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"Undo"

a novel by Joe Hutsko

COPYRIGHT 1996, by Joe Hutsko

March, 1996  [Etext #480]
^toms


*The Project Gutenberg Etext of "Undo", a novel by Joe Hutsko*
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*The Project Gutenberg Etext of "Undo", a novel by Joe Hutsko*
COPYRIGHT 1996, by Joe Hutsko





"Undo"
a novel by
Joe Hutsko



COPYRIGHT 1996, by Joe Hutsko



RESTRICTIONS

The author, Joe Hutsko, retains the copyright to this novel.

This novel may be freely distributed as long as there is no
charge for its distribution. You may read this novel, make copies
of it, and distribute it exactly as it is, unchanged, via any
media, as long as you do not receive money for it.

If you wish to include this novel in a CD-ROM collection, please
contact the author to obtain written permission for its
inclusion.

Thank you.

Joe Hutsko
76703.4030@compuserve.com



"UNDO" ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB

The WWW version of "Undo" is located at
http://www.vivid.com/undo.html

(Special thanks to Nathan Shedroff, Drue Miller, and Anita Corona
of San Francisco-based Vivid Studios, for kindly creating and
maintaining the "Undo" WWW page; you folks are a many splendid
thing.)


NOTE TO NEWTON USERS

A Newton Book edition of "Undo" is available in the Newton/PIE
Forum on CompuServe (GO NEWTON), in the Newton Forum on America
Online (KEYWORD: NEWTON), and in the Newton Books Forum on eWorld
(SHORTCUT: NEWTON).

(Special thanks to Patty Tulloch, of Apple Computer, Inc., for
her kindness, her commitment, and most of all, her friendship.
Without her assistance, the Newton Book edition of "Undo" would
not have been possible.)


DOWNLOADING THE ETEXT EDITION OF "UNDO"

The complete Etext edition of "Undo" may be downloaded from the
World Wide Web in the Project Gutenberg library, located at
http://jg.cso.uiuc.edu/PG/welcome.html 

The Etext edition of "Undo" is also available in the Newton/PIE
Forum on CompuServe (GO NEWTON), in the PDA Forum on America
Online (KEYWORD: PDA), and in the Newton Books Forum on eWorld
(SHORTCUT: NEWTON).



TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTE
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION
PROLOGUE
PART I
   Chapters 1 - 6
PART II
   Chapters 7 - 11     
PART III
   Chapters 12 - 16
PART IV
   Chapters 17 - 20
PART V
   Chapters 21 - 24
THE END



AUTHOR'S NOTE

 This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, companies,
products, places, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, companies
and/or products, or locales, is entirely coincidental.



DEDICATION

This novel is dedicated
to the loving memory of my father

Stephen M. Hutsko



INTRODUCTION TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION

"What a long, strange trip it's been."
-- The Grateful Dead


As nearly as I can remember, I began writing this novel in the
summer of '88, after leaving my job at Apple Computer, Inc.,
where I worked for almost four years for former Apple chairman
John Sculley, as his personal technology advisor. It was a neat
job title and a lot of fun, but somewhere in there I decided I
wanted to become a novelist. Eight years and two title-changes
later, the first novel that I set out to write, known these days
as "Undo," is finally available to readers in this special
electronic edition, free of charge.


Electronic books, or e-texts, have been available for some time
now so this is hardly groundbreaking news. Or is it? For me,
it's a pretty big deal. Primarily because the electronic books
that are available to download from the Internet, the World Wide
Web, and online services such as CompuServe and America Online,
were published previously in hardback or paperback editions, or
both. Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on
the Electronic Frontier," for example, was first published in
hardback by Bantam in 1992, then in 1993 in paperback, also by
Bantam. Sterling wisely retained the electronic rights to his
book so that he may - electronically speaking - do as he pleases
with his work. To the best of my knowledge, Sterling is the first
author to give away his published, in-print book for free on the
Net.

I don't know how many people who download e-books actually read
them from cover-to-cover, though I suspect the number is rather
low. Mainly because the medium isn't as easy on the eyes as
traditional paper-based books. I would bet that most people who
download e-books - and I'm talking about novels, vs. reference
works - browse them part of the way, then delete them from their
computer or PDA. As for works of non-fiction, such as Sterling's
book, or the enormously serviceable "Elements of Style" (which
has recently appeared in e-book format), readers refer to these
works on a need-to-know basis. But novels, they're another story.
A novel is something you curl up with and, if it's a good one,
lose yourself in, much the way Alice found herself getting lost
in that fantastic looking glass. Perhaps the valuable thing about
publishing a novel as an e-text is that it gives readers a taste
for the story and for the author's style, so that the reader can
then go out and purchase the published edition if they want to.

But let's get back to "Undo," and why making it available for
free in this electronic book version is so important to me. The
reason is simple: I want people to read it, and this is - so
far, anyway - the only way to make that happen. For, despite the
hard-fought efforts of not one, not two, but three very reputable
literary agents, the book, unlike Mr. Sterling's works, has not
found a trade publisher it can call home.

Why? The answer to this question is best summed up by Bantam
editor Brian Tart, in his recent letter of rejection:

- - - - - - - - - - 

Ms. Juliet Nicolson
Juliet Nicolson Ltd. Literary Agency
71 Chester Row
London England SW1W 8JL 


Dear Juliet:



Thank you for dropping off Joe Hutsko's ms. while you were in New
York. I must say that I am impressed with Mr. Hutsko's writing
and believe him to be a talent to watch in the future. His story,
however, seemed to me to be a bit stale - it seems to be about
six or eight years too late in the making - as I could see, and
indeed have seen, this kind of corporate intrigue take place in
the world of non-fiction. Because the plot was not as timely as
it would need to be to succeed in the commercial marketplace, I
will have to pass.

Please do keep me informed of Mr. Hutsko's projects, should he
decide to embark upon writing another ms.

Sincerely,
 [Signed]
Brian Tart
Associate Editor


Enc.

- - - - - - - - - - 



Give or take a few sentiments, the gist of Mr. Tart's
encouraging but ultimately downer letter was repeated by all of
the top trade publishing houses. A number of enthusiastic editors
- in particular a young editor named John Michel, who pleaded
with his senior editors to acquire the novel first at
HarperCollins, then later when he moved to Crown (and who has
since become a friend, so something good has survived those
battles) - tried their best to acquire the book, and in one case
an offer was extended to my then-agent, but then two days later
the publisher backed out, apologizing that the editor who'd made
the offer was in no position to do so, please forgive the error
in our ways.

The really troubling thing for me was that when I set out to
write my novel, another novel called "The Bonfire of the
Vanities," by Tom Wolfe, had taken the reading population by
storm. Was not Mr. Wolfe's novel inspired by real-life, by the
bond trading schemes that at the time were making front page
news? Readers of fiction turned the book into a best-seller, and
as one of those readers, I cannot say that I would have read the
book were Tom Wolfe to have written it as a non-fiction title.
That it was inspired by actual characters and events, and turned
by Wolfe's expert hands into a compelling modern-day tale of
murder and mortality, were enough to convince me that I could
pull off the same sort of magic with my own "what if" scenario,
swapping Silicon Valley for New York, and the personal computer
business for bond trading.

That this was my first attempt at writing a novel goes a long way
toward explaining the earliest rejections of the work, then
titled "Silicon Dreams," by editors unlucky enough to have had it
land with a thud on their desks. Somehow I'd lost sight of Mr.
Wolfe's excellent illustration and found myself mimicking, all at
once, the likes of Sidney Sheldon, Arthur Hailey, Jackie
Collins, and, believe it or not, Stephen King (who happens to be
my favorite mainstream read). With so many influences at play in
the already befuddled head of an aspiring young writer with
dreams of hitting the number one spot on all of the best-seller
lists, you (and of course I, this much later) can understand how
my storytelling ability left something to be desired.

Still, I pressed on, heeding suggestions I believed were valid
(such as: "How dare you kill that character in the middle of the
book just because you don't know what to do with her next!").
More than once I put the whole thing on the shelf to give it, and
myself, a breather; to put a little space between us so that our
respective flaws could be considered the next time around with a
clearer, colder eye. Four rewrites later, including a
no-holds-barred excising, I finally had a book, still known then
as "Silicon Dreams," that I believed was as good as it was going
to get.

And then it happened. A publisher bought it. I had the literary
critic Digby Diehl to thank for this good news. At the time Digby
was a book reviewer for "Playboy," and also a daily book
columnist for the Prodigy online service (where I'd done a brief
stint ghost writing for a highly paid high-tech analyst who will
remain unnamed). Via e-mail I asked Digby if he'd read my novel
and, if he liked it, to suggest editors who may want to take a
look at it. Well, Digby'd read it and liked it - enough to
personally pass it along to the head of a new and
small-but-going-for-the-big-time publisher named Knightsbridge
Publishing, an imprint distributed by the reputable Hearst
Corporation. Knightsbridge was founded around the time of the
Gulf War, and made its killing, so to speak, with a mass market
paperback best-seller, "The Rape of Kuwait."

The deal was for both hardback and paperback rights, and the
publisher himself called me to offer $5000 for the whole package,
which I came close to accepting. However, I knew that money
matters were best handled by my agent - despite the fact that I
had fired her a few months earlier for not having sold the novel
herself. Fortunately she forgave me my actions and signed me back
up, compelling Knightsbridge to increase its offer to $25,000.

Too bad neither of us ever saw most of that money.
Unfortunately, Knightsbridge went out of business - but not
without first boosting my expectations through the exhilarating
prepublication process. I was assigned a marvelous editor named
Lynette Padwa, whose keen suggestions helped me to make the book
a better read. There was even a glossy lavender and gold embossed
book jacket with my photo on back atop Digby Diehl's encouraging
blurb, and two months before the publication date I received my
first bound galley copy, to double-check for typesetting errors
before it went off to the printer. The prepublication buzz
started up, and a Hollywood producer named Andrew Karsch, who'd
just released "The Prince of Tides" with Barbra Streisand, was
considering buying a film option on the novel to adapt for a
possible a feature film or television miniseries. And just when
things couldn't possibly look brighter, they did, when both
Kirkus Review and Publishers Weekly asked to see advance reader's
copies of the book.

And then the impossible dream turned into a nightmare. I should
have known the end was near when instead of receiving the
signing advance in one lump sum, as agreed upon, it was coming in
smaller and smaller portions (and then only after my hounding the
accounting department every day telling them my rent and phone
bill were late). You see, I wanted to believe. It was difficult
enough to accept that this was finally happening to me - that my
first novel was about to be published in hardback to building
fanfare. To think otherwise, that something might stop the novel
from being published, wasn't a "happy thought," and anything but
happy thoughts, my agent advised, would seep disagreeably into
the novel's successful launch. But unhappy did things turn when
Knightsbridge announced that it was closing shop.

But I was not to be put off. Armed with ten bound galleys, my
agent appealed to several hardback publishers...and when they
all said no - in almost every case for the same reasons Brian
Tart at Bantam gave us - we tried paperback publishers, lowering
our expectations and hoping then for a paperback original deal.
Twice we came close. First Ace, then Berkley, however editors at
both houses met resistance from editorial boards who felt that
the novel would find no audience.

Feeling dejected and down on my luck, I had to blame someone for
this conspiracy, so once again I contacted my agent and told her
I would be seeking representation elsewhere. This time she told
me she wouldn't take me back if I changed my mind, and who could
blame her. My next agent, who'd left an old and very successful
New York literary agency to start her own agency, was young and
fresh and building a name for herself as one to watch in the
business, with editors chasing her all over the floor at the
first American Booksellers Association conference she attended on
her own. She had a more focused approach: Talk up the book to a
few editors she knew very well and try to get something of a
rivalry going for it - before any of them even read it.
Brilliant thinking; this was the kind of agent I wanted on my
side. Shooting for freshness, we decided to change the novel's
title from "Silicon Dreams" to "Double Click," and off it went to
the waiting editors. The long and short of it: Neither Random
House nor Viking wanted it. Adding insult to injury, one even
suggested that if I were to write a non-fiction book he would
publish that. What a depressing thought.

Before she'd signed me up, my agent and I had agreed to treat our
relationship as a trial agreement. After the rejection, I decided
that though she was fast becoming a very hot agent, mainstream
fiction wasn't her area of expertise; what I really, really
needed was an agent who represented best-selling mainstream
authors.

