Glass Towers and Steel Bars Ch. III
——————————————————————————
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902)
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Just as Paul and Quatre entered their suite of offices after lunch, the phone rang, and Paul, motioning Quatre out of the view area, answered it. There was a man that seemed vaguely familiar, with Asian features and black hair pulled tightly back. He spoke before Paul could give the spiel.
"Hello. Is this Quatre Winner's office?"
"It is. May I give a name?" It was amazing how the formality would slick the doors open. Quatre, though, didn't need to wait for a name, and moved forward into view of the camera even while Paul was speaking, though he did wait for Paul to finish before he himself spoke.
"Hi, Wu Fei. How are you?" Wu Fei. Wu Fei. Why did that sound so familiar? Paul just shook his head as he sat down to look over the mail in the basket, and Quatre leaned against the side of the desk, hands braced behind him.
"I'm fine. Sorry to call you at work, Quatre, but this is actually business."
Paul glanced up from his stack of mail to look at what he could see of the vid-screen. The man's eyes were dark and hard enough to hide his thoughts. He couldn't think of what company he was affiliated with, but the name was still very familiar.
There was a rustle of fabric as Quatre straightened up from where he was leaning against the desk. As he stood taller, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Business?"
The man shook his head. "Nothing quite that serious. But serious enough to require your immediate attention."
Paul couldn't see Quatre's face, but when he spoke, he seemed thoughtful.
"I see. Is eight hours soon enough?"
The man nodded. "Yes, that's soon enough. I'll see you then." The screen cut the image after a short nod, and it had flashed the Preventer's seal, sparking Paul's memory. Commander Wu Fei Chang.
Quatre sighed, dropped his arms, and turned to Paul. "Looks like we need to rearrange the schedule."
Paul pulled the book out of the drawer, flipping it open to the date, and rotating it around so Quatre could look at it. "Should I not ask questions?"
His boss glanced up, his finger poised over the date book. "Hardly. I've just been called to Earth on Preventer's business." He shrugged, looking back down at the book. "It'll probably happen again."
With eyebrows raised, Paul voiced a first question or two. "How long are you going to be gone? Oh! And what should I say?"
Quatre frowned down at the line he was looking at. "Three days, maybe four." He smiled then, and shrugged. "And as far as what to tell those who ask—and they will ask—just say I've been called away for the government. I'll be back ASAP. If they ask anything further, you don't have to say anything, because, after all, you don't really know." Another smile, this time with a flash of dark eyes. "Plausible deniability, and all that."
There was a short silence before Quatre came to a decision on how he wanted to rearrange the week. "I want this as clean as possible. Whatever you can't get rid of or move to within the next two weeks, figure out someone to meet with whoever it is. But I want you there in the meeting, and I want detailed minutes. And make sure that all parties realize that, whatever is decided there, I still have last say." He grimaced again, this time into the air as he thought, and visualized the different things coming up. "The last thing I need is someone taking it upon themselves to set up something."
The smile he gave to Paul was somewhat rueful. "Looks like it's a test run to see if those delegations we set up are going to work.
"Also, I want that heads meeting moved to next Tuesday, the sixth," he turned the book back around to Paul, pointing. "Here, but make sure that whoever calls their offices tells them that I want updated figures."
Quickly, Paul pulled out a loose sheet of paper, the first thing he laid hands on, and started to scribble notes. Quatre watched and waited, and, when Paul looked up, had a funny look on his face as he stared at the piece of paper. Then he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and went on.
"We'll move the board meeting from the first to the eighth." Now he was grim. "We'll be discussing the same issue, I'm sure." He paused, looking at the date book again. "Everson I want to meet with next Tuesday, okay?"
Paul nodded, and moved it, looking at the appointments left. He could move that, and that—but this one would have to be re-arranged with someone else. It could work.
Qautre, while he was fudging around with the schedule, had dialed a call in. The man who picked up said, "Master Quatre! What can I do for you?" It took a moment, but Paul finally got that first joke Duo had made.
"Could you get me Rashid, please?"
"Certainly, sir. Right away."
It only took a few seconds and the 'phone picked up off of hold, a giant of a man on the screen.
