I know the kids are going to learn language like that but I'd rather they didn't learn it from you."
"Aren't you the teensiest bit curious as to why I'm going to sue their elbows off?"
"Thank you. And yes, I'm more than a little curious, yes."
"Because those sons-of-bitches have been adapting Hacker Snack for the 64 behind my back."
She winced.
"Pardon me. Not sons-of-bitches, kids, bastards."
She looked angry. "Give it a rest, Step."
"They never asked permission, they never offered to buy it, there's no contract, no agreement to a royalty, and they never once breathed a single word, and I thought these guys were my friends."
"That's no reason to take it out on me and the kids, Step."
"I'm not taking it out on you!"
"You're yelling and you're using language that I don't want to have to explain to the children."
Step leaned over and looked at the kids in the back seat. "I'm not mad at you kids. Some people at work have been doing something really sneaky and bad to me and so I'm angry at them. And as for the words I used, those are words that you shouldn't ever use except when somebody you trusted has stabbed you in the back, and on those occasions you have my permission to use those words but not in front of your mother."
"Thanks so much," said DeAnne.
"Like I'm sure they'll remember this conversation ten years from now."
"Somebody stabbed you?"
"It's a figure of speech, Robbie," said DeAnne. "Nobody stabbed your father. Though I might, in another minute."
"I'm sorry," said Step. "I was out of line. But I'm so ..." He hunted for the word.
"Mad."
"Mad." It wasn't the word he had wanted, but then the word he wanted probably didn't exist.
"So you're going to quit."
"Absolutely. I'm going to sue them for so much money I end up owning the company and then I'll fire them."
"Just a suggestion, Step," she said.
"Yes."
"Don't quit in San Francisco. They might cancel your ticket and we don't have enough on the Visa to let you charge a return fare."
"Yes, well," he said. "I suppose I'll wait till I get home."
"And maybe it was all a misunderstanding, did you think of that? Maybe somebody didn't realize that you had signed an agreement that excluded Hacker Snack. Maybe Mr. Keene didn't know that they were working on this."
"Maybe pigs have wings."
"Flying pigs!" cried Robbie. Flying pigs were a standing joke in the family-DeAnne even had two ceramic flying pigs and one stuffed one, which she kept on a shelf beside the mirror in the bathroom. "Watch out below!" The idea of flying pigs defecating on pedestrians had been Step's contribution to the family's flying-pig lore, and of course that was the part that Robbie loved best.
"Step, don't do anything rash."
In other words, thought Step, even when they're stealing from me, I have to stay at this lousy job with these weasels.
"It's not as if it should surprise you," said DeAnne. "I mean, if they have you sneaking around behind Dicky's back, why shouldn't Dicky be sneaking around behind yours?"
"Well maybe I don't want to be where anybody sneaks around anybody's back at all."
"Exactly," said DeAnne. "You think I don't want you to quit? But think about it-the fact that they're trying to adapt Hacker Snack for the 64 means that it's probably a very good idea, commercially speaking. And there you'll be at the Computer Faire, with the heads of every major software company. Maybe it's time for you to sell the rights to Hacker Snack yourself."
"You know," said Step, "you really are good at this."
"Yes, I am," she said.
"What I want to know is, how did you learn corporate politics? When you were a secretary in the CDFR
Department at BYU?"
"Nope," she said. "Everything I know about conniving I learned as a counselor in the Relief Society presidency, as we figured out how to get the bishopric to let us do what we needed to do even when they thought we didn't need to do it."
"So the plan is, I make nice in San Francisco, and come home with a deal to sell the program myself."
"And then you get to work first thing Monday morning, before anybody has a chance to tell anybody that you know what they're up to, and you get a copy of that agreement you signed that excludes Hacker Snack from your deal with Eight Bits."
"Right. I'll need that. Because they could just lose it, couldn't they-and claim that I'd signed the same agreement as everybody else but