Jennlynn soon learned why Sam didn’t think that the other candidate would be easily intimidated. He was introduced to her as Jim Geletzke, but he stood six feet four inches or so, was rather bulky through the shoulders, and black as a moonless night in the Nevada desert. She learned early on that he was a junior at Georgia Tech, and from some of the byplay she picked up on, she realized that he played football. She did not learn until summer that he was an all-conference defensive back who favored quarterbacks and other ball carriers as breakfast food and was better known as ‘Grizzly’ or ‘Griz.’ Lambdatron wasn’t the only organization trying to recruit him; one of the others was the National Football League. In time, she was to learn that he’d risen from a very poor and gang-ridden background more on the strength of his football, and less on his intelligence, which she found was at least as brilliant as hers.

But a lot of that came later, and that first morning at Lambdatron was an eye-opener, a period packed very full with impressions and things to remember.

The first part of the orientation was done by Sam, in his office. "As you’ve been told, we do mainly research, development, and design of processor-machine interfaces," he told them. "We do mess around in a lot of other stuff. The model that we’ve built Lambdatron on is fairly old – Thomas Edison’s ‘inventions factory’ in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he invented things like the light bulb and the phonograph record. Usually a company, sometimes the government, comes to us with a technical problem that’s beyond their expertise or specialty, and our job is to come up with something reliable, quick, and cost-effective. That is a broad generality, and we’ll get to the specifics later.

"Stan Warshawski is the company president who you’ll meet in a little while. He’s an interesting, innovative, and inspirational kind of guy, at least around here, and it’s a damn shame that he has to put too much attention on business affairs and not enough to the engineering and design processes that are his first love.

"Several years ago, Stan and three other engineers, including me, were working for a large company in the business of building electrical controls. I’m not going to go deeply into the technology, since it’s ancient history, but I know you’ve both been in an elevator. Traditionally, elevators are controlled by banks of relays, essentially a very primitive computer. This was back in the early days of integrated chips, and Stan thought he could see a better way to do elevator control with a simple chipset, the 8008 in fact, to replace those banks of relays. We were the subcontractors for another company that actually built elevators, and they sent around bids looking for controller boxes. We, and really it was Stan on the lead, took our new solution to higher management, and we were just about thrown out the door. We were ordered to develop a controller unit using, and I quote, ‘traditional proven technology.’ The four of us thought we had a better mousetrap, so on our own time we got together in Stan’s basement and developed a much simpler, faster, cheaper unit with the high level of reliability that you want in an elevator.

"One day, the four of us made the controller company’s bid presentation, and really we tried to put the best face on it that we could. A couple days later, we took the day off, and the same four of us made the first Lambdatron bid presentation, which caused a little head-scratching around the elevator company until we explained what was going down. Needless to say, we as Lambdatron won the bid, and we were consequently not exactly welcomed back where we had been working. In fact, we not only burned the bridges, we ripped out the pilings, as well. The old company we worked for does not exist today; they stuck with ‘traditional proven technology’ for too long.

"That was the start of Lambdatron. I should probably explain that the word ‘Lambdatron’ doesn’t really mean anything. It was something we cooked up in about five minutes to sound sort of scientific and esoteric and fifties traditional, which made it sound like we’d been around for a while.

"In any case, ever since then, our bread and butter has been developing applications using logic through microprocessor chipsets to drive outside machinery, usually in a very proprietary setting. We do get involved with other things from time to time, based on knowledge in related fields. We’re often handed the tough problems that the customer organization has given up on trying to solve out of their own resources. Some of it I can’t talk about, it’s classified, but an example is an approach to simplifying guidance of air-to-air heat-seeking missiles. Some of the things we learned from microprocessor control were useful, and that’s about all I can say until you have adequate clearances, other than to say that the project I just referred to is completed. In a few minutes, I’ll take you around part of the building and give you some samples of unclassified projects we’re working on. Still with me?"

Geletzke spoke with a rumble deep down in his chest, almost reminding Jennlynn of Darth Vader. "Sounds to me like you take a lot of pride in innovation," he said.

"That we do," Sam nodded. "Our unofficial company motto is ‘Break the paradigm,’ and you will hear it over and over again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a good cliché, but if it is broke, often it’s better to just throw it out and start over using up-to-date methods.

