Pasarian remembered Bangladesh, where he had seen young children with sticklike arms and protruding bellies roaming the streets in packs like wild dogs, willing and even eager to kill for scraps. The separatism that the term 'Third World' implied infuriated him—as did the attitude of his immediate superior, Paul Buher. As far as Pasarian could figure out, Buher didn't see starving children. He only saw percentage points and profit-and-loss statements. He did not understand that statistics were composed of real people who were hungry and who sometimes did extremely dangerous things if they got hungry enough. All Buher understood was that if people got hungry, as they invariably did, and you controlled the food, which is what Buher wanted, then you stood to gain a handsome, steady income. Pasarian hated Buher's cold attitude, but he consoled himself with the thought that if the starving peoples of the world ended up being fed, that was all that really mattered.

Pasarian was even willing to put up with Buher's insistence that he chauffeur them in the oversized, overequipped golf cart. It was a scene out of any of a dozen old Hollywood movies Pasarian had seen projected against the canvas walls of tents when he was a boy; the big silver bird drops out of the sky, the white man comes to save the natives, explaining to them that the volcano is not erupting because they have been evil.

This particular big silver bird, however, was one of the smaller helicopters owned by Thorn Industries, and the white men it bore to earth were Richard Thorn and Bill Atherton. What they had come to explain to the natives was a carefully reasoned position prepared on behalf of the Common Market—another term Pasarian resented. Ten basically white nations ganging up against the basically nonwhite nations of Asia and Africa might be many things, might even be natural—it was certainly the way of the world. But 'common' didn't seem to be the best public relations word to apply to the enterprise.

Pasarian knew enough about the company and the various differences of opinion within it to recognize that this was Buher's big opportunity to convince Richard Thorn that his way of doing things was the best way. Pasarian had a private joke with himself that Buher had majored in Persistence and Persuasion in college. He'd never seen anyone like Buher before; always weaseling around, somehow always in the right place at the right time; knowing when to force an opinion and when not to; never giving up, always willing to wait for the right moment. And if it seemed the right moment might never come, doing whatever had to be done to make it occur. That was Buher. A real winner type. And a threat to everyone except Thorn, who was exempt only because he owned the damned company, and because as long as he was alive, the predominant philosophy behind Thorn Industries would be his.