Gordian had just finished summarizing his plan, and could already see the unhappiness on Chuck's face. He waited until the attorney wasn't looking and checked his watch, thinking he had a good half hour before his third visitor showed, time enough to deal with Kirby's inevitable objections. Not that it would be easy.
He glanced out at the yard, bracing himself. Whipping downhill in pursuit of a tossed plastic rabbit, the dogs were curves of graceful motion against the greenness of the sprawling lawn. As usual Jack, the brindle male, had outsprinted Jill, the teal-blue female. Though both had been bred for the dog track, and Jill was sleeker and younger, her skittish temperament had disqualified her from competition, while Jack had run a great many races before he'd been retired.
Julia had gotten the dogs from a greyhound adoption program out of Orange County about six months ago. Had they not been rescued and placed, they would have been euthanized, which was the common practice of racetrack owners when their dogs were no longer competitive, whether for reasons of age, disposition, or any physical deficit that hampered their coursing performance. Gordian had been originally amazed to learn from his daughter that, on average, unadopted track dogs were retired and put down when they were five years old, having barely reached a third of their natural life expectancy.. and always when he watched their spirited and energetic play, the amazement returned in its fullness.
After all the acts of inhumanity he'd seen people carry out on other people, all the personal losses he'd accumulated as a result of war and terrorism, Gordian didn't know why such waste — lesser by far in the grand scheme of things — ought to surprise him anymore. But it did, and somehow he felt that was better than if it hadn't.
He took a sip of his coffee, and listened to Kirby begin arguing that he was about to commit the worst blunder of his life.
"Gord, I've heard every word you've spoken and tried my damnedest to keep an open mind," Chuck said. "But to do what you've proposed before considering a less extreme strategy—"
"Sometimes you have to lose a limb to preserve the health of the body," Gordian said. "Sometimes survival itself depends on it."
Kirby shook his head. "You're talking about wholesale dismemberment," he said. "Not the same."
Gordian's clear blue eyes were so calm it was almost unsettling. Like Moses after receiving the Ten Commandments, Kirby thought.
"Chuck, I haven't said this would be painless. And because you're my friend, I believe that pain is the thing you're trying to spare me," he said. "But I've already accepted it, you see. Mentally and emotionally, I've already let go."
"Let go? Of everything you built up over a decade? Everything you've worked your ass off to—"
"If you stop for a second you'll realize you're overreacting," Gordian said with unassailable forbearance.
Chuck turned to Scull. "Vince? Is that what you think? I know your analysis is that Gord's plan is doable, but my question is really whether it ought to be done. Whether you're endorsing it."
Scull nodded affirmatively.
"All we're asking is that you give us a chance here," he said. "Listen to what the coach has to say."
"And look at my graphic while you're at it," Gordian said. "Please."
Kirby pressed his lips together, breathed deeply through his nose, and looked. It was an organizational chart of UpLink broken down according to the market areas served by its corporate divisions and subsidiaries.
"As you pointed out yourself, Chuck, we've grown tremendously since the early nineties," Gordian said after letting him study the diagram. "When we secured the contract to provide our GAPSFREE missile-targeting system to the military, I knew the company's future was assured, and realized I was in the position I'd been hoping to reach all my life. I was successful and financially secure… my individual needs were taken care of… and that opened up a whole range of choices. Choices I'd never been able to consider before. Choices about how to put my money and energy into things that mattered to me, into making a positive difference in this world." He rose from the table and approached the easel, gesturing broadly at his chart. "My mistake was trying to do it in too many different ways."
"Heaven help us, you're sounding like Reynold Armitage," Kirby said. "And that gives me the chills."
Gordian smiled wanly. "We'd be foolish to discount his assessment of our strengths and weaknesses merely because the language in which he's couched it troubles us," he said. "It's always possible to learn from our enemies, and Armitage's essential point is valid. We need to look at the areas where we're bleeding away resources and liquidate them."
Kirby searched for a response, but Gordian continued speaking before he could think of one.
"Chuck, I'd be confident of our expertise in the defense business even if I didn't have the earnings to back me up," he said, placing his hand on the box at the diagram's upper left. "We're the best because I've been guided by my past experience as a combat pilot, and can remember the sort of technological improvements I'd have wanted when I was in the cockpit flying air strikes over Khe San." His hand moved one box to the right. "I also know our communications unit represents UpLink's tomorrow, irrespective of early-stage profits or losses on our investment… and that its potential has yet to be unlocked." He paused. "Those two are our core operations. The ones that are integral to what I want to accomplish. The ones we have to protect. But ask yourself, do we really belong in computers? Medical tech? Or how about specialty automotive? We only got into that because I wanted to make improvements to the factory-standard dune-hoppers we were using in our more rugged gateway locations."
"Which you did."
"And now that we've assembled a large fleet of vehicles, and our competition has incorporated our modifications into their own product — and in some cases outclassed us, if you want my frank opinion — why not release the company to management who can give it proper guidance? After all, its profitability as an UpLink company has been been marginal from the very beginning."
Kirby rubbed the back of his neck.
"I don't know," he said. "Putting aside the automotive unit for a minute, you've done well in the other supposedly nonessential areas. Just as a for-instance, the prosthetics subsidiary meets both of your fundamental criteria for an UpLink company. It helps people and makes money. The artificial limbs it produces are first-rate and have captured a respectable share of the global market—"
"And I'm very proud of that," Gordian said. "But my passion and knowledge don't lay in medicine. I've shortchanged the division in terms of personal attention, and have never quite gotten my market bearings. And the R&D budget for our biotech firm eats up something like forty million a year."
"Which is not at all excessive," Kirby said. "Your people are working on new drug therapies for everything from male impotence to cancer. Cutting-edge research costs money, but the financial and humanitarian payoff from a single major pharmaceutical advance certainly justifies the initial expenses."
"I'd agree with you if this were a normal, as opposed to a predatory, business environment," Gordian said. "The fact, however, is that we are under attack and need to focus. Because the medical division is in the red, it is lowering the valuation of UpLink's shares. As it stands, if I want the medical operation to continue, my choices are to either slash its budget or sustain it with the profits we earn from, say, our avionics branch. Money that could otherwise go toward higher-performance transmitters and receivers for our cellular network, or reducing the debts we incurred after the Russian debacle… and face it, Chuck, those are just two of many obvious examples I could offer."