Hot Shot (40 page)

In the posh communities of Los Gatos, Woodside, and Los Altos Hills, the electrical engineers stepped out of their hot tubs, stuffed their plastic pocket protectors into Armani shirts, hopped into their BMW's, and laughed like hell.

By the fall of 1982, the nerds owned the Valley. The bespeckled, pimply-faced, overweight, underweight, dateless, womanless, goofiest of the goofy, were the undisputed, unchallenged kings of the entire freaking Valley!

Man, it was sweet.

Yank pulled his Porsche 911 crookedly into a parking space at SysVal's main building and then headed up the walk toward the main entrance. He nodded absentmindedly at the two female account executives who had stopped in mid-conversation as he approached and gazed wistfully at the retreating back of his leather bomber jacket. Once inside the lobby, he determinedly ignored the security guard stationed behind the elliptical-shaped desk.

Everyone else who worked at SysVal had to show a plastic security badge to be admitted.

Even Sam wore a badge. But Yank pretended the badges didn't exist, and Susannah had left orders that the guards were to admit him on sight.

Logically, he understood that those golden days of Homebrew were gone forever—the days of free and open information, of one for all and all for one. It was September of 1982. John Lennon was dead, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and Uncle Sam had just busted up AT&T. The world was changing, and the Valley was filled with industrial spies intent on stealing the latest American technology and selling it to the Japanese, the Russians, or even a new start-up in the next industrial park. SysVal's astounding success had made it a prime target for those roaches of humanity. Yank understood all that. But he still wouldn't wear a security badge.

As he headed down the hallway toward the multimillion-dollar lab that had been built especially for him, he had the nagging sensation that he had forgotten something very important. But he dismissed his worry. What could be more important than solving the problem with the trace lines of solder on their new circuit board? They were too close. He had an idea…

Ten miles away, in the gilt and brocade bedroom of his Portola Valley home, lingerie model Tiffani Wade's carefully arranged seductive pose was ruined by the frown marring her forehead. "Yank? Yank, you can come back in now. I'm ready."

She called out three more times before she realized that no one was going to answer, then she sagged back into the pillows. "You son of a bitch," she muttered. "You've done it to me again."

Susannah shut off the Blaze III that rested on the credenza behind her desk and stretched.

Somewhere in the building one of the employees fired off an air horn. She barely noticed.

At SysVal, people were always firing off air horns or calling out Bingo numbers over the loudspeaker system, just so no one ever made the mistake of confusing them with IBM or FBT.

As if someone had overheard her thoughts, the loudspeaker began to squawk. "Mayday, Mayday. The Japanese have just attacked the parking lot. All employees driving domestic cars should immediately take cover. This is not a drill. I repeat. This is not a drill."

Susannah rolled her eyes. God forbid they should ever have a real emergency. No one would believe it.

SysVal's employees were primarily men in their twenties, and they prided themselves on being bad. In the six years since the company was founded, Sam Gamble's personality had become their model. Even the whiz kids at Apple Computer weren't as raunchy, as brazen, as wild as the rowdy bunch at SysVal. At Apple they held Friday afternoon beer blasts, but at SysVal they showed stag movies, too. The boys of SysVal strutted their stuff—their youth, their audaciousness, their sense of destiny. They were the ones who had made the magical little Blaze available to the world and helped humanity learn the beauty of personal computing. Like their brash, charismatic founder, they were young, invincible, immortal.

Taking off her glasses, Susannah rubbed the bridge of her nose, then looked across her office at a much-abused dart board with the Apple logo painted on it. She thought about the five of them—Jobs and Woz, Sam, Yank, herself. All of them college dropouts.

Freaks, nerds, rebels, and one overly polite socialite. In the five years that had passed since the West Coast Computer Faire, everything they touched had turned to gold. It was as if the gods had blessed them with youth, brains, and unlimited good luck. On paper, anyway, she and her partners were worth over a hundred million dollars each, while at Apple, Steve Jobs was worth more than three hundred million. Sometimes the enormity of their success scared Susannah to death.

