Project Reunion (23 page)

“Could be. This is huge. Thank you isn’t enough,” Cam said. “Now, explain to me – ‘grain land’?”

We went through all the layers on the summary map, one by one, as I explained what parameters led to the conclusions. He really was phenomenal at this analysis. He easily caught the strengths and limitations of my methods, and suggested improvements for next time I tried this.

“Awesome, Dee,” Cam concluded. “I think I got it! Hey, can I ask – how did you come to volunteer for this? You already have a job or three.”

“Oh, it called to me, I guess,” I said. “You’ve got such aching need on Long Island. Just like New York. It bugs me. I need to help. Lots of people do, you know? I mean, it’s one thing to volunteer to move your soft warm body to Long Island and starve. But Cam, lots of people could help you remotely. And they want to. Reza was so psyched to help! Then Emmett complained that one of the things he ought to be doing, but couldn’t find time for, was you. So I suggested I could help you. And Emmett told me unsolicited advice was the last thing you needed.” That part still smarted a little. Because Emmett was right, of course.

I continued, “I mean, Cam, it’s not that I underestimate you. Totally the opposite. Every step of the way, I thought I respected you. And then you blew me away. I’m already impressed as hell. And then you impress me
more.
”

“Wow. Thank you, Dee,” he murmured. “That means a lot, coming from you. I am, also, by the way, impressed as hell. So. Consider yourself solicited.”

“Hm?”

“Well, let’s say you’re offering suggestions. Not advice. That I will take or leave,” he quibbled. “Did you have any other suggestions?”

“Oh, well, this was the most important thing, the inventory,” I said, feeling bashful. “Although. You need a woman on your team, you know. I mean, I don’t disrespect Dwayne – or you! You’re really, um, sensitive to women’s issues. But...”

“We’re not women. I think we know that, Dee.” The grin came through loud and clear in Cam’s voice.

“Sorry.” I’m sure my grin was audible, too. “If you can’t find anybody else, maybe Mary, that washerwoman. She had spirit.”

“Already hired her to do our laundry. She lives in Camp Cameron now.”

“Well, Cam, maybe half your workforce shouldn’t be stuck hand-washing laundry. You know? Maybe when you’re thinking how to use your wind generators and stuff – spare a thought for how much better your clothes would feel if you hooked up a dryer. Maybe you can’t afford three square meals a day. But your quality of life goes way up when your underwear doesn’t chafe.”

He snorted. “OK. Got it. Enlist women on quality of life issues. Anything else?”

“No. Well... Your bandwidth sucks. And I don’t just mean your Internet connection. I mean
you.
You
are too little bandwidth. Mary should be able to get onto the Internet herself. And brainstorm with other women making the best of level 1 lifestyles. And your Cocos when you pick them, and everyone else.”

“If Mary had Internet, we wouldn’t be level 1,” Cam pointed out.

“I bet you could rig a meshnet and funnel it through Tom’s Internet,” I countered. “Your Internet speeds would suck. But at least you’d have long-distance text messages through your area. You could collaborate locally through it.”

There was a long silence.

“What is a ‘meshnet’?” Cam asked intently.

“Um, I’m not an expert,” I warned. “But basically a peer-to-peer network using smart phones? Message packets are forwarded from phone to phone to phone. When they can. The tricky bit is that connectivity is always intermittent. Great way to send text messages. They’ll get there eventually. Lousy way to watch cat videos.” There was a long pause. “Cam? Did I lose you?”

“God, no. This doesn’t require powered cell phone towers?”

“Patching in wi-fi or cell phone towers could give it extra range and speed. Allow messages to cross into the Internet, or across the Sound, for instance. But no, the phones talk to each other directly, short-range. Not through cell towers. You need to charge the phones of course. But if all else fails, you can charge a phone with a cook fire and a thermo-coupler.”

“Yeah. The thermo-coupler dodge is even in the Resco manual,” he agreed. “Dee – have you ever mentioned this ‘meshnet’ idea to Emmett?”

