They got out the door, and Kerry realized a second later that not bringing a jacket wasn't the brightest thing she'd ever done. The cool air blew right through her polo shirt, and she was really glad she'd decided against wearing the tank. "Brr." She rubbed her arms with her hands. "Where'd the damn sun go?"
Mike snorted. "Boy did your blood thin."
Kerry didn't deny it. "Hey, it was ninety three degrees when I left," she protested. "I'm used to walking outside in a bathing suit in September." She scooted ahead of them and unlocked the truck door, sliding inside and shutting it after her to block the wind.
Angie got in the passenger seat, laughing, and Mike slid in the jump seat also chuckling. "It must be so bizarre not to have winter." Angie shut the door as Kerry started the engine. "I can't imagine it"
"We have winter." Kerry put the truck in gear and pulled around the big stately driveway. "We have at least two days where it drops below sixty. Dar and I make hot chocolate and wear our footie pajamas." She turned and waited for the big iron gates to open, and then eased out onto the road, looking both ways first. "I don't miss it. I like not having to think about putting layers of clothing on and being able to go swimming at midnight the whole year."
"Do you? " Mike poked his head over the seat. "Go swimming at midnight?"
Kerry had stopped at a traffic light, and now she turned and looked at him. "Yeah," she admitted. "When we get home from work sometimes, or in the ocean when we're down at the cabin. We've got a little cove all to ourselves."
"You guys swim naked?"
"MIKE!" Angie slapped him. "Of course they don't!"
"Well, actually we do." The light changed, and Kerry moved forward. "Sometimes," she answered, smothering a grin as she heard Angie nearly swallow her tongue while her brother chortled with glee. "Rebellion has its good points, y'know."
"Oh my god."
"Sweet!"
THE SALES PITCH over, it was time to get down to the real business.
"We understand that there are companies here with a lot more built out infrastructure." Dar faced the room, holding the remote for her presentation laptop in her right hand. "So your likely question for us is, how in the hell are we going to support this application until we can catch up."
Sir Melthon grunted.
"It's a good question." Dar clicked the control, and her laptop obediently responded with a lively, pulsing display, projected against a silver cased, insanely expensive screen set up at the far end of the table. It displayed a reasonably scaled diagram of their global network, long lines of green and blue tracing across the planet.
"Animated, eh. At least that's more interesting than the last idiots," Sir Melthon interrupted, "bloody boring the lot of them. You put me to sleep, woman, and you can go sell your slides out on the street."
"That's live, isn't it, Dar?" Alastair remarked from his seat next to Sir Melthon, drawing both the magnate's attention and that of the two men on the other side of him that had been introduced as his business leaders for the project. "That screen there?"
"Live?" One of the men leaned forward. "Do you mean to say that's showing a real time view of something?" He looked around. "What the devil are you connected to?"
"It is," Dar responded. "This is a reflection of the main operations console at our commercial headquarters in Miami, Florida." She went on. "I have a cellular link-up to our international gateway and we're backhauling the signal from there."
The man studied her. "Sorry, go on," he murmured.
She reviewed the screen. "As you can see, we are very built-out in North America, but we also have a significant presence in South America, India, Africa, and the Far East."
The man got up and walked around to get closer to the screen.
"We do have a basic set of pipes in Europe." Dar manipulated the control and a set of green lines grew brighter, across the European continent. "But since we size the infrastructure to the business, we haven't upgraded the port speed to provide a high capacity full mesh. Yet."
The man looked at her. "How long will it take you to do that?" he asked, sharply.
Dar studied the screen for a moment. "Two months," she answered.
"That's not possible," the other man next to Sir Melthon said. "We know it isn't, I'm not being a fly in the ointment here," he said, as Dar turned toward him. "We did a study to put our own network in. It would take over a year, and that's why we're looking to outsource."
"Two months, " Dar repeated, unmoved. "We have a certain degree of leverage."
The man looked at Sir Melthon, and shook his head.
"McLean, is this rot?" Melthon turned his head and peered at Alistair. "I don't need a load of hot air. I have a wife for that."
Alastair didn't turn a hair. "Nah," he said. "If Dar says two months, it's two months, and probably earlier," he said. "She rebuilt an entire networking center in one night, y'know. Reliable as the day is long."
The magnate snorted. "You willing to lay a bet on that?" he asked. "You do it in time or the whole deal is off, how's that for a bet?"
"Sure." The genial Texan didn't so much as glance at Dar. "But I'll tell you what, we do it in two months, and you toss in a contract for the rest of your network. How's that for a bet?"
Dar stood quietly waiting, gaining a new appreciation for her boss's always surprising wheeling and dealing side she didn't get to see very often. Usually she was pulling Alastair's ass out of the fire. This time, they were both playing a somewhat dangerous game of poker that was making the sales reps eyes bug out.
Sir Melthon studied the gray haired man sitting next to him, his hands resting relaxed on the table.
"Sir," the man next to him murmured, "this sounds dangerous."
"Hah!" the magnate barked suddenly. "Damn straight it does." He turned to Dar. "Well, smart mouthed woman, get to talking. We've got a bet on." He held a hand out to Alastair. "Good enough for you, McLean?"
"Absolutely." Alastair took his hand and gripped it firmly. "Dar? You were saying?"
Everyone turned back to Dar, and she collected her train of thought looking back at the screen. "As I was saying, the question is, how do we support this project until I can upgrade those pipes?" She illuminated two other lines, a pulsing blue one that landed in London, and another in Germany, with a heavy tracing of smaller, green lines between them. "Here's how."
"Wait." The man still standing near the screen held up a hand. "This is our premier product. We can't rely on a single line back to the States. What if it goes down? Even for--ah...two months?" His voice expressed extreme doubt.
Dar walked over to her laptop and put the control down, trading it for her keyboard which she studied for a moment before she started typing. "Here's the average response time across that circuit to our London hub." She enhanced the display, showing the statistics of the two links. "Here's what happens when it goes down." She executed a few keystrokes, and the blue line landing in London went dark.
"B..." One of Dar's own sales reps started to stand up.
The rest of the map fluttered, and then the pulsing settled down, the link into Germany growing brighter, and the lacing of green lines expanding to take up the slack. The response time counter, in its small box, remained steady.
Dar let the silence go on for a moment, and then smiled. "I like to sleep at night." She reopened the link and it surged back into place, the map giving that little flutter again. She glanced over at Sir Melthon, catching him with his jaw slightly open. He scowled at her and shut his mouth with a click. "So our proposal is that we will support your infrastructure from our Miami offices until a local hub is in place."
"With local staff?" The man near the screen rallied weakly.
"Of course," Alastair said. "Do you know how much it costs to relocate people from Oklahoma?" He chuckled. "I've told the boys here to get ready to move fast, and bring in as many good people as they can find."