The four straight weeks she spent at Bettye’s over Christmas break were really badly needed. She’d been working very hard at her studies over the fall, and the tension and stress had been getting to her, but this proved to be the perfect change of pace. Some of the time it was pretty slow compared to the summer, but that gave her some time to do some reading ahead for the winter-term classes. But there was time for relaxation, for just hanging out with her friends, recharging her batteries for the term to come.

New Year’s Day was awful slow. That was usually the case, Shirley told her; most of the customers had a tendency to stay at home and overdose on football games. So, even though it was a holiday, Jennlynn and some of the girls were just hanging around in the main room that afternoon. Jennlynn was getting an education in the finer points of cribbage by Shirley and Cindy, getting her pants whipped in the process, since she was a lousy card player. Claudia was spending some time in the kitchen with something that either smelled awful exotic or stunk the house the hell up, depending on people’s tastes. Tina was working on her nails; a couple of girls were over in the bunkhouse, taking naps or something. Everyone was a bit bored, and there was a universal sigh of relief when a car pulled in. "Boy, he doesn’t know how lucky he is," Tina snorted. "If he asked, he could have all of us at once for ten bucks apiece, just so we’d have something to do."

"Well, maybe twenty," Cindy grinned. "Can you imagine? Six on one? We’d kill the poor guy."

"It’d take some killing," Shirley said, recognizing the customer. "That’s George."

"Oh, good!" Cindy exclaimed. "It’s been a while!"

Shirley met him at the door with a hug, as she often did with regulars. "Good to see you again," she smiled. "You want a lineup right off, or would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee and shoot the bull a bit?"

"I’ve been driving since Reno," George smiled. "I’m ready to use the bathroom, maybe have a bite, and take a load off before we get down to business."

"Well, come on in and I’ll get you your coffee," Shirley smiled.

"Anybody new here?" he asked.

"Probably not to you," Shirley said, leading him into the main room. "Tina and Rebecca weren’t here when you were here the last time, but I think you’ve run across them elsewhere. Gloria is out back taking a nap, she’s pretty new, you may not have met her before. I can call her if you like."

"Maybe later," he shrugged. "Hi, Cindy!" he smiled to the girl at the big table. "Good to see you again! And Tina! Up at Old Bridge, right?"

"Yeah, back last fall," the long-haired blonde grinned. "Good seeing you, too!"

"Rebecca, I know I met you up at the Mustang last spring," he smiled. "I thought I recognized your airplane outside. I take it things worked out for you?"

"Oh, yeah," she smiled, recognizing the guy who had been her first client as a new turnout at the Mustang Ranch back in May. Just thinking back, he’d been in the top ten percent of guys she’d had, even though he was nothing much to look at. "I’m still in college; I’m just here for the holiday break."

"Well, you’ve obviously taken to it," he grinned. "You seemed a little nervous last spring."

"I had reason to be," she said. "But I got over it."

"Well, we’ll find out," he laughed. "From the smell, Claudia must be in the kitchen."

"Muttering some kind of Cajun incantation over the stove," Cindy said. "You planning on staying for dinner?"

"Might as well," George said. "Slow around here today?"

"Very," Cindy agreed.

"Well, someone tell Claudia I’ll get to her after dinner. I wouldn’t want to mess up whatever it is she’s cooking."

Without it ever being said, it was soon understood that over the course of the afternoon and evening George planned on doing all six girls in the house, and Shirley too, if she was interested, so there was no point in jockeying for position. Jennlynn remembered someone saying that George made a trip around Nevada three or four times a year, hitting several houses along the way. The guy had to be some kind of animal, but he was a cheerful, jovial, and obviously knowledgeable one.

As it was, Cindy drew the first round – it was settled by cutting the cribbage deck. They were out back for about an hour, then came back freshly showered and feeling very at ease. They sat around, had a cup of coffee, listened to some of George’s stories, laughed a lot, and told a few of their own. While they were often casual with customers, George was a little different in that he knew just about everybody in the business in Nevada. He heard a lot of the gossip from other places and was in fact one of the conduits of how it spread. That made him a lot more "with it" than most of the men who came in.

Jennlynn got lucky with the card deck on the next go-round and headed out back with him. As they left, Shirley said, "Don’t run over too much, so you don’t miss supper."

"I’ll try not to," Jennlynn giggled. They went back and had a pretty good session. George seemed a little more inspired than he had been back up at the Mustang, but she figured that back then he’d been told he was dealing with a brand new turnout and accordingly took it a little easy. He still wasn’t in Sam’s class, but not far behind, either.

Toward the end of the session, they were cuddling naked on the bed, just talking a little. "You did real good, Rebecca," he told her. "You were one of the best new turnouts I ever met, but you’re a whole lot better now. Shirley’s been teaching you, I take it?"

