He wondered how he could make Anathema happy.
It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very oldfashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.
Somewhere in Adam's sleeping head, a butterfly had emerged.
It might, or might not, have helped Anathema get a clear view of things if she'd been allowed to spot the very obvious reason why she couldn't see Adam's aura.
It was for the same reason that people in Trafalgar Square can't see England.
Alarms went off.
Of course, there's nothing special about alarms going off in the control room of a nuclear power station. They do it all the time. It's because there are many dials and meters and things that something important might not get noticed if it doesn't at least beep.
And the job of Shift Charge Engineer calls for a solid, capable, unflappable kind of man, the kind you can depend upon not to make a beeline for the car-park in an emergency. The kind of man, in fact, who gives the impression of smoking a pipe even when he's not.
It was 3:00 A.M. in the control room of Turning Point power station, normally a nice quiet time when there is nothing much to do but fill in the log and listen to the distant roar of the turbines.
Until now.
Horace Gander looked at the flashing red lights. Then he looked at some dials. Then he looked at the faces of his fellow workers. Then he raised his eyes to the big dial at the far end of the room. Four hundred and twenty practically dependable and very nearly cheap megawatts were leaving the station. According to the other dials, nothing was producing them.
He didn't say "That's weird." He wouldn't have said "That's weird" if a flock of sheep had cycled past playing violins. It wasn't the sort of thing a responsible engineer said.
What he did say was: "Alf, you'd better ring the station manager."
Three very crowded hours went past. They involved quite a lot of phone calls, telexes, and faxes. Twenty-seven people were got out of bed in quick succession and they got another fifty-three out of bed, because if there is one thing a man wants to know when he's woken up in a panic at 4:00 A.M., it's that he's not alone.
Anyway, you need all sorts of permissions before they let you unscrew the lid of a nuclear reactor and look inside.
They got them. They unscrewed it. They had a look inside.
Horace Gander said, "There's got to be a sensible reason for this. Five hundred tons of uranium don't just get up and walk away."
A meter in his hand should have been screaming. Instead, it let out the occasional halfhearted tick.
Where the reactor should have been was an empty space. You could have had quite a nice game of squash in it.
Right at the bottom, all alone in the center of the bright cold floor, was a lemon drop.
Outside in the cavernous turbine hall the machines roared on.
And, a hundred miles away, Adam Young turned over in his sleep.
aven Sable, slim and bearded and dressed all in black, sat in the back of his slimline black limousine, talking on his slimline black telephone to his West Coast base.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Looking good, chief," said his marketing head. "I'm doing breakfast with the buyers from all the leading supermarket chains tomorrow. No problem. We'll have MEALS in all the stores this time next month."
"Good work, Nick."
"No problem. No problem. It's knowing you're behind us, Rave. You give great leadership, guy. Works for me every time."
"Thank you," said Sable, and he broke the connection.
He was particularly proud of MEALSTM.
The Newtrition corporation had started small, eleven years ago. A small team of food scientists, a huge team of marketing and public relations personnel, and a neat logo.
Two years of Newtrition investment and research had produced CHOWTM. CHOWTM contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman. It didn't matter how much you ate, you lost weight.*
Fat people had bought it. Thin people who didn't want to get fat had bought it. CHOW® was the ultimate diet food—carefully spun, woven, textured, and pounded to imitate anything, from potatoes to venison, although the chicken sold best.
Sable sat back and watched the money roll in. He watched CHOWTM gradually fill the ecological niche that used to be filled by the old, untrademarked food.
He followed CHOWTM with SNACKSTM ―junk food made from real junk.
MEALSTM was Sable's latest brainwave.
MEALSTM was CHOWTM with added sugar and fat. The theory was that if you ate enough MEALSTM you would a) get very fat, and b) die of malnutrition.
The paradox delighted Sable.
MEALSTM were currently being tested all over America. Pizza MEALS, Fish MEALS, Szechuan MEALS, macrobiotic rice MEALS. Even Hamburger MEALS.
Sable's limousine was parked in the lot of a Des Moines, Iowa, Burger Lord—a fast food franchise wholly owned by his organization. It was here they'd been piloting Hamburger MEALS for the last six months. He wanted to see what kind of results they'd been getting.
He leaned forward, tapped the chauffeur's glass partition. The chauffeur pressed a switch, and the glass slid open.
"Sir?"
"I'm going to take a look at our operation, Marlon. I'll be ten minutes. Then back to L.A."
Sir.
Sable sauntered in to the Burger Lord. It was exactly like every other Burger Lord in America.* McLordy the Clown danced in the Kiddie Korner. The serving staff had identical gleaming smiles that never reached their eyes. And behind the counter a chubby, middle-aged man in a Burger Lord uniform slapped burgers onto the griddle, whistling softly, happy in his work.
Sable went up to the counter.
"Hello-my-name-is-Marie," said the girl behind the counter. "How-can-I-help-you?"
"A double blaster thunder biggun, extra fries, hold the mustard," he said.
"Anything-to-drink?"
"A special thick whippy chocobanana shake."
She pressed the little pictogram squares on her till. (Literacy was no longer a requirement for employment in these restaurants. Smiling was.) Then she turned to the chubby man behind the counter.
"DBTB, E F, hold mustard," she said. "Choc-shake."
"Uhnnhuhn," crooned the cook. He sorted the food into little paper containers, pausing only to brush the graying cowlick from his eyes.
"Here y'are," he said.
She took them without looking at him, and he returned cheerfully to his griddle, singing quietly, "Loooove me tender, looooove me long, neeever let me go…"
The man's humming, Sable noted, clashed with the Burger Lord background music, a tinny tape loop of the Burger Lord commercial jingle, and he made a mental note to have him fired.