At the lunch reception Jon deliberately chose a table in the most remote corner of the room as far away from the VIP traffic as he could get. He had skipped the gourmet items at the buffet and selected the plainest food available: a cheese sandwich and some potato salad.
As he ate his sandwich he hoped he would be all but invisible to the other attendees. But his solitude didn’t last long. After only a few minutes he was joined by Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle. They sat down at his table without so much as a by your leave. Their plates were piled high with the fancier fare available at the buffet: shrimp, scallops, roast beef, foie gras, and assorted other items Jon could not even identify. Just looking at their piles of food gave him indigestion. They both dug in as soon as they were seated. Again Jon thought how Harry had compared them to crows. Just like crows intent upon their road-kill, they had swept down and were gorging themselves.
A few more minutes passed and Ted Blume appeared at the table. “Mind if I join you?” he asked Jon.
“Have a seat,” Jon said with a smile.
Ted sat down next to him. His plate was piled high with roast beef and potato salad.
“I hear the test was a big success. Look at the Old Man,” Ted said, waving his hand toward the VIPs in the front of the room. “He looks like he’s about ready to jump into the punch bowl.”
Jon looked at where Ted pointed and saw Benton Reeves standing near the punch bowl with a glass of champagne in his hand. Jon had never seen him so happy. He was swaying back and forth as he spoke to a general, almost as if he was dancing.
“The rumor is that they’ve reached a verbal agreement about the new operating system,” said Ted Blume. “The legal department is already drawing up a contract.”
“Isn’t the fact that it’s strictly customized for Big Moe a sticking point?”
“I wondered about that myself,” Ted replied. “It seems that John Balis has turned that into a positive. In addition to updating their regular contract, they will be signing a service agreement for additional time on Big Moe. Sixty million bucks is the figure I hear tossed around for the whole package. No wonder the Old Man is dancing around the punch bowl.”
They ate in a silence for a while until Jon heard someone call out his name.
“Jon Graeme!”
Jon nearly choked when he saw Benton Reeves shuffling toward the table. Benton’s girth made him move like a walrus.
“Jon, my boy,” he said as he greeted Jon like a long-lost friend, enthusiastically extending his hand.
Jon stood from the table and shook hands with him. Benton smiled broadly. “Next time don’t sit so far away from my table. I hope you’re finding the food satisfactory.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s your new position? Is Ted keeping you busy?”
“Yes, sir.”
Still holding his hand and shaking it, Benton Reeves said one more thing that made Jon’s head swim.
“If you ever need to see me about anything, you be sure to come straight to my office. My door is always open for you.”
He released Jon’s hand and returned to the area where the VIPs had gathered.
As Jon watched him retreat, he became aware of a uniformed man across the room, watching their table intently. Jon could see that he must be an officer. There was certainly enough braid on him. The soldier’s eyes were like laser beams cutting through him and Jon sensed his disapproval. Jon took his place at the table again and purposefully ignored the man.
“It must be nice to have friends in high places.” Although Ted’s tone was neutral, he wore an expression of astonishment. Jon was too embarrassed to respond. Tina Johnston and Ed Merkle had both stopped eating and were staring across the table at him, their mouths hanging open in stunned disbelief.
The rest of the luncheon passed without incident. Jon was greatly relieved that he didn’t have to field any questions from the Pentagon staff, though he realized his moment of reckoning would be coming soon enough. He worried in particular about the officer who had stared at him when Benton Reeves was at the table. He was certain of one thing: he did not want that man as an enemy.
After he returned to his office, he gave Harry a call. He was not surprised when Harry did not answer. Jon was sure that his only chance to catch Harry would be to stop at his office near the end of the day.
He wished that he could call Lettie and discuss things with her. She had such an understanding of the people and politics of HTPS Industries. She could probably give him a good rundown of all the Pentagon people as well. He felt like he was running blind.
Midway through the afternoon, Ted Blume stopped by. He entered Jon’s office casually. There was a bemused expression on his face as he lowered his considerable girth into the visitor’s chair in front of Jon’s desk.
“After the way Benton Reeves greeted you at lunch today I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I should be the one reporting to you.”
“I was as surprised as anybody.”
“I’ve been with this company for eighteen years and the most I’ve ever gotten from the Old Man was a nod once when I passed him in the hall. You certainly seem to be on some kind of fast track.”
At a loss for words, Jon said nothing.
“Have you had a chance to sound out Harry about documenting the operating system?”
“I’ve called him but he’s been out of his office. I’m planning on stopping by his office at the end of the day. He seems to be more receptive then. If you catch him when he’s in the middle of things, you’re out of luck.”
“Tell me about it.” Ted crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. Jon couldn’t quite read his expression—curiosity, suspicion?
“Do you know anything about the decryption software Harry’s working on?”
Jon was tempted just to say no. It would have been the easiest way to handle the question. But Ted’s honest and forthright manner compelled him to be candid about what he knew.
“A little. I don’t think he’s actually working on it yet, but apparently Harry has come up with an approach for cracking public-key cryptography.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! Next you’re going to tell me he can write a functional version of Shor’s algorithm.”
