Shimmer (12 page)

Shimmer. Always, it seemed, I came back to Shimmer.

I sent the command to begin the move, Shimmer immediately playing out the shift, this outpost of the shadow network in Budapest now a solid green sphere emptying itself from each axis. Each axis leading to another sphere far off in the distance. Each axis leading to another piece of the shadow network.

“Can't do it,” Leonard said. “Can't find a way. Can't come close.”

I didn't know how to respond. Felt myself only nodding as I listened.

Shimmer was still green, the sphere slowly emptying out. But now three red strands were crossing the bottom of the shape. Leonard's scan had reached my servers, the scan crossing the surface of the shadow network like the thin red tentacles of some microscopic disease.

Please,
I thought.
Please don't find it.

I heard myself say, “It's okay that you can't find an answer.”

Shimmer was shining green, the sphere half empty, the tentacles multiplying, spreading over the surface, trying at every point to break into the globe.

And I wished suddenly that Perry were here. Beside me. Wished I were in his office.

“It is failure,” Leonard said. “How could it be anything but failure?”

I didn't know how to respond. Wanted, for that moment, to tell
Leonard the truth. To tell them they weren't failing to make a Blue Box. Because it couldn't be done.

I heard myself say, “Maybe it can't be done.”

“But they can't even repeat what you did with the Blue Boxes,” he said. “Can't even understand that.”

I blinked. I nodded.

Shimmer glowed red, the tentacles like a web now, covering the sphere, the spaces between each tentacle filling in, one by one.

An image of Whitley appeared in the corner of one of my screens. She wasn't able to see me, was instead making a call to my computer. Wanting me to switch on my camera and talk to her at her machine. I didn't. But still it was as if she were watching me, Whitley and her SWAT team spying on my efforts to salvage the shadow network, as if somehow she could see the model spread out across my screen, could see Shimmer reflecting the scan in Budapest.

Shimmer moved inside the sphere now. It was almost empty. All remnants of the shadow network almost completely removed from Budapest. The tentacles, Leonard's scan, beginning to enter the globe one at a time, dropping fast through the empty space, just missing as the shadow network poured out of the bottom of this world.

My assistant called from outside my office. “Whitley's looking for you,” he said.

I covered my phone for a moment, leaning toward the door to my office. “Tell her I can't,” I said. “Not now. Can't.”

Leonard's tentacles kept falling, now seeming to fill the inside of the globe.

“It's failure,” Leonard said. “There's nothing to call it but failure.”

In a moment, Whitley's face left the camera, then the camera turned off. In another moment, I saw I had an e-mail from her.

I haven't told Leonard yet,
her message read.
But, so you are aware, SWAT has seen some things in the past few weeks. Some odd movements. Some unexpected shifts at a host of overseas facilities. It could be that there are more rogue sections like the one we found today. We're concerned.

“I don't think,” I started to say to Leonard, but my voice stopped. I watched the screen. The last of the globe would not empty. I tapped on my desk. I pressed back against my chair.

And watched.

Watched as the tentacles fell, full speed, each one crashing toward the last pieces of the shadow network. Each one missing. Missing. Only just missing.

And then it ended. The globe went white.

The shadow network was gone. Removed from Budapest.

The tentacles had disappeared.

And I was fine. I'd made it.

I'd won.

I turned away from the screen. I stared toward New Jersey. Closed my eyes. Wanted to yell. Wanted to scream.

“It's not failure,” I heard myself saying to Leonard, eyes closed tight, trying so carefully to breathe, breathe slower,
slow down, you won.
“Don't,” I was saying, “don't ever let anyone believe they have failed.”

But in another moment I realized that Leonard had already hung up.

Trevor was on the phone, breathless as he made his way through some unidentified airport, his voice rising above the noise, then fading into static. He'd called to report the week's sales. Calling me as he always did, every Friday for the past three years, this time as always each word and number blurring into the next.

It was three days since I'd spoken to him. Two days since he'd fired the sixty people in Omaha.

