Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page A

was a ten- minute job to break the scheme and another hour or so to disassemble the code."
    Bubba Roland Saladin Gallowglass looked proud of himself, and Step couldn't disagree with him. Step was a pretty good programmer, but this kid was a true hacker, a boy genius of code. And somehow this same kid had the authority to make Eight Bits Inc. remodel Step's office.
    "What's your job here, anyway?" asked Step.
    "Oh, I just hang around and do some programming. I'm really supposed to be a student at UNC-S, but I'm sort of between semesters right now."
    "Spring break?"
    "Yeah, for about a year now. I tried taking computer classes to teach me COBOL, if you can believe it. Had to have FORTRAN or I couldn't graduate. Like making you study dinosaur anatomy in med school. A bunch of us are going to Richmond for the David Bowie concert this weekend. Want to come?"
    Flattered at the invitation, Step had to decline. "We're still unpacking, and I'm more into good old- fashioned American rock and roll. Bowie's too disco for me."
    "Oh, he's past disco now. He's past glitter, too. He's sort of in punk mode."
    "Yeah, well ...
    "I think of my D&D character, you know, Saladin Gallowglass, I think of him as looking like David Bowie.
    Or like Sting."
    "Sting?" asked Step.
    "With the Police," said the kid. When Step still showed no sign of comprehension, the kid shook his head and went on. "I understand you're going to be doing kind of quality control for us."
    "From what Dicky said this morning," said Step, "I have to get him to unzip my fly when I pee."
    The kid giggled. "That's Dickhead for you. No, Ray told me that you're a precious resource. The only way he could get Dickhead to accept the idea of hiring you was to promise that you'd have nothing to do with programming, but in fact he wants your fingers in everything. He thinks of you as the computer wizard of the universe."
    "Well, I'm not," said Step. "I'm a historian who taught myself programming in my spare time."
    "All good programmers are self- taught, at least in the home computer business," said the kid.
    "Look, what do I actually call you?"
    "Around here they call me Roland and you probably should too," said the kid.
    "But what would you prefer?"
    He grinned. "Like I said, I think of myself as Saladin Gallowglass."
    "So is Gallowglass all right, or is that too formal?" "Gallowglass is great, Mr. Fletcher." "Call me Step."
    "Hey, Step." "Mind if I ask, how old are you?" "Twenty-two." "And if you're just a common ordinary programmer, how come Ray Keene tells you stuff that he doesn't tell Dicky?" "Oh, I suppose because he's known me longer. I used to hang around his house and I learned programming on his Commodore Pet when I was, like, sixteen."
    It dawned on Step: In all his interviews and meetings, no one had ever mentio ned the existence of this wunderkind, and no one had ever told him who it was who actually coded the original soft ware that had earned Ray Keene a Mercedes and a power office.
    "You wrote Scribe 64, didn't you?"
    Gallowglass smiled shyly. "Every line of it," he said.
    "And I'll bet you're the one who keeps doing the upgrades."
    "I'm working on a sixty-character screen right now," he said. "I have to use a sort of virtual screen memory and background character mapping, but it's going pretty well. I have this idea of using character memory as the virtual screen memory, since that means that I'm not actually using up RAM for the mapping."
    "I don't know enough about 64 architecture yet to know what you're talking about," said Step. "But I hope I'm not too nosy if I ask you, since you are the person who actually created Scribe 64, how come you aren't vice-president of something?"
    "Ray takes care of me," said Gallowglass. "I kind of make more money than God. And I'm not exactly management material."
    "I'd be interested to know how much God makes, someday," said Step.
    "And someday maybe I'll tell you." Gallowglass grinned. "What about you? Got any kids?"
    "Three, with a