“That’s exactly his approach. He says he knows how to implement Shor’s algorithm.”
“Jesus H. Christ, where does the guy come up with this stuff?”
“I know,” said Jon, shaking his head. “It’s incredible.”
“It’s beyond incredible.”
Ted stood from the chair and began to pace in front of Jon’s desk. His belly jiggled as he walked. “This is just nuts,” he said. “The ink isn’t even dry on the contracts for the new OS and here they are promising them this.”
Jon watched him for a few moments, unsure of what to say.
Panting a little, Ted Blume took his seat again. “John Balis called me to his office half an hour ago. He had a heads-up about some kind of decryption software that was in the works. He wanted to be sure it was our top priority. Apparently they’ve already spoken to Harry about it.”
Ted paused and looked intently across the desk at Jon. Here it comes, Jon thought.
“When you see Harry later, could you ask if he’s started work on the decryption software?”
“I’ll do that.”
“We can get together tomorrow morning and discuss the progress.”
Ted stood from the chair. His bulky form retreated toward the door.
“Oh, by the way, Jon, Eric Meyers—one of the IT people from the Pentagon—might be stopping by your office later. He’s got some questions about the new OS. He said he wants to discuss the documentation with you.” He gave Jon a sympathetic smile before exiting his office.
Barely twenty minutes had passed when Jon heard another knock.
“Come in,” he called out. “It’s open.”
The door swung open quickly and an officer entered his office. Jon recognized him immediately as the man who had sta
red at him when he shook hands with Benton Reeves.
“I’m Major Eric Meyers, the liaison between our Senior Staff and our IT department. You’re Jon Graeme?”
“Yes,” Jon said with a nod. He couldn’t miss the hint of distaste in the man’s voice.
Meyers walked farther into the office. He was a man of medium height but seemed taller because he held himself so straight. But he also managed to affect a casual air. The top button of his dress shirt was undone and the knot of his thin, black tie was loose a half inch below it. In his mouth was a large, unlit cigar, which he shifted from the right side to the left as he approached Jon’s desk.
He put the palms of his hands on the front of Jon’s desk and leaned forward in a menacing stance. An ugly silence hung in the air. He was daring Jon to be the first to speak. But Jon held back, giving his best imitation of one of Harry’s half-smiles. He kept his gaze steady and looked straight into Meyers’s dark-gray eyes. It was a small victory for Jon when Meyers blinked reflexively. Jon chose that moment to shift his position and slide farther back in his chair to create a little distance.
Meyers leaned even farther across the desk. His eyebrows jumped and he spoke in a quiet but threatening tone. “I’m not happy with what I’ve seen so far, Graeme.”
“Are you referring to the new operating system?” Jon asked, doing his best to seem aloof.
“No, I’m referring to the documentation. Or should I say lack of documentation? In the past, Lettie Olsen always had overview documents ready on our arrival. What happened to her?”
“She’s been transferred to another department.”
Meyers stared hard at him in an obvious effort to intimidate.
“That fat guy, Blumenthal or whatever his name is, said you had some notes about the new operating system.”
Jon reached for the folder that Ted Blume had left on his desk earlier in the day and handed it to Meyers. Meyers stood back and began to flip through the pages in the folder. As he stared at Harry’s densely packed sheet of equations, his brows furrowed.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he said in a loud voice. He threw the folder down on Jon’s desk with such force that the papers scattered every which way.
“I don’t know how a rookie like you got a position like this and I don’t care. It’s pretty obvious you got here by kissing ass. I’ve seen your type before. I can’t believe they replaced someone as good as Lettie with a jerk-off like you.”
He backed away from Jon’s desk and finally took the unlit cigar out of his mouth. The right side of his mouth was curled down.
“I hear you operate out of Harry Sale’s pocket,” he said, pointing the cigar at Jon. “I guess you think you can just ride piggy-back on him. We need documentation. And if we don’t get it, I’ll personally request that they shit-can you. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll expect an Overview of the new OS to be ready by then.”
Jon was a study in self-control. Rather than reacting emotionally to Meyers, he looked coolly at him. “I’ll do my best to have it ready.”
Meyers did not reply. He turned and walked out of Jon’s office without bothering to close the door behind him.
Jon got up from his chair and shut the door before walking over to the window. As he looked out at the pine forest in the distance, he thought of Lettie. Since the day he had taken over her office he had had nothing but bad luck. And from the look of it, his luck wasn’t going get any better. He felt a sudden surge of self-pity, but before he could indulge it the phone rang. Jon picked it up on the second ring.
“Jon? This is Harry. Are you busy?”
“Well, apart from being the resident punching bag, I don’t seem to be doing too much at the moment.”
“Can you come on over to my office?” Harry asked him.
“I’ll be right over.”
Put that asshole Meyers completely out of your mind, he told himself as he walked down the hall. He’s the least of your problems.
Jon knocked on Harry’s door and it swung open immediately.
“Have a seat! Have a seat!” Harry said. There was a quiver of excitement in his voice.