My friend Gloria Nagy, a splendid novelist with seven novels
under her belt (one of which, "Looking for Leo," is on its way to
becoming a CBS miniseries), put me in touch with her then-agent,
Ed Victor, who is based in London, and enjoys a long client list
of acclaimed literary and mainstream authors. After Gloria's
introduction, I sent my novel to Ed Victor, and although he'd
rejected the novel six years ago, suggesting it needed a lot of
work (advise I took to heart), this time he responded positively,
saying he had enjoyed it.

Yet, because his client list was so full and active, he was at
the time not taking on new fiction writers. He did however
direct me to an agent named Juliet Nicolson, with whom he had
begun a working alliance, and to whom he would be happy to send
my novel for consideration. A spirited British woman, Juliet had
lived and worked in publishing in the United States for many
years, and had decided to return to London to start her own
agency. Several weeks later she faxed me to say that she
thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and that Ed Victor lends his full
support to her should I decide to have her represent me. I called
her back thirty seconds later and shouted "Yes," and, another
long and short of it, despite their combined efforts, their long
careers of landing huge book deals, the novel "Double Click"
still found no publishing house.

After sending the novel to a long list of hardback publishers,
then trying, as before, to secure a paperback original deal,
Juliet felt it was time to put the book away and concentrate on
my next novel, which I had in fits and starts tried to get off
the ground for the last however many years. She stressed that
someday we would sell "Double Click," possibly after my next
novel or the one after that, and assured me that this was how
first novels sometimes turned out (after all, although John
Grisham's blockbuster "The Firm" made him a household name, his
first novel was the small-press-published "A Time to Kill," which
Doubleday/Dell then rereleased to astonishing success). So I put
"Double Click" away once more and went back to writing the video
game strategy guides I'd found my way into to pay the rent, and
that was the end of that...

For about six months, anyway.

Then I was struck by an idea: To rewrite "Double Click" just one
more time, but this time around, fix the number one complaint
that editors had voiced: That the story was too dated. So instead
of playing out the trials and tribulations of my characters on a
stage set in the by-now commonplace (and therefore, predictable)
personal and mainframe computer market, I decided to shift the
backdrop to a more modern setting: advanced handheld computers
and pocket communicators, also known as PDAs, or personal digital
assistants.

I told my agent none of this, and quietly set to reworking the
plot and backdrop to accommodate my change of heart. To make the
story feel fresh to me I changed most of the characters names,
but other than that each of their stories and struggles remained
the same. To ensure that I didn't date the story before I even
finished it, I wove in a number of not quite ready for prime time
technologies, including practical speech synthesis and voice
recognition. The final rewrite in effect put the novel ever so
slightly into the future, and as far as I could tell squashed
the criticism that the story was too stale.

Taking my agent by complete surprise, I sent her the new
manuscript, which I had retitled "Undo" (a contemporary term,
recognizable to readers, that represents the novel's premise and
the underlying theme at play in each of the primary characters'
lives - and, a little closer to home, sums up my own story in
trying to turn around the mysterious forces that have stood in
the way of getting this novel published). Well, she was shocked,
to say the least, and complimented me on my patience and
perseverance.

While my agent was busy reading and considering what to do with
the new and improved "Undo," I'd begun, and have since
completed, my second novel, "r.g.b." The book's first chapter,
which I'd written a few years ago, was excerpted in a small
literary journal called "Puck," and represents for me my "other"
style of writing, which, for lack of a better word, I can only
describe as more...intricate and challenging to read, less
mainstream.

Which brings us to the present. Because "r.g.b." is not what my
agent - make that, former agent - considers commercially viable,
she has decided to drop me as a client, suggesting with a wish of
good luck that I find myself an agent who wants to represent both
of my "voices" - the mainstream style of "Undo," and the less
mainstream style of "r.g.b."

So, here we are. My old friend John Michel has offered to help me
find a new literary agent, and I'm about to begin writing a
screenplay called "Misguided Angel" that I've wanted to write
for years. Plus, I'm already thinking about the second screenplay
I'll write after that, and the next mainstream novel, and the
next less mainstream novel too. So I'm anything but down for the
final count.

Have I learned anything in all these years? Tons. For one thing,
my first two agents weren't so unfit after all - each did the
best job she could in trying to sell the novel, and in the end
even my third, highly esteemed agent met with the same
resistance that the previous two encountered. Second, the
publishing business is more a mystery to me than ever. That this
book has not found a home has somehow turned in my heart from a
troubling fact of life, to something of a testament to optimism,
a proud eccentricity, a character-building battle scar of sorts.
I suppose that's just how we fragile beings adapt to unrealized
expectations, dashed hopes. Still, having just completed my new
novel, I'm all juiced up and feeling groovy, raring to give it
another go - after all, it's all anyone who decides to try to
make a living telling stories can do...try, try again.

Will "Undo" ever find its way between the sheets of pulpy paper
and glossy covers? Will it ever find its way onto the big
screen, or, if I had my choice, the little screen? And, perhaps
most important of all, does this novel really matter to anyone
besides me? The first two questions I have no way of knowing the
outcomes of - both are in Fate's all-knowing hands and only time
will tell.

As for that last question, whether this novel matters to anyone
besides me, I can only answer by saying I hope so.

What you're about to read is a novel I have labored over for a
very long time. It gives me great pleasure to hand it over, once
and for all, to you, gentle reader, whoever, and wherever you
are. I hope you like it.

Joe Hutsko
76703.4030@compuserve.com
January, 1996


PROLOGUE


It was once a sprawling flatland, dominated by fruit tree
orchards and nestled safely between protective hills.

This tranquil scene slowly vanished as trees were felled,
concrete poured, and new seeds planted, each the size of a large
beetle and filled with thousands of microscopic circuits, sown by
a new breed of farmer, with dreams of growing the future.

The new electronic produce, capable of performing millions of
calculations in the blink of an eye, was harvested.

The new technology farmland: Silicon Valley.

Viewed from high above, the Valley looks like a schematic
drawing of the very seeds from which it has grown, thousands of
technology orchards, connected by the roads and highways etched
into the golden surface of the land.



PART I


Chapter 1


As he guided the black BMW coupe onto Highway 280, Matthew Locke
felt as though his mind was spinning as quickly as the wheels
propelling him onward. Whether the one functioned as precisely as
the other did not occur to him.

Appraising his position, he wondered why there were so few cars
to contend with this afternoon. Having lived in Northern
California for more than two years, he had never headed home on
280 without confronting ricocheting tail lights, jockeying for
position in the fast lane. Bright sunlight and warm air rushed
through the sunroof and windows as he gained speed and activated
the cruise control upon reaching sixty-five miles per hour.

Then Matthew noticed the clock, and he remembered he was two
hours ahead of the commuter traffic that congested the highway
every day. He also remembered why.

He took a few deep breaths to relax his nerves. He had tried one
last time, to no avail, to compromise with Peter Jones, the
stubborn young founder of Wallaby Computer, Incorporated. 

Matthew Locke did not want things to end like this. Not exactly.
But there was no alternative. The confrontation that had just
taken place was more like a vicious counseling session between a
distressed married couple than a meeting between two senior
executives of the decade's most important and innovative high
technology company.

Matthew had informed his secretary Eileen that he was walking
over to Peter Jones's office to try to talk with him one last
time about the upcoming board of directors meeting. As Matthew
neared Peter's building, his anxiety sharpened. He paused for a
moment and thought about his place at that very instant,
standing at the very center of the Peter Jones legacy.
Surrounding Matthew were a number of Spanish-style, single-story
buildings, each painted white and topped with a red tile roof.
What began as a seedling idea in a garage nearly a decade ago had
blossomed into the cluster of buildings stretching a quarter-mile
in either direction from where he stood, and even farther, to a
number of locations throughout the world. And now he was on his
way to the epicenter of this campus-like complex that was Wallaby
Computer. Matthew arrived from his journey west with the feeling
that he had entered a fairy tale, so full of wonder was this
place. But now, as he resumed his step along the gently curving
sidewalk that ran up either side of the block, he felt as though
the set were changing. Full of dread, he approached the end, and
the beginning, of the rainbow, where he would confront the man
"Time" magazine called the "Computer Wizard."

Peter's secretary cut short her phone conversation the moment she
saw Matthew. 

"Peggy, is Peter in?"

Before she could respond, Peter's own voice answered from behind
him. "No!"

Matthew turned just in time to see Peter's office door slam
shut. He knocked gently.

"Nobody's home," said Peter Jones in a calm voice from behind the
closed door. "Please leave a message at the tone. Beep." 

Matthew Locke was not amused. Like a father exercising his right
to open any door in his own home, he entered the office.

He was met with the sound of continuous clicking from Peter's
keyboard. The office was small and sparsely furnished, with
simple overstuffed furniture and gray carpeting. Peter was
sitting before his computer at a black lacquered desk against the
wall, his back turned to Matthew. He closed the door behind him
and waited for Peter to turn around.

 "Nobody's home," Peter repeated over the sound of his staccato
typing.

Matthew eased himself into the chair beside the couch,
remembering the first time he had sat in this very office, more
than two years ago, when Jones had hired him to run the company.
My God, Matthew thought, how he has changed - how everything has
changed. 

All at once, the room was silent. Peter Jones turned around in
his chair.

One thing had not changed: Peter's eyes. Deep and black and
seemingly bottomless, certain and sharply focused, like the eyes
of a young boy determined to win a swimming race. Matthew felt
his toes grip at nothingness inside his dock shoes, felt his feet
slide silently backward a fraction of an inch across the natty
carpet, as if he were taking a step back from the edge of the
board for fear of diving once again into that dark pool. And with
this thought came another...of water, and splashing, thrashing,
losing grip... Loss. Determined, Matthew quickly sobered himself
of the troubling memories that had momentarily distorted his
focus. 

He stood. "Peter, unless you and I can come to some
understanding about how we're going to run the business, I'm
going to suggest some drastic changes at tomorrow's board
meeting." To avoid Peter's eyes he glanced at the computer
screen. 

Peter smoothly turned the screen's dimmer knob and stared at
Matthew. "There'll be some changes, all right," Peter said.

The gravity of the younger man's tone went unnoticed by Matthew.
His attention had been captured by what he'd seen on the screen
before it darkened. It appeared that Peter was working on some
sort of graphic. A drawing with little boxes. Probably a sketch
of a new computer design, Matthew concluded. The pang of pity he
felt changed to frustration when he recognized the root of the
problem: Why can't he understand that this is exactly what he
should be doing, designing new computers, and let me run the
company? 

"It's too late for any more discussion," Peter said, flicking
away the shock of dark brown hair hanging over his brow. "I know
all about your plan to suggest a reorganization, Matthew. What,
you're surprised? I know everything that goes on here." He made a
disgusted noise. Then, as if to signal the end of the
discussion, he took a pen in hand and directed his attention to a
legal pad. With intense concentration, he began drawing a line
spiraling round and round from the middle of the page outward. 

"It's not too late. That's what I'm trying too tell you,"
Matthew said. "I don't think you realize the severity of things
around here. How bad it's gotten."

Peter began humming a tune to himself.

"The board is very disturbed about the schedule slips, and
furthermore, the weak sales - "

Peter's meditation ended. The pen flew within inches of
Matthew's face. He leaped to his feet. "Don't you dare come into
my office and tell me how to run my company." The younger man was
all tensile, his body resonating with indignation. "Now leave me
alone! Just get out of here!"

Matthew held his place. "Peter, please."

"Out!" 

It was hopeless. There was no way Matthew would be able to reach
him. "Okay, Peter," Matthew said with a resigned sigh. "You
win." 

The room was silent. Peter stood there with his eyes closed,
waiting for Matthew to go. 

Matthew turned to leave, then paused, his hand on the door
latch. He waited half a minute, until Peter opened his eyes and
looked at him.

"What?" Peter asked, wearily.

"That's what I want to know."

"What's what you want to know?"

"What went wrong. Why." Prepared for more flailing, Peter's
reaction surprised him.

Without looking at Matthew, Peter came toward him. He picked up
the pen he had moments before used as a missile. He lowered
himself down onto the sofa and casually crossed one leg over the
other. He held the pen bearing the Wallaby logo by each end
between his fingers. Emphatically, yet softly, he explained. "You
don't understand. You just don't get it. You don't know the truth
about inventing products like Wallaby's. In the long run, it's
all that really matters. That the products are true to the
visions that inspire them." He gently placed the pen in his
pocket, shrugged. His glazed eyes drifted across the room to rest
on his docked Joey. "My visions are my products."

