Son of Heaven (15 page)

Jake blinked his eyes tight shut, then opened them again, craning his neck to look up at the ship. For a moment he could see nothing. It was as if he had been blinded. All he could see was the
burned-in image of the craft’s searchlight on his retinas. Then, as that began to fade, he got the vaguest glimpse of its outline, the silvered shape of it in the moonlight as it withdrew; a
strange, inhuman-looking craft, much larger than anything he’d ever seen.

The pulse withdrew. Slowly the air grew still.

‘D’you see that?’ someone yelled. ‘D’you see that on its wings? Fuckin’ aliens!’

But Jake had seen it too, right at the end, even as it had accelerated out of sight.

Dragons. Those markings… they were dragons.

And as he thought it, so he could feel the touch of the finest silken threads on his face, the faintest trace of sulphur and cinnamon on his tongue. And, pervading all, like a coil of swirling,
dark red smoke, the outlines of a face. Oriental. Brutal.

Jake fell to his knees, recognizing the triggered memory; knowing now without a shred of doubt who it was.

‘It’s the Chinese,’ he said, looking to Tom, who stood nearby, his shocked face turned to the sky. ‘It’s the fucking Chinese…’

Chapter 4

FUTURES

T
he datscape explodes upon my skin. Cascades of dark violet flakes drift through an umber skein of smoke as I step in. Close by, a magma heave of
glowing cerise rests at the centre of a landscape of outrageous geometric shape, outrageous colour. If I gently squeeze my eyes within the mask, vision reveals the ghostly layers beneath, another
dozen data levels, all of it painted in vital, vivid colours, like a child’s spilled toy box, distortedly alive, in constant movement, constant flux.

Everything has meaning here. Our senses are fine-tuned to discriminate. Colour denotes commodity, density value, fluidity the transferability of stock.

It is a market, after all.

The great curve of the dome arches above me, studded with glowing metallic teats – ten thousand and more – spinning fine threads of information into the flow, like coloured silk,
building and demolishing the datscape nanosecond by nanosecond, like the universe itself, a constantly unfinished work.

Layers. There are endless layers to this. The datscape has the power to make a metaphor quite literal. It is a massively complex feedback system, the computer world’s most powerful
metonym, accurately reflecting the world of markets. Subtle changes of colour, of texture, of flow, all of these are significant, for everything here has a mathematical expression. In the instant
it exists, everything here has a precise monetary value.

I move on, past massive termite towers of a dense cyan blue, past pulsing, globular moulds of bright magenta. Skeletal trees of silver-black thrust skyward, their branches rippling like the
innards of some pulsing, transparent insect. Beyond lie massive hills of coloured geometry and shape – mushroom growths heaped up alongside crystals of a thousand different hues, subtle
variants of shade from which furred golden leaves and sinuous chains of bright red stickiness emerge like parasitic growths. And through it all flow streams of fierce, glowing colour, steaming and
vaporous, while in the air a spectral, flickering snow storm of fine crystals briefly blurs the sensory feast.

Dali’s migraine. Cyber art meets cyber commerce.

A world of avatars and avarice. How does it look? I’m often asked. How does it feel to be inside? But it isn’t how it looks that strikes one most, nor how it feels. It’s how it
smells
.

For just as every stock and share, every commodity and company has its own colour and shape, its own density and viscosity, its warmth or frigidity, so it also has its scent. It can be fresh or
stale. Colour and shape, they’re indicators, certainly, but smell is what I ‘look’ for, what I sniff out, as I make my way.

Freshness is all. At least, for what I do.

Trading results, capital growth, investment and R & D, recruitment policy, new patent registration – all these are reflected in the smell of a company’s shares. If the company is
young, dynamic, get-ahead, it has a green, springlike freshness to its smell. It will emit… pheremonally, that is. Whereas an ageing company whose sales are falling, whose staff are leaving;
a company dependent on financial cushioning, let’s say. Well… do you know the smell of dead meat?

I close my eyes sometimes – metaphorically speaking – and smell my way about the datscape, sensing the acid-taste of some giant plastics company on my tongue, the tickle of shipping
stocks in the fine hairs of my nasal passages.

There is a primacy to smell. It doesn’t lie the way that colours lie. A fresh paint job… you can’t do that with a smell. You can try to mask it, to deodorize it, and only a
fine nose can discern that.

Which is what I’ve been trained for. It is all breathed in, you see, through the fine filter of my mask. Information. Endless information. Processed not as a computer might process it, but
in a primal, instinctive fashion, using the back brain. For my job is a process of letting go. Of submitting to the Market.

The best of us don’t simply look around, we trawl the Market. We suck it all in, let it fill our pores and overload our senses, hunters in some dark, primeval forest. A hundred and fifty
thousand years of instinctive decision-making gathered in, life and death stuff, fine-tuned, fine-focused for this brave new world.

But I mislead you. You might think I am alone here. Far from it. The datscape is alive with avatars; not only the servants of the eight big companies that service the virtual Market, but those
of the fourteen hundred and ten much smaller brokers that prey like lampfish in its stygian depths.

How many? Fifty thousand, perhaps, at any one time. It depends. Some are conservatively ‘dressed’, as samurai, perhaps, or famous captains of industry, but there are pirates too and
dragons and other mythical creatures, gods and heroes, lobsters and robots, lions and Lilliputians, hill trolls and hobbits, bulls and bears, spiders and grey-bearded sages, Eurydice
and…

Whatever the imagination can devise, you’ll find it here, walking the Dantean circles of this great Erewhon – this nowhere place – crawling up its walls or flapping their great
wing-ed arms across the inner sky.

