"No, that's all. They're calling seats now, so I got to go anyway. It sounds as if you need to see this tape."
"That was why I wanted to catch you. We can get right on with that now. When are you due back?"
"Just tonight in LA. I'll be back late tomorrow."
"Okay, we'll talk more later in the week. Enjoy the flight."
The phone buzzed again as soon as Michelle put it down. She picked it up again. "Yes?"
It was Wendy, the receptionist. "Stanley Quinze is on the line again. I tried to get a number from him, but he insisted on holding."
"Okay, I'll take it. And could you try and get Doug Corfe at Neurodyne for me? Let me know if he's not there."
"Will do."
* * *
For a long time, Kevin and Taki had been intrigued by the thought of getting mecs to fly. In their experiments, they concentrated, naturally, on the smaller models in their collection, thinning the casings to fragile shells and taking out all nonessentials to reduce weight. They designed flexible wing systems based on insect patterns, which used leverage to exploit the improving power-weight relationships that came with diminishing size and stored mechanical energy recoverably in elastic structures.
A further problem was with the dynamics: of somehow matching the speeds of slow human neural processes, evolved to suit the needs of slow, lumbering bodies, with the high-speed motions appropriate to insect-world physics. And even with some real insects, for example bees and mosquitoes, it turned out that the frequency of wing beats was a result of resonance, and was actually higher than the rate of the nerve impulses driving the system.
Their solution was a "software gearbox": a microprogram that would translate one cycle of operator-muscle contraction and relaxation—or at least, what was perceived as an operator's muscles working—into a hundred or more precoded wing beats. Hence, each voluntarily initiated beat would cause a set series of instructions to execute over and over at a rate too fast to follow individually. Since the boys wanted their four regular limbs to be available for normal use, they had programmed the wing drive to link to the neural circuits associated with the shoulder blades. Flying would thus follow from a learned process of precisely controlled "shrugging." That was the theory, anyway.
The trick, Kevin told himself as he stood poised on the edge of a cliff in Neurodyne's wooden-block benchtop test ground, was to imagine that he was swimming in a dense fluid that amplified the effects of his movements. In fact, they had tried to write the microprogram to make the feedback feel just that way, with the perceived force serving as an analog of the wing speed that was impossible to register directly. Then, what felt like deliberate motion of an imaginary limb in a tangible medium would be converted insensibly into the appropriate vibrations. Having got that firmly fixed in his mind, he extended his virtual appendages and launched off.
The problem, he admitted as he found himself spinning and gyrating erratically across the floor, was that the system also amplified every error a hundredfold before you could do anything to correct it. It was like the old adage about the computer as something that can make mistakes a million times faster than the worst imbecile on the payroll: by the time you got to know that something was going wrong, it was already history.
He flipped out of visual to become himself again, viewing the Training Lab from one of the couplers. There were several techs in the vicinity, engaged at various tasks. Patti Jukes was nearest, clicking through report screens on a terminal. "Hey, Patti," Kevin said. "Can you pick me up off the floor and save me having to get out of this? I'm a couple of feet to your left, by the bottom of the bench."
"Sure, no problem." The lab staff who had been with the company for any time at all were used to having Kevin around, and sometimes Taki also. Kevin knew most of them. Patti listened to classical music and owned a dog called Bach. Kevin had told her once that Beethoven had had a dog with a wooden leg. That was where he'd gotten his inspiration when it walked across the room: dah-dah-dah-dah.
Patti got up and picked the mec off the floor. "I wouldn't want you to get trodden on down there." She held it over the landscape of blocks and terraces. "Where do you want to be—back on the big flat one at the end?"
"Yes. Thanks." Kevin had come in after school to use some of the firm's microcode utilities that he couldn't run at home. Taki was at his own place that evening, ensnared in some family function that had proved impossible to escape from.
"The way you guys have done this is terrific," Patti said, examining the mec before she replaced it. "How's it coming along?"
"Oh, slow, but I think we're getting there. The problem is finding a program to give just the right wing twist. Right now, it's spiraling and losing lift. That's why I ended up where I did. You want to try it?"
