There was a PowerPoint presentation. There was always a PowerPoint presentation.
PowerPoint presentations were somehow emblematic, in Dido's mind, of just why she'd taken an interest in the practical parts of her father's business, rather than following him into management. Technology fascinated her; making the hundreds of parts involved in a jet engine all work together to carry a plane and a payload into the sky was interesting. It was a challenge, a puzzle to solve, and she was always proud to see the practical result when a new model was tested. She probably have been willing to kill a man for the chance to take apart one of Stark's Iron Man suits and see what made it tick. Powerpoint presentations were the exact opposite of all that. They were ideas as expressed by people with absolutely no interest in the nuts-and-bolts realization of them.
Like so many other PowerPoint presentations, the one Huang had put together about his project involved graphs, bullet lists, and most of all, artist's conceptions: slide after slide of computer-generated images depicting the Ao Guang seafloor mining complex as it would look in full swing. The renderings were fairly impressive, and Dido was sure Huang knew what he was talking about,but there was one thing she really couldn't help noticing. It seemed that Huang, like so many other men in high-tech industries – Justin Hammer came prominently to mind – had a clear case of Stark Envy.
It was obvious in the design of the Deepsuits the miners in the images were wearing: they were inescapably Iron-Man-inspired, right down to the power source located in the chest. Not to mention the underwater explosive he called the Niu Wa – the way it broke into multiple projectiles to blow down a whole hillside was strikingly reminiscent of old videos of Stark's Jericho Missile tests in Afghanistan. Everybody wanted their stuff to look like Tony Stark's. It was so much easier than coming up with something of their own.
She was getting a better appraisal of Huang himself, too. Balthazar Windham claimed he could tell a man's character from the moment he met him, but Dido preferred to watch people for a while and see what they revealed about themselves when they thought she wasn't looking. Huang, she decided, really was working hard to mend the rift between Windham Aerospace and Ao Guang Resources, but he was ill at ease and tended to explain things to Dido as if she were a child. She suspected he was a little insulted that the boss' daughter had been sent to meet him instead of the boss himself, and that probably made him suspicious that Windham would not be fully committed to any future partnership. She was going to have to try to do something about that.
Huang's discomfort was most obvious in the moment when his presentation was interrupted: his cell phone went off, startling him quite badly, and he apologized profusely before retreating into a corner of the room for a brief but angry-sounding conversation in Cantonese. Dido understood very little of that language, and assumed at first that he was upset at the interruption. Then, however, she heard her father's name, followed by the word Vancouver. More likely, then, he was ranting about Balthazar being in Canada instead of coming to speak with him personally. If so, he really was a lot more upset than he'd let Dido know.
She was also pretty sure she heard the name Tony Stark.
Huang ended the call and apologized once again. "I'm very sorry, Miss Windham," he said. "I should have turned my phone off. I know it's terribly impolite to leave somebody waiting during a conversation they can't understand."
"I'm used to it. It's just like when Dad talks accounting," said Dido lightly, but his remark struck her as curiously probing. Was he trying to make absolutely sure she didn't speak the language? What had he said that she wasn't supposed to hear?
The presentation finished without further interruptions, and Huang let the screen go blue and waited for Dido's response.
"It looks very promising," she said. A couple of years ago she would have thought some of his concepts were awfully far-fetched, but it had been a hell of a couple of years in the world of high technology. "Dad will be thrilled, and I think we can offer you some solutions for the issues you mentioned with your submersible engines." Marine propulsion wasn't Dido's speciality, but given a little time to work on it, she could probably come up with something to make a pump-jet engine more efficient under higher pressures. Maybe she should do some research on it tonight. "A miniature version might work for your Deepsuits, too."
"We're exploring several options," Huang said, "but I would be happy to see what you might come up with. The Deepsuits are one of the centrepieces of this project."
Of course they were, thought Dido. They were the thing he could point to and say see? I'm just as clever as Tony Stark.
Huang coughed. "When you speak to your father," he said, "could you express my disappointment that he's not here? If he could stop by, even for a day or so, I really would like to speak to him in person."
"I'll bring it up," Dido said.
But once again, she did not. When she called her father late in the afternoon, she told him that Huang's project looked good. Balthazar told her to close the deal then, and immediately changed the subject to talk about what he was really interested in.
