“It’s as brilliant as it is obvious, don’t you think? I figured the Arabs’d be willing to pay billions to keep broadcast power off the market. So, without telling Dad, I ‘borrowed’ one of his lamps and booked a flight to Saudi Arabia. But I never got there. During the layover in Frankfurt, I discovered that the lamp didn’t work. Panicked, I hurried back to the U.S.—where I found it did work. So there’s a limit to how far the power can be broadcast.”

Idly, Alicia wondered about the range, about what wave-form was used… but what she remembered from her one undergraduate physics course was woefully inadequate.

“So I took the lamp to OPEC’s UN mission but they refused to see me. Would you believe it? Here I was offering them a way to save their collective asses, and those idiots didn’t want to listen. Fortunately I found another group, almost as wealthy—”

“Iswid Nahr,” Jack said.

Thomas jerked as if he’d been slapped.

“Who are you?” Thomas said, staring at him. “How do you know that?”

“Keep talking,” Jack said, pointing to the fire. “And keep feeding.”

“All right, all right. Anyway, Iswid Nahr must have taken that lamp apart and put it back together again about a hundred times, but finally they were convinced. They contacted Dad and made him a fabulous offer. But instead of being grateful, he pitched a fit, going on and on about how he wasn’t going to let anybody bury his invention. Billions of dollars on the table and he’s in a screaming rage. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.”

“I can,” Alicia said. “I haven’t spoken to the man since I was a teenager, and it couldn’t be clearer.”

“Well, then, dear sister,” Thomas said acidly. “Pray enlighten me.”

“Half sister,” Alicia said. “And don’t forget it. As for your father, he wanted more than money—he wanted glory. He wanted to go down in history as one of the great men of all time, someone whose genius had transformed the world. And more than that, he wanted to control his technology. What a power trip that would be: control the power that powers the world.”

“You could be right,” Thomas said. Was that a note of grudging acquiescence in his voice?