Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card

  "Must be tough on the two of you, having three kids and all that."

  "Sometimes," said Step.

  "You need some time together," said Glass.

  "Marriage counseling now?"

  "Everybody does."

  "Your mom and dad?"

  "Sure. She needs to have a chance to cry over his grave for an hour on Sundays." Glass grinned at Step's look of embarrassment. "A joke, son, a joke."

  "Son?"

  "OK, then, Dad. I really meant my offer to tend for you so you two can have some time together."

  "I know you did."

  "Yeah, but you blew it off," said Glass. "I know you did, and I want you to know I mean it. I love kids, I get along great with kids. I never had any younger brothers or sisters, and so I really like to take care of them now. Never had a baby in the house-but don't get me wrong, I'm real good with babies. I've tended a lot. There was this neighbor family I watched their kids all the time when I was a kid myself- not that I'm, like, grown up or anything now. But you know what I mean."

  "Yeah," said Step. What he was thinking was, Am I going to sleep in my clothes on the top of the bed? Or try to undress real fast and hope Glass doesn't notice my underwear. That wasn't too likely-Glass was apparently in a mood to notice everything. And he'd ask, and there'd be a long conversation, and it made Step tired to think about it. Besides, Glass must have known what they were doing with Hacker Snack. He must have provided the other programmers with a copy of his commented disassembly of Step's Atari code for the program, as a basis for their work. So it wasn't as if Step could trust him.

  "I used to do everything for those kids. They had a little girl in diapers-Lulu, I called her, but I can't remember why, her name was something like Gladys or something, a stinker name for a little girl, anyway, so I called her Lulu-and she'd be dragging her pants around her ankles, you know how diapers get so heavy when they're wet, so she'd be running around in just her shirt and those wet diapers mopping every speck of dust off the floor."

  "You're making me gag here," said Step. "Urine everywhere, my favorite nighty- night vision."

  "Come on, little girls don't wet their panties with urine, they wet it with angel rain."

  "Now I will puke," said Step.

  Glass laughed in delight. "I thought that was funny, too, but that's what Mrs. Greenwood said, angel rain, I swear it."

  "I got to tell you, Glass, I need my sleep. It's almost one Eastern time."

  "But you aren't even undressed," said Glass, "and we don't have to be over at the show till nine, so we've got plenty of time."

  "I have a mild sleep disorder," said Step, making it up as he went along but trying to come somewhere near the truth. "I have a hard time getting to sleep, which means I have to start calming down and stuff fairly early in order to get to sleep fairly late."

  "And then, just as you're dozing off, you get up and change your clothes."

  This was all too complicated and too infuriating. Step could handle being involved with people and paying attention to them and being polite and all for hours and hours at a stretch, but then he needed time to himself, time where nobody was making demands on him, and right at this moment he wanted Glass to get up and go to the window and jump out and die. Nothing personal, Step just wanted to be alone.

  "Glass, is everything I do or don't do so fascinating to you?"

  "I was just telling you why I'd be a good babysitter for your kids."

  "I'm sure you would."

  "I can change the diapers, that's what I was telling you. Wipe their little bottomses. I know that's not a man's job, but I can do it anyway.

  "It's a man's job all right," said Step, surrendering to Glass's conversation. "I pity any man who doesn't have the sense to help with the diaper changing. That's how you bond with the baby -- that's how you come to love the kid, for pete's sake-doing intimate personal service like that, doing something disgusting but necessary, and the kid knows it. I mean, a man can't nurse the baby, can he? He needs some point of contact."

  "That's a pretty good sermon."

  "Yeah, I gave the same speech to my older brother and he said, What, is she turning you gay or something?"

  Glass hooted and laughed and slapped his thigh. Too much reaction, too much laughter, not at all appropriate. What's going on here, wondered Step. Why is he so keyed up?

  "That's just it," said Glass. "The kid loves you for it, you're doing a service, cleaning up her little privates for her, she loves it."