"Did you talk to Stark's friend at all?" he wanted to know.
"Only a little," said Dido.
"A little? Sweetheart, I told you: I want this guy."
"And I told you, Dad, I'm not going to just leave the whole Ao Guang thing hanging so I can chase after a man who may or may not be who we think he is!" she said. "I talked to him about five or ten minutes, because that was all I could manage. Tonight I'll see if they're still in the hotel – I overheard a couple of security guards grouching about Stark. Maybe if I tip well they'll bend some privacy rules for me."
"What did you find out?" asked Balthazar.
Dido bit her lip. She'd had a difficult time sorting out her impressions of Edward Jarvis. "I'm not sure I'd call him Stark's friend," she said. "They're not on a first-name basis: he calls Stark Sir. Stark orders him around like a dog, and he sits and stays and fetches like one."
That wasn't what Balthazar had wanted to hear, and it really wasn't what Dido had expected to see, either. She'd figured somebody who helped Tony Stark to be Iron Man would be someone he was close to, somebody he trusted to keep a secret. Then again, Dido knew well enough that Tony Stark didn't have what she would have considered normal relationships. Maybe he really did hang such things on professional, rather than personal, loyalty.
"Any idea what he does?" asked Balthazar.
"I'm pretty sure he's some kind of techie," Dido replied. "He obviously hates wearing suits and he doesn't seem very comfortable in social situations – although he's very polite, and Stark actually lets him get away with a bit of lip." She frowned. "It's really hard to gauge their relationship, actually. I'll try again if I can catch him away from Stark."
"That's my girl."
Dido winced at his condescending tone, but decided it wasn't worth getting upset over. Besides, there was something she wanted to ask her father: she'd been hoping to get the information from Huang, but trying would only make him more uncomfortable and she doubted now that she'd find an opening to ask. Huang was a man who kept his secrets. "Dad," she said, "what exactly happened that made Huang so upset?"
"Oh, it was nothing important," Balthazar replied. "You told me he said it was water under the bridge."
Dido persisted. "I think he assumes that I already know." She wasn't sure if that were true or not, but she could tell he'd been avoiding the subject. "If he says something, I want to know what he's talking about. Come on, Dad. You can't send me out here to do this and not tell me what I need to know."
She heard her father's breath roar in the microphone as he sighed. "There was a bit of a misunderstanding about the sources of some of his equipment," Balthazar explained. "I may have accidentally given the impression that I thought he was swiping our technology to reverse-engineer."
Dido took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose, resisting the urge to groan out loud. She doubted there'd been anything accidental or impressionistic about it – it would have been an outright accusation, because Balthazar Windham was a paranoid old bastard. No wonder Huang had been angry, and no wonder he was upset now. He'd been hoping Balthazar intended to apologize face-to-face, and then he'd learned that the man would be sending his daughter instead. Fantastic.
"You actually said that to him?" she asked.
"Not in so many words," said Balthazar. "Do you think I should fly down there and talk to him?"
Dido thought her father should stay exactly where he was, twelve hundred miles away, and keep his mouth shut. "I don't think that's necessary," she said. "I can handle this."
"Okay, good," he replied, sounding relieved. "Well, just email me those documents you mentioned – and if you do get another chance to talk to Stark's man, take it! At least find out what it is he actually does."
"I'll do my..." Dido stopped and looked up as a pair of familiar figures entered the hotel lobby through the revolving door, accompanied by a third man: a very tall and astonishingly muscular fellow in a brown leather jacket. "You know what? They just walked in. I'll call you back." She pressed the 'end call' button and stood up.
An hour or so after lunch – hot dogs and French fries, purchased from a cart on the boardwalk – a group of children approached Jarvis and asked him whether he would allow them to bury him in the sand. He wasn't sure whether this request were serious or not, but chose to err on the side of caution and said he would rather they not. They left, disappointed, but soon found a more willing victim: this man lay down on the beach while the children piled sand on top of him and even built a small sand castle on his chest. When this was finished, the man suddenly sat up and growled like an animal, destroying the children's handiwork. They didn't seem offended, though. Instead they giggled and shrieked and cried out, "earthquake! Earthquake!"
