Hot Shot (35 page)

Behind her the gay red and black balloons bounced forgotten, and her palm left a sweaty imprint where it had rested on the top of the Blaze.

"What have you done to me?" she whispered again.

Sam looked at her quizzically, but before he could say anything, the door swung open again and Mitch walked in with Yank. Mitch was unbearably smug as he slapped Sam on the back and patted his lapel. "Doesn't your boy look great, Susannah? He and I went on a little shopping trip. He changes his tune when you dangle a three-hundred-dollar imported Italian sport coat in front of him."

Yank was wearing his version of dress-up, a wrinkled brown corduroy suit with a narrow, mustard-colored tie hanging askew. The underside of the tie extended barely three inches below the knot.

Mitch shrugged apologetically at Susannah. "I only had so much time. Do something, will you?"

She busied herself reknotting Yank's tie. As she worked, she tried to calm her inexplicable feeling of panic. Sam was Sam, she told herself. Cutting his hair and putting on a sport coat didn't change anything for either one of them. Besides, she had said from the beginning that he needed to look more like a business man, and now she had her wish. She glanced over at him busily loading the Blaze display programs. They were married, but marriage didn't feel the way she had always imagined. She had no sense of safety or stability. Instead, every day was an adventure full of new battles to be fought.

Sometimes, she was almost overwhelmed with the intensity of just being alive on the same planet with Sam Gamble.

The guests began to arrive, and she had no more time for personal ruminations. She had sent out over a hundred invitations to members of the press and other influential people in the trade, and she watched nervously as they critically circled the two machines, guzzling beer, munching on pizza and firing questions at all of them. Before long, they were watching in fascination as the large television monitors began to display the games and programs that had been designed to show the little computer's awesome power.

More than one skeptic pulled up the bright red cloth that draped the display table in search of the larger computer they were certain was hidden beneath. They shook their heads in amazement when they found only electrical cords and cardboard cartons.

"Amazing."

"Son of a bitch."

"This is freaking fantastic!"

The SysVal founders were hackers at heart, and it wasn't long before Sam slipped the case from one of the prototypes. (Neither he nor Yank had even considered designing a computer that couldn't be opened up.) Within minutes, a hundred guests were craning their necks to see the internal poetry of Yank's wondrous machine. By midnight it was evident that the launching of the brash little Blaze was an unqualified success.

The restaurant finally forced them to disband at two in the morning. The men loaded the equipment into Mitch's car, and the four partners headed for the hotel where they had booked rooms for the night. Sam and Mitch were still wired from the excitement of the evening, and neither wanted to sleep, even though they had to be at the Civic Auditorium in a few hours to set up. But Susannah was exhausted, and she declined an invitation to go to the bar with them for a drink. Yank also refused, and they crossed the lobby together.

In many ways Yank still remained a mystery to her. Angela had told her that Yank's ability to shut out the world when he worked had begun when he was a child growing up in the Valley. His mother and father had fought bitterly, but as good Catholics, they wouldn't divorce. From a young age he had learned to immerse himself in electronic projects so that he could transport himself to another world, where he wouldn't have to listen to the ugly sounds of their arguments. His parents had retired to Sun City several years ago and apparently still fought as bitterly as ever. He seldom saw them.

As they stepped into the elevator, Susannah made a stab at polite conversation. "Roberta wasn't at the party. She's not sick, is she?"

"Roberta?" Yank didn't seem quite certain who Susannah meant.

Normally Susannah would have been amused, but despite the enthusiastic reception the Blaze had received at the party, she was on edge, and her tone was unnaturally sharp.

"Roberta Pestacola, your girlfriend."

"Yes, I know."

Susannah waited. The elevator doors opened. They got off together. After a few steps Yank stopped walking, stared for a moment at a fire extinguisher, then began walking again.

She was suddenly determined to have a normal conversation with him. "Is anything wrong between you and Roberta?"

"Roberta? Oh, yes." He began patting his pockets for a room key.