  Now it really did sound disgusting. Not the idea, but the way he said it, the words, the coy way he said "her little privates." This was making Step faintly ill. The boy simply didn't know how to talk about this, that was all.

  In his eagerness to be of service, he didn't realize that this wasn't exactly the way a father wanted to hear a would-be babysitter talking about changing his little girl's diapers.

  "I even gave her a bath once," said Glass.

  "Mm?"

  "Lulu. Gladys. You know. She got herself all covered with honey. Not that I wasn't watching her, you know, but I'd had to do something with the boys, I can't remember what, and she just got into the honey, it was out on the table, and she poured it all over in her hair, and I couldn't think of anything to do except take off her little doll-clothes and splash her into the tub. And there she was in the tub and I washed her hair and everything and then she gives me the washcloth and she says, 'Better wash down there, Rolly' Like her mom must have taught her you always wash your little privates."

  In that moment Step realized that never, never would Glass be left alone with any of his children, even for a moment, and most especially not Betsy. No, if Step had his way Glass would never even see Betsy, with her beautiful blond hair and her sweet smile and her perfect, perfect innocence.

  "Rolly," said Step quietly. "Let's drop the subject, OK?"

  "Sure," said Glass. "I didn't mean anything by it, you know. Just that I'm willing to tend, and I know how to take care of little kids, don't you see."

  "Right, Glass. Look, here's five bucks, go to the coffee shop and have something on me so I can get to sleep.'

  Step was reaching for his wallet.

  "Why not just slap my face?" said Glass.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Here's five dollars," said Glass. "Like I'm some beggar who's been panhandling you on the street or something. I've got money, you know."

  "Sorry, I'm sorry," said Step. "But I told you, I need to sleep. I'm desperate to sleep. This is why I didn't want to share a room. I have to have time to myself, time alone, deeply and completely alone, or I can't sleep."

  "Must be great for your wife," said Glass nastily.

  "Don't be my enemy over this," said Step. "I make a lousy roommate, I'm a complete son-of-a-bitch, I know it. But I'm begging you, go down to the coffee shop or go smoke in the lounge or something but please, please, let me be alone here for thirty minutes, that's all I ask."

  "Right," said Glass.

  "Don't be mad at me, I didn't mean any offense, I'm just tired."

  "Right," said Glass. He walked to the door. Then he stopped and turned to face Step, waiting, obviously ready to say some thing.

  "What," said Step.

  "Don't ever call me Rolly" said Glass.

  "What? I don't call you Rolly, I call you Glass."

  "You called me Rolly a minute ago. Nobody calls me Rolly."

  "Did I? Why would I call you Rolly? I didn't even know that was your nickname."

  "It's not my nickname. It's my father's goddam nickname."

  Then Step remembered. "You used the name yourself. You said that's what the little girl called you. I must have used the name because you said it, that's all."

  "I did?"

  Step remembered now exactly the sentence in which Glass had used the name Rolly. Better wash down there, Rolly. He was not going to repeat it. "Why else would I have called you that?"

  "Nobody ever called me Rolly," said Glass, sounding very annoyed. "My
nickname as a kid was Bubba.

  Ropy is my dad and nobody calls me that, ever."

  "I never have before," said Step, "and I never will again. Sorry I've been so tense, I told you I'm not good at sharing a room. But better you than anybody else, right?"

  Glass grinned. "Like, better to eat the cockroach than the scorpions, right?"

  "Right," said Step.

  Glass was gone.

  Cockroach. That was exactly right. Being with Glass now was like eating a cockroach. Better wash down there, Rolly.

  Step got up and took his clothes off, all his clothes, carefully folding away his underwear and putting it back in his suitcase, under the clean clothes. And then, standing there naked, he couldn't bear the idea of getting into his sheets. Why? He couldn't. They were so clean. He had to wash first.

