"Okay."

"Venture capitalism is risky and so the vulture capitalists hedge their bets by pooling funds and investing in a number of start-ups at once - backing several horses, as it were."

"Of course."

"But what they don't tell you is that at a certain point a couple of years into its life cycle, the start-up suddenly needs to double or triple its capitalization in order to survive. To get over those cash flow problems that occur when orders suddenly go from zero to more than zero. And when that happens, the vulture capitalists look at all of their little companies and they cull out the weakest two-thirds and let them starve. The rest, they provide with the capital they need in order to continue."

Aaron said nothing. Suddenly he was feeling tired and depressed.

"That's what's happening to your company right now," Ogle said. "You're, what, three years old?"

"How'd you know that!?" Aaron said, twisting around in his seat, glaring at Ogle, who remained quiescent in his big fat chair. He was almost expecting to see a crew from Candid Camera filming him from the galley.

"Just a lucky guess. Your logo," Ogle said, "you designed your logo yourself."

Again Aaron's face reddened. He had, in fact, designed it himself. But he thought it was fairly professional, a lot more so than the typical home-brewed logo. "Yeah, so what?" he said. "It works. And it was free."

"Okay, this is ridiculous," Aaron said. "How did you know that?"

"If you were old enough to have made the cut - if you had passed through the capitalization barrier - you would have immediately gone out and hired professional designers to spiff up your corporate image. The vultures would have insisted on it."

"Yeah, that was going to be our next step," Aaron said.

"That's okay. That speaks well of you, as a scientist, if not as a businessman," Ogle said. "A lot of people start with image and then try to develop substance. But you are a techie and you hate all that superficial crap. You refuse to compromise."

"Well, thank you for that vote of confidence," Aaron said, not entirely sarcastically.

The flight attendant came through. They each ordered another drink.

"You seem to have this all figured out," Aaron said.

"Oh, no, not at all."

"I don't mean that to sound resentful," Aaron said. "I was just wondering-"

"Yes?" Ogle said, raising his eyebrows very high and looking at Aaron over his glasses, which he had slid down his nose.

"What do you think? You think I have a chance?"

"In L.A.?"

"Yeah."

"With the big media moguls?"

"Yeah."

"No. You don't have a chance."

Aaron heaved a big sigh, closed his eyes, took a gulp of his drink. He had just met Ogle but he instinctively knew that everything that Ogle had said, all night long, was absolutely true.

"Which doesn't mean that your company doesn't have a chance."

"It doesn't?"

"Course not. You got a good product there. It's just that you don't know how to market it."

"You think I should have gone out and gotten a flashy logo."

"Oh, no, I'm not saying that at all. I think your logo's fine. It's just that you have a misconception in your marketing strategy."

"How so?"

"You're aiming at the wrong people," Ogle said, very simply and plainly, as if he were getting annoyed at Aaron for not figuring this all out on his own.

"Who else can I aim at with a product of this type?"

Ogle squeezed his armrest again, leaned forward, allowed his seat to come upright. He put his drink on his tray table and sat up straight, as if getting down to work. "You're right in thinking that the media need to do people-metering kinds of stuff," he said. "The problem is that the kinds of people who run media companies are not going to buy your product."

"Why not? It's the best thing like it. It's years ahead."

Ogle cut him off with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Doesn't matter," he said flatly, and shook his head. "Doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter how good my product is?"

"Not at all. Not with those people. Because you are selling to media people. And media people are either thugs, morons, or weasels. You haven't dealt very much with media people, have you?"

"Very little."

"I can tell. Because you don't have that kind of annoying, superficial quality that people get when they deal for a living with thugs, morons, and weasels. You are very earnest and sincere and committed to certain principles, as a scientist, and thugs and morons and weasels do not understand that. And when you give them an explanation of how brilliant your machine is, you'll just be putting them off."

"I have spent a hell of a lot of time finding ways to explain this device in terms that almost anyone can understand," Aaron said.

"Doesn't mater. Won't help. Because in the end, no matter how you explain it, it comes down to fine, subtle technicalities. Media people don't like that. They like the big, fabulous concept." Ogle pronounced "fabulous" with a mock-Hollywood gush.

Aaron laughed rather hotly. He had seen enough media people to know this was true.

"If you come to a media person and you want to do a miniseries about the Civil War, or Shakespeare, or the life of J.S. Bach, they will laugh in your face. Because nobody wants to watch that stuff. You know, intelligent stuff. They want pro wrestling. Media people who try to do Shakespeare get fired or go broke. The only ones who survived long enough to talk to you are the ones who backed pro wrestling. And when you come up to them talking about the fine points of your brilliant technology, it makes them think of Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci, which they hate and fear."

"So I'm dead."

"If you rely on selling to media people, you're dead."

"But who else needs a device like this one except for media people?"

"Well," Ogle said softly, sounding almost surprised, as if he hadn't gotten around to considering this question. "Well, actually, I could use it. Maybe."

"You said you were in media," Aaron said.

Ogle held one finger up. "Not exactly. I said I worked in the media industry. But I am not a media person, per se."

"What are you?"

"A scientist."

"And what is your field of study?"

"You, Aaron, are a biophysicist. You study the laws that determine the functioning of the body. Well, I am a political biophysicist. I study the laws that govern the functioning of the body politic."

"Oh. Could you be a little more specific?"

"People call me a pollster," Ogle said. "Which is like calling you a palm reader."

4

Eleanor Boxwood Richmond heard the State of the Union address on the radio, but she didn't really listen to it. She was driving a borrowed car down abandoned streets in Eldorado Highlands, an aborted suburb ten miles north of Denver. She had borrowed the car from Doreen, who lived in the trailer next to hers, several miles to the east, in the town of Commerce City.

In case the police tried to phone with any news of her husband, Eleanor had dropped her football phone out her kitchen window, pulled it across the gap between her trailer and Doreen's, and fed it through the window of Doreen's bedroom. Eleanor's husband, Harmon, for whom she was searching, had obtained the football phone free of charge by subscribing to Sports Illustrated some years ago. Now the Sports Illustrated were still showing up on time, every week, while Harmon himself, depressed by unemployment and bankruptcy, had become more and more erratic. Some things you could at least count on.

Eleanor felt foolish and humiliated every time she spoke on the football phone. It did not make looking for a job in the banking industry any easier. She would sit there in her trailer, which would be baking hot or freezing cold according to the outside tem­perature. She kept the windows closed even in summer so that the screaming of Doreen's kids, and the heavy metal from the trailer on the other side, would not be audible to the person she was speaking to. She would telephone people wearing dark suits in air-conditioned buildings and she would hold the little plastic football to the side of her head and try to sound like a banker. So far she had not gotten any jobs.