I frowned. “Not the sort of thing that comes up in conversation.”

“Dee, on behalf of the greater Big Apple, I would like to commission a ‘meshnet’. For me, for Emmett, for New York.” His voice took on a silken tone. “How do I go about that?”

I blew out a long breath, thinking. “The Amen1 team might know. Or a telecomm firm. Maybe ask at UConn. Do you have any connections in the engineering department?”

“My mother is an engineering professor at UConn,” he supplied. “Professor Sarah Argyle-Cameron. Goes by her maiden name professionally. Argyle.”

I made a note of it. “OK, sure. I’ll ask around. And call your mom for you – Dr. Argyle.”

“You really don’t know what you’ve just done, do you?” Cam asked wonderingly.

“I haven’t done anything yet. And I won’t, really. I don’t know how to set up a meshnet. I’m just acting as your secretary. Which was my point. Your bandwidth is too low. I’m busy. You’re busy. We’re a bottleneck. Someone else should be dealing with laundry and a meshnet.”

Cam laughed softly. “Absolutely,” he breathed. “Did you have any other suggestions, Dee? Because I’m all ears.”

“No... No,” I said decisively. “Those were the important ones. Although... It would be nice if people updated the Resco manual with stuff they figured out. I mean, I’m sure the authors did a great job. But they couldn’t think of everything.”

“Absolutely. We do that. With this nifty thing you gave us called Amenac,” Cam replied. “Hey, Dee, mind a little unsolicited advice back?”

My face burned a little. But he couldn’t see that. “Sure. Shoot,” I invited.

“You’re nobody’s secretary. Ever. I mean, I’d really like to see you and Emmett work out. Good luck with that. But you’re not Emmett’s secretary, either.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, this. You had important things to say. To me. And I wanted to hear them! You don’t need Emmett’s permission to call me. Ever. Dee... You’re a lot more powerful than you realize.”

Yeah, my face definitely burned. “Well, thank you for saying so.” I sighed. “Though not as powerful as Emmett.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Cam replied. “Anyway – call, email, whenever. I’d love to hear from you. The inventory you sent today is pure gold. And I’m really looking forward to hearing more about this ‘meshnet’.”

“Will do. Call me anytime, too. Hey, Cam? You said ‘good luck with that’, about Emmett. I think you know him pretty well.”

“A bit,” he bit out.

Yes, it was clear that Cam knew Emmett better than he was going to admit. “OK, I’m not going to ask how you know him,” I said. “Because Emmett says he doesn’t want me to know... some things like that. But, ‘good luck with that’? Any pointers, on Emmett?”

Cam was silent, thinking for a few moments. Fortunately he used quick Connecticut moments like me. Not long Ozark moments like Emmett. “Has he talked to you about his divorce?” he finally asked.

“I didn’t know that he was divorced until the Resco summit.”

Cam chuckled. “Figures. You might ask him about it. I won’t tell you what I know. It wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. It’s not the content. It’s the talking between the two of you, that might illuminate something. Tread gently, though. That sort of thing.”

-o-

“I’m so glad we got a chance to eat dinner together,” I told Mangal, a couple nights later. “It seems we hardly have time to talk anymore.” Dinner was already inhaled, my foster-teen Alex come and gone. We were lingering at the table over herb tea.

Mangal was my best friend, partner in cyberspace, and next door neighbor. We saw each other and talked all the time. We’d founded Amenac together. That day, he’d worked over my house all day, and we’d likely keep going until midnight. Emmett had given the green light on his Thanksgiving bash. The Amenac technical details seemed to multiply like rabbits. Mangal and I were the ones to stomp out digressions to the mission.

Still. We rarely got time for that best friend thing anymore. Apparently today was some kind of Jain observance. Mangal was in the doghouse with his wife Shanti for working instead of communing with their local extended Jain-Nepalese-Buddhist-whatever community. Otherwise he would have spent dinner with her and his small children, not me.

Mangal didn’t reply.

“Oh,” I burbled on, “what did you and Shanti decide about another baby?”