"Oh, yeah," Jennlynn smiled. "I never dreamed there was so much to learn! But it’s been fun learning it."

"I’ll bet it has," he replied. "Look, I’m going to be honest and not try to peddle you a line of bullshit. You’re one of the best I’ve ever come across. You give full attention to what you’re doing, and you obviously enjoy it. That’s rare, but it adds a lot for the customer. I’ve seen girls who are technically in your class but are obviously just going through the motions. So long as you can keep your enthusiasm, you can go far in this business."

"Actually, I don’t know how far I want to go," she told him. "I’m still primarily a student. When I get out of college and get a real job, I’m probably going to have to give this up. Maybe it’s just as well."

"Career, husband, kids, that sort of thing?"

"More or less," Jennlynn told him. "Look, I’m an electrical engineering major, I’m drawing straight A’s, I can’t believe that I can’t come across a pretty good job right out of college. Maybe not as much fun as this, but respectable."

"If that’s what you want, then more power to you," George told her. "But if that doesn’t work out, you’ve got a solid fall-back position. Since you don’t get around like I do, you might not be aware that you’re getting a very good reputation in the small world of this business. You’re very good, you give good value for the money, and you draw some attention. People may not know you by name, but they know of ‘that girl down at Bettye’s who flies her own airplane in to work.’"

"That part wasn’t intentional," she giggled. "It just worked out that way."

"Yeah, but it worked out your way," he told her. "You’re very good, Rebecca. If you get out of this business and get married, you’re going to be marrying a very lucky guy. And I suspect he’s going to have to be a very horny guy."

"That’s probably true," she grinned.

After a while they got up, took a quick shower, got dressed, and arrived at the dinner table just as Claudia was getting ready to serve. George was still the only customer in the place, and with his knowledge of the business was more like family, anyway, so they gossiped a bit about what was happening in other houses around the state, who was doing what, and so on.

"Out of curiosity," he asked as the main course was winding down, "What would you girls to do improve this place?"

"Pick it up physically and move it a hundred and fifty miles closer to Las Vegas, just to get about half again the action," Cindy snorted. "Other than that, I really wouldn’t like to change much."

"The problem is," Claudia commented. "That we’re far enough out that we don’t get a lot of casual traffic, except for truck drivers and people who are going through between Reno and Vegas, anyway. The people in Vegas who are looking for a cheap quickie will go to an indie, or stop at a dump like the Redlite. The people who drive out here from there are looking for the special atmosphere we offer. What I’m thinking is if you picked this place up and set it down where the Redlite is, we’d be getting a lot different customers, and I’m not too sure how much I’d like that."

"Amen to that," Shirley nodded. "I never worked at the Redlite, but I stopped off there to check it out years ago, and it’s a half-assed dump."

"Worse than that," George nodded. "I head in there once in a while. The only times I’ve ever had decent parties there, I’ve never seen the same girls there when I go back. I won’t touch the regulars. But let’s take my question out of the context of this place. What would you girls like to see in a house?"

"It still comes down to more traffic, but quality traffic," Cindy said. "But to get that quality traffic, you need to be closer to Reno or Vegas, have a quality place with high-class girls."

"There’s several fairly decent houses up by Reno," Tina added. "But there’s nothing comparable real close to Vegas, and there are more visitors there."

The discussion went round for several minutes. Finally George asked, "Rebecca, do you have any thoughts?"

"I haven’t worked in enough places to do a decent comparison," she replied. "I will say, I don’t like lockdowns. I had that for one shift up at the Mustang, and after working here I’d be real reluctant to work in a lockdown situation in a bar house again."

"Yeah," Tina said. "I think all of us can say that. I like to move around from place to place, but I don’t particularly like to work in lockdowns, either. But that’s basically what you get in bar houses."

"It’d be nice to have a bigger parlor house with a bar, rather than being strictly a bar house. Keep the bar in the background, sort of," Cindy observed.

"I think so," George agreed.

"George," Shirley frowned. "Are you thinking of buying a place, or starting one? Or are you just talking for the hell of it?"

"I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t thought about it for ten years," George grinned. "But the time hasn’t been right, and other factors haven’t been right. That might be changing, I don’t know."

"I think that if Bettye were approached with the right numbers, she would be interested in selling," Shirley observed. "I thought about talking about it with her, but I just don’t have the money without selling my share in the kids’ ranch, or at least mortgaging it. I can’t risk my kids’ livelihood on the chance that the Mormon bishop might get a hair up his ass and talk the county commission into closing us down."

"That’s a thought," George said. "I’ve always admired this place. It hits several things just right; the balance is very good."

"I don’t know about the idea of you owning a brothel," Jennlynn laughed. "It just seems like turning a fox loose in the henhouse."

