One from Without

by Jack Fuller

  He switched on the computer, which whirred and ticked for a few moments then settled into a steady hum. The screen on his desk drew a lovely Nautilus-shell spiral. He clicked the mouse, bringing up his calendar, which was shaded with meetings and hockey games. From the toolbar he started a new, blank calendar, gave it the name “Correlates,” then toggled to the original.

  His Sundays were almost always empty, just as the house was now. No events to navigate by. Fridays were different. That was when Maggie usually left. He toggled back to Correlates and put an asterisk and ampersand in the boxes for this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Asterisk for Maggie, ampersand for Bill. Then he went to the scroll and found the next-most-recent entry. Toggling to his work calendar, he saw that it, too, was a Friday, when he himself had been traveling, doing a spot check on one of the data warehouses. His travel had caused a complication because Maggie was leaving on a weekend excursion, and he could not be certain he would get home, the airlines being the way they were. Megan said she would just sleep over at the Cadwaladers, but Maggie wasn’t happy with that. They had imposed on the Cadwaladers too much, she said, suggesting another friend. Megan had no problem with that, but Sam started thinking what he wasn’t supposed to think. Now he put an asterisk and an ampersand in the boxes for that weekend.

  Where did they go? He slid out the shredder receptacle and exposed the paper snakes. Do not imagine.

  The next dates Sam checked, Maggie had been home. They had gone to a game together. Megan had scored. Bill and Betty had been in the stands. The weekend before this, he’d had a miserable meeting with Chase and his team about audit procedures for database sampling. Greener had been the only reasonable one in the bunch, in his backing-in way. Sam had arrived home exhausted. Dinner wasn’t ready, despite his having called before he’d left the Dome. Maggie had turned him right around to go out for a bucket of Kentucky Fried. Sure enough, on Betty’s list, Bill was home that weekend, probably making life miserable for his wife.

  Back and back Sam went: Check calendar, check memory, check Betty’s list. Place asterisk and/or ampersand. Repeat. He lost himself in the task. The pain eased as betrayal became data.

  Then the correlations wobbled. One weekend Bill was marked absent, but Gunderman was sure Maggie had been home because they’d had to endure a dinner with some of her friends. This had probably been before she had presented her bill of particulars against him and said she was tired of keeping her life on hold, and certainly before he had offered to find some three-day weekends and she had told him not to bother. She might have already been with Cadwalader but not yet in the heavy traveling phase. Don’t imagine. Just record an ampersand but no asterisk.

  As Gunderman went further back, there were more of those and only a few ampersand/asterisk weekends. Bill must have been cheating on Betty with someone else in addition to Maggie. Gunderman wondered whether number four was some other girl’s mother. It would have been helpful to know the rate of decay of his relationships, but the asterisks and ampersands did not establish this. He made one last click-through of the Correlates calendar and then put it into a folder that he protected with the password 1dbtthc2t. (“I don’t believe that things have come to this.”) If Maggie had developed the chops it would take to break this, he should hire her. Then they would finally have something in common.

  He returned to dithering, knowing and not knowing, things coming briefly into focus and then vanishing. SEC filings always stated that past results do not necessarily indicate future performance, but D&D’s business was built on the belief that in at least rough approximation they did. If someone failed to pay his debts once, he’ll do it again. A cheater cheats because it is who she is.

  Gunderman went back to the documents from his briefcase but quickly gave up, got himself a beer, and pulled down some photo albums from the shelves beside the fireplace. They took him to play groups, picnics, birthday piñatas, Christmas presents, and block parties. Megan’s cradle and crib were in the pictures, too. They’d probably been dangerous as hell, given what the papers were reporting these days, but she had survived. There were so many dangers that you don’t see, even when you are looking right at them.

  He heard the key in the lock and quickly shut the album. He wished he had skipped the beer. It was too early. Bad example. Megan was at the age when she noticed. She wouldn’t guess why he had taken the albums down. Just Dad’s sappy sentimentality, not a crazy hope that past experience would be the future, that they would fill more albums together, the three of them. High school graduation. College. Wedding. Grandkids.

  He stood and wiped his eyes. But it was not Megan. It was Maggie. She was dropping her luggage in the hallway and laying her coat across the bags, though the rack had plenty of room for it. She did not have to speak. He knew.

  Sales for the quarter had come in even stronger than Sara had expected. A late burst of activity, probably just orders pushed early, which would make the comparisons tougher next quarter. But you took it when you could get it and worried about tomorrow tomorrow.

  Joyce called her.

  “Just saw the numbers, Sara. Impressive,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “No,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “My team,” she said. “Especially Margery Strand.”

  “Of course.”

  She passed the compliment on, exaggerating its intensity a little, because salespeople need intensity in order to face down rejection. They cheered when she told them. And again when she said, “The future begins today.” You learned to get yourself up for battle this way. During the bad streaks when you didn’t seem able to close so much as a door, you talked to yourself in the mirror. You can do this. You look great. You’ll blow them away. It’s your turn.

