The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [50]
“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,