"Now, before we get started on the tour itself," he continued, "A few words about how Lambdatron is organized, and that may tell you as much about the company as anything else. When the four of us started Lambdatron, none of us had ever had a business class. In fact, the four of us who started it have not had one yet, either. This is a company tuned to the engineers, not to the executives, because the engineers are the executives and most of us would rather be doing engineering. Therefore, we sometimes do things in different ways, sometimes ways that would turn an MBA green around the gills. For example, we have no employees and no real executives. It is entirely employee owned, and we have no intention of ever trying to go public with it; in fact, our charter makes it impossible in both principle and practice. Stan’s title is actually ‘senior shareholder,’ but we often call him the president because senior shareholder sounds like something else to anyone outside the company. I am a vice senior shareholder, which is an even more meaningless term.

"The people who work here are either ‘associates’ or ‘shareholders.’ Associates are actually pretty close to being employees, and obviously don’t hold shares in the company. We usually require a year on the job to make a person eligible to be a shareholder, and then the existing shareholders have to vote them in. However, if a shareholder leaves the company, the rest of the shareholders get their shares back, but the rate at which it is bought back could vary. Associates get a fixed rate of pay and no bonus. Shareholders get a lower rate of pay, but get a bonus based on the profitability of the company, which also helps determine the value of their share. It’s a little more complicated than that, but since you’re not going to be shareholders for a while we don’t need to get into the details. The point I’m making is that shareholders join in both the risks the company takes and the benefits that it receives. Accordingly, individual shareholders have other duties than engineering involving the maintenance of the company, and they are assigned by Stan or the other shareholders. Some are pretty straightforward, like vice-shareholder operations, or vice-shareholder financial, but every shareholder has some additional duties that associates don’t have. For that reason, some associates don’t care to apply to be shareholders."

Jennlynn nodded. "You’re right," she said. "That is a different approach."

"In some ways it’s cumbersome, but in others, it’s very streamlined," Sam smiled. "Every shareholder, except a couple who are not engineers, is assigned to at least one design team or another, including Stan and myself, although I’ll admit that our duties are such that he and I don’t get involved in stuff that’s too esoteric anymore. Most shareholders are on more than one design team. It is not uncommon for a very junior shareholder, even an associate, based solely on his or her expertise, to be a team chief with several rather senior shareholders working under them. Then, when that project is completed, the team is broken up, and there may be a totally different pecking order on the next project, again based on each person’s skills. The intent, as I said earlier, is to keep us focused on our mission. In practice, it’s what happens when you let a bunch of early hippie computer nerds design a company on the back of an envelope in somebody’s basement while they’re working for another company involved in developing a new elevator controller."

All three of them laughed at that wise crack. "But, it keeps us close, and keeps us on our mission," Sam continued. "I won’t say our growth has been explosive, because it hasn’t been. It was steady in the early years, and now with the increasing impact of microprocessors and home computers, it’s turning upward and it looks like we’re headed for a real growth period. We have enough work already on the books and on the horizon that we’re going to have to be doing a lot of growing. We’re bursting at the seams, we have three buildings here in our little park, and another one will be built in the next few months. I’ve found Lambdatron an exciting place to work since there’s always new challenges, different people to work with, and something new to discover. With that, let’s take a walk around. If you have questions, ask."

With that, Sam took the two interviewees on a tour of one of the design sections, and right from the beginning Jennlynn could see that they were working on some interesting projects. Along in the middle of the tour, a tall, lean, prematurely graying man had joined them, not explaining a whole lot but asking some serious questions, sometimes about what they were seeing, sometimes about anything under the sun. After an hour or more of the tour, the two of them along with Sam and another unidentified man were led to an office in the front of the building. Jennlynn almost gasped when she walked inside. With the possible exception of the office of the Courier, the local weekly newspaper back in Bradford, it was the messiest office she’d ever seen. Papers and books were piled everywhere, in the chairs, on the floor, any level surface. Odd and unidentifiable pieces of machinery and circuit boards were mixed here and there in the mess. Here and there were half-eaten bags of snacks; she could count at least a dozen empty pop bottles and cans that were exposed, and God knew how many more were hidden under the piles. She and Geletzke had to clear off a couple of chairs to be able to sit down; the graying man just said, "Dump that shit on the floor and let’s get on with it."

It still took a few seconds to get seated; Jennlynn had on some nice clothes, and she wanted to be real sure there were no apple cores or bits of long forgotten donut on the chair. "I know I didn’t introduce myself earlier," the prematurely-graying man said. "But I’m Stan Warshawski Jr., the den mother to this pack of untamed maniacs, which is how I can get away with what you’re probably figuring is the messiest office in the state of Arizona."

"A contender, anyway," Sam giggled. He hadn’t bothered with a chair, but shoved some stuff on a table aside and sat down on that.

