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“You’re lying. Even in the dark I can see that you just lied. So you’re a romantic too?”

Isaac’s cocktail tasted great, it had a nice color, and besides all that it went straight to your head from the very first glass. Michelle was no exception, she was joking and smiling.

“And the second one,” said Isaac, primly deciding to change the subject, “is called ‘Star Bridge’. It’s champagne too, with Amaretto and Grand Marnier. Like a bridge to the stars. Those ones up there,” he said pointing to the sky.

Michelle looked up too, at the pure black sky, spangled with bright stars.

It wasn’t cold at all, but Isaac shivered, moved closer to Michelle and took hold of her hand. She didn’t object, on the contrary, she put her head on his shoulder.

Everything was going so well, but then up walked Bikie and Peter, two moment killers.

“Damn you to hell, Bikie, can’t you guys see you’ve picked the wrong moment?” thought

Isaac. But the moment had been lost. Bikie had lugged over four glasses of champagne.

“I want to propose a toast to Peter. He’s a true character! Alive and natural, not some kind of a fake. You are young, and you’re only just at the beginning of your road, so don’t turn off it!

Happy Birthday, as they say. Happy in the good sense of the word! Dammit, what a fine word they’ve ruined!” Bikie screwed up his face theatrically and everyone laughed.

“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 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 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. Einsteiner 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, the Agency 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 Einsteiner 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.

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 grayish 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. 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. His relation with Michelle didn’t make him forget that feeling he had had for Vicky.

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. 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 local tourist

agencies. 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 Collective Mind

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.

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”.

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

Isaac knew that the Agency 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 Collective Mind 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