  She gave herself permission to bail out early. Let the future begin tomorrow. Today she would just wander down Oak Street and maybe pay too much for something out of the money she’d be getting for her team’s performance. You had to look like a million to sell a million. She might just get a pair of spike heels. Stretch a little. Make herself taller. Feeling fine. Successful. Not thinking of what it cost.

  She turned toward the elevators just as Sam appeared from the opposite direction. He didn’t see her at first, and when he did, he actually seemed to shrink.

  “You look terrible,” she said.

  “I guess I should have worn your shirt and sweater,” he said.

  He was trying, poor man. She put out her hand to touch his forehead with the back of it. He recoiled.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “To my dad everything was a fever and Vicks the cure.”

  “Placebo effect,” he said.

  “It seemed to work,” she said. “It’s like a positive mental attitude, I guess. But you guys in tech and finance don’t do that, do you. You have to be hard-core realists. Where’s the fun in that?”

  “I’m just tired is all.”

  “What you need is a drink.”

  “Got to get home,” he said. “Megan.”

  “I heard about Maggie,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  He turned back toward his office. “Forgot something,” he mumbled.

  He was obviously afraid to ride in the elevator with her. She knew that feeling. She had seen it in her own face in the mirror on days when she did not think she could sell a soda in Death Valley.

  5

  Data Firms Gird for Proxy Fight

  “What do you know about this?” said Rosten, holding out the second section of the Wall Street Journal.

  “Stock’s down,” said Harms, as if she were telling him the time.

  “There was no warning?”

  “We got a call late,” she said. “We no-commented.”

  “And you figured I could read it over my Special K?”

  “I told Brian,” she said, “and he said not to bother you. He wasn’t at all rattled. You noticed that Gnomon shares are majorl
y up.”

  “So is the price of the deal,” Rosten said.

  The day’s trading had barely begun, but millions of shares had already moved. The market had factored the Journal’s information into the stock price the instant the news broke, if not before. The prices told you that the smart money believed Day and Domes wanted the deal too much and would overpay for it.

  “Now Nyström’s shareholders know how much it will cost them to keep Niko in his job,” she said.

  “Just how calm was Joyce?”

  “Don’t go there,” she said. “He’s too smart.”

  “I’ve encountered smart people before,” he said.

  As they talked, she glided around the edge of the desk until she was close enough that he smelled her morning shower.

  “I wasn’t accusing him,” Rosten said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Who then?” he said.

  “Well, there’s you,” she said.

  Lots of people inside D&D knew about the financials, but only Joyce, Harms, Sebold, Rosten, and of course Marcia knew what was in the letter. Sabby did, too, as lead outside director. Then there was the great merger-and-acquisition sage Hardy Twine, but he did not make his money by being indiscreet; that was the investment bankers’ business model, and they had been kept in the dark.

  She took the Journal from him, close enough that they almost touched. It felt as if the air was electric and newsprint an imperfect insulator.

  “Did you tell your lady friend?” said Harms.

  “She’s out of the picture.”

  “Really.”

  A meeting, of course, was called. Twine attended by speakerphone but did not say a word. For an hour the Secret Committee debated what to say publicly. This was what they ended up with: “Day and Domes does not comment on speculative stories.” C. Northcote Parkinson would have smiled.

  By the time it ended, Rosten was way behind. Gail had managed to bend and squeeze the calendar, but while he was in the middle of a delayed session with a group of bond-issue underwriters, she slipped him a message.

  “Sorry,” it said. “The boss says now.”

  When Rosten entered Joyce’s office, everyone else was already there, and Marcia was passing out a piece of paper. Rosten sped through it. From the language, neither Sebold nor Joyce had written it. Twine had earned some of his fee.

  “I want to get this to Niko’s board ASAP,” said Joyce.

  “We would send it to the board members directly?” said Rosten.

  “You’d better read it before objecting,” said Joyce.

  The letter began with assurances that the Journal article did not reflect Day and Domes’s position. “We approached Gnomon in good faith and with utmost respect,” it said, “in the belief that together we could seize a dominant competitive advantage unavailable to each of us separately.”

  “Dominant?” said Sebold. “I’m surprised at you, Hardy.”

  The speakerphone did not speak.

  “It’s my word,” said Joyce.

  “I strongly advise . . . ,” said Sebold.

  “Strike it,” said Joyce.

  “Strong or unique or even leading, if you must,” said Sebold.

  Joyce took his pen and drew three lines through dominant. It was so easy that he must have put it in to be taken out.

  The rest of the letter repeated the proposal from the letter Nyström had refused to look at. One difference in the new version: Joyce had increased the offer.

  “This is awfully rich,” said Rosten.

  “We simply applied the original premium percentage to Gnomon’s current price,” Joyce said.

  “A price that now, thanks to the leak, already has some of the original premium we offered built in,” Rosten said.

  “That’s our math,” said Joyce. “It wouldn’t be theirs. Anyway, the new offer is only a few ticks up.”

  “May I remind everyone that a tick is twenty-five million dollars?” said Rosten. “I think it would be a good idea to hit the pause button.”

  “The bankers have run the numbers if you’d like to review them later,” said Joyce.

  Rosten looked to Sebold and Harms for support but got none.

  “The market obviously doesn’t like the deal,” said Rosten.

