"Can you give me names of any people who work for the Network?"

Mary Catherine leaned her forearms on the roof of the car, watching the birds, trying to bring things into focus. "A lot of people work for the Network. Including me, I guess, in a way. Cy Ogle, Dr. Radhakrishnan, Pete Zeldovich, are all in that category. But I've only seen one person who seems to be of the Network. Does that make any sense?"

"Sure. Who is this person?"

"He is called Mr. Salvador," Mary Catherine said. "He stops in from time to time. Like he's on an inspection tour or something. From the way people act around him, I'd say he's definitely the one in charge."

"Of the whole Network?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"Just a feeling. He acts like a guy who has a boss. I think he's in charge of everything pertaining to Dad."

"So Salvador is an ops man," Mel said. "He manages one of the Network's projects - Willy. Who is this boss of Salvador's?"

"I don't know," Mary Catherine said. "I've had a bare minimum of contact with Salvador. His boss doesn't even enter the picture."

"Can you give me any clues at all? Does he make phone calls when he's there?"

"Yeah. But he uses the phone in his car."

"Does he get phone calls, or letters, at the house?"

Mary Catherine suddenly remembered something. She stood up straight and stared intently at nothing in particular, her eyes jumping back and forth as she tried to reconstruct the memory. "Yesterday morning when I was coming back from my run, a GODS van pulled up in front of the house. The driver had an envelope for Mr. Salvador. But he wasn't in; he was due to show up a few hours later. So I signed for the envelope. Salvador showed up later and ripped it open. And threw it away."

"You're saying that the envelope is still in the garbage?" "They're too security-conscious to throw things in the garbage. They only throw away things like McDonald's wrappers. Every­thing else goes into a burn bag, or straight to a shredder."

"My god, it's just like the Agency," Mel said.

"I think that they shred the contents of envelopes. But the envelopes themselves go into the burn bag - and those only get collected once or twice a week. So I may be able to dig it out."

"I need that envelope. It has tracking codes and stuff on it," Mel said.

"I'll do some looking around later," Mary Catherine said.

Mel looked ever so slightly crestfallen. Apparently she had not shown enough enthusiasm for this cloak-and-dagger assignment.

He had a Bruckner symphony going on the CD player in the trunk of the Mercedes. He climbed back into the driver's seat and turned it up. Mary Catherine climbed in too. They sat in the car and listened to it for a few minutes.

"Listen to me," Mel said, turning it down again, "I'm way behind the curve in dealing with this thing."

"How's that?"

Mel laughed. In another man it would have been a laugh devoid of humor. But Mel had a talent for finding humor in strange places and he seemed genuinely amused, though he was not exactly happy. "I'm supposed to be Willy's trusted adviser. I'm supposed to tell him whether it's a good idea to run for president. And now look. He's announcing in a few hours. And I'm still trying to figure out what the hell's going on."

Mary Catherine had nothing to say to that. She waited for Mel to continue.

"I take my job very seriously and right now I'm failing at it," Mel said. "I have to get my ass 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 Willy?"

"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 Willy 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 reassert 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."

"Hell," 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 participate 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, assuming 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.