Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Wi-Fi radio and Indian sovereignty make for a potent mix -- even without antsy venture capitalists mucking things up.
Jan 16, 2003 | The tiny multinational lumbered across the Niagara Falls border in its tour bus, Lee-Daniel at the wheel, sipping iced mocha from the flexible straw threaded through the eyelets on his jacket. All the way since the Akwesahsne debacle, he'd been steadily consuming the lethal blend of bittersweet chocolate and espresso and reciting mnemonic sleep-dep chants. But after twenty straight hours he was in deadly danger of falling straight to sleep and head-onning the bus into a Jersey barrier. Or a bullet train. Or a minivan.
On U.S. soil, he pulled the bus over at a temporary roadhouse and set the handbrake. He eased off the driver's perch, chafing his narrow ass to get the blood flowing, and gave forth a drawn-out "gaaaah" as pins and needles stabbed his sweat-marinated muscles. He heard the multinational rousing itself behind him. First, the major investors in the front row. Then the rest of the board of directors in the row behind them. Then four rows of middle managers and finally the great mass of frontline workers, techs, customer service reps, troubleshooters, antennamen, switchwomen, chicken pluckers and left-handed bottle stretchers.
Lee-Daniel flipped the windows to transparent and let the sun shine in, provoking groans from the corporation. MacDiarmid, the angel investor who'd been in since the multinational had been able to fit in a sedan, threw a strong arm around Lee-Daniel's shoulders. "You OK?" he said. The tone had phony solicitousness. MacDiarmid had been a stand-up guy through half a dozen disasters, from hostile takeover attempts to roadblocks to high-speed engine failure, and Lee-Daniel knew a fake when he heard it.
"I'm fixing to lay down and die," Lee-Daniel said, stretching theatrically, his pipe-cleaner arms straining.
"I'm street-legal in New York," Mac said. "How about I drive the bus for the next couple shifts?" His black hair was showing grey now, but his eyebrows were still fierce and black, his eyes still sharp in their nest of whiskey-cured crow's-feet.
"No!" Lee-Daniel said. He never ceded the wheel -- it was his damned company and he'd drive the damned bus. Lee-Daniel saw the shareholder confidence eroding before his eyes.
"Just for a while, OK? Not permanent, just for a day or two, just long enough for you to get over the sleep deficit and regrow some stomach lining."
It was hard being the CEO of a mobile multinational. The shareholder oversight was murder. "Come on, Mac," he said. "I can drive the bus. One thing I can always do, I can drive the fucking bus."
MacDiarmid looked closely at him, then smiled and gave him a burly man-hug that smelled of sandalwood soap and good liquor. "Yeah, of course, of course."
"Thanks, Mac," Lee-Daniel said. "How about we get some eats?" He put his hand on the geometry reader beside the wheel, re-authenticated to the bus, then hit the hatches. Doors hissed open at the back, at the front, at the middle, fresh dusty air rushing in all at once in an ear-popping whoosh. The bus knelt ponderously and the company piled out.
MacDiarmid hustled away to join the rest of the investors, his exquisite handmade leather shoes slapping the paving, the cuffs of his wool tailor-made slacks shushing over their gleaming uppers, and as Lee-Daniel locked the bus down and armed it up, he watched the angel investor whisper in his co-shareholders' ears. Lee-Daniel couldn't hear the words, but six years at the wheel of Cognitive Radio Inc. had schooled him well in the body language of investors and he knew his days with CogRad were numbered.
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