"I’m a firm believer that a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind," Stan said. "Believe it or not, I can usually find what I’m looking for in this pile of crap, but one of the things it does not take to do this job is a clean office. This is a place to work in, not show off in. I know you’ve heard the phrase ‘break the paradigm’ several times this morning. Just think of it as breaking the paradigm that a company’s head honcho has to have an impressive office."

"Oh, it’s impressive," Geletzke grinned, a huge row of white teeth glimmering against the black of his skin. "What’s most impressive is how big a backhoe it would take to clean it out."

"Actually, there is another office in this building that’s kept neat and clean for when I have to have outsiders in," Stan grinned. "It doubles as a conference room, but this place does reflect the disorganization and the breaking of paradigms that we specialize in at Lambdatron. But, let’s get down to business. Sam probably told you that you were going before our intern committee. This is it. Actually, as we grow I have some innovative ideas I want to try in developing interns, associates, and shareholders, but we really haven’t been big enough to do it yet, and we’ve been too busy to take the time. If you’re both still interested in coming to work with us here, we’d like to throw a few questions at you."

"It looks absolutely fascinating," Jennlynn said. "Just about exactly the kind of work I’ve dreamed of doing ever since I realized that people did this for a living."

"What she said," Geletzke nodded. "In spite of what most people at Georgia Tech know me for, this is the sort of thing I really want to be doing."

What followed was the final exam from hell. All three of the Lambdatron people threw some tough technical questions at the two. Sometimes both of them could answer them, sometimes neither, sometimes one or the other. The problem was that all three of the executives were asking them at the same time, sometimes directed at one of them, sometimes directed at both, sometimes arguing with them, sometimes arguing with each other. It was sheer madness; it made the bar at the Mustang Ranch on the most drunken of Saturday nights seem like a placid lake by comparison. Somewhere dim in the back of her mind, Jennlynn realized that while the questions were important, there was another thing going on here: they were being tested on how well they could work in confusion, how well they could handle stress, how well they could think when the heat was on. What appeared casual and rather rude was in fact a carefully practiced routine that the three had probably often pulled on other applicants.

It was proved after maybe half an hour. "All right," Stan said finally, "I think we’ve found out what we wanted to with that. Jim, what would you say is your biggest personal flaw?"

"Probably that at times I tend to react without thinking. Sometimes it’s reflex, like is often needed on a football field. It’s something I really have to work on at times to keep from busting heads."

"I think I see that," Stan smiled. "Jennlynn, how about you?"

"In spite of what just went on," she said. "I tend to get very focused on things, ignoring irrelevancies, so sometimes I look past the obvious," she said thoughtfully. "In fact, when I’m concentrating, I get very irritated at interruptions. When I’m under some stress, I can get pretty bitchy."

"What do you think is your greatest strength?"

"Would you believe that I think it’s the same thing?" she smiled, figuring a snap answer was worth more than a thoughtful one. "I tend to get very focused on things, ignoring irrelevancies, trying to put my full attention on what I’m doing."

"Interesting observation, Jennlynn," Stan smiled. "Jim, how about you?"

"Probably the fact that I do tend to react quickly, and think on my feet. Again, it ties in to football. Like Jennlynn said, a great strength can also be a great weakness."

They sat for a few minutes with Stan throwing a few more hard intellectual questions at them, often very thoughtful ones, and sometimes a quick answer wasn’t the right thing.

"All right," Stan said finally. "I think it’s down to match point. Sam, what do you think?"

"Grab ’em," he smiled. "Both of ’em."

"Dick?"

"Can we use handcuffs? I really don’t want to let them go back to school; we need them both here too badly."

"No, we can’t use handcuffs, and we do want them to go back to school," Stan smiled. "But, Miss Swift, Mr. Geletzke, as soon as school is out, we’d be pleased to have you back here as intern associates. What were we talking about, Sam? Eight hundred a week, since they’re newbies?"

"I think we could go that," he said.

"To be specific," Stan smiled. "These are obviously interim appointments. While we will want to get some work out of you, and we will, the main thing that we want to do is to get a better look at you and to let you have a better look at us. We’ll have you working on real projects, sometimes projects that will work your asses off, and it’s not the intern scutwork you might find elsewhere. All three of us will meet with you together or separately from time to time, formally and informally, so we can discuss how our assessments of each other are going. I can always find technically competent engineers. To find innovative ones is harder. We think you can do the job or we wouldn’t be asking you to come here. If each of our assessments at the end of the summer are favorable, and that means your opinion of us as well as our opinion of you, then we’ll be willing to sit down and talk full-time associate positions for after you graduate. I don’t need an answer right this instant, but would like one soon."

