one side to the other. Laura followed the silent Gray into the compartment, feeling in the pinch of her throat, the shallowness of her breathing, and the thump of her heart the return of an overwhelming unease. Gray halted halfway across the gangplank, which was suspended in air inside the black metal chamber.
The sound of compressed air accompanied the closing of the compartment's exit. Through the walls Laura could hear the vault door closing as well. She searched the recesses of the dark chamber for clues as to its purpose. The floors, walls, and ceiling were black metal slats — the angles all directed toward the slender catwalk.
Laura waited for Gray to proceed, but he stood lost in thought — one hand firmly gripping the railing.
'Oh,' he said, 'I should mention that the computer center is semi-clean. We have to minimize dust, you understand.' A buzzer sounded, and a screen ahead glowed red with the words 'Blowers Activated.' A rapid series of clacks sounded from behind the grates that surrounded them. Gray shouted, 'You might want to hold onto…!' — his last words drowned out by the whine.
The wind hit her with gale force, popping her ears with the sudden change in pressure. Gray was shouting something. They were standing in a howling wind tunnel, but the wind buffeted them equally from all sides at once. Laura's hair lashed wildly across her face, combining with the windstorm to force her eyes closed. She reached up to pull a long strand from her mouth. She should have reached down.
Tendrils of air snaked under her dress. They forced their way upward — buffeting gusts along bare skin. The belt of her smock caught on her breasts, and she grabbed the billowing fabric and pressed down.
The light dress resisted all efforts, and she clamped one hand down in front, one in back.
As quickly as it had started, the storm was over. The smock settled gently into place around her thighs, and Laura opened her eyes into a thick sea of hair. She reached up to pull the mane from her face — the hair attracted to her palm by static electricity. The first thing she saw was Gray, who flashed her a sickly grin of apology. His hair stood wildly on end — tiny points like horns sticking out in all directions.
Laura broke out laughing, covering her mouth with her hand to stifle what degenerated into a series of ungraceful chortles. She managed 'Sorry' while holding her hair off her forehead, the other hand pinning her mouth firmly closed.
She swept her hair back and straightened her shoulders, fully composed now. 'That was a pleasant surprise.'
Gray raked his fingers through his hair and shrugged. 'Not very many people wear dresses down here.'
The screen on the wall ahead changed displays. 'Welcome' now glowed in cheery green letters, and a hissing sound announced the opening of the door. Bright light from the room ahead flooded the cramped compartment.
Laura followed Gray into the large room, which swirled with the activity of over a dozen busy people. They appeared to be technicians working at row after row of consoles. It felt all of a sudden to Laura as if she had stepped onto a great spaceship in some far-distant future. All was antiseptic — white panels or glowing, multi- windowed screens. Wall-sized monitors were alive with bar charts bouncing rhythmically to an unheard and discordant beat. Windows exploded with numbers, and diagrams, and glorious graphics that reminded Laura most of some psychedelic light show.
Gray was looking at her, and she turned to him. She laughed, grinning stupidly from ear to ear. 'Wow' was all she could think to say.
Gray stepped up to a vanity just inside the entrance and began to comb his hair. Laura took one look at herself in the mirror, and reached instantly for the complimentary 'Gray Corporation' brush.
'If you want a sweater or a jacket or something,' Gray said, 'just let an operator know. We've tried to fix the heating problem several times, but it never seems to do the trick. It's the superconducting electronics. They're cooled by liquid nitrogen.'
The brisk air was invigorating after their walk through the warm Pacific night. Besides, Laura was too fascinated by the spectacle to pay much attention to the chill. The confident fingers of the technicians flew tapping keys or spinning trackballs. Some wore ultra-light headphones, in constant communication with a cohort seated across the room or on the other side of the globe, she couldn't tell which. Vibrant colors popped open on crisp thirty-inch monitors like genies bursting from lamps. There was nothing government-surplus here.
All was right on the razor's edge. It was a scout ship hurtling centuries ahead of mankind.
Gray tapped a small black mat mounted to the wall by the vanity.
'Please touch before entering' was written on a bright red placard above it. Laura casually complied — a painful snap stinging her fingertips.
'Ow!' she mouthed, rubbing her fingers with her thumb.
'Sorry,' Gray said feebly. He waited beside her before the marvels of the room.
'What's this?' Laura asked, standing rooted to the spot in total awe.
'It's the operations room of the main computer.'
She nodded over and over in response while gawking. 'Oh,' she finally said.
Gray led her through the maze of workstations. Most of the technicians were men, and none, Laura noticed, looked up to return her gaze.
Instead, they glanced furtively her way just after she'd passed like boys in the hallway in high school. Gray, too, noticed the odd behavior. 'Most of my computer people are fairly intense types,' he said by way of explanation.
They passed consoles on which sat two-liter plastic bottles half-filled with generic orange soda. Industrial- sized bags of cheese puffs and pretzels and popcorn lay open in Gray's semi-clean command ship.
Decals adorned monitors with slogans like 'Legalize Marijuana' or pictures of the starship Enterprise. Some of the technicians' headphones, Laura realized, played music at high volumes.
That music ran the gamut from classical to head-banger. The people who listened to the music ran the gamut too.
Almost everyone wore thick sweaters of one sort or another. It was what they wore underneath that distinguished one man from the next.
Laura marveled at the parade of fashions — at the short-sleeved dress shirts sporting pocket protection and the tie-dyed T-shirts and the orange polyester bell-bottoms circa the disco era.
Many seemed permanently hunchbacked as they sat slumped over their consoles. Others were laid back in their padded leather chairs.
One had his feet propped higher than his head and an oversized digitizer balanced comfortably across his lap. The brilliant colors of their computer screens glinted off the thick lenses of their eyeglasses, which were held securely in place by no-nonsense frames.
Laura pictured the pale tribe being forced one day to emerge from their habitat — shielding their eyes and suffering almost instant and near fatal sunburn.
'What do you think?' Gray asked, pausing at the far side of the room.
'They're all nerds,' Laura whispered.
She watched Gray smile, then grin, then burst out laughing — startling some of the mole people nearby. He beamed at her — his eyes sparkling brightly. He was a handsome man. 'I actually meant the facility,' he said, still greatly amused.
Laura looked around, searching for something to say. 'It's very… neat.'
'Thank you,' he replied on the verge of a chuckle. 'And you're right, they are nerds. It's a sad but true fact. But their average net worth I'd guess is over ten million dollars.' Laura shot him a look of astonishment, and he shrugged. 'I give them this thing called a revenue slice. It's a lot of money, but with productivity comes [missing]. If one person can make a thousand times as many widgets as another you can pay him a thousand times as much. Or' — Gray caught Laura's gaze—'at least a hundred.'
He was grinning broadly again. He'd told another joke.
Gray turned and led Laura down a hallway. They passed a series of featureless doors — no paneling, no hardware, just flat white plastic.
One of those doors up ahead slid open on their approach, riding a faintly audible puff of air into the wall.
It had opened a half-second before they arrived, Laura noted, but an identical door across the hall had remained closed. She entered the room behind the oblivious Gray, still wondering how the door had known when to open.
They walked straight into the middle of heated debate. Seated around a long table in the high-tech
