Collective Mind (15 page)

“To
Peter!” Michelle joined in, getting to her feet.

“To
Peter!” Bikie roared, after switching off the sound on the DJ’s console.

“To
Peter!” voices echoed on all sides, alternating with the clinking of glasses.

Sandrine
came over and took the birthday boy away to dance. Bikie set off to get another
glass and Isaac and Michelle were left alone together again.

“Would
you like me to show you my main invention?” Isaac suggested.

“Yes,
do.”

Isaac
went to his room and came back down with the V-Rain.

“A
very stylish little instrument. I tell you that as a professional designer.”
Her words were sweet music to Isaac’s ears.

“The
design’s actually not the most important thing. Press this button here when
it’s raining, and not a drop will fall on you. It’s like you’re under a dome.”

“Oh,
wow! Great! I’ve never seen anything like that before. That’s a really useful
item for someone in an evening dress with a fancy hairstyle,” said Michelle,
impressed. “I could use one of those.”

“That’s
not all,” said Isaac, glad that his invention had been appreciated, and
moreover, by a girl he liked so much. “You can use it in all sorts of other
places, as a personal umbrella or as a public one. You can keep the rain off
restaurant terraces, or even have an exhibition of watercolors out in the
street. The patent has been registered.”

“I
see you really are an inventor. Peter wasn’t exaggerating. Good for you! You
are an interesting guy. Did you drop that glass at my feet deliberately that
time?”

“No,
by accident sorry.”

“I
don’t know. I’m not sure I can believe you. Every time I see you, you pull some
really offbeat stunt.”

“That’s
the effect you have on me. I get dizzy and glasses start falling.”

Michelle
put her arm on Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac tried to kiss her but Michelle pulled
away.

“I’m
a strait laced girl, not so fast. You’re too quick off the mark!” said
Michelle, smiling.

Isaac
couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. He could see she thought he was cute
and found him interesting. But he couldn’t figure out if he should try to kiss
her again or if it was better not to. Probably better not to, he could spoil
everything. And today he could get to know her better. The party was in full
swing, no one was getting ready to leave yet.

These
sober thoughts didn’t linger in his head for long. A few minutes later he did
kiss her after all, and this time she didn’t draw back.

The
next morning was a hot one, with the principality scorching with sunshine. At
his old place in weather like this, Isaac would literally have been gasping for
breath, and he preferred to go early to his job in the bar where strong air
conditioners buzzed quietly and it was relatively cool. But that problem was
behind him now. At the Wolanski villa it was great. Squeezed in between cliffs
on both sides it was always slightly in the shade, and in addition there was
always a breeze blowing in this little gap, even on a completely windless day.

The
electric cleaners hummed away steadily outside, tidying up after the party.
Isaac and Bikie, in an excellent mood, had sat themselves in the living room
and were studying in more detail the photographs they had managed to get hold
of at Link University.

Isaac
noticed that in some of the photos Link looked rather odd by modern standards.
An American would have called his appearance “old-fashioned”, and an Englishman
would have called it “classic”. In some of the photos Link was holding a cigar.

“Look,
Bikie, in this photo here and here too. Link smoked and he smoked cigars.
Smoking has already been conquered, right?”

“That’s
right, it has,” replied Bikie. “I got cured myself; I never thought it would be
so easy. I just took the pills – and goodbye, years of nicotine addiction. I
don’t feel the slightest desire to smoke, in fact it disgusts me. Although
there are some rich old farts that still suck on their cigars and pipes.”

“And
Link smokes! Maybe he still smokes now. It doesn’t look like our stubborn Link
changed his habits of many years. That could be our lead. It is cretins like
that, who think cigars aren’t really all that harmful, who keep the remaining
Cuban factories in business. Let’s see what we can dig up on the subject.”

Isaac
remembered the jubilation at the final victory over nicotine addiction. For
three hundred years smoking had been a problem for ordinary people and a source
of big money for the tobacco industry. UNICOMA screwed the influential tobacco
lobby by releasing a drug that cured nicotine addiction, both physical and
psychological, with just two tablets. In a flawless marketing move, UNICOMA
handed out the medication absolutely free, exchanging two tablets for a single
cigarette of any brand. The tobacco conglomerates were crushed like pitiful
worms; they went bankrupt in just a few weeks. The tablets flew off the shelves
like hot cakes; people gathered in parks and burned their cigarettes together.
There aren’t very many ideas that can unite the entire world in a single
impulse, but cigarettes were burned in parks from America to China.

