A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  And Sybille, hearing that cry of joy, had almost responded. In the same quiet sitting room of the Webster Apartments where she had

  entertained Quentin Enderby, she knelt down and put her arms around Chad and began to say something to him about what a big, handsome boy he was at twenty-one months. But he flung himself forward, his arms strangling her neck, his face crammed against hers, and beneath the projectile of his nearly thirty pounds of solid muscle she almost went over backward. Anger flooded her face; she pushed him away, and he sat down hard in front of her.

  Chad's eyes widened, round and filled with tears, and then his howls echoed off" the walls. Sybille was reaching for him, saying, "I'm sorry, Chad, I didn't mean it—" but Nick had scooped him up.

  "It's okay, Chad, it's okay," he said. He held him tightly against his shoulder, Chad's arms gripping his neck, his face buried in his father's neck. His sobs filled the quiet room.

  Sybille stood up, straightening her suit jacket. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that; I was falling and I just—I said I was sorry!" Nick had turned away. "I never do anything right, do I! I miss Chad so much, I think of him all the time and wish I could see him growing up, but then I do one thing wrong, just one thing, and you take him away fi-om me again. You're always so much better than I am, aren't you, you always know what to do..."

  Furiously angry, Nick did not trust himself to speak to her. "Chad," he said quietly, "your mother is sorry; she feels awful about that. I think she isn't feeling well; a cold or the flu or something; we'll ask her later, at dinner. Right now maybe we should just let her get used to having us around. She'll be feeling better by the time we have dinner and then we'll talk about what we're going to do while we're in New York, all the places we'll go and all the times we'll have together. Will that be all right?" He waited. After a moment, through his sobs, Chad nodded his head once, then again, more vigorously. Nick tightened his arms around his son, so filled with love for him he could not think of anything else.

  But then, feeling a long shudder run through Chad's body, his ftiry returned. "That's the last time you hurt my son," he told Sybille through tight lips. "You'll never get close enough—" He saw the hatred flash in her eyes and he bit off" his words. "We'll talk about it later."

  "You're not telling me how close I can—"

  "We'll talk about it later!" He was shouting over Chad's sobs and he turned and strode out. He was trembling with rage.

  "I said I was sorry!" Sybille cried, following him. "I don't know

  what you want from me; just because I'm not as good as you... You can't take a baby from his mother just because she's not as good as some people..."

  Nick stood still, his back to her. Through the churning of his thoughts, he heard her words. Tou can't take a baby from his mother.. .,

  She's Chad's mother. And Chad loves her, and needs her love. Maybe, if she saw more of him and was more comfortable with him ... But she saw a lot of him in San Jose. She hadn't been comfortable with him from the day he was born.

  Still, she was different now. New York had changed her. She was growing up; she was more sophisticated, proud of the work she was doing, probably meeting new people, making friends. If she was more at ease with herself, wouldn't she be more at ease with her son.> And didn't he owe that to Chad.> To help him have a mother .>

  He turned back to her. Chad had stopped sobbing, but his face was still hidden and he breathed in gulps. "Sybille, if we lived closer to you, would that make a difference .>"

  She looked confused. "Here? In New York? I hadn't thought about it. How could you live here?"

  "I don't know. But if it's important for Chad, I'd try to find a way."

  Slowly, she shook her head. "I don't know. I hadn't thought..."

  A clock struck the hour and she started. "I didn't realize it was so late. I have to leave; I have a dinner date—"

  "Dinner? I thought we were eating together. I just told Chad... Isn't that what you said on the phone?"

  "I said I'd try. Nick, you can't come to town with two days' notice and expect me to erase everything on my calendar. This is a date I can't break. We'll have dinner together on Christmas, I promise. And we can talk tonight, if you want; if you'd like to meet somewhere, I'll be firee about ten-thirty."

  And at ten-thirty, Chad was asleep and Sybille and Nick were drinking cognac in the Algonquin lounge.

