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wall immediately on his right.
    Brightly lit by ranks of overhead fluorescents built into the twenty-foot-high ceiling, the single room was immaculately clean, so much so that it reminded him of the production rooms he had once visited while touring the plant of a major microprocessor manufacturer. Every device, every instrument, was as spotless as if it had just been unpacked from the original shipping materials.
    Everything appeared to be interconnected. Possessing the scientific sophistication of the average educated American, he recognized absolutely none of it. The impressive aggregation of gear was dominated by a fifteen-foot-tall arch in the center of the room. Fashioned of some silvery metal, it hung heavy with coils, cables, and a fuzz of fine filaments that would have done an alien spider proud.
    Something snapped and he looked around sharply. Ignoringhis guest, Boles was busy at a half-moon-shaped console, flipping switches and thumbing buttons. In sections, the impressive interconnected confabulation began to come alive. There was a sufficient surfeit of colored lights to put to shame the best outdoor Christmas display in Beverly Hills. No nomadic bolts of lightning, though, and no explosive bursts of elegiac electricity. Quite frankly, Max had seen better special effects in half a dozen recent films. The requisite slobbering, hunchbacked assistant with the terse Slavic name was missing as well. And Barrington Boles’s casual beach attire ruined any covert Gothic atmosphere completely.
    “I’m sorry, Barry, but I have to tell you: You don’t look the part at all.” Max had to raise his voice slightly to make himself heard above the rising electronic thrum of the machinery.
    Boles responded with a boyish, slightly lopsided grin. “Sorry. I spend most of my time in sweats and tees. I don’t even own a white lab coat.” He returned to his work.
    Max wandered over to watch, but the energized instrumentation that filled the underground chamber was much more interesting than his host’s methodical pushing of buttons and monitoring of readouts. Since he had not been ordered or instructed to do otherwise, he wandered freely, examining different bits and pieces of equipment, careful to touch nothing. It all looked brand-new and very expensive. He did not have a clue what it was for or what it was supposed to do, nor could he have offered even an educated guess, and the busy Boles was not being very forthcoming. Max did notthink that the aged surfer was being evasive; he was clearly preoccupied.
    The increasingly irritating whine leveled off while thousands of mini-lights and gauges continued to glow and blink. It was all very impressive and very pretty and, after thirty minutes of nonstop glowing and blinking with no explication, very boring. Max checked his watch. While he did not have a story, Boles had provided the foundation for one. Given the now validated existence of a glut of arcane scientific equipment in a sealed basement in the mountains, Max knew he could fill in the reportorial blanks between bites of a fast lunch. He had already decided that he would have to come up with something other than the clichéd hunchbacked assistant, though. A mysterious, attractive girl with dark hair, an Eastern European accent, and carefully concealed origins who ostensibly served as the maid, perhaps. Like a good double espresso, his imagination began to perk.
    Why hang around and kill the evening in search of a story, when with the material he already had at hand he could invent one infinitely more interesting than anything he was likely to see? He smiled ingratiatingly at his busy host.
    “Thanks for the demo,” he told the would-be inventor as he started toward the doorway. “This is all very high-tech and I’m sure it can do some fascinating things—once you’ve got it up and running. But it’s getting late and I don’t want to impose.” Half expecting Boles to try and intercept him, either physically or