They continued down the corridor. Although she was tall, he topped her by a good seven inches. Thirty more seconds of silence passed. Susannah was exhausted from the evening and still unsettled over the changes in Sam's appearance. Her already frayed nerves snapped. "The purpose of conversation is to exchange information. That's difficult to do with someone who hardly ever finishes his sentences and never seems to have the vaguest idea what anyone is talking about. It's really irritating."

He stopped walking and looked down at a point just behind her right ear. "It's probably not a good idea to take out your frustration on one person when you're really upset with someone else."

She stared at him. How did he know she was upset about Sam? He shifted his gaze and looked directly at her.

She nearly winced. His eyes were so clear and so strongly focused that she had the feeling he could see the smallest cells inside her.

"Roberta and I are no longer together, Susannah. I'm not proud of staying with her for as long as I did, since I wasn't too fond of her even at the beginning. But it's difficult for me to attract women, and I like having sex very much. This means I sometimes make compromises. Is there anything else you want to know?"

Susannah actually felt herself flush. "I—I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"No, it isn't."

Embarrassed, she fumbled in her purse for her own room key, and managed to drop it just as they reached her door.

Yank stooped over to pick it up off the carpet. As he straightened, he once again looked at her with that penetrating gaze she found so disconcerting.

And then, more quickly than she could have believed possible, she lost him to the gods of genius. His eyes grew vague and his face emptied of all expression. Muttering something that sounded like "zany diode," he began moving off down the hallway as if she didn't exist.

Black sock.

Brown sock.

Black sock.

Brown sock.

None of them were prepared for what happened the next day. By early that morning thousands of computer enthusiasts had formed five lines that wrapped around both sides of the block-long Civic Center. No one had expected so many people, but despite the crowded conditions, everyone was good-natured and enthusiastic.

Throughout the day loudspeakers blared out announcements, computer-generated music played, and printers clattered. Lines formed to attend the event's workshops and people stood four and five deep at the booths. They could get their biorhythms charted at the IMSAI exhibit and play a game on the Sol at the Processor Technology display. Many companies—some actually larger than SysVal—were still showing their products on draped card tables with hand-lettered signs, but they were dwarfed by exhibitors like Cromemco, MITS, and even the tiny Apple Computer Company, which had apparently learned its lesson about appearances at Atlantic City. Even though they had only moved out of their garage a few months ago, they were introducing their Apple II in an impressive booth complete with a backlit plexiglass sign bearing their new brightly-colored Apple logo.

While Mitch spent his time making contacts with distributors and dealers and Yank wandered the hall to survey the competition, Sam and Susannah, along with several teenage employees they had recently hired to help manage the increasing workload, manned the SysVal booth. Sam was everywhere at once, holding four separate conversations at the same time and telling all who came within the sound of his voice about the miraculous little micro called the Blaze. Yank's splashy graphics display was a big hit with the crowd, as well as a target-shooting game people were standing in line to play.

Susannah distributed hundreds of expensively printed color brochures, smiled until her cheeks ached, and began taking orders for the Blaze almost immediately. As she discussed memory expansion, switching versus linear power supply, and eight-slot motherboards, she realized how far she had come from a woman who had once regarded her most strenuous challenge to be finding a good caterer.

At the end of the weekend, when one of the Faire's organizers announced that thirteen thousand people had been in attendance, a huge cheer went up from the crowd. Trade shows had been held in Atlantic City, Trenton, and Detroit, but the overwhelming success of the West Coast Computer Faire had put all of them to shame. On this April weekend in 1977, California had finally taken command of its own small computer kingdom.

Sam caught Susannah in his arms as the attendance was announced. "We've made history today! This is our Woodstock, baby. A digital love-in for a new generation."

That night, when they headed back to the Valley, they had orders for 287 Blazes in hand.

Chapter 19

By August the hills of the Santa Clara Mountains were brown from lack of rain. Joel Faulconer squinted at the sun through the windshield of his tan rental car and wished for the winter rains. He was finding it difficult to breathe. There was too much dust in the air.

