Chapter 6

OK, so I had revisited my view of Maggie, had begun to take more of an interest in her ... in her, indeed. And the sudden re-emergence of my long time collaborator and fulltime pain in the nuts, Tim, did throw me a bit. But, then, so did the phone call.

This time, it was Simon. Simon, interestingly, I felt, even as I was listening to his... contribution ... alternating between emollient and threatening — offering me the Earth and threatening damnation by turns. It was curious. I mean, I was sitting on Maggie's couch, listening to the wanker and watching her shove analgesics down his — Tim's — throat, providing glasses of fruit juice, that sort of thing.

And, when that got a bit nauseating, actually concentrating on what The Man was saying. Which focus achieved, was ... not a lot. Well, apparently we had a deal which would make us all rich. Alternatively, we had A Contract — you could hear the capitals — which gave him, at a minimum, a majority share in our immortal souls, and which he intended to enforce to the max. It was all, I concluded, almost distractedly, mostly grade A bullshit.

When his rant down, momentarily, I told him so. Pointed out that we'd signed nothing, contract wise, that I'd prefer not to get rich if it involved working with his sort of methods — or just with people like him. Which was good, and I was glad I'd said it and vaguely hoped that it would get back to Steve and the rest of the 'community'.

Simon just laughed, asked if I knew the status of a verbal contract in English law ... and rang off.

Call ended, I had an uncomfortable gooseberry moment while Maggie and Tim continued their spooning or grooming or whatever the fuck you'd call it and I had nothing to distract me. Well, aside from an as yet untouched glass of Bushmills, to which I applied myself with gusto.

Surprisingly, it was Tim who first realised that I was still there or, perhaps, that I was no longer talking on the phone. Coming up for air, he asked what was up, seemingly picking up on my thunderous expression. Well, lots of things, I thought, but decided to concentrate on the work side for the moment.

"That was Simon," I said, after a while, "and not a happy Simon, either. Seems to think he has some sort of hold on us, seems, in fact, to think that we owe him."

Which, of course, went straight over Tim's head — he'd been pickling himself while things had been developing, after all — but it certainly got Maggie's attention. And, after I'd given her the gist of Simon's call, she asked, reasonably enough,

"Can he do that? I mean we got a DVD out of him, and promises of vast amounts of new capital, but we haven't actually seen any money have we? And we do have actual written contracts with our other backers, don't we? So what's he actually capable of doing?"

Well, I thought, that was the question. Mag had, as ever, made a good point — whatever assets we had, our existing funders surely had a better claim to, if push came to shove. Not that that was a particularly happy thought...

I decided that talking to lawyers — hardly my favourite occupation — had to be priority number one and said so, even as I was gathering my stuff together and making ready to depart.

"Shit, man," Tim chipped in, "shit ... I ... oh, hell, look after yourself mate. Whatever the fuck is going on ... just look after yourself."

Which was about as profound a comment — and as near to an apology — as I was going to get, so I left it at that. Except for arranging to meet both of them in the office the next morning, 9am sharp.

Being part of a small tech start up does not, unfortunately, give one priority access to one's lawyers — they tend to want to be sure that they'll be paid, for one thing — so by the next morning I was no clearer about our legal position. Nonetheless, we sat around for about an hour, taking most of the time to bring Tim up to speed, with a little while at the end spent inconclusively meandering around the issues in a fairly dispirited way.

The bottom line was that we had very little concrete information, little to base decisions on. What we had was a rapidly growing collective paranoia, a DVD — I was quite tempted to play the damn' thing, just for the hell of it — and ... well, we had Steve's implausible idea, didn't we?

It was, I felt, time to phone Steve. Gratifyingly, he answered pretty much straight away and seemed almost pleased to be talking to me. And talking tech again, reviewing the field and doing what amounted to an option analysis — that was quite reassuringly comfortable. And maybe it was just the comfort and familiarity of our conversation — and my need to feel OK about something — but at that point it all sounded almost realistic. Something like a core group appeared to have emerged within the 'community' and something approaching organisation was developing. OK, so the mooted consolidation and its inherent mass self-sacrifice was still some way off, but ... Well, at that point, it didn't sound entirely ridiculous.

And so, after I'd finished with Steve, and after spending a couple of hours helping Tim clear up the workshop — and listen to his latest ideas as to how things could be yet further improved, engineering wise — I was in a vaguely optimistic mood when I set off for my half hour 'slot' with the solicitors.

Back in the office, barely an hour later, I had to admit that I wasn't a lot clearer about anything much. As far as I could interpret the lawyer speak, Simon was correct vis a vis the verbal contract stuff, but whether he could capitalise on that depended on a whole load of factors ... all of which involved lawyers, lawyers' bills and probably many other things we simply couldn't afford. And all we were trying to do was provide sustainable energy ... on a cost effective basis.

Ah, well ... whoever said life was fair?

Tim and Maggie were ... well, Tim and Maggie. Specifically, he was down in the workshop, cutting an alloy rod on a lathe, distinctly complicated designs and calculations showing on the various CAD monitors, she was in the office ... dealing with stuff. As soon as I walked into the room she handed me a printout and even I was scanning the first couple of sheets — spreadsheet, by the look of it, not one of ours from the formatting — also gave me a cup of coffee. Which I took, looking at her for some sort of explanation. She smiled, patted me on the shoulder and suggested that I should stop scanning and actually read the thing.

So I did. I admit, it took time to get my head into gear but I began to realise that this was good stuff: It was the activity breakdown that Steve (or his 'core group') had put together, a pretty comprehensive overview or the strengths, weaknesses, synergies and unique factors of all our various tide and wave power projects ... and it looked like there were enough overlaps and general 'fits' to make some sort of consolidation possible after all. Oh, and it was gratifying to see Tim listed as something like 'most valuable engineer' (Steve had been to school in the States and sometimes it showed) while both Maggie and I appeared to have high approval ratings amongst our peers — and not hard to imagine why, my cynical side put in, at least in Maggie's case...