Interface

Cozzano continued. "Just as nylon replaced silk in parachutes, new technologies have to replace the old ones in our job market. And I can promise you that no country in the world is better than America when it comes to inventing new technologies."

McLane interrupted him. "And no country is better capitalizing on those inventions than Japan," he said, "which is why I'm going to make sure that America, not Japan, reaps the benefit of her creative powers, unique among all the nations of the world."

Ogle slapped his face and groaned. "That McLane son of a bitch is a vampire. Give me a projection."

Aaron worked at his computer for a minute, ru

"We have a long way to go," Ogle said.

"Seems pretty good to me," Aaron said, "considering he's not even ru

"Details!" Ogle scoffed.

38

It took William A. Cozzano nearly an hour to fight his way from the dressing room, where his TV makeup had been sponged off, to his car in the parking lot of the Decatur Civic Center. Along the way he had to shake what seemed like every hand in downstate Illinois, and kiss a fair percentage of the babies. His car, a four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicle with every luxury feature and ante

The Decatur Civic Center was equipped with loading docks and ramps that would have enabled Cozzano's driver to pull straight into the building and pick him up, but it looked a lot better for him to fight his way through a crowd of supporters. Ogle's men had set up a double rope line to hold them back, providing a clear corridor across the asphalt from the building to Cozzano's car. Cy Ogle had personally walked the length of this corridor with a tape measure, making sure it was just narrow enough to allow the crowd to nearly surge in on Cozzano as they bent over the ropes and waved babies and pens and papers in his face. Banks of lights had been erected on mobile jackstands, illuminating the scene like a high-school football field on a Friday night, and network camera crews gladly availed themselves of the platforms Ogle had set up for their use.

"It was not half-bad," Cozzano said. He was sitting in the backseat of his car, next to Zeldo. His driver and an Illinois State Patrolman were in the front. They were driving down a two-lane blacktop road at eighty miles an hour, accompanied by one of Ogle's vehicles, a Secret Service car, and a few Highway Patrol cruisers. It had taken them several hours to get to Decatur this morning because they'd taken a circuitous route through Champaign and Springfield. But on the direct route, at this speed, Tuscola was minutes away.

Zeldo's brain was practically overloaded by everything that had just happened, but to him the most marvelous thing about the whole night was that they were driving eighty miles an hour - with a state patrolman right there in the car with them.

He shook his head and tried to concentrate on matters at hand. Cozzano had turned on a little courtesy light that shone a pool of golden light into his lap, and was jotting down some notes. Zeldo watched the Governor's right hand, gripping the thick barrel of an expensive fountain pen so tightly it looked like it might burst and spray ink all over the car. He wrote in shaky block letters, one at a time, like a first grader. His recovery had far exceeded their wildest hopes, and a person who did not know of his stroke would never notice anything was wrong - except when he tried to write. Cozzano knew this, it infuriated him, and he spent a lot of time practicing his penmanship, trying to erase this last vestige of weakness.

"We've got a lot of data to crank through. We're going to do a core dump on this whole night," Zeldo said. "Analyze it every which way. Then we'll go over the results with you."

"Good," Cozzano said, thinking about something else.

"I just have one question," Zeldo said. Cozzano looked up at him expectantly, and Zeldo hesitated for a moment.

Even after all the time they'd spent together, Cozzano made him nervous. Zeldo always got thick-tongued and self-conscious when he was about to ask the Governor something personal, something he suspected that Cozzano might not appreciate. Like a lot of powerful men - like Zeldo's boss, Kevin Tice - Cozzano didn't suffer fools gladly.

"What was it like?" Zeldo said.

"What was what like?" Cozzano said.

"You're the only person in history who's ever done this, so I don't know how to ask. I know it's a vague question. But someday I'd like to get an implant of my own, you know."

"So you've said," Cozzano said.

"So I'm trying to get some sense of what it's like to communicate in that way - transmissions from outside, bypassing all the sensory subsystems, going directly into the brain's neural net."

"I'm still not sure if I follow," Cozzano said.

Zeldo started to grope. "Normally we get input through our senses. Information comes down the optic nerve, or through the nerves in our skin or whatever. Those nerves are hooked up to parts of the brain that act like filters between ourselves and our environment."

Cozzano nodded slightly, more out of politeness than anything else. He was still nonplussed. But one good thing about Cozzano was that he was always game for an intellectual discussion.

"Ever seen an optical illusion?" Zeldo said, trying a new tack.

"Of course."

"An optical illusion is what we computer people would call a hack - an ingenious trick that takes advantage of a defect in our brain, a bug if you will, to make us see something that's not really there. Normally our brains were too smart for that. Like, when you watch something on television, you understand that it's not really happening - it's just an image on a screen."

"I think I'm following you now," Cozzano said.

"The inputs you were getting from Ogle tonight didn't pass through any of your normal filters - they went straight into your brain, kind of like an optical illusion does. What's that like?" "I'm not sure what you mean by inputs," Cozzano said.

"The signals he was sending you from his chair."

Suddenly Cozzano's face crinkled up in amusement and he chuckled. "Oh, that business," he said. Then he shook his head indulgently. "I know you guys have a lot of fun with that stuff. It's all just parlor tricks. Was Cy doing any of that nonsense tonight?"

"He was doing it more or less constantly," Zeldo said.

"Well, then you can tell him to stop wasting his time," Cozzano

said, "because it didn't have any effect. I didn't notice a thing, Zeldo, have you ever been in a situation like that? Debating on live television before millions of people?"

"I can't say that I have," Zeldo said.

"You get into a sort of zone, as the football players like to say. Every minute seems to last an hour. You forget about all the lights and cameras and audience and become totally focused on the event itself, the exchange of ideas, the rhetorical counterplay. I can assure you that if Cy Ogle were to walk on to the set during one of those debates and throw a bucket of ice water over my head, I wouldn't even notice it. So none of that silly business with the buttons and joysticks has any effect."

"Didn't it stimulate memories and images?"