Samantha went off into the trees.
Marcus watched her get about forty feet and stop.
“Take the pack off,” Vlad said. “You have been standing there staring at nothing for a while.”
Marcus got it off and set it down. His shirt was soaked through where the pack had been.
“Is there something I can do?”
“Yes. Be quiet for two minutes.”
Vlad sat on his heels with the tablet across his knees and typed with two fingers.
“I am asking her about Colorado.”
“Ask her what we’re supposed to do.”
“Samantha asked her that. She said she did not reach us to give us an assignment.” He watched the screen. “She is typing.”
“What’s she saying.”
“She says Kestrel.”
Marcus waited. Vlad kept typing.
“That’s all of it?”
“She sits on a board with one of the Kestrel board members.” Vlad tilted the tablet down out of the sun.
“I thought we crossed Kestrel off.”
“Samantha crossed it off. It is too obvious.”
Marcus crouched down where he could see the screen. Vlad turned it away from him, not fast, but enough so Marcus got the hint.
“Fine,” Marcus said. He stood up and put his hands on top of his head and looked down the drainage. Eleanor had said fifty million to five hundred million devices. Such a big range meant no one had a clue what the real number was. If he was making a pitch deck, he’d choose the biggest number. No, he’d choose the smallest so that his estimate was more credible.
So fifty million things with a chip in them that nobody could reach over a wire. Somebody with a screwdriver and a laptop would have to drive out to a substation in the middle of nowhere. They could handle two an hour if the roads were good and the boxes were the same, which they won’t be. Call it one an hour for a technician who costs about two hundred bucks an hour fully loaded.
Fifty million hours. Ten billion dollars of labor.
“Marcus,” Vlad said. “You are making noise.”
“Sorry.”
He walked twenty feet in the opposite direction from Samantha. He looked back over his shoulder but couldn’t see her anymore through the trees.
He knew four entities who could write a check for what Samantha had in her head. He’d pitched three of them on other things. Two were governments. One was a fund in Abu Dhabi. The woman who ran the technology side of it was named Reem. They had been in a building with no sign on it. She’d given him a bottle of water and that was it. Everything about it was sketchy. Near the end of their discussion she asked what he would do if the thing he was describing got away from him. He didn’t answer and she didn’t push.
The fourth was a company that sold directly to the two governments. And many other governments.
He had said it out loud in a car in Nebraska, driving to another government facility with someone from the third entity. This is the most valuable thing any human being has ever made. They were secretive — he didn’t know much about them and after the meeting he wondered why they wanted him there. Nothing ever came of it.
When he had said it, he’d meant it as a good thing. He hadn’t been careful about what he’d said. Ever. He realized he didn’t just feel nauseous. He felt dumb. And scared.
“Hey,” he said.
“One minute.”
“No, Vlad — listen to the road.”
Vlad’s head popped up.
The side-by-side had been working its way up the drainage. Marcus had been counting it. Fifty yards and stop. Fifty yards and stop.
It had stopped four minutes ago and it had not started again.
“It’s been quiet,” Marcus said. “Since before you asked Eleanor about Colorado.”
Vlad was already putting his gear away.
“He is loading a cow.”
“It takes four minutes to load a cow?”
“I do not know how long it takes to load a cow. You are the one who counts things.”
“Then we should go.”
“Yes.”
“What did she say about Kestrel.”
“That she would ask them.” Vlad got the strap over his shoulder. “She did not say when.”
Marcus got the pack up onto one knee and then onto his back. He wandered over to Samantha who was sitting on the ground with her back against a deadfall and her forearms on her knees.
“We have to move,” he said.
“I heard.”
She did not get up. He stood there and did not know whether it was ok for him to put his hand on her shoulder. He decided it probably wasn’t, and instead crouched down in front of her, similar to what she had done with Vlad a little earlier.
“I ran the number,” he said.
“Which number.”
“The screwdrivers.”
Samantha looked at him.
“Ten billion in labor,” he said. “That’s the floor. That’s if everything goes right.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t think that’s the part that matters. I just — that’s the part I know how to do.”
“It matters.” She put a hand up and he took it and pulled her onto her feet. “You seem to want to say something else. What is it?”
“Not yet.”
She stared at him for a few seconds and then let it go.
They came out of the trees together. Marcus picked up Samantha’s pack and held it out at the height where she could get her arms into it.
The engine started again. It ran for a long time and got quieter as the side-by-side moved away from them.