Lord of All Things (33 page)

Gu smiled, unconcerned. “Well, it was my money. I can’t take it with me after all.”

Timmermans shrugged. “Just my opinion.”

This was something that Rasmussen had liked about Gu from the very first. Larry Gu was absolutely merciless toward disloyalty—persistent rumor had it that in his younger days he had personally cut out the tongue of a treacherous business partner—but nobody in Gu’s employ had ever suffered any ill consequences from speaking his mind. Quite the opposite. Rasmussen couldn’t always follow Gu’s sometimes bizarre appointments and promotions, but he thought he saw a trend in which the old man surrounded himself largely with people who held different opinions from his own—although in recent years Rasmussen had come to suspect ever more strongly that Gu mostly did that for his own amusement.

Jeffrey Coldwell, director for North and South America, a bull-necked Southerner, was said to have an extremely checkered past. He had been growing increasingly restless, visibly irked that Timmermans had raised his hand before him. “I’m worried about quite the opposite,” he thundered when at last it was his turn to speak. “Let’s assume the damn thing really does work—then what? A universal machine that can manufacture anything at all, including copies of itself? Great God in heaven, if that’s not crazy, then I don’t know what is. I find it unbelievable that we were not told about this decision earlier. This kind of thing requires discussion. And, most importantly, before it’s had five years of investment and who knows how many thousands of hours of research and development. For instance, who actually owns the products the machine manufactures? Has anybody even considered these questions?”

“They belong to whoever owns the machine, I would say,” responded Zhou Qiang, one of the directors for Asia.

“Or whoever owns the raw materials,” countered Brad Summer, director for Australia. “You could make a case for that.”

“It may well be that we are entering uncharted legal territory here,” Larry Gu put in with a sly grin. He was clearly tickled to bits that he had caused such an uproar among his directors.

Coldwell slapped his hand down onto the table. “I simply don’t understand the business model. What’s this machine for? Somebody who buys this need never spend another penny in his life—the thing produces everything he’ll ever need. Isn’t that the idea? A universal machine that makes everything, produces whatever you want, completely automatically and at no further cost.”

“Exactly,” Gu confirmed, stroking his beard. “The modern equivalent of Aladdin’s lamp.”

“And then what? How are we supposed to make money off that?” Coldwell raved. “We’d be sawing off the branch we’re sitting on. Sawing off all the branches there even are—chopping down the whole damn forest. Sooner or later a machine like that would wipe out every industry there is. An atom bomb couldn’t do as much damage as this thing, if it really works.”

“Isn’t that somewhat exaggerated?” Brad Summer objected.

Rumor had it Coldwell couldn’t stand his Australian colleague. It certainly showed now as he barked, “Have you even read the dossier? Have you thought it through? This machine can duplicate itself. And once it’s done that, it can duplicate itself again. And again, and so on. Nuclear explosions work exactly the same way, in case you weren’t paying attention in school. All in the blink of an eye. We aren’t even guaranteed to sell more than a single one of these machines, if our first customer just gives away the copies for free.” He sank back down in his seat and shook his bull head, exhausted. “No. if you ask me, somebody didn’t think this through.”

Brad Summer raised his eyebrows, making his round face look rather bovine. “I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about. It would be a good thing if everybody had what they needed.”

“Do you think so?” Coldwell shook his head. “Well, I don’t know how you Aussies do business, but the way I learned it, we earn money by finding out what people need but don’t have. That’s the only way the game works, see? Hey. Take my housekeeper, for example.” He waved an arm in what may or may not have been the direction of America. “Jessica Gomez, forty-two years old, single, two children. She’s got a heart of gold, she’s an amazing cook, as long as you like Mexican cooking—and you know what? I do. She keeps my house in tip-top condition. Okay. I pay her good money for that. Also okay. That’s the way it works. But you give this woman a universal machine that will stock her fridge and make the sneakers and sweatshirts for her boys, and do you think she’ll ever do a hand’s turn of work for me again in her life? She ain’t doing that because she’s bored. She’s doing it because she needs the money. If she had everything she needed, I’d never see her again.”