He remained there for a few moments with a rapt, slightly
smiling expression lighting his face, gone inside himself to a
place where, the way he saw it, everything was sharp and clear,
where he could see things no one else could see. 

The only thing Matthew saw was a man gone. Gone mad, perhaps.
Although they'd had arguments in the past, Peter had never seemed
so unhinged. In a way, Matthew felt relieved. Having witnessed
Peter's distracted state, he was resolved to proceed with his
plan.

The young founder blinked. He looked at Matthew with clear eyes.
He was back. He bit his lower lip, and with an expression at once
sad and perplexed, he said, "What is it that you see, Matthew?
What is your vision?"

The car phone jingled, snapping Matthew out of his musing.

Was it Peter? If so, he could turn around at the next exit and be
back in just a few minutes. Though he had every intention of
proceeding with his plan as it now stood, Matthew would
nevertheless give Peter until the very last minute to see things
his way.

"Peter?"

"Matthew, it's Eileen." His secretary. "I called Peter's office.
Peggy said you left ten minutes ago. What happened?" 

"I've decided to go home for the rest of the day," he said. "If I
have any calls - "

"You already do. Laurence Maupin."

"Is it urgent?"

"The two of you were scheduled to discuss tomorrow's meeting.
She's in your office now, holding on the line."

"Okay. Put her on."

There was a click, then Laurence's voice. "Hi, Matthew. I've
prepared a short press release to send over the business wire
after tomorrow's board meeting." She spoke quickly, considerate
of his time. "It reads: 'Wallaby Computer, Incorporated today
announced a realignment of executive responsibilities. In
addition to his current position as president and CEO, Matthew
Locke will now assume the responsibilities of chairman of the
board, and vice president of the Joey division...'"

At this last, his heart suddenly quickened. "'Peter Jones,
former chairman and cofounder of Wallaby, will stay on as the
company's leading visionary, focusing on advanced technologies
and future product designs.'

"Still there?" she asked, giving him an opportunity to comment.

"Go on."

She continued immediately. "'Locke has expressed great
confidence in Jones's ability to drive Wallaby to the position of
technology leader in the desktop computer and personal
interactive assistant industry.'" When she finished reading
Matthew's statement, she paused. "Is that suitable?"

"Yes. That's fine. Thank you."

"If you'd like to conduct any phone interviews with key press
constituents, I'll need to know that now so I can make
arrangements."

"No. None. What you've done is fine for all parties."

He waited to be sure she was through, then said, "Thank you,
Laurence." Before taking her call he had been eager to be alone
so he could mentally review his plan, but now he felt oddly
unwilling to end their conversation. Something about her voice,
the words about him spoken so decidedly, was having a softening
effect on his anxious mood. 

"Listen," he said, "when this settles down, let's spend some time
together to work on my strategy for the press and Wallaby's new
PR plans."

"Absolutely."

"Great. And thanks again," he said. With nothing left to discuss,
he said good-bye. As he moved the phone from his ear he heard her
call his name. "Yes?"

"I almost forgot," she said, slightly exasperated. "Where do you
get your car serviced?"

"My car?" Matthew said, a little dumbfounded.

"Yes. My steering is making a terrible noise. It's a BMW, like
yours. Well not exactly like yours. I mean, mine is a lot
smaller."

"Wallaby does mine," Matthew said. "They arrange for its service,
near my house. The place is called Bavaria Motor Systems, in
Woodside. It's just off Woodside Road."

"Right. I know where that is," Laurence said. "It sounds more
like a high tech company than a car shop, doesn't it? I'm finally
getting used to all these sys's and gen's and tech's and mem's,"
she said with a chuckle. 

Her laughter caught Matthew by surprise. Until now, Laurence had
conducted herself in a strictly-business fashion. In light of the
seriousness of the situation he faced with Wallaby, her easy
laughter was a welcome breath of fresh air. He hadn't heard
laughter, or laughed himself, in a long time. He thought of
perhaps thanking her for... But for what? For laughing? Sure.

"Well, again, thank you, Laurence," Matthew.

"No, thank you," she said. "And Matthew, you can call me Lauri if
you like. It makes things less formal."

"All right. Good-bye, Lauri..." And for the second time he heard
her call his name as he went to hang up the phone. "Now what?" he
said, affably.

"I'm sorry, Matthew. There's one more thing. The picture in your
office, of your wife and her horse. Where is that? I mean, where
does she keep her horse?"

"You ride? I had no idea. It's Woodside Ranch. About a half-mile
north of the BMW shop. There's a turnoff, with a sign. You can't
miss it. That it?"

"Yes," she replied.

"You're sure?" He laughed. "Okay, then. Good-bye." He snapped the
phone back onto its cradle and settled into the comfort of the
leather seat. Tomorrow's meeting. The press. The future.
Laurence's certainty and control helped him strengthen his own
hold on the immediacy of tomorrow's meeting, and his overall
plan.

His plan. He'd spent the past six months analyzing and plotting
its current phase. If the vote was successful, Peter Jones would
be removed from his position as Wallaby's chairman and
engineering division vice president. Company-wide responsibility
would be turned over to Matthew.

All the pieces were in place. To begin with, Matthew had gained
tentative agreement from Wallaby's vice chairman, Hank Towers, to
consider "repositioning" Peter within the company. He had then
spent many hours with each member of the executive staff over the
last several months, subtly gaining their confidence as he
explained his strategy for the company's future, one that would
increase Wallaby's profitability and competitive position in the
industry.

Dissolving the executive staff's confidence in Peter Jones as a
leader, while building its trust and gaining its loyalty for
himself as company president, had been an extremely delicate
operation. Resistance from even one member of the executive staff
could have prevented his plan from advancing to its present
place.

The first phase of Matthew's plan, to gain support after his
arrival at Wallaby, had been successful. He had become a credible
and qualified champion of Wallaby's high technology platform of
computer products, a status he would have never reached without
Peter's focused coaching and friendship.

Just a year and a half earlier, "Business Week" had touted Peter
and Matthew as "The Brains and Brawn of Silicon Valley." Gracing
the cover was a jocular photo of the two, an insightful,
undisguised shot whose overall effect was similar to that of a
Hollywood buddy film promotion poster. On the left stood Peter,
wearing jeans and a white Oxford shirt. His shirtsleeves were
rolled to the elbow and his arms were folded nimbly across his
chest. Of slight build and tenuous stance, his physical composure
was that of a lanky high school student, yet his eyes had the
depth of a twenty-coat lacquer finish. They were the eyes of a
man older than his years, whose mind performed at a
cycles-per-second rate equal to that of three men combined. He
was thirty-one.

Beside Peter stood Matthew, one arm hung loosely over the younger
man's shoulder. He wore khaki pants and a chambray work shirt
whose sleeves, like Peter's, were rolled to the elbows. The
sparse, light-brown hair, high, time-worn forehead, and the
creases of his face, especially around the eyes, did not belie
his age. His eyes, more gray than blue, burned with the
determination of a college graduate who, with diploma fresh in
hand, sprints eagerly toward The Challenge. He was forty-two.

Tensions began to surface just six months after that cover shot
appeared on newsstands, when after its introduction, the Joey
personal interactive assistant met with only mild commercial
success. Though the device won accolades from the industry for
Peter and his team of engineers for its breakthrough technology,
buyers were skeptical. The dream that Peter shared with Matthew
in their first meeting was to make the Joey the hottest-selling
portable computer device in the world, displacing market share
completely dominated by Wallaby's biggest competitor,
International Computer Products. 

The dream was never realized. Though users of ICP's own
best-selling portable computer admitted that the Joey was
technically more innovative and expertly designed, there were few
key software applications available for it at the time of its
introduction. At the root of the delay was a frustrating paradox:
While the Joey was by far the easiest to use portable interactive
assistant, it was also the most difficult computer to develop
software programs for. The Joey employed a radical new method of
operation and many of the software developers had trouble
learning the new system. As sales of the Joey dropped off, the
pressure on Peter's team grew more intense. Enhancements that
would make the Joey easier to develop programs for were behind
schedule, and Matthew held Peter responsible for the delays.

During this precarious period, Peter ran for cover. Embarrassed
by his own shortsightedness, he left Matthew to contend with
Wallaby's share-sensitive executives and board members. It wasn't
unnatural for the president of a company to contend with its
board of directors, but it was radically different from the way
things had worked at Wallaby in the past. Peter Jones held a dual
role as chairman of the board and vice president of the Joey
division. Until the development dilemma, Peter had always been
the primary voice in front of the board. So while Peter recovered
from his temporary loss of balance, Matthew soothed board
members' nerves by committing all of his energies to building a
strategy that would move Wallaby back into a secure, high-sales
position. He assured them that Peter was on track and would come
through with the necessary improvements. He produced impressive
development trend studies that described how it often took two
years for a new product to gain market acceptance. His methodical
East Coast style had an interesting effect on the anxious
principals: They believed him. In the past, Peter has wowed them
with his enthusiasm and technological prowess. There had never
been cause to question the young man's business acumen; the
company was less than ten years old and had been profitable for
just as long. But suddenly, Peter's passionate efforts seemed
empty; the numbers were declining. Those numbers needed turning
around, and Matthew was the board's man. Now that he had their
confidence, it was time to give them an ultimatum.

It was really quite simple. Matthew would propose that Peter be
removed as the leader of both Wallaby and the Joey group. Matthew
would personally oversee the accelerated development of the new
Joey Plus, enforcing a strict schedule to complete its design and
production in just three months. Matthew knew Peter that would be
utterly shocked by his proposal at tomorrow's meeting. Though
Peter would be stripped of all his power, Matthew hoped that
after his feelings healed, the executive staff and board of
directors would be able to persuade him to concentrate his
visionary skills in a research capacity, which Matthew could draw
upon when the core Joey technology began showing signs of
obsolescence.

To fulfill his promise to fix the company's stalled position,
Matthew intended to unify the engineering groups, ending the
elitist conditions Peter had created when he began developing the
Joey more than three years ago. Peter had chosen only the
brightest, most proven people and moved his new team to a private
building, which he had surrounded with tight security. Only the
Joey team had been allowed to enter the building, a first in
Wallaby history. Before the Joey project, employees had been free
to enter every building. Most employees had no reason to enter
buildings other than those in which they worked, but the freedom
of being allowed to do so represented the company's trust in its
people. Matthew, of course, was free to roam wherever he pleased,
and he instantly understood the reason for Peter's rule the first
time he entered the off-limits building. Peter had created a
project-team paradise. The Joey engineers were supplied with
exotic and luxurious amenities that Peter felt nurtured their
creativity and rewarded them for their intense work.

Matthew intended to put an end to the Joey team's Club Med work
environment by integrating it with the company's other
engineering divisions. A newly consolidated engineering division
would focus its energies on expediting completion of the Joey
Plus.

In the quiet of his own car, the plan seemed logical and simple.
But as he thought about tomorrow's meeting and about the
confrontation that would ensue, he became aware of the dampness
under his arms and his flush face. 

He changed lanes as he passed the Woodside exit. High golden
hills, peppered every ten or so acres with colossal mansions,
passed on either side as sidled to the right lane. Passing the
auto repair shop, he thought of Laurence Maupin. She had been
hired into the newly created position as his personal public
relations assistant one month ago. The timing was perfect for
positioning her loyalties in his favor. He had revealed to her
his plan for tomorrow's meeting, and asked her to secretly
prepare his press statement under the assumption that everything
would go perfectly. There was no guarantee that tomorrow's board
decision would favor him over Peter, yet he was betting his
career on his plan. He reminded himself of his discussion with
Laurence a few minutes earlier, about the over-and-done-with tone
of her voice as she read Matthew his statement on the other end
of the line, speaking in a nearly conspiratorial tone as she sat
in his office, holding his telephone in her hand. He felt his
spirits lift.

He felt something else lift, too. His mind's eye fixed on an
image of the young and beautiful Laurence sitting at his desk,
her hand clasped around his handset, her lips close to the
mouthpiece, her words forging a new alliance between them. He
focused on his memory of her hands. Was there enough time? He
pressed his palm to his groin and considered opening his trousers
and taking care of himself, as he sometimes did on his way home
from work. Usually the act required about as much time as it took
to reach the Palo Alto exit, but he had passed that turnoff miles
ago and was nearly home. No, he would have to let his desire go
unsatisfied...though instead of letting go, he indulged his
imagination anyway, a little longer, fantasizing. Had she touched
his computer while she sat there talking to him? Had she rested
her soft, pretty hand on his mouse and slipped its pointer across
the screen to his private folders, opened his files? The only
other hands as lovely as hers were those of his wife...

