Hot Shot (11 page)

As Susannah watched the fire of his vision burn in Sam Gamble's young eyes, she almost thought he would succeed.

Chapter 6

As Sam drove north toward the FBT Castle, he didn't need to remind himself how important today's interview was. For months, doors had been closing all over Silicon Valley.

At Hewlett-Packard Steve Wozniak had shown his bosses the Apple motherboard he had designed and asked if they were interested. Hewlett-Packard had said no.

At Sam's insistence Yank had approached Nolan Bushnell at Atari with his board, but the company was too busy trying to stay on top of the video-game market. Atari had passed.

On the East Coast Kenneth Olsen, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, the leading minicomputer company in the world, couldn't understand why anyone would want a computer at home. DEC had passed.

And in Armonk, New York, mighty IBM dismissed the microcomputer as a toy with no business application. IBM saw no market. IBM passed.

One by one, all of the Big Boys had shaken their heads. All but FBT. Today, Sam was determined to make certain recent history didn't repeat itself.

The engine was pinging on the Plymouth Duster he had borrowed from Yank, and the muffler needed to be replaced, resulting in a combination of noises that was driving Sam crazy. How could Yank tolerate owning a car that was such a total piece of garbage? Sam hated the way Detroit had given up quality for the fast buck.

The upholstery on the seat next to him was torn, fast-food wrappers were scattered everywhere, and several old motors were tossed in the backseat, along with the guts from a Zenith television set. Most mysterious of all, a shoe box full of vacuum tubes lay like excavated dinosaur bones on the floor next to him. Sam couldn't imagine why Yank was carrying around a box of vacuum tubes. They'd been obsolete for two decades, ever since Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley had taken advantage of the semiconducting qualities of silicon and invented the transistor. That invention had changed both the history of the Santa Clara Valley and Sam's life forever.

By the sixties, electronic circuits microscopically etched on tiny chips of silicon had pushed the cattle and the fruit orchards out of one of the most perfect agricultural climates in the world. Now electronics was the cash crop. Sam frequently heard the adults clucking their tongues over how the Valley used to be, but he liked living in a place that harvested semiconductors instead of apricots. He loved being part of the age of electronic miniaturization—an age where a computer circuit that would once have filled an entire room with thousands of inefficient, heat-producing vacuum tubes could now be contained on a silicon chip no larger than one of those soapy little Sen-Sen's he used to pop into his mouth when he was a kid.

He jammed the Duster's reluctant accelerator to the floor and switched lanes. It didn't take a crystal ball to see that the continuous miniaturization of electronics would inevitably lead to a small computer, so why were the established companies so apathetic? Not after today, he told himself. Thanks to Susannah's intercession, he had his audience with Joel Faulconer.

He rubbed his thumb along the steering wheel as he thought about Susannah. When he'd walked into that Homebrew meeting with her, he'd felt like a goddamned prince. But being with her wasn't just an ego trip. There was something else. When he was with her, he heard this click in his head. It was weird. This weird
click
. Like maybe some of his missing parts had just slipped into place.

The idea was odd, and he shook it off as he exited the freeway just west of Palo Alto and drove into the hills. It wasn't long before he spotted the entrance to the Castle. The FBT

complex occupied 125 acres of land. Sam turned into the palm-lined drive and approached the central building. His lip curled in distaste. If he had built the place, he would have done the whole thing differently. That phony Greek revival style belonged on Wall Street, not in Northern California. And there were too many columns, too much marble. Total crap.

After a hassle with the security people over the sample case containing the computer motherboard, Sam was escorted across the lobby to the elevators. His aesthete's eye gave high marks to the paintings on exhibit in the lobby at the same time that his idealist's heart attempted to ignore the plastic visitor's badge that protruded from the pocket of his leather jacket. Once again he found himself torn between his determination to give Yank's beautiful design to the world by selling it to FBT and his distaste at the idea of turning it over to such a huge, impersonal corporation.

