Lost Boys

by Orson Scott Card

  "Nobody will ever put 512K on this thing," said Glass. "You can't fill 512K with meaningful code!"

  "Don't get mad at me, Glass," said Step. "I'm just telling you what I think. The machine's a piece of shit, but it's an IBM piece of shit, and where we're looking at maybe half a million 64's in use today, we'll see a million, two million, three million of these on people's desks."

  "What does it matter what's on people's desks?" said Dicky contemptuously. "We don't do business software. We write programs for the home market."

  "You think a businessman doesn't want to play a game now and then? You think a businessman doesn't want to have a real computer at home?"

  "Not for this price," said Dicky. "Not when he can get a Commodore 64 with a printer and a monitor for half what he pays for this overpriced box alone."

  It occurred to Step that by being honest he had accomplished what he really wanted. With Step firmly committed to voting for developing software for the IBM PC, Dicky would be even more firmly committed to killing any possibility of Eight Bits Inc. turning to the IBM. I couldn't have set it up better if I had planned it, he realized. So it was with a light heart that he said, "You're wrong, Dicky. We're going to see the IBM market take off until it's the only market."

  "Except Apple," said Glass. "That piece-of-junk company just won't die no matter how useless its computers are."

  "You're forgetting the Lisa," said Dicky. It was a joke, and so everybody laughed. The poor, pathetic Lisa, a vast overpriced machine whose only selling point was that it made pictures of your disk files instead of just giving them names-as if you needed a picture of a file folder to tell you that your file was a file! "Step probably thinks there'll be nothing around but the IBM and the Lisa."

  "Make whatever recommendation you want," said Step. "I can't disagree with a single bad thing anybody's said about the IBM PC. Just tell Ray that I cast a dissenting vote, OK?"

  "Oh, I'll be sure to tell him," said Dicky. "I'll tell him that you agree with our assessment as programmers, but that in your great wisdom and vast experience as a businessman you think we should support the IBM PC

  based solely on business considerations. I'll go see Ray right now, I think."

  Dicky left the room, almost swaggering.

  Step could have shouted for joy.

  "Man, you just been shat on," said one of the programmers.

  "But it was only Dickyshit," said Glass, "so it smells like little roses."

  "Little pansies," said another programmer.

  "Chanel Number Two," said Step. They all dissolved in laughter.

  Robbie and Betsy were safely strapped into seatbelts, while Jenny's innumerable herd was bouncing around in the back of the Renault like Ping-Pong balls in a room full of mousetraps. "Don't you believe in seatbelts?" asked DeAnne the first time they rode anywhere together.

  "I believe in seatbelts all right," said Jenny, "but carmakers don't believe in big families. There are never enough."

  "You could belt in as many as you can," DeAnne suggested.

  "And the ones without seatbelts, what's the message they get from that?" asked Jenny. "Mommy loves the other kids and doesn't want them to die in a crash, but you don't need a seatbelt."

  DeAnne laughed, but it still made her feel queasy. "So the solution is to protect none of them? Why not double them up?"

  Jenny just looked at her. "DeAnne," she said, "I bet I'll have as many kids live to adulthood as you will. I'm leaving Steuben next month, so let's just figure that there are some things about each other's lives that we aren't going to be able to fix."

  "I'm sorry," said DeAnne. "I wasn't criticizing. I just didn't understand."

  "I don't understand either," said Jenny. "And we've got to get this dinner over to Sister Ho's house."

  DeAnne reluctantly pulled the car out of the Cowpers' driveway, even though she and Step had never before violated their rule that their car never moved without every passenger strapped down.

  Now it was late in May, and it seemed as though once or twice a week there was something that required her and Jenny to do some kind of Relief Society compassionate service together. "Compassionate service" invariably meant fixing a meal for somebody. Child in the hospital? The Relief Society brings you dinner.

  Husband lost his job? Again, dinner. Down with pneumonia? Dinner.

  No, thought DeAnne. That isn't fair. The Relief Society does a lot of other things-hospital visits, taking old widows shopping, and that time Sister Bigelow spent three days getting that woman and her two sons with a car that broke down on I-40 installed in a rented mobile home with borrowed furniture. It's just that meals seem to be the main thing that Jenny and I get asked to do.