Were.

And with that recollection, his daydream terminated. He had
arrived at the beginning of the road that wound its way up to his
home. The car's transmission automatically down-shifted as it
climbed. And so did his mood. As if commiserating with the
machinery that had helped him reach this point, Matthew let out
an exhausted sigh.

On either side he passed huge concrete gates that fronted the
estates of some of the most powerful entrepreneurs and business
people in Silicon Valley, including Peter, whose home was only a
half-mile from his own. It had been more than six months since he
had been to Peter's home. And ever since Matthew's wife Greta had
told him more than a year ago that she did not want Peter in her
house again, Matthew and Peter spent less and less time together.
Recently they had only seen each other in formal meetings.
Looking back now, Matthew was actually appreciative for his
wife's restriction. After all, had it not been for her, he might
never have distanced himself far enough from Peter to get where
he could realize his own power.

He made a mental note. When all of this was settled, he would do
something nice for her. 


* * *


Reaching for the door handle of the dark blue 500SL convertible,
the parking attendant was momentarily struck with a small
surprise: A rather gaudy but finely tailored purple gloved hand,
wildly flapping at him like some exotic bird. Before he had a
chance to open the door, the woman to whom the gloved hand
belonged was climbing out of the car. She was dressed in black
designer sweats and lavender sport sneakers. Purple sunglasses
shielded her eyes, and a madras scarf protected her hair from the
wind. As she turned and reached inside the car for her purse, the
attendant understood at once, from this angle, that she was not
wearing this outfit to pursue an athletic regimen. Still in his
first two weeks of summer employment, he had begun to regard the
ladies who shopped here with amusement and fascination. He paid
special attention to mannerisms and hair color. The intended
overall look sought by women like this one was, he had come to
believe, that of carefree, understated elegance. Most of them
pulled it off beautifully. But this one? Not quite. The gloves
were definitely a first, and a definite give away. She wasn't the
type, he was certain of it. Too unrefined.

Or so he thought, until she removed her scarf. He observed the
loose chestnut ringlets of hair, which appeared to be her natural
color. Pausing for a moment, she casually shook down the curls,
which were surprisingly long and appeared soft to the touch. At
the same time she pointed her face directly up into the shaft of
sunlight cutting through the rows of large buildings on either
side of the street, and with obvious pleasure basked in the
warmth for an instant. The effect was striking, as though the
rays somehow transformed her into something more attractive,
which imposed a temporary snag in his analysis. Until she spoke.

"I'll be just a few secs," she said, gesturing at the store with
her Chanel wallet. "I have to pick something up."

"Of course, madam," the attendant said, touching his hat. Indeed,
the woman's tone was all wrong, too rough, as was her accent, or
lack thereof. Yes, his initial estimation was correct. Her wealth
was definitely nouveau. The worst wealth of all.

A second attendant smiled as he opened the large glass door that
announced Gump's, in gold leaf lettering. Removing her
sunglasses, she headed straight for the elevator. As she waited
for its arrival, she lifted an antique hand mirror from a
display. Taking in her own reflection, she shook her hair and
checked her teeth. Her brown, Bette Davis eyes grew even more
expansive at the discovery of a pinpoint blemish just above her
eyebrow. She touched it and clucked. Swearing under her breath,
she returned the mirror to the glass counter and replaced her
sunglasses. She had to get out of these bright lights. 

A bell chimed, signaling the arrival of the elevator. Turning
from the counter, she noticed a small, smiling elderly woman.

"Madam, can I show you some of our other fine silver mirrors?"

Greta Locke spun to hold the elevator door open. Wearing an
expression intended to come off as playful, she turned back to
the saleswoman. But when she noticed the woman staring at her
gloved hand holding the jutting elevator door, Greta's response
was anything but playful. "The last thing I need is an expensive
silver mirror to remind me to stop eating chocolate."

She boarded the elevator.

"Why Mrs. Locke, what a pleasant surprise!" said the attractive
salesman, all smiles, as Greta approached. He stood before the
Steuben crystal room situated at the end of the mercifully
subdued second level. Behind him there stood a row of ghostly
illuminated glass cases containing spectacular pieces of some of
the world's finest crystal. His modest platinum name badge said
he was Mr. William Armond.

"Billy," Greta said, pausing one step before proceeding past him,
"there's something I'd like to see in the Houston collection." 

"Of course," Mr. Armond said, trailing her. He glanced at his
associate, Ms. Olson, whose territories were the Lalique and
Baccarat rooms. Reluctant to catch his eye, she pursed her lips
and busied herself at her desk, addressing small, golden
catalogs.

Greta Locke was Mr. Armond's best customer, one of Gump's best
customers, and everyone who worked there knew it. She had spent
several hundred thousand dollars at Gump's in the two years Mr.
Armond had had the good fortune of knowing her. Last year she had
arranged a deal between Gump's and Wallaby, Incorporated, to
purchase corporate gifts at a special quantity discount. A
discount of five percent can be quite sizable, she noted to her
husband, when he purchased eight Steuben flower vases last year
as Christmas presents for the wives of the Wallaby board members,
at four hundred dollars apiece. 

She removed her sunglasses and studied the curves and artwork of
a large bowl displayed in the glass case. She'd had her eye on it
for some time now. It was a James Houston original, engraved with
painstaking detail. Circling the bowl's rim were salmon swimming
against an invisible current, surrounded by tiny air bubbles. The
piece was breathtaking.

"Perhaps a closer inspection?" Mr. Armond said, producing a small
ring of keys. But before he managed to insert the small key into
the case's lock, Greta stopped him.

"Don't bother. I'll take it."

"A splendid piece, Mrs. Locke," he said. "May I have it
gift-wrapped for you?"

"No," she said, "That's not necessary." Without removing her
gloves, she deftly slid her credit card out of her wallet and
handed it to him. "It's a gift to me. For all my hard work." She
lingered behind him as he moved to his clerk's desk. "Anything
new?" she asked, over her shoulder.

"There are some lovely new crystal animals," said Mr. Armond,
indicating one of the other cases. The collection consisted of
exquisite, palm-size creatures. A dog...a cat...a bird...a bear.
All resting peacefully on a black velvet blanket. 

She seemed uninterested; she'd gotten what she came for. However,
as she was exiting the parlor, a little farther along the
display, she saw something, reclining on a green felt pasture,
that captivated her attention. Larger than the other pieces, but
small enough to hold in two hands, there lay a knobby colt, its
translucent mane flared back from its muscular neck, forever
frozen in the wind. She thought of her own horse, a gift from
Matthew when they had moved to California. Wouldn't this crystal
beauty look wonderful beside her bed, on the night stand....

She remembered her car, double-parked out front. Another day
perhaps, she decided, seating herself before Mr. Armond at an
antique table while he called downstairs and instructed one of
the vault attendants to have the piece brought to her. 

"Billy, I've worked so hard," she said, fingering her forehead
above her eyebrow. "This is my reward." 

"Of course you have," Mr. Armond said. "The piece you have
purchased is one of a limited number created by Mr. Houston.
He'll be pleased to know it will be enjoyed by you and Mr.
Locke."

"People just don't know how difficult it is being married to a
successful businessman. It absolutely drains a woman. I swear, I
feel like half the time I do his thinking." She removed her right
glove and inspected her nails, and, as the credit card machine
beeped twice, she casually turned hand over, palm up, to receive
the sales slip.

Mr. Armond transcribed the approval code onto the form and handed
her the pen. As she signed her name, he mentally calculated his
five-percent commission on the sale: $1,200.

Ms. Olson, carrying the small catalogs in a stack that reached
from her midriff to her chin, managed a polite nod as she passed.

"Darling," Greta called, pointing in Ms. Olson's direction with
her index finger. 

As the saleswoman turned, her expressionless face metamorphosed
into a struggled smile. "Yes?"

"Can I please have one of those?"

"Madam, I am certain you will receive one in the mail shortly,"
Ms. Olson said. She blinked delicately, twice. 

"I want it now."

Mr. Armond jumped from his seat. "Of course." He slid one from
the pile. Quickly discarding the little protective jacket, he
handed the booklet to Greta, who immediately began flipping
through it.

"Thank you, dear," she said, without looking up. 

Mr. Armond returned the addressed, empty coverlet to Ms. Olson's
pile and sent her off with a grateful wink. He collected the
cord-wrapped box containing her new bowl from a stock attendant,
and handed it to Greta. "Anything else today, Mrs. Locke?"

"I think this is all for today."

"Always a pleasure, Mrs. Locke."

She strolled out onto Post Street, the pleasantly heavy box
beneath one arm. Her car had been moved several yards up the
block and into a loading zone. She waved her scarf to the parking
attendant, but he was already on his way to the vehicle.

He held the car door for her, and she placed the box on the
passenger seat and secured it with the seat belt. Tying her
scarf, she realized she had forgotten the catalog. She had left
it on the clerk's desk. No fuss. She would receive one in the
mail soon anyway. 

Climbing into the car, she smiled, recalling the day she drove it
off the parking lot. Another little gift to herself, for all her
hard work.


* * *


Now that Matthew Locke was gone from his office, Peter Jones
twisted the brightness knob on his computer monitor and returned
to his work.

Beneath his hand he rolled the mouse and pressed its single
button, causing the screen to scroll. Small connected boxes drawn
on the electronic document rolled from the bottom of the display
to the top. He stopped when he arrived at the top of the chart.
With the pointer he selected the uppermost box and clicked the
mouse twice on the name that currently occupied it. Peter looked
at the highlighted name for a moment, then pressed the Delete
key. MATTHEW LOCKE disappeared instantly.

Peter smiled to himself at the literalness of this small,
effortless action, of deleting from his computer the very man who
threatened to ruin its bright future. He typed in his own name
into the vacant box and, beneath it, added the word ACTING before
the title that was already there, PRESIDENT & CEO. Beneath this
box were others, connected to the uppermost with straight black
lines, each titled with the name of the corresponding division
vice president. His name was titled in one of these other boxes
as, VICE PRESIDENT, JOEY.

The man Peter had hired two years ago to act as his partner had
failed. Matthew Locke's role at Wallaby, defined by Peter and
Hank Towers, Wallaby's cofounder and vice chairman, was to act as
the company's business leader and Peter's assistant. While Peter
understood the power of his own vision and the importance of his
skill at inventing remarkable products, he admitted to himself
that he lacked the business experience to develop the company
from a handful of engineers to a large and profitable
organization. Which was why he had decided to hire Matthew Locke.

But something had gone wrong.

Matthew, for all of his management strength, did not fit in at
Wallaby the way Peter would have liked. Looking back, he
remembered Matthew's suggestion, about a year ago, that perhaps
Wallaby's portable computers could become more compatible with
ICP's systems. That was what had started Peter wondering if, in
the long run, Matthew was right for Wallaby. Dismissing Matthew's
idea as a naive insult, Peter only wished now that he had paid
better attention. How could Matthew think Wallaby should abandon
its founding vision of giving high technology power to the
individual with a personal computer or portable interactive
assistant in favor of creating mere peripherals that connected to
ICP's dictatorial, impersonal desktop and mainframe computers?
What's more, at about this time their friendship began to
deteriorate. Up until the disagreement over the company's
direction, the two had spent nearly every Saturday afternoon
together, going for long walks or drives. Apparently because of
Peter's reaction, Matthew stopped spending Saturday afternoons
with him. When Peter would ring the gate bell at Matthew's
mansion, the housekeeper would divulge that Mr. and Mrs. Locke
had gone out for the day. Peter had felt wounded. Matthew had
been the first person with whom he had experienced any sort of
real friendship. Or so he'd thought. Scolding himself for having
allowed his feelings to become personal, he displaced his hurt by
pouring himself more intensely into his work, in an all-out
effort to substantiate his side of the contention that had cost
him his only friend.

