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jar of coffee that looked about twelve years old. Sarah prayed
there was no milk lurking anywhere. She emptied the kettle of
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the stale, limey water inside and refilled it from the cold tap
over the basin in the shower room. Then she turned her
attention to the antique shower, thin towel and fin de siècle
plumbing.
When she had finished dressing, she took a mouthful of
black, bitter coffee. Then she carefully poured the rest of it
down the sink and went to see if the Doctor and Harry were up
yet.
The Voracian Wednesday morning weekly status update
meeting started exactly on time at eight-thirty. Stabfield's
meetings always started exactly on time, Marc Lewis mused as
he sat with his arms folded in the front row.
Stabfield started, as ever, with a slide showing the
evacuation routes in the case of an attack by human forces.
Seventeen of the eighteen members of the audience politely
took note, and Lewis scowled. Then Stabfield moved on to the
agenda for the day.
The first item was a chance for each of the Voracians in turn
to give an account of what they had been doing since the last
meeting. Most muttered that everything was going according
to plan and they had little to add to what they had said at the
last meeting (which had been much the same report as this
time). Undeterred, Stabfield nodded appreciatively as each of
his team reported in, and made notes on a laptop computer.
Only Marc Lewis and Johanna Slake had much to update the
others on. Stabfield had insisted Lewis describe the loss of the
CD. Stabfield then commented on the need for increased
vigilance and said that the main plan was not at all impacted by
this unfortunate incident. Lewis was seething, but he did his
best not to show it partly because it would simply seem like
bad grace. Mainly, though, it was because it would give
Stabfield a chance to comment in public on Lewis's apparent
inability to keep his emotions in check.
Johanna gave a brief account of the remote landing of the
shuttle at Hubway. Stabfield nodded and made a point of
displaying a Gantt chart of the project's activities
and checkpoints to date so that he could update it to show
another critical activity one hundred per cent completed.
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Eventually the meeting broke up about an hour after all the
necessary business had actually been concluded, since
Stabfield insisted on going through the slides he used for the I2
management board. Most of the board members were human,
due to the vagaries of the Stock Exchange, and the slides were
devoted to market share, stock fluctuations, and product
penetration.
One could argue, and Stabfield did, that there was value in
understanding the business side of things, and that the
penetration of Vorell and the XNet family of products, since
this was the Voracian vehicle for success in the overall
strategy. But Lewis preferred to believe that they were
subjected to the lecture mainly because Stabfield had found a
new graphics package which enabled him to produce even
more indecipherable hieroglyphic charts than before. Johanna
and the others nodded in interest and appreciation as each slide
went up. Lewis sank lower into his seat and tightened the fold
of his arms.
'So the strategic outlook for the company is buoyant, and
we're maintaining our win-win grip on the marketplace,'
Stabfield concluded at last almost exactly the same words as
he had used to conclude the meeting every Wednesday
morning for the last five years. Lewis was one of the first out
of the room.
'I worry about Lewis,' Johanna told Stabfield when the two
met in Stabfield's office immediately after the status meeting.
'Did you see him today?'
Stabfield was checking over his logic diagram on the laptop.
'Lewis is, you have to remember, organically disadvantaged.'
'His emotions do sometimes go to the top of his personal
agenda.'
'Indeed. But that in itself can have its uses,' he did not sound
convinced, adding the caveat 'if properly directed and
tempered.'
Johanna considered commenting on the pun, but doubted if
Stabfield would appreciate it. He considered humour even less
productive in the normal flow of things than anger. 'The next
stage?' she asked instead.
65
'The next stage is now on the critical path. You should take
team Alpha and initiate the distraction program.' He tapped the
enter key with a flourish and watched intently as the diagram
redrew itself across the screen. Johanna waited for him to
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