«What is it, Miss Stromsen?»
She pulled herself down into the seat next to him but did not bother to latch the safety harness. From a breast pocket in her sweat-stained fatigues she pulled a tiny flat tin. It was marked with a red cross and some printing, hidden by her thumb.
Stromsen opened the tin. «You lost your medication patch,» she said. «I thought you might want a fresh one.»
She was smiling at him, shyly, almost like a daughter might.
Hazard reached up and felt behind his left ear. She was right, the patch was gone.
«I wonder how long ago …»
«It’s been hours, at least,» said Stromsen.
«Never noticed.»
Her smile brightened. «Perhaps you don’t need it anymore.»
He smiled back at her. «Miss Stromsen, I think you’re absolutely right. My stomach feels fine. I believe I have finally become adapted to weightlessness.»
«It’s rather a shame that we’re on our way back to Earth. You’ll have to adapt all over again the next time out.»
Hazard nodded. «Somehow I don’t think that’s going to be much of a problem for me anymore.»
He let his head sink back into the seat cushion and closed his eyes, enjoying for the first time the exhilarating floating sensation of weightlessness.
PRIMARY
We have not yet begun to feel the true impact of computers in government and politics.
I can’t really say more about this story without giving away some of its surprises. So, since, as Polonius once said, brevity is the soul of wit, I will be brief. (And, by implication, witty.)
Think about who—and what—you are voting for the next time you enter your polling booth.
So they bring us into the Oval Office and he sits himself down behind the big desk. It even has Harry Truman’s old «The Buck Stops Here» sign on it.
He grins at that. He’s good-looking, of course. Young, almost boyish, with that big flop of hair over his forehead that’s become almost mandatory for any man who wants to be president of the United States. His smile is dazzling. Knocks women dead at forty paces. But his eyes are hard as diamond. He’s no fool. He hasn’t gotten into this office on that smile alone.
I want him to succeed. God knows we need a president who can succeed, who can pull this country together again and make us feel good about ourselves. But more than that, I want my program to succeed. Let him be the star of the press conferences. Let the women chase him. It’s my program that’s really at stake here, those intricate, invisible electronic swirls and bubbles that I’m carrying in my valise. That’s what’s truly important.
We’re going to have a busy day.
There are four other people in the office with us, his closest aides and advisors: three men and one woman who have worked for him, bled for him, sweated for him since the days when he was a grassy-green, brand-new junior senator from Vermont. The men are his Secretaries of Defense, Commerce, and the Treasury. The lone woman is his Vice President, of course. There hasn’t been a male veep since the eighties, a cause for complaint among some feminists who see themselves being stereotyped as perpetual Number Twos.
And me. I’m in the Oval Office, too, with my valise full of computer programs. But they hardly notice me. I’m just one of the lackeys, part of the background, like the portraits of former presidents on the walls or the model of the Mars Exploration Base that he insisted they set up on the table behind his desk, between the blue-and-gold-curtained windows.
My job is to load my program disks into the White House mainframe computer, buried somewhere deep beneath the West Wing. He thinks of it as his program, his plans and techniques for running the country. But it’s mine, my clever blend of hardware and software that will be the heart and brains and guts of this Oval Office.
I sit off in the corner, so surrounded by display screens and keyboards that they can barely see the top of my balding head. That’s okay. I like it here, barricaded behind the machines, sitting off alone like a church organist up in his secret niche. I can see them, all of them, on my display screens. If I want, I can call up X-ray pictures of them, CAT scans, even. I can ask the mainframe for the blueprints of our newest missile guidance system, or for this morning’s roll call attendance at any army base in the world. No need for that, though. Not now. Not today. Too much work to do.
I give him a few minutes to get the feel of the big leather chair behind that desk, and let the other four settle down in their seats. Treasury takes the old Kennedy rocker, I knew he would.
Then I reach out, like God on the Sistine ceiling, and lay my extended finger on the first pressure pad of the master keyboard.
The morning Situation Report springs up on my central screen. And on the screen atop Our Man’s desk. Not too tough a morning, I see. He’s always been lucky.
Food riots in Poland are in their third day.
The civil war in the Philippines has reignited; Manila is in flames, with at least three different factions fighting to take command of the city.
Terrorists assassinated the President of Mexico during the night.
The stock market will open the day at the lowest point the Dow Jones has seen in fourteen years.
Unemployment is approaching the 20 percent mark, although this is no reflection on Our Man’s economic policy (my program, really) because we haven’t had time to put it into effect.
The dollar is still sinking in the European markets. Trading in Tokyo remains suspended.
Intelligence reports that the new Russian base on the Moon is strictly a military base, contrary to the treaties that both we and they signed back in the sixties.
All in all, the kind of morning that any American president might have faced at any time during the past several administrations.
«This Mexican assassination is a jolt,» says the Secretary of Commerce. He’s a chubby, round-cheeked former computer whiz, a multi-multimillionaire when he was in his twenties, a philanthropist in his thirties, and for this decade a selfless public servant. If you can believe that. He hired me, originally, and got me this position as Our Man’s programmer. Still thinks he’s up to date on computers. Actually, he’s twenty years behind but nobody’s got the guts to tell him. His beard is still thick and dark, but when I punch in a close-up on my screens, I can see a few gray hairs. In another couple of years he’s going to look like a neurotic Santa Claus.
Our Man nods, pouting a little, as if the assassination of a president anywhere is a low blow and a personal affront to him.
«The situation in the Philippines is more dangerous,» says the Defense Secretary. «If the Reds win there, they’ll have Japan outflanked and Australia threatened.»
I like his Defense Secretary. He is a careful old grayhair who smokes a pipe, dresses conservatively, and has absolute faith in whatever his computer displays tell him. He has the reputation for being one of the sharpest thinkers in Washington. Actually, it’s his programmers who are sharp. All he does is read what they print out for him, between puffs on his pipe.
«Maybe we should get the National Security Advisor in on this,» suggests Commerce, scratching at his beard.
«By all means,» says Our Man.
We can’t have the Security Advisor in the room, of course, but I call him up on the communications screen and presto! there he is, looking as baggy and sad-eyed as a hound.
«What do you make of the situation in the Philippines, Doc?» Our Man, with his warmth and wit, and power, is the only man on Earth who can get away with calling this distinguished, dour, pompously pontifical scholar Doc.