  "You're not doing consulting anymore?" Sybille asked.

  "No, thaf s finished; we're a different kind of company now. We've changed the name." She was listening intendy and he began to talk, indifferendy at first, then with more enthusiasm. "Remember when we moved into the garage, and had our big celebration because we thought we were on our way? That was when we began building microcomputers. You watched us do it, build every one by hand, aU the circuit boards, all the..." He saw her eyes begin to glaze and he steered away from technical terms. "By the time we'd made a dozen

  computers, we'd hired a couple of technicians and a secretary. Before we were—"

  "Technicians? Secretary? I never saw them. I never saw anybody but the two of you. How did you pay all those people?"

  "You never saw them because you were gone by then. We paid them the same way we paid ourselves: we used our own money and borrowed the rest." He smiled. "Scared the hell out of ourselves. But we kept climbing, a step at a time, not thinking about how far we could fall. And then we took one of our micros to the computer show."

  "And you were a star, whatever that means."

  He smiled again. "It means we got orders for seventy of the hundred we had. We'd prayed we'd sell twenty-five."

  Sybille leaned forward. "And then what?"

  'We got calls from investors." He put down his glass, pushing it away, as if he needed more room to talk. "You can't imagine the excitement, Sybille; you'd have to be in the middle of it to understand what it meant to those people, and the kind of success it meant to us. We had something new. The first computer small enough to have ev^ery-thing all in one package—computer, keyboard, monitor—and an operating system and programming language that goes with it and that isn't hard to learn. We jazzed it up with a design that made it look like something from outer space—somebody told us science fiction sells—and we called it the Omega 1000, because somebody else told us four digits sound sexier than three. Anyway, we probably made at least 999 that didn't work before we got one that did, so 1000 might be legitimate."

  Sybille nodded, missing Nick's humor, hearing only the key words — investors, success, sells —and the enthusiasm in his voice. It was reflected in the vibrancy of his face, and she was amazed at how attractive he was. Had he always been this handsome? Had he always seemed so strong and self-assured, his body so vigorous, the set of his shoulders so powerfiil?

  It didn't matter. She had other plans now. She didn't want his dreary world of microcomputers and production companies and eigh-teen-hour workdays; she wanted money and recognition and glamor, and the power to make things happen. And she'd found a direct way to get there.

  "—Omega Computer Inc.," Nick said.

  "Sorry, I didn't hear that," Sybille said. "I was thinking about how you've changed. You're so much more sure of yourself"

  "1 was thinking the same of you." Nick gestured to the waiter for

  more drinks. 'Tou're more... slick. Is that a good word? You even walk difFerendy. As if you're pretty sure you're going where you want to go."

  '''Pretty sure'?"

  He contemplated her. "I'd guess you still have doubts, about yourself and the things you do every day, where you're going and what you've left behind."

  "No," she said flatly. 'Tou might want to believe that, but it isn't true. I don't have any doubts at all. You haven't told me what Omega Computer is. Or anything about your venture capitalists."

  "There's nothing to tell about the investors; not yet. They've said they want to come in, but we haven't worked out the details."

  "How much are you trying to raise?"

  B
riefly, he debated not telling her, then heard himself answering. "Four hundred thousand. More would be great, but four hundred would give us enough for equipment and a larger staff" and the rest of it."

  Her eyes had narrowed. Once she would have been awestruck by such a figure. But no longer; not since she had been in two Fifth Avenue apartments. Still, it was a large enough sum for her to know that investors were taking him seriously. "How much of the company would you keep for yourself?"

  "Ted and I would each keep twenty percent. That's the plan." He watched her digest the information, and wondered why he had given it to her. Maybe he still wanted to impress her and make her sorry she'd left. But he didn't miss her, and hadn't, from the time she moved away. Sitting with her now, he could not recapture any of the feelings of pity and admiration he had thought were love, or imagine taking her to bed. It was strange, he thought, that he had been blinded by Sybille, whom he had never loved, and clear-eyed about Valerie, whom he loved passionately in spite of the faults he had accused her of in their last quarrel.

