The zenith angle (12 page)

“She can do math.”

“You didn’t tell her, then.”

Van said nothing. He and his wife kept separate bank accounts. When Van’s salary and stock had begun skyrocketing with the Internet boom, that didn’t seem the proper time to confront Dottie with some strange demand that they change their usual financial arrangements. That was too much like one of those creepy post-nuptial agreements. Van was never going to dump Dottie Vandeveer for some puff-headed trophy wife. Mondiale’s other VPs might like to pull such stunts, but those clowns were just money people.

“You been out to see her lately, Van?”

“Not lately. We called at Christmas. Talked a lot.”

“Seen her ever? Since she moved to the Facility?”

“Well, no. We’re both working like crazy.”

Now Tony was truly shocked. “Look, Van. Maybe I shouldn’t comment here. But I’ve known Dottie even longer than I’ve known you. I’ve seen her in Colorado, I dunno, five times in the past two months. And you can’t fly out there to the site? You married her, fella. What is the problem?”

“We trade e-mail every day.”

Tony topped up Van’s foam cup, a pitying look on his face. “My man, look at this dark place you’re in. You really sleep in here? Are you a fifth-level federal Dungeons and Dragons troll? Are you a kobold now? Are you Gollum? She’s never seen you in this awful place, am I right?”

Van nodded.

“Well, thank God for that.” Tony sighed. “I’d better cut to the chase right away. It’s up to me to take you two in hand. Van, she is sensitive. She is lonely and vulnerable. She’ll never call you first. She has that kind of proud shyness that really bright women get. She would rather be shot first. You’ve got to tell her that you want to see her. You’ve got to insist, Van.”

Van blinked. He lowered his voice. “Well, man, it’s kind of hard to just go and do that . . .”

Tony touched the vest of virgin wool within his trench coat. “Van, was I right before? Ten years ago, I told you all this. Word for word. I
made
you call Dottie. I practically
beat you
into making that first call. Was I right?”

The brandy was hitting Van now. There was a hot rush to his bearded cheeks. “Yeah, Tony. Yeah, you did that for me. Yeah, you were right.”

“So. What is your deliverable, then?”

“Well,” said Van, “I guess maybe . . . There is this big conference coming up for the CCIAB, out at this big farm retreat in Virginia . . .”

“Which one? Coulfax? Erlette House?”

“Erlette House, yeah, that’s the place.”

“Oh, yeah. That would be perfect. CIA, DoD, Bell Labs, DARPA, they all do big seminars there. The food is fantastic, beautiful landscaping, ponds, swans, arbors, flower gardens, man, the wine cellar’s two hundred years old! Erlette House is where every undersecretary takes the sexy intern.” Tony laughed.

“End of your problem, my man.”

Van sat up straighter. That did sound pretty good, really. The Erlette House event wasn’t till early spring, but by March the CCIAB would be delivering its recommendations. And he, Van, would be leaving the little board for some heavy-duty, long-term, permanent federal post. Or else contemplating sudden unemployment. Either way he should have Dottie with him. To celebrate with him, or commiserate, or . . . No, just to be together. He owed her that.

“You’re gonna thank me,” Tony promised.

“I’m thanking you already.”

“You should fly to Colorado to see her as soon as you can,” Tony said, bearing down. “Do you have any idea what we’ve got going on out there? We are a world-class facility. We are bringing astronomy right into the e-world. We’ve got the biggest Internet2 node west of the Mississippi.”

“Yeah, Dottie seems pretty pleased with the job.”

“It’s a great job for her. It’s the future of her profession. You don’t just
look
through a digital observatory, pal. Everything that it senses is archived and fully accessible on Internet2.”

Van smiled. “Is this your best new toy now, Tony?”

Tony sipped his cup, raised a brow, and added more Benedictine. “You know, back in the Boom, I wondered why I spent so much time and energy on some stargazer project. That was old DeFanti’s baby, and I was just his chief cook and bottlewasher. But after the hell I’ve been through lately—hey, now I know why he needed a real big hobby way outside the business world.”

Van nodded. “The old folks get it about these ups and downs. That’s part of life, that’s all.”

“Oh, I knew I’d see a market correction,” Tony said grimly. “I never guessed I’d see anything this insanely bad.”

“Don’t take that to heart, Tony. Time is on your side. You’ll be back. You’ll be back with bells on.”

