Lord of All Things (38 page)

What he had told her about decades or centuries hadn’t been true. Nobody could say how long it would take. All he needed was the right idea, and that could come tomorrow. It could even be that all he needed was a dream.

Besides, Charlotte had rebuffed him so many times. It would do her no harm to learn what it felt like just once.

“You should really think about patenting what you have so far,” said Rasmussen.

“I don’t have anything. Just a couple of pictures on a computer screen.”

“You have working replication algorithms.” Rasmussen pointed out the window. “There are an awful lot of clever people out here working on the very same thing. A self-replicating nanomachine is the holy grail of nanotechnology. Do you have any notion how many patents are submitted every single day? Every new theory, every tiny incremental improvement—it all gets patented. You have no idea how they’re competing for claims out there; it’s a cutthroat business. And if someone manages to make that final breakthrough before you get your application into the patent office, then you’ll be left in the dust, Hiroshi. You’ll have to pay someone else for the right to use your own invention.”

Hiroshi leaned back and put on what Rasmussen privately thought of as his Japanese face. “They’re not working on the same thing as I am,” he declared. “Not remotely. I admit that I don’t know what goes on in the patent office, but I believe I’m more or less up to date on the theoretical work and the projects that are underway. And I don’t see anyone who has successfully moved away from the biological metaphor. Everybody’s tinkering around trying to build these insanely complicated nanomachines that are supposed to work like living beings. And they’re all wondering what keeps going wrong. Or they’re just using genetically manipulated bacteria, and all that tells me is they’ll never get any further than the compounds of carbon and protein structures.”

“Don’t underestimate these people. It could be just as you say, but that doesn’t mean that nobody will ever have the same idea as you. Quite the opposite, in fact. It could happen any day now. Any one of these researchers might suddenly decide to give up on self-replicating mechanisms and try a self-replicating complex instead.”

“So what? What good will it do him? He’ll end up stuck down the same dead end that I’m in.”

Rasmussen sighed. Hiroshi didn’t seem to want to listen. “That doesn’t matter. He’ll patent the idea, and that means that whatever it may actually lead to belongs to him. On top of which, it’ll be published, and it’ll get noticed. All the big brains in the business will be all over it—people like Binnig, Drexler, Merkle, the guys who invented nanotechnology. And I don’t want to step on your toes here, but when there are a whole lot of smart guys all working intensively on the problem, someone may very well solve your problem with the bonding angles.” He clasped his hands together. “You can make all of this work for you if you just patent what you have.”

“You don’t understand,” Hiroshi said. “I’m not interested in patents. Not for this.” He leaned forward and put his hand on the screen. “If this actually works, Jens, then I’ll create a whole new world. A world in which patents play no part. And if it doesn’t work, if I can’t do it…then I don’t need a patent either.”

Charlotte sat in the kitchen and listened with half an ear as Brenda and her son argued.

“Homework first,” Brenda said for probably the thousandth time since Jason had started school. “That’s the rule. You know very well.”

“But I said I’d go out with George!” Jason whined.

“Good. Then if I were you, I would hurry up and do the homework.”

“I can do it tonight, Mom, just this once. There’s not even that much.”

This constant bickering about schoolwork. Sometimes it got on Charlotte’s nerves. But she was sure she would miss it.

“There’s no such thing as ‘just this once,’ ” Brenda said implacably. “Not while your grades are where they are. We talked about all this, remember?”

“But George is gonna be here soon!”

“No problem. I’ll give him a slice of cake, and he can make himself comfortable in front of the TV.”

“Oh man!” Surrender, followed by angry footsteps storming up the stairs.

Brenda came back, rolling her eyes. “I’m curious as to what will happen next year,” she said as she picked up her coffee cup and sat down opposite Charlotte, “when he has to do all his homework in Spanish. Ah well, you never know your luck until you miss it, as they say.”

Charlotte was shocked to realize that by the time she came back from her expedition they would have moved. That this was the last time she would sit in this kitchen, the last time she would visit them in this house, which they had turned into such a cozy, friendly home and safe haven for her in the storms of her life. She had thought that it would always be there. She was almost in tears.

