly. It wasn't until miniaturization and the development of the PC that computers were able to saturate the world: finding new applications, creating new markets-transforming our lives, in fact.

'Hiram knows we won't keep our monopoly forever. Sooner or later somebody else is going to come up with an independent WormCam design. Maybe a better one. And miniaturization and cost reduction are sure to follow.'

'And the future for OurWorld,' said Bobby, 'is surely to be the market leader, all those little wormhole generators.'

'That's Hiram's strategy,' David said. 'He has a vision of the WormCam replacing every other datagathering instrument: cameras, microphones, science sensors, even medical probes. Although I can't say I'm looking forward to a wormhole endoscopy ...

'But I told you I studied a little business myself, Bobby. Mass-produced WormCams will be a commodity, and we will be able to compete only on price. But I believe that with our technical lead Hiram can open up much greater opportunities for himself with differentiation: by coming up with applications which nobody else in the market can offer. And that's what I'm interested in exploring.' He grinned. 'At least, that's what I tell Hiram his money is being spent on down here.'

Bobby studied him, trying to focus on his brother, on Hiram, the WormCam, trying to understand. 'You just want to know, don't you? That's the bottom line for you.'

David nodded. 'I suppose so. Most science is just grunt work. Repetitive slog; endless testing and checking. And because false hypotheses have to be pruned away, much of the work is actually more destructive than constructive. But, occasionally-only a few times, probably, in the luckiest life-there is a moment of transcendence.'

'Transcendence ?'

'Not everybody will put it like that. But it's how it feels to me.'

'And it doesn't matter that there might be nobody to read your papers in five hundred years' time?'

'I'd rather that wasn't true. Perhaps it won't be. But the revelation itself is the thing, Bobby. It always was.'

On the 'Screen behind him there was a starburst of pixels, and a low bell-like tone sounded.

David sighed. 'But not today, it seems.'

Bobby peered over his brother's shoulder at the 'Screen, across which numbers were scrolling. 'Another instability? It's like the early days of the wormholes.'

David tapped at a keyboard, setting up another trial. 'Well, we are being a little more ambitious. Our WormCams can already reach every part of the Earth, crossing distances of a few thousand kilometers. What I'm attempting now is to extract and stabilize wormholes which span significant intervals in Minkowski spacetime, in fact, tens of light-minutes.'

Bobby held up his hands. 'You already lost me. A light-minute is the distance light travels in a minute ... right?'

'Yes. For example, the planet Saturn is around a billion and a half kilometers away. And that is about eighty light-minutes.'

'And we want to see Saturn.'

'Of course we do. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a WormCam that could explore deep space? No more ailing probes, no more missions lasting years ... But the difficulty is that wormholes spanning such large intervals are extremely rare in the quantum foam's probabilistic froth. And stabilizing them presents challenges an order of magnitude more difficult than before. But it's not impossible.'

'Why 'intervals,' not distances?'

'Physicist jargon. Sorry. An interval is like a distance, but in spacetime. Which is space plus time. It's really just Pythagoras' theorem.' He took a yellow legal notepad and began to scribble. 'Suppose you go downtown and walk a few blocks east, a few blocks north. Then you can figure the distance you traveled like this.' He held up the pad:

(distance)² = (east)² + (north)²

'You walked around a right-angled triangle. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of - '

'I know that much.'

'But we physicists think about space and time as a single entity, with time as a fourth coordinate, in addition to the three of space.' He wrote on his pad once more:

(interval)² = (time separation)² - (space separation)²

'This is called the metric for a Minkowski spacetime. And - '

'How can you talk about a separation in time in the same breath as a separation in spaced. You measure time in minutes, but space in kilometers.'

David nodded approvingly. 'Good question. You have to use units in which time and space are made equivalent.' He studied Bobby, evidently searching for understanding. 'Let's just say that if you measure time in minutes, and space in light-minutes, it works out fine.'

'But there's something else fishy here. Why is this a minus sign rather than a plus?'

David rubbed his fleshy nose. 'A map of spacetime doesn't work quite like a map of downtown Seattle. The metric is designed so that the path of a photon-a particle traveling at the speed of light-is a null interval. The interval is zero, because the space and time terms cancel out.'