“Not to,” he murmured. “Not just now.”

That should have opened a conversation, not shut it down. I launched a couple more conversation openers, dashed just as abruptly.

“We should get back to it,” Mangal said, starting to rise.

“Sit down,” I said, peeved. “Spill it. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking to me?”

“I am talking to you.”

“Mangal, you know what I mean. Why the cold shoulder? What have I done?”

He fidgeted with silverware, preparing to sideswipe the awkward topic. But then gave it up. “Dee... I guess... We were a bit shocked when Emmett moved in. I was...happy for you. When you dated again. But...Emmett isn’t Zack. And living with someone, isn’t just dating.”

“Agreed,” I said, puzzled, just to move him along.

Mangal blew out. “Dee, you know I’m a pacifist. And now you’re partnered to a man whose life is dedicated to violence.”

I stared at him. “Emmett is trying to save a couple million people from the hell-hole of New York,” I countered. “He is willing to kill if needed along the way. But I’d call that dedicated to saving people. Not dedicated to violence.”

Mangal didn’t reply, or meet my eye.

“Mangal, are you saying you’re not my friend anymore?” I asked in disbelief.

“We’ll always be friends. I hope,” Mangal said softly. He still didn’t meet my eye though. “Friendships change.” He sighed. “Our friendship is based on work. Let’s get back to that.” He went back to his own home office to do it, though.

-o-

Later, I called Emmett and asked him how he and Mangal got along. They’d always seemed fine, no different than Mangal and Zack. Emmett’s answers seemed to match my observation.

“Darlin’,” Emmett followed up, “what’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to say it. But Emmett himself, and then Cam, had seemed to encourage me to talk to Emmett remotely, just as if he were home with me. “Mangal says he’s not my best friend anymore.”

“Because you’re with me?” Emmett asked.

“It’s that Jain nonviolent thing,” I agreed reluctantly.

What I expected Emmett to say was, ‘uh-huh.’ What he actually said was, “Well, that sucks, Dee. I had, um... Did Zack ever tell you much about his ex, Grace? The Quaker? Oh, I know he did. You had that blowup the day of her funeral.”

I frowned in consternation. “Zack told you about that?”

That memorable fight had covered a lot of ground. Grace. Quakers. Adam. My decision to visit Ark 7. Betrayal. Amenac. A snow hurricane. I felt like a caroming pool ball just remembering it. I hadn’t considered before that Zack might blow off steam to his best friend Emmett, like anyone else, after a fight.

“Uh-huh,” Emmett replied wryly. “Can’t tell you how much I looked forward to meeting you, after that. Seemed unlikely I’d get the chance. At the time.”

“What did Zack say?”

“Never mind,” Emmett said. “Best friend confidential. My point was Grace. When they were together. She tried to tell Zack that it was her or me. She wanted him to dump me as a best friend.”

“What did you do?” I asked. “What did Zack do?”

“I told Zack I loved him like a brother. And that wouldn’t change,” Emmett said. “Whatever he needed to do. I wanted him to be happy. But. It was something in him, not me. I mean, I wasn’t even here. I was an unknown somebody, on the far end of a phone line. It was Captain Zack, not Major Emmett, that Grace wanted him to swear off. Told him that I liked the Captain and the Zack. I thought he could do better, than Grace.”

I laughed quietly at a memory. “That Zack’s taste in women sucked.”

“Yeah, that too,” Emmett agreed. “Present company excepted. I don’t know, Dee. They’re not really parallel situations. Zack and I had years of history. Grace was new. Here, you and Mangal have the history. But your relationship changed over the years, didn’t it? You don’t hang out with him the same now as you did before Shanti came, or before the babies arrived.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Yeah, that makes sense. It keeps changing.”

“Darlin’, I’m sorry it hurts. There is a fierce streak in you, though, that I love. I hope you never have to kill another human being. But I think you could. And you would, to protect your own.” He chuckled. “Though I’d bet on you to find another way. I love that part even more.”