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jobs rode on the wisdom of their investment decisions, and the dramatic failure of SysVal would mark the
end of their careers. They subtly let it be known that the partners should have kept the news of the
computer failures to themselves and let the sale to Databeck go through.
"That's not what this company stands for," Susannah said. "You knew that about us from the beginning."
"Sam was going to let the sale go through," Hayward said in an accusatory voice. "Why didn't you let him
do it? The board couldn't have been held responsible because he hadn't informed us. And where is Sam?
Why isn't he here?"
She had dodged their previous questions about Sam's absence, but she could do it no longer, and she
informed them of his resignation.
The absolute silence that fell over the table was worse than the men's anger. The news seemed to
extinguish any dim hope they might have cherished of finding a way out of their disaster. The men didn't
like Sam, but they believed in him.
The same emotion of despair had gripped her when she had seen Sam's letter of resignation lying on her
desk, but something about their hangdog expressions sparked her anger. Sam wasn't superhuman. He
didn't possess any special powers to save the company. There were other bright, inventive minds at
SysVal, and one of those minds was her own.
Without clearly thinking through what she had to say, she rose from her chair and faced the board
members squarely. "From the beginning, all of you knew that the SysVal adventure was one of high risk.
But you were eager to go on that adventure as long as you could delude yourself into believing that the
four founding partners were keeping the path safe for you. You were making so much money that it
served you well to delude yourself. And so you told yourselves lies about us."
"What are you talking about?" Leland snapped. "What lies?"
"The lies that kept you comfortable so you could enjoy the fortunes you were making," she said angrily.
"The lies about who we were. For all the faith you have in Sam's mystical abilities to solve any crisis, he's
always frightened you. You didn't like that fear, and so in your minds you tried to overcome it by mentally
transforming Mitch and Yank and myself into safe, conservative business partners who could balance out
Sam's unpredictability. You didn't look at the three of us individually, only as we related to Sam. His
arrogance disturbed you, so you found solace in my respectability. His inexperience terrified you, so you
concentrated on Mitch's experience. When his flair for theatrics embarrassed you, you took comfort in
Yank's solid silences. Always, it was Sam you turned to, Sam you believed in, and Sam you feared. You
ignored the stories that I had run away from my wedding on the back of a motorcycle. You passed over
any doubts you might have had about the stability of a man with Mitch's background throwing it all away
to take up with three kids working out of a garage. You ignored Yank's radical genius and convinced
yourself he was merely eccentric. Sam was the wildcatter. Sam was the swashbuckler. From the very
beginning, you never understood that all four of us were the same. You never admitted to yourself that all
four of us were renegades."
The board members were stunned by the passion of her words. Mitch leaned back in his chair and began
to applaud, a lone set of hands clapping in the quiet room. Yank looked down at the notepad in front of
him, a vague, satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"The adventure is not over, gentlemen," she said quietly. "We don't promise you that we can save this
company. But we do promise you that no one not Sam Gamble, not God Himself has a better chance
of saving SysVal than the three of us."
The meeting adjourned in a somber mood. As the members filed out of the room, Mitch came over to
her and squeezed her shoulder. "Nice going, Hot Shot. What do we do now?"
"Now we get to work," she said.
SysVal teemed with the upheaval. Sam Gamble had disappeared, the Blaze III assembly line was shut
down while a new ROM chip was being produced, and incredibly all work on the Wildfire project
had been suspended. Everyone knew that something calamitous had happened, but no one was certain
exactly what. The loudspeaker system was ominously silent.
Susannah and Mitch immediately went on the attack. To keep the public's confidence high in the Blaze
HI so that customers would continue to buy new machines, they had to move boldly. They drafted a
series of newspaper ads in which they openly admitted that they had a problem with the old machines
and assured their customers that a recall would be handled in a timely fashion. Before they could run the
ads, however, they had to be honest with their employees.
Two days after the board meeting, Susannah appeared on SysVal's closed-circuit television system and
told their employees exactly what had happened. Looking directly into the camera lens, she affirmed
SysVal's intention to stand behind its product. Then came the most difficult part announcing salary and
hiring freezes and acknowledging that layoffs were inevitable. Speaking from the depths of her heart, she
reminded them of SysVal's heritage and the absolute necessity of standing behind their product.
"This is a company that has always thrived on turmoil," she concluded, addressing the single camera in the
small, high-tech studio. "Turmoil brings pain, but it also brings growth. Instead of complaining about our
fate, let us welcome this crisis as an opportunity to dazzle the world. If we face this test valiantly, we will
have taken another giant step along the continuing path of the SysVal adventure."
As soon as she had finished, the studio telephone rang. Her assistant announced that Mitch was on the
line.
"Good speech," he said when she took the receiver. "Life's strange, isn't it? You sound more like Sam all
the time."
She tightened her grip on the telephone receiver. "Sam is part of all of us. I just hope we got the best part
of him."
The expression on Sam's face when she had last seen him continued to haunt her. She had tried to call
him several times, but there was never an answer and no one knew where he was. Angela had gone over
to the house, but it was empty and she was clearly worried. That night, as Susannah was getting ready to
pull out onto El Camino, she decided to investigate for herself. Her marriage was over, but she couldn't
turn off six years of caring.
The house smelled stale as she let herself inside. The bronze lamps shaped like Egyptian torches that sat
in the foyer were dark, the living room cold and vaguely malevolent, with its sharply angled ceiling. Once
again she realized how much she hated the harsh planes and unyielding materials of this building. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]