“Look, it’s been bad enough for me. But at least I know this is all because of something I did, long ago. My husband and daughter had nothing to do with it. And yet they’ve been subject to the same pitiless stare. And Desmond.”

“I’m sorry.”

She dropped her gaze. Her tea cup was trembling, with a delicate china rattle, in its saucer. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t agree to see you to make you feel bad.”

“Don’t worry. I felt bad already. And I brought the audience. I’ve been selfish.”

She smiled, with an effort. “They were here anyway.” She waved her hand through the air around her head. “I sometimes imagine I can disperse the watchers, like flapping away insects. But I don’t suppose it does any good. I’m glad you came, whatever the circumstances… Would you like some more tea?”

…She had brown eyes.

It was only as he endured the long drive back to Cedar City that that simple point struck him.

He called, “Search Engine. Basic genetics. Dominant and recessive genes. For example, blue eyes are recessive, brown dominant. So if a father has blue eyes and a mother brown, the children should have…”

“Brown eyes? It’s not quite as simple as that, Bobby. If the mother’s chromosomes carry a blue-eyes gene, then some of the children will have blue eyes too.”

“Blue-blue from the father; blue-brown from the mother. Four combinations.”

“Yes. So one in four of the children will be blue-eyed.”

“…Umm.” I have blue eyes, he thought. Heather has brown.

The Search Engine was smart enough to interpolate his real question. “I don’t have information on Heather’s genetic ancestry, Bobby. If you like I can find out.”

“Never mind. Thank you.”

He settled back in his seat. No doubt it was a stupid question. Heather must have blue eyes in her family background.

No doubt.

The car sped through the huge, gathering night.

Chapter 14

Light years

Hiram stalked around David’s small room, silhouetted by picture-window Seattle night-time skyline. He picked up a paper at random, a faded photocopy, and read its title. “’Lorentzian Wormholes from the Gravitationally Squeezed Vacuum.’ More brain-busting theory?”

David sat on his sofa, irritated and disturbed by his father’s unannounced visit. He understood Hiram’s need for company, to burn off his adrenaline, to escape the intensely scrutinized goldfish bowl his life had become. He just wished it didn’t have to be in his space. “Hiram, do you want a drink? A coffee, or…”

“A glass of wine would be fine. Not French.” David went to the refrigerator. “I keep a Chardonnay. A few of the Californian vineyards are almost acceptable.” He brought the glasses back to the sofa.

“So,” Hiram said. “Lorentzian wormholes?” David leaned back in the sofa and scratched his head. “To tell the truth, we’re nearing a dead end. Casimir technology seems to have inherent limitations. The balance of the capacitor’s two superconducting plates, a balance between the Casimir forces and electrical repulsion, is unstable and easily lost. And the electric charges we have to carry are so large there are frequent violent discharges to the surroundings. Three people have been killed in WormCam operations already, Hiram. As you know from the insurance suits. The next generation of WormCam is going to require something more robust. And if we had that we could build much smaller, cheaper WormCam facilities, and propagate the technology a lot further.”

“And is there a way?”

“Well, perhaps. Casimir injectors are a rather clunky, nineteenth-century way of making negative energy. But it turns out that such regions can occur naturally. If space is sufficiently strongly distorted, quantum vacuum and other fluctuations can be amplified until… Well. This is a subtle quantum effect. It’s called a squeezed vacuum. The trouble is, the best theory we have says you need a quantum black note to give you a strong enough gravity field. And so…”

“And so, you’re looking for a better theory.” Hiram riffled through the papers, stared at David’s handwritten notes, the equations linked by looping arrows. He glared around the room. “And not a SoftScreen in sight. Do you get out much? Ever? Or do you SmartDrive to and from work, your head in some dusty paper or other? From the moment you got here you had your FrancoAmerican head stuck up your broad and welcoming backside, and that’s where it has remained.”

David bristled. “Is that a problem for you, Hiram?”

“You know how much I rely on your work. But I can’t help feel that you’re missing the point here.”

“The point? The point about what?”

“The WormCam. What’s really significant about the ’Cam is what it’s doing out there.” He gestured at the window.

“Seattle?”

Hiram laughed. “Everywhere. And this is before the past-viewing stuff really starts to make an impact.” He seemed to come to a decision. He put his glass down. “Listen. Come take a trip with me tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“The Boeing plant.” He gave David a card; it bore a SmartDrive bar code. “Ten o’clock?”

“All right. But.”

Hiram stood up. “I regard myself as responsible for completing your education, son. I’ll show you what a difference the WormCam is making.”

Bobby brought Mary, his half-sister, to Kate’s abandoned cubicle in the Wormworks.

Mary walked around the desk, touching the blank SoftScreen lying there, the surrounding acoustic partitions. It was all clinically neat, spotless, blank. “This is it?”

“Her personal stuff has been cleared away. The cops took some items, work stuff. The rest we parcelled up for her family. And since then the forensics people have been crawling all over.”

“It’s like a skull the scavengers have licked clean.”

He grimaced. “Nice image.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yes. But…”

But, he thought, there was still some ineffable Kateness about this anonymous desk, this chair, as if in the months she had spent here she had somehow impressed herself on this dull piece of spacetime. He wondered how long this feeling would take to fade away.

Mary was staring at him. “This is upsetting you, isn’t it?”

“You’re perceptive. And frank to a fault.”

She grinned, showing diamonds — presumably fake — studding her front teeth. “I’m fifteen years old. That’s my job. Is it true WormCams can look into the past?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Well, is it?”

“…Yes.”

“Show her to me.”

“Who?”

“Kate Manzoni. I never met her. Show her to me. You have WormCams here, don’t you?”

“Of course. This is the Wormworks.”

“Everyone knows you can see the past with a WormCam. And you do know how to work them. Or are you scared? Like you were scared of coming here.”

“Up, if I may say so, yours. Come on.”

Irritated now, he led her to the cage elevator which would take them to David’s workstation a couple of levels below.

David wasn’t here today. The supervising tech welcomed Bobby and offered him help. Bobby made sure the rig was online, and declined further assistance. He sat at the swivel chair before David’s desk and began to set up the run, his fingers fumbling with the unfamiliar manual keys glowing in the SoftScreen.

Mary had pulled up a stool beside him. “That interface is disgusting. This David must be some kind of retro freak.”

“You ought to be more respectful. He’s my half brother.”

She snorted. “Why should I be respectful, just because old man Hiram couldn’t keep from emptying his sack? Anyhow, what does David do all day?”

“David is working on a new generation of WormCams. It’s something called squeezed-vacuum technology. Here.” He picked out a couple of references from David’s desk and showed them to her; she flicked through the close-printed pages of equations. “The dream is that soon we’ll be able to open up wormholes without needing a factory full of superconducting magnets. Much cheaper and smaller.”