Emergence

by Hammond, Ray

  Haley looked at Flick, who shared her sister’s privileged knowledge.

  When they asked his fiancée for her thoughts, Haley frowned as the camera closed in. ‘I’m delighted,’ Calypso said simply. ‘I’m really looking forward to helping Tom organize his charitable foundations.’

  Haley whistled. ‘Some woman!’

  Flick nodded. ‘She’s like a movie star. In fact, don’t they make quite a couple!’

  They pigged out on the ongoing story for hours, watching endless reruns of a younger Calypso Browne being crowned Miss World, pictures of her beautiful but poverty-stricken native island, images of the grimy hospital in Chicago where she had practised, interviews with a stunned group of ex-colleagues – amidst the inevitable regurgitated bios of Thomas Tye himself and his Corporation. The happy couple had first met when Dr Browne joined the Hope Island medical staff, explained the narrator.

  ‘I’ll bet she’s treating his son Tommy,’ exclaimed Haley. ‘But there’s never any mention of him.’

  ‘You’ll probably get to meet her there,’ Flick said wistfully. ‘Just keep me patched in the whole time, you understand, every minute!’

  Haley had kept her word and on the helicopter ride she allowed Felicity and Toby to see everything she was seeing. There were about twenty or so other guests on board the large passenger craft to which they had been transferred during a stopover on the island of Mayaguana. She now realized it was Calypso Browne’s birthplace.

  Haley had discovered that VIP transport to and from the island presented the biggest single problem in the organization of this three-day summit. The Cape Hope spaceport, already one of the busiest air terminals in the Caribbean and Central America, could not provide adequate parking and ground facilities for every jet wishing to land, so visitors without their own aircraft were instead being flown to Mayaguana prior to transfer to Hope Island

  Surprisingly, that sleepy Bahamian island boasted a three-mile runway, a vast concrete apron and service buildings capable of accommodating dozens of wide-bodied jets as well as smaller aircraft. As Haley’s One Weekend in the Future: Preliminary Information download had told her, this airstrip had been constructed covertly in the early 1960s by the United States military who, with the enthusiastic agreement of the British Bahamas, felt the need for a squadron of B-52 nuclear-strike bombers stationed within ten minutes’ flying time of Fidel Castro’s renegade, untrustworthy and missile-toting Cuban Republic.

  Once the immediate problem of seeing unfriendly atomic weapons stockpiled at America’s back door had evaporated, it still seemed prudent to the US Department of Defense to mothball the airstrip and its Quonset huts so that the base could be brought back into service within a few days if necessary. When the Cold War ended, so did this level of maintenance, and Tye’s Logistics division had just spent two months reconditioning the field itself and flying in new fuel pumps, emergency services and portable accommodation units. The British government seemed delighted at having the facilities on Mayaguana restored at no expense to itself. After the party was over, the refurbished airstrip would go a long way to transforming the island’s tourist economy. Haley herself guessed that Tye had been forced into the additional expense because of Hope Island’s uncertain relations with Cuba, the only other island in the northern Caribbean with international-standard airport facilities.

  As an honoured guest of the Tye Corporation, Haley had selected to fly from London to New York in ist-E, the first-class entertainment section. Thus she had been able to enjoy the gym, a sauna, massages, facials, beauty treatment and a bewildering array of immersion games, movies and music. The only let-down was a serious disruption to the international air traffic control system that had delayed her plane by four hours. Then their landing at JFK had been a hesitant, jolting nightmare. Finally there, she had transferred to one of the Tye-Lear supersonic corporate jets that were busy ferrying visitors and staff to and from the islands. The result was that she would be arriving late Friday afternoon rather than in time for lunch.

  The ride from New York to the Caribbean had been short but thrilling, though Haley was disappointed that it hadn’t taken them over the Florida peninsula. She had wanted to gaze down on it and imagine a future there with Jack.

  It took less than thirty minutes before they had landed in the Caribbean heat of Mayaguana, where Haley and a group of dignitaries had been quickly transferred to the large helicopter.

