The Ambassador (7 page)

‘Where first?’

‘Travel shop, if you don’t mind, sir.’

The shop front was covered in stickers advertising trips on the Maglev to Malta and Cyprus for 59.99 euros, with an optional stopover in Corsica. The spectacular view from the Mediterranean bridges was rumoured to be worth the trip alone. Egypt was a day trip for 99 euros, with duty-free vouchers and a Mummy Death Experience thrown in. A week at the North or South Pole, with or without penguins, could be had for 259 euros, not far short of the price of safaris to Disney’s Atlantic Trench Undersea World or Attenborough Enterprises’ Jurassic Park, out in Korea. But Matt had a glint in his eye as he presented his swipe card. A camera bobbed above their heads. The door opened.

‘What are you after?’ Strether hissed.

‘The trip of the century. Or so it’s been billed. New Year’s Day 2100.’

The assistant was elderly and grizzled; probably came cheap, Strether suspected, if he were already a pensioner from a previous job. Or two, or three.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

Matt sat at the desk and pointed at a hologram on the wall. Strether began to chuckle and clapped his staffer on the shoulder. ‘I might have known.’

‘That one. It was advertised on CNN last night. I tried vidphoning but you were jammed. Are there still seats available?’

‘Let me see.’ The assistant pushed buttons on his console. ‘Well, they’re running an extra flight due to the extraordinary demand. You’re in luck. How many places?’

‘Just one. At a thousand euros a kilo, it’s all I can afford.’

‘Right. How many kilos, then?’

‘Well, I weigh about eighty. Have to allow for my clothes and a bag, I suppose. Is eighty-five cutting it too fine?’

The assistant appraised him carefully. ‘You could lose a couple beforehand to make sure,’ he remarked helpfully. ‘I’ll put you down for eighty-five. Excess baggage will be left on the tarmac. A deposit is payable now and you can pay the rest in instalments, with everything due six weeks before the event. Would you like insurance?’ Matt handed over his swipe card and offered his palm for DNA sweat analysis to confirm his identity. ‘What
happens if I can’t go? Is the money refundable?’

The assistant laughed indulgently. ‘My
dear
young man, by the time we get close to the date your ticket will be worth ten times what you’ve paid for it. We don’t run trips to the moon every day, you know. They drive us travel agents mad, what with passengers who can’t make their weight limit or who insist on bringing children or pets or who we can’t find suits to fit. The tantrums in the departure lounge! You’ll need a full printout from your doctor before I can confirm this, Mr Brewer, and I will have to check any criminal and mental illness records.’

As he spoke he was tapping into the computer. ‘Load of nonsense, these safety rules. There aren’t any bugs out there for you to bring back: the place is sterile, for heaven’s sake. You won’t exactly be bouncing around on the surface stark naked. The moon’s just a chilly theme park staffed by robots. In my view – and I’ve only been in this agency twenty years since I retired – the Transport Commissioners should pay more attention to what goes on in the skies
below
the stratosphere, never mind above it. Right, here’s your provisional booking.’

Matt took the laminated card and looked at it, though he knew it was unreadable by human eyes. He sighed happily. I’m going to the moon. Golly.’ He turned to Strether. ‘You ever been, sir?’

‘No,’ his boss growled in mock ferocity. ‘Don’t fancy it either. That’s a young man’s caper. We oldies prefer to gaze at the heavenly bodies from
terra firma
. Heck, Matt, I had a twinge or two on my sea voyage to get here. If there’s anything swaying under me, I’d rather it was a horse, not half a dozen Lockheed X-33 aerospike engines.’

‘I went in 2090, coronation year,’ the old man reminisced. ‘We get concessionary fares, of course. Quite an experience, though I wouldn’t want to repeat it. Thank heavens they’ve abandoned those foolish ideas about holidays on Mars. It’s fine for the fanatics, but I have to run a commercial operation. Such an inhospitable dump, Mars, and two weeks travelling there, and back. No sick bags – they don’t work in zero gravity, so use your imagination. Total familiarity with other passengers’ nasty little habits. Everything passing through a tube – and they pinch. Ouch! Not a luxury trip. Who the heck would want to go if they didn’t have to? Nobody, that’s who.’

‘Next century, maybe,’ Matt ventured.

The assistant sniffed. ‘I’ve handled travel arrangements for research scientists required to do a tour of duty at the Mars station. They hate it, I can tell you. It’s about as nice as a week outdoors in aboriginal Borneo. And I don’t recommend that, either.’

