The zenith angle by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page B

over to Northrop, but Ben Rich had the top job at the Skunk Works sewn up, and I just couldn’t stand to work on civilian subsonics.”
    “Give me the ‘on time’ part,” Van prompted.
    “That was it! Right! You got to be on time! You got to do it when there are stars in their eyes about it!
    Before they get all bureaucratic, and start counting every nickel and dime! Timing is the hardest part, son: you gotta know when good enough will do. You gotta know when to quit.”
    The old man tunneled his bony arms through his golf shirt. Static left the remnants of his hair like a windblown thistle. “Me, I got out. I got out at last. I should have got out earlier.”
    “Why, Grandpa?”
    “Because of the Grease Machine.” The old man made a bitter, money-pinching gesture. “The Grease Machine never needs maintenance, son. That Japanese Minister and his crooked payoffs . . . Lockheed was never the same. A Skunk Works is finished, once the Grease Machine takes over. Once the money beats the engineering, that’s the end of it, son. Once the money beats the engineering, it’s all just chrome and tail fins, after that.”
    Van felt a pang at the depth of his grandfather’s sorrow. He’d been all of seven years old during the Lockheed bribery scandal. Except for family reasons, Van would have known and cared nothing about it. It was just some obscure scandal from the Watergate era.
    In his later life, though, the subject had come up once. That was when a Japanese guy from DoCoMo had tried to explain to him why Japan was in so much trouble. Why Japan, with the world’s best engineers and hottest products, had fallen into a hole. In the eighties they were on their way to running the world. In the nineties they were going nowhere.
    Somehow Van had always just known that defense contracting was a crooked business. How could anybody have any illusions there to get disillusioned about? Luckily, he himself was from the world of computers and telecommunications. A very different world.
    “Well . . .” that old man said. “That’s it, son. That’s all you need to know. Now you can go home and fix yourself a drink.”
    Van’s grandfather wandered restlessly back to his worktable, and discovered the red wire of his glue gun, hanging from the drawer. Surprised, he pulled the shiny gun out and set it carefully on the desktop.
    “Now don’t you look at this,” he said.
    “Grandpa, I’ve seen a hot-glue gun.”
    “Not as hot as this one, kiddo. The boys in Burbank made me this when we got the Blackbird shaped and annealed. Titanium was Blackbird skin, it’ll take Mach 3 when the shockwave’s hot enough to melt lead!” He brandished the ray gun. “Here, let me turn this on.”
    Van noted with alarm that the cheap wall socket was discolored and half-molten.
    “You shouldn’t be melting any lead in here, Grandpa.”
    “Oh, I can melt any kind of solder in this gun, no problem.” His grandfather began searching through the dusty junk in a desk drawer.
    “Grandpa, let me have that thing.”
    “This gun’s too old for you. The boys made this for me back in ’63. Chuck Vandeveer’s Buck Rogers ray-blaster!” He smiled in delight. “That was a dang good joke, too. They were such great, funny guys.”
    “Grandpa, I’ll buy you a fresh glue gun at Home Depot.”
    “But you can’t have this gun. This one’s mine. You really need this solder gun, boy? Why?”
    Van had no good reason to offer.
    The old man narrowed his eyes. “You can’t tell me, huh? It’s classified? It’s electronics.”
    “Oh, uhm, yeah.”
    “Lotta hard soldering work in electronics. Vacuum tubes and such.”
    “Sure,” Van said gratefully. “Yeah.”
    “You keep it then, Derek, son. You can keep it as long as you need it.”
    “Thanks a lot.” Van hastily unplugged the glue gun. Then he ripped some Velcro loose and stuffed the dangerous contraption into his baggiest cargo pocket. At least now the place wouldn’t burn down. He waved