“Auto insurance for ten million,” he was saying rapidly, speaking about the newest companies he'd signed up.

“A pension processor for four million,” he said. “Spark plugs for a two-million-dollar trial. S&L for sixteen million over twenty-four months.” As he spoke, I made one more check on the storage center
in Budapest. Shimmer shining nicely, the globe itself now gone, the space it had taken reabsorbed into the real operations of the company. Shimmer now simply reflecting the smooth operation of a healthy facility within Core Communications, the world's most efficient networking corporation.

No anomalies. No shadow network.

No harm done.

“Securities for a million two over twelve,” Trevor said, and I turned away from Shimmer, seeing the sunset growing across New Jersey. Warm and curving out, wide against the sky, and for a moment I pictured the bright white airport where Trevor must be.

“Credit cards for ten million,” he said. “Some vaguely identified branch of the CIA for sixteen million over eight.”

“So you're telling me,” I said, a part of my mind unintentionally but automatically adding up the numbers he'd listed, “you're saying that you alone did fifty-eight million in sales this week? Twice your normal sales.”

“I did the CIA meeting on no sleep,” he said, not answering my question. “And my God, Robbie, I was beautiful. I was fluent and cohesive and I made clear, ringing, deeply lucid analogies. I called their internal systems a metropolis and our service the secret police, quietly bringing order to the neighborhood chaos and political upheaval. I went to the whiteboard and drew out this huge map of a city. Houses, offices, apartments and industry. I had red and green markers in one hand, blue and brown in the other, and I drew out the brown dirt and the fucking brown exhaust from the factories, Robbie. And then, real carefully, with lots of right angles and solid lines, all orderly and complete, I overlaid our system, Core, like the secret police introduced so quietly to the sprawling metropolis, which, before you say it, isn't even remotely true. We're not the secret police—if anything, we're the fucking garbage men, which is nothing to be ashamed of—but that whole secret-police analogy, oh, Robbie, their eyes went glassy and damp with excitement. They loved that shit, all these short-haired white men in white shirts, fucking CIA circa 1952, Robbie, it was a
freak show, and I was in on it—white shirt, black shoes, a black tie, did I tell you I got my hair cut, can you fucking believe it?”

“Fifty-eight million,” I said, and as I spoke I thought about Omaha. The firing that had led each of the senior staff to come to me in the last few days. Whitley standing in my doorway, hands at her lips, shaking her head, saying little, saying,
Omaha,
saying,
Trevor.
Julie stopping a copier as we stood in the mailroom, wanting silence as her shoulders pulled together so tight, torn between anger and sadness, saying,
Trevor. No more of this from Trevor.
Cliff so uncomfortable in the stillness of a conversation that didn't involve finance. Leonard reaching into territory wholly unrelated to his work but seeing a duty to make a comment to me.

Each saying in his or her way,
You can't let Trevor do this again. You can't let Trevor go on this way.

None of the senior staff had ever liked Trevor. And none of them really interacted with him. To them, Trevor was my problem, an unmentionable bastard child out of step with the rest of the company.

Only through Trevor had I ever disappointed anyone.

“I haven't slept in three days,” Trevor was saying, “and I'm playing golf with one of the top systems guys at an aeronautics supplier on Sunday and so, hey, you, hey—” he was yelling now, voice directed away from the phone, talking to someone, repeating the question, “hey, how do I get there from here? Seattle. How the hell do I get to Seattle, for Christ's sake?” He was yelling and I thought—worried, really —that maybe he was standing alone in an airport, yelling at strangers passing around him. “Hey, lady,” he yelled, “do I look like I give a shit about your crying child? Get in your own line!”

I shook my head, closing my eyes. I said into the phone, “You're not wearing anything that identifies you as a Core employee, are you?”

There was no response.

Omaha.

And yet there was no way to lead a conversation with Trevor. It was barely possible to stay connected with his thoughts.

“Yeah, well, take it to your shop foreman, union lackey!” he was
yelling, his voice growing louder even as his mouth seemed to be moving farther from the phone, the words sinking deeper into the echoing, humming noise of the airport. “I want two seats in first class, side by side, and fly me the long way because I need some sleep!”