"I'd love to, but not right now. Maybe later, when I'm done with this. Will you still be around after five?"
"Probably. . . . No, more than probably. I'm supposed to be riding home with Dad, and he's with a couple of prospective customers. You'll have time for dinner, then come back."
"Is Kevin in here?" It was Doug Corfe's voice, from the doorway. "Ah yes, there he is." He came on in and approached across the lab area. "How's the magnificent man in his flying machine getting on?"
"I think he's amazing," Patti said. "They're going to crack it, you know, Doug."
"Did Stewart put that new lens in the Liga?" Corfe asked her.
"I'm pretty sure he did. He looked like he was aligning it the last time I was in there. That was about an hour ago."
"Good." Corfe turned to Kevin. "Can we wrap it up for now, Mr. Wright-brother-the-second? I need to talk to you."
"Well, I'd say it's still mostly Mr. Wrong-brother at the moment," Kevin said. "What's up?"
"Well . . . let's go to my office."
"Oh—sure." Kevin removed the headpiece and collar, and stood up from the coupler. "Shall I leave all this as is?"
"I'd shut it down and pick up your stuff," Corfe said.
Kevin saved his updated files onto a removable disk pack, ejected it, and collected together his coding charts and notes. He put the mec in its container and stowed everything back in his school bag, which he had left on a chair. "That's it," he announced.
"Some other time, then, I guess, Kevin," Patti said. "Okay, I'll settle for a raincheck."
"We'll have it working better next time, anyway. You wait. I'll see you, Patti."
"Take care, Kevin."
Kevin followed Corfe out of the lab. They walked a short distance along the main second-floor corridor to Corfe's office. Corfe waved Kevin inside and closed the door. "I got a call from Michelle today," he said. "She told me about this business with Vanessa."
Kevin was taken aback. "She told you about that? I thought it would be kind of confidential. I don't understand."
"It's okay. I went to see her about what's going on with DNC—we talked about it that day we were working on the boat." Corfe's manner was conciliatory. "Now, I understand—I don't want to go dragging personal things up where they're not needed, either. But if it involves a person whose interests, to put it mildly, don't exactly coincide with the well-being of this company . . ."
"You mean Payne?"
"Yes, exactly. Well, in her position, Michelle has to know."
There was no escaping the reality now that sooner or later this was going to blow up in Eric's face. Kevin sighed, felt bad about it, but still couldn't see that he'd had any other choice. The only alternative would have been to do nothing. And one of Eric's own favorite sayings was that many decisions in life were made automatically when the alternative was unacceptable.
"Okay. So what do you want me to do?" Kevin asked.
"She says you've got some kind of tape."
"Right. It's a video from a mec that accidentally got into one of her bags when she was leaving for that seminar in town last weekend. Taki and I activated it to try and find out where it was. It turned out she was with Payne on his boat—that one you said you worke
d on a couple of times."
Corfe looked puzzled. "Payne keeps the Dolores at a private dock behind his house in Bellevue. How could you activate a mec at that distance?"
"Taki made a local relay pack. It was in the same bag as the mec."
Corfe raised his eyebrows, thought about that, and nodded to himself, looking impressed. "I'm going to have to take a look at that."
"Sure—assuming mom gives it back."
"She's still got it?"
"I guess so. But the mec's still in the boat. It was almost out of juice."
Corfe showed his hands. "Well, there's not much we can do about that now. But in the meantime, Michelle needs to see this tape. Where is it now?"
"I've got it at home."
"Uh-huh." Corfe nodded as if that was what he'd thought. "I don't think we want to go showing it here or at the house. So how does this grab you as a suggestion? I drive you to the house now, and we pick up the tape. Then we go into town and run it for Michelle at her office. After that, if you want, you could leave it with her and forget you ever saw it."
Kevin squirmed uneasily. "I was going to ride back with Dad tonight. . . ." he began. But it didn't say much, really. He and everybody else changed their plans constantly. Eric, if anybody, was worst of all.
