Cumulus (3 page)

He was shaking his head. Damn it all to hell. Time to drop the bomb.

“To show this is a good faith offer,” she said, staring laser bolts at his image through the feed, “I’m willing to double the economics.”

Sanchez coughed, took the phone from his ear, and stared at it for a second.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I think the signal cut out for a moment.”

Huian smiled grimly, flourished her hand, and bowed. Everyone had their price.

“You heard me right,” she said. “I’m willing to double the economics on the deal.” The board might push back, but it would be more than worth it once Tectonix was fully integrated. That was the benefit of a dual-class share structure anyway. She didn’t need Wall Street suits sticking their hands into things they didn’t understand. The board could go screw themselves.

A view from another passing Fleet car displayed a close-up of Sanchez’s face. Another window appeared, recording video from the camera on the phone of another person seated on the patio who was probably checking email. Sanchez’s breathing was fast and shallow over the audio connection. Stubble peppered his jaw, and he was biting his lower lip. There was a flicker of red. Huian did a double take. It took a moment to register. He had bitten too hard. A drop of blood dribbled from his lip down his chin, bright and incongruous.

The ramifications of the deal were already working their way through the cogs and wheels of Huian’s mind. Legal would need to get the docs sorted quickly. She would need to update her talking points for the quarterly call and probably sit through a lecture from Steve, Cumulus’s CFO. But once they cut through the red tape… It was hard to imagine the scope of what their data science teams would be able to do with the new fire hose of information. Oil companies would line up to access their ongoing insights into various basins. They could build real-time aquifer dashboards for water managers, and invite hordes of top graduate students to integrate everything into one giant, global earth model. She was itching to get off the phone and kick-start the process.

Muting the line, she called out to Tom. “Get Steve on the line the minute this call ends.”

“You got it,” he responded.

Damn, Sanchez had said something during the exchange and she had missed it. She unmuted the call and returned her attention to his body language. He had stood up from the table and was staring off into the distance.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I missed that last. What did you say?”

“No,” said Sanchez. “We’re keeping Tectonix independent. Thank you for your interest and your offer, but it’s off the table.”

Frustration reared its ugly head, twisting Huian’s stomach into knots. “Come on, Martín. You’re not going to leave $3.8 billion on the table. Yesterday, you were ready to sell for half that. What’s the problem?”

“Richard reminded us why we value piloting our own ship,” he said. “It’s not about the economics. Three-point-eight is more than generous given our current run rate. But I got into this so I didn’t have to work for Schlumberger anymore. I’m not looking to hire a new boss.”

“You have to run it by your board, at least. See what they have to say.” Huian made a concerted effort to relax her clenched fists.

“No,” he said. “That’s my final answer. The board can go screw themselves.”

It didn’t sound nearly as good coming from him. The months of planning and due diligence were all unraveling in front of her, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it. No partnerships with the masters of fossil fuel. No raw meat for data science. No geo feed. All because of Richard’s shortsightedness.

Air hissed through her teeth. “I’ve got to give it to you,” she said. “I didn’t have you pegged to turn this one down. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that the world of business can be an unpredictable place. If you ever change your mind, you know who to call.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Thanks, really.”

Huian disconnected the call but continued to watch the screen. Sanchez slowly lowered the phone and placed it on the table with extreme delicacy. He pressed both palms against his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. He was trembling. Sweat stained his armpits. He took a few deep breaths, visibly trying to get himself under control. Then a wild laugh bubbled up and out of him.

Other café patrons gave him sidelong glances. They probably thought he’d gone mad, standing there laughing by himself in the middle of the patio. They were right, thought Huian. That was the laugh of someone insane enough to turn down a check for nearly $4 billion. That was the laugh of someone stubborn and reckless enough to say no to Cumulus. It put him outside the pattern she was weaving, the technological mosaic she was assembling. That in itself made him dangerous.

5

LILLY COLLECTED HER GEAR,
and packed it carefully into padded, matte-black cases. The meticulous routine reminded her of her childhood garage in Encinitas. Her parents were both expat Japanese engineers working for the San Diego office of a Tokyo conglomerate. They were each irrepressible tinkerers. Her dad’s den was an explosion of tools, toys, and materials. It was like a mad scientist’s lair chastened by an engineer’s practicality. But the garage was different. That was her mom’s workshop. Everything had a name, a tag, a drawer, a hook. One of Lilly’s clearest memories was her mom hunched over a bench, soldering electronics. The glow of the soldering iron lit up her focused expression, and the fumes were palpable.

Like her mom, Lilly treated tools with clinical respect. She zipped up the final pocket, and hefted the straps onto her shoulder. If she hurried, she’d still make it home before dark. She dodged a few inebriated guests, and cut a line across the grass to the parking lot on the far side of the vineyard’s main building.

Night wasn’t a good time to be out and about in her neighborhood. The police didn’t much care about yet another robbery, rape, or murder in the Slums of West Oakland. The
911
dispatchers didn’t even bother saying they’d send a car over if you called in after hearing gunshots. What was the point anyway?

Lilly knew she was being cynical. The cops weren’t evil, or even apathetic. There were just too few of them. Far too few. Budgets shrank as crime and unemployment rose. Officers were spread too thin across too many beats. There weren’t really beats anymore anyway. She had been to a few of the community meetings over the years. With such a small force, the best OPD could do was just try to keep up with immediate emergency response. Investigations, patrols, and undercover operations were a thing of the distant past. And with Security keeping the peace in the Green Zones, why should the rich folks even care? Nobody wanted
their
tax money going to an ineffective bureaucratic dinosaur. Safety-as-a-service. Those who couldn’t afford it didn’t deserve it.