  DeAnne was getting just a little bit tired of it. "Isn't there a compassionate service leader in this ward?" she had asked Jenny on the phone that morning. The kids were in the back yard playing, and DeAnne was sitting down resting her back because the baby was sticking about nine feet out in front of her now and just standing up took as much work as lifting heavy crates all day.

  "There is one," said Jenny. "Sister Opyer. She was called because of inspiration. I know that because no rational person would have called her to do it. Amazingly enough she's been sick every time Ruby Bigelow calls on her to do anything, and now Ruby just calls us."

  "Why not release her and call someone else to the position?"

  "You don't do that around here," said Jenny. "Sister Opyer wants the position-she just doesn't want to do the work. So if Ruby released her, she'd be hurt and she'd go inactive and all the women in the ward would say that Ruby drove her out of the Church."

  "But that's nonsense!"

  "You just don't understand the South yet, DeAnne," said Jenny. "I give you about a year. Then it'll suddenly dawn on you that all these sweet, nice, kind-talking people are stabbing you in the back, and you'll think, What a bunch of hypocrites! Then a year later, you'll realize that they aren't hypocrites, they're just so polite that they talk in code. When they say, 'Why I'd be glad to, soon as I can,' that means 'Better do it yourself because I never will.' When they say, 'You think up the most interesting ideas,' it means 'You are plumb loco, woman!' You just have to learn the code."

  "How long did it take you to learn it?"

  "I'm still learning it,'.' said Jenny. "They still surprise me. But the basic rule is, yes means maybe and maybe means no."

  "Why don't they just say what they mean?"

  "Confrontation!" cried Jenny. "That would mean confrontation! To say no right out in front of God and everybody? Impossible. No true southerner is capable of it. It would be unseemly. It would be rude."

  "Well, I always say what I think, and I prefer it when other people do, too."

  "Of course," said Jenny. "You're a westerner. And the southerners in the ward all think that us westerners are the most crude, pushy, bossy, obnoxious, contentious, cantankerous fight-pickin' chest-pokin' rapscallions as ever crossed the Mississippi going the wrong way. If you catch my drift."

  "Was that cowboy talk?" asked DeAnne.

  "Trust me," said Jenny. "You'll never get a southern Relief Society president to release somebody who doesn't want to be released. Oh, she'll hint around about how it must be such a bur den for poor Sister Opyer and I just don't know how you manage, you sweet thing, what with being so poorly all the time and still having to carry on the burdens of your calling. And if Sister Opyer ever said, It does seem so hard sometimes, but I can manage, then Ruby'd know to release her right off. But instead Sister Opyer says-I was there once, and I think I can remember-she said, 'Oh, Sister Bigelow, it's my calling that sustains me, it gives meaning to my life to know that in the midst of my own suffering I can go out and relieve someone else's.' And you know that after that, Ruby's got no hope of releasing Sister Opyer even if she dies."

  "So we do her job," said DeAnne.

  "Hey, it's the Lord's work and it needs to be done and we can do it."

  "You're more of a Christian than I am."
/>
  "So do you want to make the salad or the casserole?"

  "I'd like to make the biscuits."

  "Not a chance," said Jenny. "You don't know how to make southern biscuits yet and I don't have time to teach you."

  "They just look like Bisquick drop biscuits to me," said DeAnne.

  "Don't ever say Bisquick around the women of the ward. Might as well sew a scarlet B on your dress after that."

  "Salad, then," said DeAnne.

  So instead of resting, DeAnne made a Jell-O salad and put it in the fridge to set. And then, along about one-thirty when the kids should have been napping, DeAnne strapped Robbie and Betsy into the car and drove over to pick up Jenny and her brood. They had talked about maybe one of them just tending all the kids while the other took the meal over, but then they realized that DeAnne was too pregnant and tired all the time to deal with Jenny's rowdy crew and DeAnne also couldn't deal with the terror she felt whenever her kids were at Jenny's house and besides, Jenny knew the way and DeAnne needed to get out of the house so there was no other way to handle it-they both went and took the kids.

