'Well, I did have the advantage of picking my own team, so I have had a deep well of talent to draw on.'
'All true, Graham, but many in that position would have, by this time, been presenting me with a key to a storage room full of magnetic chambers containing some utterly useless antimatter. You have presented me with not one, but two, products. Not one, but two, streamlined facilities for continuing to produce. And, if my sources are correct, you are continuing to expand that vision to enable the rest of my company. Along with plans for the expansion of the antimatter enterprise.'
Grum sat there, wide-eyed and fighting a slackening jaw.
'That's an extremely valuable type of person. You have had one particular sticking block this last year, I gather?'
'Umm, yes, Mister Chairman. To be perfectly blunt our VP has been hindering useful lines of enquiry and on at least one occasion ignored warnings of possible dangers.'
'Dangers?'
'Yes, sir. The generator installation for this building was — until the last month — very unsafe…'
Kelvin Goldstein's eyes had gone very round.
'The VP failed to heed our warnings. Fortunately, Lavanya Patel, on my staff, was able to devise a mitigating technology. It's not perfect, by any means, but catastrophic failure is far less likely now.' Grum finished, wondering if he'd gone too far. Kelvin Goldstein was still sitting there, wide-eyed, gripping the arm of the sofa. After a moment or two his eyes narrowed and a species of smug satisfaction crossed his countenance.
'Well, as long as your Lavanya has created the appropriate documentation, I'm sure it'll be fine. I would feel safer knowing that someone of your ilk was looking over it, though.'
'To be honest, sir, it's more an engineering problem than scientific at this stage and I'm sure the VP would have some opposition to my spending a lot of time here.'
'Let me bring this banter to a close, Graham. Your previous VP is no longer with us and we are therefore looking to you to fill that role.' Kelvin Goldstein was standing with his hand out, expectantly. 'Will you take the position?'
'Absolutely, sir!' Grum responded with what he judged to be appropriate energy, shaking Kelvin Goldstein's hand.
'Kelvin, please, Graham. Now go and organise your inner-circle into something that will invigorate this company of mine!'
'So, are we out of the Nevada Facility?' Stewart asked as Grum, looking serious and somewhat perplexed, joined them.
'Uh, in a way.' said Grum, a slight frown on his face.
Stewart looked at the two women who were both wearing frowns of their very own, by now.
'Grum, do I have to go and find a stout stick to beat it out of you?'
'No, I'm sorry, it's just… Look…' Grum stopped.
'Just so's you know, you didn't make a sentence there,' said Stew.
'Sorry. Stewart, mate, and you two as well, would you say that we've done a decent job over the last two years? The only times we've pushed it have been with the old VP and right at the start with the contracts?'
'Yes, Grum, I'd go along with that.'
'I mean, we've got the teams working well and got something usable out of Nevada, but nothing more than making use of what we were given.'
'Well,' Vann cut in, 'you have gone a bit beyond your remit in a few areas. You were never actually asked to produce the generators or power-plants, nor to set up your own project to look at the future of those technologies.'
'That's what Kelvin basically said.' Grum pulled at his lower lip.
'First name basis, is it, mate?' asked Stewart, irritation creeping into his voice. 'Are we out of a bloody job or what? Was he upset? Did he just tell us to stick our heads back in the bunker and stay schtum? What?'
'No, nothing like that.' Grum stopped his brooding stance and looked at all three in a slightly sheepish way. 'I'm now VP New Energy Division.'
Stewart and Amy stood slack-jawed. Vann threw her arms about his neck and kissed him soundly in congratulation.
Grum stuck out his hand towards Stew. 'Ave! Bossa nova,' he said when he had use of his lips back.
'Similis bossa seneca! Can I have your old office?' asked Stew, shaking the proffered hand.
'Sorry, mate, you don't get to take over. I'll have to promote someone for that, I'd rather not bring in someone new to a functioning unit. No, mate, there's another part to my new appointment. Kelvin wants us, and yes he specifically said about my inner-circle, meaning you three, to re-invigorate this company of his. His words. No idea what he means by that, but I guess we'll see.'
'Way to go, old son! New jobs all round! I bet the salary for a veep's not to be sniffed at!' said Stewart. 'What's my job title, by the way?'
'I completely forgot to ask about the money,' said Grum. 'And I'll have to think about your job title. I suppose you might be an AVP, or some such.'
'The installation's just about complete, love.' Vann said to Grum, her eyes shining with pride in him.
'Then I suggest we all take a long lunch. Keep the phones on, though.'
Chapter 23
STEVE Branch caught up with Grum and the others when they came back from the celebratory lunch, and motioned Grum aside.
'Got a moment, sir?'
'Sure, Steve. I'm guessing that the "sir" means you've heard.'
'Oh, yeah. Could have guessed before it happened, anyway. I heard some rumours from my office about the submission you sent to HR. I'd say you read the situation perfectly.'
'Blame my lawyer for that,' said Grum, but he smiled.
