Interface (68 page)

Mel turned and looked at her face. "What's that supposed to
mean?"

"You know," she said, "there are many cases of people who have
had strokes and recovered from them."

"I thought the brain tissue was dead. How can you recover from
being dead?"

"The dead tissue doesn't recover. But in some cases, other parts
of the brain can take over for the parts that died. It takes a lot of
work. A lot of therapy. And some luck. But it's been known to
happen. There are people who had half of their brains blown out
in Vietnam who are walking and talking normally today."

"You don't say. Why didn't you try this with Willy?"

"We did," Mary Catherine said, "but when the chance of a
quick fix arose, he opted for that. There's no telling where he
would have gone with normal therapy."

"You think he might have come back?"

"The chances are very low," she said. "But remember, he's
mixed-brain dominant. People like that have a knack for
recovering from these injuries."

"So what are you saying exactly - about Willy wanting to do good?"

"I'm saying that the Network may be able to exert great
influence over him through the biochip," she said, "but that under
neath, his brain may be struggling to reassert control. And that if he
pursues the proper therapy, we can increase the chances that this
will eventually happen."

"What kind of therapy?" Mel said.

"He just has to use his head. That's all," Mary Catherine said.
"He has to exercise his brain and his body, in a lot of different ways,
and retrain his neural pathways."

"Hell," Mel said, "a presidential campaign's not exactly the place
for that."

"Granted," she said, "unless the candidate travels with, dines with, and rooms with a neurologist."

She and Mel locked eyes for a moment.

"You sure?" Mel said.

"Of course I'm sure."

40

"Last year at about this time I accepted an invitation from
the chairman of my party to deliver the keynote speech at their
convention, a couple of weeks from today," William A. Cozzano
said. "Last night, I telephoned him from my home here in Tuscola
and expressed my regrets that I would be unable to participate in
that convention in any way, shape, or form - as a keynote speaker, a delegate, or a nominee. And he was gracious enough to accept my
apology for this sudden change of plans."

Cozzano finally paused long enough to allow the crowd to
detonate - something that they were primed to do, since they had
been practicing it under the eye of Cy Ogle's crowd handlers for the last hour and a half. When he finally paused for breath, the
freshly painted bleachers surrounding the Tuscola High School
football field suddenly bloomed with signs, banners, balloons,
confetti, and all the other bright insubstantialities of a political
campaign.

"It's not that I bear a grudge against my party, because I don't.
In fact, I am still a card-carrying member and expect to remain one,
assuming they'll still have me after today."

This line triggered a laugh that developed into a cheer, which built into another flag-waving crescendo.

It looked great. It looked great to Cozzano, to his close friends
and family seated around him on the field, and to the three dozen
camera crews that had come in from all the networks, major urban
markets, and several European and Asian networks.

Until about a month ago, this field had only had one rank of
low-rising bleachers, on one side of the field. That was adequate for
just about any crowd that the Tuscola Warriors were likely to draw.
Then a big donation had come in from the Cozzano family and the
bleacher space had been quadrupled, with brand-new ranks
installed on both sides of the field. The lighting system had been
beefed up to the point where it lit up half the town. Tuscola now
boasted the best football field of any town of its size in Illinois.

For today's festivities, a huge podium had been built straddling
the fifty-yard line, raised about six feet off the ground. There was
enough space for a couple of hundred folding chairs, heavy media support, and one great big red-white-and-blue lectern, massively
constructed but nevertheless groaning under the weight of nearly a
hundred microphones. Amazingly enough, most of those mikes
had arrived preattached to the lectern, were not actually connected
to anything, and bore the logos of networks and TV stations that were imaginary or defunct.

Mary Catherine was especially interested to note that Dad now
rated a Secret Service detail. Half a dozen of them were clearly visible on and around the podium, which probably meant more
circulating through the crowd.

Ogle had arranged the thing in concentric circles. The inner
circle consisted of VIPs, friends and family in the folding chairs up
on the podium. A few select camera crews and photographers had also been allowed to circulate up here, getting closeup shots.
Surrounding the podium was an inner circle of especially hysterical
Cozzano fans, sort of an all-American cross section, spiced with a
few dozen astonishingly beautiful young women who were not
wearing very much in the way of clothing but who were careful to hold up their Cozzano signs and point to their Cozzano skimmers
whenever photographers and cameraman pointed lenses in their
direction, which was constantly. Banks of high-powered bluish-
white floodlights, similar to stadium lights but only a couple of
yards off the ground, had been erected on the edges of this crowd, pointed inward so that their light grazed the heads of the Cozzano
supporters. At first Mary Catherine had thought that this must be a
mistake, and that the technicians would turn the lights toward the
podium. But then the Cozzano supporters had held their white
COZZANO FOR PRESIDENT signs up above their heads and
the light had caught them brilliantly, making them glow like
snowflakes in a car's headlights.

Beyond was a broad sweep of open turf where most of the media w
ere stationed, including a raised platform for the TV crews,
arranged so that every time they aimed their cameras at the lectern
they had to shoot over the unnaturally brilliant field of waving
signs, flags, soaring skimmers, mylar balloons, and pumping fists.

