Sanders wasn't listening. He was tired; all he really heard was that Phil realized he had screwed up, and now was trying to repair things in his usual manner, by sucking up to someone he had earlier bullied.
Sanders interrupted, saying, "What about Bob?" Now that it was over, Sanders was having a lot of feelings about Garvin. Memories going back to his earliest days with the company. Garvin had been a kind of father to Sanders, and he wanted to hear from Garvin now. He wanted an apology. Or something.
"I imagine Bob's going to take a couple of days to come around," Blackburn said. "This was a very difficult decision for him to arrive at. I had to work very hard on him, on your behalf. And now he's got to figure out how to break it to Meredith. All that."
"Uh-huh."
"But he'll eventually talk to you. I know he will. Meanwhile, I wanted to go over a few things about the meeting tomorrow," Blackburn said. "It's for Marden, their CEO, and it's going to be a bit more formal than the way we usually do things. We'll be in the big conference room on the ground floor. It'll start at nine, and go to ten. Meredith will chair the meeting, and she'll call on all the division heads to give a summary of progress and problems in their divisions. Mary Anne first, then Don, then Mark, then you. Everyone will talk three to four minutes. Do it standing. Wear a jacket and tie. Use visuals if you have them, but stay away from technical details. Keep it an overview. In your case, they'll expect to hear mostly about Twinkle."
Sanders nodded. "All right. But there isn't really much new to report. We still haven't figured out what's wrong with the drives."
"That's fine. I don't think anybody expects a solution yet. Just emphasize the success of the prototypes, and the fact that we've overcome production problems before. Keep it upbeat, and keep it moving. If you have a prototype or a mock-up, you might want to bring it along."
"Okay."
"You know the stuff-bright rosy digital future, minor technical glitches won't stand in the way of progress."
"Meredith's okay with that?" he said. He was slightly disturbed to hear that she was chairing the meeting.
"Meredith is expecting all the heads to be upbeat and non-technical. There won't be a problem."
"Okay," Sanders said.
"Call me tonight if you want to go over your presentation," Blackburn said. "Or in the morning, early. Let's just finesse this session, and then we can move on. Start making changes next week."
Sanders nodded.
"You're the kind of man this company needs," Blackburn said. "I appreciate your understanding. And again, Tom, I'm sorry."
He left.
Sanders called down to the Diagnostics Group, to see if they had any further word. But there was no answer. He went out to the closet behind Cindy's desk and took out the AV materials: the big schematic drawing of the Twinkle drive, and the schematic of the production line in Malaysia. He could prop these on easels while he talked.
But as he thought about it, it occurred to him that Blackburn was right. A mock-up or a prototype would be good to have. In fact, he should probably bring one of the drives that Arthur had sent from KL. It reminded him that he should call Arthur in Malaysia. He dialed the number.
"Mr. Kahn's office."
"It's Tom Sanders calling."
The assistant sounded surprised. "Mr. Kahn is not here, Mr. Sanders."
"When is he expected back?"
"He's out of the office, Mr. Sanders. I don't know when he'll be back."
"I see." Sanders frowned. That was odd. With Mohammed Jafar missing, it was unlike Arthur to leave the plant without supervision.
The assistant said, "Can I give him a message?"
"No message, thanks."
He hung up, went down to the third floor to Cherry's programming group, and put his card in the slot to let himself in. The card popped back out, and the LED blinked oooo. It took him a moment to realize that they had cut off his access. Then he remembered the other card he had picked up earlier. He pushed it in the slot, and the door opened. Sanders went inside.
He was surprised to find the unit deserted. The programmers all kept strange hours; there was almost always somebody there, even at midnight.
He went to the Diagnostics room, where the drives were being studied. There were a series of benches, surrounded by electronic equipment and blackboards. The drives were set out on the benches, all covered in white cloth. The bright overhead quartz lights were off.
He heard rock-and-roll music from an adjacent room, and went there. A lone programmer in his early twenties was sitting at a console typing. Beside him, a portable radio blared.
Sanders said, "Where is everybody?"
The programmer looked up. "Third Wednesday of the month."
"So?"
"OOPS meets on the third Wednesday."
"Oh." The Object Oriented Programmer Support association, or OOPS, was an association of programmers in the Seattle area. It was started by Microsoft some years earlier, and was partly social and partly trade talk.
Sanders said, "You know anything about what the Diagnostics team found?"
"Sorry." The programmer shook his head. "I just came in."
Sanders went back to the Diagnostics room. He flicked on the lights and gently removed the white cloth that covered the drives. He saw that only three of the CD-ROM drives had been opened, their innards exposed to powerful magnifying glasses and electronic probes on the tables. The remaining seven drives were stacked to one side, still in plastic.
He looked up at the blackboards. One had a series of equations and hastily scribbled data points. The other had a flowchart list that read: