The Light of Other Days

  For a long time to come, whatever the outcome of the case, Kate wouldn't be going anywhere. So Bobby decided to go find his mother.

  Heather Mays lived in a place called Thomas City, close to the Utah-Arizona state line. Bobby flew into Cedar City and drove from there. At Thomas, he stopped the car a few blocks short of Heather's home and walked.

  A police car silently cruised by, and a beefy male cop peered out at Bobby. The cop's face was a broad, hostile moon, scarred by the pits of multiple basal-cell carcinomas. But his glare softened with recognition. Bobby could read his lips: Good day, Mr. Patterson.

  As the car moved on, Bobby felt a shiver of self consciousness. The WormCam had made Hiram the most famous person on the planet, and in the all-seeing public eye, Bobby stood right at his side.

  He knew, in fact, that as he approached his mother's home a hundred WormCam viewpoints must hover at his shoulder even now, gazing into his face at this difficult moment, invisible emotional vampires.

  He tried not to think about it: the only possible defense against the WormCam. He walked on through the heart of the little town.

  Out-of-season April snow was falling on the roofs and gardens of clapboard houses that might have been preserved for a hundred years. He passed a small pond where children were skating, round and round in tight circles, laughing loudly. Even under the pale wintry sun, the children wore sunglasses and silvery, reflective smears of sunblock.

  Thomas was a settled, peaceful, anonymous place, one of hundreds like it, he supposed, here in the huge empty heart of America. It was a place that, three months ago, he would have regarded as deadly dull; if he'd ever found himself here he probably would have hightailed it for Vegas as soon as possible. And yet now he found himself wondering how it would have been to grow up here.

  As he watched the cop car pass slowly along the street, he noticed a strange flurry of petty law-breaking following in its wake. A man emerging from a sushi-burger store crumpled the paper his food had been wrapped in and dropped it to the floor, right under the cops' noses. At a crossing, an elderly woman jaywalked, glaring challengingly through the cops' windscreen. And so on. The cops watched tolerantly. And as soon as the car had passed, the people, done with thumbing their noses at the authorities, resumed their apparently lawful lives.

  This was a widespread phenomenon. There had been a surprisingly wide-ranging, if muted, rebellion against the new regime of invisible WormCam overseers. The idea of the authorities having such immense powers of oversight did not, it seemed, sit well with the instincts of many Americans, and there had been rises in petty-crime rates all over the country. Otherwise law-abiding people seemed suddenly struck by a desire to perform small illegal acts—littering, jaywalking—as if to prove they were still free, despite the authorities' assumed scrutiny. And local cops were learning to be tolerant of this.

  It was just a token, of liberties defended. But Bobby supposed it was healthy.

  He reached the main street. Animated images on tabloid vending machines urged him to download their latest news, for just ten dollars a shot. He eyed the seductive headlines. There was some serious news, local, national and international—it seemed that the town was getting over an outbreak of cholera, related to stress on the water supply, and was having some trouble assimilating its quota of sea-level-rise relocates from Galveston Island—but the serious stuff was mostly swamped by tabloid trivia.

  A local member of Congress had been forced out of office by a WormCam exposure of sexual peccadilloes. She had been caught pressuring a high-school football hero, sent to Washington as a reward for his sporting achievements, into another form of athletics... But the boy had been over the age of consent; as far as Bobby was concerned the Representative's main crime, in this dawning age of the WormCam, was stupidity.

  Well, she wasn't the only one. It was said that twenty percent of members of Congress, and almost a third of the Senate, had announced they would not be seeking reelection, or would retire early, or had just resigned outright. Some commentators estimated that fully half of all America's elected officials might be forced out of office before the WormCam became embedded in the national, and individual, consciousness.

  Some said this was a good thing. that people were being frightened into decency. Others pointed out that most humans had moments they would prefer not to share with the rest of mankind. Perhaps in a couple of electoral cycles the only survivors among those in office, or prepared to run for office, would be the pathologically dull with no personal lives to speak of at all.