Corfe shrugged and recited the explanation for him. "So I had something to do in Seattle, and you decided to come for the ride. Hell, it's true. You're not telling any lies with that."
"Couldn't I just give it to you at the house?"
Corfe seemed to give the thought some consideration, but then shook his head. "Not really. If it's a mec video, it'll need some interpreting. And if you were working the mec, you saw more than what's on the tape. You know that."
Kevin nodded resignedly. "Okay, Doug. Whenever you're ready."
Corfe picked up the phone. "I'll just put in a call first, to let her know to expect us."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Martin Payne's home, referred to by his friends as "The Mansion," was a multimillion-dollar piece of waterfront real estate in the hyper-select Medina division of Bellevue, opposite Seattle on the east side of Lake Washington. It had been bought with the proceeds from what was still an explosive growth industry, where the rewards went to the quick, the shrewd, and the bold, and the rest rapidly became wall fodder.
At least, that was the way Payne was fond of idealizing things. The frontier of technical advancement was still far west of any moderating influence capable of imparting much semblance of law and order. He had started the company twelve years previously to develop miniature, silicon-based sensors and actuators that could be fabricated into the same chips as the electronics to provide integrated subsystems, which had rapidly found application in just about every likely area, from industrial control and space instrumentation to smart cars and talking appliances. A big field was the growing interest in small robots, and it was a natural step for the company eventually to start producing its own line. It had changed its name to Microbotics five years previously.
The corporation's dazzling financial performance had been due to more than simply the excellence of its technical innovations and the free play of market forces as enshrined in the textbooks espousing the American system; if the truth were known, it was more a result of political concessions and other practices that the said system's official financial regulators would not have approved of at all—not publicly, anyway. But that was his function, Payne told himself. Weren't results the first thing that stockholders wanted from a CEO? He and what he graciously termed the "executive committee" took all the risks and were entitled to be compensated appropriately; the rest took their shares and didn't even need to know the details. And those shares were far from table scraps. The way he saw it, they had a pretty good deal.
The billiard room, with its walnut paneling, leather upholstery, gun rack, trophy case, and mural sword display, was a celebration of wealth, success, and masculine opulence. It boasted a full-size, English twelve-foot table and commanded a view of the lake through French windows opening to a flagstone veranda with gray marble balustrade. The pillar supporting the overhead rack for glasses at one end of the bar, where Vogl, the house steward stood mixing drinks, was part of a totem pole from one of the Northwest tribes, dating back a couple of centuries. Payne would have had to look up the name to bring it to mind again. The designer commissioned to take care of the interior of the house had provided a book that contained their background and history.
The game was snooker—begun with fourteen red balls, six colors, and a white cue-ball. Sinking a red wins a point and allows a try at one of the colors, which score higher. Downed colors are brought up again and reused until all reds are eliminated. Play is then to dispatch the colors in turn, finishing with black, which is the highest scoring.
Norbert Dunne, Chief Financial Officer of Microbotics, stooped over the table to line up on a red. "From what I heard this morning, some people might be getting nervous already. It seems Geddes and West might be pulling out." Dunne was a heavyset man with thinning hair going white, at present visibly feeling the heat, his tie hanging loose and vest unbuttoned. One of his most useful talents was an aptitude for turning publicly raised investors' money, which was protected by law and required to be used only for properly authorized expenditures listed on the balance sheet, into short-term privately accessible venture capital, which wasn't.
Victor Bazhin was an old friend of the committee's, a partner in a New York trading bank that had provided a lot of Payne's capital in the early days. He was lean, tanned, slightly built—in good shape for his sixty-odd years, dressed suavely but conservatively in a gray pinstripe, having come straight from a meeting with the directors that day. "Geddes and West might?" he repeated from the far side of the room. "Where'd you hear that?"
"Around," Dunne said, playing his shot.
"That would put Neurodyne in real trouble," Garsten said. He had driven across the bridge from the city to make up a foursome. "I'd guess that could hit them with another ten-point dive."