“And then you might have to iron your own shirts?” Gu put in, his voice dripping with sympathy that could only be meant ironically. He pointed at a cell phone that Ku Zhong was holding out to show him. “I am most unwilling to interrupt this splendid debate, but we have just heard that the jet with Mr. Kato onboard will be landing in less than half an hour. And we have also learned that Mr. Kato will be bringing a guest along, a lady. So if you still wish to fight, I request that you do so now.”

Hiroshi awoke to the soft, repeated chiming of a gong, slightly louder each time. The alarm clock. Of course. He put out his hand and switched it off.

Even in the company jet, the flight to Hong Kong took almost eight hours. Since they would head straight into the conference room when they arrived—and he had to be in top form once he got there—and since there was a comfortable bed in the plane, they had lain down to get some sleep. Chastely, fully dressed, but it had been good. And it was wonderful to hold Charlotte in his arms again.

He looked at her, studying her face, quite relaxed in sleep, calm and as beautiful as ever. She would always be beautiful her whole life long; she was that kind of woman. It felt so incredibly right that she was there with him. Hiroshi didn’t want to think about the fact she would be leaving him again in a few days to go back to her Scottish craftsman. She must be like a fish out of water with a man like that.

A map displaying the plane’s route had appeared on the little screen on the wall above them. He saw they would be landing very soon. In half an hour at most. Hiroshi looked away, buried his face in Charlotte’s neck, and wished this moment would never end. The movement woke her, however, and she sat up, dazed with sleep. She looked around and seemed quite startled before she remembered where she was.

“Oof,” she said. “Are we already there?”

“Not long now,” Hiroshi said sadly.

“The time passed quickly.” She felt the mattress. “A real bed in an airplane is something else again, I have to say. I’m used to narrow seats.”

Hiroshi sat up reluctantly. “We should freshen up. You can go use the bathroom first if you like.”

“What passes for a bathroom on a plane,” she said but crawled past him eagerly enough and vanished into the tiny cabin.

Hiroshi used the time to check his mail. Miroslav had sent him video clips showing the first new units being assembled and joining the complex. He showed them to Charlotte when she returned, freshly combed and smelling of something good.

“It’s crazy,” she said, genuinely impressed. “It really works. Your complex has had its first children.”

Hiroshi made a face. He didn’t like the comparison, even if everyone used it. “They’re not children. They’re replicas. Machines.” He looked up. “Otherwise, what we’re doing there on Paliuk would be considered child labor.”

She laughed, not seeming to understand he was serious. “I’m just saying. This construction is somehow so—how can I even put it…? Not one of your machines looks anything like what one would imagine they should. To be honest, I’ve been asking myself the whole time how you came up with all the ideas for it.”

Hiroshi looked at her. How beautiful she was. And how she belonged to him, even if she didn’t want to see it. “Do you want to know the truth?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “Of course.”

“Most of it I dreamed.”

“Dreamed?”

“Yes. Even when I was a kid, I would spend all day racking my brains over some problem and then the answer would come to me at night in my dreams.”

He could still remember those dreams vividly. They had been bold, colorful, and somehow quite different from his other dreams, even the erotic ones—which had sometimes been fairly bold and colorful themselves. If he had been even the slightest bit religious, he would have been ready to swear some god had talked to him and revealed the shapes of everything he was to build.

“You dreamed it,” Charlotte said again, tucking a strand of hair back from her forehead, lost in thought. “That’s really very strange.”

A soft chime, different this time, then the pilot’s voice. They had permission to land, and regulations required that all passengers strap themselves in for landing. Hiroshi switched off his computer, shut the lid, and put it away.

“Are you worried about what they’re going to say?” Charlotte asked once they were sitting alongside each other, their ears popping as the plane rapidly lost height.

“Why should I be worried?”

“Because you ignored clear instructions.”

“And what are they going to do, apart from get a little worked up?”

She turned to him and looked at him in that way of hers he liked so much, that made him feel so close to her. “Aren’t you afraid that one day you’ll go too far?” she asked.

