“What does that mean?”
“The source of the money is not open to inspection.”
“Okay, so who runs it?”
“The registered commissioners are three lawyers, Ms. Daltra, Mr. Pomanskie, and Mr. Seeton, who all work for Bromley, Waterford, and Granku, a New York legal firm.”
“Humm.” She ran a sponge along her legs. “What else does the Cox support?”
“It contributed to over a hundred universities and colleges across the Commonwealth. Do you want the list?”
“Not right now.”
“Would you like the total amount of money given to the other institutions.”
She opened her eyes, suddenly very interested—it wasn’t like the SI to volunteer information. “Yes please.”
“Seventy thousand Earth dollars.”
“For each one?”
“No. That is the total payout.”
“Hell. How long has it been going for?”
“Fourteen years. It shut down two years after Dudley Bose observed the envelopment. Six months after Paula Myo interviewed Dudley Bose.”
“So, most hated man in the Commonwealth,” Carys said with a taunting smile. “Quite a title. As voted for on the Maxis unisphere poll. Never guessed my little nephew would be so famous.”
Mark just grunted in response, and wormed down deeper into his favorite chair. They were all sitting around in the living room, giving Carys a taste of last year’s Ulon Valley wine before lunch.
“Nobody here cares,” he said. “It’s not important.”
“Oh, yes. It’s only relevant to us, isn’t it. Us, being decadent metropolitan types practicing our intellectual snobbery over you poor country bumpkins.”
Mark shrugged, smiling. “You said it.”
“Wake up and smell the coffee,” she snapped. “The media is going to screw your beautiful little town into the bedrock: I know from my contacts that Alessandra Baron is already planning a follow up. Have you tried booking a skiing holiday here for this next season? I did. They’re offering fifty percent discounts already. Nobody’s coming.”
“And you can fix all that, can you?”
Carys exchanged a glance with Liz. “You need some serious PR, Mark. And I’m the only expert you’ve got.”
“You called her!” Mark accused Liz.
“You have to listen to somebody, baby. Everyone around here is being very careful not to lay any blame. To your face.”
He turned to Carys, appealing. “I never said it the way that interview came out. They edited me to make it sound bad.”
“The technical term is raunching up,” Carys said. “They always do it. We can use that to fight back.”
“How?” he said suspiciously.
“I can get you interviewed on other shows. Live studio interviews, so they can’t mess with your message. You’ll need a lot of coaching before we let you on, and you’ll have to grow a decent sense of humor. But it can be done.”
“I’ve got a sense of humor,” he protested indignantly.
Carys opened her mouth to answer. There was a bright flash outside. Mark and Liz frowned in unison. There were no thunderclouds anywhere.
Out in the garden, Sandy was squealing as if she were in pain. Both parents jumped up and went through the open patio doors.
“What’s the matter, poppet?” Mark asked.
Panda was going berserk, barking, jumping up and down. Sandy ran to her mother, arms flung wide. “In the sky,” she wailed. “My eyes hurt. I see purple.”
Mark’s wrist array crashed. The sky to the southeast turned dazzling white. “Damn, what the hell…” All the autopickers had stopped. As had the tractors. Every bot he could see was motionless and silent.
The smear of silky light above the mountains was draining away to leave the normal blue sky in its wake. Then a vivid rose-gold sun climbed up from behind the peaks, its surface writhing with webs of black fire. It cast long moving shadows across the ground.
“Oh, my God,” Liz murmured.
The new sun was rising on a stalk of brilliant raging flame. All the remaining snow on the Regents vaporized in a single violent white explosion. The tops of the mountains looked as if they were vibrating. They started to crumble just as the ferocious vapor cloud swarmed around them, obliterating them from sight.
Sandy’s shrieks reached a crescendo.
“They nuked it,” Mark shouted in awe. “They nuked the detector station.” He watched the mushroom cloud swelling out, its color darkening, deepening as it spread its bruised perimeter across the clean sky. Then the sound blast reached them.
Mellanie ordered a light salad from room service before dressing in jeans and a coal-black sweatshirt from her own fashion line. She tied her hair back in a simple loose tail, just using moisturizer on her face, no makeup. It was important she looked serious for this call.
One of the scowling housemaids brought the salad while Dudley was splashing about cheerfully in the bathroom. She spent a couple of minutes clearing up the mess that was the two breakfast trays. Mellanie gave her a twenty-dollar tip. If anything the scowl was deeper when she left.
“Double screw you,” Mellanie told the door.
She picked at the salad for a while, sorting out the pitch in her mind, then sat at the bureau and used the room’s desktop array to place a call to Alessandra.
Alessandra’s image appeared on the array’s screen. She was sitting in the green room’s makeup chair, a paper bib around her neck to protect her fabulous dress. “Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.
“I’m on Elan.”
“Okay, in that case I’ll let you live. As it is, you’re this close to being fired.” She held her hand up, thumb and forefinger almost touching. “Don’t ever put a block on your unisphere address code again. Now: I need your follow-up report in an hour. And it better be a prize-winner, or that tiny little arse of yours will reach orbit.”
“I’m on to something.”
“What?”
Mellanie took a breath. “Paula Myo thinks the Starflyer is real.”