"We can direct the ozone opening across an entire ocean for a controlled period," said Bolt. "Gentlemen, we have put a window into the ozone and we control the sash cords. What we can deliver is no less than the most powerful force in our universe."
Bolt stood up when he said this. He paused. There were smiles on the faces of the board of directors. Reemer Bolt had dreamed of a day like this. And now it was happening. Men with the money giving him approval. Actually, if he had told them that everything was still not a disaster, they would have been pleased. But this had replaced their fear with greed. He smiled back.
There was applause. Light at first, then hearty. Reemer Bolt knew how to work an audience.
"And we have the patent." More applause.
"And we submitted this patent in such a way that no one will know exactly what we have until we make our announcement."
More applause.
"Gentlemen. You have gambled and you have won." Applause.
"You have bet on tomorrow, and that was yesterday. You own today. The sunlight and all."
There were a few technical questions which Bolt delayed answering "until Dr. O'Donnell returns."
"This is CC of M's most important project," said one of the directors. "This is the whole story now, so to speak. Why isn't Dr. O'Donnell here?"
"She has phoned and told us she is taking what I believe is a well-deserved rest."
More applause. Even for this. Reemer Bolt owned these men. The phone call was not so much a request for a vacation as a hurried message from a phone booth, saying she would get back to him soon and not to do anything without her. And then: "He's coming back now. I have to hang up."
"Him? Who's him? A he?"
"Not like you, darling," Kathy had said, blowing a kiss through the phone and hanging up. So his orders had been to do nothing. But he knew what that was about. She wanted to take the big share of the credit for the device's success. If there was one thing Reemer Bolt prided himself on, it was his knowledge of women. After all, he had been married many times.
So he told the board that Dr. O'Donnell had done well within her limited area, and that her presence was not necessary for pushing on the success of CC of M's sun access device.
"I don't know if I like the name 'sun access,' " said one of the directors. "Everybody has access to the sun. We've got to sell something exclusive."
"Good point, sir. 'Sun access' is just a working name," said Bolt.
"I think 'Mildred' might not be a bad working name," said the director. He was a stuffy sort, quite erect, who smoked long cigarettes neatly and then tortured the cinder into submission.
"Why 'Mildred'?" asked another director.
"My mother's name," he said.
"Perhaps something more sellable," said the other director.
"Just a working name. I like it."
"Why don't we let Mr. Bolt continue? He's brought us this far."
More applause. Reemer Bolt had dreamed of a day like this.
"Where to now, Reemer?" said the chairman of the board. He did not smoke. He did not drink the water set in front of him, and his applause was the weakest. He had a face with all the human warmth of cold cooking fat. "Toward making you all the richest men in the world." Applause.
"Good. What's your direction?"
"Multifaced, yet with a strong directional thrust, only when we devise the maximum benefit avenue for us to drive down. In other words, we have so many damned streets to take, we want to make sure we have the best one."
"Sounds good, Mr. Bolt. Which streets are you considdering?"
"I don't want to lock us in right now. I think the worst thing we can do is go running off in a direction just to run. I don't want to look back at these days and think we had the power of the unfiltered sun in our hands and then we let it get away because we didn't think."
"I am not asking you not to think. What direction?"
"Well, let's look at what we have. We have controlled access to unfiltered sun, the power rays, so to speak. They are ours. And they are ours safely. You know that in any experiment like this there was a danger we could rip the ozone shield and turn the earth into a cinder. Then none of our ideas would have been any good." Bolt looked everyone in the face and paused. There was no applause. "So," said Bolt. "We now move into the applications phase with a fantastic advantage."
"Yes?" said the chairman of the board. "What are we going to do with this thing to get our fifty million dollars back and make money? Who are we going to sell this to? What are we going to use it for? I have read your secret reports, and so far all we can do is ruin lawns and kill animals painfully. You think there is a market for that?"
"Of course not. Those were just experiments to define what we have."
"We know what we have. What are we going to use it for?"
The chairman of the board had hit the last little bug. "I don't want to rush this. I want Marketing to come up with a good range and a direction I can stand behind," said Bolt.
"Bolt, that fifty million dollars costs us one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars a week in interest. Please don't take your time in coming up with an application we can sell."
"Right," said Reemer Bolt. And he got out of that boardroom as quickly as he could because he didn't want anyone asking him about ideas for commercial use.
The problem with something that cost fifty million dollars to develop was that you couldn't use it for something small. You had to have something big. Big. Big.
That was what Reemer Bolt was yelling at his staff the following morning.
"Big industry. Big ideas. Big. Big."
"What about as a weapon? It would make a great weapon. And fifty million dollars would be pennies for something that might end all life on earth if used improperly. "
"Not fast enough. The money's there, but the government takes forever. A weapon is the last resort. There has got to be something we can do with this thing. Something big: Big industry. It's got to revolutionize something."
Then a lower-level employee had a magnificent idea. It didn't have to do with animals. And it didn't have to do with lawns. But it did have to do with a baking effect.
None of them knew as they were congratulating themselves that even to a lower-level Russian general, the experiment they were planning could only be a prelude to ground action all across the European front.
Even if Bolt had known, he might not have dwelt on that. Here was an idea that would not only get CC of M out of the hole, but possibly revolutionize a major industry. And even better yet, a lower-level employee had thought it up. He would have no troubie taking full credit for it.
"Are you sure this is the right jungle?" said Remo.
"Sure," said Kathy. She was still suffering from jet lag and the atrocious landing at Chitibango airport in San Gauta. The runway was built for smuggling out cocaine and bringing in tourists who liked to discover new vacation spots unspoiled by other tourists. San Gauta was always being discovered for the first time. It was the sort of place that photographed magnificently.
What did not appear in the photographs were the bugs and the room service. In all Gauta there were only four people who could tell time. And they were all in the Cabinet. The rest of the people thought that the only time one had to respect in this little tropical paradise was bedtime and dinnertime. Bedtime was determined by the sun and dinnertime by one's stomach.
Only crazy foreigners and the Maximum Leader for Life had to tell time. The Maximum Leader needed the time device to know when to meet airplanes, start parades, and most of all to declare when time was running out.