It was the only call in a whole week that Tim roused himself to answer.
The scuffed screen in his bedroom showed him Vanessa’s heart-shaped face creased with anxiety. She was regarding her own screen’s picture with almost maternal concern. “I should have called earlier,” she said. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to speak to anybody. How’s it been?”
“Pretty shitty. The residents are furious with Alison for taking me in. There are reporters camped outside the estate gates, and there’s already been a couple of fights between them and the security company people.”
“That’s awful. They’re so much animals. Can’t the police do something?”
“They say not. I just can’t escape, you know? The pair of them are all over the news streams. It’s like they’re a celebrity couple, or something; they’re getting the same kind of coverage that Sir Mitch and Stephanie do. God, even the DataMail interviewed Annabelle. Everything she said was just crap, how much she loves him, how much they’ve got in common. And I saw pictures of them going to the Summer Serpentine party together down in London. Then there was a thing about them at a nightclub in Mayfair.”
“Filter it out, Tim, for heaven’s sake. You’re the best programmer out of all of us.”
“Yeah, right. Did you know she was seeing him?”
“No!” She shook her head in regret. “No, Tim, I didn’t. None of us did. Look, I’m majorly sorry it happened, but you’re too good for her. Really.”
He knew he should smile at that, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Thanks.”
“That’s what she’s like, Tim. Just a body, there’s no character there, no substance. If I’d been dating you, I would never have done that.”
“But we weren’t dating.”
“That’s just a timing thing. Hey look, are you still coming to the protest march?”
“Dunno. Hadn’t thought about it much.”
“Figures. But you know, you’re really due a break. Why don’t you come up here to Nottingham for a couple of days before? There’s room; and this house has a big walled garden, nobody would know you’re here. We could travel down to meet with the others afterward.”
It took him a moment to realize what she was saying. How come she’d never given off signals when they were at school? Five years they’d known each other—and nothing. “That’s, er, really kind. But you so much don’t want me to visit right now. They’ve doubled the size of my bodyguard team, which is a huge pain. The Duke cow said the EIC were showing an interest.”
“God, that is so much scary.”
“I don’t suppose they’ll be interested in me. Christ, I hate him more than they do.”
“It’ll all die down. These things do. The bodyguards will go away.”
“I hope so. Call you back in a couple of days?”
“I’ll be here.”
41. SEMIBALLISTIC
AFTER A COUPLE OF DAYS of dutiful attendance at the Houston physics conference they caught the daily American International flight to Antigua out of Miami. Despite the collapse of the Caribbean mass tourism industry, each flight was always full. Ever stricter industrial and bioethic regulations in the developed nations made the relocation of certain specialist core activities to the Windies an attractive proposition for a lot of companies and researchers. The most prominent was of course the private spaceflight operators, even though they were among the smallest financial contributors to the economy of the Caribbean islands.
“I can’t see any spaceplanes,” Annabelle complained as they were on their approach to St. John’s. She was pressed up against the cabin window.
Jeff looked over her shoulder. There was a row of large hangars at one end of the airport, made of geodesic solar panels. “Don’t worry, we’ll see them before we leave.”
“Do you think we’ll meet Stephanie and Sir Mitch as well?”
“It’s a small island.”
THEY WERE BOOKED in at the Hawksbill Bay resort, thirty minutes from the capital across the island’s dilapidated roads. Their Mercedes taxi was ten years old, but thankfully the air conditioning was working well as it slowly negotiated the potholes and crumbling tarmac.
Even before the rising ultraviolet radiation started bleaching tropical vegetation, the island had little land under cultivation since the sugarcane industry collapsed in the late twentieth century. Despite the revenue from the corporate laboratories and restricted heavily automated industrial plants that was paid into government coffers, the locals still lived much the same life as they always had. They fished and tended to their new GM banana trees provided by the UN Tropics Regeneration Office and nurtured small vegetable gardens and harvested natural-growing ganja, activities that left them almost completely disconnected from the global economy.
When they finally started down the last steep slope toward the four coves that formed the resort, Jeff stared in mild astonishment at the clean deep-turquoise water of the Caribbean Sea. It was the kind of landscape he thought couldn’t possibly exist in the real world, belonging instead to some mocked-up tourist brochure. The beaches were composed of pristine white sand that gleamed brighter than snow under the dangerous midday sun. Behind them, a thick swath of GM royal palms and coconut trees marked the boundary between sand and the manky scrub bushes that covered the rest of the island. There was an old dark stone mill tower on one of the promontories, fronting the resort’s main building, a white pavilion-style structure that could have been transplanted from the heart of the British Raj. It contained the reception, restaurant, and bar. Three bellboys in scarlet polo shirts emerged and hurried out to the taxi to collect their luggage.
Brightly colored parrots squawked excitedly from the foliage surrounding the reception-area fountain as Jeff booked in.
“You’re Jeff Baker, aren’t you?”
He turned to see a very pretty girl in a purple bikini and a white sarong skirt standing outside the entrance to the bar, a cocktail glass in one hand. She was in her early twenties, with implausibly long tousled blonde hair that reached below her hips. It must have been extensions, or the result of an exceptionally powerful genoprotein treatment.
“And you must be Annabelle,” she continued. “We heard you were coming.”
Annabelle gave her a slightly flustered smile. “Yes.”
“Hi,” the girl squealed. “I’m Karenza.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Jeff said.
Karenza gave a diffident shrug. “You don’t recognize me. I’m Jewel. From Sunset Marina.”
“Oh, right,” Annabelle said. “Sorry, it’s been a long trip.”
Jeff frowned. He was sure he’d heard the soap’s name before. Couldn’t think where. Surely he hadn’t started watching that kind of crap before rejuvenation?
“There’s a whole bunch of us here,” Karenza said. She waved her glass toward the bar, slopping some of the liquid onto the floor. She was seriously drunk, Jeff realized.
“Bunch of who?” Annabelle asked.
“The cast. We’re doing a photo shoot for Pantherlux, their new catalog.”
“Right.”
“Are you coming to the bar tonight? I’d love to talk to you. We all would. I’ve never met anyone as important as you before.”
“That’s a date,” Jeff said.
The resort manager himself, Mr. Sam, led them along the second beach. Behind the sands, a long line of white-painted wooden chalets were tucked away under the palms, almost invisible amid the shadows and lush foliage. Jeff had booked the last one, right atop the promontory opposite the mill.
As they walked along the gentle bluff above the beach, sweating from the tremendous heat, Annabelle got an impression of their fellow residents. Most of them were American, though she could hear several European languages being spoken. Men lazed around in hammocks, bellies hanging over floral swimming trunks, their eyes hidden away behind PCglasses as they muttered constantly to their interfaces. Their womenfolk lay on loungers, tanning themselves under white gauze UV-stopper parasols, or swam through the transparent water.