"Neurology is a fascinating science, full of riddles and mysteries," Dr. Radhakrishnan had said during their first meeting, in the conference room on the high bluff over the Pacific Ocean.

Mary Catherine had stifled a smile. Radhakrishnan was a neuro­surgeon, and uncharacteristically, he was talking about what a wonderful discipline neurology was. She wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that the patient's daughter was a neurologist.

"In your therapy," Radhakrishnan continued, "we will be exploring realms that have never been entered. We will watch the data streaming out of your biochip like the astronomers viewing the images from the Voyager spacecraft on its journey to the outer planets. Every day and every hour, we will see new and unexpected things. Enough new data will be generated to write a thousand articles and a hundred Ph.D. dissertations.

"But the information that we receive from the implanted biochip will be reaching us through a narrow bottleneck. You, the patient, will have access to a far broader spectrum of information and experience. This is why we welcome the opportunity to pursue this therapy with a highly intelligent and perceptive patient. We need your help, Governor Cozzano. We need your partnership in this scientific venture."

Dad hadn't spoken a word, just gazed out the big windows at the pounding surf. But Mary Catherine knew that he was hearing and understanding every word. He knew exactly what was going on. And she knew he was excited about it. Two months of being treated like a child by Patricia had left him ravenous for this kind of thing.

She had gone over every inch of the Radhakrishnan Institute. Reviewed the records of their baboon experiments and of their work on an Indian truck driver named Monhinder Singh, who had been miraculously cured using the same therapy. Viewed many hours of videotapes of Singh, taken before the implant and over the course of his subsequent therapy. The results would have been impressive to anyone; to a professional neurologist, they were uncanny.

She had interviewed Dr. Radhakrishnan and some of his top staff members for hours, asking them a lot of hard questions about what could go wrong with this procedure and what steps they had taken to avoid it. She always got good answers to her questions. Answers that seemed to have been prepared in advance, as though they had anticipated all of her thoughts.

But this was a paranoid attitude. She couldn't find anything wrong. The only bad thing that could be said about the Radhakrishnan Institute was that they had made the transition from baboons to humans rather hastily. They had taken big chances. If it had failed, it would have meant that they were rash and foolish. But it had worked, so they were brilliant and daring.

It would have been better - a lot better - if they could have trotted out a dozen or so Mohinder Singhs, at various stages of recovery. Because this one Punjabi truck driver did not make for a track record. He was not a trend. He might just be a fluke.

But William A. Cozzano had taught his daughter to be scrupulously egalitarian, and so at this point in the argument she always caught herself short. Because it wasn't fair to adopt that attitude. The only way to test this thing was by doing it on humans. Sure it would be nice to see a dozen Mohinder Singhs. It'd be nice for the Cozzanos. But what about the second Singh, and the third? They'd be taking a big chance with not much to go on. And their lives were worth just as much as William Cozzano's.

It wasn't fair. That's what Dad would say. It wasn't fair to have other people take all the risk, then reap the benefits after it had become a sure thing.

Besides, this way it was more of an adventure. And she just knew that he'd be thrilled by that idea. Dad was a wild man at heart; he'd always wanted to go out and do crazy things. But his position as the head of the Cozzano clan had forced him to behave conservatively all his life. The stroke had freed him of that oppressive respon­sibility. He had nothing to lose now.

So she signed the papers. Since the stroke, Mary Catherine had been in charge of her father's body. She sent him into that operating room with many doubts about the operation - but in the full confidence that it was what he wanted.

They shaved his head and rolled him into the operating theater at 7:45 a.m. on the morning of March 25, a little more than two months after his initial stroke. Mary Catherine gave him a last kiss on his burnished scalp before they scrubbed him for surgery. Then she pulled on a jacket and went for a long walk along the edge of the bluff, letting the pure Pacific wind blow through her hair. They had said that she could watch the operation if she wanted, but if it turned out to be fatal, she didn't want that to be the last memory of her father.

She found a high rocky outcropping, climbed to the top, and sat down. Below her, half a mile out to sea, a huge, beautiful ketch was tacking upwind. Farther out, she could barely make out the silhouettes of big freighters cruising up and down the California coast.

God, I need a vacation, she thought. Then she thought: this is it. This is my vacation. So she enjoyed her vacation for a few minutes.

Then, hearing a noise behind her, she looked over to see James approaching, fresh from the airport, a big grin on his face.

So much for the vacation. Dealing with James had developed into business.

"You're right," Cy Ogle had said to her on the telephone the day of the Illinois primary. "Your brother's a terrible surfer."

"How'd you find that out?"

"Remember that lunch you and I had?"

"Sure."

"I did the same thing with your brother. Brought him in from

South Bend on a chopper. Bought him lunch at the same place."

"And?"

"The way he handled it was totally different."

"Different how?"

Ogle had chuckled. "You weren't impressed. You weren't impressed by any old limousine. You weren't impressed by a fancy lunch or by my reputation, or by people cheering at you because your last name's Cozzano."

"And he was impressed?"

"Oh, yes. Profoundly impressed. You could see it in his face."

"Stop," she had said. "Don't even describe it to me. I know exactly how he must have looked."

"Well, we had a nice little chat, anyway."

"What did you talk about?"

Ogle had laughed. "Not anything even remotely similar to what you and I talked about. See, you are interested in relationships. James is interested in power. So we talked about power for a while."

This had left Mary Catherine feeling slightly queasy, because she knew that Ogle was exactly right.

It was a testosterone thing. She knew it was. James had been suppressed by Dad. James was small, weak, had a low pain thres­hold, couldn't throw or catch a football, didn't like getting dirty. Dad had been enough of a good father to swallow his dis­appointment. But everyone knew it was present, just under the surface. James just hadn't developed. And as soon as Dad had been removed from the picture, all those pent-up hormones had come flooding out and he had started developing too fast. Developing in the wrong direction, without any guidance from Dad.

He needed a trellis to grow on. He needed it now, before he started any more trouble for the family. But Mary Catherine knew there wasn't a damn thing she could do; in James's current state of testerone overdrive, he was incapable of taking direction, or even advice, from a big sister.

Mel couldn't do it either. Mel and James had never had much to say to each other, they had never had the simpatico that Mel and Mary Catherine did. Mel was a street fighter and James was coddled and naive, despite all of Dad's efforts to toughen him up. The two of them just didn't connect on any level.

This was a case in point. Dad had gone under the knife an hour and a half ago. James should have been there to kiss him good-bye. Mary Catherine knew damn well that people died in surgery and that you had to be there when they went under, because they might never open their eyes again. And she had explained all of this to James. Stated, over and over again, the importance of his being there before the surgery. And he had missed the boat.