Interface (71 page)

"We've had interference problems when your father goes near
microwave relay stations," Zeldo said. "We're going to keep him
away from those things, maybe work up some kind of a hat with EM shielding in it."

"But TV trucks use microwaves, don't they?"

"Exactly. And he spends a lot of time around TV trucks. So as a
last line of defense, I'm building some safeguards into the software
so that when the chip starts getting stray signals; it'll be smart enough to realize that there's a problem."

"Then what?"

"It'll go into Helen Keller mode until the interference goes
away."

"What happens then? Dad goes into a coma?"

"Not at all," Zeldo said. "The chip will keep doing what it's
supposed to do, filling in for the damaged parts of his brain. It's just
that it won't be able to send or receive data anymore."

"That's not an important function anyway, is it?" Mary
Catherine said. "You only send signals into his brain when you are
fixing a bug in the software. Right?"

There was a long pause, and Mary Catherine wished that she had
turned on the room lights. She suspected that she might be able to
read some interesting things on Zeldo's face right now.

"As we mentioned before the implant," Zeldo finally said, "the biochips do more than just restore his normal capabilities."

This struck Mary Catherine as evasive. "You hackers aren't very good at playing these kinds of games, are you?" she said.

"No comment," Zeldo said. "I didn't spend half my life learning
what I know so that I could get tangled up in politics."

The snappy technical patter had been replaced by a completely
different sort of conversation. Both of them were now speaking
elliptically with long pauses between sentences. Suddenly, Mary
Catherine realized why: both of them knew that they were being
listened to. Both of them had things to hide.

She had said something to Mel earlier in the day: Zeldo was in the Network but not of the Network. His fear of speaking freely in
the bugged room was confirmation.

"As Ogle may have told you, I'm the campaign physician," she
said.

"Yes," Zeldo said. "Congratulations. It's going to be a grind."

"Nothing like residency, I'm sure," Mary Catherine said.

"Because of. . . because of these pesky bugs and glitches," Zeldo said, framing the words carefully, "I've been assigned to travel with
the campaign, at least for a while. So let me know if there's
anything I can do to help you out."

"For starters you could tell me exactly what happens when he
goes near a microwave relay station."

Zeldo answered without hesitation. Now that they had gotten
away from dangerous topics he had relaxed again. "He has a
seizure."

"That's all?"

"Well . . . before that there are other symptoms. Disorientation. A flood of memories and sensations."

"When these memories and sensations enter his mind, can he tell
that they are just hallucinations from the chip?"

This question made Zeldo pause for a long time.

"You shouldn't grind your teeth. Bad for the enamel," Mary
Catherine said, after at least sixty seconds had gone by.

"That's a profound question," Zeldo said. "It gets us into some
heavy philosophical shit: if everything we think and feel is just a
pattern of signals in our brain, then is there an objective reality? If
the signals in Argus's brain happen to include radio transmissions,
then does that mean that reality is a different thing for him?"

Mary Catherine held her tongue, for once, and did not ask why
Zeldo was referring to her father as Argus. It was most definitely a
slip of the tongue, a glimpse into something that Mary Catherine
hadn't been allowed to see yet. If she got inquisitive, Zeldo would just clam up again.

Another, more interesting, possibility occurred to her: maybe Zeldo had slipped the word in deliberately.

"And if so," Zeldo continued, "who are we to say that one form of reality is preferable to another form?"

"Well, if he says things that simply aren't true, and seems to
believe them, I would say that that was a problem," Mary
Catherine said.

"Memory is a funny thing," Zeldo said. "None of our memories
are really accurate to being with. So if he's got a memory that works a little differently from ours, and is otherwise healthy and happy, is
that better than being aphasic in a wheelchair? Who's to say?"

"I guess it's up to Dad," Mary Catherine said.

Clearly she had to find the GODS envelope. The events of the day
had convinced her beyond doubt that Mel was right: there was a
Network, and it was up to something. Mary Catherine went back
to her room, changed out of her daughter costume, put on a
bathrobe, and walked downstairs. The caterers were at work in the
kitchen, cleaning up the aftermath of the party; all of the guests had
gone home except for a few old Vietnam buddies of Cozzano's
who sat around the coffee table in the living room having a few
drinks and reminiscing about the war, alternately laughing and
crying.

Mary Catherine avoided them and went out on to the back
porch. A row of black plastic garbage bags were lined up against the
wall, waiting to be collected. She opened one of the bags, sorted
through a few loose pieces of paper, and found the brightly colored enveloped, still intact except for the broken seal. The mailing label
was a bewildering panoply of numbers, code words, and bar codes;
the inscrutable mutterings of the Network. Mary Catherine folded the envelope, stuffed it into her bathrobe, closed up the burn bag,
and called it a day.

Floyd Wayne Vishniak

R.R. 6 Box 895

Davenport, Iowa

Aaron Green

Ogle Data Research

Pentagon Towers

Arlington, Virginia

Dear Mr. Green:

Just for starters, I figured out your game that you are playing.
When you came here you gave me some shit about working
for that Ogle Data Research. Like you were some scientist writing a dissertation. But now I have figured out what you
really are: you are working for William A. Cozzano. He must
be paying you money to work on his campaign.