The
day they started handing out the free tablets was a global holiday, a celebration
of independence. Independence from nicotine which used to take a million human
lives a year. People lost millions on their tobacco shares, some even committed
suicide but no one felt sorry for them. The hands of the tobacco company owners
might not be bloodstained in the literal sense, but figuratively speaking they
were dripping with gore.

Anyone
that still wanted to smoke could only find a tobacco shop in the very biggest
cities, or they ordered the old-fashioned poison on the internet. Cigarettes already
cost almost as much as cigars, their price rocketed as sales plummeted. A month
later the Agency spectacularly bolstered its influence by releasing a cheap
remedy for cancer.

In
those two months the popularity of donating creativity soared sky-high and more
followed when COMA struck a blow at drugs. This time the Agency didn’t forget
its own interests – the drug-dealers and pushers were “downloaded”
compulsorily, as criminals. Drug addiction had also been defeated, this applied
to every kind of illegal highs apart from weed. The arguments about that were
still going on but way things were headed, it was going to be declared a drug.
The last bastions of legal marijuana, Amsterdam and Los Angeles were losing the
battle.

Alcohol
consumption also fell, but not heavily. The people who became alcoholics were
usually pretty stupid, with such low levels of creativity that it was pointless
to sell it for the money. They could never afford a good boarding house for
themselves, so they preferred to carry on drinking, although there were some
cases when in order to get their next drink, alcoholics did go to donate “for
peanuts”. COMA adopted an internal regulation on the minimum level below which
it didn’t buy anyone’s energy.

So,
smoking had been conquered. Only a few smokers were left, mostly rich people
and members of the older generation. They were too old to listen to the
warnings about how bad you smoking was for you and too arrogant to give up
their beloved habit of puffing on a pipe or pulling at a cigar for any reason
at all. For people like that, smoking a cigar was a matter of individual style,
a hobby and a part of their life. There was a chance that the retrograde Link
was like that too. Everything seemed to suggest it. Like many geniuses, he was
not very particular about his appearance, and greyish white traces of ash could
be seen on his trousers and the sleeves of his jacket. The cigars also turned
in his photos a few times. The tobacco industry was at its last gasp but still
working for people like Link.

Bikie
came up with the idea of digging through the lists of clients on the servers of
tobacco shops near the university. He asked Isaac not to bother him.

“I
like to socialize and I get distracted when there’s someone else with me,” he
explained. “So when I’m working, I’m a loner.”

Isaac
did not object since he was sorting out the patent documents for his anti-rain
device. The important thing now was not to sell too cheap. Wolanski’s idea of
using the V-Rain on the open verandas of restaurants added a good two million
to the price, if not more. And he went to visit Vicky in the hospital: he
wanted to see her all the time now. There was so much he wanted to say to her,
but he couldn’t. Neither could she hear.

Working
on his new approach Bikie collected the addresses of tobacco sellers who turned
out to have been a lot more numerous in Link’s time since here were very few of
them now. First of all he excluded the shops that were too far away, and then
he picked out the ones that sold expensive cigars and worked around the clock.
He broke into their databases with no problem and to start with he focused on a
tobacco shop that was located only a short distance from the university campus
they had just come back from.

“We
know when Link was in England. We know when he started giving his lectures or
when he went away to conferences. I’ve highlighted the relevant dates. If he
paid for cigars with his card, we’ll see its number on those days,” Bikie
explained to Isaac.

Sales
at the little cigar shop were pretty sparse, on some days no one bought a
single one. “Good kids,” Bikie growled, “smoking is bad for you.” There was a
time when he was a heavy smoker himself and he had ignored all the warnings. It
was hard to imagine how many cigarettes he would already have smoked sitting
there like that and working on his puzzle. Now even during an intensive search
he never even thought of smoking….but coffee was a different thing.

Bikie
took a swig from his cup and looked at the results of analyzing payments by dates.
Every time Link came back to England, a purchase for a substantial sum was made
at the tobacco shop. Bikie compared the numbers of the cards used hoping to see
that it was the same customer every time, then he could assume that it was the
professor’s card. But, alas, he saw that the cigars were purchased with at
least two different cards. Did that mean that Link was the owner of at least
one of them?

The
analysis continued and Bikie decided to break into the data bases of tourist
agencies located fairly close to the University. Even though the procedure
didn’t look too promising, he launched the program for comparing cards into
which he had entered the numbers that came up at the English tobacco shop.
While the program was working he went to take his mind off things by seeing
what Isaac was up to.

Isaac
had just come back from the gym and his hair was still wet after the shower. He
was sitting on the sofa with the television on.

