Kate gasped. “You heard him say that?” But of course he had; Hiram had probably heard everything.

Hiram’s eyes were on Bobby. “You do believe me, don’t you? Don’t you?”

Chapter 8

Scoops

From OurWorld International News Hour, 21 June, 2036:

Kate Manzoni (to camera): …The real possibility, revealed exclusively here, of armed conflict between Scotland and England — and therefore, of course, involving the United States as a whole — is the most significant development in what is becoming the central story of our unfolding century: the battle for water. The figures are stark. Less than one percent of the world’s water supply is suitable and accessible for human use. As cities expand, and less land is left available for farming, the demand for water is increasing sharply. In parts of Asia, the Mideast and Africa, the available surface water is already fully used, and groundwater levels have been falling for decades. Back at the turn of the century ten percent of the world’s population did not have enough water to drink. Now that figure has tripled, and it is expected to reach a startling seventy percent by 2050. We have become used to seeing bloody conflicts over water, for example in China, and over the waters of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Ganges and the Amazon, places where the diminishing resource has to be shared, or where one neighbour is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as having more water than it requires. In this country, there have been calls in Congress for the Administration to put more pressure on the Canadian and Quebecois governments to release more water to the U.S., particularly the desertifying Midwest. Nevertheless the idea that such conflicts could come to the developed Western world — just to repeat our exclusive revelation, that an armed incursion into Scotland to secure water supplies has been seriously considered by the English state government — comes as a shock…

Angel McKie (v/o): It is night, and nothing is stirring.

This small island, set like a jewel in the Philippine Sea, is only a half kilometre across. And yet, until yesterday, more than a thousand people lived here, crammed into ramshackle dwellings which covered these lowlands as far as the high-tide line of the sea. Even yesterday, children played along the beach you can see here. Now nothing is left. Not even the bodies of the children remain.

Hurricane Antony — the latest to be spun off the apparently permanent El Nino storm which continues to wreak havoc around the Pacific Rim — touched here only briefly, but it was long enough to destroy everything these people had built up over generations.

The sun has yet to rise on this devastation. Not even the rescue crews have arrived yet. These pictures are brought to you exclusively by an OurWorld remote news-gathering unit, once again on the scene of breaking news ahead of the rest.

We will return to these scenes when the first aid helicopters arrive — they are due from the mainland any minute now — and in the meantime we can take you to an underwater view of the coral reef here. This was the last remnant of a great community of reefs which lined the Tanon Strait and the southern Negros, most of it long destroyed by dynamite fishing. Now this last survivor, preserved for a generation by devoted experts, has been devastated…

Willoughby Cott (v/o): …now we can see that goal again as we ride on Staedler’s shoulder with OurWorld’s exclusive As-The-Sportsman-Sees-It feature.

You can see the line of defenders ahead of Staedler pushing forward as he approaches, expecting him to make a pass which would leave Cramer off-side. But Staedler instead heads away from the wing into deeper midfield, beats one defender, then a second — the goalkeeper doesn’t know which threat to counter, Staedler or Cramer — and here you can see the gap Staedler spotted, opening up at the near post, and he puts on a burst of acceleration and shoots!

And now, thanks to OurWorld’s exclusive infield imaging technology, we are riding with the ball as it arcs into that top corner, and the Beijing crowd is ecstatic…

Simon Alcala (v/o): …coming up later, we bring you more exclusive behind-the-scenes pictures of Russian Tsarina Irum’s visit to a top Johannesburg boutique and what was Madonna’s daughter having done to her nose in his exclusive Los Angeles cosmetic-surgery clinic?

OurWorld Paparazzi: we take you into the lives of the famous, whether they like it or not!

But first: here’s a General Assembly we’d like to see more of! Lunchtime yesterday, UN Secretary General Halliwell took a break from UNESCO’s World Hydrology Initiative conference in Cuba.

Halliwell thought this rooftop garden was secure. And she was right. Well, almost right. The roof is covered by a one-way mirror — it allows in the sun’s soothing rays, but keeps out prying eyes. That is, everyone’s eyes but ours!

Let’s go on down through the roof now — yes, through the roof — and there she is, certainly a sight for sore eyes as she enjoys the filtered Caribbean sunlight au naturel. Despite the mirrored roof Halliwell is cautious — you can see here she is covering up as a light plane passes overhead — but she should have known she can’t hide from OurWorld!

As you can see Mr. Gravity has been kind to our SecGen; Halliwell is as much a knockout as when she shimmied across the stages of the world all of forty years ago. But the question is, is she still all the original Halliwell, or has she accepted a little help?…

Chapter 9

The agent

When the FBI caught up with Hiram, Kate felt a rush of relief.

She had been happy enough to be scooping the world — but she had been doing that anyhow, with or without WormCams. And she’d become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that such a powerful technology should be exclusively in the hands of a sleazy megalomaniac capitalist like Hiram Patterson.

As it happened, she was in Hiram’s office the day it all came to a head. But it didn’t turn out the way she expected.

Kate paced back and forth. She was arguing with Hiram, as usual.

“For God’s sake, Hiram. How trivial do you want to get?”

Hiram leaned back in his fake-leather chair and gazed out of the window at downtown Seattle, considering his reply.

Once, Kate knew, this had been the presidential suite of one of the city’s better hotels. Though the big picture window remained, Hiram had retained none of the grand trimmings of this room; whatever his faults, Hiram Patterson was not pretentious. The room was now a regular working office, the only furniture the big conference table and its set of upright chairs, a coffee spigot and a water fountain. There was a rumour that Hiram kept a bed here, rolled up in a compartment built into the walls. And yet there was a lack of a human touch, Kate thought. There wasn’t even a single image of a family member — his two sons, for instance.

But maybe he doesn’t need images, Kate thought sourly. Maybe his sons themselves are trophy enough.

“So,” Hiram said slowly, “now you’re appointing yourself my bloody conscience, Ms. Manzoni.”

“Oh, come on, Hiram. It’s not a question of conscience. Look, you have a technological monopoly which is the envy of every other news-gathering organization on the planet. Can’t you see how you’re wasting it? Gossip about Russian royalty and candid-camera shows and on-the-field shots of soccer games… I didn’t come into this business to photograph the tits of the UN Secretary General.”