He had parked the car so that he had a clear view of the single glass door that led into the SysVal offices, but the van parked on one side of him made the car barely noticeable to anyone walking through the lot. Over the past six months, Joel had learned to choose his locations carefully. He rented inconspicuous cars, and he always brought a newspaper with him so that if Susannah should appear unexpectedly, he could block his face.

The indignity of what he was doing was something he refused to dwell on. He didn't think of it as spying on his daughter. He tried not to think of it at all. Coming here was necessary. That was all. He had to find a way to get her back.

In an hour he was due in his office for an afternoon meeting with one of the most important industrialists in Japan. It was the kind of encounter that had once sent adrenaline pumping through his veins. Now what he really wanted to do was take a nap.

He continued to have difficulty sleeping at night, and last night had been particularly bad.

He should have been more honest with his doctor when he had finally gone to see him a few weeks ago, but he couldn't bring himself to confess to a medical lackey twenty years younger than himself that he was suffering from a depression so deep and so black that he didn't think he could ever climb out of it. The night before, he had spent hours locked in his library, gazing down at the Smith & Wesson revolver he kept in a mahogany case.

Sweat broke out on his body. For weeks now he had felt as if he were living on the jagged edge of something monstrous. He told himself not to think about it. He would be better soon. Any day now.

The door of the building opened and Sam Gamble walked out. Joel's stomach pitched.

The bastard. Gamble moved across the parking lot toward the used Volvo he had bought a few months ago. His walk was cocky, as if he were a king instead of an arrogant upstart. Joel consoled himself with the thought that the Gamble car was merely another item that would fall to the bankruptcy court when this harum-scarum operation went belly up. He was both incredulous and frustrated that it hadn't already happened. Of course, he hadn't counted on Mitchell Blaine throwing his hat into their circus ring. Still, even Blaine couldn't work miracles.

Cal had been as bewildered as Joel when he had heard the news. "Why is Blaine doing something so bizarre?" Cal had asked.

Joel had kept his response casual. He saw no sense in letting the younger man realize how much the news had shaken him. "His wife left him. He's obviously not thinking clearly. But I don't believe we need to worry too much. Even Mitch Blaine won't be able to keep them afloat much longer."

Cal had pressed him to move more aggressively against SysVal, but once again Joel had demurred. Susannah was going to fail on her own. Only then—only when she had suffered defeat at her own hands—could he possibly take her back. He envisioned her remorse, the way she would beg him to let her return to Falcon Hill.

The sound of tires squealing distracted him from his thoughts. Gamble was just reaching for his car door when a small red Toyota shot into the parking lot and jerked to a stop near the Volvo. A woman jumped out and began rushing toward him. She wore a purple elasticized top, black jersey wrap skirt, and high heels with ankle straps. It took Joel only a moment to recognize her as Gamble's cheap little floozy of a mother.

Gamble had already spotted her. She had left the engine of her car running and the door open. He hurried forward in concern. She grabbed his arm and began to speak with enormous agitation. Joel could pick out a few isolated words but not the sense of what she was saying. Gamble looked as if he were growing angry. She clutched harder at his arms. He shook her off and went back to his car.

"Sam!" she cried.

Gamble jumped into the Volvo without sparing her another glance. Gunning the motor, he peeled out of the parking lot. She crumpled like a rag doll against the trunk of her car.

Joel watched her clutch her arms in front of her stomach and begin a slow rocking that sent her gold hoop earrings swaying. Her dark hair was mussed and her expression was full of despair. Perversely, the sight of her misery lifted his spirits as nothing had in weeks. It made him feel more in control of his own life, more like his old self. At the same time, curiosity piqued him. Anything that made Sam Gamble angry might be good news for him.

He hesitated for only a moment before he got out of the car and walked toward her. The pavement began to tilt under his feet. He wasn't feeling well, not well at all. Perhaps he should cancel his appointments this afternoon and go home. But no. Someone might discover that he wasn't feeling like himself. That wouldn't do at all.