“It’s
time you took a stroll down to the shop and bought a couple of new t-shirts for
yourself. While we’ve been living here, you’ve pumped yourself up a lot. Good
for you, of course, keep at it. But your old clothes are skintight on you now;
they make you look like a dance teacher.”

Isaac
snickered and reached for the remote to turn up the sound. The jingle to
introduce the news played and an affable presenter announced in a brisk voice:

“And
now the latest science news! In Africa new crops developed by UNICOMA that are
tolerant to heat and consume only small amounts of water are being planted. The
food that is grown is already semi-dehydrated, and its volume expands several
times over when liquid is added which is extremely convenient. The compressed
harvest from one acre fits into a single small truck. It goes to the warehouse,
from the warehouse to the shop and onto the shelf. The customer can easily
carry the compact package home and then soak it in water.”

“To
deliver the amount of food that you get from one pack you would have had to
hire a truck before!” an old man in a shop announced briskly from the screen,
leaning down to the journalist’s microphone.

Then
the television told them about the latest news in medicine. In a discussion
about a large number of conveniences and innovations available to the disabled,
the developers presented a new generation of artificial limbs which were
practically indistinguishable from real ones. “In the future they can go even
further and make them better than the human body, if one of the scientists
comes up with a suitable design. As yet it’s only a dream,” summed up the
pretty reporter with the bright-white smile. “But with the new technology,
dreams come true.”

At
the end of the bulletin they showed a brief glimpse of a demonstration against
downloading OE in Delhi. The protesters carried placards saying: “Veggies have
dimwit children”. The presenter switched to a spokesman for UNICOMA, who said
yes, some children are born with a low level of creativity, but it was too soon
to draw any conclusions. “They are still very young, still babies, and perhaps
their creativity levels will increase as they grew. Ordinary children also have
low creativity when they are born and it develops as they mature. In any case,
we are giving this matter special attention, tracking the problem and not
forgetting about it. The possibility is being considered to produce a remedy to
correct the situation. We have already tripled the downloading fees for
specialists working in this area.”

“Not
all of the children are born as Happies, which shows that the situation can be
corrected. In any event, UNICOMA is certain to solve this problem, as it has
previously solved other problems of mankind,” the presenter summed up.

Isaac
knew that UNICOMA was tracking the problem; he had seen the table of Veggie
children’s creativity levels. But it wasn’t true simply to say that the level
was low, because most of the children were born without any creativity at all
and it would be a good idea to have paternity tests for the ones who did have
some. So UNICOMA lied. Isaac was furious, but there was nothing he could do.

After
the advertisements came the sports news. In sports Happies performed no worse
than ordinary people. Physical ability was still the determining factor here.
The Veggies simply kept themselves in good shape under the guidance of a
trainer, and basically accomplished with ease any task they were instructed to
do.

Suddenly
Mick Jagger’s voice started singing in the room where Bikie’s computer was at
work: “I can’t get no satisfaction!”

“What
the hell’s that?” Isaac started in surprise.

“The
program is signaling that it’s found a match!” said Bikie with a sly wink.

The
friends dashed to see what had been found. It turned out that the numbers of
both cards used to buy cigars were found in the payment database of one tourist
agency. They had been used several hours apart to pay for a flight to Sardinia.
The same cost, a one-way flight. But the most exciting thing was the date of
the payments. It coincided with the day of Link’s disappearance, the very same
day when he didn’t show up to lecture to his waiting students.

“Both
cards again?” Bikie exclaimed, as if he was talking to the monitor.

“Have
you forgotten?” said Isaac, turning his blazing eyes towards his friend, who
was so proud of his discovery but at the same time had failed to see the
obvious. “Link had Yoshi Kato with him. I’m sure she bought him cigars too. And
they flew to Sardinia together. And by the way, they paid at different times to
keep things secret.”

“It
sounds convincing! It is convincing, dammit! But was Sardinia their final
destination?”

“Let’s
take a look at the tobacco situation there shall we Bikie?”

“Already
looking,”

Until
quite recently there had been two cigar shops left on the island, both quite
excessive for a dying economic sector. But on the other hand, that was the way
it ought to be in a place so well-loved by the rich. One shop had already
closed now, but the other was working. Bikie opened up the databases of both
and rummaged around in the accounts section to see if the two familiar cards showed
up there. Alas, the numbers weren’t in the databases.

“But
look here!” Bikie exclaimed. “Literally two days after Link’s disappearance a
really big purchase was made in one of the shops. It looks very much as if
someone stocked up well in advance before going into hiding. As a former
smoker, I can tell you Isaac, that when your nerves are stretched you smoke a
lot more.”

“Obviously
Link couldn’t use the old cards for buying things. He must have had new ones
ready in different names.”

