Fastest Sector
Dmitri's little exercise in self-promotion—if that was even the word for it—was just winding down when Henri Vuitton turned a question on me.
"Do you know which brand is drawing the most attention at this New York fashion show?"
"Hard to say."
"Gromhats."
Well, now.
"In the early days they kept to metalwork alone. Lately they've been making clothes as well, and they've carried that signature flash of pattern straight into the cloth."
"Ah."
"You didn't know?"
"I'm only a shareholder. I don't involve myself in the design at all."
"The very best sort of shareholder."
I almost laughed.
"Ah, and since the subject has come up, if I may."
"...?"
"If Chairman Park Jihoon alone would permit it, I should like to try a collaboration between Luy Vuitton and Gromhats. Would that be agreeable?"
"You'd do better to ask Gromhats than me..."
"Those friends of yours told me they very much want to."
Then just go ahead and do it. Why ask me...
That was only my thought. Henri Vuitton seemed to consider the asking itself a point of manners.
The finest gentleman I knew.
"I shall be making my way to Manhattan, where the show is held."
We'd be staying in the same hotel for as long as we were in New York anyway.
"I'll see you this evening."
I said goodbye to Henri Vuitton, and Dmitri and I headed for a café nearby.
Perhaps it was hearing that Gromhats was hot in America. Whenever someone passed in sleek, all-black clothes, my eyes went to their hands of their own accord.
Thick rings. Gaudy ones.
People really are walking around in these.
Well. Before long Gromhats would grow into the luxury house that stood for America.
That still takes time. And I needed a trillion won right now.
We ordered iced americanos at Starbucks. Cold coffee is never easy to come by in Europe.
This is what I like about America.
Cups in hand, we took a window seat and went on with the work.
"How have sales been since the Tommy Hawk ad?"
Had he been waiting for the question? A smile drew itself at the corner of Dmitri's mouth.
"Mad Bull's American sales alone are up fiftyfold. Explosive growth, truly..."
"That isn't enough."
"Sorry? Did I misspeak? Not five times—fifty..."
"I'm disappointed."
Dmitri didn't quite say it. His eyes did.
Will you only be satisfied once Americans are drinking Mad Bull instead of water?
Whether they were or not, I was running for a hundredfold, and that was all.
"The next face of the ads is MJ of the Chicago Bulls."
"Ah. Yes."
He answered, but something in his expression stayed sour. Sure enough, he went on.
"Chairman, it's true MJ is the league's scoring champion and playing brilliantly. But he keeps losing to Detroit, and he hasn't so much as reached the door of the Finals, has he?"
Meaning, was it really wise to hand that MJ a fortune and lock him into a ten-year contract?
"If he takes the money and doesn't deliver, the damage..."
"I'll take the responsibility. Sign him. No conditions."
"Sorry? Yes... well, understood."
If MJ became the face of Mad Bull, a hundredfold in sales would be no dream. And the money we made that way would go, every last cent of it, toward buying Ferrari. Ugh.
I tossed out a question, partly to change the subject.
"How popular is F1 in America?"
"You may as well call it barren. There's no interest, so the American teams do poorly, and because they do poorly, there's even less interest. A classic loop, I'd say."
For it to make money, America had to care.
Right. If I'm pouring a trillion into this anyway, I'm not walking off with nothing but the glory.
Still, there was a way.
"Is the setup I asked for finished?"
"Yes. We've hired the documentary crew, and we've secured permission to film, mostly from the teams at the back of the F1 grid."
What had pulled me into F1 in the first place was a documentary I'd seen on NetXrix. The series had done well enough that F1's standing in America rose with it.
There's a proven case. Of course we follow it.
"You haven't eaten, have you?"
"No. Not yet."
"Anything you'd like?"
"No. I've been in America a good while now... if anything, whatever suits your taste, Chairman..."
"Is pizza all right?"
"Shall we go? I know a place that does proper American pizza."
Maybe it was the talk of pizza. All at once I wanted to see Mr. Devon.
What's he doing about now? The moment I was back in England, I'd go find him.
Thinking of my teacher, I felt a smile pull at my mouth.
Devon was a prodigy out of Stanford. His father had been attorney general and his grandfather a chief justice, so the superior genes were beyond dispute.
And yet. Why on earth.
He hated using his head.
Hadn't Park Jihoon told him? Add up everything a business required and come back with the right price for a single pizza. If it was competitive, he would invest.
At first Devon did tap at a calculator. He gave up in exactly ten minutes.
Forget it. Hit something and see what happens.
That same day he rented a truck and opened for business in the university district. Prices? He didn't know prices. Make the pizzas and hand them out free. Then ask.
"Is it good?"
"Best pizza I've ever had."
"You're not just saying that because of my arms, are you?"
Devon's biceps were, admittedly, in a state.
"N-no. Nothing like that."
"Then how much would you pay?"
"Sorry?"
The student took a step back, and Devon realized the line had come out wrong.
"I'm not robbing you."
