Disclosure: A Novel by Michael Crichton Page A

to answer her, what tone to take. He poured the wine.

    "Yes," she said. "We had a good time. I think about it often."

    Sanders thought: I never do.

    She said, "What about you, Tom? Do you think about it?"

    "Of course." He crossed the room carrying the glasses of wine to her, gave her one, clinked them. "Sure I do. All us married guys think of the old days. You know I'm married now."

    "Yes," she said, nodding. "Very married, I hear. With how many kids? Three?"

    "No, just two." He smiled. "Sometimes it seems like three."

    "And your wife is an attorney?"

    "Yes." He felt safer now. The talk of his wife and children made him feel safer somehow.

    "I don't know how somebody can be married," Meredith said. "I tried it." She held up her hand. "Four more alimony payments to the son of a bitch and I'm free."

    "Who did you marry?"

    "Some account executive at CoStar. He was cute. Amusing. But it turned out he was a typical gold digger. I've been paying him off for three years. And he was a lousy lay."
    She waved her hand, dismissing the subject. She looked at her watch. "Now come and sit down, and tell me how bad it is with the Twinkle drive."

    "You want the file? I put it in your briefcase."

    "No." She patted the couch beside her. "You just tell me yourself." He sat down beside her.

    "You look good, Tom." She leaned back and kicked off her heels, wiggled her bare toes.
    "God, what a day."

    "Lot of pressure?"

    She sipped her wine and blew a strand of hair from her face. "A lot to keep track of. I'm glad we're working together, Tom. I feel as though you're the one friend I can count on in all this."

    "Thanks. I'll try."

    "So: how bad is it?"

    "Well. It's hard to say."

    "Just tell me."

    He felt he had no choice but to lay it all out for her. "We've built very successful prototypes, but the drives coming off the line in KL are running nowhere near a hundred milliseconds."

    Meredith sighed, and shook her head. "Do we know why?"

    "Not yet. We're working on some ideas."

    "That line's a start-up, isn't it?"

    "Two months ago."

    She shrugged. "Then we have problems on a new line. That's not so bad."

    "But the thing is," he said, "Conley-White is buying this company for our technology, and especially for the CD-ROM drive. As of today, we may not be able to deliver as promised."

    "You want to tell them that?"

    "I'm concerned they'll pick it up in due diligence."

    "Maybe, maybe not." She leaned back in the couch. "We have to remember what we're really looking at. Tom, we've all seen production problems loom large, only to vanish overnight. This may be one of those situations. We're shaking out the Twinkle line.
    We've identified some early problems. No big deal."

    "Maybe. But we don't know that. In reality, there may be a problem with controller chips, which means changing our supplier in Singapore. Or there may be a more fundamental problem. A design problem, originating here."

    "Perhaps," Meredith said, "but as you say, we don't know that. And I don't see any reason for us to speculate. At this critical time."

    "But to be honest-"

    "It's not a matter of honesty," she said. "It's a matter of the underlying reality. Let's go over it, point by point. We've told them we have a Twinkle drive."

    "Yes."

    "We've built a prototype and tested the hell out of it."

    "Yes."

    "And the prototype works like gangbusters. It's twice as fast as the most advanced drives coming out of Japan."

    "Yes."

    "We've told them we're in production on the drive."

    "Yes."

    "Well, then," Meredith said, "we've told them all that anybody knows for sure, at this point. I'd say we are acting in good faith."

    "Well, maybe, but I don't know if we can-"

    "Tom." Meredith placed her hand on his arm. "I always liked your directness. I want you to know how much I appreciate your expertise and your frank approach to problems. All the more reason why I'm sure the Twinkle drive will get ironed out. We know that fundamentally it's a good product that