  Haley and Felicity chatted like two excited schoolgirls as the Tye-Westland Personnel Shuttle rapidly crossed the nine miles of azure Caribbean separating these two islands of the Greater Antilles. Finally, Haley saw a familiar outline and she transmitted images of Hope Island as it grew larger. The shape of the world’s only corporate state was burned into her mind because she had read every book and watched every inch of footage available on Tye and his island paradise. She could probably recite the names of every bay and inlet.

  The first feature to catch her eye was the vast array of concave capture dykes of the Hope Island solar-energy farm. Acre upon acre of dull solar fuel cells covered the entire northern tip of the island. Then came further hectares of greenhouses further to the south. As they approached the waist of the island she could make out the long white crescent of Hope Town Bay over to the west. The residential developments along the coast were bejewelled with glittering swimming pools. Then, on the near side of the low mountain range that formed the island’s spine, she saw the great white edifice of the Tye Mansion itself, surrounded by guest bungalows set in acres of manicured terraces, pools and lawns.

  ‘That’s Tye’s house there,’ she told her twin unnecessarily. ‘It’s even bigger than I imagined.’

  ‘What a waste – all for one man,’ sighed Felicity.

  ‘Not any more!’ corrected Haley. ‘It’s now going to be a family home for three of them,’ she added quietly. But it was unlikely any of the other passengers could overhear their conversation. They were also busy gawping out of the windows and talking to far-away companions.

  ‘Do you think you’ll get to see the little boy – Tommy?’ asked Felicity, superimposing herself in Haley’s vision.

  ‘I doubt it,’ replied Haley, switching off her sister’s image. ‘Look, that’s the floating spaceport. It’s huge!’

  She could identify six of the large OrbitLoad shuttles that Tye Aerospace had developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin, all parked on their own separate apron. She had read that these giant craft were part aeroplane, part rocket. Coated with a light but high-density ceramic, heat-resistant skin, they took off conventionally. But once airborne, they tilted upwards to an almost vertical plane before rocket motors cut in to provide a long high-energy burn to defeat the Earth’s hugging gravity and propel them into orbit.

  The helicopter continued flying south-west, beyond the extended tip of the island, then circled around to make its approach. It was then that Haley noticed the cruise ship in the deep-water harbour.

  ‘Wow!’ exclaimed her distant twin as the image filled Haley’s viewpers. ‘It’s bloody enormous!’

  Bloody enormous! thought Haley simultaneously. Only recently commissioned, the ship was the largest cruise liner ever built. Taking advantage of the flex capabilities of new plastic ceramics, her designers had given her two hulls like a super-catamaran and, on this wide and stable base, the marine architects had built up a pyramid of gleaming white accommodation decks and leisure facilities. Whereas in the past ship designers had been forced to build downwards into large chine hulls, the designers of Treasure of the Caribbean had been able to build upwards from the stability of its twenty-acre platform. The black photonic glass used in the ascending levels contrasted starkly with the rest of the dazzling superstructure. The minimal displacement of the two giant planing hulls would allow the ship to achieve a top speed of eighty knots, which enabled her to outrun all storms, especially given the lengthy advance warnings that sophisticated meteorology could now provide.

  ‘Wow!’ echoed Haley.
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br />   As the helicopter began a rapid descent, she could see at least twenty supersonic or wide-body corporate jets already parked close to a low building that had to serve as an arrivals hall. She sensed she was arriving in the future or, at the very least, the extreme present.

  The noise increased as the pilot adjusted the angle of the rotor blades and, despite her sister’s protests, Haley closed down transmission, getting ready for landing. Flick could dip into the recordings later if she wanted to.

  Haley had been met by a personal greeter and, to her surprise, by a reporter and crew from Tye News Networks. Was it true she had been granted exclusive access to Tom himself for a new biography? She had waved them away, refusing to comment. Then she was driven the short distance to the harbour where rose the gleaming white fastigiated wedding-cake of the cruise ship in which she would be accommodated.

  *

  Of the 937 people who would be killed that afternoon only one had any prior warning, and she was also the only one to understand the immediate cause of her death.

