7:00 P.M.

The convention had broken up for dinner and would reconvene at nine. Jack shared the glass elevator with a man who carried a tall stack of Domino's pizzas, and stood with his face turned firmly to the door-he hated heights, a phobia that developed after Tachyon pointed out, forty years before, that a long fall was one of the few things that could kill him. The elevator doors opened, and Jack thankfully followed the pizzas down the hall to Hartmann's headquarters. Floating up from the atrium lobby were the chords of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." Bar pianists, he thought, seemed a bit overspecialized.

Billy Ray, chest puffed out as he stood guard in the hallway in his white Carnifex suit, passed the deliveryman, but with a martial artist's quickness, stepped in front of Jack as he tried to follow.

"Did the senator send for you, Braun?"

Jack looked at him. "Don't push. It's been a hard day." Ray's face, which had quite literally been rearranged in a fight, gave Jack a leer. "Your plight touches my heart. Let's see what's in the case."

Jack bit back his annoyance and opened his briefcase, revealing the cellular phone and computer-operated dialing system that kept him in touch with his delegates and Hartmann HQ.

"Let's see vour ID."

Jack dug the laminated card out of his pocket. "You're really a prat, Ray."

"Prat? What the fuck kinda word is that?" Ray's twisted face leered at Jack's ID. "That's not the word the strongest ace in the world would use. That's the kinda word some insignificant shivering weenie might use." He licked his lips as if savoring the idea. "Golden Weenie. Yeah. That's you."

Jack looked at Ray and folded his arms. Billy Ray had been riding him for over a year, ever since they'd met on the Stacked Deck. "Get out of my way, Billy."

Ray stuck out his jaw. "What are you gonna do if I don't, weenie?" He smiled. "Give me your best shot. Just try it." Jack comforted himself for a moment with the mental picture of squashing Ray's head like a pumpkin. Ray's wild card gave him strength and speed, and his kung fu or whatever gave him skill, but Jack figured he could still demolish him with one punch. On second thought Jack decided it wasn't what he was here for.

"Right now, my job's getting the senator elected, and fighting with his bodyguard isn't going to do that. But after Gregg's in the White House, I promise I'll kick a field goal with you, okay?"

"I'm holding you to that, weenie."

"Any time after November eighth."

"See you at one minute after midnight on the ninth, weenie."

Ray stepped aside and Jack entered the headquarters suite. Open pizza boxes were surrounded by gorging campaign workers. TV monitors babbled network analyses to media-deaf ears. Jack found out which room Danny Logan was using, took a pizza box, and set off.

The campaign parliamentarian was a white-haired, paunchy former congressman from Queens who had lost his seat when his Irish constituency was replaced by Puerto Ricans. Now he advised Democratic candidates on how to collect Irish-American votes.

Jack saw him spread-eagled alone on his bed, surrounded by empty bottles and crumpled yellow legal-sized sheets, covered with numbers. "Better eat something," Jack said, and dropped the pizza box onto Logan's wide stomach.

"It's not going to make a bit of difference," Logan said. His voice was thick. "We don't have the numbers. We're going to lose 9(c}-the test case."

Jack rubbed his eyes. "Refresh my memory."

"9(c) is a formula for apportioning delegates formerly committed to candidates who have dropped out of the race. According to 9(c), the ex-candidates' delegates are divided among the remaining candidates in proportion to the number of votes the survivors won in those states. In other words, after Gephardt dropped out, his delegates from Illinois, say, were divided between Jackson, Dukakis, and us according to the percentage of the vote."

"Right."

"Barnett and a few of the party elders are challenging 9(c). They want to free the delegates to vote for whoever they want. Barnett figures he can pick up a few votes; the party elders want to start a movement for Cuomo or Bradley among the uncommitted." Logan ran a hand through his thinning white hair. "We announced our support for the rule thought we'd see who lined up for and against, to give us a hint how the California challenge will go."

"And we're losing on 9(c)?" Jack reached for a bottle and drank from the neck.

"Gregg's making some phone calls. But since Dukakis came out against 9(c), we're fighting a losing fight." He slammed his fist into the bed. "Everyone keeps asking about those stories about the senator and that reporter lady. That we're going to have another Hart fiasco. That's where the resistance lies. Everybody's smelling Gregg's blood."

"What can you do?" Jack said.

"Just try to delay." Logan belched massively. "Lots of ways to delay in this game."

"And then?"

"And then Gregg starts working on his concession speech."

Anger crackled in Jack like a burst of lightning. He waved a big fist. "We won the big primaries! We've got more votes than anybody."

"That's why we're a target. Aw, shit." Tears were rolling from the corners of Logan's eyes. He swiped at them with the back of one red paw. "Gregg stuck by me when I lost my seat. There isn't a more decent man alive. He deserves to be president." His face crumpled. "But we don't have the numbers!"

Jack watched as Logan began to weep, the pizza box jogging up and down on his broad stomach. Jack left his drink on the bedside table and wandered out of the room. Hopelessness sang in him like a keening wind.

All that work, he thought. All the renewed hope that had got him into public life again. All for nothing.

In the main HQ, campaigners were still clustered around pizza boxes. Jack asked where Hartmann was and was told the senator was cloistered with deVaughn and Amy Sorenson, plotting strategy. Then they'd try a last-minute phone blitz to win over some of the uncommitted superdelegates. Without anything else to do, Jack took a piece of pizza and settled down in front of the television monitors.

"It'll be a close vote." Ted Koppel's voice rang in Jack's ear, speaking from the nearly empty floor of the convention to a cynical-looking David Brinkley in the sky booth. "The Hartmann forces are counting on this test to show their strength prior to the showdown over the California challenge."

"Isn't. That. A risky. Strategy?" Brinkley's curt manner seemed to inflate each word into its own sentence. "Hartmann's strategy has always been risky, David. His articulation of liberal political principal in a race dominated by glib media personalities has always been thought risky by his own strategists. Even if he loses California tonight, Hartmann's campaign manager told me that he'll still stand by the jokers' Rights plank in the platform fight tomorrow." Brinkley affected curmudgeonly surprise. "Are you telling me, Ted. That in this day and age. A man can get. To be front-runner. By a consistent public articulation. Of principle?"

Koppel grinned. "Did I say that, David? I didn't mean to suggest that Hartmann's campaign wasn't media-wise-just that it's been consistent in the image it's presented to the voter, just as the campaigns of Leo Barnett and Jesse Jackson, the other two candidates nearest the prize, have been equally consistent. But, like I said, any strategy has its risks. The campaign of Walter Mondale in '84 stands as an example to any politician who dares to be too consistent and articulate."

"But let us suppose. That Hartmann loses the fight. How can he possibly. Regain momentum?"

"He may not, David." Koppel was obviously excited. "If Gregg Hartmann can't win by at least a small margin in the fight over Rule 9(c), he may lose everything. The big challenge over California may just prove an anticlimax-he could lose the whole shooting match right here in the fight over 9(c)." Drama, Jack thought. Everything had to be dramatized. Each vote had to be the vote, the significant vote, the critical vote, or else the voracious media gods were unhappy and had nothing to fill the air with but their own meanderings.