"No."

"Sure? I got a nice one. Just happens to be in the back of my truck. I don't even know what they call them, they're so new. It's a terminal built into a tempered-glass desktop. Hit a switch and the screen lights up. Comes with a touch-sensitive keyboard."

"I do not need any upgrades beyond the optical drives."

"Suit yourself. Like I said, these are the best. You planning to store data permanently, a WORM drive is your best bet. Write it once and it's on the drive forever. No accidental erasures. No more screwing around with tape drives."

"I intend to keep my tape drives as backup."

"Reasonable choice for a careful man. And you, I can tell, are careful." Kuttner shook a cluster of connecting cables. "So which is the master unit?"

"The one beside the standpipe," the disembodied voice of Jones said.

Kuttner looked around. He saw the standpipe in a corner, next to the last mainframe in the line. It was vaguely rusty, but out of the open bottom trailed a flat ribbon cable.

"Man, this baby is old."

"I have no need for cable upgrade," said the disembodied voice of Jones.

Kuttner pulled the jukebox cables to the master mainframe and started to hook everything up in a cable arrangement called a star. He kept up his end of the conversation.

"How far up does that ribbon cable go?"

"To the second floor."

Kuttner blinked. He craned his neck around and addressed Jones. "You mean you've got two whole floors between your system and your terminals?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I guess you really don't want anyone to know about this hybrid system of yours," muttered Kuttner, suddenly wondering if the mainframes had been skimmed out of some warehouse, as well. If so, it was a hell of a long time ago. Still, they had been good in their day. IDC mainframes. Too bad about IDC. Kuttner had worked for them once, back in the days when if you knew computers you could write your own ticket.