The receptionist on the top floor was young and attractive. Her mouth tightened at his appearance, so he let his eyes slide insolently to her breasts. Fuck her. He didn't have any use for women like her—phony sophisticates who thought that class was something they could buy at a high-priced boutique. After he gave her his name, she checked an appointment book, then led him down a corridor. He grew increasingly contemptuous.

The interior decor might be first-class, but the atmosphere at the FBT offended him—the guard-dog secretaries, the elitism of the closed doors, the sterile, hushed silence. With every step, he yearned for the rowdy openness of the Homebrew Computer Club. If only he and Yank had enough money to start their own company. If only they had more options.

Susannah was sitting in a wing chair in the reception area outside Faulconer's office. As he spotted her, he heard that click in his head again. That strange, comforting click. Her auburn hair was neatly brushed back from her face and arranged in a French twist. She looked composed and costly in a beige wool dress with a single strand of pearls at her throat. The sight of her gave him a rush. He wanted to touch her, to hear the soft tones of that expensive private-school voice.

Susannah lifted her head as Sam approached. Her heart plummeted to her stomach and then catapulted back into her throat. She felt breathless and disoriented. The effect he had on her was so strong that several seconds passed before she could take in his appearance, and then she was barely able to hide her consternation. Despite what he'd said, she hadn't actually imagined that he would show up in jeans and a leather jacket for his meeting with her father. Her gaze lingered on those jeans and the intimate way they cupped him.

The secretary disappeared. She remembered how displeased Joel had been when she'd asked him to meet with Sam. He had insisted she be present for the meeting, and she suspected it was a subtle form of punishment for imposing on him. With a sinking dread and an awful exhilaration, she rose and stepped forward.

"Hello, Sam."

His eyes swept over her appreciatively, and he nodded.

She tucked her purse under her arm. As she spoke, she tried to hide the fact that her pulse was racing out of control. "My father's not pleased about this, I'm afraid. He doesn't approve of family interference in business, and he probably won't be very receptive to you."

"I'll make him receptive."

His arrogance maddened her. How could someone who was only twenty-four have so much self-confidence? "I told him you were a friend of one of the new board members at the Exploritorium." It wasn't entirely untrue.
She
was a new board member.

"I won't lie to him about us."

She gripped her hands together. Why was he being so unbending? He had catapulted into her life without invitation and upset everything. "There isn't any
us
," she said stiffly.

"And sometimes lies are a kindness."

He looked at her for a moment, and then the hard lines of his mouth softened. "Trust yourself, Suzie. Don't be so afraid of everything."

No other person had ever accused her of being afraid. Even when she was a child, people had told her how brave she was for surviving her kidnapping. How could Sam know these things about her?

Joel's secretary appeared and led them through paneled doors into her father's private office. He rose from behind his massive desk with its polished malachite top. Not by a flicker of an eyelash did he betray any reaction to Sam's long hair and informal attire. Yet even as he graciously extended his hand, Susannah felt as if she could hear his contemptuous, unvoiced scorn.

Sam took his time moving forward to return Joel's handshake. Susannah experienced an uneasy combination of dread and admiration. What kind of man wasn't intimidated by Joel Faulconer?

"Thanks for agreeing to see me," Sam said. "You won't be sorry."

Susannah inwardly winced.

"My pleasure," Joel replied.

Not waiting for an invitation, Sam began talking about Yank's design and the future of the microcomputer at the same time that he was tossing his sample case onto a chair and flipping open the latches. "I'd like to have been able to give you a full demonstration of the machine in operation, but apparently you didn't have the time." Did he linger on the last word deliberately, she wondered, or was that vaguely insulting emphasis accidental?

Susannah turned toward the wall of windows that overlooked the manmade lake outside.

A series of seven stone fountains shaped like obelisks rose from the water. They represented the seven continents of the world, all of them part of the FBT empire. As she watched their spray shoot high into the sky, she wished she were anyplace but in her father's office. She hated being in a tension-ridden atmosphere. She always thought it was her responsibility to somehow make things better.