Their laughter was oddly infectious. Jarvis found himself smiling broadly as he watched them. He was a little uncomfortable with the realization that this body could do things without his being consciously aware of them: facial expressions were particularly worrisome, because those actually communicated information to others, and he seemed to have no control over them. A lot of the processing, too, took place on a level he could not access. Recognizing Miss Potts' voice on the phone, for example: Jarvis normally identified voices by comparing them to a library of recordings. He had enough processing power that he could do this almost instantaneously, but he'd been startled to find that a human brain was not only faster, but could somehow perform the task without being told to. Jarvis would have preferred to keep track of what his brain was doing.
Shortly after making this observation, Jarvis began to notice that he felt uncomfortably warm. When he touched the skin of his arm, it was hot under his fingers. He didn't remember it feeling like that earlier... perhaps being out in the sunshine had raised his internal temperature? If so, he should probably move to a cooler place. Humans functioned best at thirty-seven degrees centigrade. It only took a small increase to cause serious medical problems.
He found a place to sit in the shade of a tent. That helped him feel cooler overall, as did the purchase of a bottle of cold water to drink, but neither did much for the skin on his arms. Even more worrying, his neck and shins were displaying the same flushing and warmth. Jarvis felt like he should know what these symptoms represented, but somehow he could not come up with the name for it. The information seemed to be hovering on the edge of his awareness, frustratingly just out of reach.
In fact, he was concentrating so hard on trying to retrieve that elusive piece of data that outside stimuli seemed to fade away, and he didn't even notice that Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark had returned until the latter threw a towel at him.
"Jarvis!" he said. "Stop daydreaming! We're heading back!"
"My apologies, Sir," said Jarvis. He stood up – and immediately regretted doing so. Over the course of his afternoon sitting in the shade, his posture had worsened until he was nearly lying down, and when he got to his feet he was nearly overwhelmed by dizziness and sudden headache. He managed not to fall over again, but it was a near thing.
"You okay, there?" asked Mr. Stark, grabbing his arm to steady him.
"I think so," Jarvis said. "I believe it's merely postural hypotension." That was the technical name for the symptoms produced when blood rushed suddenly out of the brain – why could he remember that, but not what was causing his skin to feel warm?
Mr. Stark nodded. "Let's go – I gotta shower and get dressed before I pick up Pepper."
Climbing into the Land Rover was still a somewhat awkward process for Jarvis, although he was getting better at sitting down without feeling as if he were falling over. Once settled with his seatbelt on, he brushed the sand off his feet and tried to put his shoes and socks back on – but quickly changed his mind. For some reason, having cloth against the warm areas wasn't just uncomfortable, it was almost painful. He set the footwear on the seat beside him and left it there.
When they arrived back at the hotel, Captain Rogers announced that he would like some help with something, and asked whether there were a computer he could use. The hotel in fact had a row of Macbooks in the lobby for its patrons: while Mr. Stark and Jarvis looked over his shoulders, Captain Rogers sat down in front of one and cracked his thumbs.
"Okay," he said. "Everybody's telling me to try this Tube, so let's give it a shot."
"Which Tube?" Mr. Stark asked immediately. "The internet is a whole series of tubes."
"What?" asked Captain Rogers.
Jarvis decided to offer instructions himself. "Click on the 'Safari' icon," he said, pointing to it. "There will most likely be a bookmark for YouTube – there it is. Click that."
Captain Rogers obeyed the instructions, and the website popped up. "Okay, I know this. The search bar is here. What should I search for?" he wanted to know. "All these websites have different standards."
"With YouTube, try anything relevant to what you want to find," Jarvis said. "Perhaps Captain America WWII Animation."
Captain Rogers nodded and started to enter the terms – and it became immediately obvious that he had never taken a typing class. In his era, typing had been very much women's work, and he hunted and pecked at an agonizingly slow pace. Mr. Stark winced and turned his head, unable to watch, and Jarvis had to fold his arms across his chest to keep himself from reaching around Captain Rogers and entering the keywords for him.
Captain Rogers pressed the 'enter' key, and then frowned at the list of results. "It's asking me if I meant Captain America's Weekend in Amsterdam..." he began, his cursor hovering over the link.