"Master Quatre?"
"Rashid. I need the shuttle ready to go, and could you have Auva pack my things? Enough for three days, I'm going to go see Commander Chang."
There was a sedate nod from the giant. "Very good, Master Quatre. The shuttle will be ready in thirty minutes. Would you like me to put a call into the 'port authorities to make them aware of the situation?"
Again he nodded, but this time, he brought a hand up to rub his face as well. "If you would that's perfect, Rashid. I'll see you at the docks in forty minutes."
"Forty minutes it is then, Master Quatre." There was a huge hand reached out to hit the disconnect, but it paused, "I assume that you will not need the pilot?" The blond head shook.
"No, he won't be necessary. Thank you, Rashid."
A nod, just before the screen went blank.
Quatre sighed, and shook his head turning back to Paul, a hand running absently through his hair, something Paul had never seen the young man do, despite the stressed situations they'd already been in. "Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about going, it is very important, so whenever something like this comes up, it will be my absolute first priority." Well, Paul could understand priorities, and the responsibilities of those who held a tremendous amount of influence over the government and the economy. Still, he couldn't help but wonder. "Just try to keep things from blowing up, and I'll see you in three days, okay?"
Paul nodded, his mind just a little numb as he thought about the things needing to be done immediately. He pushed that to the side for the moment as Quatre picked up his coffee cup once more, and swallowed the entire contents, which Paul was sure were cold now, and grimaced. "Well. This is fun. I'm going to get out of here, okay? If you need anything desperately, call that emergency number, and talk to Rashid. He'll track me down for you." And with a nod, he went into his office, grabbed his briefcase, one of the bagels he'd brought in, and nearly ran out the door.
Rubbing his hand over his forehead where he just knew there was going to be a headache coming to soon, Paul got to work, and began to call everyone he needed. It was going to be a long week.
The fifteen or sixteen men that were gathered in the boardroom were grim, to say the least. Quatre stayed calm, and almost bored at the head of the table, still so young that the chair there dwarfed him, made as it was for his father. But there was no uncertainty that showed on his face, even if Paul had been next to Quatre the first time he'd sat down there, and seen him nearly cry.
After they'd gotten through the initial hellos, they got to the actual business of the matter, going over the things that would usually be gone over when they were in vid conference. This was the first time many of these men had met Quatre face to face because they were always where they were supposed to be, managing the on-colony, on-Earth, on-satellite offices and operations. These were all of WEI's true heads. Each were wealthy, (some enormously so,) pulled to the top by the mass of the corporation. But one was wealthy, and rotten.
Paul sat in the corner, just as he did for the board meetings, and took notes—not the minutes, they had a secretary, (one of the ones first hired by Quatre for the paper mess,) who was eminently competent do that—Paul took the notes that Quatre wanted him to take. He observed, took notes on reactions of whomever Quatre wanted him to, and, when he got up to serve them the coffee, water, tea, anything that they needed, he made note of it, exactly what they requested, and later, would put it into a database that same secretary had made. Quatre felt that the more he knew about those he was in contact with, the better for him to understand them, and their motivations. Paul had been slightly put back by this, until Quatre and Duo had made the discovery, which they'd later admitted to expecting, that someone was selling mining technology to the competitors.
In that arena, the company's biggest competitor wasn't another construction based company, but a mining company, the only one that had previously had rights to gundanium. Quatre, personally, now held all rights to gundanium, something that Paul assumed had to do with his involvement the previous week with the government, and the Preventers. But because of that loss to Winner, the company was trying to quickly recoup its losses on that front by supplying greater amounts of other high-tensile strength alloys. Unfortunately for them, they'd been refining all their techniques on gundanium because of the wars. Someone within this competitor's company had therefore gotten creative, and created a high-priced mole.
His name was Alfred Ciderin, and he was Winner's main satellite manager. Duo, when he'd heard, had said some very choice things about the honor of a man who could turn around after being so far entrenched into a company, and he and Quatre had gone briefly into a tired exchange about changing allegiances, but although Paul noted it, he wasn't that interested in anything but how Quatre was going to choose to deal with it.
