Interface (77 page)

"Brandon F. Doyle, former U.S. Representative from Massa
chusetts, currently on the faculty of Georgetown University . . ."
This was a handsome, youngish man, probably in his late forties but
young-looking for that age. He smiled a tight little smile into the
camera and nodded. She didn't like him.

"Marco Gutierrez, Mayor of Brownsville, Texas, and a found
ing member of the international environmental group Toxic
Borders
..."
This was a burly Latino man with a mustache and
large, intense black eyes. He was leaning back in his chair,
stroking his mustache with one finger. He raised his hand away from his face as his name was called and waved at the camera.

Mae Hunter snapped the Dick Tracy watch into place around
her wrist. She wanted to see at least this one program.

The TV image cut to a blond, blue-eyed woman with one of
those professional-looking haircuts that Mae always saw on the young women in midtown. She stared directly, and almost coldly,
into the camera. "Laura Thibodeaux-Green, founder and CEO of
Santa Fe Software, who, two years ago, came within a thousand
votes of being elected senator from New Mexico."

Finally, to Mae Hunter's surprise and delight,
she
appeared on
the screen!

"And Eleanor Richmond of Alexandria, Virginia, assistant to the
late Senator Caleb Marshall."

The woman was so cool. She didn't even look at the camera,
didn't react to the introduction at all. She was looking at some
papers in her lap. Then she glanced up and looked around a little
bit, calm, alert, but not paying any attention to the announcer or
the TV cameras. She was so like a princess.

What a terrible introduction that was! It didn't do justice to the life and times of Eleanor Richmond at all. Mae Hunter knew all
about her, she had followed her career in the discarded pages of
The
New York Times.
She was a modern-day hero. Mae pushed her way
out through the bushes and went on to the broad open bank of the Hudson to watch her girlfriend Eleanor.

The moderator was Marcus Hale, a grizzled ex-anchorman who
had gotten to the place in his career where he could write his own
job description. He did a lot of work for TV North America now,
because there, he didn't have to keep stopping in midparagraph to pimp hemorrhoid remedies to the American public. And now that the candidacy of William A. Cozzano had developed into a media-
certified Important Phenomenon, he had been all too eager to serve
as the moderator of this vice-presidential showdown. He opened things up, in typical Marcus Hale style, with a lengthy editorial,
though he probably would have preferred to call it analysis.
Eventually he worked his way around to asking a question.

And it was a doozy. "All of you are young people, in your forties.
Chances are you'll be around for at least another twenty-five years.
One or more of you may even become president during that time.
By then, people who are being born today will just be coming into the adult job market, and their success in that market will depend largely on the economic and educational initiatives that are taken
during the next decade. These will be most important to the
poorest people, who today face the most restricted opportunities.
And without putting too fine a point on it, you know and I know
that what I'm really talking about here is inner-city blacks. My question is: twenty-five years from now, what will life be like for
these people, and what will you have done to make that life
better?"

Brandon F. Doyle of Massachusetts went first, and he looked
scared. It was easy enough for an old man like Marcus Hale to drag these scary and difficult issues into the limelight. It was a lot harder
for someone like Doyle to deal with the resulting mess, especially considering that he was sharing the stage with a black person who
could shoot him down whenever she wanted.

"Well, first of all, Marcus, let me say that opportunity - for all
people, white or black - is a function of education. This is a
message that we have always taken to heart in Massachusetts, which
has a long heritage of brilliant institutions of higher learning. It's my
hope - and my intention - that twenty-five years from now, a lot
of the people you're talking about will be entering graduate school,
 
or law school, or medical school, and they'll be doing it with the
full assistance and support of a government that takes these things
with the utmost seriousness. Which is not to support big-spending
government programs. I prefer to think of education as an
investment, not an expense."

Next came Marco Gutierrez, who had a heavy, stolid, calm
affect. That and his hair and his clothes had all been developed to
make him seem like a cool norteamericano, not the jumpy,
emotional Mexican that blue-eyed Duluth voters were afraid of.
"Well, I would second a lot of what my friend Brandon said, but where we differ is at the end. Look. Government has a moral duty
to educate its children. No matter what it costs. To say that
education is a good investment misses the point. Even if it cost
every penny in the Treasury, we should educate our kids to the best
of our ability, because it's the right thing to do."

It was Laura Thibodeaux-Green's turn. "Kids spend seven hours
a day in front of the television. Seven hours a day. Just think about
that for a second. That's a lot more time than they spend in the classroom. Well, my opinion is that TV doesn't have to be mind-
rotting garbage. It has the ability to educate. And the digital, high-
definition TV that's just starting to be introduced to the living
rooms of America can be the most potent educational tool ever devised. I advocate a massive program to develop educational
software that can run on these TV sets of the future, so that those seven hours a day spent in front of the TV can turn our little kids
into little Shakespeares and Einsteins instead of illiterate couch
potatoes."

