Neal Stephenson - Interface

At one point she even ran into Cy Ogle and had the presence of mind to tell him that she wanted to talk to him when he got a chance. He couldn't talk to her right away because he was addressing the two squads of cheerleaders, Tuscola and Rantoul, who had all gotten a chance to take showers and get pretty. He was confessing his total inability to choose which squad had done better, and promising to buy new uniforms for both squads. Consequently he didn't talk to Mary Catherine until about an hour later, when he finally tracked her down on the edge of the festival.

She was standing at home plate on the softball diamond. She had hung her blazer up on a nail sticking out of the wooden backstop. She had an aluminium bat in her hands and she was knocking fly balls and grounders to half a dozen preadolescent boys, arrayed throughout the infield and outfield, playing a game called five hundred. In honor of her high birth, superior muscles, and pinpoint place-hitting ability, they had named her All-Time Batter. She punched the balls out. They caught them, keeping track of their own scores, and threw them back. By hitting the balls in the right places, she was able to keep their scores pretty closely bunched together. After a while, a Japanese TV crew showed up and began to film her. She didn't mind.

"I detect some bias here," someone drawled, just after she hit an easy grounder to a small boy who had just entered the game.

She turned around. It was Ogle, watching her through the backstop. "How long have you been watching?" she said.

"Couple minutes. I was going to come out and catch for you. But that'd spoil the visual," he said, nodding toward the Japanese video crew. She could not tell, from the way he said this, whether he was serious or making fun of himself.

"They've got their visual," she said. "Why don't you come out and catch before I break a nail and spoil that visual."

"Okay, kids!" Ogle shouted, emerging from behind the back­stop, "Now y'all got an all-time catcher too! First one who bops me in the head gets two hundred points!"

A ball came sailing from left field, directly toward Ogle's head.

He pretended not to notice until it was nearly there, then suddenly held up his hands and grabbed it inches away from his face. "Wow!" he said, looking frightened and shaking his head in astonishment. The kids went nuts.

Ogle underhanded the ball gently to Mary Catherine. She one-handed it, then turned to survey the field. All the kids jumped up and down and punched their gloves. Little Peter Domenici was currently trailing the field, so she tossed the ball lightly up in the air and punched a pop fly to him. He didn't even have to move in order to catch it, but he dropped it anyway.

"We need to talk about a couple of things," she said.

"I'm all ears," Ogle said, pulling on his ears ridiculously. They were prominent ears at the best of times. A hard pitch from Peter Domenici was sailing directly toward his right temple and at the last minute he let go of his ear and clawed the ball out of the air. A moan of disappointment went up from the fielders.

"This whole thing is so vast that I don't know where to begin," she said. "I have so many questions."

"There's no way you can understand everything," Ogle said, tossing the ball to her. "That's my job. Why don't you just tell me your main concerns."

Mary Catherine knocked a difficult grounder out to one of her Tuscola cousins. "Whose idea was it to have Dad jog from the helicopter to the podium?"

Ogle squinted into the sun, thinking that one over. "I'd be hard put to remember who came up with that one first. But your dad enjoyed doing it. And I didn't try to discourage him."

"Do you think it's advisable, given his medical problems?"

"Well, he's been jogging three miles a day."

"Yeah, but wearing a suit, under all that stress, and in front of all those cameras - what if he had some kind of a problem? Even healthy people like Bush and Carter have had problems while jogging."

"Exactly," Ogle said "that's exactly why it works."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know and I know, and your dad knows, that it's perfectly okay for him to run that short distance. My god, the man is like a human steam locomotive. But most people don't know that. All they know is that Cozzano is supposed to have been sick. They have developed this image of him as a frail, faltering invalid. When they see him jog across that football field, they see vivid evidence that this is a wrong impression, and they watch very carefully, because there's an element of danger."

"Could you run that last part by me again?" Mary Catherine said. She and Ogle had gotten into a smooth rhythm now, knocking hit after hit out to the little kids with their baseball gloves.

"The skydivers," he said. "We had three skydivers come in low over the podium and land on the grass. Now, why on earth did we do that?" Ogle sounded mystified.

"I don't know. Why did you?"

"Because everyone knows that sometimes skydivers break legs. They can't help watching. Same deal with those idiots who were setting off firecrackers."

"They worked for you?"

"Sure they did. Oh, those were just tiny little ladyfingers. You could set one off in the palm of your hand and you'd be fine. But it sure looked dangerous. So people watched. And that's why it was a great visual when your dad ran across the field."

Mary Catherine sighed. "I don't know how I feel about that."

Ogle shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to feelings."

"Speaking of that whole safety issue," she said, "when did the Secret Service start following Dad around? I didn't know he had a Secret Service detail."

"He doesn't," Ogle said. "Those were just actors."

She dropped the tip of the bat down on to home plate and stared at him. "What did you say?"

"They were actors dressed up like Secret Service."

"Hired by you."

"Of course."

She shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

"For the same reason we built extra bleachers, and put extra microphones on the lectern."

"And what reason is that?"

"Being a third-party candidate has big, big advantages," Ogle said. "But it has some disadvantages too. One of the disadvantages, as Perot found out, is that people may not take you seriously. That is the single most dangerous thing we have to worry about. So at every step along the way, we need to surround your father with the visible trappings of presidentiality. Chief among those is the Secret Service detail."

Mary Catherine just shook her head. "I can't believe you," she said.

"Sometimes I can hardly believe myself," he said, turning to face her. A soft, arcing throw was headed toward Ogle from a five-year-old stationed on the pitcher's mound. Ogle deliberately took it in the back of the head and went into a staggering pantomime of a silly man with a mild concussion, wobbling around home plate, rolling his eyes, bouncing drunkenly off the backstop. The kids went completely out of their gourds and a couple of them actually fell down on the grass, tossing their gloves up in the air, screaming with uncontrollable laughter. Mary Catherine shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. She looked at the kids who were still strong enough to remain on their feet and twirled her finger around her ear.

"When you've recovered," she said, "I have one or two more things."

"I think I feel a little better now," Ogle said. "Shoot."

"I feel like I'm being set up as some kind of a surrogate wife. It's creepy."

"Yes, it is," Ogle said.

"It borders on the perverse. I'm not going to do it anymore."

"You don't have to," Ogle said. "The only reason it happened today was that this is a formal event, kind of like a wedding. In a wedding, you know, the father is supposed to give away the bride. But if the father of the bride is dead, or if he hit the road twenty years ago with some white trash floozy and a fifth of Jack and never was heard from again, then that place must be filled by some other individual - it doesn't matter who - anyone with a Y chromosome. Could be a brother, an uncle, even the bride's high-school basketball coach. It just don't matter. Well, a campaign announce­ment is the same deal except that normally the wife is there in her silly hat and her sensible shoes. You performed that role today; it's just that you happened to look a hell of a lot better."