At that moment, he'd shrugged and said he'd think of something, retreating into his office, but leaving the door open enough for Paul to hear him on the phone to someone who sounded suspiciously like the man from the recordings that were still periodically arriving in interesting ways. Paul had asked a while ago about the voice, and his boss had smiled, and said, "A friend, much like Duo. You'll meet him eventually; he just has a busy schedule, much as we all do, so he keeps in touch as he can."
But a friend was something that Mr. Ciderin was certainly not. After the brooding he'd done in his office, Quatre had a plan, and had told Paul to arrange a meeting with all the regional heads, from space to Earth. Then, despite the necessary postponement, they'd gathered, and they were back in that boardroom, as Quatre let them go on about the business of the company, waiting for that opportune moment to kill the brown worm in his green apple.
It was after Ciderin was through presenting the new colony hopper to be used for the mine operations that Quatre took the moment for himself.
He seemed completely his self as he spoke up. "Ah, yes. And I assume that you have that internal thing under control now, Mr. Ciderin?" He looked concerned, innocent, and earnestly young.
Ciderin seemed confused, just as Paul knew he must be. "I'm sorry, Mr. Winner, but what internal 'thing'?" Listening carefully, and expecting it, Paul could hear the stress the man had put into the address.
Now it was Quatre's turn to look confused, and even more young. "Oh, I thought it was in the brief," and here, he flipped through the thick book of reports before him, which he hadn't yet opened. He didn't find anything, just as Paul knew he wouldn't, having set up the presentation himself, to Quatre's specifications.
What he did find was the strength of his will that he'd been hiding from the board. "Oh, yeah." He had a smile on his face that was not in any way nice. "I forgot." And Paul could tell that he wanted them to know that he had not forgotten anything. "I had it set up on the computer." Quatre nodded to Paul in his corner, and the assistant hit the button on the remote controller to light up the screen that covered the wall behind Quatre.
The first screen was a simple graph. It showed the increase in business for the three top mining companies for the past two years, the ones after the wars. Winner was doing a steady increase, punctuated with leaps in places…but the next one wasn't doing quite so well. Scheulers, an enormous umbrella, just as Winner was, had had the entire corner on the Gundanium profit…and it wasn't doing quite as well as it had once been. The graph showed it, and showed how, over the last few months, the declining ground hadn't been so declining. They were beginning to recoup the profits they had lost with the banning of Gundanium.
Quatre had swiveled his chair around to see the screen. From the rest of the room, nothing could be seen of him, except perhaps, if you looked under the table, his thin legs would stick out from the edge of the chair. When he turned back, he had that same smile on his face that somehow, despite all the angles, all the brightness in it, didn't equal good.
"I believe the next one is the reason they've done so very well over the past few months." He glanced down at the table, where the imbedded screen was, echoing the larger one. "Ah, yes. As is here, you can see they're new miner, and, if shown next to ours, they appear shockingly similar." Again, he looked up, and his face was now a mixture of complete seriousness, and a calm amusement. "After all…it only takes ten percent for a new patent.
"And…even more interesting is that there were only three places that those plans could have leaked from…one, me, as I knew about the project, certainly. Two: the engineering department, but then, why change the item at all? Or…" And he looked at Ciderin. "Three. Department head." His eyes swept the entire board. "The timing worked well, as did the several incentives that were found."
Ciderin, to Paul, looked more shocked than anything, but that was only for the amount of time it took for his survival instinct to kick in, and he was as calm as a glacier. That was one thing that this panel had going for them, the fact that they weren't inherited to this position, they had to know what they were doing. Quatre wasn't finished, though.
He sat very straight in his father's chair, as Quatre continuously called it, and he was very calm as he addressed those men. "It ends here. If you have spiffs going somewhere, I'd back out very quickly, now."
Paul wondered if Quatre knew just how dangerous the men sitting there were, cornered. But he'd trust him to, because he'd been so very right so far.