The two Americans rose and left, Matt clutching his ticket, a dazed look on his face. Outside, his carrier bag reminded him of other tasks. The young man squared his shoulders. ‘Sorry, sir. The recycling shed. This way.’

The blue filters overhead cut the power of the sun’s rays and lent an almost ethereal feel to the mall, as if it were situated in the lower reaches of some delicate Botticelli heaven. Muzak floated over their heads. Even the cameras were painted pale blue and silver, reflecting the mellow light. The business of shopping was designed to be a delightful pastime, which helped explain why, despite vidphones and electronic catalogues, individuals chose to come in large numbers, to bring their families, meet their friends and spend the whole day over it.

Strether and Matt left the upper levels, found the escalator down and descended five floors, until they were around forty metres underground.

The light here was dimmer. Matt turned a corner. As they pushed open the big door they were assailed by mega-music: crashing metallic thunder that rattled their ear-drums and set their teeth on edge. There was no point in shouting. Matt darted about until he found the proprietor, a big, pale-faced bear of a man with frizzy grey hair tied in a topknot. Then he waved his arms vigorously to gain his attention. At last the man noticed his visitors, and turned down the volume.

The underground warehouse was cavernous, its walls lined with metal cupboards, some half closed, others without doors, spewing out a disorderly jumble of parts, keyboards, wiring, computer towers, white, black, beige, translucent and psychedelically coloured. On the floors were heaps of broken items: bits of monitors and screens in one corner, printers elsewhere, circuit boards, loudspeakers, cooling fans. A mini-mountain of joysticks testified to aeons wasted in playing outdated games. Dustbins carried smaller parts in slightly better condition, presumably awaiting recycling. Strether could see floppy-disk drives, modems, diskettes in all sizes. An ancient supermarket trolley held copper wire, another a stack of shiny aluminium disk hard drives. In a plastic tray hundreds of tiny squares identified themselves as Intel Pentium chips. A shrink-wrapped pallet of interfaxes had been half stripped. On a workshop bench lay an ancient Apple Mac, its innards spilled out, a light winking on a console board. Above on the wall was a sign:

WELCOME TO THE CHIP SHOP
!

WHERE ALL GOOD COMPUTERS GO TO DIE
.

The bear ambled over and offered a grubby paw. ‘Hi. Wotcha brought?’

Matt opened his package. ‘Three empty toners and a broken hologram screen.’

The man examined them cursorily. ‘Five euros the lot.’

‘Fine. I wasn’t expecting anything. Just like to ensure they’re safely disposed of.’

‘Put it in the charity box?’ the bear asked hopefully. Matt nodded. The man grinned and rubbed his greasy palm over his hair. ‘Yeah. Thanks. There’s still lead in them screens, you know. Don’t want to see them end up in landfill.’

Strether picked his way cautiously among the debris. ‘Where do you get this stuff?’ he inquired. ‘And what do you do with it?’

The proprietor prodded Matt. ‘Concerned citizens bring it in; we get it by the pantechnicon from IBM and other big corporations. Over forty million computers are retired every year, you know, in Europe alone. Plus users like the banks and the NHS. One of our jobs – and we’re bonded to do it – is to clean out confidential info before we recycle. Don’t want your DNA details ending up in anyone else’s printout, do we?’

‘Dismantling must be a big task,’ Strether ventured.

The man laughed. ‘Nope. All you need to disassemble a computer are a Phillips screwdriver and the floor. Everything comes apart with screws: they’re required to by law, better than the old hermetic seals, which didn’t separate. But we use the floor when we have to.’

With a sudden movement he picked up the Apple Mac chassis and swung it heavily down on to the concrete. The cover splintered and cracked. Strether winced. The bear
chuckled. ‘You can’t break it – it’s already broken. Worth about five cents a kilo like that, but there’s money to be made if we dismantle.’ He turned to one of the scrap heaps. ‘We’re
nonprofit
. Got everything here. This is a 400-megabyte C80 251. Used to be the industry standard. Now it’s almost worthless except as scrap. Alas, poor Yorick!’ He moved to another bin. ‘Slow modems. These are 2400-baud. No use here, but they like ’em in Guyana where the phone lines can’t handle high bandwidth. We’ll fix up the machines with a Union grant then the Red Cross’ll ship ’em.’

‘Amazing,’ Strether murmured.