Hiroshi thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No. I’m only afraid that I won’t go far enough.”

Obviously, she hadn’t slept quite enough on the plane. As the car stopped in front of the huge glass tower block and they were supposed to get out, Charlotte was suddenly utterly overcome by exhaustion. She would have liked more than anything to stay in the car, curled up on the soft, warm leather of the backseat, and shut her eyes.

“Will they even let me in?” she asked Hiroshi, hoping she would be escorted to a hotel room somewhere to sleep it off.

Hiroshi, however, seemed fit as a fiddle. “They’ll have to,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “I’ve already announced you.”

Charlotte struggled to keep her eyelids open as gravity tugged them down again. “Announced me? What as?”
Hopefully, not as his fiancée or something embarrassing like that.

Hiroshi gave a quick smile. “As my muse.”

“Oh my word!”

It was no good, though. The chauffeur shut the car door and wished them a pleasant stay; other staff in smart uniforms rushed up to take charge of their baggage and hold the gleaming doors open for them…and in they went. A vast cavern of glass and steel swallowed them up. The elevator was about as large as a student apartment, albeit unfurnished. They went up and up until it seemed they would reach the sky itself. Security guards scanned them with flat, plastic-shrouded
wands. “In case of bugs,” one of them told her, a shy young man who clearly liked the look of her but was determined not to let her notice.

Then the conference room. A table the size of an airfield, where men in dark suits stood up and shook their hands and said how very glad they were to see them. It was so cool that Charlotte shivered. She would have liked a cup of coffee, but Hiroshi had explained on the way over that would be impossible during the meeting itself.

Hiroshi introduced a bald, wiry man as Jens Rasmussen, his business partner for all his other inventions. Rasmussen seemed a little more relaxed and a whole lot more pleasant than the others around the table. And then finally, the boss of the whole corporation, Larry Gu, a wizened old man who looked like a white-bearded cicada. He didn’t stand up to greet them but simply bowed slightly in his seat.

At last, they got to sit down. Charlotte ducked her head down between her shoulders and told herself the meeting couldn’t last forever.

“Welcome,” said the old man in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “I am particularly pleased to meet a living, breathing muse, if only once in my life.” The muted laughter around the table stopped as soon as Gu lifted his hand—not even lifted; he simply put his hand on the table and raised one finger. He had trained his people well, she had to hand it to him. “We have prepared a few questions before your arrival, Mr. Kato, and we hope you will be able to answer them to everyone’s satisfaction. We are all agreed that your experiment is a quite extraordinary feat of research, albeit with no clear result as yet, and that it therefore deserves our fullest attention. Mr. Timmermans, your own objection, please.”

A thin man who looked like he could have been a particularly humorless school principal raised his head. “Piet Timmermans, director for Europe. I’ve studied your proposal, Mr. Kato, and I have to say I am fundamentally not convinced. I don’t wish to accuse you of seeking to perpetrate a deliberate swindle here. But I must assume you are simply mistaken. If your proposal had been placed in front of me five years ago, I would have turned it down flat and refused to invest so much as a penny. I simply cannot imagine a machine of the sort that you describe here could function at all.”

Hiroshi had been sitting still as a statue, staring straight at the man on the other side of the table. When it was clear he had said all he had to say, Hiroshi came to life. “Well, Mr. Timmermans, I don’t wish to rush to judgment on your powers of imagination,” he replied politely enough, but with an edge to his voice Charlotte had never heard before, “but you are quite mistaken.”

He opened up his computer and unspooled a thin cable from a little hatch in the table Charlotte hadn’t noticed before, then plugged it in. The next moment a screen behind them lit up, and the image on Hiroshi’s computer appeared.

“I received this video footage from the Pacific shortly before we landed,” Hiroshi declared and began to play the series of clips that he and Charlotte had already watched on the plane. The video showed the machines building a new unit from parts they had themselves produced, the new unit quivering and quaking into motion, and then joining the flock of other units as though it had been with them from the start. “You see, the machine works and works exactly as planned.”