Legacies

14.

"Give us about an hour with the fire, guys, and I promise you it'll be nice and hot when you get back."

Alicia had followed Jack farther west, down the slope toward the Hudson River, as much in the dark as Thomas as to where he was going. He'd stopped at a trash can fire in the mouth of an alley and handed a twenty to each of the three men warming themselves by the flames.

Now they laughed and grinned and low-fived each other as they hurried off.

"All right," Jack said, pointing to Thomas. "Get to work."

Alicia looked around at the dark, empty, forbidding streets. But she didn't feel afraid. Jack seemed to be in his element, and in complete control.

"You're not listening to me," Thomas said. He'd been talking nonstop since they'd left his apartment.

"Start feeding the fire," Jack said. "And not too fast. We don't want to smother it."

Thomas finally got the idea. He reached into one of the boxes he'd carried here and pulled out a fistful of photos. Alicia watched them flutter into the can, curling and blackening as the hungry flames consumed them, destroying forever the hideous images they bore. She was in there, with Thomas, but other children were there as well… forced or duped like her into performing an obscene dance…

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling almost giddy. She reminded herself that it was only a token, but still… now there would be one less set of prints in existence.

But Thomas didn't seem to care about the photos, seemed only half aware of what he was doing. All he cared about was the transmitter.

"The transmitter's the key, you know," he said, starting in again. "If you know its location, I can make us all wealthy beyond your wildest dreams."

Jack appeared uninterested. "If we have the transmitter, why do we need you?"

"Because your ownership of the technology will be challenged the instant you try to sell it."

"And yours won't?"

"Anybody trying to patent it will run into a wall. That's because…" He paused. "Let me back up and explain this. Then you'll know why you need me."

"This oughta be good," Jack said, glancing at her.

Alicia shrugged. "Just as long as you keep feeding the fire."

Broadcast power was all fine and good. But first she wanted to see those photos reduced to ash.

"I found out about Dad's invention when I stopped by to visit him one day."

"You stayed in touch?" she said. She found that hard to believe.

"Not really." He shrugged. "I was a little short, and he wasn't returning my calls. So I stopped by. Anyway, he left me cooling my heels while he talked on the phone, so I wandered around and noticed he'd left a couple of lamps burning here and there around the house. It being noon and all, and me being a good, ecologically minded son"—he grinned here, but Alicia wouldn't respond and Jack only stared at him—"I, uh, went to turn them off. But as I did, I noticed these little wires sticking up from the bases of their bulb sockets. I looked closer and realized that the damn lamps weren't plugged in. What was powering the bulbs? Had Dad developed some sort of battery-powered lamp? Out of curiosity, I began to tinker with one. By the time he finished his conference call, I'd figured it out."

"I'll bet he was thrilled," Alicia said.

"Hardly the word for it. Royally pissed was more like it. He started kicking me out, but then changed his mind. That mystified me then, but I understood why later. Dad wouldn't tell me anything about the technology itself, but he did explain why he didn't want word to get out about it just yet. You see, his invention isn't completely his. It utilizes a number of discoveries he made and technologies he developed while working for various universities and corporations over the years. Those organizations hold the patents on those technologies. They'd claim the lion's share—or possibly all—of the profits from his invention. So what he was doing was searching for a way to maintain ownership once he revealed it. He leant me the money I needed on the condition I kept mum."

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the other way around, Alicia thought. You promising to keep mum in exchange for cash.

"But I thought Dad's thinking was backward. If patent disputes were going to get in the way, he should come up with a way to make all those patents irrelevant. If going public with it meant losing all your profits, then find a way to profit from not bringing it to market. So I started asking myself: who stands to lose the most from broadcast power? And that gave me my answer: Sell the technology to OPEC."

His head swiveled back and forth, looking for approval. Alicia wasn't going to give him any, and Jack's face might as well have been cast in bronze.

"It's as brilliant as it is obvious, don't you think? I figured the Arabs'd be willing to pay billions to keep broadcast power off the market. So, without telling Dad, I 'borrowed' one of his lamps and booked a flight to Saudi Arabia. But I never got there. During the layover in Frankfurt, I discovered that the lamp didn't work. Panicked, I hurried back to the U.S.—where I found it did work. So there's a limit to how far the power can be broadcast."

Idly, Alicia wondered about the range, about what wave-form was used… but what she remembered from her one undergraduate physics course was woefully inadequate.

"So I took the lamp to OPEC's UN mission but they refused to see me. Would you believe it? Here I was offering them a way to save their collective asses, and those idiots didn't want to listen. Fortunately I found another group, almost as wealthy—"

"Iswid Nahr," Jack said.

Thomas jerked as if he'd been slapped.

"Who are you?" Thomas said, staring at him. "How do you know that?"