  The family they took dinner to lived way out in the county, and on the long drive back home the kids all fell asleep. Quietly Jenny asked how things were going with Stevie. "Did you decide to go with any of the names that Dr. Greenwald gave you?"

  "Step's against taking Stevie to anybody like that," said DeAnne. "I mean really against it. He's not rational about it. I think he'd rather that I had an affair."

  "Men," said Jenny. "And they say we're irrational."

  "Well, there's some reason for it, but he never says," said DeAnne.

  "Does he have some relative who's a shrink?" asked Jenny.

  "No," said DeAnne. "Why?"

  "I mean, I have an uncle who's a real estate agent and so I hate all real estate agents. I just see one and I want to go get my gun."

  "Because of your own uncle?"

  "The sleazeball of all sleazeballs," said Jenny. "I can't go into detail because of the little pitchers in the back, but believe me, if you knew this guy you'd want to impose the death penalty fo r general offensiveness."

  "Well, he's got no shrinks in his family, anyway," said DeAnne.

  "So," said Jenny, "when are you going to take Stevie in?"

  "I said, Step won't do it."

  "You're at home," said Jenny. "Now that he works human hours, he carpools, so you have the car. You also have the checkbook. Take Stevie in and what's Step going to know till you've done it?"

  DeAnne was appalled. "Would you really do such a thing to Spike?"

  "If Spike ever dared to put his foot down and forbid me to do something that I knew my child needed, hell yes!"

  "Well Step didn't put his foot down," said DeAnne. "We just didn't agree, that's all."

  "Well then what's the problem?" asked Jenny. "If he didn't forbid it, then you can just go and do it."

  DeAnne was nonplussed. It was as though Jenny came from a different tribe with strange marriage customs. "Jenny" she said, "Step and I don't do things about the children until we agree."

  "I can see it now," said Jenny. "The child bleeding to death on the lawn, and you on the phone talking it out with Step."

  "It's not like that," said DeAnne. Then she closed her mouth and decided it would be better if she said nothing else.

  After a minute, Jenny broke the silence. "Um, if you want to kill me, could you wait till we've got the kids out of the car?"

  "What?" asked DeAnne.

  "You're going about sixty and this is a thirty- five zone."

  It was true. DeAnne immediately put on the brake and the kids lurched around in the back, making grumbling noises in their sleep. "Sorry," said DeAnne.

  "Look, be mad at me if you want," said Jenny, "but it's Step you're mad at and you know it. Call it what you want, he's stopping you from doing what you know is right for your child. The mother bear in you is not happy DeAnne. Besides, one of those doctors is even in the ward. Well, she's not a member herself, but her son just joined."

  DeAnne made a connection in her mind. "Step was just assigned to a home teaching companion like that. A

  young man whose mother isn't a member but she drives him to church."

  "That's the one," said Jenny. "She's a shrink. Dr. Greenwald told me she was probably the one most likely to have an opening, too."

  "Why, because she's no good?"

  "Because she's a woman," said Jenny. "Most men have a harder time going to a woman therapist, and a lot of women have an easier time going to a man. Or they think they will, anyway. Dr. Greenwald said. It's like gynecologists. I for one don't understand why any woman would go to a male ob- gyn ever, now that there are women doing the job, but they still dominate the business. Anyway, she's got a connection with the Church and she's sympathetic. She's more likely to understand."

  "Understand what?"

  Jenny laughed. "I can see you've never been to a shrink. They think religious people are crazy"

  "Not true," said DeAnne, thinking at once of Sheila Redmond back in Vigor. "I knew a therapist and she and her husband were serious Christians. Not Mormon, but they certainly didn't think it was crazy to be religious."

  "Have you ever taken the Minnesota Multiphasic?"

  DeAnne vaguely remembered that she had taken it once, but couldn't recall anything more than that.

  "It's got questions all over it like, Do you believe that God sometimes talks to you? I mean, that's our whole religion, isn't it? That God still talks to human beings. And by their rules it means we're crazy!"

