Makers Part 87

Kettlewell sighed. "What the h.e.l.l am I going to do with you two?"

"I'm sorry," Lester said.

"Don't be sorry. Be happy. Someone should be happy around here."

Herve Guignol chaired the executive committee. Sammy had known him for years. They'd come east together from San Jose, where Guignol had run the entertainment side of eBay. They'd been recruited by Disney Parks at the same time, during the hostile takeover and breakup, and they'd had their share of nights out, golf games, and stupid movies together.

But when Guignol was wearing his chairman's hat, it was like he was a different person. The boardroom was filled with huge, ergonomic chairs, the center of the table lined with bottles of imported water and trays of fanciful canapes in the shapes of Disney characters. Sammy sat to Guignol's left and Hackelberg sat to his right.

Guignol brought the meeting to order and the rest of the committee stopped chatting and checking email and looked expectant. At the touch of a b.u.t.ton, the door swung shut with an authoritative clunk and shutters slid down over the window.

"Welcome, and thank you for attending on such short notice. You know Augustus Hackelberg; he has something to present to you."

Hackelberg climbed to his feet and looked out at them. He didn't look good.

"An issue has arisen --" Sammy loved the third person pa.s.sive voice that dominated corporate meetings. Like the issue had arisen all on its own, spontaneously. "A decision that was taken has come back to bite us." He explained about the DiaBs and the code, laying it out more or less as it happened, though of course he downplayed his involvement in advising Sammy to go ahead and s.h.i.+p.

The committee asked a few intense questions, none directed at Sammy, who kept quiet, though he instinctively wanted to defend his record. They took a break after an hour, and Sammy found himself in a corner with Guignol.

"What do you think?" Sammy asked him.

Guignol grimaced. "I think we're pretty screwed. Someone is going to have to take a fall for this, you know. It's going to cost us a fortune."

Sammy nodded. "Well, unless we just settle with them," he said. "You know -- we drop the suit we just filed and they drop theirs...." He had hoped that this would come out on its own, but it was clear that Hackelberg wasn't going to offer it up himself. He was too in love with the idea of getting his hands on Perry and Lester.

Guignol rocked his head from side to side. "You think they'd go for it?"

Sammy dropped his voice to a whisper and turned away from the rest of the room to confound any lip-readers. "I think they've *offered* to do that."

Guignol cut his eyes over to Hackelberg and Sammy nodded, imperceptibly.

Guignol moved away, leaving Sammy to eat a Mickey head built from chunks of salmon and hamachi. Guignol moved among the committee, talking to a few members. Sammy recognized the behavior -- consolidating power. Hard to remember that this was the guy he'd played savage, high-stakes games of putt-putt golf with.

The meeting reconvened. No one looked at Sammy. They all looked at Hackelberg.

"What about trying to settle the suit?" Guignol said.

Hackelberg flushed. "I don't know if that's possible --"

"What about if we offer to settle in exchange for dropping the suit we've just filed?"

Hackelberg's hands squeezed the side of the table. "I don't think that that would be a wise course of action. This is the opportunity we've been waiting for -- the chance to crack them wide open and see what's going on inside. Discover just what they've taken from us and how. Out them for all their bad acts."

Guignol nodded. "OK, that's true. Now, as I understand it, every DiaB we s.h.i.+pped with this Banks person's code on it is a separate act of infringement. We s.h.i.+pped a million of them. What's the potential liability per unit?"

"Courts usually award --"

Guignol knocked quietly on the table. "What's the *potential liability* -- what's the size of the bill a court *could* hand down, if a jury was involved? If, say, this became part of someone's litigation portfolio."

Hackelberg looked away. "It's up to five hundred thousand per separate act of infringement."

Guignol nodded. "So, we're looking at a ceiling on the liability at -500 billion, then?"

"Technically, yes. But --"

"I propose that we offer a settlement, quid-pro-quo with this Banks person. We drop our suit if he indemnifies us from damages for his."

"Seconded," said someone at the table. Things were picking up steam. Sammy bit the inside of his cheek to keep his smile in check.

"Wait," Hackelberg said. "Gentlemen and lady, please. While it's true that damages can technically run to -500,000 per infringement, that simply isn't done. Not to ent.i.ties like this firm. Listen, we *wrote*

that law so we could sue people who took from *us*. It won't be used against us. We will face, at worst, a few hundred dollars per act of infringement. Still a sizable sum of money, but in the final a.n.a.lysis --"

"Thank you," Guignol said. "All in favor of offering a settlement?"

It was unanimous -- except for Hackelberg.

Sammy got his rematch with Hackelberg when the quarterly financials came out. It was all that black ink, making him giddy.

"I don't want to be disrespectful," he said, knowing that in Hackelberg's books, there could be nothing more disrespectful than challenging him. "But we need to confront some business realities here."

Hackelberg's office was nothing like Sammy had expected -- not a southern gentleman's study lined with hunting trophies and framed ancestral photos. It was as spare as the office of a temp, almost empty save for a highly functional desk, built-in bookcases lined with law-books, and a straight-backed chair. It was ascetic, severe, and it was more intimidating than any dark-wood den could hope to be.

Hackelberg's heavy eyelids drooped a little, the corners of his eyes going down with them. It was like staring down a gator. Sammy resisted the urge to look away.

"The numbers don't lie. DiaB is making us a fortune, and most of it's coming from the platform, not the goop and not the increased visitor numbers. We're making money because other people are figuring out ways to use our stuff. It's our fastest-growing revenue source and if it continues, we're going to end up being a DiaB company with a side-business in theme-parks.

"That's the good news. The bad news is that these characters in the ghost mall have us in their crosshairs. They're prying us open faster than we can lock ourselves down. But here's another way of looking at it: every time they add another feature to the DiaB, they make owning a DiaB more attractive, which makes it easier for us to sell access to the platform to advertisers."

Hackelberg held up his hands. "Samuel, I think I've heard enough. Your job is to figure out new businesses for us to diversify into. My job is to contain our liability and protect our brand and investors. It sounds a lot to me like you're saying that you want me to leave off doing my job so that you can do yours."

Sammy squirmed. "No, that's not it at all. We both want to protect the business. I'm not saying that you need to give these guys a free ride. What I'm saying is, suing these guys is *not* good for our business. It costs us money, goodwill -- it distracts us from doing our jobs."

Hackelberg leaned back and looked coolly into Sammy's eyes. "What are you proposing as an alternative, then?"

The idea had come to Sammy in the shower one morning, as he mentally calculated the size of his coming quarterly bonus. A great idea. Out of the box thinking. The right answer to the question that no one had thought to ask. It had seemed so *perfect* then. Now, though --

"I think we should buy them out."

Hackelberg's thin, mirthless grin made his b.a.l.l.s shrivel up.

Sammy held up his hands. "Here, look at this. I drew up some figures. What they're earning. What we earn from them. Growth estimates over the next five quarters. It's not just some random idea I had in the shower. This makes *sense*." He pa.s.sed over a sheaf of papers, replete with pie-charts.

Hackelberg set it down in the center of his desk, perfectly square to the corners. He flipped through the first five pages, then squared the stack up again.

"You've done a lot of work here, Samuel. I can really see that."