  Like motorists on many of the metropolitan roads below them, pilots frequently turned their attention away from their vehicles’ controls, allowing on-board computers to fly the planes as satellite-managed air traffic control systems steered a course through densely populated airlanes made safe and navigable solely by computer control. Earlier in the day the Director of Operations, North-West Segment, United States Air Traffic Control had begged for, and obtained, permission to delay implementing the FAA’s latest safety instruction. On such short notice it was almost impossible to find enough qualified staff to assume manual control of aircraft in this sector and the alternative was to temporarily ground all traffic. Thus the switch to manual air traffic control would not now take place for another two hours.

  Joan Maria Martinez, forty-eight-year-old mother of two, loving wife and senior captain of ABA Airlines – with twenty-three years of flying experience behind her – yawned and turned away from the cockpit conversation to stretch. The Boeing 797 was at 32,000 feet, twenty-one miles north-west of Denver, out of Atlanta en route to Tokyo.

  It was only when Joan glanced out of the cockpit window that she saw the dark underbelly of the giant military transport jet that was descending into their path. She cried out, reaching for the yoke, and automatically shot a look of disbelief at the aircraft proximity warning system. It showed green: no alert. But she didn’t have time to disconnect the flight-control computer system before the roof of the cockpit was ripped open and she was sent flying upwards into bright sunshine, sub-freezing air – and oblivion.

  *

  Haley yawned and ran her hands through her short hair as she shook off the tiredness from the journey. Only twelve hours before she had been in the Victorian streets of Battersea, now she was here on the most advanced cruise ship in the world, moored up alongside the world’s newest nation state. She was also finally about to meet the richest and most powerful businessman in the world: the object of her intellectual obsession for almost two years and of personal interest to her since very much earlier. An early-evening reception would take place on the lawns in front of the Tye mansion before all the VIP guests would attend the opening lecture.

  The opening evening is strictly informal, her programme read. The lecture will be given by the Nobel Prize-winner and futurologist, Professor Theresa Keane.

  But first, there was a special and even more exclusive social event. Another envelope, black, with her name printed on it in small gold lettering, had been waiting on her dressing table. She pulled out the grey card it enclosed:

  Josh Chandler is welcoming friends at seven p.m. in Suite 1809/10.

  Underneath, Josh had scrawled ‘You do get around!

  How kind of Josh, she mused, to have spotted her name on the guest list and to have thought of inviting her to his private reception. Well, that would certainly start her weekend off properly! Although she knew of Professor Keane’s reputation, she didn’t at all mind the idea of skipping the lecture part of the opening ceremony. She could do without hearing yet another futurologist.

  Her stateroom was filled with flowers and gifts: sponsorship, Haley guessed, although she had to reckon these particular sponsors would be getting value for their outlay. They would be reaching the most exclusive and influential target audience in the world.

  She found a black Chanel kimono hanging behind the bathroom door. Her travelling clothes hit the floor and after a quick, very hot shower she was enjoying the feel of the kimono’s silk. Automatically she went to push the sleeves up but was surprised to find the robe a perfect fit. Similarly she found Gucci slippers, Givenchy perfumes, talcs and toilet water, a Smythson writing set on her desk, and six bottles of Laurent Perrier champagne in a large fridge concealed in the mahogany panelling. A selection of non-calorific hand-made Belgian chocolates lay in a small bowl on the bedside table. She popped one into her mouth.

  Despite her stern determination not to be seduced by Tye’s lavish corporate hospitality, she crossed her arms and hugged herself as she breathed in the orchidean air. She couldn’t quite believe she was here.

  Sitting on the edge of the off-white bed, she pulled the purple-wrapped parcel towards her. Her neatly manicured fingernails, kept short for keyboard work, managed to detach the ribbon but were no match for the plastic-metallic wrapping. Then she noticed a letter opener on her bedside table.

  They’ve thought of everything.

