THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT (18 page)

“The President, Virgil.” Jason had inscribed the words upon his too potent silence.

What had become real remained unspoken. Virgil might ask whatever he wished – he deserved a full and considerate answer. Jason pressed a discreet button. Unsurprisingly, the door had been secured. Virgil accepted the policy of it with equanimity.

How quickly circumstance alters! The irony that it might easily change again suffused him. He was after all no less mortal than the Roman emperors of the past who needed a reminder of the fact.

In the corridor he felt much lighter than a moment ago and was single-eyed in his own mental tunnel. He recommended to himself that whatever path the President sets him upon as undoubtedly he will – endowed with vistas unlike his own of late – in no way could lead to pitfalls that he did not himself provide. All will at least, he trusted, be clear as dirt. He must post ‘No Illusions’ signs and keep a level head.

Virgil breathed and expanded as the good elevator box positively jumped in an excess of energy to the next floor where it summarily discharged them with a sigh that sounded respectful. Immediately they entered another ascending container, a more stately confine that did its sedate utmost in its raising of them to confirm their most positive self-regard. It exuded gravity while it defied its physical manifestation with an ineluctable smoothness that made the claim there were no limits to the heights this presidential box would scale on its occupants’ behalf. It had all the authority an elevator could possibly have and came with a seal in duplicate. Like the flag, this stamp seemed to be everywhere. One could forget everything else but not where one was.

The door parted to reveal the silent figure of a besuited man, on his feet, hands crossed at groin, ear captured by a scarab-shaped leech that the hot end of a cigarette might remove. Most of his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere but a single nod permitted them to proceed. Jason led to the right and Virgil remarked that they trod upon minute gold stars fixed in a deep blue ground.

Portraits of past Presidents in his peripheral vision gave no acknowledgement of their passage. He was more a contributor to history than were they in this moment, and he kept his eyes straightforward. Even had they been present in person, they would not have inspired to the degree that death alone granted them in the public discourse. They would have had to make way for him.

Before the self-congratulatory blur of this little critique had worn off, he found himself at a highly polished door, with Jason stepping aside after knocking twice and then a last once with a restrained fist. A moment of anticipation inflated Virgil’s sense of himself. When Jason turned the door handle on no signal that he could make out, all the elements of presidential surprise self-consciously and attentively awaited them in the room that they entered. Virgil wore his own expectation in self-conscious, equal measure to the casual summer shirt and slacks that he’d had on now for far too long.

As for Jason, what greater show of power than this freedom of access, and of weakness in the need to be dressed to a fault?

“Jason! You’ve brought a friend! Mr. Woolf! Virgil is it? Do you mind first names? Come. Let’s not stand on ceremony. Hah!”

As he shouldn’t, the President didn’t find it difficult to play the part of the perfect host and he relished the subsequent demands upon guests to follow suit with their own grace notes. It was his privilege to lead and to provide the mood of the moment.

Virgil saw an arrangement of chairs. It was to these that his host’s gesture had invited him before he had hardly time to say his piece:

“Mr. President. Yes, Virgil Woolf. Virgil will be fine. Thank you.” This proved the most he could offer with his recent incarceration in mind.

Clay Eastwood did not need to introduce himself. One knew him, and commended him without question for the simple fact of being who he was.

Their host had risen from his desk and moved toward them. As the gracious resident creature of this burnished oval, he guided them to a grouping of chairs designed for talk and not relaxation, although fitted with armrests. He waited for them to sit, his looming face coming as a three-dimensional shock now that Virgil was no longer viewing it on a screen. As one, Jason and Virgil obeyed his invitation in a united movement apparently orchestrated by an instance of psychic agreement that all living things are at times subject to. Where the protocol of who sits first is in dispute, the path of least resistance avoids much idiocy.

With an appearance of accomplishment that the relatively modest contrast of his guests enhanced, the President followed suit.

“My condolences for your friend. He was also mine, you know. It is surprising we have not met before. Humphrey and I went a long way back.”

Since Humphrey had never said, the communication could not help but confuse Virgil with feelings both of diminishment and elevation – had his deceased friend not viewed him as worthy or, instead, as above such considerations?

“Jason as well,” Clay Eastwood thought to add and accepted the grateful nod from the mentioned party.

Here Virgil found no change in his sense of himself.

“He would speak of you,”

Virgil doubted the truth of this never mind the basis for its expansive tone.

“But, of course, he didn’t need to.”

Perhaps he was being too modest, but Virgil still refused to take the compliment seriously. Although he didn’t need to be told that he was known, like Jason he similarly acknowledged the show of recognition.

“Thank you, Mr. President. As Humphrey’s friends we owe each other condolences. He always spoke highly of you,” – his took his own moment to show expansiveness – “and, as for myself, policy differences aside, you have always had my respect. It is an honour to meet you.”

He waited, satisfied that his articulation of their shared loss and his further sentiments accorded with these Olympian heights that should draw the best out of one; and he had succeeded, had he not, in banishing the circumstantially necessary but unwelcome other invisible presence? He had dealt with Death, whose dark wing had hovered above them and by extension in this office above the nation as a whole, dismissively. It was established that they were civilized men who could talk away the passing of a friend in the sentimental manner the subject deserved and had forborne from assertions regarding the nature of the event – whether or not it was absolute – a subject that men of ideas might even enjoy. After all, what passes and what doesn’t? Nullity itself is but an idea, a supposition: the ending of life cannot be settled as easily as the emptying of a teacup or a scotch glass.

Virgil and the President shared in a tacit, socially stipulated claim of human continuance. Both their tone and utterance conveyed the metaphysical bias, while leaving Death’s wing as more than shadow; it had dust beneath it.