Sam took out the motherboard and pushed aside a neat stack of reports to set it on the desktop in front of Joel.

"This is the wave of the future. The heart and guts of a revolution. This machine will shift the balance of power from institutions to individuals."

Without waiting for an invitation, he launched into a technical explanation of the efficiency of the design. Her father asked a number of quietly uttered, overly polite questions. She retreated to a leather chair on the far side of the room.

"FBT has never been inclined to enter the consumer products market," Joel said mildly.

Sam dismissed this with a disdainful wave of his hand. "Haven't you been following the Altair 8800?"

"Perhaps you should fill me in."

Sam began pacing in front of the desk, filling the office with his restless energy. Even from her safe perch at the side of the room, she could feel his intensity. "A year and a half ago,
Popular Mechanics
ran a picture on its cover of the Altair 8800, this small computer about half the size of an air conditioner that can be built from a kit. The only way to get information out of it is by reading a panel of lights flashing octal code. The machine doesn't have any memory, so it can't do much, and all anybody gets for his money is a bag of parts that have to be assembled. But within three weeks the company that was manufacturing it went from near bankruptcy to having $250,000 in the bank."

Joel's eyebrows lifted, but Sam was so wrapped up in his enthusiasm that he didn't notice.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars! They got more orders than they could fill.

People were sending money for add-on equipment that was only in the talking stages.

One guy drove all the way to Albuquerque and lived in a trailer outside the company's offices while he waited for his machine."

"My, my," Joel said, shaking his head. And then he looked thoughtful. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, you say?"

Sam planted his hands on the edge of Joel's desk, then leaned forward eagerly. "In only three weeks. There's an incredible market, especially when you consider the fact that the Altair is primitive compared to what Yank has designed."

Joel gazed down at the motherboard in front of him with admiration. "Yes, I can see that.

And how much are you and Mister—is it 'Yankowski'? How much are the two of you asking for this design?"

Sam sat down, hesitating. "We'd want some assurance that FBT would aggressively market the machine."

"I understand."

"And we'd like to be involved with the process."

"Ah, yes. Heading up the project team, perhaps? Something like that?"

Sam looked a bit surprised, but then he nodded.

"And the price tag?" Joel inquired.

Sam leaned back in his chair and crossed one ankle over his knee. Susannah could almost see him pulling the number from the top of his head. "Fifty thousand dollars."

"I see." Joel picked up a stainless-steel letter opener. "And how much yearly revenue do you think your computer could generate for FBT once the product was established?"

"A few million, I'd guess," Sam said cautiously.

"Ah." Joel looked thoughtful. "Could you be more specific?"

"Maybe two and a half million."

"Two and a half million? Are you sure about that number?"

Sam had begun to grow wary. "I haven't done any research, if that's what you mean."

"Could it be less?"

"I suppose."

"More? Perhaps three million?"

"Possibly."

"Two point eight million?"

Sam stared at Joel for a few seconds and then slowly stood. "You're jerking me off, aren't you?"

Susannah made a soft, barely audible gasp and rose from her chair.

"Jerking you off?" Joel looked puzzled, as if he were trying to understand the meaning of the expression. "Now why would you think that?"

Sam's jaw jutted forward. "Just answer my question."

Joel scoffed. "Why would I be jerking someone off who wants to make this company two million dollars a year? That's nearly what FBT pays to have its garbage collected."

Sam's complexion turned chalky.

"You don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, Mr. Gamble. You have no idea of the value of what you're selling or of its worth to this corporation. It's obvious that you haven't done your homework, because if you had, you certainly wouldn't be wasting my time with this meeting."

Joel had been toying with a panel of switches set into the top of his desk, and now he began to press them. Slowly he turned his head to look out the window. Sam followed the direction of his eyes and watched as the seven columns of water rising from the stone fountains outside began to still, one by one. Like God, Joel Faulconer could command the forces of the universe. The show of power wasn't lost on Sam.