  No doubt the truth, as usual, would be somewhere between the extremes.

  There was still some coverage of last week's big story: the attempt by unscrupulous White House aides to discredit a potential opponent of President Juarez at the next election campaign. They had WormCammed him sitting on the john with his trousers down his ankles, picking his nose and extracting fluff from his navel.

  But this had rebounded on the voyeurs, and had done no damage to Governor Beauchamp at all. After all, everybody had to use the john; and probably nobody, no matter how obscure, did so now without wondering if there was a WormCam viewpoint looking down (or, worse, up) at her.

  Even Bobby had taken to using the lavatory in the dark. It wasn't easy, even with the new easy-use touch-textured plumbing that was rapidly becoming commonplace. And he sometimes wondered if there was anybody in the developed world who still had sex with the lights on...

  He doubted that even the supermarket-tabloid vendors would persist with such paparazzi exposure as the shock value wore off. It was telling that these images, which would have been shockingly revealing just a few months ago, now blared multicolored in the middle of the afternoon from stands in the main street of this Mormon community, unregarded by almost everyone, young and old, children and churchgoers alike.

  It seemed to Bobby that the WormCam was forcing the human race to shed a few taboos, to grow up a little.

  He walked on.

  The Mayses' home was easy to find. Before this otherwise nondescript house, in a nondescript residential street, here in the middle of classic small-town America, he found the decades-old symbol of fame or notoriety: a dozen or so news crews, gathered before the white painted picket fence that bordered the garden. Instant access WormCam technology or not, it was going to take a long time before the news-watching public was weaned off the interpretative presence of a reporter interposing herself before some breaking news story.

  Bobby's arrival, of course, was a news event in itself. Now the journalists came running toward him, drone cameras bobbing above them like angular, metallic balloons, snapping questions. Bobby, this way please... Bobby... Bobby, is it true this is the first time you've seen your mother since you were three years old?... Is it true your father doesn't want you here, or was that scene in the OurWorld boardroom just a setup for the WormCams?... Bobby... Bobby...

  Bobby smiled, as evenly as he could manage. The reporters didn't try to follow him as he opened the small gate and walked through the fence. After all, there was no need; no doubt a thousand WormCam viewpoints were trailing him even now.

  He knew there was no point asking for respect for his privacy. There was no choice, it seemed, but to endure. But he felt that unseen gaze, like a tangible pressure on the back of his neck.

  And the eeriest thought of all was that among this clustering invisible crowd there might be watchers from the unimaginable future, peering back along the tunnels of time to this moment. What if he himself, a future Bobby, was among them?...

  But he must live the rest of his life, despite this assumed scrutiny.

  He rapped on the door and waited, with gathering nervousness. No WormCam, he supposed, could watch the way his heart was pumping; but surety the watching millions could see the set of his jaw, the drops of perspiration he could feel on his brow despite the cold.

  The door opened.

  It had taken some persuading for Bobby to get Hiram to give his blessing to this meeting.
br />   Hiram had been seated alone at his big mahogany effect desk, before a mound of papers and SoftScreens. He sat hunched over, defensively. He had developed a habit of glancing around, flicking his gaze through the air, searching for WormCam viewpoints like a mouse in fear of a predator.

  "I want to see her," Bobby had said. "Heather Mays. My mother. I want to go meet her."

  Hiram looked as exhausted and uncertain as at any time Bobby could remember. "It would be a mistake. What good would it do you?"

  Bobby hesitated. "I don't know. I don't know how it feels to have a mother."

  "She isn't your mother. Not in any real sense. She doesn't know you, and you don't know her."

  "I feel as if I do. I see her on every tabloid show..."

  "Then you know she has a new family. A new life that has nothing to do with you." Hiram eyed him. "And you know about the suicide."

  Bobby frowned. "Her husband."