"Keep talking," Jack said, pointing to the fire. "And keep feeding."

"All right, all right. Anyway, Iswid Nahr must have taken that lamp apart and put it back together again about a hundred times, but finally they were convinced. They contacted Dad and made him a fabulous offer. But instead of being grateful, he pitched a fit, going on and on about how he wasn't going to let anybody bury his invention. Billions of dollars on the table and he's in a screaming rage. I couldn't believe it. I still can't."

"I can," Alicia said. "I haven't spoken to the man since I was a teenager, and it couldn't be clearer."

"Well, then, dear sister," Thomas said acidly. "Pray enlighten me."

"Half sister," Alicia said. "And don't forget it. As for your father, he wanted more than money—he wanted glory. He wanted to go down in history as one of the great men of all time, someone whose genius had transformed the world. And more than that, he wanted to control his technology. What a power trip that would be: control the power that powers the world."

"You could be right," Thomas said. Was that a note of grudging acquiescence in his voice?

"But once his secret had been leaked, especially to people who wanted to suppress it, he had to move fast. The only way he could see to keep the credit and the riches was to take it to a country that had no oil, that would agree to almost anything to cut its oil imports. I'll bet Israel was his first choice, until he realized Japan had more money. And with a technology in hand that would not only reduce their dependence on oil, but give them something more valuable than oil to sell to the world, the Japanese government would dispute any patent claims that would arise. Ronald Clayton would be unimaginably rich, and guaranteed his precious place in history."

"Except he never made it to Japan."

"No," Jack said. "Your Iswid Nahr buddies saw to that."

Alicia thought she saw Thomas flinch. Didn't he know? Or had he merely suspected.

"That was an accident," he told Jack.

Jack shook his head. "The Japanese found explosive residues in the wreckage."

"How do you know?"

"Same way I know about Iswid Nahr."

Alicia guessed Jack didn't want Thomas to know about the Japanese agent. She watched Thomas mull this new information a moment.

Then he shrugged. "Oh, well. He never cared about me anyway."

"Only about himself," Alicia said.

"How can you say that? Look what he left you. Before he left for Japan he hid all his records and cut me out of the will. He left everything to you, dammit! Why?"

"I couldn't tell you," Alicia said. "I wish he hadn't."

"Then tell me what you know," Thomas said, leaning over the flames. The shadow of his large nose flickered back and forth across his forehead. "I'll cut you in with the Arabs."

"No thought of releasing it and making the world a better place?"

He looked at her as if she were speaking in tongues. "Trust me, when I have so much money that it'll take me a year to spend a day's worth of interest, the world will be a better place."

"I recall an old saying about the distance an apple falls from a tree…"

"You'll be rich, Alicia. You've always hated him, always wanted to get even—"

"That's not true." But of course it was. She'd known times when it had been all she'd thought of.

"Who're you kidding? The only person in this world you hate more than me is him. Now's your chance to settle the score. We sell the technology to the Arabs… and they bury it. Isn't it delicious? We get his money, and he gets no credit. His only claim to fame is that he was just another unfortunate passenger on JAL 27. You've got to love it, Alicia."

She had to admit she found a certain sour appeal in Thomas's scheme… but the thought of conspiring with Thomas on anything…

"Forget it."

He leaned back, obviously frustrated. "Suit yourself. But it's only a matter of time before we find the transmitter, and then it'll be too late. You won't have anything to bargain with."

"Are you as bored as I am?" Jack said looking at Alicia.

She nodded.

"Then, let's speed this up."

He grabbed a box of photos and started tossing them into the flames.

Alicia watched them blaze and turn to ash. And then there were no more.

"All right," Jack said. "That does it for this box. Any more?"

Thomas shook his head. "No."

"There'd better not be," Jack said, jabbing a finger at his face. "Because if I ever find out you held something back—"

"That's all. I swear."

Alicia jumped as she felt Jack take hold of her upper arm, but she let him guide her away from the fire.

"Good. Then, we're done with you."

"That's it?" she heard Thomas saying as they walked up the slope away from the river. "You drag me out here and squeeze me for information, and that's it? What do I get?"

"You get to warm your hands," Jack said without looking back.

"Doesn't matter that they're burned," he called. "You can burn all the paper you want, but it means nothing." His voice rose to a shout as they moved farther away. "Ever hear of the Internet, Alicia? We're on it. In lots of private places. And you know what? We're stars, Alicia. How do you like that? We're stars!"

Alicia pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out.

Beside her she heard Jack say, "Excuse me. I think I forgot something. Be right back."

Fighting the nausea bubbling just below her sternum, Alicia kept walking, breathing deeply. She didn't turn around to see what he'd forgotten. She hoped it was nothing tangible…