  Zipping along one edge of the package, she recognized Louis Vuitton logos. She saw that she had been given a square valise of green and beige farmed-leather – the perfect carry-on luggage item. Then she realized the case contained something else. Flipping open the catches, she lifted the lid to reveal polystyrene packing. She slit away the top to find a card with a pink satin bow bearing the legend Welcome To The Girard-Perregaux Equipage. Inside the moulded indentations were items individually bubble-wrapped.

  The printed note read:

  Ms Voss,

  On behalf of Girrard-Perregaux International and Tye Consumer Electronics Inc., we hope you will accept this dress-occasion Equipage. It has been individually styled for you and we hope it adds to your enjoyment of ‘One Weekend in the Future’.

  The card was signed in different inks by Thomas Tye and the president of Girrard-Perregaux. A unique number purported to make her set a one-off.

  The first gadget she unwrapped was a classic square G-P LifeWatch. She whistled silently as she held the silver and gold item up to the light. She could guess what that might cost. She noticed it was a Generation Eight, two models newer than her own fun LifeSwatch. She went on to unwrap three further pieces of Girrard-Perregaux jewellery: a belt buckle, two brooches and a pair of earrings. These were part of the wireless bodynet, she read, and could be worn individually or in combination to link these various items of the Équipage together. Both brooches – one plain silver, one gold, set with what appeared to be small diamonds, for more formal events – were described as user-dedicated microphones. According to the literature provided, they filtered out all sounds but the wearer’s own voice. This overcame the problem of ambient noise when recording or transmitting. The belt buckle provided the system’s radio link to external networks.

  A new-generation VideoMate with a sleek silver case came out of the packing next. It was like an old-fashioned cigarette case and was hinged along its longest axis, designed to be held upright like a book. On its left was a large high-definition colour screen, on the right a smaller secondary screen with a fold-out keyboard and an icon panel. The literature claimed that the unit had greatly improved storage, battery power and wireless-range facilities. And it also contained new image-recognition software called GuestList.

  Then Haley unwrapped an item that was new to her. This was a slender silver bracelet – a personal ScentSim. Examining it closely, she detected minute holes around its circumference for aroma delivery.

  As she had unwrapped each piece she pinned or clamped it at random to parts of her s
ilk robe and now she laughed. She imagined that she must be starting to look like a Christmas tree.

  Welcome to the Personal ScentSim. This is a new accessory in the Girrard-Perregaux Équipage range and it allows wearers to produce any of 40,084 aromas at will. To be worn only on the left wrist

  Controlled from either her VideoMate or Viewpers, she assumed it was intended to generate artificial perfume.

  Next she unwrapped a small brooch described as an Osmatique, a scent-analyser designed to first identify and then disregard the wearer’s own scent. Thereafter it would analyse the aromas in the wearer’s environment, in particular analysing the pheromones and body chemistry of other people in close proximity.

  She’d read about this new Spell-Smell technology. The system analysed another person’s smell from within a metre and analysed the underlying pheromones that would prompt attraction, disinterest or repulsion. Then a rating was provided in the wearer’s viewpers on a one-to-ten scale of the natural chemical compatibility and attraction. The system could manufacture a contra-simulation guaranteed to similarly attract. A health warning emphasized the dangers of careless use – especially with strangers in non-public places. Haley wondered what would happen if two people wearing Osmatiques met each other with their systems set to level ten.

  Next year, claimed the literature, Tye Life Sciences would also be introducing a new oral therapy that enabled the user’s body to produce custom-designed pheromone mixes to attract specific mates. Haley realized that osphresiology had developed enormously in recent years, but the idea of controlling physical chemical attraction! Jesus, imagine meeting someone and marrying them only to find their pheromone mix was artificially adjusted. Go to bed with a hunk and, if he missed his medication, wake up with a cesspit! But perhaps it wasn’t so new – just another version of going to bed drunk and waking up sober.

  Then Haley was unwrapping the last item, something that seemed completely new to her. This was an almost microscopically thin curved fibre-optic tube. At one end its tip was enlarged slightly, like the head of a small knitting needle. At the other it was attached to a transparent internal earpiece.