  So he got in the shower and soaped himself twice and then he felt clean enough to go to bed. Glass was still gone, and an hour later when Step looked at the clock Glass was still gone, and then Step must have fallen asleep because he never heard Glass come in at all. In the morning Glass was in the shower when Step woke up, and his sheets were open and swirled and wrinkled on the bed, so he must have come in sometime during the night. And when he came out of the bathroom Glass was back to his old cheerful self and Step could almost, almost put out of his mind the things that Glass had talked about last night.

  In the morning everybody was trapped at the booth, just as they had been the day before. It had never occurred to Step that Ray would bring his people out to San Francisco and then never let them go see the rest of the show, but then a lot of things about Ray Keene had never occurred to Step until too late. It looked like the only chance he'd have to scout around would be at lunchtime, and that would be only a half hour. And he'd have the half hour only if he didn't eat, since the lines at the snack counters were even longer than the lines at the women's restrooms. It almost wasn't worth trying to meet anybody, since it would take that long just to spot where the software companies were. And then he'd have to find one that knew his name and thought Hacker Snack was hot stuff, which might take a lot of looking, since that game was last year's news. No, two years ago, and it was all played out. No point, none at all, Step was permanently trapped in Eight Bits Inc., a chicken outfit where he'd be surrounded by sneaks and cheats and thieves and skinflints and guys who dreamed of washing little girls.

  He felt sick. He toyed with the idea of pretending to be really sick in order to get out of the booth, but then there'd be hell to pay if he were caught visiting around at other booths when he was supposed to be sick in his room. Besides, just because they were liars didn't mean he had to be. At least, no more than he already was, skulking around running the creative end of Eight Bits Inc. while pretending to Dicky that he still ran it.

  In fact, that was one of the hardest things about working the booth. People would come up and want to talk about the games, especially the demos, and Step would show them stuff and tell them about features to come, and then he'd realize that Dicky was listening-Dicky always seemed to be listening, drifting silently from place to place within the booth like a ghost that never quite touched the earth-and that Step was talking about features in the games that only he and the programmers knew were going to be there, features that had never been in any version that Dicky had seen. And once he thought of a rule that a game ought to have and was talking about it to a buyer from Service Merchandise, even though nobody at Eight Bits Inc. had ever thought of having the game work that way, which would have been fine because Step pretty much got his way on these things, except that there was Dicky, staring off into space, maybe listening to him or maybe to somebody else or maybe to nobody at all. The Spy, thought Step. He recalled the old Authors cards from his childhood, the picture on the James Fenimore Cooper cards, the hatchet- faced weaselly picture that always summed up the essence of spy- ness in Step's mind. From now on Dicky would replace Cooper as Step's image of a spy. Dicky stood there looking lost in thought, his eyes heavy- lidded, his thick sensuous lips making vague movements, pursing and unpursing, as if he were drinking from an imaginary straw or kissing an imaginary aunt.

  I've got to get out of here, thought Step. Not just out of this booth, but out of Eight Bits Inc.

  He finished with the buyer from Service Merchandise, who didn't buy games anyway, he just wanted to know about them so he'd know which machines would have the hot software, and then Step walked straight to Dicky and planted himself in front of him, not sure until he started to speak what it was he planned to say.

  "I've got to get out of the booth, Dicky," he said.

  "Oh? We're all here to work this booth, Step." Dicky looked detached, uninterested. This subject was not even going to be an argument, because Dicky would never bend.

  Step raised his voice a notch, to make sure the others in the booth heard him. "I have to see the other packages, Dicky I have to see what the competition is doing."

  "We don't do packaging," said Dicky. "That is our packaging. And besides, that's the art department, not the manuals."

  "I have to see the level of documentation," said Step. "I have to see the style. I have to see how much personality they're putting into their packages."

  "If you want to try something new with our manuals, write it up and bring it to me and Ray and I will decide whether you can do it."

  Step raised his voice yet another notch. "So what you're telling me is that Eight Bits Inc. went to the expense of flying me out to San Francisco and now you won't let me go around and see what ideas I can come up with to help us make our documentation keep up with the competition?"

  "Nobody opens the packages to see what the documentation is like when they're deciding whether to buy a game," said Dicky "The documentation is irrelevant to competitiveness. And documentation is all you are responsible for."