The real challenge now was to get the Joey Plus quickly out the
door and into the user's hands and, put to rest once and for all
the criticism the original Joey had received. The Joey personal
interactive assistant was the product of three years of hard work
and engineering magic. Peter, the inventor of the original
Wallaby Mate personal computer, had created the Joey as a
radically different and intuitively designed portable computer.
Named after the Australian word for baby kangaroo, the Joey was
compact and thin and easy to transport, and it lasted for days on
a single charge. In its simplest configuration, the basic Joey
was about the size of a slender hardback book and almost as
light, and it slipped easily into a briefcase. It worked as
either a traditional notebook computer, or as a keyboard-less
slate computer, and its built-in modem made it easy to access
on-line services and the Internet, or send and receive faxes.
Users interacted with Joey using either a stylus by "drawing"
directly on its color active-matrix screen, or with the full-size
keyboard and trackpad that stealthily slid out from its
underside. Or with a combination of both stylus and keyboard, if
they preferred. That was what made the Joey so unusual and
compelling - its flexibility. Especially when the owner returned
with it to the office, or took the Joey home. There, the Joey
attached easily to a variety of snap-on peripherals that turned
the base unit into a more powerful desktop system. Expanded
keyboards. Mice. Monitors. Printers. Scanners. CD-ROM players.
Stereo speakers. Enhanced network peripherals. And most any other
peripheral device available for ordinary personal computers.

But the machine had its faults. Though it was technically
superior to ICP's portable computers, software developers
hesitated to invest the costly technical and human resources
required to create new programs for it. Because its design was so
new and different, many software developers were fearful of
straying beyond the safe boundaries of developing programs for
anything but ICP's series of computers, regardless of their
plain-vanilla functionality. In the few short years since they
had become players in the portable computer industry, ICP had
attained an installed base of millions of portable systems
worldwide, which dwarfed the few hundred thousand Joey systems
Wallaby had sold since its introduction. To a software developer,
ICP's user base numbers were too great to ignore, regardless of
what the future potential of a device like the Joey might be.

Peter clicked the print button on the computer screen. The laser
printer on his desk hummed. A few moments later the revised
company organization chart rolled out of the printer.

Nowhere in the drawing did Matthew Locke's name appear.

In tomorrow's board meeting, Peter intended to surprise the team
by proposing his newly drawn organization. Peter himself would
temporarily fill the president-and-CEO slot until a qualified
replacement was found. Though Peter had spent little time with
the members of his executive staff over the past few months, he
knew that they had faith in him. He was their leader, the
company's crown jewel. In founding his company he had founded an
industry, one that had made every member of his senior executive
staff a multimillionaire. Without a doubt, their loyalties rested
with him. Any other possibility never occurred to him; he had too
many more significant issues to contend with, like leaky
batteries.

Leaving his office, Peter stopped for a moment to appreciate the
sharp and elegant lines of the Joey prototype resting on the
shelf beside his desk. In just two months, according to his plan,
the world would finally benefit from his original Joey vision:
the new Joey Plus. His plan for providing the Joey engineering
group with more engineers was precisely what was going to move it
off his shelf and onto buyers' desktops.

Peter's secretary Peggy looked past her computer screen as she
heard his office door close.

"I'm leaving for the day," he said.

Peggy had worked for Peter since the company began. She had been
nineteen years old then, a year younger than Peter, and one of
the first employees in the company. Like Peter, she had attained
massive wealth when the company had had its public stock
offering. She wore a colorful Wallaby T-shirt and jeans, and one
would never guess that this young woman, worth slightly more than
one million dollars, was executive assistant to the man who had
started the fastest growing new market in the computer industry.
However, looking at Peter's longish hair, customary faded blue
jeans and Oxford shirt, would anyone guess that he was worth
eight hundred million dollars?

Before heading to his car, Peter decided it wouldn't hurt to
bolster his confidence in his plan by checking the status of a
few key Joey Plus projects.

"How's it coming?" Peter asked, leaning over an engineer's
shoulder.

"Good," Paul Trueblood answered. He blew at the trails of smoke
that rose before him as he lifted a soldering iron.

"I think I've got the battery problem fixed." The engineer
returned his attention to the electronic components scattered
about his worktable.

"Great," Peter said, noticing the pile of tiny batteries beside
the main Joey unit. Each was charred with a caramel-colored
resin. In the original Joey design the battery was located too
close to the power recharger unit, and occasionally the excessive
heat caused the battery to leak and burn.

Peter had tremendous faith in Paul and his work, and he was one
of the first engineers who had started the company with Peter.
The battery problem would be fixed, and thinking about it
reminded Peter of a similar problem that Paul had corrected
several years ago, in the all-in-one Mate personal computer.
Unlike the Joey's battery, which powered the unit away from the
desktop, the Mate's battery was deep inside the computer, and its
sole purpose to keep track of the date and time when the computer
was turned off. During extended use, the Mate's interior would
occasionally reach high temperatures, causing the tiny battery to
leak. The obvious solution was to install a small cooling fan
inside the computer, like every other brand of computer had. But
Peter wouldn't allow it. They said it couldn't be done, that you
couldn't build a computer without putting in a small noisy fan to
keep it cool. "If they say it can't be done, that's because
they're not smart enough to figure out a way to do it," was
Peter's standard reply. That was how Peter Jones challenged his
engineers to do the impossible. After two days of no sleep, and
having sustained himself on soda and popcorn, Paul had revealed
to Peter a design that would cool the machine by natural
convection.

Peter leaned in over Paul's shoulder for a closer look. "I'd sure
hate to see us go back to the drawing board on that sweet little
power recharger..." he said, hanging a mild warning in the
burnt-smelling air of the engineer's office.

"No problem," Paul said, and blew out a breath that hinted mild
frustration. Not catching the drift, Peter stayed right where he
was, perched over the engineer like a hawk. Paul set down the
soldering iron and retrieved a Walkman from his drawer. Loading a
tape into it, he held the headphones just above his ears and
raised his eyebrows at Peter, as if to ask if he had any more
comments.

"All right, all right," Peter said, grinning behind raised palms.
"Just making sure we do it right." He left the engineer with his
head bobbing rhythmically through little smoke clouds. It was
little triumphs like this that excited Peter, doing things people
said couldn't be done. The engineers were the only people in the
company for whom Peter felt any admiration and respect. And,
secretly, awe. They were the conveyers of his visions, the ones
who possessed the power to turn his radical ideas into real
products.

He swung through the software testing lab. Several test
engineers, each seated before a prototype Joey Plus, were running
system software programs through their paces. The inhabitants
were oblivious to his presence as screens rolled and flashed,
styluses scribbled and tapped, speakers chirped, and printers
printed.

Satisfied that all was rolling according to plan, Peter exited
the building and climbed into his BMW coupe. His natural
appreciation for simple and beautifully designed products had
prompted his decision to make BMW the company car for senior
executives. When Matthew had gone out and ordered the exact same
style and color coupe for himself, Peter was flattered. Until
their friendship curdled. Now he'd begun to wonder if Matthew had
only chosen the car because he was trying to prove to the
executive staff that he and Peter were in some way equal.

As he drove down Clyde Avenue he passed the many single-story
stucco buildings that comprised Wallaby's international
headquarters. Eventually he passed the larger and more
corporate-looking three-story sales and marketing building, where
Matthew and the other senior executives resided.

Peter preferred to have his office among his engineers rather
than on the third floor of the larger corporate building. Though
his title was chairman, his job was to create Wallaby's
computers, and to do that, he wanted to be right in the trenches
with his team. Especially lately. The last thing he wanted was to
have to sit near Matthew Locke. If he had been any closer, he
might have taken pity on the man he'd hired, and not gone through
with his new plan to remove him from the company.

Leaving the complex, he headed for Highway 280. Waiting for the
traffic signal to change, he looked in his rear-view mirror at
the main corporate building with its Wallaby banner. The Wallaby
logo featured a sketched pocket with a baby kangaroo, a joey,
poking its head out.

He felt a small gush of pride whenever he looked at the company
logo, at the thought of how many pockets he had filled with
riches, in how many lives. And though tomorrow he would have to
essentially sew shut one of those pockets, he was already
beginning to feel the sense of relief that would come very soon,
when he regained complete control of the company he had built.


Chapter 2
 

She stood and admired the bowl from different angles, marveling
at how the spotlight shining down on it created rainbow effects
and prismatic distortions. She had displayed the object on a
simple, waist-high pedestal finished in black lacquer. Maybe I
should not have rewarded myself so soon, thought Greta, since the
board meeting that would take care of Peter Jones was not until
tomorrow. What if something went wrong?

Of course, nothing would go wrong. She knew that Matthew had no
choice but to pitch Peter from his position at Wallaby, and not
only because she couldn't stand the precocious young founder. She
smirked when she thought about the blow Peter would feel after
the ax dropped at tomorrow's meeting. 

The minute Greta had met him, she knew she was not going to like
Peter Jones. He had taken to Matthew instantly, tugging on his
arm like a child when he was excited about something, or when
Matthew's observations and comments would harmonize with Peter's
own thoughts. He would listen intently when Matthew talked about
business and buying psychology, things she did not understand and
had no desire to know more about. But what she loathed most about
Peter, which led to her involvement in his destiny, was that he
managed to spend more time with Matthew than she did. Matthew
would practically ignore her in Peter's presence, so exhilarated
was he by the young man's company. When Matthew arrived home from
work, especially in the beginning, it was always "Peter said
this," or "Peter did that," so full of marvel was her husband at
young headache's braininess. And every Saturday, like clockwork,
Peter would be at the door before she was out of bed, asking
Matthew to come out and play. One morning, while Peter was
waiting within earshot in the entrance hall, she loudly protested
from their bedroom upstairs that she and Matthew never got to
spend time together on Saturdays, as they used to when they lived
in Connecticut. Afterward, Peter stopped coming to the door and
took to waiting outside the gate, like a mongrel. Not a bad
description, she thought to herself. Greta had once read an
article about Peter that told of his life as an orphan. Obviously
he saw Matthew as a father figure. Well, too bad.

Greta understood early on that Peter's attachment to Matthew
could ruin everything her husband had so carefully planned before
he accepted the job at Wallaby. Time was wasting, she observed;
she knew that the stronger Matthew and Peter's friendship became,
the farther Matthew would stray from the original plan. She had
had to act swiftly, otherwise Matthew might have had a change of
heart altogether.

To start the ball rolling, Greta had told Matthew that she did
not want Peter in their home. How Matthew was to accomplish this
without offending Peter was his problem; if he really cared about
her, he'd spare her the company of the bratty wunderkind. She
followed through by feigning anguish whenever Matthew mentioned
Peter, and by pressuring him to get on with business: When would
he tell Peter about the development strategy? Why was he
stalling? She knew that once Matthew revealed his strategy, the
young man would withdraw from her husband. And perhaps that was
why he had taken his time - he was enjoying too much their
friendship. Matthew's transformation plans were hideously
contrary to Peter's renegade spirit. It had been painful to hound
Matthew constantly, but she had no choice. He would never have
dealt with Peter and put his plan back on track if she had not
intervened. A few weeks was all it had taken to re-focus Matthew.
When he explained to Peter his hopes for the company - a profound
strategy for leading Wallaby into Big Business - the two men had
their first falling-out, which seriously upset their formerly
flawless courtship. Matthew had persisted in attempting to sway
the young founder into understanding his strategy, but each time
he faced argument and resistance. Greta had forced Matthew to
confess that as long as Peter was in control, the secret plan
would never materialize. Finally, Peter expressed doubt in
Matthew's overall vision and qualifications, saying he was
personally hurt that Matthew could even hypothesize such a thing
for Wallaby. That said, Matthew halted his friendship with Peter,
and drew heavily from his wife's support to rebuild his
confidence in the secret plan.

She felt wanted again. However, her expectation of spending more
time with Matthew was unfulfilled. Instead of spending weekends
with her, he spent more time than ever in his little home office,
next to the library. And when he wasn't holed up in there, he was
constantly reading about big computers and the latest
technologies, his face often closer to the pages of a book than
to his wife's face when they were in bed.

After tomorrow, after Peter was truly invalidated, she knew that
Matthew would start spending more time with her. She had to
believe that. After all, it was she he had to thank for
rectifying his temporary shortsightedness. At least that was how
she saw things.

Raising a glass of wine to her lips, she heard the automatic
garage door open. He was home. She twisted the knob of the
recessed ceiling-mounted quartz lamp to full intensity. The
salmon bowl sparkled.

He appeared at the living room entrance, hands at his sides. She
pretended not to notice his arrival.

"Greta."

"Oh, darling," Greta said, pretending to be surprised. 

