the same planet with Sam Gamble.
The guests began to arrive, and she had no more time for personal ruminations. She had sent out over a hundred invitations to members of the press and other influential people in the trade, and she watched nervously as they critically circled the two machines, guzzling beer, munching on pizza and firing questions at all of them. Before long, they were watching in fascination as the large television monitors began to display the games and programs that had been designed to show the little computer's awesome power.
More than one skeptic pulled up the bright red cloth that draped the display table in search of the larger computer they were certain was hidden beneath. They shook their heads in amazement when they found only electrical cords and cardboard cartons.
'Amazing.'
'Son of a bitch.'
'This is freaking fantastic!'
The SysVal founders were hackers at heart, and it wasn't long before Sam slipped the case from one of the prototypes. (Neither he nor Yank had even considered designing a computer that couldn't be opened up.) Within minutes, a hundred guests were craning their necks to see the internal poetry of Yank's wondrous machine. By midnight it was evident that the launching of the brash little Blaze was an unqualified success.
The restaurant finally forced them to disband at two in the morning. The men loaded the equipment into Mitch's car, and the four partners headed for the hotel where they had booked rooms for the night. Sam and Mitch were still wired from the excitement of the evening, and neither wanted to sleep, even though they had to be at the Civic Auditorium in a few hours to set up. But Susannah was exhausted, and she declined an invitation to go to the bar with them for a drink. Yank also refused, and they crossed the lobby together.
In many ways Yank still remained a mystery to her. Angela had told her that Yank's ability to shut out the world when he worked had begun when he was a child growing up in the Valley. His mother and father had fought bitterly, but as good Catholics, they wouldn't divorce. From a young age he had learned to immerse himself in electronic projects so that he could transport himself to another world, where he wouldn't have to listen to the ugly sounds of their arguments. His parents had retired to Sun City several years ago and apparently still fought as bitterly as ever. He seldom saw them.
As they stepped into the elevator, Susannah made a stab at polite conversation. 'Roberta wasn't at the party. She's not sick, is she?'
'Roberta?' Yank didn't seem quite certain who Susannah meant.
Normally Susannah would have been amused, but despite the enthusiastic reception the Blaze had received at the party, she was on edge, and her tone was unnaturally sharp. 'Roberta Pestacola, your girlfriend.'
'Yes, I know.'
Susannah waited. The elevator doors opened. They got off together. After a few steps Yank stopped walking, stared for a moment at a fire extinguisher, then began walking again.
She was suddenly determined to have a normal conversation with him. 'Is anything wrong between you and Roberta?'
'Roberta? Oh, yes.' He began patting his pockets for a room key.
They continued down the corridor. Although she was tall, he topped her by a good seven inches. Thirty more seconds of silence passed. Susannah was exhausted from the evening and still unsettled over the changes in Sam's appearance. Her already frayed nerves snapped. 'The purpose of conversation is to exchange information. That's difficult to do with someone who hardly ever finishes his sentences and never seems to have the vaguest idea what anyone is talking about. It's really irritating.'
He stopped walking and looked down at a point just behind her right ear. 'It's probably not a good idea to take out your frustration on one person when you're really upset with someone else.'
She stared at him. How did he know she was upset about Sam? He shifted his gaze and looked directly at her.
She nearly winced. His eyes were so clear and so strongly focused that she had the feeling he could see the smallest cells inside her.
'Roberta and I are no longer together, Susannah. I'm not proud of staying with her for as long as I did, since I wasn't too fond of her even at the beginning. But it's difficult for me to attract women, and I like having sex very much. This means I sometimes make compromises. Is there anything else you want to know?'
Susannah actually felt herself flush. 'I-I'm sorry. It's none of my business.'
'No, it isn't.'
Embarrassed, she fumbled in her purse for her own room key, and managed to drop it just as they reached her door.
Yank stooped over to pick it up off the carpet. As he straightened, he once again looked at her with that penetrating gaze she found so disconcerting.
And then, more quickly than she could have believed possible, she lost him to the gods of genius. His eyes grew vague and his face emptied of all expression. Muttering something that sounded like 'zany diode,' he began moving off down the hallway as if she didn't exist.
Black sock.
Brown sock.
Black sock.
Brown sock.
None of them were prepared for what happened the next day. By early that morning thousands of computer enthusiasts had formed five lines that wrapped around both sides of the block-long Civic Center. No one had expected so many people, but despite the crowded conditions, everyone was good-natured and enthusiastic.
Throughout the day loudspeakers blared out announcements, computer-generated music played, and printers clattered. Lines formed to attend the event's workshops and people stood four and five deep at the booths. They could get their biorhythms charted at the IMSAI exhibit and play a game on the Sol at the Processor Technology display. Many companies-some actually larger than SysVal-were still showing their products on draped card tables with hand-lettered signs, but they were dwarfed by exhibitors like Cromemco, MITS, and even the tiny Apple Computer Company, which had apparently learned its lesson about appearances at Atlantic City. Even though they had only moved out of their garage a few months ago, they were introducing their Apple II in an impressive booth complete with a backlit plexiglass sign bearing their new brightly-colored Apple logo.
While Mitch spent his time making contacts with distributors and dealers and Yank wandered the hall to survey the competition, Sam and Susannah, along with several teenage employees they had recently hired to help manage the increasing workload, manned the SysVal booth. Sam was everywhere at once, holding four separate conversations at the same time and telling all who came within the sound of his voice about the miraculous little micro called the Blaze. Yank's splashy graphics display was a big hit with the crowd, as well as a target-shooting game people were standing in line to play.
Susannah distributed hundreds of expensively printed color brochures, smiled until her cheeks ached, and began taking orders for the Blaze almost immediately. As she discussed memory expansion, switching versus linear power supply, and eight-slot motherboards, she realized how far she had come from a woman who had once regarded her most strenuous challenge to be finding a good caterer.
At the end of the weekend, when one of the Faire's organizers announced that thirteen thousand people had been in attendance, a huge cheer went up from the crowd. Trade shows had been held in Atlantic City, Trenton, and Detroit, but the overwhelming success of the West Coast Computer Faire had put all of them to shame. On this April weekend in 1977, California had finally taken command of its own small computer kingdom.
Sam caught Susannah in his arms as the attendance was announced. 'We've made history today! This is our Woodstock, baby. A digital love-in for a new generation.'
That night, when they headed back to the Valley, they had orders for 287 Blazes in hand.
Chapter 19
By August the hills of the Santa Clara Mountains were brown from lack of rain. Joel Faulconer squinted at the