'This is relativity. Something to do with time dilation, and rulers contracting, and.'

'Yes.' David patted Bobby's shoulder. 'Exactly that. This metric is invariant under the Lorentz transformation ... Never mind. The point is, Bobby, this is the kind of equation I have to use when I work in a relativistic universe, and certainly if I'm trying to build a wormhole that reaches out to Saturn and beyond.'

Bobby mused over the simple, handwritten equation.

With his own emotional whirlwind still churning around him, he felt a cold logic coursing through him, numbers and equations and images evolving, as if he was suffering from some kind of intellectual synaesthesia. He said slowly, 'David, you're telling me that distances in space and time are somehow equivalent. Right? Your wormholes span intervals of spacetime rather than simply distances. And that means that if you do succeed in stabilizing a wormhole big enough to reach Saturn, across eighty light-minutes - '

'Yes?'

'Then it could reach across eighty minutes. I mean, across time.' He stared at David. 'Am I being really dumb?'

David sat in silence for long seconds.

'Good God,' he said slowly. 'I didn't even consider the possibility, I've been configuring the wormhole to span a spacelike interval, without even thinking about it.' Feverishly, he began to tap at his SoftScreen. 'I can reconfigure it from right here. If I restrict the spacelike interval to a couple of meters, then the rest of the wormhole span is forced to become timelike ... '

'What would that mean? David?'

A buzzer rang, painfully loudly, and the Search Engine spoke. 'Hiram would like to see you, Bobby.'

Bobby glanced at David, flooded with sudden, absurd fear.

David nodded curtly, already absorbed in the new direction of his work. 'I'll call you later, Bobby. This could be significant. Very significant.'

There was no reason to stay. Bobby walked away into the darkness of the Wormworks.

Hiram paced around his downtown office, visibly angry, fists clenched. Kate was sitting at Hiram's big conference table, looking small, cowed.

Bobby hesitated at the door, for a few breaths physically unable to force himself into the room, so strong were the emotions churning here. But Kate was looking at him-forcing a smile, in fact.

He walked into the room. He reached the security of a seat, on the opposite side of the table from Kate. Bobby quailed, unable to speak. Hiram glared at him. 'You let me down, you little shit.'

Kate snapped, 'For Christ's sake, Hiram.'

'You keep out of this.' Hiram thumped the tabletop, and a SoftScreen in the plastic surface lit up before Bobby. It started to run fragments of a news story: images of Bobby, a younger Hiram, a girl-pretty, timid-looking, dressed in colorless, drab, outdated fashions and a picture of the same woman two decades later, intelligent, tired, handsome. The Earth News Online logo was imprinted on each image.

'They found her, Bobby,' Hiram said. 'Thanks to you. Because you couldn't keep your bloody mouth shut, could you?'

'Found who?'

'Your mother.'

Kate was working the SoftScreen before her, scrolling j quickly through the information, 'Heather Mays. Is that her name? She married again. She has a daughter, you have a half-sister, Bobby.'

Hiram's voice was a snarl. 'Keep out of this, you, manipulative bitch. Without you none of this would have happened.'

Bobby, striving for control, said, 'None of what?'

'Your implant would have stayed doing what it was doing. Keeping you steady and happy. Christ, I wish somebody had put a thing like that in my head when I was your age. Would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. And you wouldn't have shot off your mouth in front of Dan Schirra.'

'Schirra? From ENO?'

'Except he didn't call himself that, when he met you last week. What did he do, get you drunk and maudlin, blubbing about your evil father, your long-lost mother?'

'I remember,' Bobby said. 'He calls himself Mervyn. Mervyn Costa. I've known him a long time.'

'Of course you have. He's been cultivating you, on behalf of ENO, to get to me. You didn't know who he was, but you kept your reserve-before, when you had the implant to help you keep a clear head. And now this. It's open season on Hiram Patterson. And it's all your bloody fault, Manzoni.'

Kate was still scrolling through the news piece and its hyperlinks. 'I didn't screw and dump this woman two decades ago.' She tapped at her SoftScreen, and an area of the table before Hiram lit up. 'Schirra has corroborative evidence. Look.'