How did I figure it out? By just noticing what things you
put on the little TV set on my wrist. You always show
Cozzano but you don't show the other candidates as much.

Well, I watched Cozzano announcing that he would run
for president this afternoon. I did not watch it on the little
wristwatch. I went down to Dale's, which is a bar, and
watched it on the big-screen TV there with some other guys. And I can tell you for your information that just about all the
guys who were in that place thought it was real impressive.

I thought it was impressive too. But now it is two o'clock
a.m.
and I can not get to sleep. Because I am thinking about
some of the things that Cozzano said and it troubles me.

When he was in that debate in Decatur, Illinois, he spoke
about his dad's parachute factory and how important it was to
the men on D day standing in the open door of the plane. But
today, he told a whole story about a bunch of paratroopers and
how one of them came to personally thank his dad. This is a
strange discrepancy, don't you think?

My opinion: something got scrambled up inside Cozzano's
head when he had those troubles. And now, either he has
memory troubles or else he can't tell right from wrong. So
don't expect me to vote for him.

You will be hearing again from me soon, I am sure.

Sincerely, Floyd Wayne Vishniak.

42

Mel Meyer drove into Miami, Oklahoma, in his black
Mercedes 500 SL at 4:30 on a hot mid-July afternoon. The sky was
a sickening, yellowing white. He stopped at the Texaco station to
fill up with gas and check his oil. He checked his oil religiously -
though the car used none to speak of- because thirty years ago the
Cozzanos had made fun of him for not knowing how.

He also needed to ask for directions. As he opened the window to talk to the attendant, the 103-degree heat poured in on him like
boiling water. He ordered ultrapremium from the Texaco pump
and popped the hood for the oil check. "How far to Cacher," he
asked the grease-streaked, acne-ridden kid smearing his windshield
with an equally appetizing-looking rag.

The kid had never seen anything like Mel Meyer - dapper,
intense, clad in a perfect black silk suit - nor had he seen many 500
SLs. "Why d'ya wanna go to Cacher? Nobody lives in Cacher
except some crazy old farts," he said. He went to the front of the car, could not figure out how to raise the hood, looked pleadingly
at Mel.

Mel did not like the kid, did not like Miami, Oklahoma, and
would have given anything to avoid being there. But this was the
closest thing to a lead he had come across in four months of
investigating the Network. He could have hired a private investi
gator in Tulsa or Little Rock and had him drive out to the place
and look around. But he knew that, whatever this Network might be, it was good at hiding itself. A private investigator, who made
his living watching unsubtle people commit marital infidelities in
cheap motels, could not be trusted to pick up the nearly invisible
spoor of the Network. In the end Mel would have to come out and
look around himself. He might as well get it over with.

"Why do you think people in Cacher are crazy?" Mel asked,
thinking to himself that he had no right to ask that question, sitting
in a black silk suit in a black car in July in Oklahoma.

He had found precious little in absolute terms as he chased down
lead after lead: the institutional roots of the Radhakrishnan
Institute; the fascinating pattern of stock trades surrounding the
takeover of Ogle Data Research and Green Biophysical Systems in March; the interlocking directorates of Gale Aerospace, MacIntyre
Engineering, Pacific Netware, and the Coover Fund; and the even more shadowy group of very private investment funds that held majority shares in them.

He had even placed intercepts on the lines and numbers of
various people, hiring monitors placed in vans near microwave
relay towers. Nothing had come up. He had gone through financial
reports, he had gone to friends in the FBI, he had tried everything,
but he could not find the Network. He had hired private
detectives, he had hired investigative accountants. He had spent a
whole month pulling strings and working various connections in order to get his hands on some IRS data that he thought would be
promising. It had turned out to be worthless.

The one lead that he had was the GODS envelope that Mary Catherine had pulled from the Cozzanos' burn bag on the night of
July fourth. Mary Catherine was the one to blame for his being
here.

The envelope did not bear anything as obvious as a return
address. It had code numbers instead. GODS was a well-run com
pany, highly centralized, and was not interested in helping Mel decipher those codes. He had provided some financial aid to a
financially troubled GODS delivery man in Chicago and eventually
gotten the information that the envelope appeared to have been routed through the Joplin Regional Airport in extreme southwest
Missouri, near where that state came together with Kansas and
Oklahoma.

Mel had spent four days living at a Super 8 Motel on Airport

Drive outside of Joplin. He claimed to be a businessman from Saint
Louis, working on a big project of some kind. He spent several
hundred dollars express-mailing empty packages to an address in
Saint Louis, and quickly became a familiar sight to the three people
who worked at the Joplin GODS depot.

One of them had informed Mel that he was now their biggest
customer. Mel pursued this line of conversation doggedly and got the man to say that they had another fellow across the border in
Oklahoma who mailed almost as much as Mel did. Finally, yester
day afternoon, Mel had gotten them to specify a town: Cacher,
Oklahoma.