“Have you really thought about this?” she asked one more time. “Buenos Aires. It’s not going to be easy for either of you. And as for Jason. He’s only just got used to going to school at all.”

“I just think we’re too young to settle down here contentedly for the rest of our natural days,” Brenda declared. “And it’s Tom’s big chance. Not just a teaching post—a whole department! And one that is practically uncharted territory. He would never get that anywhere else. So we’re packing our bags. I’m used to moving around, remember?”

“I’ll miss this house. I’ll miss all of you.”

“That’s why they invented airplanes, Charley. You make sure you come and see us.”

Charlotte nodded glumly. When Brenda was gone, what was there to keep her in Boston? Nothing. She wasn’t welcome at Harvard, and she had lost touch with most of her friends here during the years with Gary.

“Anyway, once we’re gone my mother will look after your apartment, so don’t you worry about that. And by the way, Tom asked me to thank you for that tip about getting in touch with Prof. Andrade. They spoke on the phone, and he seems to be a charming man. Tom said he was so happy to have someone other than the flying-saucer nuts interested in his ceramics that…oh, here’s George!”

George was a gangly black boy with beautiful, almost grown-up manners—he called Brenda “Miss Wickersham” when he asked politely after Jason. Brenda told him her son was still doing his homework and asked whether George might like a slice of cake.

“Oh yeah!” he said, his eyes lighting up.

“Have you done your homework?” Brenda asked as she took the cake out of the pantry.

“Ages ago,” George said, waving his hand dismissively. “It was easy today.”

Charlotte snuck a look at the boy as he sat there devouring the cake with every sign of enjoyment, and swapped glances with Brenda, who was smiling broadly. No doubt she would shortly be feeding her English fruitcake to little Argentinean children. Lucky them.

“A machine that will make everybody rich?” James Bennett III tried to blow a smoke ring. He failed miserably. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Nancy Coldwell snuggled up on his chest and put her leg across his thigh. “I thought so, too, at first. But Jeffrey said it’s not so crazy. He said if it works, it’ll change the world more than fire, printing, and the Internet all put together.” She began to play with his nipples. “And you can say a lot of things about Jeffrey, but you can’t say he’s easily fooled.”

One of those psychologists should do a study on this
, James reflected.
Why women always start yammering on about their ex-husbands once you’ve gotten them into bed
. He must have made one hell of an impression on her, this Jeffrey, what with tangling with the Chinese mafia when he was starting out and being charged with incitement to murder all those times. And how, despite all that, he had become director for the Americas for a worldwide corporation based in Hong Kong.

James stubbed out his cigarette and put the ashtray over on the nightstand. He rolled out from under her to see whether there was another whiskey in the minibar. No such luck. Nothing even remotely acceptable in alcohol content. And he could have damn well used a whiskey right then. Nancy wriggled over to join him, pressing her large breasts against his back, and reaching a hand between his thighs. In other words, she wanted another round. Or, more likely, she was just playing the sex maniac to make him marry her sooner. Not that James Bennett III would ever have dreamed of doing such a thing. The great advantage of his current situation—possibly the only advantage—was he could counter any such suggestions with the argument he was still getting over his divorce. But she could still have another round.

After that he must have fallen asleep, since it was much darker outside when he finally woke up. He had been dreaming about that machine, even if he no longer remembered what his dreams had told him.

“Did your Jeffrey ever explain how this machine is supposed to work, how exactly it will make everybody rich?” he asked Nancy, who was finally beginning to look worn-out.

She looked at him with smoldering bedroom eyes. “Yes, he did.”

“And?”

“Imagine a universal machine that can build anything that can be built. Logically, that means it can also build another universal machine. So there’s two of them. Then they both build another universal machine and there are four—and so on and so forth. Eventually, you have enough universal machines to build anything that people need. Nobody ever needs to work again.”

James frowned in thought. He felt just as tired as she looked. “A universal machine? There’s no such thing.”

