Thomas, whose father was a retired admiral, also thought the desks and cabinets should be lined up in neat rows, ship shape. She didn’t care for the seemingly random placements three desks angled together here, five circled there. The blueprints and schematics taped to the walls and to the windows bothered her. Brande was all for ship shape aboard a ship, but in his office, in the workroom on the first floor, or in the dockside building on the Commercial Basin a half block away, he was more interested in creative output. The people who formed the various project teams kept shifting with the projects, or worked on multiple tasks, and he didn’t care if they moved their desks to the roof.
The disciplinary specialties oceanography, biology, computer science, civil and structural engineering, environmental engineering, robotics, and propulsion interacted with each other by shouts across the room, by telephone calls from one desk to another, and by computer conversations.
Downstairs, the same kind of controlled confusion existed. The birth of a new concept resulted in the components of one project being shunted to one side while the new idea was formed into brass, stainless steel, reinforced carbon, fiberglass, or fiber optics.
It was all very reassuring to Brande. It meant that creation was taking place.
He was never bothered by the fluorescent light that buzzed nor the ceiling mounted air conditioner that shivvered loudly from time to time.
To the northeast, San Diego International Airport was busy, a file of United, Continental, and Quantas passenger liners taking to the skies. From where he sat, Brande could view the U.S. Naval Air Station on North Island, relatively quiet this evening.
Where he sat was in Larry Embry’s high backed, blue Naugahyde chair, with his feet up on one of the pulled out drawers of Embry’s scarred gray metal desk. He would have used the Formica walnut desktop for his feet, but it was piled high with geographical reports, charts, maps, paper cups, and the remnants of two large pepperoni, black olive, green pepper, and onion pizzas.
In the far corner, in a quiet buzz of their own, Okey Dokey and Ingrid Roskens were ideating submarine entrance and exit hatches for the physically challenged.
Across from him, sitting cross-legged in the middle of Mayberry’s green blotter with a huge slice of pizza in one hand and a can of Coke in the other was Kim Otsuka. In the chair at her own desk, to his left, was Rae Thomas.
“I think,” Otsuka said, “that Dane ought to endorse the check, then give it to the American Cancer Society or to one of the AIDS projects.”
“That would be called theft. Or fraud, or something,” Thomas said.
“That’s justice,” Otsuka countered.
Neither of the women liked Paul Deride much better than Brande did.
Thomas waved the check in the air. “It’s a cashier’s check.”
“Hell,” Brande said. “Let’s cash it then. We could maybe pay off a couple notes, and there’s this forty foot ketch I saw over at the marina….”
“Dane,” Thomas said.
“My grandma Bridgette used that very same tone with me all too often.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that she probably had a right to use it,” Thomas said.
“We could,” Otsuka mused, “actually sell him Gargantua. Or a copy of Gargantua.”
Brande went along with the musing for the moment. “What have we got invested in him?”
Thomas turned to her computer terminal and played with the keys. Since she had taken over the presidency, a number of things had become organized. Project costs, for example. In the past, if it wasn’t required by some federal or institutional grant, Brande had never worried unduly about the efforts and dollars put into a contract. Scientists were happy to boast about their accuracy in research and development, but many of them were slippery when it came to how much of the government’s, or their own, money they were pouring into some hole in the ocean. Rae Thomas preferred a more exact accounting than, “give or take a few hundred thousand.”
“Celebes,” she said, “has consumed two point two six million to date.”
“Nah,” Brande said.
“Yes.”
“Can’t be.”
“But it is.”
“How?” he asked.
“You never allocated the salary and fringe benefits costs of the people working the project.”
“I didn’t?”
“You didn’t.”
She was correct, of course. Brande hadn’t worried about such things as fringe benefits. His people got salaries and were happy with what they were doing. Sometimes, they got an insurance program thrown in, if they asked for it, but Brande wasn’t big on administration. Now, Thomas had standardized life, health, dental, and retirement programs in place. They cost money, and the cost was allocated to the various projects.
“So, a second Gargantua, with all the research and development costs taken care of, would cost us how much, Rae?”
She scrolled through her numbers, finding the materials section. “Nine hundred thousand, roughly, allowing for inflation, for the bits and pieces, and maybe another three hundred thousand in personnel costs.”
“That would give us a one point three mil profit,” he said, trying to be practical.
“Except that we want to recapture some of our R&D costs,” Thomas said. “Call it a half million profit. On a second copy of the robot.”
Brande looked at the check. “It’s damned tempting, isn’t it?”
“Look what happened the last time,” Otsuka said, “with Sneaky Pete.”
Sneaky Pete was a small tethered robot for use in exploration. Controlled from a submersible or from surface craft, Sneaky’s still cameras and video lens assisted deep sea searches. While beginning life with a more exotic name, the robot had become Sneaky Pete as a result of a graduate student intern’s use of the robot’s video system to survey naked female scuba divers.
The robot was in general and occasional production out of the workroom and, while not sold outright, had been leased to a number of research and salvage concerns.
Paul Deride’s AquaGeo Limited had leased four of them, and a couple years later, when Brande tried to get them back, he found that Deride’s super attorney, Anthony Camden, had written the lease agreement in such a way that MVU would never get the robots back, so long as the lease fees were paid. On top of which, MVU was required by law to maintain the robots. At controlled maintenance fee levels. The way he had been snookered still rankled.
Brande, accustomed to working with fairly reliable government offices and relatively standard forms, had learned a valuable lesson in legal maneuvering. He no longer relied on the clients’ legal firms.
“Tear it up,” Brande said.
“Mail it back,” Otsuka said. “Put it in a big box and send it third class, to the wrong address, so that it take a couple weeks.”
“We can use the money,” Thomas reminded them.
“From Deride?” Brande asked.
“I’ll mail it back.”
“God, I’m glad that settled,” Otsuka said. “I’m going home.”
She slid off the desk and started for the door. Seeing Dokey and Roskens still at work, she changed her mind and dodged around desks and filing cabinets to join them.
“Are you ready to go home?” he asked Thomas.
“I’m ready, but since we’re suddenly out a couple million, I’d better review Adrienne’s latest proposal.” Thomas tapped a thick sheaf of paper resting on the corner of her desk.
Adrienne Hampstead was a whiz at raising money. She tapped into the foundations, institutes, and institutions, scrounging research funds. She arranged dinners for Brande, so he could meet people and convince them that the future for minerals and food could be found beneath the sea. Since Avery Hampstead was her brother, all federal contracts through the Commerce Department were left to Brande, to avoid a conflict of interest.