Her boss sighed audibly. "I didn't expect to start my morning by seeing you on MSNBC, as the technology headline."
"Was I?" Dar mused. "Didn't even see them there. I thought AP and UPI were giving us a skip this year because technology is 'out'." She glanced casually around, spotting one of their biggest competitors cornering two ILS clients.
"Well, Dar, when you go and announce we hire hackers, and dare anyone to try and hack our network to prove we only hire the best ones..." Alastair replied, in a dry tone. "It's a sound bite no one could resist."
"Got us attention."
The ILS CEO sighed again. "The only thing that offset the 'attention' was the way you handled it. The camera is fascinated by you." He cleared his throat. "With good reason. Nice suit, too."
"Uh huh." Dar leaned against the woven weave wall, feeling it's faint prickliness through the cloth of her jacket. "So let me guess. The board is freaking."
"Surprisingly, no," Alastair answered. "Actually, they asked me to give you a call and say how pleased they were."
Dar pulled the phone away from her ear and studied it with a deeply quizzical expression. Then she knocked it against the wall, making a sharp rapping sound.
"Dar?" Her boss's voice came to her tinnily. "Dar? What's going on?"
"Sorry. I think we've got a crossed line," she replied. "I know I didn't just hear that."
Alastair chuckled. "Well, you know, it surprised me too," he admitted. "But John said he'd gotten a lot of flak lately about how stodgy we are...well, most of us, anyway. He thought this was a damn good boot in the short pants for all those pundits who thought we were mummies in three piece suits."
"Eh." Dar grunted. "Glad they liked it, but it wasn't planned. Damn guy just got my goat."
"Whatever the reason." Her boss shrugged it off. "Something good'll come of it."
Dar watched Peter Quest enter and cross over to their booth, where Kerry was currently holding court. Michelle was there also, and she noted by her posture, not entirely happy. "Kerry's giving an interview right now to TechTV," she commented. "So listen, let me go see if she needs backup. We got invited into a little bid for some new cruise ship IT business."
"What?"
"Yeah. " Dar craned her neck to watch the crowd. "Could end up being a decent sized contract."
"Dar! Why didn't you tell me!"
"Because I just decided to do it. Listen, Alastair...let me get back to you. I've got people looking for me here." Dar studied Kerry's body language anxiously.
"Dar, damn it, talk to me for a minute," her boss shot back. "Kerry's perfectly capable of doing an interview, isn't she?"
The rough bark drew Dar's attention from her lover. She collected herself and re-focused on the phone. "Yes, she is" she replied. "I don't have that many details, Alastair. I was approached by some guy over at American Cruise Ventures who wants to put new tech in all their ships, especially the ones they're bringing over to the States."
"Fabulous!"
Dar sighed. "Yeah, well, we're up against three other companies, including Telegenics."
There was a small silence on the other end of the phone. "Really?"
"Yeah."
Another silence. "Well, we're gonna have to make sure we win this one,"Alastair stated positively. "No taking chances, Dar. I want you to handle this personally."
Dar examined her cell phone again, this time with a bemused look. She poked a button experimentally, then a second, making a small musical interlude.
"Dar?"
"Sorry." Dar put the phone back to her ear reluctantly. "I was checking something. You know, I do have qualified people working for me."
"Dar, this is no time for that. These bastards have been running roughshod all over us. Here's one major chance to stop their momentum. This is too important to let someone else do it," her boss argued. "I want you to handle it. In fact, take Kerry if it'll make you feel better. She's your protégé."
"Alastair?"
"What?"
"Could you arrange for an ice cream machine to be installed in my office?"
"WHAT?"
"Never mind." Dar almost laughed. "I'll take care of it. I've got a vested interest...did you know who the movers and shakers were in Telegenics? I bumped into them here."
"Ahem." Alastair cleared his throat. "Not the day to day folks. They've got some interesting backers. I know they've got deep pockets. Japanese, I believe."
"Michelle Graver, and someone from my past I hate with a passion," Dar informed him. "So yeah, I'll take this one, Alastair. I'll take it and beat them so badly they'll go running off to San Francisco to sell tie-dye shirts and tickets to Alcatraz."
It was, apparently, her boss' turn to be nonplussed. He made a sound something like a cluck, and then cleared his throat.
"Now, can I talk to you later? The person I hate with a passion is about to start bugging my wife."
Another cluck.
"Bye, Alastair."
"Uh...bye, Dar. Talk to you later, huh?"
"Sure." Dar closed the phone and clipped it to her belt. Then she straightened her jacket and headed for the booth.
"WE KNOW WHERE we hold the market lead." Kerry leaned back and crossed her ankles. "Right now, our priority isn't spending time fending off lowball services contract hawkers. We're interested in taking another step forward in providing our backbone customers with the best infrastructure in the world."
"That's bold," the Tech TV reporter remarked. "You guys put a really solid network in place, everyone knows that. But where do you go from there? Only so many bells and whistles you can add before it just becomes more frills customers have to pay for."
"Exactly," Michelle piped up, her lip twitching at the lowball comment.
Kerry met her gaze evenly. "We don't bother with frills." She turned back to the reporter. "What's the next step? The next step is making the network intelligent. Giving it the sentience to be able to react to changing conditions, and flexible enough to respond to the challenge of new bandwidth requirements dynamically."
The man stared at her, and then cocked his head. "You can't do that. The intelligence doesn't exist."
"Not yet," Kerry agreed quietly. "But it will."
"If it's not just empty promises," Shari called out. "Sounds like vaporware to me."
Kerry could have reacted, but she chose not to. She merely gave Shari a brief, dismissive look, and then turned back to one of the men in the front. "Eddie, you know what I'm talking about. You're a pilot location."
Thrust suddenly in the spotlight, her client almost melted into a pocket-protected puddle. Kerry gave him a smile though, and he blinked at the round, staring eye of the camera and managed a nod. "Uh...yeah" he stammered. "It was cool. It was like the pipes knew when the program needed more space, and like...um..." He shrugged. "Gave it to 'em. Real cool."
"Wait...I thought you said it didn't exist yet." The reporter eased closer to her. "Didn't you just say that? She just said that, right?" he asked the audience.
"Right," Michelle drawled. "That's what she said."
Kerry slipped into a nearby console chair and turned the monitor on the desk around so the audience could see it. "It's not in production," she conceded. "But we've prototyped it. Wanna see?"
They were lucky the booth was well built. Kerry suddenly found herself surrounded by curious nerds and a cameraman who seemed more interested in checking out her earlobes than seeing what she was doing on the monitor.
She flexed her fingers, and spared a glance at the part of the crowd unable to fit, giving their rivals a brief, very pleasant, wordlessly wicked smile. "Okay, here's how it works." She tapped out a quick command, fishing in her memory for the codes she'd learned from Dar.
Cryptic codes. Dar never made anything obvious or easy, at least on the back end. She permitted the applications people to put snazzy looking front ends on her stuff, but where it counted, it was all grease on the hands and you better know what you're doing time.