The Weaver Fish Read Online Free Page A

MEXICO.

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    I don’t think that I have ever seen such an improbable contrast, and felt such an unsettling disjunction, between the inside and the outside of a building. That two vastly different worlds—two realities almost—could co-exist separated only by a thin boundary of pressed steel seemed to defy the Second Law, or something.
    Outside, Building B1 looked like any other abandoned, derelict hangar at any other abandoned, derelict airstrip. Dented, rusting, flapping sheet metal, roughly musical, competed with dying long grass and pitted bitumen to advertise the desolation. A cracked concrete plinth with corroded tie bolts that once secured some prized exhibit was now itself a testament to extinction. Closer to the building, near its left-hand end, was an antique gasoline bowser that belonged in an industrial museum as much as in this scene of relics. As we approached, I just made out the designation B1 inside a faded decal high up on the wall. Were it not for that, I would have thought I was being led to the wrong place.
    The strange thing is, I can’t remember the point of actuallyentering or leaving the building, the phase transition, as it were. I just remember being outside and being inside.
    And the inside, as they say, was something different. I was guided by a helper called Rory to the centre of about an acre of open-plan offices, some made barely private by low glass partitions. Everywhere were men, women, and not a few teenagers sitting at computer terminals, some with racks of accessory test gear housing flashing oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers, and so on. Here and there, two or three would be huddled over a desk or a screen, animated yet hardly noisy. That was a surprising thing: it seemed very quiet for so many people.
    And right there, in the centre, in an office like any other, I was introduced to the man I had come to interview: Walter Reckles, President and Chief Executive of all this, as well as the author of a controversial book on disaster survival that had somehow generated a critical industry of its own before being actually published.
    As I approached, Reckles was facing away, watching a large screen with a graphic of, I suppose, an aerofoil—though it might equally have been a long section through a chilli. The image was to form a slightly insistent, visually seductive background to our interaction. Several columns of numbers were streaming up the right side of the screen, while the figure to left progressively changed in shape, occasionally drastically. I guessed that some kind of optimization was proceeding, but I didn’t ask.
    Rory hesitated, mesmerized it seemed, by the screen. I expect everyone there thought that the most interesting, the most important, the most fantastic design work on the whole floor would begin its life on that monitor. Then he said, ‘Dr Reckles, this is Dr Camenes. She has an appointment.’
    Reckles almost jumped out of his chair, turning awkwardly in the confined space. It was a complex welcoming gesture combining splayed arms and a large smile, as well as, I suspect, a recovery of balance manoeuvre. He responded warmly, ‘I know. I know.’
    It was a broad, beautiful Southern accent. We shook hands, and he gestured me to a chair, at the same time swivelling his own to face me, and moving it to my left. The effect, I came to see,was that he could turn his head from time to time to glance at the unfolding numerical drama behind him; for me it was just a little distracting.
    I would have to say that Walter Reckles, on first impression, is a likeable man. He was tall and clean-shaven, dressed in tee-shirt and jeans, with a certain elegance of speech, accentuated by an intensity of gaze from disconcertingly pale green eyes. I was soon to form the impression that his mind was busy on several channels of concurrent activity, yet his attention to me was almost impeccable. His age was difficult to place, probably midthirties. Even so,