"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.

"Lord in heaven above, it's Step Fletcher himself!"

The blast of Neddy Cranes's voice at such close range almost made Step cringe, but he managed to control himself, because that was hardly the way you responded when Neddy Cranes recognized you right in front of the Agamemnon booth.

"Hi," said Step.

Cranes turned to some guy inside the Agamemnon booth. "What you need is to put somebody like Step Fletcher here onto software for the PC. Get him to adapt that game of his-Hacker Snack-great game, played it for longer than I'll ever admit- get that game of his onto the PC, and it'll look shitty because everything looks shitty on the PC, but those poor bastards who have to use that machine every day are gonna be so grateful to have something on there that's actually not hellish to use that they'll make a line five miles long just to lick your butt."

Step wondered if his own forays into crudeness made DeAnne feel as uncomfortable as Cranes's even cruder talk was making him feel. Not for the first time he resolved to stop tormenting her by using language that Mormons weren't supposed to use.

The guy from Agamemnon finally got a word in. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Fletcher."

"Step," said Step.

"Oh, haven't you met each other?" said Cranes.

"I actually haven't met anybody," said Step. "Not even you, Mr. Cranes."

Cranes threw his head back and laughed-a sound that attracted attention like the sudden cawing of a crow.

Step could feel the general movement of the surrounding crowd as they turned to look, for a moment, to find the source of that incredible sound. And for that moment, inside the circle of space immediately surround ing Cranes, Step felt how all that attention had a kind of energy in it. It made Step feel shy, burdened by it, but Cranes seemed to draw strength from it. "Well it's nice to meet you, Step! I spent so much time with your goddam game that I felt like you were my ugly brother- in- law!" And to Step's astonishment, Cranes threw an arm around him and hugged him. It was an impossible moment-what was Step supposed to do, hug him back?

He didn't have to do anything. Cranes still gripped him around the shoulders as he turned back to the guy from Agamemnon. Step read the name tag. It was Dan Arkasian. Arkasian himself, Agamemnon's founder and president. And a nice guy, it seemed, handling this invasion from Neddy Cranes with grace and patience. This was exactly the man he wanted to meet, the man who could get his games published with the best distribution in America, in the best packaging, and it had to be with Neddy Cranes hugging him.

As Cranes rattled on, Arkasian was looking Step in the eye -- no, looking him over -- and all Step could do was smile wanly.

"You've hitched yourself to all these toy computers with no more than 48K of usable RAM, and it's gonna kill you," said Cranes. "But you get somebody like Step Fletcher to design you some real software-I mean, this guy isn't just a computer nerd, he's got a Ph.D. in history! He knows something!"

Step couldn't believe that Cranes knew that about him. And then he remembered- Eight Bits Inc. had put out a press release about hiring him, and that included the fact that he had just got his doctorate. Step had assumed that nobody read that stuff.

"I'll bet that standing right here, Step has more ideas about what you can do with the PC than just about anybody here. Come on, Fletcher, tell him one, he needs a new idea, all that Arkasian has going for him is that his product is slick, he needs a new idea!"