Mr. Stark reacted so quickly that Jarvis almost missed it: before Captain Rogers had even finished saying the word Amsterdam, Mr. Stark had slammed the Macbook shut and then, just for good measure, yanked the power cord out of the wall. Captain Rogers stared at him, confused.
"You don't want to watch that one," said Mr. Stark.
Captain Rogers clearly didn't understand why not. "I brought home prisoners of war to Amsterdam," he said. "They named a tulip after me."
"Trust me," said Mr. Stark. "That's not what the video's about."
Jarvis offered a clarification. "It most likely features an actor playing you in a series of sexual situations with Dutch prostitutes."
"Don't tell him that!" Mr. Stark protested.
"You know, believe it or not, Tony, I do know what pornography is," said Captain Rogers.
"You asked if Pepper and I 'fondue'," Tony reminded him, unconvinced.
"The 'fondue' thing was a joke between your father and me," Steve said. "You obviously knew what I meant by it!"
Mr. Stark rolled his eyes, then seemed to notice something behind them. Whatever it was, his expression changed markedly and he quickly leaned forward, pretending to be very interested in something on the counter in front of them. "Guys," he said, "whatever you do, don't turn around."
Jarvis meant to obey, but he couldn't help taking a quick glance – and when he did, he saw Miss Windham walking towards them. She began to smile, but then her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in horror.
"Oh, my god!" she burst out. "You're glowing!"
"I'm sorry, Miss Windham?" asked Jarvis.
"You turned around!" muttered Mr. Stark. "Why did you turn around?"
"Look at you!" Miss Windham pulled up one sleeve and held her arm next to Jarvis', and he suddenly realized that his complexion had changed dramatically. The skin in the warm areas had turned an unnatural brilliant pink. "What were you doing today?" Miss Windham demanded.
"I was at Surfrider Beach with Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers," he said.
"And you weren't wearing sunscreen?" Miss Windham was aghast.
"Oh!" Mr. Stark took off his sunglasses and looked Jarvis over as if he'd only just noticed he was there. "I didn't even think of that. That's actually a hell of a sunburn you've got there."
Sunburn. That was the word Jarvis had been unable to think of. He was relieved it wasn't something serious.
Miss Windham looked exasperated. "That is going to peel like a banana," she said. "I've got some aloe cream in my room. I'll go get it, and you wait right there." She poked Jarvis in the chest. "I'll be right back."
Mr. Stark waited until she got in the elevator and the doors closed behind her. Then he took Captain Rogers and Jarvis each by the arm. "We are not staying here," he said.
"Ow!" exclaimed Jarvis, as Mr. Stark's palm touched his sunburn.
"Sorry." Mr. Stark grabbed him by the sleeve instead. "I'll find something for that, but we're going back upstairs. Now!"
Watching Dido run off, Tony had come to a decision: if he were going to take charge of his life for real this time, the first thing he needed was a plan.
Tony was good with plans as long as they were the type of plans that told a person how to build something. Plans that involved real life, on the other hand, were Pepper's thing: she lived and breathed by agendas, schedules, and itemized to-do lists. Tony had never been that kind of organized. His version of a plan was rarely more complicated than "go to party and stay until carried out" or "locate Colombian guerrillas and wreck their stuff". That was enough to start with, and he could fill in the details as he went.
Right now, however, he was starting to realize that the spontaneous approach just wasn't working here. It was time to sit down and plan. He needed a plan for finding Dr. Strange. He needed a plan for convincing Pepper that he loved her and he wasn't an idiot. He needed a better plan for dealing with Jarvis' current condition than sitting around in this hotel until he could figure out a 'find Dr. Strange' plan. And while he was at it, he needed a plan to avoid Dido Windham, because she just kept popping up and it was really awkward.
That last one, at least, he thought he could handle. After all, he knew what it was she wanted: Dido was obviously trying to make Tony jealous. Why else would she be taking such trouble to pay conspicuous attention to somebody else in front of him? Luckily she didn't know what Jarvis really was, and therefore had no idea that she was wasting her time. Jarvis would never be either intimidated or seduced into telling her any important secrets – and Tony had absolutely no reason to be jealous of him whatsoever. So assuming that Dido wanted jealousy, the way to get rid of her would be to demonstrate that it wasn't working, that Tony was more than happy without her and his pride was not at all rankled by an ex-girlfriend ignoring him.