“Oh but there is. The computer is one, for instance. Only works on data, though. This machine is just the next step. That’s how Jeff explained it to me.”

“Aha.” He would have liked to ask her whether
she
was easily fooled. Better not, though. They had run into each other at a private viewing of an exhibition where he had given the opening speech in place of his father, who couldn’t make it, and she had practically flung herself at him. Since she had everything a woman should have and some to spare, he had decided, well, why not? The affair had been going on for a few weeks and was still fun—and he didn’t want the fun to end.

Nancy stretched and yawned and gazed pensively into space. “If only I could remember the inventor’s name. Jeff told me, but it was something Japanese.…What were those cities called where we dropped the bombs? Something along those lines.”

James felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end.
Hiroshi, as in Nagasaki.
“Was the name Hiroshi Kato, by any chance?”

“That was it!” She looked at him with real admiration. “How do you know that?”

James slumped back into bed, feeling as though he had been sandbagged. Hiroshi Kato. The Jap who had taken Charlotte from him, turned her against him; the man who was to blame for the misery into which his otherwise wonderful life had sunk. For some reason, the name set alarm bells ringing, making him think—no, fear— there might be something to it after all. The name raised his hackles, all right.

What would be the point of having everybody be rich? The whole fun being rich was that some people, just a few, were richer than everybody else—and that he was one of them. If everybody was rich, then nobody would be rich. If everybody was rich, then nobody would wait hand and foot upon him, James Bennett III. Nobody would serve him coffee, make his bed, cook his meals, do his laundry, and all of that. And even if robots were going to do all that work, what woman would ever be interested in him again if he didn’t have his wealth to make him interesting?

“I knew someone by that name once,” he murmured, since Nancy was lying across him and waiting for an answer. “But that’s got to just be a coincidence.”

All at once he was in a hurry to wrap up this date. When they were finally standing down in the lobby and he took out his gold MasterCard to pay for the room, for the first time in his life he was afraid that the day would come when he would no longer be able to lord it over everybody else. If such an invention really existed, if there really was a universal machine, then he had to do whatever he could to get his hands on it.

Visibly troubled that the guests were checking out when they had only just checked in that afternoon, the young man at the counter asked whether everything had been all right. They had paid for a night after all.

“Yeah, yeah,” James grumbled. “Some business has come up though. Urgent. Always the same.”

“When will I see you again?” Nancy Coldwell asked, pouting and looking at him with lovey-dovey eyes as they left the hotel. She was in love with him, all right—him and his money.

“I’ll call you,” he said and put her in a taxi.

He wondered how he could get his father interested in this business. But he didn’t spend long thinking about it; there was no point. Of all the CEOs on the planet, his father was the least likely to grab an invention like that and make it the biggest money spinner in history. All James had to do was remember all those philanthropic, tree-hugging, save-the-planet organizations his dad supported—mostly in ways the general public never even got to hear of—to know his father would much rather release the machine as a “gift to humanity.” Dad would probably give him that lecture again about all the inventions Benjamin Franklin had deliberately never patented.

No. He wouldn’t breathe a word about it to his father. He would wait patiently until his time had come.

Hiroshi saw her coming. At first, of course, he had no idea it was Charlotte at the wheel of the red SUV that came roaring up the hairpin bends. For some reason, he had felt the urge to go roaming through the empty rooms in the towers at the top of his house, which gave a quite different view of the mountains all around. He had stopped in front of the window that faced out front. That’s when he noticed the car and saw the breakneck speed it was doing up the curves.

The roads hereabouts were ancient, never designed for speeds like that. Hiroshi held his breath as the car sped around the bend with the six-hundred-foot drop below and wondered whom he should call if it went off the road. Whether there would even be any point in trying to help. Then the car pulled up in his front driveway, and Charlotte got out. Well how about that? Hiroshi watched her talking to Mrs. Steel, no doubt explaining who she was and what she wanted, and he watched his housekeeper admit the guest. He ran his fingers through his hair and went downstairs. She was happy to see him there, but there was a curious gleam in her eyes as she said hello.