Even the will’s cryptic message for Greenpeace made sense now: broadcast power meant no more oil spills… a brand-new day for air quality, the ozone layer, the whole environment: World-changing technology…

Abe cleared his throat. “One thing I don’t understand—I should say, one of the many things I don’t understand—is why Ronald Clayton was taking his technology to Japan. He didn’t need Japan. He didn’t need anybody. All he had to do was patent it and quietly announce it. He wouldn’t have to go to anybody. The world would stampede to his door. Not only would he be rich beyond King Midas’s wildest dreams, he’d be worshiped as well. He wouldn’t be Time’s Man of the Year, he’d be the world’s Man of the Millennium. Why was he going to Japan?”

“Haven’t the faintest,” Jack said, taking the chassis from Abe and switching off the motor. “But I know someone who might.”

8.

8.

“… And so it’s my guess,” Jack was saying, “that this little truck is going to flip the world on its ear.”

Alicia had been relieved to see Jack. Not glad, just relieved that the man at the reception desk asking to see her without an appointment hadn’t been Will. He’d already called twice this morning. Alicia knew she couldn’t face him, but maybe she could dredge up the courage to talk to him. At the very least she owed him a return call.

But Jack had come in with that toy truck from the house and pulled it apart on her desk, talking a blue streak. Alicia had had a hard time following him at first. She was still dazed from watching Hector die. And then she’d been a little frightened. Jack was positively wired. For a bad moment she’d thought he might be on speed, or maybe peaking in the manic phase of a bipolar disorder. And when she’d heard what he was talking about, she pretty much settled on the latter.

But then he wasn’t simply telling her, he was showing her how the Rover didn’t have a battery and would only run when the aerial was attached. He called it broadcast power.

“Broadcast power,” she said, catching the chassis as it rolled across her desktop. “But that’s science fiction.”

“So was rocketing to the moon and a computer on your lap—once. Now they’re history. But what’s got to blow you away even more is the fact that it’s all yours.”

Was it hers? she wondered. Really? And how much was it worth? A tingle crept over her skin as she realized that a day might come when every lamp, every microwave, every TV, every car in the world would have one of those little transceivers in its works. Worth? Alicia doubted she or anybody else could count that high.