Manhattan in Reverse by Peter F. Hamilton Page A

now, dead these last five years. It was he, I freely admit, who had given me a degree of comfort in tackling the question of who had killed poor Justin Ascham Raleigh. Always the old missus dominicus had exuded the air of conviction, the epitome of an irresistible force. It would be his calm persistence that would unmask the murderer, I’d always known and accepted that. Now the task was mine alone.
    I emerged from the plane’s walkway into the reception lounge. Neill Heller Caesar was waiting to greet me. His physical appearance had changed little, as I suppose had mine. Only our styles were different; the fifties had taken on the air of a colourful radical period that I wasn’t altogether happy with. Neill Heller Caesar wore a white suit with flares that covered his shoes. His purple and green cheesecloth shirt had rounded collars a good five inches long. And his thick hair was waved, coming down below his shoulders. Tiny gold-rimmed amber sunglasses were perched on his nose.
    He recognized me immediately, and shook my hand. ‘Welcome to Manhattan,’ he said.
    ‘Thank you. I wish it was under different circumstances.’
    He prodded the sunglasses back up his nose. ‘For you, of course. For myself, I’m quite glad you’re here. You’ve put one of my charges in the clear.’
    ‘Yes. And thank you for the co-operation.’
    ‘A pleasure.’
    We rode a limousine over one of the bridges into the city itself. I complimented him on the height of the buildings we were approaching. Manhattan was, after all, a Caesar city.
    ‘Inevitable,’ he said. ‘The population in America’s northern continent is approaching one and a half billion – and that’s just the official figure. The only direction left is up.’
    We both instinctively looked at the limousine’s sunroof.
    ‘Speaking of which: how much longer?’ I asked.
    He checked his watch. ‘They begin their descent phase in another five hours.’
    The limousine pulled up outside the skyscraper which housed the Caesar family legal bureau in Manhattan. Neill Heller Caesar and I rode the lift up to the seventy-first floor. His office was on the corner of the building, its window walls giving an unparalleled view over ocean and city alike. He sat behind his desk, a marble-topped affair of a stature equal to the room as a whole, watching me as I gazed out at the panorama.
    ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You win. I’m impressed.’ The sun was setting, and in reply the city lights were coming on, blazing forth from every structure.
    He laughed softly. ‘Me too, and I’ve been here fifteen years now. You know they’re not even building skyscrapers under a hundred floors any more. Another couple of decades and the only time you’ll see the sun from the street will be a minute either side of noon.’
    ‘Europe is going the same way. Our demographics are still top weighted, so the population rise is slower. But not by much. Something is going to have to give eventually. The Church will either have to endorse contraception, or the pressure will squeeze us into abandoning our current restrictions.’ I shuddered. ‘Can you imagine what a runaway expansion and exploitation society would be like?’
    ‘Unpleasant,’ he said flatly. ‘But you’ll never get the Borgias out of the Vatican.’
    ‘So they say.’
    Neill Heller Caesar’s phone rang. He picked it up and listened for a moment. ‘Antony is on his way up.’
    ‘Great.’
    He pressed a button on his desk, and a large wall panel slid to one side. It revealed the largest TV screen I’d ever seen. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep the Prometheus broadcast on,’ he said. ‘We’ll mute the sound.’
    ‘Please do. Is that thing colour?’ Our family channel had only just begun to broadcast in the new format. I hadn’t yet availed myself of a compatible receiver.
    His smile was the same as any boy given a new football to play with. ‘Certainly is. Twenty-eight inch diameter, too – in case you’re