Bug Park by James P. Hogan

“It was there, penciled in.”

“Well, it would have helped if you’d said so.”

“I did, but you weren’t listening. You were too busy looking out the window.”

A silence fell while the car negotiated a bridge over a creek. Kevin decided that he was getting the worst of things and changed the subject. Ohira ran a corporation called Theme Worlds Inc., which operated public amusement centers, theme-parks, and similar attractions. He was always looking for new ideas. As far as Kevin could make out, his aim in bringing Michelle along was to show her what Kevin and Taki had been doing, and let her judge the potential for herself.

“Is Ohira really serious about thinking that this could have real commercial prospects?” Kevin asked his father.

Eric nodded. “Oh yes, very serious. He’s been trying to sell her on the idea, and now he wants her to see for herself what it’s all about. No doubt he’s hoping she’ll get as fired up about it as he is.” Eric was not exaggerating. Ohira’s performance earlier had shown him about as fired up, externally, as he ever got about anything.

Kevin turned his head to look back from the passenger seat. “Did you hear that, Taki? They’re getting serious about it.”

“My uncle is always serious when money’s involved,” Taki said.

“So does that mean we could be onto a good thing here if we play our cards right, do you think?”

“I guess . . . if he meant what he said.” Shameless in recruiting allies wherever they were to be found, Ohira had indicated that as far as he was concerned, since it was the boys who had originated the concept, they should receive an appropriate share of the proceeds if the project ever became a reality.

“You two might have taken your first step to becoming millionaires,” Eric told them. They reached the cluster of mailboxes mounted on a log shelf where narrow trails diverging off among the trees led to the surrounding houses, and turned along the one with the sign saying heber.

Michelle’s first impression of the house as she got out of her car after drawing up behind the Jaguar was of comfortably contained confusion—like Heber’s office. It had begun as an original two-level structure, since sprouting an aggregation of decks and extensions that seemed to have lost their way in the surrounding greenery. To the right of the house and at the rear, the ground descended toward the edge of the water that they had been approaching. Michelle estimated it to be about a half mile across to the low hills forming the opposite shore.

One door of the double garage was open, revealing a gray Dodge van. A clutter of cabinets, stripped-down electronics frames, and assorted pieces of machinery took up the rest of the space. To the side of the garage was an extension, probably some kind of workshop, with a go-kart and a partly dismantled motorcycle under a carport roof. A blue Jeep was parked in front of the garage, and a brown Ford around at the side. Heber had said that his wife, Vanessa, would be home. Michelle guessed that he had used her car that day for some reason. Although they had not yet met, the image that Michelle had formed of her went with the Jaguar, somehow; the Jeep was definitely more “Eric.”

Michelle and Ohira moved forward to where Heber and the two boys were waiting. “Most people expect something vast and imposing,” Heber said, tossing out an arm as they began walking to the house. “Everyone seems to think that all corporation presidents live in something like the Taj Mahal behind security walls with electric gates. I suppose we’re not really what you’d call very formal.”

“I’d call it casual,” Michelle told him. “Don’t try to change it. It suits you.”

“It gets more casual round back,” Kevin commented dryly.

“The tidiest places I can think of are museums,” Heber said. “But not very much gets done in them. Would you or Taki really want to live in one? I can’t imagine either of you surviving half a day.”

“Is that a lake at the back?” Michelle asked.

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