  For the first time DeAnne began to think that maybe Step was right. If psychiatrists were really like that, then it could be a disaster to take Stevie to see one. As Step said, they didn't really cure people that often. And if the psychiatrist actually did talk Stevie out of his belief in the gospel ...

  "What I'm saying," said Jenny, "is that maybe you can talk Step into it if he knows the shrink and trusts her.

  So just make sure he does his home teaching and meets Lee Weeks's mom."

  Step came home with his trophies: a copy of his employment agreement, excluding Hacker Snack and any work he might do for computers not being supported by Eight Bits Inc., and the memo from Ray Keene stating that Eight Bits Inc. would not be supporting the IBM PC. He thought DeAnne would be overjoyed.

  "I can quit now," he said.

  "Not really" she said.

  "The option in our contract with Agamemnon says that at any point in the first six months I can send them a letter saying I'll be working on PC programs for them, and that's it. We get a check. And when I turn in Hacker Snack for the 64 we get another check. And when I turn in Hacker Snack for the PC, we get another check. Which means that before Christmas, if I work hard enough and learn 8088 machine language quick enough, we'll have had a total income this year of more than fifty thousand dollars."

  "That's fine when all that money comes," said DeAnne. "But what about right now? You may have noticed that we have a baby due in July. I don't think we're going to be able to get a new insur ance policy that will cover a preexisting pregnancy."

  Step looked at her belly for a moment, as if the baby might come up with an idea.

  "You can't quit till the baby is born," she said. "As it is, the first check from Agamemnon will barely catch us up on the house in Vigor." She held up a letter. "They're warning us that we have thirty days to bring the loan current before they'll begin foreclosing on the house."

  "But don't you see?" said Step. "If I quit right now, we'll have enough money to pay for the house and the baby."

  "Do you think I haven't gone over the figures?" said DeAnne. "Do you think I haven't read the Agamemnon contract? Do you think I haven't calculated all our payments down to the penny? If you quit now, and anything goes wrong with the pregnancy, we'll be in such deep trouble that we'll never get out. We need the insurance.

  We've got to be covered."

  She was right, but she was also wrong. "DeAnne, R
ay's decision not to support the PC is a deep and serious mistake. Some where along the line-and I think it'll be soon-Ray will realize that and there'll be another memo.

  We have a brief time right now when I can quit and go straight into PC projects. But if Eight Bits Inc. is supporting the PC when I quit, then I have to wait a year before I can do anything but Hacker Snack for Agamemnon, and we really can't live on just Hacker Snack for one year, even if it sells brilliantly."

  DeAnne looked away from him; he could see that she was trying to control her emotions. "I don't know what to do, then," she said.

  "I can't even afford to buy a PC until we exercise our option and get the check from Agamemnon," said Step.

  "If we lose the house in Indiana," said DeAnne, "that'll be on our record forever. Every loan application there'll be a questionhave you ever been in default on a loan? Have you ever had a mortgage foreclosed?"

  "We won't lose the house," said Step. "We'll lower the selling price, what about that? We won't even get our equity out. That's fifteen thousand down the toilet, but-"

  "It's more than that," said DeAnne. "It's the money we spent on the new furnace and the air-conditioning and the rewiring and the Anderson windows and I wish we'd never moved! If we had stayed there and you had just gone to San Francisco on your own, you could have signed with Agamemnon and we'd still be in the house and—"

  "DeAnne," said Step, "what good will it do for us to start second-guessing ourselves? We had no way of knowing Agamemnon would take me on-we wrote to them, didn't we? And how would I have gone to San Francisco? We were already broke."

  "I know," she said. "But I feel us circling and circling around in a whirlpool, getting sucked down, and this job is something to hold on to."

  "What we need to hold on to is my ability as a game designer," said Step. "I'm good at it. I've seen it at Eight Bits Inc. I really do see things that other programmers don't see. I have a knack for it. You've got to trust me, DeAnne, not the check from Ray Keene."

  "Don't put it that way!" There was fire in her eyes. "Don't you dare put it that way! Trust in you-I've trusted my whole life to you, the lives of my children, my whole future forever So don't tell me that if I ask you not to quit your job until after the baby is born it means I don't trust you."