reclining on a green felt pasture, that captivated her attention. Larger than the other pieces, but small enough to hold in two hands, there lay a knobby colt, its translucent mane flared back from its muscular neck, forever frozen in the wind. She thought of her own horse, a gift from Matthew when they had moved to California. Wouldn't this crystal beauty look wonderful beside her bed, on the night stand….

She remembered her car, double-parked out front. Another day perhaps, she decided, seating herself before Mr. Armond at an antique table while he called downstairs and instructed one of the vault attendants to have the piece brought to her.

"Billy, I've worked so hard," she said, fingering her forehead above her eyebrow. "This is my reward."

"Of course you have," Mr. Armond said. "The piece you have
purchased is one of a limited number created by Mr. Houston.
He'll be pleased to know it will be enjoyed by you and Mr.
Locke."

"People just don't know how difficult it is being married to a successful businessman. It absolutely drains a woman. I swear, I feel like half the time I do his thinking." She removed her right glove and inspected her nails, and, as the credit card machine beeped twice, she casually turned hand over, palm up, to receive the sales slip.

Mr. Armond transcribed the approval code onto the form and handed her the pen. As she signed her name, he mentally calculated his five-percent commission on the sale: $1,200.

Ms. Olson, carrying the small catalogs in a stack that reached from her midriff to her chin, managed a polite nod as she passed.

"Darling," Greta called, pointing in Ms. Olson's direction with her index finger.

As the saleswoman turned, her expressionless face metamorphosed into a struggled smile. "Yes?"

"Can I please have one of those?"

"Madam, I am certain you will receive one in the mail shortly,"
Ms. Olson said. She blinked delicately, twice.

"I want it now."

Mr. Armond jumped from his seat. "Of course." He slid one from the pile. Quickly discarding the little protective jacket, he handed the booklet to Greta, who immediately began flipping through it.

"Thank you, dear," she said, without looking up.

Mr. Armond returned the addressed, empty coverlet to Ms. Olson's pile and sent her off with a grateful wink. He collected the cord-wrapped box containing her new bowl from a stock attendant, and handed it to Greta. "Anything else today, Mrs. Locke?"

"I think this is all for today."

"Always a pleasure, Mrs. Locke."

She strolled out onto Post Street, the pleasantly heavy box beneath one arm. Her car had been moved several yards up the block and into a loading zone. She waved her scarf to the parking attendant, but he was already on his way to the vehicle.

He held the car door for her, and she placed the box on the passenger seat and secured it with the seat belt. Tying her scarf, she realized she had forgotten the catalog. She had left it on the clerk's desk. No fuss. She would receive one in the mail soon anyway.

Climbing into the car, she smiled, recalling the day she drove it off the parking lot. Another little gift to herself, for all her hard work.

* * *

Now that Matthew Locke was gone from his office, Peter Jones twisted the brightness knob on his computer monitor and returned to his work.

Beneath his hand he rolled the mouse and pressed its single button, causing the screen to scroll. Small connected boxes drawn on the electronic document rolled from the bottom of the display to the top. He stopped when he arrived at the top of the chart. With the pointer he selected the uppermost box and clicked the mouse twice on the name that currently occupied it. Peter looked at the highlighted name for a moment, then pressed the Delete key. MATTHEW LOCKE disappeared instantly.

Peter smiled to himself at the literalness of this small, effortless action, of deleting from his computer the very man who threatened to ruin its bright future. He typed in his own name into the vacant box and, beneath it, added the word ACTING before the title that was already there, PRESIDENT & CEO. Beneath this box were others, connected to the uppermost with straight black lines, each titled with the name of the corresponding division vice president. His name was titled in one of these other boxes as, VICE PRESIDENT, JOEY.

The man Peter had hired two years ago to act as his partner had failed. Matthew Locke's role at Wallaby, defined by Peter and Hank Towers, Wallaby's cofounder and vice chairman, was to act as the company's business leader and Peter's assistant. While Peter understood the power of his own vision and the importance of his skill at inventing remarkable products, he admitted to himself that he lacked the business experience to develop the company from a handful of engineers to a large and profitable organization. Which was why he had decided to hire Matthew Locke.

But something had gone wrong.

Matthew, for all of his management strength, did not fit in at Wallaby the way Peter would have liked. Looking back, he remembered Matthew's suggestion, about a year ago, that perhaps Wallaby's portable computers could become more compatible with ICP's systems. That was what had started Peter wondering if, in the long run, Matthew was right for Wallaby. Dismissing Matthew's idea as a naive insult, Peter only wished now that he had paid better attention. How could Matthew think Wallaby should abandon its founding vision of giving high technology power to the individual with a personal computer or portable interactive assistant in favor of creating mere peripherals that connected to ICP's dictatorial, impersonal desktop and mainframe computers? What's more, at about this time their friendship began to deteriorate. Up until the disagreement over the company's direction, the two had spent nearly every Saturday afternoon together, going for long walks or drives. Apparently because of Peter's reaction, Matthew stopped spending Saturday afternoons with him. When Peter would ring the gate bell at Matthew's mansion, the housekeeper would divulge that Mr. and Mrs. Locke had gone out for the day. Peter had felt wounded. Matthew had been the first person with whom he had experienced any sort of real friendship. Or so he'd thought. Scolding himself for having allowed his feelings to become personal, he displaced his hurt by pouring himself more intensely into his work, in an all-out effort to substantiate his side of the contention that had cost him his only friend.

The real challenge now was to get the Joey Plus quickly out the door and into the user's hands and, put to rest once and for all the criticism the original Joey had received. The Joey personal interactive assistant was the product of three years of hard work and engineering magic. Peter, the inventor of the original Wallaby Mate personal computer, had created the Joey as a radically different and intuitively designed portable computer. Named after the Australian word for baby kangaroo, the Joey was compact and thin and easy to transport, and it lasted for days on a single charge. In its simplest configuration, the basic Joey was about the size of a slender hardback book and almost as light, and it slipped easily into a briefcase. It worked as either a traditional notebook computer, or as a keyboard-less slate computer, and its built-in modem made it easy to access on-line services and the Internet, or send and receive faxes. Users interacted with Joey using either a stylus by "drawing" directly on its color active-matrix screen, or with the