"Here," Byron said, stepping back from the wheel. "Hold it where my hands are."
Peter placed his hands over Byron's, ready. When Byron let go, Peter's body gave a slight jerk. "Just keep her steady," Byron said, returning his hands. He held them there until Peter adjusted to the boat's pull.
Byron disappeared inside the cabin for a moment, then returned
with two cans of beer. He popped the lids and handed one to
Peter. "Top of the morning to ya," he said, tipping his can to
Peter.
The two men shared a couple of minutes of silence between them as they sailed some distance. Peter was the first to speak up. "I've got an idea," he said simply.
"Me too," Byron said. His gaze was focused behind Peter, at the distant shoreline. He took a sip from his beer and gave Peter a nod. "You first," he said.
"Okay. I was thinking about what you said the other night. You know, about our differences, good ones."
Byron took a thoughtful suck of his pipe and nodded, then expelled a plume of aromatic smoke.
"So I started thinking," Peter went on, his speech coming quickly, "that with your experience in big system stuff, and with what I know about little system stuff, what if we put our heads together?"
Byron made a gesture with his pipe for Peter to go on.
"Okay. See, I've been thinking about portable computers, and PIAs - you know, personal information managers. And as much as I think they are helpful, like the Joey, they're not really as helpful as the could be. They don't so much help you, not directly anyway, as serve you, so to speak. I mean, they're really just smaller, more tightly-integrated computers than real helpers."