Grits in Manhattan? You want me not to come back?

Oh, never. Kerry's thumb stroked the screen lightly. Wish you were here right now.

The reply took a little longer than before. Me, too.

Kerry exhaled. "Boy, what is it with us the past few days?" she murmured, sensing the emotion both in herself and in the responses she was getting. Well, I'll be waiting at the airport tonight, so you better not be late coming back from that crazy apple.

Ugh. I'll be there, Ker, but if these jackasses don't get their act together, I might have to stay over another night.

"Ugh is right." Kerry frowned. Ew.

(frown)

Kerry tapped her stylus against the screen thoughtfully. "Damn." Let me know, okay? I hope you don't have to stay.

You'll be the first to know. I am going to dump this bad omelette and go terrorize people. Good luck with the meeting.

Yeah. You too. Talk to you later, Dixiecup.

(grin) Later, Yankee.

The exchange made her feel pleasantly warm and fuzzy inside, though the lingering worry about Dar's state of mind was still there, lurking in the background.

However. Kerry scribbled a brief paragraph onto the screen, reviewed it, and then hit send, waiting expectantly until she saw the reply.

Saucy little wench. Say that again tonight.

"Heh. I will." Kerry put the PDA down and with a final glance at her own monitor, she set her trackball aside and stood up, carefully shrugging on her metallic bronze colored jacket over the gold silk shirt she'd chosen that morning.

It was a bit flashier than she usually preferred, but Kerry hadn't been brought up in a political rat's nest for nothing. She knew how to dress to make an impact, and at this meeting, when she'd be the principal instead of acting as Dar's trusted right hand, she had a bit of a different image to present.

She finished her tea, then slid the strap of her laptop case over her right shoulder and headed for the door, pausing briefly to check her reflection in the small mirror over the credenza.

It was a relatively sophisticated image that looked back at her. The new haircut framed her face a little differently, lengthening it just a touch, she thought. After a fluff of her bangs, she gave her image a grudging nod, then continued out the door. "Okay, Mayte. I'm outta here."

Her assistant looked up from her work. "Oh, Ms. Kerry. You look so pretty today," she exclaimed. "What a nice jacket!'

Not immune to flattery by any means, Kerry paused and grinned, showing off her outfit. "Like it? Dar said I needed something a little snazzier the last time we went shopping so..." She shrugged slightly.

"Did la jefa pick that one out? She has a good taste," Mayte said.

"Yes, she did," Kerry agreed. "And I like to think she does." She winked at Mayte. "I'm going to be offsite all afternoon if anyone's looking for me. I'll be at the Intercontinental at a prospective new business meeting."

"Si." Mayte nodded. "Ms. Mariana called for the employee meeting, and she said she would move it to next week. She is going to be off tomorrow for her birthday."

"Oh, yikes." Kerry's eyes widened. "How did we miss that? Can we get a cake in for Friday? Something big and decorated really crazy?" She made a mental note to remind Dar also, who probably would eschew a card but possibly not something far more bizarre...like the spiny cactus she'd gotten Duks for his last birthday.

"We can do that, sure," Mayte agreed confidently. "I will take care of it, Ms. Kerry. No problem."

With a wave of her fingers, Kerry slipped out the front entrance of her office and headed for the elevators. She felt a little nervous, both from the knowledge that their rivals would be there waiting for her and of the bid process itself.

That, she knew down pat. She'd gone on dozens of new business bids, most as Dar's second, but occasionally as the primary contact when her partner was occupied elsewhere. While her usual job was to come in after the contract had closed and make it all happen, she knew the delicate casting landing the deals took.

Dar was, in the terms of business, a closer. She didn't usually do the initial leg work, she left that to the sales directors and regional managers who worked with the new accounts. Her job was to come in when the money talk got tough and lay down the bottom line of what they'd accept on a contract, and what they wouldn't.

Her word was law, even over the highest sales executives, and everyone knew only Alastair could, or would, overrule her and he never had.

Never.

Kerry was more than aware of that going into any new bid. She felt responsible for doing her job, of course, but she was also very conscious of being Dar's personal and professional representative. She knew people had expectations of her because of that, and she focused intently on living up to or surpassing them.

It was easy for people to think she did what she did because of her relationship with Dar. Kerry eyed the floor counter on the elevator, waiting for it to descend to the ground. People here at ILS no longer thought that--they were well aware of her capabilities.

But she knew she was going into a situation where their relationship was known better than they were, and so...Kerry sighed.

That got old real fast. She hoped she could put Michelle in her place before the whole thing got started so they could stick to business for a change. Maybe she'd get lucky, as Dar had said, and Telegenics would send engineers instead of highly annoying marketing heads whose faces made Kerry want to pick up a sledgehammer.

"Hey, boss," Mark greeted her as the doors opened. He had a nerd backpack slung over one shoulder and was dressed in a more reserved, formal suit than was usual for him. "Ready?"

"Ready." Kerry led the way toward the doors. "Let's go make waves."

DAR SAT BACK in the thick, leather conference room chair and let her eyes travel around the table, just watching as the discussion moved from seat to seat. She rested her elbows on the chair arms and interlaced her fingers, trying the best she knew how not to either fidget or explode.

