Griffith ignored the man. 'We'd better get going,' he said — just a little too quickly and too abruptly, Laura thought.
14
'It'll never, ever happen!' Filatov argued.
Margaret was undeterred. 'Give me three hours, tops.'
'You'll never, ever, ever get enough capacity freed up to load the phase two that way!' Filatov said, shaking his head to blot out the offending sound of Margaret's voice. 'The space has to be contiguous. Your plan will leave the unused racks fragmented all over the place!'
'We'll defragment and compress the racks in the main pool. That'll leave us eight percent of contiguous space free over in the annex.'
Filatov was already shaking his head. 'It'll never work. Not in this lifetime! Not in this universe!'
The conference room fell silent. Filatov waited, ready to pounce on Margaret again, but she'd finished making her proposal.
There were light bings from stage right, and heads turned in unison to Dorothy. 'That would be just enough to load the phase two,' she said, looking up from her little computer. 'If Margaret's calculations are right.'
'Sheer fantasy,' Filatov mumbled, obviously feeling obligated to say something on mention of Margaret's plan.
Gray held his hands out to invite final comments. Laura felt out of place at the long table. She was the only one there with no progress to report. 'All right,' Gray said, 'start off-loading as soon as we break up and load the phase two as soon as you have the capacity.'
'There have been some… some more errors,' Dorothy said tentatively, raising her pen pad as if everyone could read its small screen. 'Three unexplained door malfunctions, a bunch of small account discrepancies in a pay- per-view movie order, and seventeen minutes of black during a French documentary.'
'That seems like a lot of door problems to me,' Hoblenz said, leaning forward and eyeing Gray. 'Could be we've got visitors.'
'Oh, come on!' Filatov jumped in. 'And there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll, too, I suppose!' He shook his head in utter disbelief. 'It's a bug! A virus. Dorothy's phase-two ought to kill it.'
'Yes, but how much code will it tear up in the process?' Margaret asked.
'Hardly any!' Dorothy objected in a reedy pitch. 'We might lose, like, the connections in the racks that are infested, but it shouldn't do system-wide damage. If the new version of the phase-two finds a malevolent virus, it'll isolate it, not chase it all over the system. I've fixed a lot of things since the last outbreak!'
In the silence from around the table, the skepticism of the group was obvious.
Laura waited for what seemed like ages, and when no one else spoke up she asked, 'What was the pay-per- view movie and the documentary?'
At first she thought they would humiliate her by ignoring the question. Few heads turned her way, but Gray's, she noted, was among those that did.
Dorothy's gaze only slowly left the doubting looks of her colleagues.
She tapped at her palmtop then said, 'The movie was A Room with a View. There was a credit issued for all the orders that came in over the weekend.'
Laura tried to hide her astonishment. She had placed two of those orders herself — twice on Friday, then again on Saturday. 'Do you mean that everyone who ordered that movie last weekend got it for free?' she asked.
Dorothy frowned and nodded.
A Room with a View was Laura's favorite movie of all time.
She'd stumbled across the re-released high-definition version among the growing number of films that, with the tap of a button, could be downloaded from Gray's system in seconds. When Laura had placed the first order on Friday night, she'd been alone and unhappy over the grad-student 'profile.' The purchase the next night had been spur-of-the-moment — a halfhearted attempt to escape sheer boredom.
'That's one of the sappiest movies ever made,' Margaret said with a sneer on her face.
'You have no taste!' Filatov shot back.
'Do you like it?' Margaret challenged.
'I've never seen it. But that doesn't change the fact you have no taste!'
There were more pinging sounds from the end of the table. Everyone looked at Dorothy, who cringed as she stared at the palmtop. 'The blacked-out documentary was called Faces of Death V.'
Her mouth was misshapen by the disgust that was also evident in her tone. 'Yucch! Actual footage of real deaths by suicide, disaster, and crime. We air this shit?' she asked, looking up.
'Watch yer language young lady!' Hoblenz snapped.
'Why are we calling that a computer malfunction?' Filatov challenged in his combative manner, this time directed at Dorothy. 'The trouble could've been anywhere along the line!'
'I checked it, Georgi!' Dorothy squealed. 'There were four separate satellite passes. The satellites received the uplink, but the computer didn't blip the transmission code and so the switches didn't throw!'
A strained quiet descended on the room.
'When did the transmission resume?' Laura asked, and again there was a delay in Dorothy's response. They weren't accustomed to the new voice in their midst.
'Straight up on the hour.'
'As soon as that Faces of Death thing was over?' Laura asked.
Slowly, Dorothy nodded — growing more and more interested, it appeared, in what Laura would say next.
'All right,' Gray interrupted abruptly and pushed his chair back from the table. 'Let's get the phase-two loaded.'
With the meeting ended, debates resumed as everyone rose and headed for the door.
'Laura!' Dorothy called out. She was standing beside her chair, and Laura joined her at the end of the table. The smiling girl whispered, 'So, did Griffith talk your ear off?' Her chin was dipped to her chest, and her green eyes were wide-open and sparkled mischievously as she looked up at the taller Laura. 'He's notorious for lecturing people about anything and everything. I told Mr. Gray I'd give you the real dirt but he just blew me off, like always. Did Griffith talk about the light pipes?' she asked, now grinning.
Her good humor was infectious. Laura smiled and nodded.
'U-u-u-g-g-h,' Dorothy rolled her eyes, her shoulders heaving with the effort. 'He's been trying to talk Mr. Gray into putting those things everywhere! That's just, like… great! You can practically count every pore on your face under those lights, ya know?'
Laura nodded, but she really didn't have a clue what Dorothy was objecting to.
'What do you think about Filatov and Margaret?' came next from the girl, spoken with the pent-up energy of someone starved for conversation.
Laura drew a deep breath, contemplating her answer. 'They don't seem to like each other very much.'
'Did you know they're doing it?'
Laura cocked and then shook her head. 'Doing what?' she asked.
'You know — the nasty. Like, all the way?' Laura was at a complete loss now, and she made a face simply to avoid having to respond. 'I know!' Dorothy said. 'Isn't it disgusting? I can't even, like, begin to picture it.' A strong quake shook Dorothy's upper body and she loosed a moan of disgust. 'Oh-o!' the frenetic girl said suddenly, then whispered out of the corner of her mouth, 'Here comes the thought police.'
Laura turned to see Gray reentering the room.
'Catch you later,' Dorothy whispered, heading for the door.
Gray walked up to Laura. 'Are you ready?' he asked.
Something in his tone caused Laura to reflect on his question before answering. 'Ready for what?' she replied.