"Yes," Jennlynn said immediately. "When do you want me to start?"

"As soon as you can get here once classes let out," Stan said. "Jim?"

"One problem," he said. "I have to be back around the first of August for football. If my scholarship weren’t involved, I’d tell them where they could shove their football, but it is a major factor. If we can work around that, I’m in."

"Not a problem on this end," Stan said. "We realize that there are some things that you have to do to get where you want to go, even though you may or may not like them." He turned and looked straight at Jennlynn. "And that goes for you too, Miss Swift."

Jennlynn understood him perfectly – it was the same message she’d had from Sam earlier in the morning, that the fact she’d been a prostitute off and on for most of the last year just did not matter to them. That was incredible. It had been her main worry over the past year, that the insertion of one word, prostitute, into a discussion like this would permanently louse up any reasonable job in the field. But, apparently not. At least not at Lambdatron.

By then, it was early afternoon. The five of them went out, got in the company minivan, and headed to a nearby casual restaurant for a late lunch. The discussion was pretty casual, too. Stan suggested that since they were here, they might want to nail down apartments for the summer, and told them of a couple nearby complexes that catered mostly to students from Arizona State, which wasn’t far away. They tended to empty out in the summer, especially when kids graduated, and stayed empty until the fall, so the prices were usually pretty good. There were a few other hints and tips to get them ready.

"Well, we might as well get back and get some work done today, so you two can go apartment hunting," Stan said as they finished lunch. "We’ll be looking forward to having you with us in a couple months. Sometime while you’re here next summer, Linda and I will probably have you over for dinner, and we can discuss other things."

"Maureen and I’ll be happy to have you, too," Sam added. "Look, if you have any questions, or there’s anything we can do to help you make arrangements, just give us a call. Angela can help with most housekeeping problems, but if there’s anything else, we’ll do what we can."

* * *

Jennlynn was still dazzled early the next morning when she dropped off the rental car at the airport and begged a ride over to where Magic Carpet had been tied down. Talk about a dream, she thought. Hell, talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences. Who would have ever dreamed that Maureen picking her out of the truncated lineup at Bettye’s back after Christmas could lead to what seemed like the absolutely perfect job? And, even wilder, the fact that it had been done at Bettye’s didn’t seem to matter?

For a few minutes, getting Magic Carpet into the sky and out of the busy Phoenix area drew most of her attention. But, as city turned to desert, and she followed the line of US-95 northwestward, she began to let her mind wander back to the job implications and away from the practicalities she’d dealt with in the afternoon of arranging for a furnished apartment and a place to tie down the Cessna at an airstrip that was not an unreasonable distance away.

She really hadn’t gotten to know Jim Geletzke very well, but remembering Stan’s remark in his messy office at the end of the interview process – it seemed as if they had much in common.

She realized early on in the interview process yesterday that he was no more being recruited for his football skills than she was being recruited for being a prostitute. In fact, she and Geletzke shared one very important thing: they were both using their bodies as tools to get where they wanted to go – and without saying very much, Stan had made that point very clear. Like her prostitution, football was a means to an end for Jim, not the end in itself, and Stan’s example would prove to be a valuable lesson.

Once she came to that realization, it did seem much the same thing. Football was more or less respectable, after all, unlike what she was doing at Bettye’s, legal or not, but at the same time, it was pretty rare for anyone to think of football players in terms of brains. From the viewpoint of someone who dealt in intellectual activities like engineering, a football player and a legal prostitute started from about the same distance back.

One of the things that Jennlynn always kept in mind was that everything she had done as a prostitute was legal – at least in the state of Nevada. Nothing independent, no catting around. She had not had sex outside a legal bordello since the first time she’d pushed the buzzer up at the Mustang, and in a perverse sort of way that seemed to make it a lot more acceptable. Was that so different from beating your body up on a football field, for the thrill of the crowd? Maybe not.

But the acceptance of that job offer the day before put a new spin on things. Realistically, she did not have to be a prostitute anymore. There was nothing – except the promise that she’d made to Shirley to work the rest of the week – that kept her from flying back up to Bettye’s, picking up the few things she’d left in the bunkroom, throwing them in Magic Carpet, and heading back to Caltech. It would be a little tight, as she’d be grossing something over $13,000 next summer, only a third of what she’d made the summer before. But, with the weekends and the period over spring break, there was enough money on the horizon or in her bank account to see her through to graduation, which was a real relief. It seemed likely that, if she did a good job, she’d be picked up as a permanent associate once the summer was over with, and would be starting at a higher salary in fourteen months. No numbers had been thrown around, but based on what they were paying an interim associate, it had to come well on the way to a six-figure annual income. If she went for shareholder status, things were a little more iffy, but it seemed pretty likely that at least in good years it would be well into six figures. She’d heard stories of kids right out of school getting picked up by high-tech companies for astronomical salaries, but somehow she’d never figured it would happen to her – especially after the last year. Yet, there it was. There was no longer any need for her to be a prostitute.