Without remark, she quickly took in his tired expression. His
eyes seemed half closed, as if the reflection thrown off by the
glittering object were blinding. Studying him, she searched for
the foundation of the man she had married, the man with the
strong and sinewy build, the confident posture, the sharp
aristocratic features. Today his cheeks appeared blanched, his
stance tentative. With her glass of wine in hand, she strolled
casually across the room. 

"What's that?" Matthew said.

She pecked his impassive lips. "That," she said, toasting the
bowl with her glass, "is pure brilliance."

"How much brilliance?"

"A steal, Darling. I got it to celebrate your success. Let me get
you something to drink." She left him alone with "his" present.

He inspected her newest purchase. He had to admit, it was
magnificent, and as he scrutinized it more closely, he began to
forget about his labored day and the impending showdown. He
studied one of the etched salmon that circled the bowl's rim. It
swam against a powerful, unseen force, compelled onward with
inner strength, driven by instinct to fulfill its obligation. It
was that way in business, he reflected, one had to be driven by
instinct and a sense of obligation, plain and simple - 

But that word, simple, was like a hook that snagged his mind and
reeled him from the peaceful waters that were his thoughts. Once
more, his thoughts returned to the damnable Peter Jones, his
excited voice raiding Matthew's mind like an unwelcome visitor.

"'If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get the best
thing God invents,'" Peter would wistfully recite, the poet
Robert Browning's words, during design meetings. Forever
distrusting complexity, Peter made it his utmost priority that
Wallaby's products were unaffected in their design and easy to
use. 

Once more, apprehension washed over Matthew like a shifting tide.
If only he could convince himself that everything would go
exactly according to plan. It would, wouldn't it? He felt as
though his life depended on it. He just didn't feel one-hundred
percent sure.

"Here," Greta said, handing him a small bottle of Perrier. Taking
the drink, he avoided looking at her bare hand...or at the other,
which was concealed inside a silky white glove. He took a sudden
and uncomfortable interest in the tiny bubbles that formed and
rose in the bottle.

Greta sat on the flowery chintz settee and patted the cushion
next to her. "Come."

Before joining her, Matthew twisted off the bright lamp.
Nighttime descended on the salmon, their struggle temporarily
suspended. He sank into the softness of the sofa and rested his
eyes.

"Well? Is everything all set?"

He nodded.

"Good, Matthew," she said. "I can't wait for you to be able to
relax once this all settles down." She thought of the time she
would have with him after tomorrow's meeting and smiled, more at
this thought than to comfort him.

Matthew frowned. "He says I don't know what I'm doing. That I
don't have a clue." He stared into the bottle. "He says I don't
have instinct. No vision, guts. Unless I'm wrong, I don't think
he realizes what's going down tomorrow." He met his wife's eyes.
His expression soured; then half resentfully, he sought her
reassurance. "Have I been wrong? What if I've misread everyone's
loyalties? What if he has his own plan to spring on me tomorrow?"

A voice inside Greta's head roared No! No matter what Peter Jones
had up his sleeve - yes, certainly he had something - her
husband's well thought out plan was more powerful. It was too
late now, anyway, to start worrying about the enemy's strategy.
That she never seriously considered it probably meant that her
instincts about Peter were correct. He was blind to what was
coming.

"No sweetheart. Don't think that way." She gently pushed back
some hair from Matthew's forehead. "You're doing exactly the
right thing. And after tomorrow, everything will be fine."

He offered her a dim smile, then closed his eyes.

For the briefest instant there she had felt his need for her. It
had been so long since he'd called to her for help. However
cursory, she had served him nevertheless. And now it was her
turn, tit for tat. "Let's go for a walk down by the stables. What
do you say?" She grasped his hand as she rose.

Too weary to protest, he rose to his feet and let his wife lead
him off.


* * *


Walking into his home, Peter heard Ivy playing the grand piano in
the drawing room. She was singing softly, a verse he did not
recognize. One of her own? The pleasing sounds bellowed and
echoed through the more or less empty mansion. She did not hear
him enter the room.

Her fingers settled on the last chords of the score. Peter
smelled the sweet fragrance of her long white-blond hair,
brightened and warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the
French windows behind her. Coming closer, his shadow gave him
away and she turned her head to greet him.

"Hello," she said, through the last fading chords of her music.

"That was wonderful. It's as if this entire house is joyful and
alive when you're playing." He casually rested a hand on her
shoulders, a simple expression of admiration.

She turned her cheek to his hand, and he went to move it, but
before he was able to she stood and stretched. He took her seat
then, resting his hands on his lap. Looking past her and through
the windows, toward the hills that rolled beyond his estate, he
could see Hoover Tower in the distance, rising high above the
treetops of the Stanford University campus. Three weeks earlier
he had been there to give the commencement speech to the
graduating class. Afterward, at the reception, a striking young
girl had introduced herself. Her name was Ivy, she said, and she
proceeded to tell him about the speech and language interface
that she was developing for the Wallaby Joey computer. When it
was finished, she promised, the interface would allow people to
interact with the Joey by speaking to it, and it would reply in
kind, in its own "voice." The Joey's intuitive and portable
design, she told him, was what had inspired her to develop the
speech recognition and simulation interface software. When he
asked what were her eventual ambitions for the project, she said
she wasn't sure. She had no agenda for the summer and, for lack
of a more tempting course, had halfheartedly committed herself to
traveling across the country with some friends. He was intrigued
by her knowledge of linguistics, particularly when she revealed
that she had never used a computer until the Joey. That part was
especially touching, and he somehow felt compelled to help her,
so he offered her the opportunity to continue developing the Joey
speech and language component in his home. The next day she
arrived with her duffel bag, a couple of books, a few boxes of
floppy disks, and a backpack. Peter often had guests straying in
and out of his home, usually students to whom he offered the use
of his thoroughly equipped computer lab. In return he asked that
they respect the privilege by picking up after themselves. He let
them come and go for as long as they liked, and his doors were
never locked. Alice, his maid and cook, always kept herself
abreast of the various artists in residence.

She appeared now in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron.
She was a small, voluminous Spanish woman with pulled-back black
hair and a gorgeous smile. "Hello, Mr. Petey," she said with
plain affection. She turned to the young girl. "I finished
preparing your meat and spices." Peter looked at Alice for an
explanation, and she nodded to Ivy.

"I'm making you a special Mediterranean dish tonight," Ivy said,
taking Peter's hands in hers. "My way of saying thanks, for being
so kind and letting me stay here with you."

 "Great," he said, and casually withdrew his hands.

Usually it started out, as it had a number of times before, as a
rent-free working environment. Peter received both pleasure and
satisfaction from being around artists and other creative types
who crafted amazing things from the technology he had invented.
Except for his work and Kate, when she was in town, his life was
surprisingly spare. Having the students in his home filled the
spacious mansion with the lives and passionate works of others.
And with little effort, he was helpful to them. In several cases
the projects they worked on became marketable products, and
sometimes he nurtured them in getting started as software or
hardware developers by introducing them to the appropriate
managers at Wallaby. But to some of the students, staying at
Peter's became more than just a neat place to crash. Once a
couple of young men had taken off with some of the equipment and
a few of Peter's personal valuables. And then there were the
girls, who often presented their own set of problems. And right
now, Ivy was the mansion's sole no-strings boarder.

"Come on," Ivy said, taking him by the hand once again. "I want
to show you what I've been working on this afternoon."

As they passed, Alice busied herself with a tissue in her apron
pocket. Peter noted the uncertain look on her face; she was all
too familiar with the course that Ivy's stay was taking.


* * *


Dressed in a violet silk camisole, Greta Locke sat on the edge of
their large bed and brushed down her thick chestnut curls. As she
did this she observed herself - her hair, her face, but never the
movement of her hands - in the mirror above her bureau. Though it
was early, she had nonchalantly followed Matthew upstairs to the
bedroom when, after dinner, he had said he was going turning in
early. She had a modest face that she considered robust rather
than pretty. It was satisfactorily oval in shape, though a little
too fleshy in the cheeks. Her nose was sized accordingly, yet if
it had been a little longer, straighter, perhaps she would have
been a real model - but then again, her face had never been her
selling point...

While she scrutinized her complexion, her right hand, as if
guided by its own vision, encountered the crystal lotion
dispenser resting on her bureau. With a light press she dispersed
two long, corpulent worms of Lancome lotion into her hand.
Working one hand over the other with systematic precision, she
performed the evening ritual without ever once looking at them.
On this occasion she focused her vision, through the mirror, on
the lighted bathroom doorway at the opposite end of the bedroom
suite. Finishing up, working again on the familiar motions
without directly needing to - without wanting to - watch what she
was doing, she reached into a drawer and retrieved a pair of
fine, exclusively tailored white silk gloves. Just as she was
pulling on the second glove the bathroom light snapped off.

Matthew appeared, wearing light blue Oxford cloth pajamas made of
the same material used to tailor his business shirts. That was
her husband, she thought with a tinge of malice, all business
both in and out of bed.

Greta snapped off the lighted mirror and climbed beneath the cool
sheets, folded the layers of bedclothes to just below her
breasts. Matthew settled on top of the sheets, sealing her in on
one side, and clamped his hands together behind his head.
Straining her peripheral vision, she saw that he was staring at
the ceiling.

She turned on her pillow to face him. "Darling, don't keep
thinking about tomorrow." Softly: "Try to relax."

Taking her advice, she watched as the puzzled, problem-solving
frown on his face slackened and was replaced by a vague yet
unwavering gaze.

She stretched across him to turn off the antique bedside lamp,
her breasts barely an inch from his chin. As she drew back, she
gently settled herself on his chest.

Through the windows beside the bed, the valley shone brightly.
Orange and yellow pinpoints of light, far in the distance, glowed
and shimmered in the cool summer night. She felt a sudden urgent
desire to get out of bed and close the curtains, shutting out the
view of the damned valley.

Was she rushing things? First the bowl, and now making love. But
it had been so, so long, she thought, in her silent agony.
Matthew had simply shut off where activity between them was
concerned, telling her once, several months ago, that he could
not concentrate on lovemaking, not even their particular style of
it, until things were working again and his plan was firmly on
track. Still, they were so close, just hours away from tomorrow's
big event and the unquestionably victorious outcome that was
rightfully theirs.

Just a kiss. Was that asking too much?

She gently nuzzled his neck and throat, which showed minimally
through the pajama top, tracing her long and delicately gloved
hand, the part of her body to which he had once been most
attracted, most submissive, along his upper body.

He sighed through his nostrils and closed his eyes.

Was he responding? Perhaps he too felt that he deserved to reward
himself a day early, she thought with a private cheer. She
inhaled deeply and pressed his shoulder with her left hand,
careful to keep the sight of it from his peripheral vision. Her
other hand strayed along his biceps. Raising her face, she closed
her eyes and moved her lips to his.

He sniffed, and she opened her eyes just in time to see him turn
his agonized face toward the window. He sneezed, twice, and she
flinched with each burst, but was at the same time enormously
relieved too. For an instant she had had the impression that the
face he'd made had been in response to her. But it was only a
sneeze. Two sneezes. Nothing at all to do with her, and so silly
for her to have thought otherwise.

Or was it. There he was, gazing out the window again, as if he
were counting the individual lights in the valley. She scolded
herself for not having pulled the shade.

"Matthew," she said softly, meaning to apologize or assure him or
- 

"Good night," he said.

Or nothing.

It was useless, and so she retreated to her side of the bed and
lay there in silent deliberation. For the second time today she
worried if perhaps the crystal bowl she had purchased had been a
mistake, her private celebration somehow jinxing the outcome of
tomorrow's meeting.

They lay there like that for a long time, silent and awake but
inexpressive, until, eventually, exhaustion won out and they both
slept, each playing their parts in a dream that did not embody
the other.


* * *

Peter sat on a stool at the island console range while Ivy
prepared her special dinner. She bustled about in what seemed
like a frenzy, but he understood, with some amusement, that she
had the meal under complete control. A fragrant lamb and
vegetable stew bubbled lazily in a large pot on the stove. In the
oven, two small pizzas baked. Peter had enjoyed watching Ivy roll
out the dough with her hands and shape it into little rounds. On
each she had arranged caramelized onions, chopped olives, pine
nuts, grated Parmesan cheese. During the preparation, she
concentrated intensely on each step. A number of times she held
the recipe close to her face and read a line or two aloud. At the
same time she managed to engage him in interesting conversation.
Though she had been a guest in his house for three weeks now,
this was the first opportunity he'd had to spend time with her.
And considering his day at Wallaby, her company tonight was a
welcome relief.