Jon sat down and then glanced up at his friend. Harry looked completely disheveled. His hair was wild, sticking out every which way. It seemed that only one side of his face had been shaved. The right side had a two-day stubble. His badly wrinkled shirt was tucked in on one side and pulled out on the other.
Despite his shabby appearance, Harry had an almost luminous quality about him. He was so elated that Jon half expected him to rise into the air and float around the room. Instead he sank back into his chair, propped himself up on his right elbow, and grinned.
“I just can’t believe it, Jon. Two hours ago I was furious at you.”
“Why?” Jon replied, “What did I do?”
“You’re the one who told ’em I could implement Shor’s algorithm, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Jon said, reluctantly.
“That’s like waving a piece of raw meat in front of a pack of hungry wolves. Didn’t you realize what you were setting me up for?”
Jon bristled, but didn’t attempt to explain himself.
“Man, I was so pissed. I was about ready to storm up to your office and let you have it.”
“Well, why didn’t you?”
“First, you have to understand where I was coming from. I’d just had three or four of the most frustrating days of my life. Just imagine; here I was roaming around inside the directory structure of a goddamned quantum computer, and I couldn’t do a fucking thing! I was completely powerless. I thought all I needed to do was build some kind of interface to Big Moe, but I couldn’t get anywhere. I wrote thousands and thousands of lines of code and ended up sending them all to the bit bucket. I was at my wits’ end, when who should come into my office but John Balis. Without so much as a ‘How’s by you?’ he asks me if I had started coding Shor’s algorithm. I looked at him like he was some crazy stoner. ‘Where did you hear about that?’ I asked him. ‘From Jon Graeme,’ he says.”
Harry paused and looked at Jon for his reaction.
Jon smiled sheepishly. “Well, what happened then?”
“If it had been any other name but yours, I would have blasted him with both barrels of monkeys.”
“Barrels of monkeys?” Jon asked, confused. But then it dawned on him that it was just another of Harry’s mixed-up metaphors.
“Yeah,” said Harry, “It’s a saying, isn’t it? What I meant was that I was pissed, but since it was your name he mentioned, I didn’t want to get you in trouble. So I said, ‘No, I haven’t started coding yet.’ Next thing I know, Balis is sitting where you’re sitting now giving me this big story about how important this is to the company. ‘Can you do it?’ he asks me. So I say ‘With enough time and money I can do anything.’ ”
Jon laughed out loud when his friend said this. He was always amazed by Harry’s certainty about his own abilities. “What did Balis say then?”
“Well, he puffed up kind of like a salesman. ‘If you can get it done in the next month, there’ll be a hundred thousand dollar bonus for you.’ He stood up, shook my hand like he’d just sold me a new car and said, ‘Keep Jon Graeme updated on your progress.’ Then the fat son-of-a-bitch walked out of my office. He might as well have been whistling.”
Harry paused, waiting for a response.
“Well,” said Jon, “What happened next?”
“I was really pissed. But then I started thinking about Shor’s Algorithm. It occurred to me that since I had completely struck out trying to come up with a functional interface from Big Moe to the quantum computer, I might as well try another approach. I figured I would explore the quantum directories and try to find anything relating to the distribution of prime numbers. So I logged onto to Big Moe. As soon as the Josephson junctions activated and I linked to the quantum computer—”
“Wait a second,” said Jon. “I’m not following. When you say ‘link’ I don’t know what you mean. Are you
talking about I/O at your terminal?”
“No, not at all. I told you about this the other day. I/O is controlled by quantum fluctuations. The Josephson junctions trigger some kind of resonance effect in Big Moe that creates a gate between the quantum computer and a specialized structure they built into my neo-cortex.”
“You mean it’s like a telepathic connection?”
“I don’t like the word ‘telepathic.’ It’s not very exact. It would be more accurate to say that I can visualize the organization of the quantum information system. I can roam at will through its domain of data structures. But I was like a kid looking through the window of a candy ship.”
Jon smiled. “I think you mean you were like a kid looking through the window of a candy shop.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely, Harry.” But even as Jon said this he was thinking that maybe Harry’s mind was getting as scrambled as his metaphors. What he was describing was just not possible.
“But when I logged on to Big Moe this time,” Harry continued, “I got into the candy shop. As soon as I was logged on I started thinking about the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and how primes are the building blocks of all the positive integers. And boom, I was suddenly in the root directory on the quantum computer. And that’s where all the utilities are and all the tools that I need. I’d never been able to find it before.”
“You mean it’s sort of like the bin library on a UNIX system?”
“Exactly,” said Harry. “It even has the quantum equivalent of the man page.
“You mean these utilities and tools are documented?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“In English?” Jon asked incredulously.
“No, no, no,” Harry replied. “Everything is visualized; it’s all conceptual. The files themselves are not names like they are on a classical computer. They are three-dimensional structures. When you focus your attention on one of them, the generalized concepts flow by quickly, like a table of contents. If you focus on one of these table elements, you can drill down to a more detailed picture.”
The Infinity Program Page 15