  He hadn't done too well with either of them. Maybe that was why he'd told Sybille about the money: to convince her, and himself, that he may have been a failure with women, but in his work he was going to be as successftil as he had always dreamed.

  "Tell me about yourself," he said. "Your job and how you like New York. Have you made friends here?"

  "No, I don't know anyone. I've been too busy. Most of the time I'm at work, on World Watch,' and some new shows. Our ratings are up for World Watch,' but the station as a whole isn't doing well. Quentin

  wants me to think up something that will get lots of attention, especially from the press."

  "Quentin?" Nick asked.

  "Enderby. The president; he owns the station. 'World Watch' is on tomorrow night, by the way; would you like to watch it from the control room? Chad, too. He'd have to sit on your lap and be quiet, but as long as he's not in anyone's way we'd be glad to have him."

  "Then we'U be diere," Nick replied. "Thanks; I'd enjoy it." He watched her drink her cognac and thought it would be good for Chad to see his mother at work, and for SybiUe to have Chad close by while she did something successfully. In some form or other, he told himself, they would have to come to terms with each other, for Chad's sake. He'd do what he could for the few days they were here, but he wouldn't stay too long, on this trip or future ones. Because as far as he could tell from the short time he'd been in New York, there was nothing and no one here for him.

  Sybille seemed taller in the control room, even when she was sitting down. She wore a brown pinstripe suite with a white blouse that tied in a small bow at her throat; Nick thought she looked formidable. Often she stood as she talked on the telephone or bent over to make notes at the long narrow desk with telephones, notepads, and clusters of buttons that connected her to everyone in the studio and other parts of the buUding. When she sat in her upholstered executive chair on the upper level of the large room, she had the air, Nick reflected, of a ruler surveying her kingdom. Below her sat the director and assistant director and, beside them, in his own space, the technical director with his enormous panel of lights and buttons that looked as if it came from the cockpit of a jumbo jet. Looking past them, Sybille could scan the banks of TV screens filling the wall of the control room, some of them showing what each camera in the studio was focusing on at the moment, others showing reporters at remote locations, still others showing taped segments, and tides and graphics.

  Nick and Chad sat on a bench behind Sybille, their eyes moving back and forth from her and her assistant producer at the long desk to the screens on the wall. When Sybille picked up one of her three telephones, pushed a button on the panel before her, and said, "Warren, pick up your telephone," they saw the anchorman in the studio, who had heard her on his earplug, reach out of camera range and bring a bright-red telephone to his ear. "We've got a new expert on the Exeter nuclear plant," she said, "so we're moving the story back; we'U run it

  as soon as he gets here. I'm writing a new lead; I'll let you know when he's here."

  Nick saw the man on the screen talk protestingly into the telephone. Sybille was writing on the program schedule before her, the phone wedged between her shoulder and her chin, but as the man talked her fingers stilled. "It was the top story; it isn't anymore. Your lead was fine, but we need a new one for this guy, and I've written it. It's done." He spoke again; Nick heard his raised voice through the telephone, cut off by Sybille's icy words. 'Warren, I'll say this once, so you'd better get it. No one else has this guy; he's always refused to go public. I found him, I'm using him, and you'll talk to him when I tell you to. If you can't handle that, you can come to my office after the show and tell me why not. And fix your handkerchief; it's crooked." She slammed down the telephone and went back to revising the hour-long program schedule. On one of the television screens in the wall before her, Warren's red face seemed to swell, then shrivel. He rotated his head as if his collar were too tight. Slowly, he raised a hand and straightened the handkerchief in his pocket.

  Below Sybille, the director shook his head. "A killer," he murmured to the assistant director, and no one seemed to care that, of course, Sybille heard it.

