Hot Shot

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Weird wasn't the word for it, she thought as she looked around at the strange assortment of people clamoring for information. Despite the fact that she didn't understand most of the technical references flying around her, she felt their excitement just as Sam had said she would.

  "Everything is open here. Everybody shares whatever they know. It's part of the hacker heritage from the early 1960s-free exchange of information." He pointed toward the young kid arguing with three older men. "At Homebrew, people are judged by what they know, not how old they are or how much money they make. A lot different from big corporations like FBT, isn't it?"

  A shadow passed across his face, and she knew that even while he urged her to set up an appointment with her father, he was regretting the necessity of dealing with FBT. His prejudice rankled.

  "Let me introduce you to Yank."

  As he led her toward the front of the auditorium, he called out greetings to various club members. Just like Steve Wozniak at the back of the room, Yank Yankowski was at the center of a group gazing down at a television set hooked up to a circuit board that looked like the one Sam had been carrying around in his case.

  "It'll take me a few minutes to get his attention. Sometimes when he gets involved, he's-" Sam broke off as he stepped in front of her and spotted the design flashing across the television screen. "Holy shit," he said, his voice full of wonder. "Yank's got color! He did it. He actually got color." He immediately forgot about her and pushed through the men clustered around the card table so he could make his way to Joseph "Yank" Yankowski.

  Yank was one of the more noticeable figures in the room, Susannah decided. Probably four or five inches over six feet, he stood half a head taller than Sam. He wore thick-lensed glasses with black plastic frames and sported a short dark brown crew cut. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, he had a high sloping forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a long nose. His spare torso ended in a pair of pipe-stem legs. With twenty extra pounds of flesh, a decent haircut, contact lenses, and some clothes that didn't look as if they'd been slept in, he might have been moderately attractive. But as it was, he reminded her of someone Paige would have dismissed as a complete nerd.

  Susannah watched as the demonstration continued. Sam had apparently forgotten she was there. He kept throwing questions at Yank and studying the machine on the card table. She took one of the aisle seats and watched the way his hair curled up on the shoulders of his jacket. Her father wouldn't listen to a word Sam had to say once he caught sight of that hair, not to mention the Easter Island earring. Why had she promised Sam that she would try to set up an appointment?

  She didn't want to think about her father, so she concentrated on the lively chaos in the auditorium. The confusion made her remember tours she had taken through the research and development labs at the Castle. Everything was always orderly in the FBT labs. Men with neat hair and necktie knots showing at the top of their white lab coats stood at well-defined work spaces. They spoke to each other respectfully. No one shouted. Certainly no one ever called a coworker's design "a monumental piece of shit."

  What she saw in front of her now verged on anarchy. Vehement arguments were still breaking out. People were climbing up on chair arms and calling out the name of a piece of equipment they wanted to borrow. She remembered the plastic ID badges she had seen on those white FBT lab coats, the special pass even her father had to display. She remembered the locked doors, the uniformed security guards, and she thought about what Sam had said concerning the hacker heritage. Here in the environment of the Homebrew Computer Club, no one seemed to have any secrets. Everywhere she looked, she saw a free exchange of information. Apparently, none of them thought about holding back what they knew for personal profit.

  Sam appeared in the aisle at her side. "Susannah, come on over and meet Yank. That crazy son of a bitch got color without adding any more chips. At the last meeting, he and Wozniak talked about running it off the CPU, but nobody really believed either one of them could do it."

  "Incredible," she said, although she had only the vaguest idea what Sam was talking about.

  "It might take me a minute to get his attention." Sam led her forward. "Yank, this is Susannah. The one I was talking about."

  Yank didn't look up from his screen.

  "Yank?"

  "The son of a gun still won't synch up." Yank's eyes remained glued to what he was doing.

  Sam looked over at her and shrugged. "He gets pretty involved when he's working."

  "I can see that."

  Sam tried again. "Yank?"

  "Why the heck won't it synch up?"

  "Maybe we should save introductions for another time," Susannah suggested.

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  As they began walking toward the back of the auditorium, she wished she hadn't spoken as if they had a future. There wouldn't be another time. After what had happened between them outside, she couldn't possibly see him again.

  "So what do you think?" he asked.

  "It's definitely an interesting group."

  "It's not the only one, either. There are others all around the country-hundreds of hardware hackers getting together to build small computers." He studied her face for a moment. "Can't you see what's happening here? This is the vanguard of the future. That's why it's so important for me to talk to your father. Did you mean it when you said you'd set up that appointment?"

  "I'll try," she said reluctantly, "but he may not agree."

  "I'll give you my phone number. Call me when you arrange it."

  "If I arrange it." She hesitated, knowing he would probably laugh at her, but also knowing her father too well. "There's one thing more…"

  "What's that?"

  "If I can make the appointment, you'll-you'll be careful how you dress, won't you?"

  "Afraid I'll show up like this?"

  She hastily denied the truth. "Oh, no. Of course not."

  "Well, you're right. I will."

  Her forehead creased with alarm. "Oh, no. I'm afraid that would be a terrible mistake. My father's from another generation. He doesn't understand people who don't wear a business suit. Or men who wear earrings. And you'll need to get your hair cut." Even as she spoke the words, she felt a stab of regret. She loved his hair. It seemed a part of him-free and wild.

  "I told you, Suzie. I don't go in for any bullshit. This is who I am."

  "If you want to do business with my father, you'll have to learn to compromise."

  "No!" He spoke the word so loudly that even in the chaos of the Homebrew Computer Club, people turned to look. "No. I don't make compromises."

  "Please, not so loud."

  He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging through her sleeve. "No compromises. Don't you see, Suzie? That's why people fail. It's why this country is so fucked up-why businesses are so fucked up. That's what I love about computers. They're as close as we can get to a perfect world. There aren't any compromises with computers. Something is either black or white. Octal code is absolute order. Three bits of ones or zeros. Either a bit is or it isn't."

  "Life's not like that," she replied softly, thinking of all the compromises she had to make.

  "That's because you won't let it be. You're a chickenshit, Suzie, you know that? You're afraid to get passionate about anything."

  "That's not true."

  "You pull this class A con job trying to keep anybody from seeing how scared you really are. Well, it's a waste of time when you're with me, so don't bother."

  He glared at her for a moment, and then his expression softened. "Look, stop worrying about business suits and haircuts. Just get your old man to talk to me. He was a pioneer in the fifties when he whipped up those early computer patents. I know I can make him understand. I'll make him see the magic. Damn, I'll make him understand if it's the last thing I do!"

  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 to
ward 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."<
br />
  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."