"Pass me that cayenne, would you," she said, reaching out with
one hand.

"Which is it?"

"That's curry. The one next to it. Right."

The rosiness of her face, from all of the bustling about, against
her white-blond hair, gave the effect that she had spent the day
at the beach. She wore tattered old jeans cinched at the waist
with a colorful bandanna, and a white dress shirt with no bra
beneath. He realized suddenly that he was staring. He spoke.

"So do you cook often?"

She gave him an amused look. "You kidding. For who. I've been in
a dorm, chowin' on junk food and studying for the last three
years."

"Then how'd you learn all this stuff?"

"Easy. All you have to do is follow the directions. Besides, I'm
a quick study." She met his eyes and held his stare, as if
challenging him. Until a bell chimed. "Pizzas," she said with a
delighted smile, breaking their link, which had felt to him a
little weird but not exactly unpleasant. Just,
well...significant. Careful, he warned himself.

He watched her slip on an oven mitt and told himself he should
really look away as she bent over to retrieve the appetizer. Her
breasts, he could see, were not large, yet were ample enough to
illustrate gravity. They reminded him of the firm doughy rounds
she had worked beneath her fingers minutes ago. As she reached
inside the oven a little burst of heated air gently raised a few
stray wisps of her hair, and an instant later the delectable
aroma of her creation wafted his way. He swallowed.

Then something about her startled him and he felt his throat
abruptly tighten.

As she was rising, holding the tray in one hand, she swept her
hair aside with the other, and he had the opportunity to see,
just for an instant, inside the collar of her shirt, in back of
her neck.

What he saw was his own name - the code name the dry cleaner used
to label his shirts. Something that felt about the size of a
marble felt as though it had suddenly become lodged in his chest.
A little to the left. Yes, there. In his heart.

"What?" she said, freezing in place.

"Oh," was all he could manage at first. He gave a little laugh.
"Nothing, oh nothing. Sorry. I just zoned out there for a
second." His lungs moved, he was breathing again.

"Hmm," she said, a moment's scrutiny, then she shrugged and
transferred the miniature pizzas to the butcher block counter.
"Where's the cutter thing?"

"I'm sorry?" he said. He had blanked her out for a moment, and
was just beginning to recover from his jolt. The cutter thing. He
wanted to be helpful, to tell her where to find it.

Until he found more: The jeans, with their familiar rips where
his own knees had eventually worn through the denim. She was
wearing his pants, too. The marble thing became a fist.

"You know," she said, making a rolling gesture with her hand,
"The pizza cutter thing."

"No. I mean, I don't know. In one of those drawers, probably."
Had she gone through his closet? Had she helped herself to
anything else?

"Ah. Here we go." She returned with the instrument and cut the
pizza into quarters.

Her feet were bare. She wore no jewelry, no watch. He fabricated
a possible explanation: She was doing her laundry and had asked
Alice if she could borrow some of his old clothes while hers went
around.

"Mmm. Not bad. Here. Eat."

It was probably nothing, he told himself. He was probably
overreacting. He'd ask her about it later, no big deal. Still, it
had given him one hell of a little scare there. Enough, already.
Right now, he was hungry.

"Delicious," he said truthfully. "I can't believe you don't do
this all the time."

"I could," she said, and stopped chewing. He caught her look,
edged with some unknown meaning. "I mean," she went on, waving at
the pot on the stove, "I could eat like this all the time, but
who has the time, right?"

Peter just nodded. He took another bite of pizza. He was thirsty.

"Wine. That's what we need."

"Yes."

"White? Is that good for what you're making?"

"Red's better."

He went to the tall narrow wine rack hidden inside a cabinet. His
fingertips lingered on the neck of a particular reserve, a
special bottle. He deliberated for a moment, then selected a
younger vintage. He opened it and poured them each a glass,
handed one to her. There was an awkward moment, in which both
stood motionless. He didn't know what to say and, gratefully, she
made it easy for him.

"To new friends."

"New friends," he said, slipping in a small emphasis on the
latter.

They touched their glasses together and Peter looked into his own
to avoid her eyes as he sipped the wine.

"Come on," Ivy said, "let's eat." She went about filling two
bowls with stew, while he sliced the crusty loaf of bread she'd
set out on the counter. She carried the bowls into the dining
room, and he followed with the bread and his glass of wine.

"Sit," she said, "I'll get the bottle."

He drank some more, and when she came back in he noticed her
glass. She had filled it.

They ate in silence for a few moments. He told her the stew was
delicious, and she said she was surprised, though she wasn't
really.

"So, what made you choose Stanford?" he said.

"A course they had. It's called VTSS. Values, Technology,
Science, and Society."

"I've never heard of it."

"It's been around for awhile. Interesting mix."

"Sounds like it. What interests you about it most?"

"Well, how they all overlap. One affecting and impacting the
other, and so on. You sure know all about that."

"Me?"

"Sure, you." She snorted. "Come on. You know, the way the
computers you invented have changed our society, that they're
founded on science and technology. How they've affected people's
values." She glanced up from her plate. "I mean, really, you've
democratized computing power among the masses, putting it in the
hands of the people. Giving them a choice, an alternative to
business as usual. No more Big Brother, brother." She resumed
eating. "Anyway, that's what the course was about." She spoke
with the easy, unaffected confidence one acquires with
experience. Yet she was only twenty-one.

He realized that his spoon was halfway between his bowl and
mouth. He did not know how long he'd been sitting there like
that. He set it down and poured himself more wine. He looked at
her over the rim of his glass, and felt as if he were seeing her
for the first time. It was an agreeable feeling, and that in turn
made it an adverse feeling. Thin ice ahead, if he didn't watch
himself. Friends, he repeated to himself, and don't forget it. 

"Did you hear me?"

Had she said something? "I'm sorry - you were saying?"

"I said, that's what the course was about. I dropped it."

"But you sound like an expert. Why the change of heart?"

"Nah. Music. This speech stuff. That's what I told you when I met
you, don't you remember?"

In fact, he did not remember. What's more, he realized, was that
he didn't know her last name either. Before he was aware of what
he was doing, he asked her, "What's your last name?"

She was pouring herself more wine. She stopped. Was she hurt?

She grinned. "You got me."

His expression betrayed his confusion. 

"I never told you my last name!" she said, as if that explained
everything. Whatever everything was. "I see what you're getting
at: How could I ask if you remember that I dropped that course to
get into this linguistics programming stuff when you don't even
know my last name. It's because I never told you."

He went to take another sip of wine, but then decided to hold off
for a bit.

"It's Green. Ivy Green. Can you stand it?"

"It's certainly very Earth conscious."

"Very funny. The only green I think Rick and Jeannette had in
mind when they named me was reefer."

He burst out laughing. "How come?"

"Oh, please. Don't you get it? I'm a Sixties baby, like, 'Make
Love, Not War,' 'Give Peace a Chance,' 'If It Feels Good, Do It.'
Well, they did it. They met at Woodstock, no kidding, and, a few
years later, they did it, made me, and got married and all. How
it felt, I mean, good or not, I never asked. Quit laughing. They
moved to California, lived right at the corner of Haight and
Ashbury, and found peace and all that. Later, when my dad
accidentally started his own herbal tea company - yes, it's the
brand you've got on the shelf there in the kitchen - they moved
to Mill Valley. That's where I grew up, with parents who told me
to call them by their first names, so we'd get closer to where we
visualized ourselves in the universe. Or some shit like that."

"Sorry, I'm not laughing at the circumstances. It's the way you
tell it."

"No problem. I'm still amused by the Rick and Jeannette Show."
From out of nowhere came a pout. Then: "But I'm not goin' to live
my life like they did." She sniffed deeply. "Um, I'll be right
back."

Had he offended her? He'd meant no harm in laughing. He was just
amused by her deadpan delivery. While she excused herself, Peter
got up from the table. Her talk about the Sixties had aroused
some vague sentiment in him. Whatever. All of the sudden the
place seemed too quiet. While she was away from the table he got
up and loaded a compact disc into his stereo system. The first
track was a folksy acoustic number.

Ivy returned to the table smiling. "Want more stew?"

"I'm stuffed," Peter said.

She sat down.

"Here." He poured more wine into her glass, trying for an apology
if it was in fact called for. He had no idea.

The instrumental ended, then a lovely female voice filled the
room with song. It was his absolute favorite. His eyelids lowered
slowly, automatically, and a smile washed across his face. The
artist's sensual voice had an effect on him that was like easing
into a warm bath. He sat there like that for a little bit,
forgetting Ivy and his dinner and everything else.

Ivy turned her head to the source of his evident pleasure. Her
frown went unnoticed.

Peter had met the vocalist one afternoon at a Sierra Club
luncheon thrown in his honor after Wallaby had donated several
computers to the noted environmental organization. Kate
McGreggor, the "softly outspoken" folk-rock star, was the keynote
speaker. He tried to be attentive to her words during her speech,
but he constantly found himself drifting, starting at her warm
green eyes, sighing when she casually brushed aside her hair,
dark brown with sunned highlights and occasional strands of gray.
In just fifteen minutes Kate had made an impression on him like
no other woman ever had. Meanings for her wandered into his mind.
Intelligent. Simple. Pure. True. What you see is what you get, he
surmised. After the meal, she sang. Her voice was enchanting,
perfect, and as she sang about pain and hope and love he knew
that he had to get to know her personally. Immediately after her
performance he introduced himself. At first she seemed
disinterested. He suspected her judgment was influenced by his
involvement in an industry notorious for destroying the
environment. And perhaps also by the eight years difference in
their ages. He invited her to visit Wallaby for a personal tour.
She hesitated, but ultimately he persuaded her to accept after
asking for a chance to prove that he and Wallaby were unlike all
the rest. When she arrived a week later, she surprised him with a
special gift: A bottle of wine from her parents' obscure little
vineyard in Oregon, where she had grown up. It was a Cabernet
Sauvignon, bottled the same year he had founded Wallaby. He was
touched by the thoughtfulness of her gesture, and told her she
had to be the one to share it with him when the company was ten
years old. Her tour was scheduled to last two hours, but as Peter
expressed his own thoughts and concerns about the environment,
the state of education, the future, they engaged in long and
satisfying conversation, and by the end of the day their
attraction for one another was evident. And had remained so to
this day. They were two people comfortable with themselves and
with each other. She maintained a home in Los Angeles, where she
was constantly at work on her music or lending her celebrity
status to political causes about which she felt strongly. She
came to stay with Peter between recordings and projects, and her
independence meshed perfectly with his own like composure,
creating the foundation for what had become a lasting and loving
relationship. They had been together for nearly eight years, and
the distance between them imposed by their careers generated a
constant longing that kept their affection for one another fresh
and alive. Sometimes, like now, it was difficult and he wished
they could be together more often. Especially now, with
everything the way it was at Wallaby...

And with that thought, he opened his eyes and came back around to
the present, and to his guest.

Ivy was lowering a coffee cup from her lips, staring at him. Had
she made a pot? He hadn't even heard her in the kitchen. In front
of him sat a steaming cup of coffee. Perfect, he thought. That
odd sense of dread he'd experienced earlier had returned, just
for an instant, when he'd opened his eyes. He needed to sober up
a little. 

Abruptly she spoke.

"Is it true?"

"What's that?" he asked. He met her azure eyes with a perplexed
smile. She gestured with a nod to where the music was coming
from. "That you two are lovers?"

"Completely."

She nodded, added more coffee to her cup, very slowly, with
considerable concentration. She emptied half a packet of Equal
into her coffee. Addressing her immersed spoon, she said, "In
everything I read, like "People," or that story about you in last
month's "Esquire," they say you'll probably get married. To her."

"I don't know, it's hard to say" Peter said, knowing the right
thing to do would be to agree with the speculation, but choosing
to answer truthfully instead. "We're both very busy. She's always
recording or involved in some cause or another. And I'm at
Wallaby." The feeling of dread inside his heart rolled on its
side. However this time, instead of striking quickly and fading
away, its presence seemed to stretch out and linger as he sat
watching what Ivy was doing with her half-empty packet of Equal.

She had dumped the remainder of the artificial sweetener onto the
black enamel table. Using the straight edge of the little blue
packet, she cut several fine, stark, parallel lines from the
small white pile of grains.

Not very subtle, and not a good sign. He attempted to resume the
conversation.