  Nick held Chad on his lap and remembered the tearful, hesitant girl who had told him about being expelled from college and fired from her job. And now, in this control room, she was a ruler surveying her kingdom. A killer.

  The directors and Sybille's assistant producer went about their tasks under her watchful eye, while the huge clock in the midst of the wall of screens ticked die seconds away. Ever)^one was purposeful and serious; only the director cracked irreverent jokes and lolled in his chair, drinking root beer. As the time came closer to the hour, Sybille's assistant producer and the director in charge of remote cameras and crews were making final checks on their own telephones; the technical director, deceptively relaxed, chewed beef jerky from the supply he kept in a jar beside him, and read the revised schedule Sybille had just handed him; and the director finished his root beer while joking with his assistant director about the girls in the editing room. "One minute," he said, still telling jokes but bringing his chair closer to his desk, preparing for work. "Thirty seconds." Sybille stood, watching the screens. "Ten seconds," said the director. He tossed his empty paper cup into the wastebasket and sat straight. "Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen; make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in

  their upright and locked positions Five, four, three—"

  Nick felt Chad's body tense with the countdown; his own was the same, and so was everyone's, in the quiet room.

  "Two, one.'''' At that, the technical director punched a button, and a bold graphic appeared on the screen, sliding past planets and nebulae to curve around planet earth with the words "WEBN World Watch."

  "Five," said the director; the technical director pushed a button, and camera five brought Warren Barr, the new host of 'World Watch,' to the screen, filling it with his smiling face, maroon tie, white handkerchief and serious dark-gray suit. "Good evening," said Barr, and, as he introduced the program, the camerman pulled back to reveal the set, where five men and two women sat around a low coffee table on a raised carpeted platform. A huge, colorful map of the world was behind them; at the introduction to each story a beam of light pinpointed its location. A coffee mug stood on the table before each guest, but no one drank; why take the chance, on live television, of someone jostling an elbow and sending a plume of hot coffee down the fi-ont of an impeccable business suit."

  "Three," said the director. The technical director pushed a button, and camera three focused on the first expert as Barr introduced her. The assistant director gave another command, and the technical director made the expert's name appear across the bottom of the screen. "Two," said the director, and camera two showed the next expert, and so it went, rapidly, cameras switching, names appearing and disappearing as each expert was introduced. Barr returned for a few words, followed by a film clip of a
riot in India that had become the top story, described by one of the guest commentators. Two other stories followed, separated by six commercials. In the middle of the fifth story, one of Sybille's telephones rang; she listened for a moment, then picked up another one to tell the floor director the nuclear phvsicist had arrived. In a minute the physicist was in the studio in a chair vacated, off camera, by one of the other commentators. Barr, when the camera picked him up, happily introduced their guest, a physicist who opposed government policy on nuclear plants. A quick background film was shown, and then Barr began to make sparks fly by asking sharp, rapid-fire, hostile questions of the two experts on each side of the nuclear-plant issue.

  Nick watched Sybille. Her hands were clenched, her face frozen. When the debate in the studio grew acrimonious she nodded. Nick glanced from her to the screen, where the government's expert was shaking a finger at the physicist. Barr had set them both up. In his

  hostility to both, he was oddly neutral. What Sybille had done on 'World Watch," Nick saw, was to give viewers Warren Barr as their stand-in: someone who liked no one, admired no one, trusted no one and believed no one. The most sceptical audience, Nick thought, would cheer Barr on: he was their nasty surrogate, doing their finger-pointing and doubting and sneering for them. And then, at some point in the debate, he took sides. With a raised eyebrow or carefully timed pause, or a small chuckle, suddenly Barr was no longer neutral: he had shown the audience where he stood. Nick wondered if they decided in advance which side he would take. Probably not, he thought; Sybille had no politics; she only had ratings. If what she wanted was to give the audience a hero and a villain, she wouldn't care who played which part, only that they were identifiable to viewers. He thought of the Colosseum, and Christians thrown to the lions. And Sybille in the front row, giving thumbs up.