"Hell," Claudia added, "It’d be even worse if the fox owned the henhouse."

"I never thought of it in quite those words," he laughed. "I always thought of it more in terms of an alcoholic buying his own bar. You’re right; it’s one of the factors I’d have to consider, but I can tell you this much: even in a business like this, things are a little different when you’re talking an employer-employee relationship."

"Not that different," Shirley shook her head. "I agree, what we have here is close to perfect for what we have here. But in a bigger, busier place, well, I’ve worked in enough places to have plenty of ideas of how I’d like to see it done differently."

"We need to have a serious talk about that some time," George said. "But for right now, Claudia, you cooked a hell of a dinner. I think you ought to let the rest of the girls deal with the dishes, and go lie down."

"With you, I suppose," she grinned.

"Well, of course," George laughed. "I mean, why waste the opportunity?"

* * *

Once Jennlynn made it back to Caltech, she got serious about looking for some sort of summer internship in electrical engineering. If there had been any question, some of the discussions she’d had over her break at Bettye’s had pretty well firmed up her decision. While working there was fun to do for a while, it wasn’t something she’d want to do for a career, and there were better opportunities out there.

Over the next two months, she sent out a lot of letters and resumés, made a lot of contacts, and did some interviews, some in Los Angeles, and some up in Silicon Valley, where she flew Magic Carpet for several days, cutting classes in the process. There were some offers, too, but for one reason or another, none of the companies or their offers quite hit her between the eyeballs. Either the work would be mundane, scutwork stuff, or dull corners of chipset design, or the pay was lousy or nonexistent, or something. She didn’t officially turn any of them down, preferring to keep her options open, and, of course, the option of spending the summer at Bettye’s again was always there if nothing better came along.

Along toward the end of February, she stopped by her campus mailbox and found a letter from a company down in Phoenix. She couldn’t place the name, but opened the letter anyway. It started out, "You have been suggested to us as a likely candidate for our summer internship program, and we’d like to talk to you." It wasn’t the first such letter she’d received, but this one went on to say that the work she would be doing would probably be involved with machine interfaces. It also named one hell of a prospective salary, not what she could expect to make at Bettye’s but not all that far behind. That by itself made it worth checking out.

She approached Dr. Hargroves, one of her professors a little later. "There’s a company by the name of Lambdatron in Phoenix that wants to talk to me," she said. "I never heard of them. Do you know anything about it?"

"If they make you an offer, grab it," he replied. "It’s mostly an R&D shop; not real well known since they mostly do development for other people. But there are some extremely sharp individuals down there. They have a terrific reputation, especially for innovative solutions. Someone from there called me about you a while ago, and I gave you the best recommendation I could possibly give anyone."

"Why, thank you, sir," she said seriously. She’d always done well in his classes, but he had a reputation for being a very tough grader and not very personable. Apparently, she’d impressed him more than she thought.

She called Lambdatron as soon as she got back to her dorm room and wound up talking with a woman by the name of Angela. "What’s the chances of you being here a week from Monday?" Angela asked. "We’ve got a guy coming in from Georgia Tech; that way, it’d be one less time we have to call the intern committee together."

"I’ve got an appointment, but I think I can reschedule," she replied. In fact, it was spring break week, and she had planned on being at Bettye’s the whole time, of course. But she was sure that Shirley would let her have those couple days off under the circumstances.

It was just far enough between Bettye’s and Phoenix that she had to leave early Sunday morning – well, not early for most people, but since partying usually goes late in a brothel, morning people don’t tend to work in such places. It was a good five hours at Magic Carpet’s best speed, including a slow fuel stop at Las Vegas; the sun was getting low by the time she was on the ground in Phoenix and had rented a car. She found a motel room, got a good night’s sleep, then got up in the morning and dressed sharply. A year or so ago, she might have worn jeans and a sweatshirt to an interview like that, but not now; she wore a conservative business suit, hose, nice makeup, and jewelry – a little past normal for her anymore, but not exceedingly so. First impressions were important; she knew this more than ever from all the lineups she’d stood – and in a way, she realized she might be standing one of the more important lineups of her life, so she intended to act the part.

Lambdatron proved to be a relatively nondescript collection of cinder-block buildings in an otherwise drab and unremarkable industrial park on the edge of Tempe. She walked in the front door and went to the receptionist. "I’m Jennlynn Swift," she said. "I’m supposed to see Angela."

"I’m Angela," the friendly middle-aged woman said. "The other candidate who’s supposed to interview this morning isn’t here yet. That’s just as well, because Mr. Trott wanted to have a word with you before you get started with the regular process. Down the hall to the right, third door on the left."

She walked down the hall and knocked on the door, which stood open. There was a man over in the far corner of the room, typing away at a computer keyboard, his back to her. "Mr. Trott?" she said. "Angela said you wanted to see me."