“If
we assume that Link hunkered down on Sardinia and he has a new card, he must
have used it quite a few times.”

“Bikie,
this is a lead, this is our chance to find him. Check the purchases for the
last seven years on the card that came up and check that the card used for that
large purchase hadn’t shown up in the shop before then and I’ll go and pack.
We’ll go to Sardinia, keep the tobacco shop under observation and lure Link out
into the open.”

While
Isaac was packing Bikie shared the news with him: no one had used that card
before to buy anything at the tobacco shop, or anywhere else on the island. But
the number showed up again later at that shop and in several supermarkets.
Deliveries have been ordered on it too, but Bikie did not manage to discover
the delivery address. “Delivery companies have been flourishing, they have the
money for good data protection,” said Bikie, making an excuse.

At
last they had a theory about where Link was that was based on more than mere
hope. It was much better than the straws they had been clutching at before.
With their computers and their own two heads, they could set up a brainstorming
session even in New Zealand if necessary and Sardinia was relatively close. Not
Asia or North Africa luckily. The only thing keeping Isaac here was Vicky. His
heart ached at the thought of having to part with her again and this time he
did not know for how long. Wolanski’s house was super-comfortable, but his feet
were itching to get on the road.

With
their plan set, Isaac and Bikie felt better. The nervousness that had dominated
the last couple of weeks subsided. A decision that has been taken firms things
up, setting a concrete goal, switching the thoughts over to the new challenge.
Neither of them wanted to admit that the logic for the journey was rather flimsy,
that Link could have moved on from Sardinia, so without agreeing they supported
and encouraged each other.

That
evening Isaac had yet another good sign. He got a text, short but extremely
encouraging. Michelle Blanche asked him how he was getting on. He decided that
today luck was definitely on his side. Forgetting about Vicky, he immediately
remembered the unbelievable evening that he had spent at Wolanski’s place with
Michelle, chatting and discussing things like old friends and even kissing.
That was the first time she had shown any real liking for him.

Isaac
answered that he was doing great and plucked up the courage to say he would be
glad to see her again and the sooner the better because he was going away and
he didn’t know for how long. As he waited for Michelle’s reply the minutes
stretched out into hours, and when she finally replied: “Yes, I’ve freed up my
evening, we can meet!” – Isaac was engulfed by euphoria.

Everything
was coming together incredibly well, at last they had a serious lead and his
nascent relationship with Michelle was getting on track. It felt really good to
fall in love, and memories of that evening kept coming back to him.

On
days like this he thought there were quite a lot of good things in his life. As
he packed his suitcase, he remembered how he used to go picnicking with his
family at a campsite. They drove there, and those trips were always real
adventures! His mother and stepfather took turns to drive, while Vicky and he
gazed out of the windows spellbound.

Remembering
Vicky again, Isaac realized with some confusion that his feelings for her were
similar to what he felt for Michelle. ‘Okay, there’ll be time to figure things
out,” he decided.

Now
that they calmed down a bit, the two friends started thinking about what they
needed for the journey and how they were going to get there. Isaac had a clear
opinion about that but he knew Bikie would be against it, dreaming of going on
his motorbike, and Isaac spent a long time choosing his words before bringing
up the subject. As if he was thinking out loud, he said they would need at
least some inconspicuous old van for the surveillance of the shop. It would be
better to drive to Sardinia in the van because you couldn’t do much talking on
a motorbike. They could take their things; have a roof over their head, all
hunky-dory. And if everything went well, they wouldn’t be coming back on their
own. In the end Bikie realized that Isaac had already made the decision but
they only had a motorbike so the question was where to get a van.

“Look,
Bikie, what if we try borrowing some kind of van from someone in your crowd? Or
maybe swap something for it, something that your crowd really values?”

“Isaac,
you don’t want us to go on my Harley, and you’re dropping hints, wondering
where we could get a van from, aren’t you? And since there’s nowhere a van
could come from I have to sell or exchange my Harley right? Now tell me….are
you totally nuts?”

Isaac
nodded guiltily, as if to say, thank you Bikie for sparing me the need to
suggest it.

There
was a brief pause and then an argument followed. Bikie protested heatedly,
screaming that his Harley was his life, his brother, his love and destiny. The
stuff you no way sell or exchange, either temporarily or permanently.

“I’ll
never, ever lend out my friends, my women or my motorbike!”

But
in actual fact he was arguing with himself. He was the one who had voiced the
idea of swapping the Harley. Bikie was a pretty sound analyst, and he realized
that he was stuck with nowhere to turn. His logic was backing his own wishes
into a corner.