Bobby looked over his father's shoulder. The Screen showed Hiram sitting at a table-this table, Bobby realized with a jolt, this room- nd he was working his way through a mound of papers, amending and signing. The image was grainy, unsteady, but clear enough. Hiram came to a particular document, shook his head as if in disgust, and hastily signed it, turning it facedown on a pile to his right.

After that the image reran in slo-mo, and the viewpoint zoomed in on the document. After some focusing and image enhancement, it was possible to read some of the text.

'You see?' Kate said. 'Hiram, they caught you signing an update of the payoff agreement you made with Heather more than twenty years ago.'

Hiram looked at Bobby, almost pleading. 'It was over long ago. We came to a settlement. I helped her develop her career. She makes documentary features. She's been successful.'

'She was a brood mare, Bobby,' Kate said coldly. 'He's kept up his payments to keep her quiet. And to make sure she never tried to get near to you.'

Hiram prowled around the room, hammering at the walls, glaring at the ceiling. 'I have this suite swept three times a day. How did they get those images? Those incompetent arseholes in Building Security have screwed up again.'

'Come on, Hiram,' Kate said evenly, evidently enjoying herself. 'Think about it. There's no way ENO could bug your headquarters. Any more than you could bug theirs.'

'But I wouldn't need to bug them,' Hiram said slowly. 'I have the WormCam ... Oh.'

'Well done.' Kate grinned. 'You figured it out. ENO must have a WormCam as well. It's the only way they could have achieved this scoop. You lost your monopoly, Hiram. And the first thing they did with their WormCam was turn it on you.' She threw back her head and laughed out loud.

'My God.' Bobby said. 'What a disaster.'

'Oh, garbage,' she snapped. 'Come on, Bobby. Pretty soon the whole world will know the WormCam exists; it won't be possible to keep a lid on it any longer. It has to be a good thing if the WormCam is prized out of the hands of this sick duopoly, the federal government and Hiram Patterson, for God's sake.'

Hiram said coldly, 'If Earth News have WormCam technology, it's obvious who gave it to them.'

Kate looked puzzled. 'Are you implying that …'

'Who else?'

'I'm a journalist,' Kate flared. 'I'm no spy. The hell with you, Hiram. It's obvious what happened. ENO just figured out that you must have found a way to adapt your wormholes as remote viewers. With that basic insight they duplicated your researches. It wouldn't be hard; most of the information is in the public domain. Hiram, your hold on the WormCam was always fragile. It only took one person to figure it out independently.'

But Hiram didn't seem to be hearing her. 'I forgave you, took you in. You took my money. You betrayed my trust. You damaged my son's mind and poisoned him against me.'

Kate stood and faced Hiram. 'If you really believe that, you're more twisted than I thought you were.'

The Search Engine called softly, 'Excuse me, Hiram. Michael Mavens is here, asking to see you. Special Agent Mavens of .'

'Tell him to wait.'

'I'm afraid that isn't an option, Hiram. And I have a call from David. He says it's urgent.'

Bobby looked from one face to the other, frightened, bewildered, as his life came to pieces around him.

Mavens took a seat and opened a briefcase.

Hiram snapped, 'What do you want, Mavens? I didn't expect to see you again. I thought the deal we signed was comprehensive.'

'I thought so too, Mr. Patterson.' Mavens looked genuinely disappointed. 'But the problem is, you didn't stick to it. OurWorld as a corporation. One employee specifically. And that's why I'm here. When I heard this case had turned up, I asked if I could become involved. I suppose I have a special interest.'

Hiram said heavily, 'What case?'

Mavens picked up what looked like a charge sheet from his briefcase. 'The bottom line is that a charge of trade-secret misappropriation, under the 1996 Economic Espionage Act, has been brought against OurWorld: by IBM, specifically by the director of their Thomas J. Watson research laboratory. Mr. Patterson, we believe the WormCam has been used to gain illegal access to IBM proprietary research results. Something called a synaesthesia-suppression software suite, associated with virtual-reality technology.' He looked up. 'Does that make sense?'

Hiram looked at Bobby.

Bobby sat transfixed, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, with no real idea how he should react, what he should say.

Kate said, 'You have a suspect, don't you. Special Agent?'

