The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [28]
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 his free hand at the walls. “Grandpa, how did you get in this place?”
“I’m hiding out here, that’s how! After I broke out of that damn nuthouse!” Grandpa Chuck tapped the thin skin on his skull. “Old Kelly, he never knew when to leave when the time was right! Hardening of the arteries up here, that was Kelly Johnson’s problem . . . I used to see ol’ Kelly laid up in his hospital bed, all crippled-up and cussing-out Allen Dulles, when Dulles was already dead . . . His mind went! Now my boy Srini, though . . . He’s just this young kid, Srini, but he’s a good engineer, one of my best . . . He fixed up this computer for me, to read things out loud for me . . . A lotta contract work now, he’s a busy boy . . . This was his room.”
“He sure likes planes,” Van observed.
“I pay his mom room and board, you know. His mom, she’s a widow now. Family values, that’s a good deal.” The old man turned back to his desk. He looked with resigned confusion on the clutter