"Let's get it all straight, right now. I have no patience left for anything but the best. If you're so busy selling things to other people…go to them, and I'll find the best to do whatever needs doing. I don't need to be watching over everyone's shoulders, I need to be doing the things that need to be done. You have precious little time to be doing anything, and I have less." Again his eyes swept the room, even resting on Paul for a second, pulling him into it as well. "Understood?"
There was a chorus of affirmative answers coming from all around the room, and after it, Quatre nodded, and spoke again, "Good. Then let's break for lunch, and we'll come back in two hours." He pinned Ciderin down to his chair. "Mr. Ciderin. If you'll just stay a moment?"
The man nodded, apparently knowing nothing else to do in the face of Quatre's aplomb. The blond stayed seated as the room vacated in silence, many of the men leaving their things there. Paul stayed in his corner, and he didn't think that Ciderin was going anywhere.
Quatre waited until the door was closed again before he began. "You know, reason dictates that I fire you."
The man met his eyes. "Are you reasonable?"
The young man looked back at him, serious and thoughtful. "No. And since you seem to be happy dancing around in circles all day long, I'm going to be brief, and to the point. You do it again, and I will. And then I'll spend a lot of time thinking up lots of very satisfying ways to get revenge, and I'll talk myself out of them, and you'll be just one more free scoundrel in the world." He smiled. "But then, I'm thinking that you won't do anything like that again, because you're going to be so very paranoid about being watched, and you'll get so nervous, eventually you're going to retire, fairly early, and enjoy your mis-earned credits happily." He lost his smile. "Is that very clear, Mr. Ciderin?"
The man swallowed, and nodded. "Yes. Quite."
Quatre nodded. "Good. Then I'll see you when the meeting resumes."
Ciderin nodded again, and stood, taking a long drink of water from his glass before he left. When the door shut once more, Quatre sighed, and turned to Paul. "Oh, that was fun."
Paul chuckled, and nodded, making an mmm sound.
The young Winner swiveled in his chair a few times, back and forth, looking up at Paul after a little while. "Would you be so kind as to call Duo for me, on his office phone?"
His assistant stood even as he nodded, and went to the large vid-screen, pulling up the number from the memory. It range twice, before it was picked up with a "Maxwell."
"Hey Duo, I have Quatre here for you."
"Ah, hello Paul. Go ahead, then, hope you're doing well, and all."
"It's me. I was wondering if you could do a favor for me, off the books." Paul could hear the smile in his voice without looking around at him. The dark screen gave nothing away for Duo.
There was a pause, and "Sure, whatever you need, you know that."
"Well, you know the Ciderin issue…"
There was a sound like Duo was clearing his throat, or making a confirmation noise, and he went, "Yeah?"
"Well, I seemed to have resolved it, for now, but I was thinking…" Here, Paul turned to look at his boss. "I was thinking…wouldn't it be a good reminder if he could be…a little more poor for a day?"
Duo had a good laugh over that, and Paul raised eyebrows to Quatre, where he was waiting for Duo's voice to come back. "Sure, man. It would be a pleasure, so consider it done. I think I'm going to enlist help, though."
Quatre smiled, and shrugged. "Just so long as it's completely temporary, and has no lasting effects. A computer glitch, that's all."
"Okay, man. I'm going to go get started, I didn't have anything really interesting going on anyway, and it was good to talk around you, Paul, see you at some point, I'm sure, guys."
After the screen disconnected, Paul raised his eyebrows at Quatre again, but the man just shrugged, with an innocent expression plastered all over his face. "Hey, I said temporary." Then they looked at each other, and started to chuckle.
The door swung open, startling Paul as he was sorting through the morning mail. When he looked up, there was a man standing there that looked slightly familiar, though he couldn't really place where he'd seen him before. He had reddish brown hair, green eyes, was very tall, and fairly thin, even if you couldn't really tell under his bulky turtleneck.
He spoke before Paul could, asking, "Is he in yet?"
Paul frowned. "Mr. Winner?"
The man nodded. "Yeah. If he is, could you tell him Trowa's here?"
Caught off guard, all Paul could think of was to nod, and touch the intercom. "Quatre?"
Quatre's voice came back over the line. "Yes, Paul? It's not my first, is it?"