There she was, getting all cynical again. She, whose entire livelihood depended on Greenies willing to fork out top dollar for an analog photographer to document their adventures in a format rendered cool by its obsolescence. She was the anachronism. A soul from a bygone era born into a far-flung future. A stranger in a strange land.

Nothing illuminated loneliness in sharper relief than working weddings. The vicarious thrill ride on the joy of others dissipated immediately upon departure, leaving an emotional wake that most professionals drowned with cheap liquor. That wasn’t her jam, though. Even shitty booze cost money, and she wasn’t going to achieve her dream with empty bottles and pounding headaches.

Lilly’s fingers trailed along the olive-green fender of Sara’s
1977
Land Rover. It sat alone in the gravel yard. Most parking lots in urban areas had already been redeveloped. No need to have vehicle storage space taking up valuable real estate when nearly everyone traveled by Fleet. She unloaded her gear onto the passenger seat, and then went back around the truck to pull herself into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life with twentieth-century brazenness. She peeled out of the empty parking lot, wheels kicking up a cloud of dust, and followed the country road down toward the highway.

The steering wheel was hot under her hands, and the engine rumbled like the snoring of an ancient god. The road meandered through rolling hills carpeted with vineyards, autumn leaves turning the landscape into a patchwork of red and gold. She imagined herself thousands of kilometers away, navigating the trusty Land Rover into a trackless African wilderness in search of the ultimate story on wildlife trafficking. Or maybe she was descending a Himalayan back road into the Silk Road deserts of Xinjiang where the Chinese government was laying waste to the Uyghur ethnic minority. Instead of pinot noir grapes, perhaps these were the legendary poppy fields of Sinaloa, and she was seeking the ultimate source on the latest cartel
patrón
to conquer the tributary system of narcotics that fed the ocean of insatiable American demand. These were the adventures that her savings would finance one day.

In defiance of her imagination, US
101
appeared around the next bend. The highway was as mundane and disappointing as an alarm clock tearing away a wild and magical dream.

6

“MA’AM? I’VE GOT STEVE ON THE LINE.”

“Tell him to forget it,” said Huian. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You got it.”

Sanchez’s pass increased her estimation of him and Tectonix. The companies she wanted most to buy were the ones that didn’t want to sell. And when she wanted something, she found a way to get it. As she’d told Richard, the future was a demanding mistress.

With a wave of her hand, Huian cleared the screen and the glass reverted to transparent. Employees wandered the various walking paths, or rode brightly colored bicycles from building to building. Two interns were throwing a Frisbee back and forth on a distant lawn. A hawk screeched as it tumbled through the sky, wrestling three crows at once.

“Sorry to bother you again.”

“Yes, Tom?”

“Graham’s here to see you.”

Graham Chandler. Now there was a strange one. She returned to her desk and stroked the stainless steel with her fingertips. They had first met right here in this office. His fake credentials fooled her executive recruiting team into thinking he was a legitimate candidate. The big reveal impressed her more than a résumé ever could.

“Send him in.”

The door opened, and Graham slipped into the room. Brown hair and eyes. Face lodged halfway between handsome and homely. Average height and weight. Neutral American accent. Slacks and blazer that would have gone unnoticed in any financial district or airport the world over. Graham made almost no impression at all. It had taken a few months before that in itself made an impression on Huian. This was a man who turned innocuousness into an art form.

“Sanchez still personally controls 68 percent of Tectonix’s total outstanding shares.” He sat down in the chair that Richard had so recently vacated and interlaced his fingers in his lap. “The board wouldn’t have swayed his decision.”

Huian sat and stared across the desk at him. “I suppose I shouldn’t ask how you happen to know that,” she said.

He shrugged. “Richard didn’t look particularly happy on his way out this morning. The rest is just me doing my job.”

“Our best bet is to wait them out,” she said. “It’s frustrating, but we need to give Sanchez time to blow off some steam. Once the prospect of a big ticket acquisition is in the rearview mirror, the everyday grind of the sausage factory will make independence a whole lot less sexy.” If anyone knew that, she did. “If we buy up some of their competitors along the way, it’ll make him nervous and accelerate the process.” She pursed her lips. “It’ll be slower, a lot slower. But at the end of the day, it’ll work. It always does, one way or the other.”

Graham nodded. “I’m sure that will work, eventually.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly that. It may work at the end of the day, but are we willing to wait that long?”

Huian mulled the question over. She couldn’t pretend to relish the prospect of waging a war of attrition against Tectonix. Cumulus had laid siege to companies before. Indeed, they were running similar operations on at least four organizations at the moment: a nonprofit public health think tank in the Netherlands, two cybersecurity firms, and Disney, with its massive proprietary content library. All of them would add valuable new colonies to the Cumulus information empire. It was grueling work. The fact that she was accustomed to forced marches didn’t make them any more enjoyable.

“Of course I don’t want to wait,” she said. “But what’s the alternative?”

“Alternatives are what I specialize in.” He said this with quiet confidence, not joking or bragging, just stating a fact.

Huian cocked her head to the side, and her nostrils flared. She didn’t like how close this conversation was getting to topics that she
really
shouldn’t know more about. Graham’s permanent appearance of perfect relaxation made her nervous. But she couldn’t deny that he had proved his worth, time and again. She shuddered remembering that shit storm with Beijing last year. He had somehow swept an unfolding nightmare under the rug with nary a peep. Cumulus needed people like Graham. They weren’t working out of a garage anymore. They were a force to be reckoned with. They were
the
force to be reckoned with. And reckoning required people with skills that went beyond software engineering.