"I was not!" she said.

"You were deciding whether or not to tell me that you were going to call Eight Bits Inc. and find out for yourself if it's covered."

"That's not calling you a liar," she said. "That's checking to make sure. What if they thought you meant adult psychiatric treatme nt, and that's not covered, but psychiatric treatment for children is."

"Oh, I see. It's not that I'm a liar, it's that I'm so incompetent that I can't carry on an effective conversation with another adult. You have to check up to see if I missed a little thing like that."

"People can make mistakes!" she said.

"Yes, ma'am, they certainly can," said Step, and he started to leave the room.

"Don't do that!" she shouted at him.

"Don't do what?" he asked.

"Don't walk out on me."

The words hung in the air.

"There's a world of difference," said Step, "between walking out on you and walking out of a room. I'm walking out of a room right now." She started to say something, but he didn't give her a chance. "Right now," he said.

He opened the bedroom door and went into the hall and realized that Robbie and Betsy were playing quietly in Robbie's room, not in the family room as he had thought. Step and DeAnne had raised their voices during this argument-did the children hear? "Hi, kids," he said. "What brings you back here?"

"Stevie told us to get out."

"Are you fine here?"

"Yes.

But Robbie looked so solemn that Step knew that he had heard, that he was worried. "What's wrong, Road Bug?"

"Stevie doesn't like me anymore," said Robbie. His face twisted up to wring out his tears.

"Sure he does, Robot Man," said Step. He sat down by Robbie and put his arm around him. Betsy, of course, began to cry too, since crying was getting Robbie so much attention from Daddy. Step put an arm around her, too, but his attention remained on Robbie. "Stevie's just having a hard time right now."

"What's so hard about it?" asked Robbie. "He just sits around and plays computer games or he plays with Jack and Scotty and he never plays with me."

"Jack and Scotty?" asked Step.

"He's always playing pirates with them, or playing train or something, and he won't play with me, and Betsy's no fun."

"No fun," said Betsy.

"I mean she's just a baby"

"Baby in Mommy's tummy," said Betsy.

"Road Bug, it's hard, you think I don't know that?" said Step. "Stevie's having a hard time at school and I think he's still a little mad at me for making him move. And so he needs to be by himself a lot."

"Then how come he's always playing with Scotty and Jack?" asked Robbie.

Step had to think for a minute. What in the world could he say to that? You have to understand, Robbie, that your brother is retreating from reality into a wonderful magical world full of good friends, which has only one drawback- none of the rest of humanity can get to that place.

"Robbie, can't you just be patient with Stevie for a little longer?" said Step. "He doesn't hate you. He loves you, he really does. He just isn't able to show it as much right now. A year from now you'll look back on this time and you'll say-"

"Don't say 'a year from now,"' said Robbie disgustedly.

"Why not?"

"That's what Mommy always says. 'A year from now you'll look back and laugh."'

His imitation of DeAnne was dead on. Step had to laugh. "Can you do my voice?"

Robbie immediately deepened his voice and said, "Life's a bitch, ain't it?"

"Bitch," said Betsy.

Step was appalled. "I've never said that to you."

"No, you say it to Mom when you think we're not listening," said Robbie. He was very proud of himself.

"Well, now I know that you are listening," said Step.

"What's a bitch, Daddy?" asked Robbie.

"It's just a word for a mommy dog," said Step.

"Woof woof," said Betsy.

"Why did you say life's a mommy dog?" asked Robbie.

"That what a mommy dog say!" shouted Be tsy. "Woof woof woof!"

"Believe me, Robbie, when you get older, you won't even have to ask. The answer will just come to you."

Step unfolded himself and stood up. DeAnne was standing in the doorway to the boys' room, jiggling with silent laughter. "If you hold all that laughter inside," said Step, "it might make the baby pop out."

She laughed all the harder-but still silently.

"Could it really make Mommy pop?" asked Robbie.

"No, Road Bug, I was joking," said Step.

"Why is it a joke when 1 don't think it's funny," said Robbie,

"But when I tell a joke and you don't think it's funny, then you say, 'That's not a joke'?"

"Because I'm the official funny-decider of America," said Step. "Back in 1980 when they elected Ronald Reagan to be president, I got elected to be the national funny-decider, and so if I say it's a joke it's a joke, and if I say it isn't it isn't. Next year they'll elect somebody else, though, because I'm not running again."

"Is that true, Mommy?" asked Robbie.

"What do you think?" asked DeAnne, her eyes wide in a mockery of innocence.

"I bet this is a joke, too," said Robbie.

"You are right indeed, my brilliant boy," said Step.

"If Mommy's laughing does that mean you aren't going to yell at each other anymore?" asked Robbie.

At the word yell, Betsy opened her mouth and let out a fullthroated holler.

"Betsy, don't do that!" said DeAnne. "They can hear you on the street. People will think we're child-abusers."

"We weren't yelling at each other," said Step.

"Yes you were," said Robbie.

"We were arguing because we didn't agree about something," said Step. "That happens sometimes. And maybe we got too loud because we both care very much about the thing we were discussing."

"What were you discussing?"

Thank heaven he didn't understand the actual words we said, thought Step. "We were talking about stuff that only grownups talk about."

Robbie chanted derisively: "Grown. Up. Grown, up."

"Yeah, well, someday you'll be a grownup and then you won't think it's so cute. Now play with your sister."

That's where they left the question of taking Stevie to a psychiatrist-nowhere. It was the first clause in article one of the unspoken constitution of their marriage: If they disagreed about something it was a tie vote, and no one had the power to break a tie, but they both had to promise to think about the other person's side. So Step was thinking about DeAnne's point of view, and DeAnne was thinking about Step's, but this time Step knew that he would never, never agree with her, and he knew that she would never see things his way, either.

Except that in the back of his mind, he knew that he would see things her way. That somewhere in the future he would realize that they really were out of their depth in dealing with Stevie's problem, that Stevie wouldn't just give up on these imaginary friends, and Step would end up walking through the door of a psychiatrist's office one day, taking his own son to the witch doctor to get an incantation that would make the evil spirits go away. It made him angry to think about that, though, and so he put it to the back of his mind and hoped desperately that the whole issue would just stay there, would just go away along with Stevie's imaginary friends.

The memo finally came down from Ray Keene that it was time for all the creative staff to evaluate the IBM

PC and come up with a recommendation. This is it, thought Step. This is what will decide whether I can sign the contract with Agamemnon, the big one that will let me quit this job and never see Dicky Northanger or Ray Keene again. As long as Eight Bits Inc. decides not to support the IBM machine.

And there were plenty of reasons not to support it. The biggest reason was that it was a crippled machine from the start. The operating system was a kludged-together imitation of CP/M; color graphics was only an option, and even if you paid some obscene amount extra to get it, all you got was four colors on the screen at a time, and it was no compensatio n that you could switch between a set of cool colors and a set of warm colors.