«Well, little girl,» he said to her awkwardly, and she had desperately to suppress a hoot of laughter at his glasses. Little conversation therefore ensued, but the girl had an ally, and began to enjoy herself a tiny little bit. Her father gave her a relieved smile.
Reg turned back to Richard, who said, suddenly, «Do you have any family?»
«Er… no,» said Reg, quietly. «But tell me. After „Three Blind Mice“, what then?»
«Well, to cut a long story short, Reg, I ended up working for WayForward Technologies…»
«Ah, yes, the famous Mr Way. Tell me, what's he like?»
Richard was always faintly annoyed by this question, probably because he was asked it so often.
«Both better and worse than he's represented in the press. I like him a lot, actually. Like any driven man he can be a bit trying at times, but I've known him since the very early days of the company when neither he nor I had a bean to our names. He's fine. It's just that it's a good idea not to let him have your phone number unless you possess an industrial-grade answering machine.»
«What? Why's that?»
«Well, he's one of those people who can only think when he's talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well.
He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder.»
«A blue one, eh?»
«Ask me why he doesn't simply use a tape recorder,» said Richard with a shrug.
Reg considered this. «I expect he doesn't use a tape recorder because he doesn't like talking to himself,» he said. «There is a logic there. Of a kind.»
He took a mouthful of his newly arrived porc au poivre and ruminated on it for a while before gently laying his knife and fork aside again for the moment.
«So what,» he said at last, «is the role of young MacDuff in all this?»
«Well, Gordon assigned me to write a major piece of software for the Apple Macintosh. Financial spreadsheet, accounting, that sort of thing, powerful, easy to use, lots of graphics. I asked him exactly what he wanted in it, and he just said, „Everything. I want the top piece of all-singing, all-dancing business software for that machine.“ And being of a slightly whimsical turn of mind I took him literally.
You see, a pattern of numbers can represent anything you like, can be used to map any surface, or modulate any dynamic process — and so on. And any set of company accounts are, in the end, just a pattern of numbers. So I sat down and wrote a program that'll take those numbers and do what you like with them. If you just want a bar graph it'll do them as a bar graph, if you want them as a pie chart or scatter graph it'll do them as a pie chart or scatter graph. If you want dancing girls jumping out of the pie chart in order to distract attention from the figures the pie chart actually represents, then the program will do that as well. Or you can turn your figures into, for instance, a flock of seagulls, and the formation they fly in and the way in which the wings of each gull beat will be determined by the performance of each division of your company. Great for producing animated corporate logos that actually mean something.
But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well.
Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it.»
Reg regarded him solemnly from over a piece of carrot poised delicately on his fork in front of him, but did not interrupt.
«You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers,» enthused Richard. «Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and lengths.»
«You mean tunes,» said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.
Richard grinned.
«Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that.»
«It would help you speak more easily.» Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. «And this software did well, then?» he asked.
«Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead March from Saul, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a bit loud and squeaky at the end.
Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing, commercially. Though the thing that's interesting me most now is what happens if you leave the accounts out of it. Turn the numbers that represent the way a swallow's wings beat directly into music. What would you hear? Not the sound of cash registers, according to Gordon.»
«Fascinating,» said Reg, «quite fascinating,» and popped the carrot at last into his mouth. He turned and leaned forward to speak to his new girlfriend.
«Watkin loses,» he pronounced. «The carrots have achieved a new alltime low. Sorry, Watkin, but awful as you are, the carrots, I'm afraid, are world-beaters.»
The girl giggled more easily than last time and she smiled at him.
Watkin was trying to take all this good-naturedly, but it was clear as his eyes swam at Reg that he was more used to discomfiting than being discomfited.
«Please, Daddy, can I now?» With her new-found, if slight, confidence, the girl had also found a voice.
«Later,» insisted her father.
«This is already later. I've been timing it.»
«Well…» He hesitated, and was lost.
«We've been to Greece,» announced the girl in a small but awed voice.
«Ah, have you indeed,» said Watkin, with a little nod. «Well, well.
Anywhere in particular, or just Greece generally?»
«Patmos,» she said decisively. «It was beautiful. I think Patmos is the most beautiful place in the whole world. Except the ferry never came when it said it would. Never, ever. I timed it. We missed our flight but I didn't mind.»
«Ah, Patmos, I see,» said Watkin, who was clearly roused by the news. «Well, what you have to understand, young lady, is that the Greeks, not content with dominating the culture of the Classical world, are also responsible for the greatest, some would say the only, work of true creative imagination produced this century as well. I refer of course to the Greek ferry timetables. A work of the sublimest fiction.
Anyone who has travelled in the Aegean will confirm this. Hmm, yes. I think so.»
She frowned at him.
«I found a pot,» she said.
«Probably nothing,» interrupted her father hastily. «You know the way it is. Everyone who goes to Greece for the first time thinks they've found a pot, don't they? Ha, ha.»
There were general nods. This was true. Irritating, but true.
«I found it in the harbour,» she said, «in the water. While we were waiting for the damn ferry.»
«Sarah! I've told you…»
«It's just what you called it. And worse. You called it words I didn't think you knew. Anyway, I thought that if everyone here was meant to be so clever, then someone would be able to tell me if it was a proper ancient Greek thing or not. I think it's very old. Will you please let them see it, Daddy?»
Her father shrugged hopelessly and started to fish about under his chair.
«Did you know, young lady,» said Watkin to her, «that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair. I find that very suggestive. Perhaps you should write a paper on it.» He nodded at her.