"No…You have a Trowa here to see you." There was no reply to that, but a moment later, the door to the office was yanked open, revealing an excited boss.
"Trowa!" He didn't run, but he still came forward to hug the man, who, with a smile, hugged him back. "You're a week early!"
Trowa nodded. "Yeah. Our last city was cancelled—apparently they were facing an epidemic of some kind, and it wasn't safe for the animals." He shrugged. "So I caught a ride up a little earlier than expected."
Quatre grinned. "Well, I'm glad!" He turned to Paul, now. "Paul, this is Trowa Barton. He's an old friend, and he's going to be staying with me during the off season, so he'll probably be around a bit."
Trowa nodded to him, but didn't smile.
"Off season?"
Quatre answered. "Yeah. He owns the Bloom circus, and does a lot of their main acts."
Recognition sparked, and Paul remembered him from the photograph that Duo had sent. He'd been the one kneeling next to the lion. "Oh, okay."
The man, however, raised an eyebrow at Quatre, before turning to Paul. "Half of it. I own one half of it, my sister the other." He smiled slightly. "Don't let the owner of all he surveys try to convince you that anyone else owns all of everything."
Shaking his head, Quatre motioned to the office, and after Trowa passed him, pushed him in the back. "Paul, just ring me when the L1 VP gets in, would you?"
Paul nodded, and watched as the door to the office shut once more. "Huh."
There was enough busy work to keep him occupied until the L1 VP arrived, so he spent the time doing that, and directing his attention to the questions of his boss, and thinking about the latest news he'd had from his family.
He'd been far enough away, and for a sufficient amount of time, for him to think about maybe taking a break, and visiting them. They'd like that, and it would ease his homesickness. And perhaps, if he worded it right, he could convince Quatre to take a vacation at the same time. It'd be good for him, and if it were soon enough, he could do it while his friend was here. He quickly reconsidered that, though. Maybe a partial break, working from his estate, or something. He was too new to the hot seat for a real break away from it, but he could maybe do something to catch his breath. Yeah. He liked that idea, both for himself, because, after the near year he'd been there, he needed it, and for his boss, because, although the man didn't show it, Paul figured he'd be grateful for even a step away.
The idea was liked immediately, and embraced wholeheartedly. The actual possibility of it, however, seemed a little shady, until Trowa, into work the next day to catch up with Quatre, said that, if you were to look at it as a small hypothetical situation, it was optimal for seeing the development of the internal systems they'd built from scratch. He also pointed out that, if Quatre were still in touch, there would be a relatively small chance of failure on the parts of the people under them.
The ultimate law-layer had stared at Trowa for a moment or two, and said, "Done." Then he'd swung around to Paul, and said, "We'll give it a month to prepare, how's that sound? We give advance notice of it all, except that it's to see if they can handle a little amount of time." He started to chew on his lip again as he stared into space, thinking. "But I'm only going to give some slack to a few of the higher ups…if this is a training exercise, I'm going to do it right."
Over the next several weeks, he became very used to Trowa popping into the office to drag his boss off to lunch, or even when he thought he was staying at the office too late, drag him out of the building. Usually, that would be accomplished only after a long discussion, though never an argument, of why each thought what he was suggesting was a better thing. Trowa, it seemed, had an infinite amount of patience with everything but excuses, and wouldn't let Quatre make any to stay. He'd just stare at Quatre as the man attempted to grasp onto exactly why he needed to get something done right then, and, when the excuse was finished, say: "I take it it'll grow wings in the middle of the night, and won't be right there in the morning?" Or something equally ridiculous, but valid. If that didn't work, it would be a long staring contest, and that usually worked. If it didn't…well, Trowa would stay there until Quatre went home. Whatever the outcome, it was always interesting to see.
As those that looked directly to them for answers buckled down for the week and a half that they were going to be gone, the more they looked forward to it, because there seemed to be a thousand reasons and a hundred people who would be quite happy if they didn't leave. Determined as Quatre was, though, there was nothing short of rack and ruin that was going to stop him, and he made sure that those in charge knew the procedures they needed to, so that the company would keep running smoothly.
many thanks to Crazy and Miyabi for help and betas