'In any case. My VP wants me back, so I have to tell you that when you get back to Nevada, you'll find my transfer notice from the Facility already on your desk.'
'That's a shame, Steve, but I can understand that it wasn't your real role.'
'Oh, I dunno. I get sent into departments to fix problematic managers, and other sensitive projects in public sight. All my work is strictly white-hat, but I don't exactly work exclusively for the Media Division. I have a dotted line — shall we say — to the CEO.'
'Ah. I think I begin to see. A second a go you said you go and fix broken managers. I immediately though you meant me. But now I remember your unfeigned surprise and joy at my strengths-based management thing.'
'Oh, I was, indeed, sent to fix you. Even to replace you if you weren't fixable. But you are right. I realised very quickly that you weren't the problem. I was curious, though, to see how you would handle the increasing pressure.'
'How did I do?'
'Your new job should answer that.'
'Fair enough. I guess, I'll still see you around. We'll have to move here, realistically.'
'Yeah. I'm usually on assignment somewhere, but I'm back every now and then. Catch you later!'
'Seeya.'
'Pods give us the scope to increase the amount of power delivered to various applications, but there are a lot of really big, power-hungry uses we just can't touch. There are, however, a tonne of use cases for smaller generators with continuous power output. Especially in the medical field,' said Grum, addressing the Next Gen Club in their final meeting at the Nevada Facility. For this meeting, Ben had been included as he was slated to take over running the place.
'Well, sure, boss. But how? We've only got one source and one place to collect,' said Ben.
'The answer is contained in the problem as stated,' said Stew.
'Huh?' Ben looked not a little upset.
'Sorry, Ben. What Stew means is that we need to address both the points you raised: more sources, and more collection points. I know that the collectors you've designed far out-perform my originals, and I know that they can be fired at speeds down to sub-microsecond intervals. So we could put them in series and stagger the collection.'
'It's a trap-rack, Benny. Don't look distraught!' Stew held his hands up in apology. 'Sorry, sorry.'
'I don't get it,' said Ben.
'Don't worry about it,' said Grum. 'But essentially, yes. If you think in terms of having an entire rack of capture systems
which can be fitted to the collector assembly during the reset period, and different sizes of cells on the back end. Right down as small as we can go. Smaller the better.'
'I'll work on it.'
'Good.'
'But what about the other part. More supply? We can't just build another accelerator!'
'Why not?' asked Grum.
'Oh. My. God.'
'As flattering as that is, I'm real,' said Grum. 'Yes. We are going to build more accelerators. We are going to need to churn out a gram a year to even approach the demand. That ladies and gentlemen is our goal for the next five years.'
Power Base
(Book 2 of the Leaving Earth Series)
Chapter 1
GRUM was slumped over his desk, head in his hands, growling and muttering imprecations at no-one in particular. Everyone was getting a bit of sub-vocal grief.
The Division had been in a state of disarray when he took over, and he had to spend a significant amount of time — as well as budget — trying to get things sorted out.
That had meant that he was spending all his time in New York, while Vann and Ju were back in Nevada. Stew did not have it any easier with Amy being pregnant, Grum knew. They were both getting used to New York office, and yet another set of cultural norms. Then there would be the moving in to deal with.
The only thing that had been relatively painless, so far was finding the new apartments. None of them were particularly precious about where they were living, so long as it did the job. Of course the new position and salary helped, but it was still preying on his mind while he should be concentrating on the mess the New Energy Division was in.
One of the things which was bugging him was the word "new".
There were programmes for solar, standard nuclear fission, hydro, tidal, wind, highly theoretical gravitic turbines – which to Grum's mind stood more chance of becoming space elevators than power generation – various kinds of biomass research and the ever-hopeful nuclear fusion team, but none them brought in any significant profit. Most of them were not "new", and yet they fell within his remit.
It was a small thing, but it gave him a feeling of cognitive dissonance every time.
From his point of view, each of those programmes should be running as research-heavy business units. Each of them could potentially play its part in a successful energy supply mix, but the various department heads had been trained to "not confuse the boss with science". This, for Grum, was a major problem.
The Tech Centre had effectively got its twelve-generator plant for free because the previous VP had not been running the Division like a business.
The Division's budget had mysteriously grown overnight on the day he had inherited it. Now, however, he was eighty percent through that budget. The financial year started on the sixth of April, and it was only the twenty-seventh.
Less surprising to him, now that he saw the state of things, was that his Nevada expenditure had not initially been questioned. Only when he had run afoul of the old VP had it started to get sticky, and he understood that the treatment he had been given at the old VP's hands was definitely not the norm.
So, if he came in heavy-handed, he was probably going to get a revolt.
Unless he could get the rest of the company to buy the generators and the raw antimatter that his Division was turning out, he would have to try and run the whole thing on twenty percent over the year. Granted there were other energy based programmes, not just AM. The best he could hope for with them was that they would pay for themselves, even that was doubtful in one or two cases.
Nevertheless, he had just gone and asked to spend heavily into the budget for next year with little more – he was prepared to admit – than vague projections, hopes and wishful thinking. And the Board had agreed.
