Unpopular Science

The young Fastbinder saw the whole picture now. His father was ill, forced to reveal this bizarre family secret as a way of kicking his son in the pants, force him to become someone truly deserving—by the old man’s standards—of the leadership of the family company.

“How much time do I have?” he asked. “To prove myself?”

“Before I die, you mean? Two years, maybe five. Yes, Jacob, there is plenty of time for you. Do you have what it takes to make use of the time?”

For an answer, Jacob looked at the mechanical man. “Let me work here, in grandfather’s workshop. Let me see what I can learn from him.”

Jacob could tell that his father thought this was a curious request, and Jacob realized then just how dull a man his father was. Why, he had never had the desire to work in this workshop!

At that moment he understood that he, Jacob Fastbinder III, was made in a different image—not the successful businessman his father was. He was like his grandfather, the first Jacob Fastbinder, the man who claimed Ironhand.

The seed of shame that his father planted in his being was only as monumental as his excitement over the discovery of his past. It was just two months later that these opposing forces collided again.

“What is this?” his father demanded hotly. This time, Jacob had not been kept waiting outside his father’s office for even a minute.

“A patent application,” Jacob said. “I have learned much from Ironhand.”

His father’s anger was commingled with shock. “From Ironhand? The thing still has secrets to tell?”

“Perhaps if you had spent a few hours poking around in Grandfather’s workshop you would have discovered this yourself,” Jacob said. “Have you ever earned a single patent for this company, Father?”

“No, and neither shall you,” Fastbinder stated flatly. “You’ll risk everything! Don’t you understand? Somebody in America already invented this—this nested relay switching matrix.”

“Ninety years ago,” Fastbinder reminded him. “That does not matter if there is someone in America who is still wondering what became of Ironhand. It is a miracle we were never shut down, but at least now those patents are far in our past, too. We cannot afford to dredge up this secret again.”

Jacob noticed his old man was pale. How long would it take him to die? Hopefully not five years. The young man said, “Ironhand walks.”

“What?”

“What Grandfather could not understand, I do understand. I have mapped his programming system, repaired the corroded relays, and now he walks. Soon I’ll have his frequencies and command codes mapped out and I’ll be able to operate him perfectly, just as his makers did.”

His father looked stark. “No. No more work there. It is reckless and I should never have allowed it.”

“Father, this is my way. It was your father’s way. I can be a success, but not like you, not by being a financial executive. I must be an engineer.”

“Then do it elsewhere.”

In silence, the young Jacob stood and reached for the paper.

“This stays with me.” The elder Fastbinder slapped his hand on the patent application.

So this was what it was reduced to, finally, the old power struggle. Jacob Fastbinder III was not going to allow himself to lose at that, not again, not even one more battle.

“But the knowledge goes with me,” the young man said. He extracted a small flat thing from his briefcase. His father looked confused. “It is a floppy disk. All my notes from Ironhand are stored on one five-inch piece of plastic.”

“Give that to me!”

“Of course, Father,” Jacob said, flipping the thing onto his father’s oak desk. ‘It is only a copy.”

“Give me all of them.”

“Not possible. I made a dozen copies. Some are hidden around the country, some are in safe-deposit boxes in the U.K. and Switzerland.”

Now the old man understood. “You would blackmail your own father?”

The younger man sneered. “What were you trying to do to me, Father?”

“Make you into a useful businessman!”

“Manipulate me. Force me to become hideously mundane, like you.”

“Son, please, do not reveal what you have learned.”

“I will. To the highest bidder. And let it be known that you refused to make use of my patent. It is substantial. People will want to know why you turned away your own son with his profitable new technology.”

“Every word you speak is another knife thrust into my heart,” the old man said, full of bitterness.

“Better the heart than the back,” his son retorted, exposing his own anger now. “Decide, old man. You have ten seconds.”

Jacob Fastbinder stayed with the family business and was promoted to director of technology, eventually even buying out his father’s share in the firm. A year later the value of that share had tripled with the introduction of the new nested relay switch product line, giving unprecedented computerlike control to component makers, without investing in bulky, expensive computers. It had applications in luxury cars, armored vehicles, aircraft, cruise ships, you name it.