This was the best thing Van could think to say, and he meant it sincerely, but he saw from Tony’s wince that he had overdone it somehow. Maybe it smelled too much like pity.

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Tony said, “but, you know the way router prices have crashed lately? Well, DeFanti had a standing order in to purchase those below a certain price level. Pal, we have got
unbelievable
numbers of routers in that facility. Barns full. We
are
Internet2, man, we can handle all the lambda from Juneau to Los Angeles.”

“No way.”

“Yes way. There’s nothing new about an NSF hub being a major Internet backbone. Enron was gonna move hard into that niche, in a Bush administration. They were gonna marketize Al Gore’s broadband. We were with that idea way ahead of the curve. We would have made a fortune with DeFanti’s old pals from Houston. We coulda run a dozen observatories off that kind of revenue.”

“How is that holding up now?”

“Oh, the price-point on routers will come back soon. It’s just kind of a bridge loan to the industry, really. But in the meantime, we’ve got
loads
of routers. I’m thinking your Grendel thing could do with some routers. Am I right?”

“Sure it could, but, Tony, I can’t buy any hardware from you.”

“I could practically pay you to take ’em.”

“We’re friends. I’m a fed now. That’s not ethical.”

Tony was nettled. “Do I look five years old? How long have you been in this town? Of course I wouldn’t ‘sell’ them to you. You wouldn’t ‘buy’ them either. It would never show up as a financial transaction at all. You’re NSC, and I’m NSF. Plus, we’ve got the NSA, for heaven’s sake! How do you think
they
buy their hardware? They don’t even damn exist.”

Van shook his head. “My boss hates the NSA. They’re all over our turf. They killed all the crypto initiatives. They made security bad and kept it bad, just so they could spy the easy way.” Van put his cup down. “They suck.”

“Yeah, sure they do, but the NSA has got black budgets that make Enron look like a bookie joint. Okay, never mind the hardware. That was one option, that’s all. How about you coming out to lecture us next spring? We know how bad security is out in the networks. We’re hosting the next Joint Techs conference out on DeFanti’s dude ranch. Next April. Why don’t you fly out there and bring us some of the noise from inside the Beltway? You always do Joint Techs, right?”

“That’s true.” Everybody at Joint Techs was a personal friend. That was the only way that the Secret Nerd Masters of the Internet knew how to invite you to Joint Techs in the first place. Everyone who was anyone went. “Yeah, Tony, I’d go there for you.”

“You could tell Joint Techs the new party line from your boss the Jebster.”

“Yeah, I’d demo Grendel for ’em.”

“Oh, man. That would rock so hard. Why don’t you
build
a Grendel at Joint Techs? We’ll get you a truckload of crap PCs. We’ll wire ’em up real time. Joint Techs will go ape.”

That would definitely work, thought Van. Such a showman’s stunt would never have occurred to him, but Tony was absolutely right. The guys at Joint Techs would be totally thrilled by a hands-on confrontation with k-rad streaming hardware. They would forget how to breathe. He beamed on Tony suddenly. It was impossible not to love the guy. Van could barely remember how lousy he had felt twenty minutes ago, how grim and committed and full of fortitude. Now, with Tony in this sorry little room with him, there were suddenly some bright shining lights in his future. Days that would be full of sunshine for him. And happiness. Future days that would be
really cool.
The guy was light and magic.

Tony silently reached to pour himself more booze. The happy moment passed quickly. There was an anvil on Tony’s back.

“What are you up to, Tony? You got plans to turn it around, right?”

“Well,” said Tony, who was definitely not okay, “you mustn’t lose sight of the end goal, Van. After a stock market bubble, people are just as irrational as they were before. But now it’s all about the terror, instead of all about the greed. They are
more
irrational now, because they can’t see any future.”

“You’ve got money troubles?”

“It’s not that simple. By the way, I’m really sorry about your board of directors gig for DeFanti’s holding company. You were right to resign before you turned fed, but, well, I wanted to make that thing work out a lot better for you.”

“That’s okay, Tony,” said Van, and it was, because Van hated corporate board meetings even more than he hated federal ones. “They never got it about what I told them about real security, that was clear.”

“When you’re a master-of-the-universe like Tom DeFanti, sometimes you just plain lose track.” Tony’s face twisted. “You heard all about what happened to Tom, didn’t you?”

