Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [47]
“Can you find the original spreadsheet?”
“It’s hidden behind all this other stuff.”
“Bend over, and look. See if you can get it.”
Conley bent at the waist, and appeared to look under something. He reached out and pinched air. “I got it.”
“Okay, now you see a green arrow in the right corner. Touch it.”
Conley touched it. All the papers zoomed back into the original spreadsheet.
“Fabulous!”
“I want to do it,” Daly said.
“No, you can’t. I’m going to do it.”
“No, me!”
“Me!”
They were laughing like delighted kids.
Blackburn came up. “I know this is enjoyable for everyone,” he said to Nichols, “but we’re falling behind our schedule and perhaps we ought to go back to the conference room.”
“All right,” Nichols said, with obvious reluctance. He turned to Cherry. “You sure you can get us one of these things?”
“Count on it,” Cherry said. “Count on it.”
Walking back to the conference room, the Conley-White executives were in a giddy mood; they talked rapidly, laughing about the experience. The DigiCom people walked quietly beside them, not wanting to disrupt the good mood. It was at that point that Mark Lewyn fell into step alongside Sanders and whispered, “Hey, why didn’t you call me last night?”
“I did,” Sanders said.
Lewyn shook his head. “There wasn’t any message when I got home,” he said.
“I talked to your answering machine, about six-fifteen.”
“I never got a message,” Lewyn said. “And then when I came in this morning, you weren’t here.” He lowered his voice. “Christ. What a mess. I had to go into the meeting on Twinkle with no idea what the approach was going to be.”
“I’m sorry,” Sanders said. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Fortunately, Meredith took over the discussion,” Lewyn said. “Otherwise I would have been in deepest shit. In fact, I—We’ll do this later,” he said, seeing Johnson drop back to talk to Sanders. Lewyn stepped away.
“Where the hell were you?” Johnson said.
“I thought the meeting was for eight-thirty.”
“I called your house last night, specifically because it was changed to eight. They’re trying to catch a plane to Austin for the afternoon. So we moved everything up.”
“I didn’t get that message.”
“I talked to your wife. Didn’t she tell you?”
“I thought it was eight-thirty.”
Johnson shook her head, as if dismissing the whole thing. “Anyway,” she said, “in the eight o’clock session, I had to take another approach to Twinkle, and it’s very important that we have some coordination in the light of—”
“Meredith?” Up at the front of the group, Garvin was looking back at her. “Meredith, John has a question for you.”
“Be right there,” she said. With a final angry frown at Sanders, she hurried up to the head of the group.
Back in the conference room the mood was light. They were all still joking as they took their seats. Ed Nichols began the meeting by turning to Sanders. “Meredith’s been bringing us up to date on the Twinkle drive. Now that you’re here, we’d like your assessment as well.”
I had to take another approach to Twinkle, Meredith had said. Sanders hesitated. “My assessment?”
“Yes,” Nichols said. “You’re in charge of Twinkle, aren’t you?”
Sanders looked at the faces around the table, turned expectantly toward him. He glanced at Johnson, but she had opened her briefcase and was rummaging through her papers, taking out several bulging manila envelopes.
“Well,” Sanders said. “We built several prototypes and tested them thoroughly. There’s no doubt that the prototypes performed flawlessly. They’re the best drives in the world.”
“I understand that,” Nichols said. “But now you are in production, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right.”
“I think we’re more interested in your assessment of the production.”
Sanders hesitated. What had she told them? At the other end of the room, Meredith Johnson closed her briefcase, folded her hands under her chin, and stared steadily at him. He could not read her expression.
What had she told them?
“Mr. Sanders?”
“Well,” Sanders began, “we’ve been shaking out the lines, dealing with