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"Paige, I don't know if you remember, but I'm getting married on Saturday. It would mean a lot to me if
you were there." At first Susannah didn't think Paige had heard. But then, just before Conti led her
through the door, her sister gave a nearly imperceptible nod.
The electronics shop was located in Cupertino just off Stevens Creek Boulevard. Sam thought he knew
every shop in the Valley, but Z.B. Electronics was new. As he pulled up outside, he spotted a group of
three teenage boys approaching the shop. He immediately tagged them as "wireheads" the name high
school kids gave to the boys who spend all their time in the school electronics lab. When Sam was in high
school, he had hung out with both the "wireheads" and "freaks," the kids who were caught up in the
counterculture. The fact that he didn't stick to one group had confused everybody.
Acting on impulse, Sam got out of the car and opened the trunk of the Duster. He called out to the boys,
"Hey, help me carry this stuff inside, will you?"
A pudgy, long-haired kid detached himself from the group and walked forward. "What do you have?"
"A microcomputer," Sam replied casually, as if every-body in the Valley drove around with a
microcomputer in the trunk.
"No shit! Hey, guys, he's got a micro in his trunk." The kid turned to Sam and his face was alive with
excitement. "Did you build it?"
Sam handed him one of the boxes of equipment and picked up the heavy television himself. Another boy
slammed the trunk lid. "I helped a friend of mine design it. He's the best."
As they walked toward the shop, the boys began peppering him with questions.
"What kind of microprocessor did you use?"
"A7319 from Cortron."
"That's shit," one of them protested. "Why aren't you running it off an Intel 8008 like the Altair?"
"The 8008 is old news. The 7319 is more powerful."
"What do you think of the IMSAI 8080?" the pudgy kid asked, referring to a new microcomputer that
was rapidly challenging the Altair's supremacy.
"IMSAI's nothing more than a rip-off of the Altair," Sam said derisively. "Same old stuff. Have you ever
taken one apart? Total shit. A bucket of noise."
One of the boys rushed in front of Sam to open the door. "But if you're using another microprocessor,
none of the Altair equipment will work with it."
"Who cares? We've done everything better."
As they walked inside Z.B. Electronics, an enormously obese man with yellow hair and pink watery eyes
glanced up at them from behind the counter. Sam stopped in his tracks. As he looked past the man, his
stomach did a flip-flop, and the television in his arms suddenly seemed as light as a box of microchips.
No wonder the kids were attracted to this store. On two rows of shelving directly behind the man's head
rested a dozen Altair microcomputers.
Sam Gamble had hit pay dirt.
"Chamber of Commerce weather," Joel kept saying the morning of the wedding. "It's Chamber of
Commerce weather."
Susannah forced herself to take a bite of dry toast while she stared through the dining room window at
the sun-spangled June day and watched the gardeners tying the last of the white ribbon festoons in the
trees.
Her father glanced up from his newspaper, a man in complete command of his world. "Could I have
more coffee, dear?"
As she refilled his cup, she felt tired and worn, like an old lady with all the drama of life behind her.
The woman who was coordinating the wedding arrived shortly before noon, and for the next few hours
she and Susannah busied themselves double-checking arrangements that had already been
triple-checked. She sat for the hairdresser who arrived at two, but the style he arranged was too fussy.
After he left, she brushed it out and made a simple coil at the nape of her neck. At three o'clock she put
on her antique lace dress and fastened a little Juliet cap to her head. While she secured the Bennett family
choker around her neck, she watched through the window as the guests arrived. And then, when it was
time, she went downstairs.
"My little girl," Joel whispered as she approached. "My perfect little girl."
Moments later the trumpets sounded, heralding the beginning of the ceremony.
Cal was smiling at her as she approached. The minister began to speak, and she tugged surreptitiously on
the pearls. Why couldn't she breathe? Why was the choker so tight?
The ceremony continued, and the noise of the lawn mower that had been bothering her grew louder.
People were turning their heads and Cal's eyebrows drew together. The minister had just begun to
address her when she finally recognized the sound for what it was. Her gasp was drowned out by the
noise of the Harley shooting into the garden.
"Suzie!"
She spun around and saw his black hair flying in the breeze like a pirate's flag. He looked magnificent and
appallingly dangerous a dark angel, a wicked messiah.
"What's the matter?" he called out. "Forget to send me an invitation?"
As he taunted her from the seat of his Harley, the long-ago chant of the balloon man began to beat in her
ears.
"Come on, Suzie. Climb up on the back of my bike."
She pulled away from Cal and pressed her hands over her ears. "Go away! I won't listen to you! I'm not
listening to you!"
But Sam was a man with a vision, a child of the middle class, immune to the rules of upper-class
propriety, and he paid no attention to her entreaty. She stumbled away from the altar, trying to distance
herself from all of them.
"Follow me, babe. Leave all this and come with me."
She wouldn't do it. She wouldn't go to the end of the drive. She wouldn't unlock the iron gates. She was
a good girl. Always a good girl. She wouldn't ever, ever again run off with a clown-faced balloon man.
All my balloons for free. Come and follow me.
Her father was untangling himself from the rope garland that cordoned off the end of his row, coming to
rescue her, to protect her and keep her. To keep her at Falcon Hill. To keep her with Cal. She saw
Paige's shocked face, Cal's appalled one. She clawed at her neck so she could breathe, but the choker
was no longer there. A sprinkling of pearls had scattered over the toes of her wedding pumps.
"Hop on my bike, babe. Hop on my bike and follow me."
She felt the pull of his sun, the light of his vision, the blazing glory of his challenge. A yearning for freedom
burst inside her like a rocket-born rainbow. She heard the rage of proper angels in the outbursts of the
people around her, but the call of a leather-clad devil spurred her on. No more. No less is more. Not
ever. From now on more is more.
She began racing toward him, flying along the pristine white runner and crumpling it beneath her feet. One
of her shoes came off. She kicked off the other. The little Juliet cap blew away, tugging free her careful
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