Interface (78 page)

"You came here to do some serious business," Eleanor said.

Mary Catherine nodded.

"You came here to
NOTIFY
ME!" Eleanor said, and finally she
couldn't hold back any longer; she slid forward out of her chair, on
to her knees, put both hands over her face, and started screaming. Mary Catherine, laughing hysterically, wrapped Eleanor up in her arms and held her tight.

In some deep, remote part of her soul, Eleanor knew that she was
acting just like the winning contestants on the game shows that she
used to watch when she was unemployed. But she didn't care.
Come to think of it, it wasn't a bad analogy. She had gone on the biggest quiz show of all time and won the penultimate prize.

The results were so odd and yet so important that Cyrus
Rutherford Ogle ran one more test, shortly before the announce
ment. They were starting off the broadcast with a round-table
discussion among the four metapundits whom Ogle had hand-
picked from Central Casting.

One of them was a gruff, grandfatherly old man who projected
traditional American family values. He had made a comfortable
living playing a cowboy patriarch in various Westerns and an
admiral on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Another was a tweedy
academic (lab-coat wearing pseudoscientist on a couple of drug
commercials). Then there was a middle-aged, professional-looking
young women whose role was to puncture the egos of the two men
(occasional lawyer on
L.A. Law).
Finally, they had a stylish,
younger black woman with a Hispanic surname and generically
progressive politics (roommate/best friend to better-known
actresses in various films). All four of the metapundits would gather
every evening and engage in a spirited discussion of political issues
that had come up during the day's events at the National Town
Meeting. All four of them had, at one time, worked in soap operas
and had the ability to memorize dialogue rapidly, which came in
handy since Ogle and his staff scripted the discussions.

During tonight's discussion, the tweedy academic metapundit
delivered a bombshell several minutes into the program by
announcing that he had spoken with a high-level Cozzano
operative minutes before the program and that this person had
confirmed that Eleanor Richmond would be the vice-presidential
candidate.

Cy Ogle was ensconced in the Eye of Cy at the moment his line
was delivered, and the results were intense and striking. There were
a few discrepancies between the new information and last night's
debate results, but they were not big discrepancies. Richmond had
a hard core of support that would never change. There was also a smaller but strong anti-Richmond segment, led by Byron Jeffcote
(Trailer-Park Nazi, Ocala, Florida) and by a few others like the
Post-Confederate Gravy Eater and the Orange County Book
Burner.

But reaction among more moderately conservative whites was
not half-bad. And the big surprise was still there: Chase Merriam
loved Eleanor Richmond. Cy Ogle picked up the phone and got
his press secretary.

"Go ahead and announce it," he said. "The demographics are
perfect."

"Richmond?" the secretary said, still a little uncertain about this
whole idea.

"Eleanor Richmond," Ogle said.

On the other end of the line, he heard keys whacking on a
computer keyboard. The press release was now being transmitted digitally to the wire services, computer-faxed to every press outlet
in the Western world. Cozzano's state and local campaign
managers, in all fifty states, were receiving information packets on
Eleanor Richmond - pictures, videotapes, and canned sound bites
for them to toss off to the local media. It all happened in an instant.

"It's done," his press secretary said.

"Good" Ogle said. "White House, here we come. I gotta go,"
he concluded. "I have a call on another line."

It wasn't just any old phone line. This was a special line that Ogle
had agreed to keep open. The only person who had this phone
number was Buckminster Salvador. Cy Ogle's boss. Rarely heard from, rarely seen, but always there.

"Ogle," Ogle said.

"Hold everything!" said the voice of Mr. Salvador, which was
barely recognizable; his throat was tense to the point of strangula
tion. "Don't move! Don't push any buttons or make any phone
calls or let anyone do anything!"

"I am alone. Alone and powerless," Ogle said. "You have my
undivided attention."

"Thank god I reached you in time," Salvador said. "I knew there
was something wrong with that whole Eleanor Richmond thing."

"What do you mean?"

Salvador spent most of his time hanging out in ODR's fake
headquarters in the office tower above Pentagon Plaza, so that he could monitor all of the PIPER 100 data at the same time as Ogle
did. And he did so constantly, as Ogle had learned; scarcely a single
campaign event went by that Bucky Salvador didn't phone him up right in the middle of it and provide his own commentary on how the PIPER 100 were reacting. He fancied himself something of an
expert. And, dilettante that he was, he completely failed to grasp the mediagenic advantages of Eleanor Richmond.

"Chase Merriam called me just a few minutes ago. He just got out of the hospital."

Ogle laughed. "Haw, haw, haw," he said, "don't tell me. He had
an operation. He was on laughing gas or something during the
debate."

"Worse than that. He was in a car crash. Wednesday night. Some
hoodlum stole his watch. We have no idea who's wearing that
thing!"

"A late-middle-aged black female homeless person with good
education and traditionalist values," Ogle said.

Salvador was caught off guard. "Oh. You've found the watch, then?"

"Nope," Ogle said, "just an educated guess."

"Well," Salvador said. "Well."

"Well what?"

"This changes everything!" Salvador said, shocked by Ogle's seeming indifference. "The statistics are completely fouled up!"

"If all the PIPER 100 got together and traded watches, that
would foul up the statistics," Ogle said. "One person doesn't foul
them up too bad."

