CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Rival
I spent the night at Summer’s last night, partly because we were so dazzled by the impromptu Redwood visit—and concerned by what he told us—that we didn’t think to do otherwise. Sunday morning, though, she gently kicked me out. She had things to do, I had dragons to feed, and there was the unvoiced risk that we might break the fragile peace between us. Besides, all I could think about was Greaves taking the prototype Redwood Codex. And the very existence of a Redwood Codex.
It was too tempting to think about what else Redwood had had in his secret storage warehouse. No, rather than let that distract me, I tried to chess-match out Greaves’s next move. Naturally, he knew everything else necessary to construct a biological printer. He could make his own. Yet he also had a keen business sense. He had to know how our business prospects in the current consumer market looked. So what was his plan? Start a new company so he could fight us for the last scraps of revenue before all the dogs came back? It didn’t make sense.
If Greaves was out for revenge, he could hit us in other ways. He knew the company inside and out. Hell, he knew its founder well enough to track down his secret storage unit, break in, and steal the Codex prototype. I’d been to Redwood’s house in the desert before it burned down. He took security seriously. Not seriously enough, obviously, because Greaves got around it. And took the heart of the God Machine. The priceless, confidential, irreplaceable heart. That’s when it hit me. There was no backup Codex now. Without it, we couldn’t print viable dragon eggs.
Anyone who could break into a secure warehouse could break into a company headquarters. Especially if he used to run the place. He could take, or simply destroy, our Codex and we would have no recourse. As far as most of the world knew, Simon Redwood was dead. No Codex, no dragons, no Build-A-Dragon. And the worst part was, when the company inevitably went bankrupt, Greaves would get to take a goddamn victory lap. Look how quickly it failed without me. See? I wasn’t the problem.
That made a lot more sense. It had the cleverness, the vindictiveness that Greaves had already shown. If he already had the backup, there was no reason to wait, either. Once I had that thought, I could hardly sleep. I woke up at six and forced myself out of bed. It was still dark outside for most of the drive to work. The eastern horizon had only just begun to lighten when I parked and hurried inside. Almost no one came into work this early; the place looked deserted. No one challenged me at reception. No hatchers prowled the still-dim hatchery. I rushed through into the design lab. The biological printer looked unmolested, but it also wasn’t moving. I squeezed into my cubicle and leaned as far as I could into the metal-arm framework.
And there it was: the Redwood Codex. Still in place, with its old-school LED lights blinking their cheerful enigmatic rhythm. My arms shook with relief so much that I almost fell on the desk.
I thought I’d beat Evelyn to her office, but I was mistaken. She perched on her chair in the expansive suite surrounded by a flotilla of projection monitors. First thing in the morning, too. I could tell from the hunch in her shoulders that something had her stressed.
“Nihao, Lao-bahn,” I said. Good morning, boss.
She looked up and smiled. “There is my Director of Dragon Design.”
I had to admit, the title had a certain ring to it. I paused a moment to savor it before I ruined the good mood.
“How are you?”
“Too busy for a Monday.” Her brow furrowed in my direction. “Are you all right?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Come in.” She gestured to the chair, and activated the hermetic seal behind me when I entered.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Your old office has one of those, doesn’t it?”
“The control is on your desk.” She beckoned me over so I could see it. “This activates it, and this turns it off.”
My own privacy door seal. “Thanks, I’ll try it.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“I have important news, but it comes with conditions,” I said. How do I put this? “What I know comes from a very reliable source, but I can’t tell you more about the source, or why I have the source.”
“Ooh, this is getting interesting.” With a gesture, she minimized all of the projection monitors between us. Now I had her full attention.
I took a deep breath. “Simon Redwood built a prototype of his Codex.”
Evelyn’s face went stony all of a sudden. She’d met Redwood in person; she’d admitted that much a long time ago. I assumed it was in the company’s early days before I joined. She was cagey whenever I asked about him. Now, as she said nothing and waited for me to elaborate, I wondered why she didn’t seem more surprised. “You already knew, didn’t you?”
She put her hands flat on the desk and exhaled. “I suspected there might be one. Redwood often built prototypes of his inventions.”
“Well, bad news. It was stolen,” I said.
“When?”