He considered that either they really were as keyed into the energy and space programmes as they appeared, or he was being given a hell of a lot of rope for a nice, long drop.
With both Grum and Stew moving on to their new jobs – and with Amy and Vann soon to follow suit – there was something of a leadership vacuum in Nevada. Grum had deliberately not appointed anyone to head the facility for two main reasons. The most important one being that he was intending to separate the antimatter production and the generator manufacture into their own business units. This he had told the senior staff at Nevada before he left. The second reason was that he wanted to see if there were people who would take up the responsibility and authority, naturally. Grum suspected there would be and he had private bets with himself as to whom.
Also, without Stew at the site, the primary inter-facility communication channel was missing. He was hoping to see that new channels had opened of their own accord, on which he could build an administration framework.
To his satisfaction, most of his private bets paid off. In his discussions with Stew, he decided on the structure and roles for people in the new USSMC Nevada AM Production Unit and the new USSMC Nevada AM Generator Manufacturing Unit. He still had a private bet with himself as to the overall head of the facility.
The AM Production Unit worked similarly to how it always had, except in terms of paperwork. Instead of just continuously turning out antimatter regardless, now they had orders for certain amounts from the Generator Manufacturing Unit and, potentially, other areas of USSMC. Likewise, with the GMU to wider business and possibly beyond. Each Unit now had its own administration staff and work had started to make the physical facilities reflect the business structure.
Grum felt that he now had two internal business units that he could work separately as they best fit into his overall view.
The other challenge was that he could not allow any more installations like the one here at the tech centre. That was not a viable method ongoing. He needed the real "pod" design as soon as possible. Vann and Ben were working on it down in Nevada, and had promised him a proper prototype Real Soon Now. Could not be soon enough from Grum's point of view.
He was not absolutely certain whether he wanted to roll the pod production into the generator business line — where it would naturally fit — or to spin it off as its own unit, given that they were looking at the possibility of having different sizes of pod per installation.
There was a single knock, followed by Stew walking into the office.
It's never going to matter what title I hold, thought Grum, irritably, he's never going to change that habit.
'Wotcha, boss.' Stew walked over to the coffee pot and started to pour himself a mug.
'What now?' Grum growled, without moving.
'I've got a raft of suddenly urgent requests from every department vaguely related to space, and a few earth-bound ones, who all "need" Nevada generators.'
'Fine. I'll pull some out of my arse tomorrow.'
'That'll be curious sight. But you'll face a challenge whilst you've already got your head stuck up there.' Stew was still smiling, but the edges were crazing a little and his tone had sharpened significantly.
Grum raised his head slowly and glared at Stew. Stew returned his gaze unflinchingly.
'Okay, fine!' Grum threw up his hands and slammed his palms back down on the table, wincing at the sting. 'How many of them is it actually possible to fill?'
'None of them. Well, almost none.'
'Then, why the hell…'
'Because you need to know that.' Stew cut in. 'You need to know both those things. We're getting orders, and that we can't fill them.'
'We do have a little stock.'
'Yes, but the numbers don't stack up. The other Divisions are all thinking in terms of having a compact nuclear power plant for their offices, not even in the same order of magnitude as we can produce. Not even with a full-sized pod.' Stew took a sip of his coffee.
'Have you tried to educate them?'
'Tried, and so far failed.'
'Then try again. If there are any which are close to the ballpark, see if Vann or Ben are available to explain the facts of life to them, or do it yourself.'
> 'Don't you want to…'
'Stew! I've got the entire Division to put back to the business of being a business, and to work out how the Nevada business units mesh with the rest of the programmes. I've got as much as I can carry. You do it.'
'OK. I will.' Stew took another sip of coffee, and leaned forward to put the mug down on Grum's desk. He did not complete the motion, nor lean back again. 'You mean right now, don't you?'
Grum knew he was being hard on Stew, but he did not let up on his glare. 'Yes, Stew. I mean now. Neither of us have time to chat.'
Stew put the coffee mug down with a slight click, stood up, and walked out of the office without another word.
Grum knocked on Stew's office door the following morning. He had gone home the previous night and ranted about the meeting, and the rest of the day, to Vann over the phone. Vann very carefully, and with attention to detail, tore him a new one.
She reminded him about granular delegation. He did not have to regard tasks as monolithic problems. They could be sub-divided and each bit dealt with by the right person.
Intellectually, he knew that. He also realised that he had a tendency, when he felt snowed under, to silo big tasks and either deal with them himself or dump them — in their entirety — on someone else. Vann was right. Several aspects of what he was dealing with could be better done by other people, and some aspects of the problems that Stew had come to him with should be on his plate. The most effective way of getting Divisions to understand the reality of AM power generation and its place in the organisation, was for Grum, himself, to discuss things with the other VPs rather than foist it off on Stew.
So, Grum was visiting Stew.
Stew waved at him through the window in the office door and Grum went in.
Leaving Earth Vol. 1 (Leaving Earth Omnibus) Page 11