  "Word of mouth is what sells our products," said Step, "and word of mouth comes from the whole package.

  If our manuals are just right, then that's part of what the customers tell their friends about."

  "The answer is no," said Dicky. "You came to work, not play, and that's final."

  Step should have given it up long ago, if he cared about antagonizing Dicky. But he did not care, he intended to go on and on until- until what? Until he was fired? "I'm no t proposing to play, Dicky, I'm proposing to work-effectively. Every other software house here is sending their people around to look at the competition, and we sit here locked in this booth, learning nothing. It's a recipe for turning Eight Bits Inc. into a dinosaur preserve."

  Finally, finally Ray Keene walked over and stood silently with them for a moment, his eyes focused somewhere between them, at chest level. Then he looked Step in the eye and said, "Go ahead."

  Dicky showed no sign of minding that he had just been contradicted after taking a stand.

  "How long?" asked Step.

  "A couple of hours," said Ray. "And then we'll send everybody else out, one at a time." He looked at Dicky now. "New policy."

  Dicky nodded. "Excellent idea."

  Step turned to Dicky, and keeping all hint of triumph out of his voice, said, "I'll take my lunch during the time I'm gone, so I'll be back at one-thirty."

  Dicky nodded graciously. Step could see his jaw clenching. I'd better find something, thought Step. I'd better meet somebody and make a connection because my days at Eight Bits Inc. are numbered now, and whatever days I have left are not going to be fun, because I have faced up to Dicky and won and he doesn't like being humbled, he's not good at that. He knows enough to suck up to Ray about it, but he'll make me pay.

  Still, it felt sweet to have joined battle with Dicky and carried the field. And as he left the booth, Glass and a couple of the marketing guys glanced over him and surreptitiously pantomimed applause.

  As he pressed through the crowds, passing booth after booth, he began to realize the problem he was going to face. He didn't know anybody. He had worked solo, had never been to one of these conventions, though of
course he had heard all about them-had read about them in Neddy Cranes's column, for one thing. He couldn't just walk up to a booth and ask who the president of the company was, and if he was there, and could he speak to him. But maybe he'd have to, whether he thought he could do it or not. Besides, he wasn't asking for a job, he needed to talk about licensing an adaptation of Hacker Snack for another machine. Who do you talk to about that? Without telling every flunky manning the booth, so that word spread that Step Fletcher was out trying to make a deal?

  So there he stood at the Agamemnon booth, looking at their games-so smooth, they were a great outfit, the best-when suddenly that squealing-balloon voice came out of nowhere. "The PC may be the worst computer ever foisted on the American public that wasn't made by Commodore," Neddy Cranes was saying, "but that doesn't mean that it won't be the new standard. Sixteen bits is sixteen bits, and now that programmers can design software for more than 64K of RAM at a time, they're going to be able to pile features onto their software and it's going to kill CP/M and all these little so-called home machines, too. Stick with Commodore and Atari and you'll go down with them, mark my words!"

  Step had to listen. They had an IBM PC at Eight Bits Inc., and Ray Keene was still waiting to decide whether or not they were going to port their software over to it. Step was pretty sure they would not, because Glass hated the PC so much. Step himself hated the PC, with its screwy display memory and pathetic four-color graphics when you weren't stuck with monochrome. It was like taking every annoying aspect of the Apple II, making it all a little more complicated and pathetic, and then selling it for five times as much. But Neddy Cranes wasn't a fool, even if he sounded like an obnoxious blowhard. And Cranes wasn't in anybody's pocket.

  He didn't care about making enemies. He wasn't a flack for IBM. If he was saying IBM was the future, then probably IBM was the future, sad as that might be.

  Whoever it was that Cranes was talking to, they weren't arguing with him. Probably they were trying to convince him that they were just as visionary as he was and they agreed with him-completely and now look at this great software, we'll send it to you, give it a try, you'll see how great it is. And since it was Agamemnon, it probably really was great.