"Anyway, as far as marriage, we've never really discussed it
seriously."

All of the sudden, he understood the feeling assaulting his
senses. Trepidation.

Something - no, a number of things - were going to happen. It was
as though a crystal ball had bloomed in his mind's eye, giving
him a quick peek into the near future. It all came in a blurry
rush, no single picture or image freezing long enough to grasp
completely. But he caught the gist, just same. He would go
through all the required motions, but in the back of his mind he
knew he was helpless. What was coming, he realized with a
throbbing certainty amplified by the wine, was only natural.
Jesus, how sick that sounded to his private ear. Still, he
wouldn't give in without a fight, for that, too, was only
natural. Quietly he stared at the lines she'd cut, mesmerized by
their orderliness.

Ivy, too, studied the straightness of her lines, her upper lip
hidden beneath the lower. She was the first to notice the
silence, to sense its uneasy drift. With a great gust, she blew
the white lines from the table and looked across the table at him
with a renewed smile.

"Oh, hey. Sorry. I had a little skip down unhappy-memory-lane
there for a second, is all. I hope I didn't upset you."

Peter looked at her. He shook his head, then rose without a word
and carried his coffee cup into the kitchen. 

"Hey, you want to open more wine?" Ivy was at his side, carrying
their empty glasses. "I've been here only three weeks and already
have a prototype of my speech interface working." The trembling
of her hand caused the glasses to steadily clink together, a
fragile ringing sound. She didn't seem to notice. "Come on, let's
celebrate."

He rested his hand over the glasses, silencing them. "We've had
enough."

She narrowed the already small space between them, and he slid
his hands into his pockets, not sure what to do with them. "Thank
you for such a great meal," he said, and made an attempt to get
past her.

She giggled, held her ground.

He let out a frustrated breath. "Please," he said. "I've got to
get to bed." There was no humor in his face.

"All right, then," she said sullenly, and pressed her back
against the doorjamb, making way for him.

Just as he was about to shut off the stereo he changed his mind,
and decided to leave it on. To keep Kate there with him, he
thought, humming along with her voice on his way to his bedroom.

He lit a single candle and placed it on the floor beside his
futon bed. Except for the thick stuffed sleeping mat, some books
piled against the wall, a Tizio lamp and the Zuni Indian
sculpture of a bear that Kate had given him one birthday, his
bedroom was bare, like the rest of the house.

He tossed his clothes onto the floor and sat in the lotus
position on the soft cotton mat. Kate had introduced him to the
basics of meditation when they had first started dating, teaching
him to lead himself into natural, peaceful sleep. He closed his
eyes and concentrated on relaxing the muscles in his neck and
shoulders. Gradually he worked his way down, through the rest of
his body. His breathing slowed, and he imagined whiteness,
weightlessness. The whiteness slashed into a black surface and he
thought of Ivy and the dining room table, her playing with the
little blue packet. He pushed this away and brought back the pure
white. After a short period, the soft whispering snowstorm turned
to warm earth tones, to Kate's lovely hair...

The sound of footsteps broke his concentration. He opened his
eyes.

Ivy stood before him, wearing a lightweight cotton kimono. Her
face glowed warmly in the candlelight. Her voice was a mere
whisper. "I want to be with you."

Peter remained seated in the lotus position, unable, it seemed,
to move. He became sharply aware of her delicate physique, his
nakedness. He felt their vulnerable auras bending toward one
another, reaching. He thought about what he'd come to realize at
the dinner table, the feeling of dread inside him that seemed to
suddenly threaten everything in his life. He thought of telling
her about the few close calls he had had over the past couple of
years, how they had ended in tears and shattered dreams for the
students. He thought of telling her that in all their years
together he had never been unfaithful to Kate. He thought of
telling her that in all their years together, Wallaby had never
been unfaithful to him, and it was the same thing. Was, he wanted
to say aloud and tell her, tell anyone who'd listen, why.

But he told her none of these things. Instead he said to himself,
without uttering a word, I had a lot to drink, it was the wine.
But was he really that drunk, or was it something else? Something
worse? That he even considered this excuse, that he was actually
entertaining a defense for something that had not even happened,
not yet, presaged the guilt that would follow if he were to allow
them to come together. And apart. And it was all the same thing,
he told himself. Today, tomorrow, and the next day and every day
after that. 

He considered her. She was an angel whose mission was to ease him
into the hereafter. He concluded, when he noticed a powdery white
substance encircling the inner edge of her nostrils, that she was
already "there," perhaps even farther, some point beyond
recognition. As if she interpreted this, she brushed her nose
with the back of her hand and sniffled.

"Peter," she pleaded, her voice husky, "You've empowered me.
You've given me a whole new meaning. It's my future."

Somehow her words had breaking effect on him. He was both
repulsed and beholden by her sentiment. By himself. He turned his
face toward the window, fighting the urge to reach out and pull
her down by the waist. It was not as if he were in love with this
young girl. And the way she made it sound, he was acting on her
behalf, like she needed him. Not the other way around. No, not
that at all. He didn't need her. She was nothing to him. Just
another worshipper in a long string of subjects.

And, as if to prove his cruel pretense, she knelt before him. Her
soft knees touched his shins. He smelled the peppery sweetness of
her breath, and his eyes lingered on her radiant golden hair. He
looked into her shining, anticipating eyes.

With a deep, winded sigh that was almost a cry, he finally
acknowledged his fear. It was inevitable, he told himself, as he
felt himself rising. He placed his fingertips about her neck,
traced his thumbs along her delicate lips, her precious ears,
touched her smooth eyelids, and gently pressed them shut. Her
breath hitched, and she waited for his touch to lead them
farther.

He slid the kimono from her lean body, and guided her hands to
his shoulders. He drew her down, guiding her to his hips. Her
smooth buttocks slid along his thighs. He felt her pause as she
settled onto him, over him.

They kissed.

She pulled away her lips and raised her hips.

He moved his mind to another place, into and around and between
Kate's lovely, far-off lyrics. He concentrated, tuned himself to
her rhythm.

Down, then up, then again, she slowly drove herself harder and
harder. He matched her motion with equal urgency, little lunging
lifts, telling himself at the same time that he was not
participating, not really, that she was doing all of the work, it
was all her, not him. Their mouths worked desperately, lunging
for one another, each attempt to kiss more impossible, more
desired than the last...

Spent, he felt a delirious sense of relief, as if it had all been
a bizarre dream from which he had just awakened. He raised his
head from the mat. For a brief, wanting moment he envisioned Kate
resting lightly on top of him.

The music had ended, the silence was palpable. 

His mind collapsed. He felt as if he had taken an enormous plunge
backward from a high altitude, his head dizzy, his thoughts vague
as he fell. He squirmed beneath the full weight the young girl
lying atop him, trying to escape from what they had done. He
wanted tonight to be over. He wanted tomorrow to be over. He
wanted both gone forever. He wanted another chance.

Ivy stirred. She raised her head off Peter's chest and looked at
him. Her face was glistening, content. "Thank you," was all she
said. She raised herself from him and collected her kimono. She
covered him lightly with the comforter, blew out the candle, and
vanished.

He tested his defense. A whisper: "It was the wine - "

But he could not complete the sentence, for it was already done.
And it was not the wine. It was another thing altogether. And he
felt it now.

The little thing in his heart. The little thing that had come and
gone earlier in the evening. It was back again. It lay quietly,
barely perceptible, like the breathing of a tiny creature, and he
had almost not noticed it. But there was no mistaking it now, and
he fought to grasp hold of it, to suffocate it, but his attempts
were futile. It felt as though the thing had established
permanent residency.

For many hours, until his consciousness finally succumbed to
mental depletion, he was disturbed by a queer premonition. That
the dark, throbbing thing in his heart was determined to eat its
way out, ever so slowly, boring straight through the only parts
that Peter had ever loved, the only parts that had ever mattered.


Chapter 3


It was a bright, hazy morning, not yet seven o'clock, but already
hot and humid, which wasn't so unusual for a June day in New York
City. William Harrell braced himself for the cool comfort of the
limousine's air-conditioned interior.

For twenty-five minutes he would relax in a comfortable silent
plushness. He stretched his legs, lengthening his taut body until
his feet touched the facing seatback. His calves responded
wearily. Last evening's workout, the first in more than a week,
had taken its toll. He had skipped several sessions since putting
in longer hours over the past couple of days, working on the
company's portable computer strategy. The break in his routine,
regardless of whatever aches and pains it caused, brought him the
kind of excitement on which he thrived. His regal face had the
precisely aged features of a character actor cast in the role of
judge, or the President of the United States. On occasion he wore
glasses, when he remembered, for seeing things up close. At
sixty-two, his looks suited his job perfectly.

The car briskly pulled away from the brownstone, his course and
destination the same today as it had been each business day for
the past fourteen years. 

He eagerly unfolded the "Wall Street Journal. In the News Brief
column analysts speculated as they did every quarter about
changes at Wallaby, Incorporated. According to the story, sources
close to the company suggested that the company's founder, Peter
Jones, and its president, Matthew Locke, were not getting along
as famously as they once had. There was speculation that a major,
long-overdue reorganization would be announced in today's board
meeting. Matthew Locke's corporate organizational changes at
International Foods were revisited. A Wallaby engineer who had
asked to remain anonymous was quoted: "Jones has created a
rivalry between his division [Joey] and ours [Mate]." The
informant went on, "It's really strange. Jones invented the Mate,
yet he says that anyone who is not associated with the Joey is a
bozo." The article explained that separate product divisions were
precisely what Matthew Locke had earlier in his career put an end
to at International Foods, when he had merged the food and
beverage divisions, as well as several other minor groups, into
one umbrella organization. A brief background story on the Joey
discussed its sparse sales and the fact that few software
programs were available for use with the computer, underscoring
the analysts' predictions of a major overhaul. All of the experts
agreed that the product was revolutionary and proclaimed that if
Wallaby could speed Joey applications to market, it could then
gain major market share and thereby disarm the older, less flashy
technology of its largest competitor, International Computer
Products. The consensus was that Wallaby had to get its act
together if it was to have any hope of remaining at the forefront
of portable computer technology innovation. 

William Harrell smiled. That was exactly what he had hoped to
read. He folded the newspaper and tossed it onto the seat beside
him. 

The car neared its destination, turning for the final stretch
onto a block with the largest buildings in the city.

If everything went as the analysts predicted, William Harrell
would soon begin implementing his new plan. The existing one, a
conservative strategy that the company had followed for two
years, would soon be replaced with one informed by none of the
customary Fortune 500 company protocol. William Harrell's plan
was based on a decision he had made two years ago, around the
same time the press had touted Wallaby's newly appointed
president, Matthew Locke, as "ICP's Nemesis."

The car slowed in front of a massive building with a black marble
facade. William adjusted his tie and tugged at the jacket of his
charcoal pinstriped suit. As the driver opened his door the city
air hit him like a furnace blast. Towering above him were
seventy-six stories of world renowned corporate power, wholly
occupied by the company whose name was carved in stone above the
building's entrance: INTERNATIONAL COMPUTER PRODUCTS.

He entered the building, rode the elevator to its highest level,
greeted his secretary, and entered his office, on whose door a
golden plaque announced: Chairman & Chief Executive Officer.


* * *


Each member of the board and of the senior executive staff filed
into the Wallaby boardroom. Most of them arrived at eight o'clock
sharp, avoiding the usual idle conversation that, in the past,
had always taken place outside the room. 

Matthew's secretary, Eileen, stood in the doorway of his office.
"It's time," she said, then returned to her desk.

Matthew stood. He clipped his pen to the yellow tablet on which
he'd been writing. 

Eileen busied herself at her desk, arranging papers and notes.
She paused and said, "Matthew, good luck."

He gave her a small nod and headed for the boardroom.

The exotic fruits, croissants, pastries, coffee, and bottles of
mineral water on the table set up outside the boardroom had
hardly been touched. Normally the table would be nearly empty by
now, and the executive staff secretaries, disguising their
cravings by pretending to go to the ladies' room, would pick over
the remains once the boardroom door had closed and the meeting
was underway. But today they could enjoy themselves in a
leisurely fashion, for none of the board members seemed to have
appetites.

The room fell from a fuzzy hum to heavy silence when Matthew
entered. Immediately he saw that Peter had not yet arrived. He
seated himself in one of two vacant leather chairs at either end
of the long, black table. The room's amenities and furnishings
were simple and hig