That, at least, was something he knew how to do. He dragged the others up to the hotel room and called room service to send up something to put on a sunburn. Then he made another call.
"Hello?" asked Pepper's voice.
"Hi, Pepper," said Tony. "Uh, listen, I'm having some trouble finding a car..."
"You've got six of them at the house," she pointed out.
That was true – the cars were among the few things that hadn't run off JARVIS. Tony thought fast; he certainly couldn't just say he wanted to show her off to an ex. "That," he added, "and my shoulder's acting up again." Even though Pepper couldn't see him, he gave his arm a theatrical shake – then winced as it twinged. The joint had, in fact, been getting stiff towards the end of the afternoon and while it had been a bit melodramatic to insist on having a doctor yesterday, he probably also shouldn't have gone surfing so soon after nearly having his arm twisted off by the security guard. "Instead of me picking you up at the building," he said, "can you come pick me up at the hotel?"
"I suppose I could do that," said Pepper. He could tell by her voice that she was humouring him – she probably thought he had a surprise for her. He'd have to think of one... one that didn't involve strawberries. "What should I wear?" she wanted to know.
"Nothing fancy," he said, remembering the advice he'd been given earlier. "We've done enough fine dining. Tonight I have something else in mind."
"We can't stay out too late," she reminded him playfully. "We've both got work in the morning, remember?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Tony promised. "See you soon."
After ending the call, Tony took a quick shower, then threw on one of the hotel's robes and left the bathroom to find that concierge had sent up the burn cream: Jarvis was sitting shirtless and morose on an ottoman, gritting his teeth while Steve rubbed hydrocortisone into the back of his neck.
"You've got another spot down here where your shirt rode up," Steve observed, squatting down to do Jarvis' lower back.
"Thank you once again, Captain Rogers," sighed Jarvis. He looked up and caught Tony's eye – Tony quickly turned away and went to get dressed.
Tony did feel honestly bad about the sunburn. Those weren't any fun, and it could have been so easily avoided. As he'd said, it had simply never occurred to Tony, even when he and Steve were busy smearing down with the stuff, to go offer the bottle of sunblock to Jarvis. Jarvis was a computer: computers didn't need to worry about sunburns. Computers didn't worry about anything, although JARVIS had been programmed with a certain amount of concern for Tony's safety.
He was going to have to pay more attention. Jarvis might not really be human, but he had human needs for the moment, and Tony would have to remember that.
Once he'd dressed, Tony poked his head back into the suite's sitting room and asked, "Jarvis? How you doing, buddy?"
"Absolutely terrible, Sir," said Jarvis, who was now putting cream on his own shins and the tops of his feet, while Steve sat nearby looking sympathetic.
"It'll take a few days to clear up," Steve offered. "Just don't scratch it, especially when it starts to peel. Let it come off on its own."
Jarvis nodded and grimaced, although whether at his current pain or in disgust at the thought of his skin peeling was impossible to say. If Tony's much-neglected conscience could have physically poked him with a sharp stick, it would have.
"I gotta go meet Pepper," he said. "You guys can order out, or... no, wait," he said. "Jarvis – put a shirt on and come downstairs with me."
Jarvis made another face. "May I ask why?"
"To prove to Dido that I can find my own damn burn cream," said Tony.
Jarvis sighed, but heaved himself to his feet. Steve handed him his shirt.
Then Tony remembered something else. "Oh," he said, "also, Pepper seems to think I have a surprise waiting for her here. You guys got any ideas? Preferably something hard to transport."
Steve and Jarvis exchanged a glance that seemed to involve some telepathic communication. Probably something on the order of we have mutually had enough of Tony.
"I suggest a pony, Sir," said Jarvis, with a perfectly straight face.
Tony scowled. "I'm not buying her a pony."
"Girls like ponies," said Steve.
"I believe Miss Potts once said that when she was a child, she wrote to Santa Claus for three consecutive years to request a pony, and never received one," said Jarvis.
"No ponies!" Tony held up his hands. "Fine. I'll think of something myself!"