‘And these.’ He indicated the silvery Intel processors. ‘Last forever, they do. Computers don’t die, they become obsolete. Not because the hardware don’t work – some of these are fifty years old, recycled a dozen times. Integrated circuits turn up here, still functional, beautifully made. But the configurations can’t cope with the new software they bring in every year. That’s why they do it, see? The more programmes, the more so-called consumer choice, the slower your machine works. So you have to upgrade to get back to the speed you want.’ He slurred
so-called
with a curl of his lip. ‘Then it starts all over again. I found a refurbished Compaq Contura 420 the other day dating from 2015 and it was fabulous, still working. But where’d you find software for it? Nowhere. Deleted. Patents self-destruct every ten years. Bloody racket, if you ask me. The government oughta do something about it.’

‘It’s been a problem since the things were invented,’ Matt agreed. He bent and retrieved a sliver of the Apple Mac.

‘Huh!’ the man snorted. ‘When petrol cars first became popular, manufacturers ignored safety rules to sell more cars. Once buyers insisted, cars got safer. They could do the same thing with PCs, hardware and software. Insist on durability. Make simple options available. But they don’t.’

The man suddenly lost interest and turned up the music once more. The Americans beat a retreat.

They re-emerged into the hazy light at ground level near a clutch of open stalls.

‘The flea market,’ Matt said. ‘Don’t you just love this stuff?’

The two men lingered at a bookstall. ‘I wish they still made these,’ Strether remarked as he picked up paperbacks with lurid covers. ‘Sure, I can download anything I want on my powerbook or on the wall-screen at home. Multi-media, pot-boilers, thrillers, films, holograms, music, live theatre broadcasts, the lot. I like novels read to me by audiobook if I’m feeling idle. But to curl up with the real thing – to turn the crumbly paper pages in your hands. That’s something special.’

‘With respect, sir, you’re betraying your age,’ Matt teased. He moved on to the next stall. ‘Wow! I haven’t seen these except in museums. D’you remember them?’

Strether allowed himself to sound mildly offended. ‘I’m not
that
ancient, Matt.’ He picked up the black plastic headgear and twisted it about. Then he lifted it to fit his eyes and loosely fastened the strap while the stallholder, a stout woman, looked indulgently on.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘It’s got new batteries. You press this switch.’

Strether yelped as the internal image flashed on. ‘Hey! I’m being attacked by tigers! Get ’em off me!’ He danced about, tugging at the straps. The stallholder cackled as
passers-by 
turned in curiosity. She began to rummage for the hand console. ‘Where did I put it? Then you can fire a rifle and kill them.’ But Strether had torn off the helmet, and stood panting and red-faced.

‘Virtual reality! Huh. You can see why
that
was a passing fad. Not a nice sensation at all.’

‘Yeah, well,’ the woman shrugged, ‘they were all the rage for a while. I sell ’em for only ten euros complete with new batteries. The kids like ’em. Addle your brains after a while, though. That’s why they never caught on.’

‘The cinema’s coming out.’ Matt pointed. ‘They’ve had a retrospective this week. Early films. I might catch it with the guys after the game.’

Strether was still panting slightly. He smoothed down his hair, then stopped. ‘Boy, their customers seem to have had a wild time. What’s on?’

‘I don’t know exactly, sir. Let’s ask.’

The two men mingled with a substantial crowd, who were tumbling out of several exits. Mostly young, they were laughing uproariously and clinging to each other as they wiped blood and gore from their clothes. One young woman, her entire head a bloody mess, stood shaking helplessly with giggles as her friends tried to clean her up.

‘What was it? Oh,
Pulp Fiction
– supposed to be Tarantino’s masterpiece,’ volunteered a boy. His face was disfigured by a bullet-hole through the cheek, which oozed wetly on to his tunic.

‘And you – what did you see?’ Strether addressed an older woman whose clothes were flecked with green slime.

‘What was it, darling?’ She turned to her companion. ‘Oh yes,
Alien
. Monsters from outer space. God, this stuff’s disgusting – it really stinks.’ She scrabbled at the mucus with a paper tissue. Others nearby moved away, their noses twitching.

Behind came a youth whose face was blotched red. His eyebrows had disappeared and his hair was badly singed. The smell of scorching hovered about him. To Strether’s inquiry he muttered, ‘
Gone with the Wind
. Silly story, but the Atlanta scenes were terrific. ’Scuse me.’