“Where are you?” I asked, raising my voice, hearing the footsteps in the airport, the carts being rolled along a hard floor, hearing all that motion around Trevor, each sound framing his voice.

“Fucking-A right, Robbie,” he said into the phone, his voice now eliminating the echoing airport noise, “just what kind of fucking place is this? Hang on, battery's dying.”

The phone went quiet. I hung up. The silence of my office was sudden and complete, me alone in the quiet of the fading light. I had a vision of sixty people exiting an office building in Omaha. I pictured the threads of Leonard's server scan falling so close to my emptying remnant of the shadow network. I had a distant memory of floating. I wondered, for a moment, if I could close my eyes and sleep.

My phone rang and I picked it up.

“I feel like a fucking Navy Seal out here,” Trevor said, “roaming from battle to battle with all this gear, loading new batteries into my phone like clips into an M-16.” He paused, and all I could hear was the swirling sound of feet and voices. I thought maybe he'd passed out. “Jesus,” he said in a moment, “I need to use that in a meeting next week.”

“Will you just tell me what state you're in?” I asked again.

“Forty-nine million plus nine in options,” he said. “So, yes, fifty-eight, loosely speaking.”

“Leonard almost found the shadow network yesterday,” I said, trying to get Trevor's attention. Trying to bring him into my conversation. “He almost found it in Budapest.”

“But I really wanted to hit sixty,” Trevor said, moving forward without me.

“And we had a rogue section in the DMZ,” I said, knowing he heard nothing.

“What I'd like some day,” he said, “is to hit sixty.”

“And SWAT is seeing problems everywhere,” I said, staring out the window. Feeling the cold air pressing against the window in front of me. “It's coming in from all sides,” I said quietly.

“But,” he said, “fifty-eight's not bad.”

“I've got some things I'd like to talk about,” I said, making an empty attempt to bring up Omaha.

“Every week,” he said now, “someone offers to sell me a Fadowsky journal.”

“Who does?” I asked, surprised. He'd never mentioned offers to buy a Fadowsky journal.

“Which reminds me,” Trevor said, his voice clear and rapid, rising above the blurring noise of the airport around him. “We need to raise our prices across the board, five to ten percent, in my opinion, which I know we'll have to fight about, so let's wait till I'm in New York and I can argue for it in front of the full team, do a cost/benefit, whatever, but I'll go ahead and preview you on the outcome: I'll win because at some point this week—need to check my notes—I raised the prices for certain types of companies. Called it our ‘Focal Service.' The masses love that shit.
Focal
Service. It came to me on the spot. Amazing. So, anyway, schedule a meeting and we'll talk about it. What was I saying? Oh. No. Right. Right, because the more people I sign up, the more who seem to want to be sold. These people are fucking sheep, Robbie, just following each other around.”

“And you're the sheepherder,” I said, thinking again that he wouldn't hear me.

“Yeah, and you're my three-legged little sheepdog, you lame piece of shit!” he yelled. “I'm not a fucking sheepherder! That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard! Next time I'm in New York I'm going to shave your ass with a pair of sheep shears! Put me through to your assistant so I can schedule a fucking time to shave your ass bald!”

I started to laugh quietly, shaking my head. I closed my eyes, picturing this half-crazed salesman in a fine but wrinkled suit, screaming wildly into a cell phone as he marched toward Concourse B.

Mention Omaha.

Trevor was yelling away from the phone, “Keep moving, keep moving. It's an escalator. Stop acting like some sort of idiot savant.”

“Please tell me you're not wearing a company shirt,” I said, although I knew he wouldn't hear me. “A company hat. Tell me there's not a business card on your luggage.”

“I'm in Kansas City,” he said, “which is funny, really, because actually I have no idea what state I'm in. There were rumors of tornadoes in Cincinnati, so I ended up here. Have you ever heard of a fucking tornado in Cincinnati? It's some airline lie, I think. Fucking flight crew probably slept in.”