Finally, Eleanor Richmond got her chance. "Look," she said,
"Abe Lincoln learned his lessons by writing on the back of a shovel.
During slavery times, a lot of black people learned to read and write
even though they weren't allowed to go to school. And nowadays,
Indochinese refugee kids do great in school even though they got
no money at all and their folks don't speak English. The fact that
many black people nowadays aren't getting educated has nothing to
do with how much money we spend on schools. Spending more
money won't help. Neither will writing educational software to
run on your home TV set. It's just a question of values. If your
family places a high value on being educated, you'll get educated,
even if you have to do your homework on the back of a shovel.
And if your family doesn't give a damn about developing your mind, you'll grow up stupid and ignorant even if you go to the
fanciest private school in America.

"Now, unfortunately, I can't give you a program to help develop
people's values. Personally, I'm starting to think that the fewer
programmes we have, the better off we are."

For the first time, the live audience broke into applause.

"Amen to that!" Mae Hunter shouted, her voice echoing out across the gray Hudson. A couple of passing joggers glanced at her, then
looked away quickly and pretended not to notice the crazy lady.

Cy Ogle saw a screen flare bright green in the corner of his eye,
and turned to look. The name at the bottom of the screen was
CHASE MERRIAM.

It was amazing. Out of all these candidates, Merriam's clear
favorite, so far, was Eleanor Richmond. Between the poor people
and minorities on the bottom, and the women and people like
Chase Merriam on the top, an astonishing number of people liked
Eleanor Richmond.

But on second thought, Ogle reflected, maybe it wasn't so
surprising after all. Months ago, when she had confronted Earl
Strong in the shopping mall, he had pointed his finger at her image
on the screen and pronounced her the first female president of the United States.

45

Eleanor went straight to her hotel room after the debate,
talked to her kids in Alexandria, watched some TV, went to bed,
and slept until ten Friday morning. When she opened her eyes, she
knew without looking at the clock that she had lost control of
herself and overslept massively. The red light on her phone was
flashing like a police car, the blackout curtains on her hotel room
windows were limned with the hot, hysterical white light of
midday. She felt wizened and dehydrated and headachy.

She opened her curtains about six inches, letting a slab of arid
light into the room, ordered some room service (yogurt, a large
infusion of juice, and lots of coffee), and took a shower. The yogurt arrived with a stack of message slips from various journalists, most
of whom had deadlines that had already expired. She was still sitting
on her bed in her hotel bathrobe, trying to get the coffee into her
system as fast as possible, sorting these messages into stacks, when
someone knocked at her door. Shave and a haircut, two bits.

It was her girlfriend Mary Catherine Cozzano, turned out in a
smashingly professional navy blue ensemble. Mary Catherine was
doing some major grinning, showing some serious dimple action
this morning.

"I'm not worthy," Eleanor said, placing one hand to the breast of her white terrycloth bathrobe.

"My daughter costume," Mary Catherine explained.

"Well, I knew I overslept," Eleanor said, ushering her into the
room, "but looking at you I feel like I am
way
behind the curve."

"You don't know how right you are," Mary Catherine said
provocatively. She groped for the curtain pull and yanked it
decisively, flooding the room with light. Then she turned around
and sat down on the unmade bed, facing Eleanor, who was
squinting between her fingers.

"You have this look on your face like you are in possession of
important state secrets that you can't wait to blab," Eleanor said.
"So let me assure you that I have a Top-Secret Alpha clearance.
Coffee?"

"No thanks," Mary Catherine said. "I had breakfast four hours ago."

Eleanor laughed and pretended to be ashamed of herself. "In
Alexandria my neighbor's dog starts barking at five
a.m.
sharp," she
said, "so I never get the opportunity to sleep in."

"Well," Mary Catherine said, "I think you'll find that the accommodations are much quieter on the grounds of the Naval Observatory."

"Naval Observatory?"

"Yeah," Mary Catherine said innocently.

The Naval Observatory was a circular patch of land along
Massachusetts Avenue, northwest of downtown D.C., in a part of
town that Eleanor had rarely visited while growing up there. Its
function was to provide very nice housing to a few important Navy
types who needed quick access to the White House. And it
contained the official residence of the Vice President of the United
States.

She inhaled sharply and looked at Mary Catherine's face. Mary
Catherine was sucking in her cheeks, trying not to break out
laughing.

"I'm going to be made an admiral?" Eleanor said.

Mary Catherine shook her head.

The idea was too stunning. Eleanor couldn't speak. It couldn't be.

If Cozzano were a fringe candidate, she'd understand it. A purely
symbolic candidacy, like the Libertarians or the Socialists, might
pick someone like her as a running mate. But Cozzano was no
fringe candidate.

Hell, Cozzano was the
leader.
All the polls had him out in front.
It was impossible.

"You're playing with me, girl," Eleanor said.

Mary Catherine just shook her head. She put one hand over her
mouth, trying to contain herself.

That one gesture finally brought it home to Eleanor. This wasn't
just some nice young lady she had made friends with at a
convention, after all. This was the daughter of the candidate
himself. And the way she was dressed-