"Maybe she's his wet nurse," Susannah whispered, unable to take her eyes off the monumental mammaries.
"Are you kidding?" Mitch whispered back. "He'd suffocate to death."
Yank walked up to them and nodded. He refused to have anything to do with the day-to-day business operations of the company; typically, he didn't ask about their meeting with Hoffman Enterprises, but about a problem they'd been having with their keyboards. "What'd the manufacturer say, Sam? Did you talk to them?"
"Uh… static." The woman's presence seemed to have robbed Sam of his capacity for coherent speech.
Yank looked irritated. "Of course it's static. We've known that for weeks. What do they intend to do about it?"
"Do?"
Susannah stepped in and extended her hand to Yank's companion. "Hi, I'm Susannah Faulconer."
"Kismet," the woman replied in a breathy, affected voice.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Kismet Jade. My numerologist picked it out. You're a Sagittarius, aren't you?"
"Actually, no." Susannah quickly introduced her partners, but Kismet barely spared them a glance. She was too busy cantilevering her left breast over Yank's upper arm.
"I'm hungry, Stud Man," she purred. "You gonna buy me something to eat, or do I have to work for my dinner?" She gave him a wicked, moist-lipped smile that clearly indicated exactly what sort of work she had in mind.
Yank calmly adjusted his glasses on his nose. "I'll be happy to get you something to eat. The pizza is excellent, but the burgers are quite good, too."
"Stud Man?" Mitch muttered at Susannah's side.
"I ordered some pizzas," Susannah said quickly.
Kismet walked two vermilion fingernails up the length of Yank's arm. "Play Victors with me while we wait."
"I'm sorry, Kismet, but I don't play Victors."
Kismet began to pout. "Why not? It's the best arcade game that's come out this year."
Yank looked genuinely distressed. "I'm awfully sorry, Kismet. I really don't like to play Victors. Sam is our champion. He's the best Victors player you've ever seen." He gave Sam a pleading glance. "Would you mind playing a game with Kismet?"
"Uh-sure. No problem."
Mitch abandoned Space Invaders and walked with Susannah to the table. "She certainly is a far cry from Roberta," he said. "Sam's going to have a hard time keeping his eyes on the screen."
"So would you," she pointed out as they slid into the booth.
Kismet released a giggling obscenity as Sam annihilated her before she even reached the second screen. She took the quarter Yank handed her.
Susannah studied them. "Have you spent any time at all thinking about what it will mean if this deal goes through?"
"That's about all I've done lately."
"I don't mean the company. I'm talking about how it will change us personally. On paper, anyway, each one of us will be worth a lot of money."
"I have money now. You've had it before. We know what it's like." She studied Yank and Sam. "They don't." "Nothing ever stays the same, Susannah." "Uhm. I guess you're right." She picked up her beer and took a sip. On the opposite side of the room, Kismet arched her arms around Yank's thin neck, pressed her lips to his, and thrust her long experienced tongue deep within his mouth. Susannah experienced a moment both bittersweet and poignant. Mitch was right. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
BOOK TWO. THE MISSION
We have set out together on an adventure to give the world the best computer humankind can produce. We will support and stand by our products, placing quality and integrity above ail else. We relish the adventure because it gives us the opportunity to put ourselves to the test of excellence.
Statement of Mission
SysVal Computer Corporation
Chapter 21
The money came rolling in. Slick, green, fast money. Hot money. New money. Money aching to be spent.
The seventies whirled into the eighties, and the greatest industrial joy ride of the twentieth century picked up speed. Silicon Valley was awash in electronic gold as capitalism struck its finest hour.
Home video games had already captured the imagination of the American family, and by 1982, the idea of having a computer in the house no longer seemed strange at all. Firms sprang up overnight. Some of them collapsed just as quickly, but others left their founders with almost unimaginable riches.
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."