"Miss Swift?" he said, not looking up. "Come on in, close the door and have a seat."

She walked in, closed the door, and was halfway to a chair at the desk when the guy at the computer turned around and said, "Good morning, Rebecca."

She couldn’t help but let out a gasp at the shock of recognition.

"But . . . but . . . " she stammered.

"Relax," he grinned. "I wanted to let you be surprised in private, before we get to the official part."

"But . . . Sam . . . er, Mr. Trott . . . I mean, I . . . "

"Relax, Jennlynn," he smiled again, using her real name for the first time. "Yes, I know that’s your real name, and I know quite a bit more about you. You really caught my attention a couple months ago, and I mean that in a good way, both in a business sense, as well as a personal one. I was impressed with your intensity, your focus, and that you seemed to have a good knowledge of technical areas we desperately need help with here. You come very highly recommended. I just want to assure you that you are not here because of your other professional activities, but neither are you here in spite of them. In other words, it doesn’t matter."

"But . . . Sam, er, Mr. Trott, are you sure?"

"As sure as I can be, and ‘Sam’ is fine," he grinned. "Look, I don’t want to talk much about the company, you’ll get a thumbnail orientation a little later, but there are some things that you and I need to have clear because of the way we met, OK?"

"I guess, Sam," she said dubiously.

"The first and most important thing," he said. "Is that it doesn’t matter how we met, what you were doing, or anything from that angle. We’re interested in what you can do for Lambdatron in a technical sense, not what you had to do to get that technical background. What you do on your own time is no problem as long as it doesn’t affect your work. If you’re hired, you can rest assured that you’re not the only person here with some odd activities away from work. Stan, the company president, knows about what you and I did at Bettye’s back the first of the year, and Maureen does, of course. No one else, as far as I know. Whether you want to make it public is your choice, and for later, but I’ll point out that the arrangement Maureen and I have is no secret around this place."

"This has got to be some company," she said with wonder, scrambling for words.

"It is unusual, and we take pride in that," he smiled. "While we’re on the subject of Maureen, though, the second thing I have to say to you is to remind you of the agreement I have with Maureen, which is to say, once and only once. Realistically, that’s the most sensitive issue I have for you."

"I understood that at the time," she nodded. "I like and respect Maureen enough that you’d have to rape me at gunpoint to do me again, and I’d fight you every second of the way."

"Can’t ask for much more than that," he smiled. "And that’s just about what I figured you’d say. That’s part of the reason that we spent the time in the hot tub afterwards, just so you could get to know Maureen a little better on a personal level. In fact, do you remember when she and I hugged right after dinner, before we went out back? She whispered in my ear, ‘Is she a Lambdatron candidate, or what?’ I’d already figured that much out."

"She works here?" Jennlynn asked, still amazed at this turn of events.

"In personnel. She does several things, but primarily she’s in charge of administration of security clearances, which leads me to the third point. We do a lot of government classified work here. She doesn’t think that your work history is going to cause security clearance problems in the long run. I’m not so sure about that, but I’ll defer to her expertise. In the short run, you wouldn’t be doing work that needs a clearance next summer, since it takes longer than that to get a clearance. In the long run, it’s not a problem, anyway."

"Not a problem if I can’t get a clearance?" she frowned. "You’re losing me, Sam."

"I’m sure I mentioned our unofficial company motto, ‘Break the paradigm,’ Jennlynn," he grinned. "Think about it for a moment. Government work, especially classified work, is a pain in the ass, since there are always a bunch of project officers who have to justify their existence, mostly by dreaming up new forms for people fill out instead of allowing them to work on the project at hand. That means work under security clearances sucks up a lot of engineering talent that could otherwise be doing useful things for the private-sector side of our business, which is the more important and more profitable part, anyway. Frankly, a talented engineer who couldn’t get a security clearance would be a godsend."

She shook her head. "I’ll take your word for it, but damn!"

"You’re getting the picture," he laughed. "Now we’d better get on with the program. This is just a private little chat about the special issues we have, you and me. I’ll see you on part of your orientation, and I’ll be on a committee you’ll have to go before later today. You won’t know me, all right? That’s more for the sake of the other candidate than it is for the other committee members, who all know that I know you, but not necessarily why. We don’t want him intimidated because of the fact that you and I already know each other. On the other hand, from what I know about him, he’s not the sort of guy who intimidates easily."

"All right, I can fake that," she nodded. "Sam, what are the chances?"

"Pretty good," he said. "The committee has to approve, but on the other hand Stan can overrule the committee either way, so it comes down to Stan. But don’t worry about that for the next couple hours. Just relax and keep your eyes open so you can really learn about this nuthouse."

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