The battered Apple dart board gave visual evidence of the early rivalry between the two young companies, but in the past few years that had changed. With trie dawning of the 1980s, the Big Boys had finally lifted their heads and realized that they had been left behind. Late in 1981, IBM had introduced the IBM-PC. Apple Computer, in a display of bravado that Susannah still wished SysVal had thought of first, had taken out a full-page ad in the nation's newspapers. The ad said, WELCOME IBM. SERIOUSLY. A paragraph of copy had followed in which the brash young upstarts at Apple had assumed the role of the wise old men of the industry and spelled out for Mighty IBM all of the glories of personal computing—as if IBM were too inexperienced, too stupid, too wet-behind-the-ears, to figure it out for themselves. The sheer audacity of it had kept the business community laughing for months.

A custom-designed radio-controlled car zoomed into her office, did a three sixty in the middle of her carpet and zoomed out again with no sign of a human operator. SysVal's engineers were entertaining themselves again.

Rubbing her eyes, she pushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. Her hair was shorter now, cut in a breezy style that feathered around her cheeks and softened the sharp, aristocratic features of her face. Since no important meetings were on her docket for that day, she had dressed informally in a coral cowl-neck sweater and tight, straight-legged jeans. Two slim gold bangles glittered at one wrist and a wide gold cuff hugged the other.

The third finger of her right hand sported a two-karat marquis-cut diamond that she had bought for herself. More, she had definitely concluded, was better than less.

On impulse, she reached for her telephone and dialed the number that connected her directly with Mitch's private office. But before the phone could ring, he walked through her door.

"Mental telepathy," she said, some of her tension slipping away merely at the sight of his solid, comforting presence. "I was just calling you."

He slumped wearily into the chair opposite her desk. "Somebody left a bra in the hallway."

"As long as the person who lost it isn't running around bare-chested, don't complain."

Of them all, Mitch had changed the least. The blunt planes of his face had hardened a bit, and a few strands of gray had begun to weave through the sandy hair at his temples. But his body hadn't lost any of its tone. At thirty-seven, SysVal's Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing was still as solid as the Buckeye wide receiver who had won a place in Woody Hayes's heart.

Mitch was the most respectable corporate officer SysVal had, a wonderful piece of white bread who thought nothing of flying across the country to watch one of his kids play soccer, and was recently honored as the Bay Area Jaycees' Man of the Year for his civic contributions. Over the years, he and Susannah had developed a deep friendship.

She saw at once that he was exhausted. He had been driving himself for months, trying to win a multimillion-dollar contract with the state of California to install the Blaze III in hundreds of its state offices. The contract would provide the capitalization SysVal needed to finish up the work on the Wildfire and launch their new business computer ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, SysVal's competition for the contract was FBT, and Cal Theroux had been lobbying hard for the Falcon 101, FBT's new personal computer.

Although the entry of giant corporations like IBM and FBT had legitimized the personal computer, it had also made things a lot tougher.

"Be honest with me," he said, as he stretched out his legs. "Do you think I'm stuffy?"

"You? Perish the thought."

"I'm not joking. I want to know."

"You're serious?"

He nodded.

"Yes. You're definitely stuffy."

"Well, thank you. Thank you so very much." He glared at her, a picture of offended dignity.

She smiled. "Does this sudden soul searching have anything to do with your relationship with the beautiful, talented, and terminally obnoxious Jacqueline Dane?"

"Jacqueline is not obnoxious. She is one of the finest actresses in this country."

"As she is quick to point out. Did you see that television interview she gave last week where she went on and on about the importance of making
serious
films and doing
serious
work? She kept pushing her fingers through her hair like she had mange or something. I have never yet seen that woman give an interview where she hadn't managed to work in the fact that she has a degree from Yale. She bites her fingernails, too."

He gave her his best stony-eyed gaze. "I suppose you would prefer it if I started dating bimbos like Yank does."

