It was an hour before Annie could bring her around, and then her terrified screams roused the building security. She was shaking uncontrollably when Annie hit her with a tranq patch, then put her to bed.

There wasn’t going to be any partying for Francesca that night, nor for many nights to come.

8

“What did you get?” Serrin was eager to hear, stubbing out the last of a string of cigarettes that bore witness to his impatience.

Geraint frowned slightly, dumped a pile of papers on the table and smoothed back his dark hair. He fussed over the gold fountain pen in his pocket, sighing in frustration. It hadn’t been a good morning, and to top it all he’d returned to find a missive waiting for him that was definitely unwelcome. The Earl of Manchester’s personal secretary regretted that Lord Powys was unable to sit in on the committee stage of the Gwynedd Demarcation Bill next week, and since a trustworthy and reliable Welsh man would be needed…

Wonderful. Now he could look forward to being bored silly in a debate with aggressive Gwynedd elves over small print, while trying to politely kick some government lord under the table to keep him awake. At least he’d gotten something for Serrin, though he wasn’t so sure how the elf would take it. Geraint decided to play it down for starters.

“Next to nothing, my friend. The Communication Management people are apparently here for the specific purpose of observing this afternoon’s seminar on biomolecular technology in comm systems. They aren’t talking to anyone, and the brief they submitted has been printed in the program. It doesn’t say much, so far as I can see. But a little bird did whisper something in my ear.”

Serrin edged forward. "What kind of bird? As long as it wasn’t a blood kite, I want to hear what it said."

“It was one of Nakatomi’s boys from Fuchi Industrial UK. Drunk as a skunk at ten in the morning." Geraint’s face crinkled slightly with disapproval. "Chap reeked of brandy and bimbo at a frankly disgraceful hour of the day.”

“Spare me the jazz,” Serrin said with a shrug. “I know places back in Seattle where no one will believe you can cut it at all if you don ‘t smell like that, know what I mean? What did you get?”

“Just this: Kuranita is supposed to pay a call on Fuchi’s labs out at Longstanton this evening. CMS is a Puchi subsidiary, after all, so it wouldn’t look odd. If I read my contact right, that’s Kuranita’s real motive for being here. The seminar’s just a convenient cover.”

Serrin was satisfied. It was impossible to get anywhere near Kuranita in the hotel, and if he tried any more magic around the place it wouldn’t just be hotel security knocking politely at his door. Next time, they’d have an official from the Administrative Bureau of the Lord Protector’s Office along with them. If Serrin was carrying any permit not perfectly in order, they’d deport him instantly and confiscate his precious magical gear. And even if all his permits were up to snuff, they’d probably still find something in the small print anyway. And that was before they found the Ingram…

So he would wait. He’d been out to Longstanton, north of the city’s sprawl, and it was easy to hide out there. The labs weren’t far from the Stinkfens, the polluted miasma of marshland and waters that befouled most of old East Anglia, so there wasn’t exactly a high density of population and homes to worry about.

Serrin looked around the room, taking in the scattering of foreign faces, many Asians among them. “I thought this was Nobles in Business, Geraint. You can’t tell me that these chummers are all scions of Britain’s blue-blooded aristocracy.”

“My dear fellow, you misunderstand. An event like this brings together two groups of people who need each other. On the one hand, a selection of British upper-crust, a bit short on cash, but who badly want to believe they can succeed in business. Most of them haven’t a prayer, of course, since they’re swimming with sharks. On the other hand, you have greedy foreign fat cats who have money and power, but who can’t buy that elusive quality, style. So they buy the presence of the nobles, hoping some of it will rub off on them.

“Both sides are doomed to disappointment, obviously. The nobles usually have as much business acumen as a lobotomized troll, and the greed merchants wouldn’t know style if it sandbagged them. Still, at least the chaps who pay the tab get traditional British room service, with butlers and valets on tap, and a carefully planned percentage of forelock-tugging and ‘by gad, you are a card, sir.’ Nobody in Britain actually speaks like that anymore, of course, but you seps seem to think we do, so we maintain the pretense to keep the rich tourists happy. Bentinck, the Tourism Minister, is an absolute past master at it. He’s probably got the entire works of Dickens in head-ware memory and a skillwire in advanced groveling. Still, it’s all good for the economy. End of lecture."

Geraint waved away the oncoming threat of the hors d’oeuvres trolley. “I think I’d better stick to something green and safe. Too much gamma-cholesterol in the bacon strips this morning. Must have fed the factory pig the wrong goo.”

“But, Geraint, what about your Conservationists?” Serrin said. “They seem pretty much the traditional old Brit to me. And what you’re saying about class and style, that’s very British too. I think the folks back home know they can’t buy class, no matter how much we pay for implants or the loveliest cybereyes or clonal facelifts or any other cosmetic trick of the modern age. But we recognize it in you guys. That’s real."

“Granted. But you’re missing something,” Geraint gestured with his fork.

“What’s that?”

"Humor. We don’t take this terribly seriously. Deep down, British people know that life’s tawdry tapestry is something you have to get through with a certain decent detachment. Look, I spent hours this morning listening to some Swiss corporate mercenary drone on about the role of speculative finance in the development of viral agents to counter the diseases of old age. Medicine? No, it was all about money."

"What his arguments came down to was this. Stuff the poor countries, because their per capita income is too low to pay for the drugs, and no one lives long enough to need them anyway. Ignore the richest countries, because the smart money there is on clone-tech and tissue replacement banks. In the future the very rich will never grow old anyway. His position-and this is where he got really excited for just a few minutes-is that smart investors will focus on the middle group. That group can’t afford the real cutting-edge work, but who has enough money and enough crumblies to become a sound market for the cheaper viral repair agents."

“My friend, what medicine comes down to is, where is the best market? And not even the best market now. That’s not enough. We need venture capitalists with the foresight to know who will be able to afford to delay death in the right way in years to come."

"Oh, and there was a nice little rider in the next presentation. Some people might think that developing clonal technology-the thing that really works-for the very rich and then letting it trickle down to the rest would benefit everyone. Producers get economies of scale, consumers get what they need. However, it turns out that you can’t dispense the new products to the mass market because then the corps wouldn’t have big enough production runs for their simpler, cheaper products. Long-term profits would drop, discouraging further research."

“It’s political, of course, as well as economic: we can’t allow those with less money to enjoy the same advantages of those with more. Dear me, no. Can’t have billions of little Indians and Chinese running around with extra-long life spans. Think of the pollution from overpopulation. And all this from men living i"n the most destroyed and polluted countries in the world."