"You get my point now about timing," Payne said, addressing Dunne and Bazhin especially. The talk was about the DNC scare. Geddes & West was one of the large backers that had put funds into Neurodyne. If they pulled out it would send a message to the market that would start a stampede. For all its scientific trappings, imagery, and rhetoric, the stocks business was still largely computerized superstition.
"You're as good as family here, Vic," Payne said to Bazhin. "I didn't want to leave you in the cold. Norbert's setting up for us here to buy in to a tune of a mil each, minimum. A week from now will be the time."
"That's why G and P are about to unload," Garsten put in while he sized up the table. "They can feel the dirt sliding."
Payne watched Bazhin as he chalked the tip of his cue. He knew what Bazhin was thinking. Floating bad press in the journals to drive prices into the basement as a setup for a bulk buying operation was hardly a new tactic. And it wouldn't be the first time that fears would be found to have been baseless, and prices magically recovered, once the right interests were in control.
"Okay, I hear the message," Bazhin said as Garsten played. "But the big egg in this instance isn't the company per se, is it, Martin? What we're talking about is the technology. Having Neurodyne on a leash won't accomplish much unless the patents come with it. And I can't believe that's the case."
"Heber owns them personally, and leases exclusive rights to the corporation," Garsten said.
"You see." Bazhin gestured to Payne as if to say that made his point. "Eric's a smart guy."
"His wife, anyhow," Garsten said. "She's the business brains."
"Whoever." Bazhin waved it away. "But it puts us on time. Leases have dates on, and have to be renegotiated. Then what?" Meaning that Heber could put them through a laundry, or, with DNC given a reprieve by then, walk away and set up a new company that would be eagerly capitalized, leaving them holding a worthless shell.
Payne moved to a corner to take h
is turn. "You'll be safe," he told Bazhin, leaning over and sighting. "I'll get control of the patents too. Then Microbotics gets full rights, and we buy out Neurodyne as a subsidiary."
Bazhin frowned. "How are you planning on doing that?"
Colors rolled on the green felt to a rippling of clicks. Payne smiled as he straightened up from sinking a red and moved to line up for the pink. "I'm not at liberty to go into all the details. Let's just say it gets a little personal. You know how it is, Baz, some things aren't really appropriate to a conversation between gentlemen."
"Just don't go underestimating Heber again this time," Bazhin said. "Because somebody thinks thoughts into chips all day, that doesn't mean to say he can't be a fighter. It caught everyone off guard when he decided to walk and set up Neurodyne. If it's his company and his patents, a guy like that could still cause a lot of trouble."
Payne shook his head. "Just trust me for a little while, okay, Baz?" It wasn't necessary to spell out the implications. In the event, whoever controlled Neurodyne by that time would stand to come out of it very well—and with Microbotics's stockholders providing the funds. And the eventual yield would in turn recompense the stockholders for their involuntary generosity later, all in the fullness of time. It could work out very neatly. Bazhin nodded.
Outside the French window, the water reflected lights from across the lake. Payne's yacht lay moored stern shoreward at its dock to one side, white, sweeping curves picked out in a blaze of floodlighting.
Not only his company, but his wife, Payne added mentally. But he hadn't deemed it tactful to go into that side of things just for the moment. And besides, if all went as planned, in another week Heber would no longer be around to raise objections.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The towers of Seattle center were gouging the darkening sky into orange streaks of cirrostratus edge-lit by dying sun when Corfe parked in a side street off 4th Avenue in the downtown district. He had borrowed Eric's van from the house so that on the way, he and Kevin could pick up some timber moldings and a door that he needed for a job at his own place that he had planned for the coming holiday weekend. Not that the van had a lot of spare room to squeeze a door and a pile of timber into. The back was filled with electronics consoles, screens, and three operator stations—like one of the mobile surveillance and communications units that backup teams used in the spy movies. Eric had fitted it out as a mobile mec command center in order to give demonstrations to prospective users on their own premises. But using it would explain Corfe's going to the house from Neurodyne, and make it seem more natural that he should take Kevin along for the ride.
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