Part 41 (1/2)

”I take my job very seriously and right now I'm failing at it,” Mel said. ”I have to get my a.s.s in gear. I have to do stuff. To take steps. Some of what I do may not make me very popular with the Network. So let me ask you something: do you want to work with me? Or not? Either way is fine.”

It was Mary Catherine's turn to laugh. ”Either way is not fine,” she said. ”We're talking about Dad.”

”No, we're not,” Mel said gently, ”we're talking about what your dad became when that chip went into his head. And I'm not sure it's the same thing.”

This was such a disturbing comment that Mary Catherine decided not to let it sink in just now. ”Well, even if he were just another presidential candidate - one way I'm doing good and one way I'm doing evil.””Leave it to a farmer to see things in those terms,” Mel said. ”Okay, are you going to do good or evil?”

”Good,” Mary Catherine said.

”That's a nice girl,” Mel said.

”I think that Dad wants to do good also - whatever you might think,” Mary Catherine said.

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 w.i.l.l.y?”

”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 w.i.l.l.y 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 underneath, his brain may be struggling to rea.s.sert 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.”

”h.e.l.l,” 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 partic.i.p.ate 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, a.s.suming 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce for a couple of hundred folding chairs, heavy media support, and one great big red-white-and-blue lectern, ma.s.sively 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 were 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 firecrackers 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, occasionally 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 ma.s.sive phalanx at the very back of the podium, where their shoulders wouldn't block anyone else's view; they had started pa.s.sing 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 G.o.ddess, 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.

Consequently she had no idea what was going on when, suddenly, the entire crowd - bleachers, podium, everywhere - suddenly jumped to its feet and burst forth in wild exaltation. Ten thousand helium balloons launched themselves from the end zone and headed for Mars. Tremendous barrages of firecrackers went off all over the place, releasing skeins of acrid smoke into the air. Boat horns screeched all over the place as if all the world's seagulls were dying at once, the podium reverberated with the thumping ba.s.s drums of the marching band, and from somewhere - a helicopter, maybe? - a thunderhead of confetti descended upon the scene, so dense that for a few moments you could hardly see your own hand. Mary Catherine instinctively looked to her father, who was just visible through the confetti as a glowing outline, limned by the television lights, blurred by the red-white- and-blue blizzard.It seemed like he was a thousand miles away from her. Not a human being, but an electronic figment conjured up from the computers of a media laboratory. Ronald Reagan had been an actor. At times, William A.

Cozzano had begun to seem like a special effect.

Then the blizzard of confetti cleared and he was just standing there, letting the waves of sound roll over him, and he turned towards her, his eye searching through the faces, the smoke, the streamers and balloons, and he found her, caught her eye, and smiled a smile that was for her and for her alone.

She smiled back. She knew that both of them were thinking about Mom.

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She didn't even know what was going on, really. But she wanted to be with Dad, and so she walked across the podium and climbed the steps to the raised lectern. He caught her up with one arm around her waist as she reached the top step and crushed her to his side. The noise level went up by another few decibels, if that was possible, and she did what she was supposed to do: she looked not at her father, but out on to the crowd, into the battery of lenses, and waved. She felt terrified and forlorn, but with Dad holding her up she knew she'd get through it. It was so good to have him back.