  "He committed suicide, because of the media intrusion. All because your girlfriend gave away the WormCam to the sleaziest journalistic reptiles on the planet. She's responsible."

  "Dad."

  "Yes, yes, I know. We had this argument already."

  Hiram got out of his chair, walked to the window, and massaged the back of his neck. "Christ, I'm tired. Look, Bobby, any time you feel like coming back to work, I could bloody well use some help."

  "I don't think I'm ready right now."

  "Everything's gone to hell since the WormCam was released. All the extra security is a pain in the arse..."

  Bobby knew that was true. Reaction to the existence of the WormCam, almost all of it hostile, had come from a whole spectrum of protest groups—from venerable campaigners like the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, all the way to attempted attacks on this corporate HQ, the Wormworks, and even Hiram's home. An awful lot of people, on both sides of the law, felt they had been hurt by the WormCam's relentless exposure of the truth. Many of them seemed to need somebody to blame for their travails—and who better than Hiram?

  "We're losing a lot of good people, Bobby. Many of them haven't the guts to stick with me now I've become public enemy number one, the man who destroyed privacy. I can't say I blame them. It's not their fight.

  "And even those who've stayed around can't keep their hands off the WormCams. The illicit use has been incredible. And you can guess what for: spying on their neighbors, on their wives, their workmates. We've had endless rows, fistfights and one attempted shooting, as people find out what their friends really think of them, what they do to them behind their backs... And now you can see into the past, it's impossible to hide. It's addictive. And I suppose it's a taster of what we have to expect when the past-view WormCam gets out to the general public. We're going to ship millions of units, that's for sure. But for now it's a pain in the arse; I've had to ban illicit use and lock down the terminals..." He eyed his son. "Look, there's a lot to do. And the world isn't going to wait until your precious soul is healed."

  "I thought business is going well, even though we lost the monopoly on the WormCam."

  "We're still ahead of the game." Hiram's voice was getting stronger, his phrasing more fluent, Bobby noticed; he was speaking to the invisible audience he assumed was watching him, even now. "Now we can disclose the existence of the WormCam, there is a whole host of new applications we can roll out. Videophones, for instance: a direct-line wormhole pair between sender and receiver; we can see a top-end market opening up immediately, with mass-market models to follow. Of course that will have an impact on the DataPipe business, but there will still be a need for tracking and identification technology... but that's not where my problems lie. Bobby, we have an AGM next week. I have to face my shareholders."

  "They aren't going to give you a rough ride. The financials are superb."

  "It's not that." He glanced around the room warily. "How can I put this? Before the WormCam, business was a closed game. Nobody knew my cards—my competitors, my employees, even my investors and shareholders if I wanted it that way. And that gave me a lot of leverage, for bluff, counterbluff."

  "Lying?"

  "Never that," Hiram said firmly, as Bobby knew he had to. "It's a question of posture. I could minimize my weaknesses, advertise my strengths, surprise the competition with a new strategy, whatever. But now the rules have changed. Now the game is more like chess—and I cut my teeth playing poker. Now—for a price—any shareholder or competitor, or regulator come to that, can check up on any aspect of my operation. They can see all my cards, even before I play them. And it's not a comfortable feeling."

  "You can do the same to your competitors," Bobby said. "I've read plenty of articles which say that the new open-book management will be a good thing. If you're open to inspection, even by your employees, you're accountable. And it's more likely valid criticism is going to reach you, and you'll make fewer mistakes..."

  The economists argued that openness brought many benefits to business. Without any one party holding a monopoly of information there was a better chance of closing a given deal: with information on true costs available to everybody, only a reasonable level of profit-taking was acceptable. Better information flows led to more perfect competition; monopolies and cartels and other manipulators of the market were finding it impossible to sustain their activities. With open and accountable cash flows, criminals and terrorists weren't able to squirrel away unrecorded cash. And so on.