  “The market doesn’t appreciate the synergies,” said Joyce.

  “It believes we will lose our financial discipline,” said Rosten. He tried to get Harms’s eye; she was looking at Joyce.

  “I’ll cc Niko on the letter,” said Joyce. “As a courtesy.”

  Then he stood and thanked everyone. The speakerphone beeped as Hardy Twine left the line.

  Lawton’s energy was returning. Sweet homeostasis steadied his soul. When he laughed, his little sphincter held. Soon he would have the confidence to get out of Depends. And then maybe someday . . . Still, he could not keep himself from checking for warning signs. No blood on the absorbency pad. No chill, even as he passed out of the revolving brass door into the cold.

  No more than a general wariness about things going so well led him to sign in as System Administrator when he learned that a board call had been arranged. As he waited for the screen to load, he shifted his swaddled groin in his chair. Why did they call it navel-gazing? That was definitely not where men focused.

  As soon as he saw his own data field, he felt a bloom of moisture. Anyone might have peed himself. From what the computer showed, Lawton should have been on a street corner with a hand-lettered sign and an empty paper cup. Foreclosed mortgage. Eviction notice. Revoked credit cards. IRS liens. Cell service suspended. Car repossessed. He clicked over to Joyce’s file. Same story. The two of them huddled around an empty oil drum, burning trash to stay warm. Rosten’s records were even worse. They included arrest warrants. Sebold’s file showed him disbarred. Snow’s. Chase’s. Harms’s. Everyone’s was a wreck but Sara Simons’s.

  A chill went through him, followed by a wave of vertigo. He had never thought to spot-check the members of the board, so he punched in Sabby’s name and waited seven lives for the file to come up. Praise whoever’s God was responsible, the data was as fastidious as the man. Teddy Diamond, same story. Tobin. Horst. Leavitt. Robinson. Sullivan. Fusilli. He moved to the customer-complaint dashboard. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

  He needed to get himself dry, but first he hit speed-dial and said it was urgent. After pulling on a fresh pad, he collected Gunderman, and they went together to Rosten’s office. Rosten marched them straight to Joyce.

  “This can’t get beyond the four of us,” said Joyce.

  “Chase will want—” said Gunderman.

  “Screw Chase,” said Joyce.

  “We’d be better off bringing him into the tent,” said Rosten.

  “If he comes inside, Greener does, too,” said Gunderman.

  “Is it a tent or a clown car?” said Joyce.

  “We need to think about what we tell the board,” said Gunderman.

  “I’ll worry about the board,” said Joyce. “You find the terrorist who is doing this to me.”

  “He did it to all of us,” said Gunderman.

  Lawton knew what Joyce was feeling. Fifteen percent of men are diagnosed with the disease, but in all the world there is only one case.

  “Morrie Berry has handled shit storms,” said Rosten.

  “He’s caused them, too,” said Joyce. “Keep him away.”

  With that, they left him and went to Rosten’s new office next door.

  “How confident are you that this really is somebody inside?” said Rosten.

  “Until today I was at about 85 percent,” said Gunderman.

  “And now?”

  “I’d say more on the order of 60 percent, which could grow when we have time to put the algorithm back to work.”

  “What does the fact that Sara Simons’s file wasn’t touched tell us?” said Rosten.

  “Somebody is trying to put this on her,” Gunderman said.

  “We’d better look at Sales
and Marketing first,” said Rosten. “Somebody with a grudge. Maybe somebody who needs money.”

  “Sara doesn’t even know how to do control-alt-delete,” said Gunderman. “She calls me when her machine won’t boot. I go and plug it in.”

  “We’ll need to bring HR into the loop,” said Lawton.

  “You heard Joyce,” said Rosten.

  “No way around it,” said Lawton.

  “I’ll talk to him,” said Rosten. “You go ahead.”

  “There will be privacy issues,” said Gunderman. “Sara will be sensitive about that.”

  “Somebody is in our knickers,” said Rosten. “You bet there are privacy issues.”

  “Knickers?” said Gunderman.

  “It’s a technical term,” said Rosten.

  After the board call Rosten had to get out of the Dome so he could breathe. Through the window it was one of those days when the air carries no moisture and the winds off the lake blow away any hint of haze, making every edge a blade.

  “You going to tell me where you’re going?” Gail said as he passed.

  “Nowhere,” said Rosten.

  She looked at her screen.

  “That’s not on the schedule,” she said.

  The call had gone smoothly. The conciliatory letter with its increased offer was sent. But Joyce flatly rejected Rosten’s advice to let the directors in on the hacking.

  “It’s graffiti,” Joyce said. “Guy with spray paint hanging over the edge of a bridge. It’s the only way a creep can make a mark. Just find him and fire him.”

  “It’s a crime,” said Rosten.

  “Package him out of here,” said Joyce. “I’m counting on you.”

  “What does Sebold say?”

  “He’s in,” said Joyce. “Are you?”

  This was never a question. Just as he had turned to finance because it clarified things, now he looked to the org chart to keep him from falling again into the bottomless pit of self. He was responsible to Joyce, and it was Joyce who was responsible to the board. This was the plain order of things.