Endworlds - Nicholas Read [12]
Eisman replied before Hills could interject. “The word ‘expensive’ doesn’t apply here.”
Not to you, Raef, thought Hills. But there are those on the Board who view it differently.
While Eisman could have funded both the trip and the search from his own checkbook, he considered it a matter of principle that this was an unclosed debt the company owed him. If the corporate jet hadn’t been in maintenance, or if its fleet sisters weren’t on the other side of the planet, he’d have flown privately that fateful day and Paige would still be with him.
The company owed him. Their mess. Their cost.
There were two helicopters on the island capable of landing men and equipment at the peak of Nahna Laud. Eisman immediately contracted both of them, their crews, and their support teams on a full-time basis. Thirty locals were hired to make the flight to the top of the mountain and hack their way in half a dozen different directions down to sea level. They were provided with food, camping supplies, modern communications, and instructions to go slow and make an intensive search of the vegetation-choked ravines, fast-flowing streams, and dense rainforest.
Time was unimportant. Cost was unimportant.
Every day Eisman joined the men, hacking through the jungle, working shoulder to shoulder, refusing to rest or eat other than to take essential water. His intensity and capacity for long hours of relentless physical work inspired the locals as much as it frightened them: none dared to disappoint and face this man’s ire. They all saw the madness crackling just beneath the veneer of civility he maintained with a wink and a smile, growing less certain with each passing day. By night he pored over reports from each team he hadn’t been with that day, searching for clues (a scrap of cloth would have been gold), hoping for hints, devouring anything that smacked of the slightest hope, and filling journal pages with hand-drawn illustrations and long blocks of personal musings. It was as though he never slept.
Meanwhile the world-spanning enterprises of Burroughs Labs stumbled forward on inertia, the company headless, critical decisions postponed, vital daily directives added to an ever-mounting pile requiring perusal despite armies of underlings in senior management. Hills received them daily via an Iridium sat-fax, collated them according to importance, and passed them to Eisman. The CEO would scan each one vacantly.
In the absence of clear direction from his boss, Hills was forced to deal as best as possible with the real world, a locale from which he feared his friend and mentor was becoming increasingly isolated.
They were seated on the outdoor patio of the resort’s hillside restaurant. As it often did, dinner consisted of fresh reef fish (broiled tonight), a rice dish (nasi goreng tonight), and local vegetables (pretty much the same every night).
Beyond and below the railing fashioned of local wood, green forest trailed away toward the coast and the sea. Further to the west, the sun was flaunting its usual spectacular sunset. Eisman ate quickly and efficiently, as if his dinner was an impediment rather than a comfort. Hills did not even try to keep up. They were the only diners, the flight crew already having left with the jet that afternoon.
Halfway through the meal the taller, older man glanced at his watch, then turned to his boss feeling he could no longer keep quiet. To do so would be to harm Raef instead of protect him.
“They’ve taken the plane away from you. The Board has.”
Eisman did not even look up from his eating. “Bill, how much money do I have? How many billions?”
Hills considered. “Several,” came the reply.”
The other man nodded once, curtly. “We’ll charter a plane privately when we need to leave. Probably should have done it in the first place.” He smiled slightly. “Gives us more flexibility anyway.”
“As you wish, sir.”
Fork halfway to mouth, Eisman