"Oh. Right."
"Say I sold this in front of your school. Would you still eat it at ten pounds?"
A nod. Another nod.
"Fifteen?"
"Yes."
"Twenty..."
"A bit expensive. But it's good enough I'd have to think about it."
Devon handed out pizza all day long and gathered opinions, and out of it came an average.
Is this about right?
The next day he went to the university in the next neighborhood and sold pizza at exactly that figure. Astonishingly, the ingredients were gone within half a day. The thing was a sensation.
Too cheap?
That evening he went to yet another university and sold it at an absurd price, the sort of number a food truck should never be able to charge. He wondered who on earth would buy it.
And then—
"You're the pizza-truck guy, right?"
Word had gotten around. One after another, they were buying.
They're actually paying that much?
So the evening trade was a roaring success as well.
Ugh.
Devon was not happy in the slightest.
Wait. Did I come here to sell pizza?!
Anyone else would have called it the most absurd thing in the world. But Devon, truly, had not come to sell pizza.
So! What is the right price supposed to beeeee?!
A question with no answer. The truck rocked. Devon tore at his hair until the whole thing shook.
American style really is different.
Delicious. Truly delicious. And yet, strangely, pizza tasted better when you ate it with your teacher.
After the meal I was going through the papers Dmitri had set in front of me.
"As you asked, I've compiled the records of racing prospects from F2 through F4."
I had asked for that list for exactly one reason: to check the record of the greatest racer in the history of motorsport.
Max Schumacher.
Here he is.
Eighteen, by the Korean count.
A year older than me.
If things went as they should, he would debut in F1 two years from now. Not because there was an age rule. No team had the nerve to hand a driver seat to a teenager.
My nerve has always lived a little outside my body.
Once I bought Ferrari, the first thing I would do was sign Max Schumacher. His prime would fall somewhere in his mid-twenties, and I had to take a championship within two years, so whether he was the right driver remained an open question.
But if I, who know Max's ceiling, decide to push him with everything I have?
A gamble worth taking. Besides, each team could field only two drivers.
Right. When you fill out college applications, you always aim at least one of them high.
I had just finished going carefully through the F2 drivers' records. F3 and F4 were, in truth, difficult to throw straight into a seat. By age alone, most of them were seventeen or under. Still, just in case, I was checking—
Huh?
A name I had never expected jumped off the page.
Tennessee Grosvenor.
Beside the words F3 driver, a lap time. For his age, a genuinely fine result.
Well, well.
Honestly, Tennessee could be explained. The Grosvenor family sponsored McLaren, and aristocrats were bound to throw themselves at refined sport—light aircraft, shooting, all of it. So Tennessee, fine.
But this.
Olivia Warren.
Why was Olivia here?
Like Tennessee, an F3 driver. No less. Her lap times were better than his. Not merely better: among the very top of all F3. She even held several outright circuit records.
Ha.
It would have been the start of term. Olivia had definitely said she meant to be a professional driver. I'd half let it go at the time. To think she actually held the times.
"If you're finished, shall we go?"
"Sorry?"
"There's a friend I want to see. Quickly."
Astonishingly, Olivia was racing. I checked with the staff. She came to the circuit at least three times a week.
"Is that her car?"
At the question, Dmitri flipped through his papers. Before he could answer—
Shhh-wooom!
The car was already gone, at a tremendous speed. A hundred and twenty-five miles an hour at the least. The sound alone left my ears ringing.
There's atmosphere, I'll give it that.
From the stands it was hard to feel Olivia's actual skill. But the lap times ticking onto the board kept falling, and that was clearly no ordinary talent.
After about ten laps—
Shhh-woooom!
The note was sharper than the rest. I looked up at the board.
Hm.
Three sessions a week sounded respectable until you priced it. Hire a race car, pay the circuit—week after week, it would burn through a fortune.
This isn't a hobby.
Dmitri, sure enough, looked startled.
"That girl from the party on the ship... I never imagined she'd actually be out racing."
"Exactly."
"Ah... so there are things even you don't know, Chairman."
He had a gift for delivering the obvious in perfect earnest.
About a minute later—
Shhh-woooom!
Olivia's car cut the wind again.
"Chairman, this may be a slightly awkward thing to say."
"...?"
"If we signed Miss Olivia as a driver... the marketing effect, at least, would be certain."
The only woman driver in F1. American, besides, and her father the greatest designer the American continent had produced. Let her face so much as appear in a documentary and every eye would turn.
"The story couldn't be better, either."
"The story?"
As a child, a piece she had entered in a design contest had gone and won a prize. The public dragged her father into it and pointed fingers, calling the award unfair. That was when Olivia thought of racing—the only way to escape eyes full of suspicion and malice.
Let that girl overcome all of it and debut on an F1 grid.
Above all.
If we could put that whole path into the documentary, intact.
Taking the American market would be no mere dream.
In that instant—
Shhh-woo-woooom!
Wind tore, and the board lit once more.