Susannah couldn't help but wonder what he had to say.
"Captain Crunch knows more about building illegal blue boxes to make free telephone calls than anybody here. Just mention his name and the phone company goes nuts."
"I can imagine."
"He's on probation now."
She smiled, although she shouldn't have, because she was on close terms with several members of the Bell System's Board of Directors.
"A lot of these guys really get off on exploring the telephone system."
"Because of its elegant design?" she inquired, feeling as if she was starting to catch on.
"The best. Fantastic."
"Your design's shit," an acne-scarred kid told a man in a wheelchair. "A bucket of noise."
"I worked on that design for six months," the other man protested.
"It's still a bucket of noise," the kid replied.
Sam steered her toward one of the card tables where a group of onlookers was gathered around an untidy-looking man in his early twenties with a beard and thick-lensed glasses. He was peering intently at a moving pattern on a television screen. "That's Steve Wozniak. He's the only engineer I know who's as good as Yank. He works as a technician for Hewlett-Packard, and he and a buddy of his-a guy named Steve Jobs-are putting together a single-board computer, sort of like the one Yank and I have made. They've named theirs Apple. Pretty weird name, huh?"
Weird wasn't the word for it, she thought as she looked around at the strange assortment of people clamoring for information. Despite the fact that she didn't understand most of the technical references flying around her, she felt their excitement just as Sam had said she would.
"Everything is open here. Everybody shares whatever they know. It's part of the hacker heritage from the early 1960s-free exchange of information." He pointed toward the young kid arguing with three older men. "At Homebrew, people are judged by what they know, not how old they are or how much money they make. A lot different from big corporations like FBT, isn't it?"
A shadow passed across his face, and she knew that even while he urged her to set up an appointment with her father, he was regretting the necessity of dealing with FBT. His prejudice rankled.
"Let me introduce you to Yank."
As he led her toward the front of the auditorium, he called out greetings to various club members. Just like Steve Wozniak at the back of the room, Yank Yankowski was at the center of a group gazing down at a television set hooked up to a circuit board that looked like the one Sam had been carrying around in his case.
"It'll take me a few minutes to get his attention. Sometimes when he gets involved, he's-" Sam broke off as he stepped in front of her and spotted the design flashing across the television screen. "Holy shit," he said, his voice full of wonder. "Yank's got color! He did it. He actually got color." He immediately forgot about her and pushed through the men clustered around the card table so he could make his way to Joseph "Yank" Yankowski.
Yank was one of the more noticeable figures in the room, Susannah decided. Probably four or five inches over six feet, he stood half a head taller than Sam. He wore thick-lensed glasses with black plastic frames and sported a short dark brown crew cut. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, he had a high sloping forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a long nose. His spare torso ended in a pair of pipe-stem legs. With twenty extra pounds of flesh, a decent haircut, contact lenses, and some clothes that didn't look as if they'd been slept in, he might have been moderately attractive. But as it was, he reminded her of someone Paige would have dismissed as a complete nerd.
Susannah watched as the demonstration continued. Sam had apparently forgotten she was there. He kept throwing questions at Yank and studying the machine on the card table. She took one of the aisle seats and watched the way his hair curled up on the shoulders of his jacket. Her father wouldn't listen to a word Sam had to say once he caught sight of that hair, not to mention the Easter Island earring. Why had she promised Sam that she would try to set up an appointment?
She didn't want to think about her father, so she concentrated on the lively chaos in the auditorium. The confusion made her remember tours she had taken through the research and development labs at the Castle. Everything was always orderly in the FBT labs. Men with neat hair and necktie knots showing at the top of their white lab coats stood at well-defined work spaces. They spoke to each other respectfully. No one shouted. Certainly no one ever called a coworker's design "a monumental piece of shit."
What she saw in front of her now verged on anarchy. Vehement arguments were still breaking out. People were climbing up on chair arms and calling out the name of a piece of equipment they wanted to borrow. She remembered the plastic ID badges she had seen on those white FBT lab coats, the special pass even her father had to display. She remembered the locked doors, the uniformed security guards, and she thought about what Sam had said concerning the hacker heritage. Here in the environment of the Homebrew Computer Club, no one seemed to have any secrets. Everywhere she looked, she saw a free exchange of information. Apparently, none of them thought about holding back what they knew for personal profit.
Sam appeared in the aisle at her side. "Susannah, come on over and meet Yank. That crazy son of a bitch got color without adding any more chips. At the last meeting, he and Wozniak talked about running it off the CPU, but nobody really believed either one of them could do it."
"Incredible," she said, although she had only the vaguest idea what Sam was talking about.
"It might take me a minute to get his attention." Sam led her forward. "Yank, this is Susannah. The one I was talking about."
Yank didn't look up from his screen.
"Yank?"
"The son of a gun still won't synch up." Yank's eyes remained glued to what he was doing.
Sam looked over at her and shrugged. "He gets pretty involved when he's working."
"I can see that."
Sam tried again. "Yank?"
"Why the heck won't it synch up?"
"Maybe we should save introductions for another time," Susannah suggested.
"Yeah, I guess so."
As they began walking toward the back of the auditorium, she wished she hadn't spoken as if they had a future. There wouldn't be another time. After what had happened between them outside, she couldn't possibly see him again.
"So what do you think?" he asked.
"It's definitely an interesting group."
"It's not the only one, either. There are others all around the country-hundreds of hardware hackers getting together to build small computers." He studied her face for a moment. "Can't you see what's happening here? This is the vanguard of the future. That's why it's so important for me to talk to your father. Did you mean it when you said you'd set up that appointment?"
"I'll try," she said reluctantly, "but he may not agree."
"I'll give you my phone number. Call me when you arrange it."
"If I arrange it." She hesitated, knowing he would probably laugh at her, but also knowing her father too well. "There's one thing more…"
"What's that?"
"If I can make the appointment, you'll-you'll be careful how you dress, won't you?"
"Afraid I'll show up like this?"
She hastily denied the truth. "Oh, no. Of course not."
"Well, you're right. I will."
Her forehead creased with alarm. "Oh, no. I'm afraid that would be a terrible mistake. My father's from another generation. He doesn't understand people who don't wear a business suit. Or men who wear earrings. And you'll need to get your hair cut." Even as she spoke the words, she felt a stab of regret. She loved his hair. It seemed a part of him-free and wild.
"I told you, Suzie. I don't go in for any bullshit. This is who I am."
"If you want to do business with my father, you'll have to learn to compromise."