Marcus sat down gingerly and took off his left boot. He crossed his left foot over his right. He grimaced as the heel scraped on his leg.
“Are you going to look at it,” Samantha said.
“No.”
She was standing with her hands on her hips, facing southwest, where the clouds were stacking up over the next range.
“Those are on us by two,” she said.
“Then we have an hour,” Vlad said.
“You have less. I want to be back down in the trees before the first one.”
Vlad set the Mini out on the rock with the kickstand and squatted in front of it. He looked at the battery.
“Twenty-four,” he said.
“I’ve got it,” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
He stood back up and took the panel off the top of the pack which he’d been carrying for what seemed like eternity. He positioned it on the ground facing the sun to get maximum exposure.
“Four messages,” Vlad said.
Samantha put her hand out and he gave her the tablet. She read with her thumb hooked over the top corner of it. She turned and held it out to Marcus.
“What,” Marcus said.
“She wants you.”
Marcus took it.
Marcus.
I’m here.
Good. The CEO of Kestrel knows I want to talk to him. He will give me twenty minutes, although he will think I’ve become senile when he hears what I say.
Kestrel?
Yes.
Marcus looked curiously at Sam and said, “I thought you crossed Kestrel off.”
“I did. But I’ve been second guessing myself all day.” Samantha sat down on the rock across from him. “At this point I just need a machine I can use.”
What do you need from me, Marcus typed.
He is going to ask what you want. I need your answer, and not hers, since she will ask for more than I can get.
Marcus put the tablet on his knee and typed with both thumbs.
Okay. The ask is small. Eight hours, one night, no badge, no logs, and nobody in the building who doesn’t need to be there. From his perspective, he isn’t buying anything and he isn’t lending us anything. The machine was probably going to be idle overnight. He knows we will use it, but for everyone else in the company — and the world — it was idle.
What else? He’ll want something for this.
When this is over and everyone, and everything, is safe, he can have the first conversation with us about what we have figured out. And, he gets the first chance to license it. I’ll put it in writing and he can print it out and take it to his board.
Stop.
Marcus waited.
You are selling past the close.
This is different.
No, it’s not. You’re giving too much and making it harder than it needs to be. The second he hears he can license it, he brings in his general counsel, and all of a sudden you are negotiating a contract rather than getting access to the machine in the dark of night with no one knowing.
Marcus paused. He looked up at Sam. She was staring at him intently.
Then I take the money out of the equation and leave the relationship in. He gets to be the guy who helped.
Marcus. When this is over, is there a version where you sell it?
He typed for a while and read it over. Then he put his thumb on the backspace and held it down until the box was empty.
No.
You’re sure.
Yes.
Then give me something I can tell the CEO and the board.
Marcus turned the tablet around and held it where Samantha could see it. She read the exchange and sighed.
“You don’t have to do that to get me access to the machine,” she said.
“I know.”
He turned it back and typed.
We aren’t going to do a deal with anyone. We are not selling it to him and we are not selling it to anyone else, now or when this is over. You can tell him I said that. He can write it down, and I’ll sign it.
Good.
I’ll write the language out properly tonight so you have it in front of you.
Marcus. I’m sorry you are having to do this.
He sat with the tablet on his knee.
Was that the right call? he typed.
The screen dimmed. He touched it and it came back up and there was nothing new on it. He was embarrassed that he’d asked.
“She’s already on the phone,” Samantha said.
“Yeah.”
Vlad took the tablet out of Marcus’s hands and put it inside his jacket and started breaking down the Mini.
“How much was it,” he said.
“How much was what.”
“What you just gave up to get access to the machine.”
Marcus pulled the panel over and started folding it up.
“I’ve been doing that number in my head since the first night,” he said.
“Give me the biggest one.”
“Five hundred billion dollars.”
Vlad kept packing the Mini.
“No way it’s five hundred billion dollars.”
“Vlad, that’s not even that much money anymore. Nvidia does an investment like that once a month.”
“Fold it the other way. You are going to crack it.”
Samantha stood up fast. “Trail,” she said. “One guy. Northbound.”
Vlad put the Mini in the top of his pack and sat down on it.
Marcus got up and limped the hundred yards down to the trail in his sock.
He got there about ten seconds ahead of the guy. The man was in his fifties, in a sun hoodie, with poles and a big pack with a foam pad lashed under it.
“Afternoon.”
“Hey.”
“You know if there’s water up top?”
“There’s a creek about a mile and a half back the way we came,” Marcus said. “After that I don’t know.”
“I’ll take it.” The man looked up the slope at Samantha and Vlad and the packs, and then at the rock. “That a Starlink?”
“Yeah.” Marcus was suddenly nervous.
“My son-in-law has one of those bolted to his camper.” He got a bottle out of the side pocket and drank some of it and put it back. “You working out here?”
“Trying to.”
“Yeah, well.” He laughed. “Good luck with that. I hate those fucking things. The whole point of being in the mountains is to get away from everything.”
He shifted his weight off his right leg and left it there.
Marcus was counting the number of trees in the distance. He knew he had to respond, but he didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
“How far are you going?”
“Twin Lakes, if the knee lets me. It started up on me at Monarch and I decided I was going to keep going anyway, which was probably stupid.” He got the poles back in his hands. “Everybody I’ve talked to for two days has told me it was stupid.” He looked down at Marcus’s sock. “Looks like you’ve also got something bothering you.”
“What are you taking for it?”
“Ibuprofen and denial.”
Marcus snickered. “That’s what I’m on.”
The man smiled and went on up the trail. Marcus stood where he was until he couldn’t hear the poles anymore, and then quickly went back up the slope, more annoyed with his foot than in pain.
“He’s going to tell somebody he met three people with a satellite dish,” he said.
“He is going to tell somebody about his knee,” Vlad said.
Marcus looked at his watch. He’d finished chatting with Eleanor eleven minutes ago.
Samantha was looking at the clouds again.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Then it’s going to be loud up here.”
Marcus sat back down on the rock, looked at his now very dirty sock, brushed it off the best he could, and worked his boot slowly back on his foot.
“When she comes back on,” Samantha said, “you’re the one who answers it.”
“Okay.”
“Every time. I don’t want to do it.”
“Because she’s mine and not yours?”
“Because she asks me how I am.”
Marcus got his pack up and stood and put his weight on the foot.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“It is not fine,” Vlad said, and started down.