"You and Yank could do each other big favors by trading women for a few months. Yank needs to date someone with an IQ that's higher than the speed limit, and you need to find a woman who can lighten up a little. Honestly, Mitch, I can't believe Jacqueline had the nerve to call you stuffy. I think her face would crack if she ever tried to smile."

"You just said I was stuffy," he pointed out.

"I'm allowed to say that because I'm one of the best friends you have, and I adore you.

She, on the other hand, only cares about dead philosophers with names no sensible person can spell."

"I had my fill of party girls when I was married to Louise. I like serious women."

Susannah shook her head in disgust. There was simply no reasoning with him. In the past six years, Mitch had had long-term relationships with three women, all brilliant, beautiful, and sober-minded. Susannah still couldn't make up her mind which one of them she detested the most. At heart he was a family man, and Susannah was afraid he might actually marry Jacqueline Dane. And if her suspicions were right, the actress would jump at the offer. Mitch had a funny effect on women. For someone who was basically a stuffed shirt, he certainly didn't have any trouble finding bedroom companions.

She knew she was beating a dead horse, but she plunged in anyway. "Why won't you let me pick out some women for you? Really, Mitch, I know just the sort of person you need.

Someone who's intelligent, but warm. Someone who won't try to mother you, since I know you hate that. A woman with a sense of humor to make up for the fact that you have absolutely none." It wasn't true. Mitch had a wonderful sense of humor, but it was so dry that most people didn't appreciate it. "A woman without much libido, since you're getting older and you probably don't have the sex drive you used to."

"That's it." He stood and glared at her. "My libido isn't any of your business, Miss Hot Shot."

"Touchy, touchy." She tried to imagine herself joking with a man about his sex drive six years ago and failed. SysVal had changed them all.

He finally smiled. "Now that you're filthy rich, you've turned into a real brat, do you know that?"

"We're all filthy rich. And I'm not a brat."

She noticed the strain that had been evident when he had come into her office had dissipated. The company was a pressure cooker of activity with a new crisis popping up every hour, and she and Mitch had long ago discovered that baiting each other worked as well as anything else to relax them both.

An angry male voice blared through the loudspeaker. "Whichever son of a bitch took DP27E's new HP calculator had better get the fucker back to the office right now!"

Mitch's expression grew pained, and he lifted a disapproving eyebrow toward the speaker. "Susannah?"

She sighed. "I'll put out another obscenity memo." They had learned years ago that it was useless to lock up the loudspeaker controls. There was nothing the SysVal engineers loved better than breaking through anything that bore even a passing resemblance to a closed system.

She asked him about his visit to Boston. Over the years, Mitch's children had visited him frequently, and she had grown fond of them. She kept a framed picture nine-year-old Liza had drawn for her on her desk next to a paperweight David had made in his sixth-grade art class.

Mitch walked over to her window. "I finally met Louise's new husband. He and I had a couple of beers and talked about the kids. He said they were getting along well, and he wanted me to know that he wasn't going to try to take my place with them. He saw himself as a big brother, not a father, that sort of thing. Heck of a nice guy."

"You hate his guts, don't you?"

"I wanted to slam my fist right through his face."

She gave him a sympathetic smile. Not for the first time, it occurred to her that Mitch was a much better friend to her than Sam had ever been.

They chatted for a few more minutes, and then Mitch left. Her stomach rumbled and she realized she was hungry. Maybe she could talk Sam into leaving early tonight. It would be wonderful to have dinner at home for a change and spend an evening alone together—

something they hadn't done in longer than she could remember.

She got up from her desk, deliberately pushing away the painful knowledge that Sam wouldn't want to spend an evening alone with her. She had made it a habit not to dwell on the problems in her marriage when she was at work, but it was difficult. As she walked out of the office, she forced herself to think about the company instead.

SysVal had become one of the most glamorous privately owned companies in the world.

Thanks to Mitch's brilliant financial strategies, the original four partners had each held onto a whopping fifteen per cent of the company. Susannah didn't like to think about how much money they had. The amount was almost obscene.