Clueless. "So what you're telling me," she finally interrupted the conversation. "Is that the developer can't control the resources his program needs to operate."

"Well..." The hitherto absent VP Ops, Jason Meyer, sighed. "Not exactly, but there is a problem with the way the code's written."

"Problem?" Dar's eyebrows lifted. "Given the test I just ran, they've offloaded all their processing to the servers, and it's running everything across your WAN links to minimal clients. That's not a problem, that's a design disaster, Jason."

"But, it's an advantage, Dar," Stewart Godson said. "Every time they make changes, they don't have to alter the client, and it's big bucks to us in savings. They just do what they need to do, and it's taken care of."

Dar exhaled silently. "I'm pretty conversant with the economies of the mainframe based distribution model, Stewart. It's been around longer than I have," she remarked dryly. "And I won't even disagree with it, on a local scale. My support desk often wishes for the old days, when the users just flipped a switch and got a green screen. However," she tapped her thumbs together, "GUI based applications are not meant to be pushed across the wide area network if you expect any kind of reasonable response time."

"Well..."

"Did the vendor do any bandwidth testing?" Dar asked.

Godson shrugged. "He said he did, and that it had an acceptable result."

Dar just looked at him for a long moment. "What did he define as acceptable?" she asked cautiously.

Godson looked at Meyer, who looked out the window. "Ah...there's a language barrier," Stewart admitted. "The developer is German, and he doesn't...um...speak English."

It was like being stuck in some bizarro Dilbert world. Dar rested her chin against her folded hands and found herself at an uncharacteristic loss for words. "Um." She finally exhaled, with a slight shake of her head. "What exactly do you want me to do, here?"

The rest of the room's occupants looked at each other, then focused on Godson. "Well, make it work," he said. "You can, can't you?"

"Sure," Dar replied. "Got a million bucks for infrastructure upgrades?"

Godson actually gasped. "Of course not!"

Dar got up and started pacing, her body's instincts finally getting the better of her. "Okay." She lifted both hands and held them out slightly. "You have a new application, written by a firm over in Germany, which is designed to require four times the amount of bandwidth you currently have provisioned for." She turned and leaned against the table. "So, gentlemen, you have one of three possible choices." One hand lifted and indicated a finger. "You can scrap the application, make the developer fix it so it works right, or pay for expanding your network."

Agitated, Godson got up. "Dar, we can't do any of those. We've already paid for the program...it cost us over 10 million dollars! And it's a good program. It'll raise our productivity ten-fold!"

Dar just looked at him.

"But we don't have a half a million dollars to put new circuits in. That's why we called you. You're our network administrator. Fix it!"

"Your network is based on a usage curve you signed off on," Dar shot back. "We don't have to fix it, Stewart. All we have to do is deliver what you paid for, which is the bandwidth you got right now." She pointed at the CIO.

"Dar, put yourself in my shoes. What would you do?" the man replied, a hint of desperation in his voice.

"Fire myself," Dar told him, bluntly.

The entire room save the two of them was frozen, everyone looking at their hands folded on the big wooden conference table. The morning sunlight entered into the room via a row of small windows near the top of the wall, but the effect was almost like that of a fishbowl.

Dar felt like one of her Siamese fighting fish, in fact. "So..."

"Can't you do anything?" Godson muttered. "You guys are supposed to be the best."

Patience. Dar took three or four breaths before she answered, mindful of the fact that she was, after all, at a client's site. "Okay. I'll fix it. Give me the damn source code," she said. "But I'm warning you, I bill by the hour for programming services and I ain't cheap."

Godson's expression brightened, and he turned to his VP. "Can we do that?"

The VP shook his head. "No sir." He cleared his throat. "We didn't get the source code."

Dar circled the table and sat down again in her seat. She propped her chin up on her fists and stared at the lot of them in patent disgust. "You paid ten million for an application and didn't get the source code?" she asked. "Please tell me you have a guarantee the developer will adapt the program to your specifications."

Godson looked at Meyer.

"I think so," Meyer sighed. "I mean, yes," he amended hastily as Dar started to stand up. "Yes, they'll rewrite whatever we need them to, only...um...they kind of have a little problem understanding what it is we need."

Dar sat back down and leaned back, resuming her brooding posture. "You don't have source code, you can't communicate with your developer, you paid for something that doesn't work on your existing infrastructure and you want me to fix it?"

"Well..." Godson leaned on his elbows. "I mean, who else can we go to, Dar? Really? Okay, so we maybe miscalculated a little, but this project is vital to the company. It has to happen."

Across the table, Meyer lifted his hand to cover his mouth, his eyes taking on a dark glint. "Well, maybe we have other options."

Dar remained quiet for a few minutes, considering her own options. They were as few as Godson's, really. She could walk out and tell them it was their problem not hers, but that meant a disaster for them, and they had a contract up for renewal next year with ILS.

She could force them to pay for new infrastructure, but the thought irked her given the fault really lay not with Godson or his clueless git of a VP Ops, but with the developer who sold them a bill of goods and was now probably laughing his German butt off on the other side of the world. Also, they had a contract up for renewal, and Dar knew if she forced a half million dollars worth of gear down Godson's throat, he'd just take it out of her when they were negotiating in twelve months.