Neal Stephenson - Interface

She would he awake every night for hours, sensing the distant clunking of her answer machine under the pillow in the next room, and run through this series of thoughts over and over again, like a rat on a treadmill, exhausting herself but never going anywhere.

One morning in the middle of April she got up, turned on her coffee maker, took the pillow off her answering machine, and played back the messages, as she did every morning. Today there were only four of them. The people who had Eleanor's phone number written on the walls of their trailers and project flats had begun to learn that she never responded to messages and, bit by bit, weren't bothering to call anymore.

One of the messages was from someone speaking a language that Eleanor had never heard before. He rambled on until the machine cut him off. Then there were a couple of irate voters. And then there came a voice she recognized: it was one of Senator Marshall's political aides, calling from Washington.

"Hi, this is Roger calling from D.C. at nine a.m. local time."

Eleanor glanced at her clock. It was 7:15. This message had just come in while she was showering.

"We have a major problem that's up your alley. Please call me as soon as you can."

Eleanor picked up her phone and started punching numbers. She got through to Roger in D.C. During her month of working for Senator Marshall she had spoken briefly to this man once previously, and seen his name on a lot of memos.

Senators were too important to do anything personally. They were like sultans being carried around on sedan chairs, their feet never actually touching the ground. They showed up at the Capitol to make speeches and cast votes, and they made a lot of essentially social appearances, but most of the actual grunge work was delegated to a few key aides. This Roger character was one of those aides. He was a highly media-conscious, touchy-feely sort who spent a lot of time worrying about Senator Marshall's image with the folks at home. When a high-school band made a trip to Washington, D.C., it was Roger who made sure that they got in to the Senator's office for a photograph and a brief chat.

"Hi, Eleanor, I'm glad you called back," he said. "Look, I got a call this morning from Roberto Cuahtemoc at the Aztlan Center over in Rosslyn."

Rosslyn was part of Arlington, Virginia, right across the bridge from Eleanor's hometown. Aztlan was a Hispanic advocacy group. Roberto Cuahtemoc had formerly been Roberto something-else and had switched to a Nahuatl last name during his college years. He was obscure to northeastern Hispanics, but in the Southwest, particularly among migrant workers, he was revered.

Naturally, he and Senator Marshall hated each other. At least, they did in public. In private they had apparently reached some kind of an arrangement. When Roberto Cuahtemoc phoned the Senator first thing in the morning it probably meant he was pissed about something.

"He's really pissed," Roger said. "He got a call from Ray del Valle this morning at seven a.m. our time, which means that our buddy Ray was up and at 'em at five a.m. in Denver."

Ray del Valle was a Denver-based activist and protege of Cuahtemoc. He was young, smart, and, considering the intensity of his convictions, Eleanor had found him easy to get along with.

"What's Ray up to?" she said.

"He's convinced that some migrant family is getting screwed over by Arapahoe Highlands Medical Center. There's a little kid involved. It's the kind of thing where he could really beat our brains out in the media, and believe me, if anyone understand that fact, it's Ray. So before he makes the Senator out to look like Francisco fucking Pizarro or something, please get over there and show the flag and tell everyone how concerned the Senator is. Are you ready to write down this address?"

"Shoot," she said.

Fifteen minutes later she was there. It was a straight shot. She'd used most of her first paycheck to fix up the Volvo. She crept up to the edge of Highway 2, looked both ways, and punched the gas, spraying dust and rocks back into the Commerce Vista, screaming a wild left-hand turn on to the highway, headed southwest toward Denver. She weaved her way through heavy truck traffic, passing one trailer park after another, eventually getting into the heavy industrial zone of southern Commerce City - all the stuff that Harmon had avoided when he'd first taken her to look at the Commerce Vista. Passing out of the refinery zone, over and under freeways and railway lines, she entered a flat, hot warehouse region of north Denver that catered entirely to semitrailer rigs and the men who drove them. One parking lot had been turned into a makeshift bus station where you could catch a bus straight to Chihuahua. Finally she passed under Interstate 70 and into the area she was looking for.

Her destination was a tiny brick bungalow in a neighborhood of tiny brick bungalows. The neighborhood was entirely Mexican-American and it seemed like 90 percent of its population was clustered around this particular house. She had to park her car a couple of blocks away and excuse her way through the crowd until she reached the epicenter.

The center of attention wasn't the house itself; it was a pickup truck parked in its driveway. A yellow Chevy pickup, at least twenty years old, rusted in many places, with a white fiberglass camper cap attached to the back, held on to the box by means of four C-clamps. The truck's tailgate and the rear window of the camper cap was spread open like a pair of jaws to provide a view inside: a couple of bulging Hefty bags filled with clothes, and a flannel sleeping bag, zipped open to expose its colorful lining (mallards in flight over a northern wetland) and spread out flat on the rusted steel floor to soften its corrugations. There were a couple of pillows shoved into the corners and some wadded-up sheets and blankets.

And there were a lot of flowers too. A number of bouquets had been tossed in on top of the sleeping bag. More bunches were leaning against the side of the truck or resting on the roof of the fiberglass cap.

At the very center of the action were two men whom Eleanor recognized. One of them was a tall, good-looking young man in jeans and a blazer. With his black ponytail he could have passed for a full-blooded Apache. This was Ray del Valle. He was talking to a local newspaper reporter who covered the Chicano affairs beat.

Eleanor didn't pay much attention to them. She just made her way through the crowd, trying to suppress a gag reflex that was gradually rising in her throat. She got close enough that she was practically standing in between the two men, staring into the maw of the pickup truck.

Last night, the four children of Carlos and Anna Ramirez had lain down on that sleeping bag to sleep while their parents, sitting up front in the truck's cab, had driven them across the high plains southeast of Denver. They had gone to sleep quickly, and slept well, not because it was cozy but because the back of the truck was full of carbon monoxide leaking from the truck's exhaust. Three of the children had died. One was in the hospital in critical condition, with irreparable brain damage. Carlos and Anna Ramirez had not known what was going on until they had arrived here, early this morning, at the home of Anna's sister.

She knew all these things from her phone conversation with Roger. He had run through the story quickly and tersely and she had listened in much the same spirit, looking at it as a political problem to be solved. But now that she was here in the middle of a sniffling and wailing crowd, looking into the bed where the innocents had died, the emotional impact suddenly hit her like a truck. Eleanor put her hand over her mouth, closed her eyes, and tried to suppress the urge to become physically ill.

"Eleanor," Ray del Valle said, "come on, let's talk somewhere else. You don't want to dwell on this." Eleanor felt Ray's arm tightening around her shoulders. He led her around the truck and into the backyard, gently but surely, like a ballroom dancer leading his date around the floor.