But did she want to stop?

Despite the fairly decent prospect of a job at a starting salary well over what both her parents made combined, it was not actually a sure thing. But, even so, there was the problem of her sex drive. She’d learned back in the fall how strong it really was, and it wasn’t something that could be put down easily. If she got as bitchy at Lambdatron as she’d been with Roseanna and around campus last October, then it could obviously lead to trouble. A similar problem with Sam, she knew, had almost led to his marriage breaking up – and she remembered that Stan had somehow been involved in working out the solution between Sam and Maureen.

The hell of it was that she’d actually come to enjoy being a prostitute. It was fun; the sex was a lot of fun, toying around, teasing, play, entertainment for her customers just as much as it was for her. The money had been important, but as of yesterday afternoon, the money had become secondary. Yet, there was a simplicity and a directness involved that made it appealing, especially in the context of the way she and Roseanna had run around their freshman and sophomore years.

From the perspective of the last ten months, some of the things that she had previously done now scared the hell out of her. How many guys at school had she fucked bareback, without a rubber? In this day of STDs and AIDS? She’d no more do that now than she would put a single bullet in a revolver, spin the cylinder, put it to her temple, and pull the trigger. At least at Bettye’s and the Mustang, there had been no question of doing barebacks – Eileen told her right up front, right at the beginning, that if she ever heard of her doing one, her bare ass was going to be thrown right out on the asphalt parking lot.

For that matter, she’d gone out with some pretty scary guys, gone to some pretty scary places. So had Roseanna. Granted, a lot of the action had been right there in the dorm room, sometimes with she and Roseanna going at their dates at the same time, but shit could happen, even in the dorm room. Now, if someone did get out of hand, there were panic buttons in each room at both places she’d worked. No one in memory had ever used one at Bettye’s even though there was a nightstick and a .357 in the front desk, but the bartender at the Mustang had also been the bouncer, a big rough dude who knew how to use the gun that was kept behind the bar. In fact, the story was told quietly on slow afternoons up there that one time, years before, a different bouncer had shot it out with a guy, leaving the guy bleeding to death on the sidewalk. As rough as the Mustang had been, and it had been rough, knowing that big son of a bitch with the .44 magnum was only the push of a button away and that there was more backup in the building made the rest of the fear tolerable. You just didn’t have that when you were picking up some cute guy around campus, and both she and Roseanna had had near misses that still scared the hell out of her to think about them.

Best of all, the sex with the customers was only sex. Have fun, get rid of the tensions, and that was all. No emotional commitment, no risk of getting involved with someone and then having them throw her out on her ass like her parents had done. If anything, the money just helped to underline that. If a guy paid her, he was dealing with a paid toy, not a girlfriend. By this time, she’d probably partied with, oh, 250 different guys, it was hard to say, but if she thought back she probably could only say the first name of half of them, and the last name of under a tenth. Hell, she hadn’t even known Sam’s last name until yesterday morning! That made it mighty impersonal – which had more than a little appeal. That might not be the case with that cute guy around campus, too.

As far as that went, suppose she got involved with some guy. What were the odds he would want to move to Phoenix so she could work at Lambdatron? Not good. So whatever else happened, she needed to be planning in terms of not getting involved with someone before she was permanently in Phoenix.

Given all that, and given the fact that she realized now that she just couldn’t turn her back on having fairly satisfying sex fairly often, she really wasn’t anxious to give up what she was doing, at least as a part-time hobby. And the money was nice; it meant a decent car, decent clothes, maybe a better replacement for Magic Carpet sometime. At a minimum, it could be invested, maybe in the stock market.

At least for the short run then, there were powerful and decisive arguments to keeping on with what she’d been doing, at least for the next couple months. Maybe she’d take a break from it over the summer while she was in Phoenix, and maybe not, she’d have to see. And then, there was still another year at Caltech. Maybe if it worked out that she went to Lambdatron permanently in fourteen months, she might want to change her mind, but she didn’t have to make that decision right now.

Probably the best thing to do, she thought, would be to run it past Sam, and sooner rather than later, probably even before summer.

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