"I'll tell you, I really get along great with kids," said Gallowglass. "If you want me to tend the kids for you sometime, let me know."
"Yeah, right. A programmer who makes more money than God, and I'm going to call him up to babysit for me."
"I mean it, I really like kids, and I get kind of lonely sometimes."
"You don't live with your folks?"
"Dad hates me," said Gallowglass. "I live by myself."
"Hates you? Come on."
"No, I mean it, he says it wheneve r I go home. I walk in the door, he says, 'Damn but I hate you, do you have to keep coming back here?' Mom's OK though. Hey, we're just a good old southern family."
"Sorry. I wasn't trying to pry or anything," said Step.
Gallowglass laughed. "I haven't seen a grown man blush in a long time," he said.
This poor kid, thought Step. A sweet, brilliant, nice kid, and not only does his dad hate him, not only did his mom blow smoke in his face as a baby, but also he's getting seriously ripped off by the very people that he trusts most in all the world. None of my business, I know, but this kid ought to at least know that something else is possible. "Let me tell you something," said Step. "The difference between royalties and bonuses is that a royalty is yours by right, by law, even after you leave the company, while a bonus is a gift and if Ray ever feels like not giving it to you, then that's just too bad for you."
Gallowglass looked at him steadily through those bottle-bottom lenses.
"I just thought you ought to know that," said Step. "In case you ever want to write another piece of software. Maybe on the next one, they'll mention your name somewhere in the manual. It's something we programmers don't get much of-credit for what we do."
"You had your name on Hacker Snack," observed Gallowglass.
"I turned down two software publishers because they wouldn't write that into the contract," said Step.
"That's why you folks here at Eight Bits knew my name. But until this very moment, no one here ever mentioned your name. In fact, I kind of got the impression that Ray wrote Scribe 64 himself."
"You did?" asked Gallowglass.
"Not that he ever said so," said Step.
"Ray can't program a computer to print his name on the screen," said Gallowglass.
"Yeah, well, I didn't know that," said Step. "He never told me.
Hey, not his fault if I got the wrong impression. The main thing is that I think it's important for programmers to get credit for what we do. Like an author getting his name on his own book."
"You weren't the first to get your name above the title, you know," said Gallowglass. "Doug Duncan got his name on Russian Front even before you."
"Yeah," said Step. "I already had my contract signed before Russian Front came out, but he was the first to get his game out that way. "
"I met him at CES last year," said Gallowglass.
"Yeah?"
"I did him like I did you-told him it was a great game but then I laid into one of the flaws in the game."
"Oh, is this something you do to everybody?" asked Step.
"Sure."
"Where'd you learn that technique, from How to Win Friends and Influence People?"
Gallowglass giggled. "I just like to see how people react to it. You took it just fine. In fact, best ever. You actually listened to a kid with glasses and a pocket protector and you didn't know me from shit on the sidewalk."
"What did Duncan do?"
"Well, let's just say that Doug Duncan is the kind of guy who never, ever forgives anybody who dares to suggest that anything he ever did was somewhat less than perfect. He actually got me kicked off a panel at a conference six months later. Said he'd leave and not do his thing there if I was given a microphone at the conference.
He never forgives and he never forgets."
"Maybe that would have taught you not to criticize strangers."
"Hey, it's my flaming-asshole test, and Duncan leaves a trail of ashes wherever he goes."
Step had to laugh. He liked this kid. Maybe a lot. Though if Dicky had overheard their conversation about royalties and credit for programmers, both of them would probably be in trouble. "Hey, uh, how soundproof is this office?" asked Step.
"How the hell should I know?" asked Gallowglass. "But with all these games on, who do you think can hear us?"
Step thought, but did not say, that the games in the room made them talk louder, while the noise they made wouldn't interfere half as much with someone outside the room who wanted to listen in.
Someone knocked on the door.
"Come in!" yelled Gallowglass.
It was Dicky, and for a moment Step felt that rush of guilt that comes when you've just been caught. Dicky had been listening.
"So there you are," said Dicky. "I've been looking all over for you.'
"Me?" said Step.
"I wondered if you wanted to go for lunch with me."
"He can't," said Gallowglass immediately. "He's going to lunch with me, so I can get him up to speed on the new features in Scribe 64."
"And I have to get him up to speed on everything else," said Dicky, looking a bit stern.
"Hey, leave me out of this," said Step. "This is my first day I'll go wherever I'm told."
But Dicky and Gallowglass gazed at each other for a few long moments more, until at last Dicky said,
"Come see me after lunch."
"Sure," said Step. "But you're my supervisor, Mr. Northanger, so my schedule is yours to command."
"Call me Dicky," said Dicky.
"Not Richard?" asked Step.
"Is there something wrong with Dicky?" asked Dicky.
"No," said Step. "I just thought-"
"Dicky is not a nickname for Richard," said Dicky. "It's the name I was christened with."
"I'm sorry," said Step.
"And meeting with you after lunch is what I prefer." Dicky closed the door behind him.
"Man, you're a champion suck-up," said Gallowglass.
Step turned on him. "What are you trying to do, get my supervisor permanently pissed off at me on my first day on the job?"
"Don't take Dicky so seriously," said Gallowglass. "He can't touch a program without introducing a bug into it. The guy's worthless."
Apparently Gallowglass had no concept of the kind of trouble that Dicky could make for a man in Step's position. This kid's relationship was with the owner, and he was the programmer of the bread-and-butter program that was paying everybody's salaries, so he really could treat Dicky however he liked. But that didn't mean Dicky liked it. In fact, if this had gone on very long, by now Dicky probably seethed at anything Gallowglass did or said. And he'd take it out on whoever was closest to Gallowglass who actually needed his job.
"Do me a favor," said Step. "Don't do anything to get Dicky any more ticked off at me than he is."
"Sure," said Gallowglass. "Don't get mad. It's really OK, I promise you. You're in like Flynn around here, everybody's really excited you're actually here. You'll see, it'll be great."
"No sweat then," said Step, though Gallowglass was probably wrong.
"And I really would be glad to tend your kids for you."
"Thanks," said Step.
"I'm really good at it. And I'm not afraid to change diapers."
"Sure," said Step. "I'll talk to DeAnne about it."
"OK. Squeet."
"What?"
"Squeet. It's just a word we use around here. It means Let's go eat, only the way you say it when you say it real fast. Squeet."
"Sure, fine," said Step. "Squeet."
4: Yucky Holes
This is why DeAnne, a westerner all her life, was unpacking boxes in the family room of a house in Steuben, North Carolina: Her earliest memories were of growing up in Los Ange les, in a poorer part of town back in the fifties, when gangs did not yet rule and blacks were still colored people who were just starting to march and had not yet rioted. Her neighborhood and school friends were of an array of races and nationalities. She barely noticed this until she left.
Her father got his doctorate and went to teach at Brigham Young University-the "Y." She was eight years old when she first went to school in Orem, Utah. All the children in her class were white, all of them were Mormon, and many of them were the same children she saw at church on Sunday. This was the fall of 1962, and the conversation among the children turned, eventually, to civil rights and Martin Luther King. Deeny was stunned to hear some of the other children speak of "niggers," a word she had thought was like any other word written on walls-one knew it existed but never said it where God could hear.