“Believe me, Virgil, I’ve always learned from what you had to say. Saw how the words were meant and never took them to heart. Never. Why would I?”

Yes, why wouldn’t he absorb all the attacks and criticisms when self-congratulation and a satisfied smile were his reward? It was an old trick, but he was the first Republican President of any real substance in decades to employ it.

“You’re wondering why you’re here.”

Virgil was, in fact, enjoying the laundered moment in that it promised some kind of fulfillment that he hoped to employ over what might be awaiting him. The Oval Office exuded care and power and the accomplishments that come from attention to detail. The air itself consisted of an infinite number of turning points, each a pearled moment to be flung outward in a straight line, or braided about the privileged neck. Where might exactitude on his part take him?

“Allow me, Virgil, to dredge up an old word – ‘nemesis’. Nemesis is what kept us back although, let me say this, our party had a return to power through our own merits not through raising spectres that were no more than fabricated scandals as the trick once was, and I say this without blushing, Virgil, and I will add, the people – the voters – seem to have smartened up somewhat – not to put too fine a point on it – but it’ll happen if they’re led off a cliff more than once, although you’d think once would be enough. And we’ve smartened up with them – it’s what I mean by ‘merits’. We did do awful things, Virgil – off the record, of course – awful things, there’s no denying even if some still do, but it’s true for both sides, in different times, and let’s face it, it will probably be true again, but not on my watch, not if I have a say.”

A clicking sound came from the President’s mouth. Must have been the tip of the tongue against palette in order to punctuate a politician’s confidence. Why they might even become friends, with no end in sight, you never know! Virgil entertained himself with the thought. It ended with their being in a cage together, in Times Square, and picking at each other’s pelts. He wasn’t going to push the conversation beyond a respectful prod:

“Nemesis, Mr. President?” His tone camouflaged that he was in possession of at least some of the answer.

“Rove. Karl Rove. Hate to say the name but there it is. You didn’t think that I had you here to help with the economy, hah! We beat him back with all that trans-human nonsense,” he said abruptly. “Wanted to live forever. That was his reason for opposing the amendment. He thought his brain – his intelligence – to be more than sufficient for what might result. It wasn’t enhancement he was looking for – too late for that – but survival, and not in the usual three score and ten sense. Rove would do anything he could get away with to increase the odds in whatever he undertook. The man should have been thrown down an unused well a long time ago. And now that he’s had to come around…”

Clay Eastwood stopped to wonder if he should explain himself and, as he considered Virgil’s sympathetic expression, decided to risk taking him on as an early ally.

“Sonufabitch,” he began. “I know you don’t need to look it up. Tricks, dirty tricks, always the same, and they finally took us down – ‘Can’t fool all the people all the time!’ – Well, you can do it enough of the time and that’s a safe bet. So much pride – he could put any empty suit into office – this office – didn’t care if it wasn’t himself long as they knew where to go for the decisions. And they couldn’t do anything without him, could they?”

The President stared at Virgil as though asking for agreement. Satisfied, he ploughed on.

“Read his biography sometime, the history of the man, even as a kid he was up to his game – high school debates, trucking in mountains of file boxes where but one was called for, just to intimidate, nothing written on the cards and these were big sons a’ bitches, big cards 4x6 when 3x5 was standard. All of it for show. Oh, he had the brains, but he wanted to win no matter what side he was on, no matter the tactics. Then years on, they try to suppress the vote, keep the ethnics and the blacks, the working poor not to turn out. New i.d. laws at the last moment, less polling stations, and long line-ups. In Florida, it was like his debating days all over, the ballot with so many options that it took forever to fill, and people would just plain give up and go home; at least, that was the plan, except that this time enough of them persevered. No matter how much was tried, he couldn’t repeat what had previously worked.”

A weariness – a sense of beating something that would always refuse to die – brought the words to an end.

In fact, Clay Eastwood recoiled at going further into the sordid and corrupt details, not that he was a stranger to such matters, but the office itself exerted its influence that he had the sensibility to feel and, sometimes, to obey. It was the presidential thing to do – a democratic equivalent to
noblesse oblige
– and not without reward in self-esteem. In the end, he was exposing the political family’s entrails. Having become more and more rueful as he shared with Virgil, anointing him with the status of confidante, he adopted an off-hand tone.

“We thought we’d rid ourselves of him. People forget.” That he spoke the line as though he couldn’t abide the idea – not usual for a politician – generated a modicum of respect in Virgil.

“They won’t make the hard choices, and they put anyone in, anyone, without looking who’s behind him, Virgil…I guess I’m getting carried away,” the President laughed. “As I said, it’s an embarrassment that I don’t need and, while I’m in Office, that the country doesn’t need.”

Jason shuffled in his seat, and he coughed.

Virgil took the cue.

“Mr. President, I am still in the dark, I feel.”

Clay Eastwood reached under a side table, whereupon four men in black waistcoats entered from a side door, one of them designated to speak.

“What can we get you, Mr. President?”

Clay Eastwood looked at Jason and Virgil.

“Gentlemen? Whiskey? What is your pleasure?”

“Whiskey would be fine.”

Both nodded their agreement. Not that Virgil particularly liked whiskey, but it would have to be quality stuff. Being of the opinion that an otherwise unaffordable experience went a long way once undergone, he would take the opportunity to expand himself.

The four men retreated with discipline as the tone of the place required although their superfluous number was showy and excessive. The President smiled for what was at his disposal as he and his guests waited in silent enjoyment of this display of luxury and power: fruit on the nation’s tree that ever extended its roots and explored the skies. No one man in either a four or an eight-year term could know the vastness of it.