In New York City the tops of the buildings tear the sky. When the snow falls the tops of the buildings look like mountain peaks. The most important people in the city live and work as high as they can on their man-made mountains. When they want to travel, a helicopter lands on the roof and carries them away, just as enchanters on glass mountains whistled for eagles.
Regalia Mason had an office in a part of New York City called Tribeca. She was so high up that the clouds sometimes snowed outside her window while lower buildings were still in sunshine.
In her vast white office she gave orders to people who had never seen her. People knew her name and they were afraid of her, but only a very few knew what she looked like.
She was beautiful.
And cold.
Regalia Mason was the Chief Executive and President of a company called Quanta. Quanta made its money by only selling things that people had to buy – like air and water and oil. Whatever was in short supply, Quanta sold. Sold it very expensively. Sold it to people who could not afford it. Sold the Earth and the stars and the sun. Yes, they had even sold stars to rich men worrying that Earth was too full, and they had sold solar energy to people who had run out of all fossil fuels. They had sold everything out of the Earth – its gold, its titanium, its plutonium, its iridium, its rivers, sea, forests and coral.
Quanta controlled National Parks, where the last few animals lived, and Quanta controlled all the oil reserves of the Middle East.
Quanta controlled most of life, and Regalia Mason controlled Quanta.
There were only a few things that Quanta didn’t control; one of them was Time.
Regalia Mason was sitting in her white office, wearing her white fox-fur coat and gazing out of the window at the flat plain of sunlit clouds.
She was above the skyline, the way you are in an aeroplane, and when she looked out, the clouds seemed solid, like after snow has settled on land. White infinity stretched before her.
On her desk she had an egg-timer made out of white gold, and she idly turned it over and over, and tiny fragments of diamonds fell from one sphere to the other.
Regalia Mason was a scientist. Underneath her white fox-fur, she wore a white coat. She analysed, quantified, measured, and experimented. Her latest experiment was to take Time from people who had too much of it – useless people, lazy people, unemployed people, children, perhaps, yes, children, perhaps, and sell the Time she had taken from them to people who didn’t have enough of it – important people, rich people, successful people, old people, dying people, if they could afford it.
She had a file on her desk marked Top Secret. Inside were the rough outlines of her new idea.
Time Transfusions.
She was going to sell Time Transfusions.
Faintly, overhead, she heard the whirr of the helicopter blades coming to take her to the airport. She was going to London.