Deep in his heart, Ogle knew Salvador had a point. But he didn't
want to agree with him. He did not really get along with Salvador
very well.

"That's ridiculous!" Salvador said. "You told me yourself last night that the single strongest thing in Richmond's favor was the
fact that Chase Merriam loved her. You said it was a key factor in
making your decision."

"Hey," Ogle said, "try to keep this in perspective. We're
talking about the goddamn vice presidency here. It just doesn't
matter."

"So you admit that Richmond is the wrong choice. Salvador said
triumphantly.

"From here on out, she's the right choice. She's a brilliant
choice. A daring, incisive, masterstroke of leadership on Cozzano's
part," Ogle said, "because she's a choice we already made."

"Not true," Salvador said, "the formal announcement doesn't
happen for another hour."

"The formal announcement doesn't mean diddly," Ogle said.
"We already unleashed the cascade. Stories have already been filed.
Hell," Ogle said, grabbing a remote control and clicking channels
on a nearby TV monitor, "I got Koppel on screen right now with a picture of Eleanor Richmond over his shoulder. And when
Eleanor's peering over Ted Koppel's shoulder on national TV, and
Koppel's got that smirky know-it-all look on his face, it's just too goddamn late."

"Good lord." Salvador sighed, sounding quiet and defeated.

"When I got into this thing, I never realized how complicated it
was going to be."

"Cheer up," Ogle said, turning his attention back toward the
Eye of Cy. "Look at the screens. I am seeing a generally green color
this evening. The electorate is mellow and satisfied. If Richmond
turns out to be a wrong choice, we'll just send her to kiss babies in
Guam."

"I see a case of measles," Salvador said. "I see a lot of red screens.
Look at Economic Roadkill! Economic Roadkill is a key bloc. And
tonight, Economic Roadkill is frightened."

Ogle looked at the screen labeled FLOYD WAYNE
VISHNIAK. As Salvador had pointed out, it was bright red. "It's nothing," Ogle said. "He does that all the time. He's in another bar fight."

Suddenly, Vishniak's screen turned bright green. Ogle and
Salvador both laughed. "Ha ha!" Salvador said, I'll wager his opponent is out cold on a barroom floor in Davenport, Iowa!"

46

Floyd Wayne Vishniak strode into
McCormick
Place and
heaved a tremendous sigh of relief. A cascade of sweat fell out of his
hair and showered his face. He had made it through the metal
detectors!

The Fleischacker had performed as advertised. It was a ceramic-and-plastic gun, made in Austria, that didn't trigger metal detectors.
After cashing in his latest check from Ogle Data Research, picking
up his paycheck from detasseling, and pawning all of his other
weapons, he had finally raised the capital he needed to purchase the
Fleischacker at a gun store in Davenport and to top his truck's fuel
tanks. That done, he had made the trip across northern Illinois in
two hours flat, blasting across the nearly empty pavement of I-88 at
an average velocity of eighty-five miles per hour. He had wanted
to leave himself an adequate time cushion upon reaching Chicago,
because he wasn't sure how to locate McCormick Place. But that
turned out to be a snap. He just took the interstate into town and,
to his astonishment, began to see signs for the damn place. A whole
series of big signs that took him straight where he wanted to go.

This kind of thing did not happen to Floyd Wayne Vishniak very
often, because usually he went places where no one else wanted to go: cornfields that needed detasseling, riverfront bars, and defunct
factories. He had been forced to develop a certain amount of
navigational cunning over the years. He had assumed that once he
trespassed upon the borders of Chicago, he would, as usual, spend a considerable amount of time idling on the shoulder of various roads and in the parking lots of convenience stores, pouring over his Chicago map collection.

But it wasn't like that. All he had to do was pay the tolls and
follow the signs. And as he was doing so, it dawned on him that this
was natural and logical, because if he had the correct understanding
of it, a convention was a thing where a whole lot of people came together at once for a purpose. Which meant that a whole lot of
people were having to find their ways to McCormick Place all the
time, every day.

Like most of the other new ideas that entered Floyd Wayne
Vishniak's head, this one came in the form of a pang of bitter
resentment. It hit him straight between the eyes and made him
grind his teeth and mumble indistinct profanities.

The whole world was set up for the benefit of the rich folks.
That interstate, four beautiful lanes of pavement cutting straight
across the state of Illinois, had been put there just to ferry the wealthy and privileged into Chicago so that they could go to conventions and meet with others of their kind and plot new
conspiracies to keep the common man in his place: on the bottom.
Far be it from these people to find their own way to McCormick
Place. Oh no, these people were too busy and dignified and
important to actually buy maps and find their own way. No, they
had to have special signs.

It was easy enough to reach the convention center, but difficult
to park in its vicinity; the lots were jammed. Not making it any
easier was Vishniak's own extreme nervousness. He was afraid to slow down, so he just orbited the target zone like an Indian circling
a wagon train. He shot right past a few perfectly good spots.
McCormick Place was the southern end of a whole chain of big
civic projects, including Soldier Field, some museums, and Grant Park, and parking lots were strung for several miles up the shore of
the lake. Vishniak ended up parking way the hell and gone up in
the vicinity of Grant Park and then walking for half an hour, which
was fine because it helped him burn off adrenaline.