- - - - - - - - - -
"No," William declared breathlessly as he sank heavily into his chair. He raised the tissue to his brow, blotted the sweat that had instantly formed there.
In one fell swoop, Matthew Locke had just changed William's entire plan-and the future of ICP. He felt his heart racing, and he began to hyperventilate. He wondered if he was experiencing the onset of a stroke. He held his palm over his heart and willed it to slow while he attempted to breathe evenly, all the while staring at the message spilled across his-no, Matthew's!-screen.
When he eventually calmed down enough to think a little more clearly, his panic was replaced by shallow emptiness. Then, vaguely at first, a strange feeling of grief and mourning numbed his senses, resurfacing for the first time since he had begun his plan to acquire Wallaby.
His mind started racing, and his immediate reaction was to quickly counter Matthew's scheme by unveiling ICP's own competitive product, showing him that no one pushed the number-one computer maker around. Thinking this through, however, William could hardly bring himself to ask the question, What can I do? He already knew the answer. Nothing. Hadn't he himself halted any new designs of ICP's BP series, or for that matter, any new portable design, after reaching the "Jones" phase of the original plan, when Matthew had moved into power?
No backup plan, he thought and shook his head sadly. The funeral…the rebound to Wallaby…through these events he had lost the foresight to build a backup plan in case something like this should happen. And, he realized, taking the final blow, there could be no going back. While he could simply pick up the phone and call his development heads in and put together a team to begin accelerated development of his technical and market advisors' proposed concepts, a real product would not surface for at least twelve to eighteen months, probably more. He had no immediate backup plan, no product of his own to augment ICP's new strategic dependence and commitment to Wallaby and the Joey. He could not cancel the strategic alliance.
His gaze lingered painfully over the Joey II stationed before him. Its beautiful compact design, its crisp high-resolution screen, its ergonomic keyboard, its slick trackpad. Gently, William touched the trackpad, slid his fingertip across its smooth black surface.
Suddenly, strangely, his thoughts turned sympathetically to Peter Jones. Matthew Locke had just pulled on William the same surprise he had inflicted on Peter Jones.
Then all at once he felt charged as if by a synaptic tingle, a stirring in his fingertip that shot up to his brain. At first he feared he was completely losing control, but then he let out a little laugh, realizing, yes, he had crossed a fine line, and suddenly it all made complete and wonderfully perfect sense to him.
The call. Of course. It had been there all along, a hibernating backup plan, but William had simply ignored it. There had been no reason to notice it. His old friend calling just to say hello, to ask for a few notes, all along up to his old playful tricks.