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you have, and have been given precious little support in return so long as
Nano Systems has been getting fat R and D contracts from Japan and America.
Well now the gravy train has hit the buffers and all you can do is sell them
and their talent down the river.'
Carl began to get annoyed at this stream of barbed criticism. Good God, she
was nothing but a secretary who he had called in to fire and she had the nerve
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to go on at him about the faults in the company. Okay, so she had nothing to
lose, but carping at the failure of others was the easiest and most futile
exercise in the world. Anyone could do it. It was time to call her bluff.
'Very well, Bev, you've made your point. You're understandably angry. But what
do you suggest we do?'
Beverley turned to face him. 'What the hell's the matter with you? Are you
blind as well as stupid? Isn't it obvious?'
Seeing efficient, diligent and hard-working Beverley Laine so spitting mad was
an education. 'At the moment . . . no.'
'A management buyout!' Beverley fumed. 'Why not take a look at the possibility
of a management buyout!'
SEPTEMBER 1992
The inaugural meeting of Nano Systems' middle management buyout consortium was
held in secret in the reception suite of the Royal Albion Hotel in Brighton.
Ten men took their seats around an oval conference table. On a pedestal in the
centre of the table, like a miniature shrine to protein memory technology, was
the cause and possible salvation of their problems: a Kronos microprocessor.
It was about the size of a packet of twenty cigarettes. Its unusual thickness
was due to the light-sensitive substrate glass chamber bonded to its face. The
chamber was filled with the chip's nutrient feed. Even the light from the
overhead chandelier falling on the awesome device was enough to provide the
energy it needed to power the millions of light junctions around its outer
edges. Each tiny flickering point of light was made up of a thousand such
nerve junctions. It was through these that the Kronos communicated with the
outside world when it was mounted in a special socket. The Kronos was a
miniature version of the planet Earth, the cradle of life itself: the swirling
nutrient fluid was the equivalent of the oceans, and the light above was the
energy-giving sun fuelling the chip's carbon cycle. There was no chairman,
therefore Carl, as the principal organizer of the consortium, was the first to
speak with a brief welcome. He opened business by proposing himself as
chairman of the consortium and Beverley its secretary. Both nominations went
through on the nod. As Carl talked Beverley watched each man in turn for a few
seconds, gauging their individual reactions and considering her attitude
towards them. A mixed bunch but all first-class men in their respective
fields: Dr Mace Pilleau, one of the world's top nano-scientists; Hal Bremner,
a clever but uninspiring software engineer - give him a problem and he would
crack it, but he was no innovator; Peter Dancer, sales manager, now there was
a sharp operator - a salesman with a technical background, a man who thought
quickly on his feet
and was not afraid of making fast decisions, usually the right ones. Sitting
next to him was Jack Pullen, accounts department manager, blunt, talented and
determined, a man who had done much to help the company defy economic gravity
for so long. If a new company was to emerge from this present mess, it would
need the financial skills of Jack Pullen. Altogether ten very different men
listening carefully to proposals that would mean putting their houses, their
jobs, and probably their marriages on the line.
'And this whole thing wasn't my idea,' Carl concluded. 'It was Beverley's.'
All eyes swivelled around to Beverley who was taking minutes. She looked up,
nonplussed.
'So if it all goes wrong, we can blame her. Anyway, Beverley feels very
strongly about the Kronos and Nano Systems so I think she should have a say.
Miss Beverley Laine.' Carl sat down abruptly and treated Beverley to a
mischievous grin.
Beverley's composure was such that she rose to her feet without any outward
sign of surprise although she did direct a brief I'll-get-even-with-you-later
gamma-ray glare in Carl's direction.
After a hesitant start, she got into her stride and talked with passion and
eloquence for five minutes, surprising herself with the neatness of her
phrases. The grey-suited men listened attentively. They were as intrigued by
this formerly unobtrusive secretary talking so confidently as they were by the
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bold plan that Carl was proposing.
Beverley pointed out that Nano Systems' problems were the opposite of most
companies'. Paradoxically, they were too innovative: they were pushing out the
frontiers of the new science of molecular engineering but not coming up with
consumer products to finance research. As she spoke, the vibrations from her
vocal cords impinged on the glass-faced Kronos and caused its neuron junctions
to modulate in harmony with her voice. The points of light rippled and pulsed,
only becoming acquiescent when she paused.
'It's no good having the board saying that the Kronos chip isn't ready for
application marketing,' she told the meeting. 'Of course it's not ready,
getting only half a per cent of the motor
neurons working on the prototype chips is a lousy figure. But last year it was
quarter of a per cent. And yet there's nothing like the Kronos.' She paused
and looked at the glowing Kronos. 'The silicon chip used in the first pocket
calculators at the beginning of the seventies wasn't ready because it could
only add, subtract and multiply, but calculators took off just the
same.'
'So what should we be making, Miss Laine?' asked Peter Dancer. 'Personal
computers for a world that's already saturated with them?'
'Something even better. Show him, Carl.' Hey, steady on, Bev, you're hijacking
the meeting.
If Carl was annoyed by Beverley's presumption, he didn't show it but reached
into his briefcase and laid what looked like a laptop portable computer on the
desk. The difference was that the slim, A4-size device was all screen because
there was no keyboard. He pushed it in front of Dancer who looked sceptically
at the gadget. 'Another electronic writing tablet?'
'Not quite,' Carl replied. 'Write straight onto the screen. Use a pencil or
anything, even your thumbnail.'
The other members of the gathering watched with interest as Dancer took a
ballpoint pen and a letter from his pocket. He hesitated for a moment and
wrote his name and address in the middle of the screen. His scrawl was
faithfully reproduced on the gas plasma screen but as the words appeared, they
were automatically converted to neat lines of text in Times Roman fonts that
flowed across the screen as the words self-justified to
the left.
Dancer was impressed. 'Neat,' he observed.
'Try crossing out a word,' Carl suggested.
Dancer struck a line through BRIGHTON. The word disappeared from the screen
and the other words shuffled sideways and upwards to close the gap.
'Now ring a word and use an arrow to move it as if you were correcting a
report,' Carl instructed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]