"Sounds like Wordsworth," Hackworth said.

The man had been staring out over the meadows below. He cocked his head and looked directly at Hackworth for the first time.

"The poem?"

"Judging by content, I'd guess The Prelude."

"Nicely done," the man said.

"John Percival Hackworth at your service." Hackworth stepped toward the other and handed him a card.

"Pleasure," the man said. He did not waste breath introducing himself. Lord Alexander Chung-Sik Finkle-McGraw was one of several duke-level Equity Lords who had come out of Apthorp. Apthorp was not a formal organization that could be looked up in a phone book; in financial cant, it referred to a strategic alliance of several immense companies, including Machine-Phase Systems Limited and Imperial Tectonics Limited. When no one important was listening, its employees called it John Zaibatsu, much as their forebears of a previous century had referred to the East India Company as John Company.

MPS made consumer goods and ITL made real estate, which was, as ever, where the real money was. Counted by the hectare, it didn't amount to much– just a few strategically placed islands really, counties rather than continents– but it was the most expensive real estate in the world outside of a few blessed places like Tokyo, San Francisco, and Manhattan. The reason was that Imperial Tectonics had geotects, and geotects could make sure that every new piece of land possessed the charms of Frisco, the strategic location of Manhattan, the feng-shui of Hong Kong, the dreary but obligatory Lebensraum of L.A. It was no longer necessary to send out dirty yokels in coonskin caps to chart the wilderness, kill the abos, and clear-cut the groves; now all you needed was a hot young geotect, a start matter compiler, and a jumbo Source.