itself depends on it.'
Kirby shook his head. 'You're talking about wholesale dismemberment,' he said. 'Not the same.'
Gordian's clear blue eyes were so calm it was almost unsettling. Like Moses after receiving the Ten Commandments, Kirby thought.
'Chuck, I haven't said this would be painless. And because you're my friend, I believe that pain is the thing you're trying to spare me,' he said. 'But I've already accepted it, you see. Mentally and emotionally, I've already let go.'
'Let go? Of everything you built up over a decade? Everything you've worked your ass off to—'
'If you stop for a second you'll realize you're overreacting,' Gordian said with unassailable forbearance.
Chuck turned to Scull. 'Vince? Is that what you think? I know your analysis is that Gord's plan is doable, but my question is really whether it ought to be done. Whether you're endorsing it.'
Scull nodded affirmatively.
'All we're asking is that you give us a chance here,' he said. 'Listen to what the coach has to say.'
'And look at my graphic while you're at it,' Gordian said. 'Please.'
Kirby pressed his lips together, breathed deeply through his nose, and looked. It was an organizational chart of UpLink broken down according to the market areas served by its corporate divisions and subsidiaries.
'As you pointed out yourself, Chuck, we've grown tremendously since the early nineties,' Gordian said after letting him study the diagram. 'When we secured the contract to provide our GAPSFREE missile-targeting system to the military, I knew the company's future was assured, and realized I was in the position I'd been hoping to reach all my life. I was successful and financially secure… my individual needs were taken care of… and that opened up a whole range of choices. Choices I'd never been able to consider before. Choices about how to put my money and energy into things that mattered to me, into making a positive difference in this world.' He rose from the table and approached the easel, gesturing broadly at his chart. 'My mistake was trying to do it in too many different ways.'
'Heaven help us, you're sounding like Reynold Armitage,' Kirby said. 'And that gives me the chills.'
Gordian smiled wanly. 'We'd be foolish to discount his assessment of our strengths and weaknesses merely because the language in which he's couched it troubles us,' he said. 'It's always possible to learn from our enemies, and Armitage's essential point is valid. We need to look at the areas where we're bleeding away resources and liquidate them.'
Kirby searched for a response, but Gordian continued speaking before he could think of one.
'Chuck, I'd be confident of our expertise in the defense business even if I didn't have the earnings to back me up,' he said, placing his hand on the box at the diagram's upper left. 'We're the best because I've been guided by my past experience as a combat pilot, and can remember the sort of technological improvements I'd have wanted when I was in the cockpit flying air strikes over Khe San.' His hand moved one box to the right. 'I also know our communications unit represents UpLink's tomorrow, irrespective of early-stage profits or losses on our investment… and that its potential has yet to be unlocked.' He paused. 'Those two are our core operations. The ones that are integral to what I want to accomplish. The ones we have to protect. But ask yourself, do we really belong in computers? Medical tech? Or how about specialty automotive? We only got into that because I wanted to make improvements to the factory-standard dune-hoppers we were using in our more rugged gateway locations.'
'Which you did.'
'And now that we've assembled a large fleet of vehicles, and our competition has incorporated our modifications into their own product — and in some cases outclassed us, if you want my frank opinion — why not release the company to management who can give it proper guidance? After all, its profitability as an UpLink company has been been marginal from the very beginning.'
Kirby rubbed the back of his neck.
'I don't know,' he said. 'Putting aside the automotive unit for a minute, you've done well in the other supposedly nonessential areas. Just as a for-instance, the prosthetics subsidiary meets both of your fundamental criteria for an UpLink company. It helps people and makes money. The artificial limbs it produces are first-rate and have captured a respectable share of the global market—'
'And I'm very proud of that,' Gordian said. 'But my passion and knowledge don't lay in medicine. I've shortchanged the division in terms of personal attention, and have never quite gotten my market bearings. And the R&D budget for our biotech firm eats up something like forty million a year.'
'Which is not at all excessive,' Kirby said. 'Your people are working on new drug therapies for everything from male impotence to cancer. Cutting-edge research costs money, but the financial and humanitarian payoff from a single major pharmaceutical advance certainly justifies the initial expenses.'
'I'd agree with you if this were a normal, as opposed to a predatory, business environment,' Gordian said. 'The fact, however, is that we are under attack and need to focus. Because the medical division is in the red, it is lowering the valuation of UpLink's shares. As it stands, if I want the medical operation to continue, my choices are to either slash its budget or sustain it with the profits we earn from, say, our avionics branch. Money that could otherwise go toward higher-performance transmitters and receivers for our cellular network, or reducing the debts we incurred after the Russian debacle… and face it, Chuck, those are just two of many obvious examples I could offer.'
Kirby drank his Bloody Mary and was quiet a while. On the lawn one of the greyhounds had caught the plastic rabbit and flashed behind an alderberry bush, where it was throttling the toy between its jaws. The sound of its squeaker had apparently gotten the other dog envious, and it was jumping antic circles around the hedge. Standing nearby, Ashley Gordian and her daughter looked like they were having fun.
He wished he could have said the same for himself.
'Gord, listen to me,' Kirby said at length. 'If I read you correctly, your strategy for averting a takeover is based on the assumption that the value of UpLink stock, and thus shareholder confidence, will be boosted once you've gotten back to basics and released capital to your most profitable ventures. Ordinarily I'd agree that it's a sound defensive approach, since a higher corporate valuation will curb sell-offs, force up a hostile acquirer's bid, and make him wonder if his move is worth the trouble and drain on his checkbook. Except this is no ordinary situation. Marcus Caine has already obtained a large chunk of UpLink stock. He's committed. Furthermore, UpLink's market decline has less to do with any real or perceived overdiversification than with investor fears that your stance on crypto will put you way behind rivals who are eager to sell overseas. And since you're obviously not going to sell off your cryptography firm—'
'Who says?' Gordian interrupted, the patient, forbearing expression back on his face.
Kirby looked at him a moment, then turned briefly toward Vince Scull.
'Both of you are shitting me here, right?' he said.
Scull shook his head.
Taken aback, Kirby waited a minute before saying anything more.
'Gord, I don't understand,' he said disbelievingly. 'You've fought so hard to maintain control of your cryptographic technology… to turn it over to someone else… to chance that it will be distributed abroad…' He spread his hands. 'You've never quit a fight before. I can't believe you'd do it under any circumstances.'
'Not just any,' Gordian said. 'Chuck, I—'
Gordian broke off, his eyes going to the sliding doors that opened from the house to the veranda. Andrew, his domestic, had appeared with Richard Sobel, the third guest he'd been expecting for breakfast.
'Sir, I've shown Mr. Sobel in as you asked,' Andrew said.
'Morning,' Sobel said, tipping the other men a wave.
Gordian motioned him to an empty chair at the table. 'You're right on schedule, Rich,' he said. 'Join the party.'
Kirby gave Gordian a level glance, saw his spreading grin, and suddenly understood everything.
'You can relax now, Chuck,' Gordian said* his smile growing even larger. 'Our White Knight has arrived to save the day.'
Chapter Eighteen
