Mayte nodded solemnly. "La jefa means much to my mother as well. She told me this time, if she hears people saying unkind things about her, she will go get the janitor's broom, and make them fly with it."
Kerry spared a moment to imagine her lover's short, feisty administrative assistant chasing Shari down the hallway with a broom and unexpectedly burst out laughing. She leaned against the door and held her stomach, trying hard to catch her breath as the image played itself out over and over again in her mind.
Mayte blinked at her in alarm. "My Mama is serious!"
"Oh, I know." Kerry slid down the wall and just kept laughing. "But now I gotta figure out how to bug the conference room so she can hear it all and crank the broom up!"
"But..." Mayte sounded very puzzled. "You want her to do this?"
Kerry finally let the laughter run down, and just sat there, one knee raised with her arm resting on it and looked up at her assistant. "Don't worry about it, Mayte." She finally exhaled. "Your mama won't have to do a damn thing."
"No?"
"No." Kerry's voice was quiet and serious now. "Because I'll do it first." She got to her feet and dusted herself off. "Wish me luck." A breath later, she opened the door and went through it, heading for the conference center with a grimly determined air.
THEY HAD TAKEN over the entire conference table by now. Hans had printouts spread out over half of it, and Dar had router and switch dumps littering the other half as she focused on the screen of her laptop. She was leaning on the table and had both legs wrapped around the legs of the chair she was sitting in, rocking back and forth a little as she tapped her mouse pad impatiently. "You're still sending too much data over, Hans."
"It is not!" Hans insisted. "Look, look here." He pushed a paper toward her. "See there? It is only what the program needs. Just that."
Dar pulled the paper over and studied it, one long finger tracing the code. Her brow furrowed, and then she pulled over the next page, her eyes flicking over the lines of text searching for something. "Eh...eh..."
"What?" Hans got up and came around to her side of the table, leaning on the wooden surface and peering over her shoulder. "There is nothing there."
"There." Dar tapped a line of code with the tip of her finger. "Look what you're doing here."
"Nothing!"
"You're sending the whole screen at once."
Hans leaned closer, almost touching Dar's arm as he peered at the paper. "And, so?"
"So it's going as an unbroken string of linked packets and it grabs all the bandwidth," Dar said. "You're sending colors, Hans, as bits. You should be sending only vectors."
He stared at the paper. "Plot it all? Don't be ridiculous!"
"I'm not. You send vectors, it's only four bits, I transmit that as a small packet," Dar argued. "Change it. I'll show you."
Hans took the paper and sat down, frowning. "No. I cannot change it."
"Give me that. I'll change it." Dar held her hand out. "Share your drive out."
"No." Hans refused. "You do not understand, Dar. If this changes, the whole program must change."
Dar looked at him. "That's right."
"I am not changing my whole program. That is not what we agreed to."
"You agreed to make it work for them. That's what it's gonna take," Dar said.
"No, you must change your network, to allow them to work better." Hans shook his head. "I am not at this time going to redo my entire program."
Dar got up, in an almost explosive motion that sent the chair skittering back a few hops. She walked to the window and peered out of it. "Hans, it'll work."
"Pah." Hans pushed a stack of papers out of his way. "It is much easier if you give them more room."
"They have to pay for it."
Hans shrugged. "The world turns around on such things."
Dar turned and leaned against the window. "Hans, cut the dirt. They contracted you for a working program. You gave them a big, smelly white elephant."
"In no way!" he shot back, slapping his hand on the table. "This system works as designed! As designed! I will not change it!"
"You will." Dar crossed the space between them and braced her arms on the table, leaning toward him. "Because I'm not going to ask my clients to pay more for bad programming."
"You cannot say that!" Hans warned. "There is no way that I will..."
Dar moved suddenly, leaning much closer and lowering her voice. "Yes, you will," she growled. "So get it into your head right now you're going to make those changes. Do it, or I'll call in their legal department and we can start drafting up a breach of contract filing."
"You would not dare."
"Sure I would," Dar rasped. "So you'll sit there, and make that change." She pointed a finger at him. "Because you know damn well I'm right."
"You are not!"
"I AM." Dar's voice built up to an impressive bark.
Hans glowered at her. Dar kept her eyes locked on his, refusing to let up. He shoved back from the table and threw his pencil down, then walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Dar straightened up with a reflective sniff, and resumed her seat. "Hm." She crossed her ankles. "Forgotten how much I really like doing that." She looked up as the door opened again, ready to resume her argument but put it on hold as Meyer walked in instead. "Hi."
He gave her a slight nod. "Not going well, I see."
Dar blinked mildly at him. "I think it's going great." She checked her watch. "Only took me four hours to figure out what the problem is. With any luck, I'll be able to get him to fix it in less than a decade."
Meyer rested his hands on the back of one tall chair and regarded her. "If you get the chance. I don't think you will. I think you upset our friend Hans so much he's leaving." He smiled grimly at her. "So I guess your great discovery is a bust."
Dar leaned back and laced her fingers behind her head. "Unfortunately for you, I think he's got more integrity than that," she remarked. "Not that you'd recognize it if you saw it."
"Just who the hell do you think you are?" he asked, angrily. "You think you can come in here and mouth off like that to me? I'm your customer!"
The door opened again, and this time Stewart Godson walked in. "Well, hello you two." He smiled, apparently oblivious to the dark thunderclouds hovering over the conference table. "How are things going? Made any progress? I see you've got a lot of paperwork here."
"Excuse me, sir," Meyer murmured, dodging past his boss and leaving the room.
Godson peered after him, then he turned and looked at Dar. "Did I interrupt something? I knew you two would get along if you just got to know each other a little bit. He's not a bad sort, Dar."
"He's a scheming skunk who wants your job and has the skill set of a pickle," Dar replied, with a light drawl. "Watch out for him, Stewart. He'll sink you."
"Oh, c'mon Dar." Godson took the seat next to her. "You always think the worst of everyone, don't you? He's all right. He's done some great work for us, and not only on this project."
Dar wondered if her counterpart was really that oblivious. Finally she just shook her head. "Whatever," she said. "All right, here's the deal, Stewart." She sat up and pushed the piece of paper over. "I found the problem."
"Did you? Excellent!" Godson was delighted.
"Yeah. Only Hans is giving me heartburn about fixing it," Dar said. "So I don't know how far we're gonna get," she admitted. "Especially if your boy Meyer gets to him, since he's got a reason to keep him stubborn."
"What? Oh, really now, Dar. Let's stop this talk." Godson frowned. "He's a valuable employee, and I don't appreciate you tearing him down like that," he said. "You wouldn't talk like that about your next in line, would you?"
Dar folded her hands on the table, and took a breath. "No," she replied evenly.
"Well, there then."