  "Jesus," Hiram growled. "When I hear guff like that, I wish I sold management textbooks. I'd be making a killing right now." He waved his hand at the downtown buildings beyond the window. "But out there it's no business-school discussion group.

  "It's like what happened to the copyright laws with the advent of the Internet. You remember that?... No, you're too young. The Global Information Infrastructure—the thing that was supposed to replace the Berne copyright convention—collapsed back in the nought-noughts. Suddenly the Internet was awash with unedited garbage. Every damn publishing house was forced out of business, and all the authors went back to being computer programmers, all because suddenly somebody was giving away for free the stuff they used to sell to earn a crust.

  "Now we're going through the same thing all over again. You have a powerful technology which is leading to an information revolution, a new openness. But that conflicts with the interests of the people who originated or added value to that information in the first place. I can only make a profit on what OurWorld creates, and that largely derives from ownership of ideas. But laws of intellectual ownership are soon going to become unenforceable."

  "Dad, it's the same for everybody."

  Hiram snorted. "Maybe. But not everybody is going to prosper. There are revolutions and power struggles going on in every boardroom in this city. I know, I've watched most of them. Just as they have watched mine. What I'm telling you is that I'm in a whole new world here. And I need you with me."

  "Dad, I have to get my head straight."

  "Forget Heather. I'm trying to warn you that you'll get hurt."

  Bobby shook his head. "If you were me, wouldn't you want to meet her? Wouldn't you be curious?"

  "No," he said bluntly. "I never went back to Uganda to find my father's family. I never regretted it. Not once. What good would it have done? I had my own life to build. The past is the past; it doesn't do any bloody good to examine it too closely." He looked into the air, challengingly. "And all you leeches who are working on more exposes of Hiram Patterson can write that down too."

  Bobby stood up. "Well, if it hurts too much, I can just turn the switch you put in my head, can't I?"

  Hiram looked mournful. "Just don't forget where your true family is, son."

  A girl stood at the door; slim, no taller than his shoulder, dressed in a harsh electric blue shift with a glaring Pink Lincoln design. She scowled at Bobby.

  "I know who you are," he said. "You're Mary." Heather's daughter by her second marriage. Another half-sibling he'd only just found out about. She looked younger than he
r fifteen years. Her hair was cut brutally short, and a soft-tattoo morphed on her cheek. She was pretty, with high cheekbones and warm eyes; but her face was pursed into a frown that looked habitual.

  He forced a smile. "Your mother is..."

  "Expecting you. I know." She looked past him at the clutch of reporters. "You'd better come in."

  He wondered if he should say something about her father, express sympathy. But he couldn't find the words, and her face was hard and blank, and the moment passed.

  He stepped past her into the house. He was in a narrow hallway cluttered with winter shoes and coats; he glimpsed a warm-looking kitchen, a lounge with big SoftScreens draped over the walls, what looked like a home study.

  Mary poked his arm. "Watch this." She stepped forward, faced the reporters and lifted her shift up over her head. She was wearing panties, but her small breasts were bare. She pulled the shift down, and slammed shut the door. He could see spots of color on her cheeks. Anger, embarrassment?

  "Why did you do that?"

  "They look at me the whole time anyway." And she turned on her heel and ran upstairs, her shoes clattering on bare wooden boards, leaving him stranded in the hallway.

  "...Sorry about that. She isn't adjusting too well."

  And here, at last, was Heather, walking slowly up the hallway to him.

  She was smaller than he had expected. She looked slim, even wiry, if a little round-shouldered. Her face might once have shared Mary's elfin look—but now those cheekbones were prominent under sun-aged skin, and her brown eyes, sunk deep in pools of wrinkles, were tired. Her hair, streaked with gray, was pulled back into a tight bob.

  She was looking up at him, quizzically. "Are you okay?"

  Bobby, for a few heartbeats, didn't trust himself to speak. "...Yes. I'm just not sure what to call you."

  She smiled. "How about 'Heather'? This is complicated enough already."

  And, without warning, she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around his chest.