"Lemme hold on to your piece for you, ma'am," Jenks suggested placidly.
"It's just a sweet little one," Veruschka demurred, handing over a pistol.
Tug Mesoglea tripped in moments later, sunburned and querulous. The mathematician sported a lavender dress-shirt and peach-colored ascot, combined with pleated khaki trail-shorts and worn-out piezoplastic Gripper sandals.
Revel Pullen followed, wearing a black linen business suit, snakeskin boots, and a Stetson. Janna could tell there was a bald pate under that high hat. Jenks faded into a nearby booth, where he could shadow his employers and watch the door.
Mesoglea creaked into the plastic seat beside Veruschka and poured himself a coffee. "I phoned in my order from the limo. Where's my low-fat soy protein?"
"Here you go, then," said Janna, eagerly shoving him a heaped plate of pseudo-meat.
Pullen stared as Mesoglea tucked in, then fastidiously lit a smokeless cigarette. "I don't know how the hell this man eats the food in a sorry-ass chain store."
"I believe in my investments," Mesoglea said, munching. "You see, ladies, this soy protein derives from a patented Ctenophore process." He prodded at Veruschka's plate. "Did you notice that lifelike, organic individuality of your waffle product? That's no accident, darling."
"Did we make any real foldin' money off that crap?" said Revel Pullen.
"Of course we did! You remember all those sintered floating gel rafts in the giant tofu tanks in Chiba?" Mesoglea flicked a blob of molten butter from his ascot.
"Y'all don't pay no never mind to Dr. Mesoglea here," Revel counter-advised. "Today's economy is all about diversity. Pro-active investments. Buying into the next technical wave, before you get cannibalized." Revel leered. "Now as for me, I get my finger into every techno-pie!" His lipless mouth was like a letter-slot, bent slightly upward at the corners to simulate a grin.
"Oh good, let's see your Pumptis, girls," crooned Tug, with a decadent giggle. "Whip out your Pumptis for us."
"You've never seen our product?" asked Janna.
"Tug's got a mess of 'em," said Revel. "But y'all never shipped to Texas. That's another thing I just don't get." Pullen produced a sheaf of printout, and put on his bifocals. "According to these due-diligence filings, Magic Pumpkin's projected on-line capacity additions were never remotely capable of meeting the residual in-line demand in the total off-line market that you required for breakeven." He tipped back his Stetson, his liver-spotted forehead wrinkling in disbelief. "How in green tarnation could you gals overlook that? How is that even possible?"
"Huh?" said Janna.
Revel chuckled. "Okay, now I get it. Tug, these little gals don't know how to do business. They've never been anywhere near one."
"Sure looks that way," Tug admitted. "No MBA's, no accountants? Nobody doing cost control? No speakers-to-animals in the hacker staff? I'd be pegging your background as entry-level computational genomics," he said, pointing at Janna. Then he waggled his finger at Veruschka, "And you'd be coming from -- Slavic mythology and emotional blackmail?"
Veruschka's limpid eyes went hard and blue. "I don't think I want to show you men my Pumpti."
"We kind of have to show our Pumptis, don't we?" said Janna, an edge in her voice. "I mean, we're trying to make a deal here."
"Don't get all balky on the bailout men," added Revel, choking back a yawn of disdain. He tapped a napkin to his wrinkled lips, with a glint of diamond solitaire. He glanced at his Rolex, reached into his coat pocket and took out a little pill. "That's for high blood pressure, and I got it the hard way, out kickin' ass in the market. I got a flight back to Texas in less than two hours. So let's talk killer app, why don't we? Your toy pitch is dead in the water. But Tug says your science is unique. So the question is: where's the turnaround?"
"They're getting much prettier," Janna said, swiftly hating herself.
"Do y'all think Pumptis might have an app in home security?"
Janna brightened. "The home market?"
"Yeah, that's right, Strategic Defense for the Home." Pullen outlined his scheme. Ever the bottom-feeder, he'd bought up most of the patents to the never-completed American missile defense system. Pullen had a long-cherished notion of retrofitting the Star Wars shield into a consumer application for troubled neighborhoods. He had a hunch that Pumptis might meet the need.
Revel's proposal was that a sufficiently tough-minded, practical Pumpti could take a round to the guts, fall to earth, crawl back to its vat in the basement and come back hungry for more. So if bullets were fired at a private home from some drug-crazed drive-by, then a rubbery unit of the client's Pumpti Star Wars shield would instantly fling itself into the way.
Veruschka batted her eyes at Pullen. "I love to hear a strong man talk about security."
"Security always soars along with unemployment," said Pullen, nodding his head at his own wisdom. "We're in a major downturn. I seen this before, so I know the drill. Locks, bolts, Dobermans, they're all market leaders this quarter. That's Capitalism 301, girls."
"And you, Ctenephore, you would finance Magic Pumpkin as a home-defense industry?" probed Veruschka.
"Maybe," said Pullen, his sunken eyes sly. "We'd surely supply you a Washington lobbyist. New public relations. Zoning clearances. Help you write up a genuine budget for once. And of course, if we're on board, then y'all will have to dump all your crappy equipment and become a hunnert-percent Ctenephore shop, technologically. Ctenephore sequencers, PCRs, and bioinformatic software. That's strictly for your own safety, you understand: stringent quality assurance, functional testing and all."
"We gonna help you youngsters catch the fish," said Pullen smugly. "Not just give you a damn fish. What'd be the fun in that? Self-reliance, girls. We wanna see your little outfit get up and walk, under our umbrella. You sign over your founder's stock, put in your orders for our equipment -- and we ain't gonna bill for six months -- then my men will start to shake the money tree."
"Wait, they still haven't shown us their Pumptis," said Tug, increasingly peevish. "And, Revel, you need to choke it back to a dull roar with those Star Wars lawn jockeys. Because I can grok ballistic physics, dude, and that crap never flies." Tug muffled a body sound with his napkin. "I ate too many waffles."
Janna felt like flipping the table over into their laps. Veruschka shot her a quick, understanding glance and laid a calming hand on her shoulder. Veruschka played a deep game.