Well, crap. I hadn’t thought to ask, and Redwood’s sense of urgency remained hard to interpret. “I’m not completely sure, but it was recent. Three or four days ago.”
“Do you know who took it?”
“Not for sure, but I have a theory it’s the person who used to sit in that chair.” I pointed at her executive chair, which also looked to be Nappa leather.
She nodded, but if this information surprised her, it didn’t show. God, I wished I had her ability to control her expressions. Noah Parker wore his heart on his sleeve and everyone knew it.
Then she must have had another thought, and a look of fear flashed across her face. She started to get out of her chair. “Do you think—”
I held up a placating hand. “I already checked. Our Codex is fine.”
She sat down and took a breath, settling herself. “I have a feeling this may be related to my news.”
“Okay.” I braced myself against the sinking feeling that started, of its own volition, down in my gut.
“This morning I got a message from Major Nakamura. There will be changes to the statement of work.”
“What kind of changes?”
“They are opening up the request to anyone. It’s now a competitive bid process.”
Competitive as in we have a competitor. Now the pieces clicked into place and I didn’t like what I saw. “We’re no longer the sole supplier of dragon technology.”
“That is what she said.”
“This is bull—” I caught myself, remembering whose office I was in. “Crap. Someone else can’t just steal our tech and try to get the contract. Can they?”
“Is the theft going to be reported to the police?”
I wanted to answer hell yes, but now that I considered it, there was no way Redwood would want any of this official. His purpose in turning up to tell me was becoming more and more clear. “Probably not. What about patent protection?”
She shook her head. “There is no patent for the Redwood Codex.”
“Because there’s only supposed to be the one.”
“And a patent requires disclosure of the invention, which would be like giving away the . . . the . . .”
“The secret sauce recipe?”
That made her laugh in spite of the circumstances. “Yes, Noah Parker. Secret sauce.”
“What about the other parts of the egg-printing process?”
“The lawyers are already looking into it.”
“That sounds . . . slow.”
“It’s the best we can do for now.”
“So we’re stuck with the competitive bidding?”
“It’s the DOD’s call at the moment, and they like competition,” she said.
I groaned. “This sucks. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“I was so sure that Greaves wanted to destroy the company by taking out our dragon-printing capability.”
“He might achieve the same goal if he wins out on this contract,” Evelyn said.
I was tempted to say there was no way he’d win the contract or even be serious competition. But I’d underestimated Robert Greaves a couple of times, and it always came back to bite me. “Well, that’s not going to happen. He might have changed the process, but he can’t beat us on a level playing field.”
“He may have resources we don’t know about yet,” Evelyn said. “Private backing, even.”
“So what? We have the home field advantage. The design experience.”
She smiled. “Yes, we do.” A look of uncertainty flickered across her face, but was gone just as quickly. She said nothing more.
“I’ll get to work, then.” I made to leave.
“Oh, one more thing,” she said. “Guess who called me this weekend?”
I looked back at her, puzzled by the question. My first thought was Robert Greaves calling to taunt her, but judging by her little smile, it was a good kind of call. Something that made her happy. And the fact that she wants to tell me means I should know. So it would make me happy, too. Well, I had one educated guess. “Priti Korrapati.”
“Ah!” She slapped her desk and jabbed a finger at me in mock accusation. “So this was your doing!”
I shrugged. “You said get a designer, so I got the best one I know.”
“But how did you do it?” Her amusement faltered. “I didn’t have the heart to tell you, but—”
“She gave notice, I know.”
“I am sorry I wasn’t up front about that.”
“It caught me off guard a little, but I understand.” I’d been plenty offended about O’Connell and the Frogman. Evelyn knew me well enough to guess what losing Korrapati might have done to my self-confidence. “Probably for the best, actually.”
“How did you change her mind?”
I winked at her. “I can be very persuasive.”
“Maybe Noah Parker is our other secret sauce.”
“Ha! I don’t think that’s true. Is she coming back?”
“Assuming I can meet her many conditions, yes.”
So Korrapati did ask for a raise. Good for her. “Please do, because we need her. How soon can she start back?”
“Tomorrow.”
I pumped a fist. “Yes.”
“I already sent her the DOD specs.”
“Outstanding.”
Greaves thought making this a competition would cause problems for us. Turned out, he didn’t know me so well after all.