Walking into his home, Peter heard Ivy playing the grand piano in the drawing room. She was singing softly, a verse he did not recognize. One of her own? The pleasing sounds bellowed and echoed through the more or less empty mansion. She did not hear him enter the room.
Her fingers settled on the last chords of the score. Peter smelled the sweet fragrance of her long white-blond hair, brightened and warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the French windows behind her. Coming closer, his shadow gave him away and she turned her head to greet him.
"Hello," she said, through the last fading chords of her music.
"That was wonderful. It's as if this entire house is joyful and alive when you're playing." He casually rested a hand on her shoulders, a simple expression of admiration.
She turned her cheek to his hand, and he went to move it, but before he was able to she stood and stretched. He took her seat then, resting his hands on his lap. Looking past her and through the windows, toward the hills that rolled beyond his estate, he could see Hoover Tower in the distance, rising high above the treetops of the Stanford University campus. Three weeks earlier he had been there to give the commencement speech to the graduating class. Afterward, at the reception, a striking young girl had introduced herself. Her name was Ivy, she said, and she proceeded to tell him about the speech and language interface that she was developing for the Wallaby Joey computer. When it was finished, she promised, the interface would allow people to interact with the Joey by speaking to it, and it would reply in kind, in its own "voice." The Joey's intuitive and portable design, she told him, was what had inspired her to develop the speech recognition and simulation interface software. When he asked what were her eventual ambitions for the project, she said she wasn't sure. She had no agenda for the summer and, for lack of a more tempting course, had halfheartedly committed herself to traveling across the country with some friends. He was intrigued by her knowledge of linguistics, particularly when she revealed that she had never used a computer until the Joey. That part was especially touching, and he somehow felt compelled to help her, so he offered her the opportunity to continue developing the Joey speech and language component in his home. The next day she arrived with her duffel bag, a couple of books, a few boxes of floppy disks, and a backpack. Peter often had guests straying in and out of his home, usually students to whom he offered the use of his thoroughly equipped computer lab. In return he asked that they respect the privilege by picking up after themselves. He let them come and go for as long as they liked, and his doors were never locked. Alice, his maid and cook, always kept herself abreast of the various artists in residence.
She appeared now in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a small, voluminous Spanish woman with pulled-back black hair and a gorgeous smile. "Hello, Mr. Petey," she said with plain affection. She turned to the young girl. "I finished preparing your meat and spices." Peter looked at Alice for an explanation, and she nodded to Ivy.
"I'm making you a special Mediterranean dish tonight," Ivy said, taking Peter's hands in hers. "My way of saying thanks, for being so kind and letting me stay here with you."
"Great," he said, and casually withdrew his hands.
Usually it started out, as it had a number of times before, as a rent-free working environment. Peter received both pleasure and satisfaction from being around artists and other creative types who crafted amazing things from the technology he had invented. Except for his work and Kate, when she was in town, his life was surprisingly spare. Having the students in his home filled the spacious mansion with the lives and passionate works of others. And with little effort, he was helpful to them. In several cases the projects they worked on became marketable products, and sometimes he nurtured them in getting started as software or hardware developers by introducing them to the appropriate managers at Wallaby. But to some of the students, staying at Peter's became more than just a neat place to crash. Once a couple of young men had taken off with some of the equipment and a few of Peter's personal valuables. And then there were the girls, who often presented their own set of problems. And right now, Ivy was the mansion's sole no-strings boarder.
"Come on," Ivy said, taking him by the hand once again. "I want to show you what I've been working on this afternoon."