Only right now I am heading for the future. And before you ask, let me answer you. You can walk there. You need only move your virtual legs and there, on the far side of the cavern, lies a
doorway, or rather, a membrane. You just have to step through. There, on the far side, in a cooler, less-crowded, less eye-disturbing place, the future waits, silent and sterile, a great warehouse
of what-will-be.

There is marginally less here than in the present, and as one walks on, further into the weeks and months ahead, so the landscape grows less crowded still, until, a year or so ahead,
there’s empty floor space under foot. Here, one can identify stocks and commodities at a glance.

Yes, and here’s where I do much of my business: identifying what’s going up and what down, which is a good risk and which poor, using what I’ve learned from the
‘Now’ of the datscape, to gamble on the ‘Then’ of this other place. Buying cheap to sell dear a year from now. Guaranteeing supplies for my masters and oiling the wheels of
commerce in the years to come. Making sure it all continues.

Futures. That’s what I do. I deal in Futures.

The cameras stopped. Behind the actor, dangling in his harness, the elegant curve of the blue screen reappeared as the projection vanished.

‘Okay, Jake… that’s great… word perfect… and great visuals too…’

Slowly they lowered him.

‘Jeez, it’s hot in this…’

He was dressed as a massive go piece; a huge black stone, tiny limbs and an equally tiny head sprouting from the curved, unblemished surface.

‘Stop moaning,’ Carl, the director, called to him. ‘You’re being paid twice what you’re worth!’

It wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. He liked doing this stuff.

As his feet touched the floor, the prop men hurried over, unhinging the costume and letting him step free.

‘Have a shower, Jake, then we’ll talk.’

Jake nodded. He liked Carl. They had the same acerbic sense of humour. And Carl knew what he was doing. He had understood at once what Jake was getting at.

As he showered, Jake thought about the shoot. When he’d first become a
login
there had been no guidelines, no training ‘immersions’ to help him find his feet. He’d
been thrown in at the deep end to sink or swim. But things had been different back then. The virtual Market had been so much smaller, so much easier to deal with. In the last ten years more and
more companies had signed up, until now it was impossible to float a company without being in the datscape.

Now training was all the thing, and he, their star turn, their golden boy, had been asked to make the latest training immersion.

He stood beneath the hot air stream, drying off. Because of the shoot he had been given the evening off. Friends were coming round. They were going to have a meal and watch the latest episode of
Ubik
.

Chris and Hugo were coming, along with Jenny and Alex. And, of course, Kate.

Speaking of which…

Jake pulled on his shorts, then pressed the tiny implant that lay beneath the skin just below his right ear. At once he was connected up.

‘Get me Kate. Voice only.’

The implant vibrated gently. As it stopped, Kate’s voice filled his head.

‘Hi, sweetheart… how did it go?’

‘It went wonderfully. We got it in one. You still okay for this evening?’

‘Be there at seven.’

‘You can come earlier if you want.’

Her laughter made him smile. She knew what he meant.

‘Seriously. I’ve just got to have a quick word with Carl, then I’ll be home.’

‘Maybe… but I’m not promising. I’ve got to finish a few things.’

‘Okay… I love you.’

‘Love you, too.’

He cut the connection.

Turning, he noticed the steward standing against the wall across from him. The man’s head was bowed, his eyes averted, but Jake had the feeling that he’d been being watched.

‘You…’

‘Yes, Master?’

‘Book me a hopper. I want it on the roof in twenty minutes, okay?’

‘Yes, Master.’

Jake watched him go. Chinese. Of course he was. The Chinese got in everywhere these days; body servants and cleaners, receptionists and doormen. It seemed like there wasn’t a single
service industry they hadn’t infiltrated.

He finished dressing and went back upstairs. Carl was waiting for him, sitting in the bar, the big picture window behind him giving a view of the river and the dense mass of high-rises that was
the City.

‘What are you drinking?’ Carl asked, getting up and coming across.

‘Just a Coke.’

‘You don’t drink?’

‘Oh, I drink… but only when I’ve a day or two to recover. You can’t take any chances when you’re inside. You need your senses about you.’

Carl grinned. ‘Literally so, from what you were saying… A Coke it is, then.’

They went over to the bar.

As Carl ordered the drinks, Jake studied him.

‘If you don’t mind me coming to the point, what is it you want?’

Carl turned, handed him his drink. ‘From you? Well, I certainly can’t match what you make with Hinton, but… if you want to do some more of this stuff… and I don’t
just mean the corporate packages… well… I’d love to work with you.’

‘That’s very flattering…’

‘No. Not at all. You’re good. One of the best I’ve worked with. You’ve got a real gift for it, Jake. And that text… I loved it…’

‘I wish I could claim sole credit, but I had help from my friend, Hugo.’

‘Well, introduce him to me. Here’s my chip.’

Jake took it, stowed it in his pocket, then raised his glass to the other man. ‘Maybe… let me talk it through with my fiancée.’

‘You’re engaged?’

‘She doesn’t know it yet, but… yes…’

Carl’s eyes flew open wide. ‘You mean…?’

‘A permit, yeah… it came through yesterday.’

‘Christ! Then we
have
got a reason to celebrate!’

Jake smiled ‘I’d love to, only… Another time, eh?’

‘Sure. Take a copy of the chip for yourself. You’re welcome to call any time, day or night. My avatar fields all my contacts.’