wrapped their brains around that concept. He glared at the phone, got up from the desk again, and went up the stairs to the gallery level of his office, where he began to pace. Phil’s office had been built to accommodate that pacing; it was how he did his best thinking, and his desk stood a few feet below the gallery walkway, which wrapped around inside the corner of the building as the rest of the office did. Here he could keep an eye on the desk, and any visitors—not that many people had entrée here—while also being able to gaze out at the river. Here Phil could wander up and down, thinking on his feet, dictating to the office note management system or to his assistants, while at the same time keeping a weather eye on the view southward toward the Battery, and the wrinkled flow of water where the Hudson poured out into New York Bay. “The widow’s walk,” some of his assistants called it, joking, though never to his face. When did they stop telling jokes around me? Phil thought briefly. Then he shrugged the idea away. Not a problem, not for here and now, anyway. There were too many things to think about today.
He paused in the walk, glaring down at the phone again. It still hadn’t rung. It’s almost end of business here, he thought; they know they were supposed to be in touch with me by now. How am I supposed to make my final assessments on this move if they don’t— Then Phil shook his head, went back to walking. There was no point in getting all type-A about it. The whole purpose of this business was to make other people sweat . . . one in particular.
The phone rang. “Sorensen,” he said immediately.
“Mr. Sorensen,” Brandy’s voice said from the outer office, “I have Link Raglan on the line.”
“Put him through.”
“Mr. Sorenson,” Link’s voice said, “I’ve got those end of day download figures for you.”
“Go,” Phil said.
“Total downloads to five p.m.,” Link said, “four million, three hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and twelve.”
“That’s great,” Phil said. And it really was, though it was strange how flat he found this small triumph in the actual moment of its achievement. Those numbers were nearly half again what he had expected—half again what even the most enthusiastic and optimistic of his trend-trackers had suggested they might achieve this week. Phil smiled again at the thought that Omnitopia was not going to have everything its own way. “So go ahead and issue the statement we prepared. Just make sure you swap in the new numbers.”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“And while you’re at it,” Phil said, “you might want to add a little something to it along the lines of how even our most ambitious competitors couldn’t have predicted such a jump in product interest. How plainly the players are as interested in established, reliable platforms as in new, unproven, blah blah blah . . .”
“Got it,” Link said, and Phil could faintly hear scribbling in the background. “You want to see it before I pass it on?”
Phil thought a moment, shook his head. “No need,” he said. “Just make sure you copy it to me and the usual PR people in e-mail. Meanwhile—” He looked out and down through the wall-wide window at the skyscraper shadows moving slowly out across the river, gnomons of a sundial that he watched every day. Almost five-twenty now, he thought. Over there it’ll be— “Any news today from our normal inside sources?”
There was no question what he meant when he said “inside.” There was only one other inside that mattered to Phil. “Nothing that we weren’t expecting,” Link said. “They’re all scrambling around trying to patch software holes, exactly as we knew they would be.” There was a pause. “Obviously you were right about this. They got a little too ambitious for their own good. Got themselves married to this particular date because of some weird symbolic quality—”
Phil nodded. “It’s the solstice,” he said. “And Dev always was hung up on winter solstice this, spring equinox that, all these artificial, outwardly imposed due dates. It’s a weakness, and it’s strengthened by the fact that we know about it. Never mind.” Phil was still amused that he’d known the new Omnitopia’s most likely rollout date long before any of his people inside had been able to bring in the news, long before any press release had been issued. The man was just