The FBI man eyed her steadily, sadly. 'I think you already know the answer to that question, Ms. Manzoni.'

Kate appeared confused.

Bobby snapped, 'You mean Kate? That's ridiculous.'

Hiram thumped a fist into a palm. 'I knew it. I knew she was trouble. But I didn't think she'd go this far.'

Mavens sighed. 'I'm afraid there's a very clear evidentiary trail leading to you, Ms. Manzoni.'

Kate flared. 'If it's there, it was planted.'

Mavens said, 'You'll be placed under arrest. I hope there won't be any trouble. If you'll sit quietly, the Search Engine will read you your rights.'

Kate looked startled as a voice - inaudible to the rest of them-  began to sound in her ears.

Hiram was at Bobby's side. 'Take it easy, son. We'll get through his shit together. What were you trying to do, Manzoni? Find another way to get to Bobby? Is that what it was all about?' Hiram's face was a grim mask, empty of emotion: there was no trace of anger, pity, relief-or triumph.

And the door was flung open. David stood there, grinning, his bearlike bulk filling the frame; he held a rolled-up SoftScreen in one hand. 'I did it,' he said. 'By God, I did it ... What's happening here?'

Mavens said, 'Doctor Curzon, it may be better if - '

'It doesn't matter. Whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter. Not compared to this.' He spread his SoftScreen on the tabletop. 'As soon as I got it I came straight here. Look at this.'

The SoftScreen showed what looked superficially like a rainbow, reduced to black and white and gray, uneven bands of light that arced, distorted, across a black background.

'Of course it's somewhat grainy,' David said. 'But still, this picture is equivalent to the quality of images returned by NASA's first flyby probes back in the 1970s.'

'That's Saturn,' Mavens said, wondering. 'The planet Saturn.'

'Yes. We're looking at the rings.' David grinned. 'I established a WormCam viewpoint all of a billion and a half kilometers away. Quite a thing, isn't it? If you look closely you can even see a couple of the moons, here in the plane of the rings.'

Hiram laughed out loud and hugged David's bulk. 'My God, that's bloody terrific.'

'Yes. Yes, it is. But that's not important. Not anymore.'

'Not important? Are you kidding?'

Feverishly David began to tap at his SoftScreen; the image of Saturn's rings dissolved. 'I can reconfigure it from here. It's as easy as that. It was Bobby who gave me the clue. I Just hadn't thought out of the box as he did. If I restrict the spacelike interval to a couple of meters, then the rest of the wormhole span becomes timelike ... '

Bobby leaned forward to see. The 'Screen now showed an equally grainy image of a much more mundane scene. Bobby recognized it immediately: it was David's work cubicle in the Wormworks. David was sitting mere, his back to the viewpoint, and Bobby was standing at his side, looking over his shoulder.

'As easily as that,' David said again, his voice small, awed. 'Of course we'll have to run repeatable trials, properly timed.'

Hiram said, 'That's just the Wormworks. So what?'

'You don't understand. This new wormhole has the same, umm, length as the other.'

'The one that reached to Saturn.'

'Yes. But instead of spanning eighty light-minutes - '

Mavens finished it for him. 'I get it. This wormhole spans eighty minutes.'

'Yes,' David said. 'Eighty minutes into the past. Look, Father. You're seeing me and Bobby, just before you summoned him away.'

Hiram's mouth had dropped open.

Bobby felt as if the world was swimming around him, changing, configuring into some strange, unknowable pattern, as if another chip in his head had been switched off. He looked at Kate, who seemed diminished, terrified, lost in shock.

But Hiram, his troubles dismissed, grasped the implications immediately. He glared into the air. 'I wonder how many of them are watching us right now?'

Mavens said, 'Who?'

'In the future. Don't you see? If he's right this is a turning point in history, this moment, right here and right now, the invention of this, this past viewer. Probably the air around us is fizzing with WormCam viewpoints, sent back by future historians. Biographers. Hagiographers.' He lifted up his head and bared his teeth. 'Are you watching me? Are you? Do you remember my name? I'm Hiram Patterson! Hah! See what I did, you arseholes''

And in the corridors of the future, innumerable watchers met his challenging gaze.