NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

Mark Cuban was facing a personal crisis.

And he would get no sympathy from anyone.

His $1 billion investment in Virgin-Maverick six months earlier had been done on a lark. It was “mad money,” a small piece of a fortune totaling $13 billion.

Now it had blown up in his face, in a good way. It had become seed capital that was placed in a host of good places. Branson had invested him on the same terms as he’d invested himself. And everything had come up trumps. His $1 billion was now at least $10 billion, and growing every day. As a result Forbes was about to put him on the cover of its annual “rich list,” the Forbes 400. His was the largest American fortune outside Microsoft, Wal-Mart and Warren Buffett.

What’s wrong with that? Mark Cuban had long wanted to be rich, but that had meant things like a big house, a boat, the ability to travel. Yeah, maybe a sports team.

He’d had it all, even before he met Richard Branson and let Dr. Richard Florida suggest he could hedge his fortune in South Africa. Imagine owning a combination of the Caymans and the NASDAQ, complete with its own trading floor, Branson had said. Imagine having a fortune equal to the one you have in America, but outside it, so nothing politicians can do might touch you. Imagine giving white and black people a new chance, a new start, on the other side of the world.

It was a romantic vision. But who could have imagined it would work?

Now Mark Cuban’s fortune had entered a new dimension, one he was unfamiliar with. He’d thought he was tossing money away on his basketball team, and giving himself a great joyride. Now the Mavericks were worth twice what he’d paid for them, and other owners were starting to emulate him. Everything he was touching turned to gold.

What was the difference between the fortune Mark Cuban had now and the money he’d made in the Internet Bubble?

Responsibility.

And there was no one to guide him through it. Bill Gates had Buffett. All Mark Cuban seemed to have were a bunch of jocks, hangers-on, sportswriters…The Benefactor had been a fiasco.

An entire industry seemed to have emerged overnight, aimed at separating Mark Cuban from his money. Each e-mail that came through his firewall seemed to be carefully scripted. They were like prospectuses, complete with broadband presentations. They made him yawn, made him wonder at the waste that went into his pitching them, often unread, into his recycle bin.

Here was a business school, “by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs,” down in Austin. They just wanted $100 million, to virtualize the program, take it around the world over the Internet. They’d put his name on the school, The Mark Cuban School of Entrepreneurship.

How could he tell them? He was an accident, practically a scam. He got streams of sports broadcasts when no one saw value in them, called it Broadcast.Com. He sold it to Yahoo, a non-business which owned no rights to what it claimed it offered, for stock worth $6 billion. Then he held that stock for a year, as required, selling it for $13 billion in cash a full year before the bubble burst.

There was no genius in it. No matter what the hangers-on claimed. He was just the biggest lottery winner in history, a complete and total fraud.

Now, thanks to Richard Branson he was worth, what, $25 billion? $30 billion. He’d lost count. He had people to do that. As honest as they might be, he knew they padded the accounts. His accountants and lawyers all had their McMansions, their Infiniti limos, their memberships in the local Republican clubs.

What was his politics? He had no idea.

What did he want? He had no idea.

So here he was, unannounced, sitting in the high suite of the Carlton Centre, where I’d been stashed after my my rescue a month before.

“I know how you feel, sort of,” I said, before he turned from the window, where one corner of the view held the ghettos of Soweto, and another corner held the cavity of a new skyscraper, thhe Virgin Center, due to become our headquarters a year or so from now. The promise was, in time, it would cover over half the view. It would rise a full 70 stories, clad all in Green, black steel with some glass polarized to yellow, so on sunny days a vision of the South African flag would play against the curtainwall.

“How long has it been, a little more than a half a year, and look what they’ve done to both of us,” I said with a smile. “Wealthy beyond our wildest schemes.” Briefly I sketched out to him how, between my own V-M investments, Always-On Technologies Ltd. and Jenni’s new job with Global we were suddenly swimming in money.

“They’re not,” Cuban said, pointing down toward the ghettos below.

“No,” I agreed. “But there a lot more jobs there now, a lot more educational opportunities, a lot more hope. For every family who emerges from Soweto into the wealthier suburbs, there are two or three more, often illegal families, from Zimbabwe or Mozambique, Zambia or Botswana, coming to take their place. They will work for what seems like peanuts to us, then spread the wealth among 8-10 relatives and wire more home.

“Like our great-grandparents. They dream of us, dream of their own grandchildren having the view you’re seeing now.

“That’s what makes this worthwhile. They may be working for us, but they’re really working for themselves. We may seem to be getting rich on their backs, but we’re really working for their grandchildren.

“They’re hungry, but they’re looking for fishing holes, not fish. The ones I know are good people, although there are sharks in those waters, barracuda who’ll strip your bones, a whole human ecosystem that will bring you to tears if you let them.” And I proceeded to outline my own experience, in what turned out to be Zimbabwe.

“So what are you here to do to me?” Cuban asked ruefully.

“I think I’m here to return a favor,” I said with a smile.

“Another helicopter ride?” Cuban asked.

Once again, Sir Richard Branson was waiting on the roof. But this time I took what had been Richard Florida’s seat, and there was no champagne. Instead a small plastic chest sat in the center of the craft, holding water bottles.

Branson sat in the pilot’s seat, urged Cuban to take the co-pilot’s chair, and both dipped into the pail for drinks while I took three in the passenger’s compartment, sharing them with the nominal pilot and co-pilot.

We were making a grand circuit. We headed northeast, toward Kruger Park. Along the way we saw suburbs, and slums, and then wild streambeds where giraffes grazed. I saw Branson point down several times, I saw Cuban nod his head a few times over the earphones, and after a bit I brought them both a second round of water.

When we returned to the Carlton Center, many hours later, Cuban had a glow in his eyes and Branson the look of a satisfied lover.