“I know that he retired. The board never talked much about that. They kept it real hush-hush.”

“Oh, everyone knew Tom was getting erratic, that part was all over the media, but . . . Well, Tom finally, completely crashed. Basically, Tom is a prisoner now. They wouldn’t send a guy like that to just any mental clinic, you know. They
built one around him,
the way they did for Howard Hughes. Tom is delusional. They’ve got him trapped inside a wing of that farmhouse. The Chinese wife looks after him . .

. He talks about Martians, Van.”

“Oh, jeez. You mean that?”

“I know it. Tom met a UFO. Among other things. It’s like the
Heaven’s Gate
thing. Spaceships and Martians. He’s really bent in the head. It’s been a total nightmare for all the associates.” Tony emptied his cup and slumped in the shining chair. “The very same powers that made Tom so great are tearing him apart. The acuity, the imagination. The mental daring. I think it’s the very worst tragedy that I have ever witnessed at first hand.”

“My God,” Van said. “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Van, listen.” Tony was passionate now. “I have learned something important about people who are profoundly creative. They are unbalanced. That’s why they have so much to give. They
have
to give. They are fighting with some kind of black chasm inside. Great artists, great writers . . . Captains of industry, even. The top ones get much better than any human being ever needs to be. No mere reward could ever make anybody act to that level of performance. Because it’s never about the money, or even the fame. It’s all about the inner terror.”

“Come on, Tony.”

“That is the truth, Van.” He was bitter. “I have seen it happen with my own eyes.”

Van rallied himself. He was feeling pretty good now, the brandy was smoothly taking hold of him, and it was time for him to exert himself for the sake of his unhappy friend. “The work is its own reward, Tony. If you do it right, it feels great. To give is good for you.”

“You say that because you’ve got creative power, Van. You are a scientist. You’re stable. You can stare deep into the screen and you really engage. I have seen you do that and it’s marvelous. You get awards for it. I knew you had a gift the first time I met you. But you’re not an artist. You’re not a businessman, even. Because you don’t have a demon. You’re a nice guy.”

“Tony, come on. If I don’t believe in UFOs, there’s no way you’re gonna get me going about demons.”

“Who, me? I’m just a deal maker. I’m not a creative. I’m just a glorified hustler.”

Van laughed. “Tony, buck up. You do okay, man. You do great.” Maybe Tony had suffered some market setbacks, but the guy had a private jet. He dated models and actresses. He spent enough on his clothes to feed a village in Kenya. Why was he carrying on like his world had ended?

And yet, Tony had always been like this. It was the other side of his charm somehow, that dark urge to put himself down.

Tony rubbed at his cheeks, the way he did as his face went numb from drink. “I do assemble my deals in rather remarkable ways, sometimes. Through pastiche and collage, basically. It’s very postmodern.”

“ ‘Postmodern’? You’re drunk, Tony, cut the crap.” Van rose to his feet. “You know what we should do right now? Bowling. Let’s go bowling, Tony, come on.”

Tony smiled. “You’re still bowling? You’re gonna kick my ass, man.”

“No way, Tony. You are
the
bowler. You are
Mr.
Ace the Split.”

“Look at your damn arms,” Tony objected. “What have you been doing to yourself? You’ve got arms like two tree trunks.”

“Two tree trunks,” Van repeated carefully. As a child with a stutter, he would have found those words impossible to say. They were pretty hard for him to say right now, with that brandy hanging on his tongue. “Let’s go bowl in the Pentagon. They’ve got some great lanes in there. I’ve got a Pentagon pass card.”

“Now you’re starting to interest me,” Tony said.

“The Pentagon is full of hot chicks.”

“You are plastered,” Tony realized. “Did you eat anything today?”

Van shrugged. “Let’s just go. This place stinks. Lemme call my limo guy.”

“Never mind that, I’ve got a chauffeur,” said Tony. He helped Van into his overcoat. The coat was West German military surplus. It was slick green nylon with elastic cuffs, some kind of a European battlefield medical thing. The coat had the many pockets Van always needed for tools, gizmos, and spare bits of hardware, even though it made him look like a secret mad surgeon. Normal people skittered away when they saw him on the sidewalks of Washington. This was one of the coat’s major benefits, actually. Plus, the coat was warm, and it was cold outside.