The outermost circle, surrounding everything, was a vast sweaty
crowd consisting of all the population of Tuscola and then some.
Their function here was to hurl up a barrage of noise whenever
Cozzano said something mildly interesting, and to provide a
colorful backdrop rising up behind him. In fact, the geometry of
the bleachers, the lectern, and the main media area was such that it was impossible to get a shot of Cozzano without taking in several
hundred supporters in the bleachers behind him, all waving hankies
and signs, just like fans seated behind the goalposts at a football
game. To make sure that the level of enthusiasm never dropped,
the Tuscola High School cheerleading squad had been deployed, in
full uniform, in front of one set of bleachers, and the squad from Rantoul was egging on the opposite set of bleachers. Cy Ogle had
promised a free set of new uniforms to whichever squad elicited the
most noise from their half of the crowd. The Tuscola High School
marching band was lined up behind the podium, primed to burst
into music whenever the mood seemed right. All of this, combined
with the reckless Cozzano supporters setting off strings of fire
crackers amid the crowd; the giant vertical Cozzano banner
hanging from the soaring sign of the Dixie Truckers' Home; the
circling airplanes trailing more banners; the hovering choppers; the
team of three precision skydivers who had skimmed over the
podium in formation just before Cozzano was introduced, trailing
plumes of red-white-and-blue smoke; and the appearance of
William A. Cozzano himself, landing in the home team's end zone
in a National Guard chopper and jogging
-jogging -
across the field,
through a tunnel of supporters, slapping hands on either side the
whole way - it all added up to a show the likes of which had never
been seen in downstate Illinois, and which Guillermo Cozzano could not have imagined when he first came down to toil in the
coal mines.

Mary Catherine had the seat closest to the lecturn. She was wearing
brand new clothes purchased for her by her personal shopper at
Marshall Field. The personal shopper and the clothes were both
paid for by Cy Ogle. The personal shopper was a fifty-five-year-old
Sunday school teacher and had chosen the clothing accordingly.
Except, that is, for the underwear, which Mary Catherine had
picked out herself, and which probably would have gotten her in big trouble if she got into a car accident.

It had already become obvious that for purposes of the campaign,
Mary Catherine would serve as a kind of surrogate wife. This was
an awkward notion, to say the least, and as she sat there boiling and
sweating under the July sun she made up her mind that she was going to have to have a talk with Ogle about it. The fact that she
was now acting as a secret agent for Mel Meyer made it a little more
palatable.

James was next to her, very handsome in a new suit that had
obviously been chosen by a personal shopper of his own. She
hadn't seen much of him lately, which was probably a good thing.
His book project seemed to have added years to his age - in a good
sense. Somehow he looked taller, leaner, more confident. He
looked like a grown-up.

The remainder of the front two rows was completely occupied
with family. The Cozzano family, after a dodgy first couple of
generations during which a lot of people had fallen victim to war
of influenza, had begun to multiply ferociously during the last
twenty years. The distribution of ages up here on the podium - a
few oldsters, a few more middle-agers, and half a million kids - was
a visible demonstration of the exponential growth concept. In
addition, her mother's family, a prosperous clan of blue-eyed
midwestern engineers, had shown up in division strength. The
Cozzanos still had deep roots in the Chicago Italian community. A
lot of them were here. And so were a bunch of Meyers.

It was the biggest family reunion ever. She had kissed a hundred
people on her way to her seat. She must have half an inch of
powder caked up on each cheek from bussing all those old ladies.
Roughly one thousand people had come up to her and told her that she looked beautiful.

Mary Catherine was glad that this campaign hadn't yet gotten so
slick and controlled that kids had been banished from these big
events. The podium was an absolute riot. A little toddler girl
wandered around behind Cozzano with her diaper peeking out
from under her dress. A Domenici boy and a Meyer boy, both
wearing suits that were a size too small, jumped and ducked around
the rows of chairs, sniping at each other with squirtguns, occa
sionally picking off an old lady by mistake. Some of the mothers
with young kids had folded up a bunch of chairs, tossed them off the platform, spread out blankets, and set up an impromptu day-
care center. With their wide-brimmed hats and their spreading
skirts, all in light hues of yellow and white, they looked like a field of daffodils, the toddlers running around from one to the other like
fat little bees. Inspired by the bleacher crowd, the extended family
up here on the podium had become rowdy. A dozen ex-Bears had showed up and were seated in a massive phalanx at the very back
of the podium, where their shoulders wouldn't block anyone else's
view; they had started passing a hip flask very early and were now
beginning to lead the podium crowd in cheers.

It was a blast. Mary Catherine was having a great time. She could
hardly hear a word Dad was saying. All of the kids in all of those
extended families looked up to her, she was like a goddess, role
model, and honorary big sister to dozens. She had the special status
accorded to big girls who know how to drive, are skilled at kissing
owies, and aren't afraid to throw and catch a football. Consequently
she was visited by a never-ending stream of perfectly dressed-up
little kids who came up to her to pay homage, admire her dress,
show her their owies, give her presents, have their shoes tied,
display important baseball cards, and ask for directions back to their
mommies.