Lewis's gaze slithered from Joel's well-cut hair to his Stanford class ring. "Shit, boy. You're not even wet behind the ears and you're trying to tell your daddy and me how to run the company we founded."

Ben Faulconer, who had gained more social polish over the years than his brother, was intrigued by Joel's ideas, but still cautious about making the sweeping changes his son insisted the postwar economy mandated. Still, Joel was certain he could manage his father, if only he could get rid of his uncle Lewis.

In a move that was to prove prophetic, Joel snatched up patents from the infant computer industry. At the same time, he began a systematic courtship of the high-ranking officers of the company, and with very little effort maneuvered his uncle into an escalating series of blunders. It took two years, but he finally succeeded in uprooting Lewis Faulconer.

On Lewis's last day with the company he had helped found, he confronted his brother in Ben's comfortable, paneled office. "You let a fox in the hen house, Benny," he warned, his words slurred because he no longer had any reason to wait until noon to take his first drink of the day. "Watch your ass, boy, because he'll be after you next."

Nonsense, Ben had thought to himself, secretly proud of Joel's cunning in ridding the company of a man who had become an embarrassment. The very idea of worrying about the security of his own position seemed ridiculous to Ben. He was chairman of the corporation-an untouchable. Besides, Joel was his son.

One year later, at the age of thirty, Joel Faulconer had forced his father into early retirement and taken over the helm of the newly renamed Falcon Business Technologies-or FBT, as it was being called. The company immediately began to prosper beyond anyone's imagination.

Two weeks after Susannah's arrival in California, FBT was marking the eighth anniversary of Joel's ascendancy to the chairmanship with the dedication of their new corporate headquarters near Palo Alto. Officially named the FBT Center of Corporate Activities, it had already become known simply as the Castle. Joel was secretly pleased with the nickname. After all, what better place for a king to live than a castle?