Caleb said nothing.
"But there are levels."
He still said nothing.
Victoria filled the silence.
"People who make nine-figure decisions live differently."
"Not because they're better people."
"Because the decisions require it."
Caleb thought about Everett Langford, chairman of Sterling Atlantic's board, who drove a twelve-year-old pickup whenever he was in Denver because he hated rental cars.
He thought about Douglas Wren, the operations integration executive waiting in Seattle, who packed peanut-butter sandwiches because airport food annoyed him.
He thought about a retired airline CEO who once spent half a transatlantic flight fixing a flight attendant's broken service-cart latch with a butter knife.
People who had real power did not always perform it.
People who needed others to notice power often did.
Caleb said:
"I can think of some people who buy time and still waste it."
Victoria smiled.
"That's clever."
"It wasn't intended to be."
She leaned back.
The aircraft began its takeoff roll.
Conversation stopped under the engine noise.
Once airborne, Victoria opened her tablet.
Caleb saw the title before deciding not to look.
Ashbourne Dynamics Predictive Maintenance Architecture.
Full Fleet Integration Proposal.
Of course.
A strange coincidence, though not impossible.
People involved in the same deal flew to the same city for the same meeting.
Caleb did not believe in cosmic signs.
He believed in travel schedules.
Still, he felt his attention sharpen.
Victoria advanced through slides.
Caleb asked:
"What did your false-positive rate settle at in the final validation series?"
Her finger stopped.
Slowly, she turned.
"What?"
"The false-positive rate."
"I heard you."
"Then you know the question."
Victoria stared.
"How would you know enough to ask it?"
Caleb shrugged.
"I work around reliability systems."
"You said consulting."
"Those statements don't conflict."
She studied him for several seconds.
Then looked at his jacket again.
Caleb almost laughed.
Victoria said:
"Reading technical literature is not the same as understanding an integrated fleet architecture."
"Agreed."
"This is not a maintenance app."
"I didn't say it was."
"It is a quarter-billion-dollar deployment across a complex operating environment."
"I know."
Her expression changed.
"How?"
Caleb opened his laptop.
"Because you announced the price twice at the gate and once after sitting down."
The woman in the row ahead visibly lowered her head, hiding a smile.
Victoria's face tightened.
Caleb continued calmly.
"Your architecture is none of my business unless you make it my business."
"I asked a technical question."
"That's all."
Victoria looked toward his screen.
"What do you think the rate should be?"
Caleb smiled faintly.
"That isn't how validation works."
"Humor me."
"A beautiful rate worries me more than an ugly one if I don't understand how the dataset was constructed."
She frowned.
"Why?"
"Ugly numbers force investigation."
"Beautiful numbers can end it too early."
Victoria said nothing.
Caleb returned to his screen.
She looked at him another moment.
Then said:
"Reading a few technical papers doesn't mean you understand a two-hundred-forty-million-dollar transaction."
Caleb closed the laptop.
Not hard.
No performance.
Just closed.
He folded his hands.
"Probably not."
Victoria turned back to the tablet.
Silence sat between them.
For several minutes, neither spoke.
The aircraft climbed.
Clouds passed beneath.
Caleb looked out the window.
He should have felt irritated.
He didn't.
Victoria was providing information.
Unexpectedly valuable information.
Before the flight, Caleb's concerns were technical and organizational.
Data exclusion.
Governance.