Neal Stephenson - Interface

"In the expectation that they'd be able to make more money off them when they were full-grown," Eleanor said. She did not know the first thing about ranching but this concept seemed simple enough.

"Right. Well, by now, these calves are starting to get big and starting to need more food - you know how growing children are. In this part of the country, cattle graze - they eat grass out on the range. Much of the range land is owned by the federal Government, and cattlemen are allowed to graze their cattle on that land.

"There is a nice patch of BLM land that I know about six hours from here. It's in the basin of the Arkansas River, so it always has plenty of green grass, but unlike a lot of the other land around there it hasn't been converted to truck farming yet."

"Truck farming... that means vegetables and so on?"

"There's a lot of that stuff down there along the Arkansas," Ray said. "Migrants work there, picking vegetables for shipment to Oklahoma and Texas."

"Okay. Go on."

"Last year, when the price of beef was low, no one wanted to use this land and so a number of migrant workers - including the Ramirezes - went there and parked their trucks and trailers on it and started living there. Set up a little community. Planted some little gardens and so on. Waiting for the next harvest to come in."

"But last week, a cattleman in that area found that he was running out of land on which to graze all of these calves that he started when the price of beef got high. And now, in place of the community of migrant workers that used to be on that land, this man's cattle are there, eating the lush green grass."

"You're saying that the Ramirezes were kicked off the land."

"They and all the other people living there were evicted yesterday," Ray said. "The closest place for the Ramirez family to stay was Anna's sister's house, here in Denver. So they put the kids in the back of the truck and came here."

"Oh."

"Hundreds of people are on the road today, all over the High Plains, because some cattle got hungry," Ray said. "And I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were several more cases of carbon monoxide poisoning in the backs of pickup trucks that we haven't heard about yet."

"If I am a cattleman," Eleanor said, "and I want to use a piece of BLM land, and some migrant workers happen to be living on it, then what is the mechanism? How do I make those workers go away? Call the cops?"

"No you don't call the cops. There are a number of approaches one could take," Ray said, "but if I had the right connections, my first choice would be to make a phone call to the Alamo."

Eleanor thought this one over for a minute.

"Ray, if nothing else, you just guaranteed Bianca Ramirez a spot in the hyperbaric chamber," she said.

Eleanor was right. Dr. Morgan did have a very capable secretary.

She could tell just by looking at the woman that she knew her business.

"Good morning, my name is Eleanor Richmond and I just got off the phone from talking to my boss, Senator Marshall," she lied, "and based on the results of that conversation I think I can promise you that the single most important thing that your boss Dr. Morgan will do this whole month, possibly this whole year, will be to have a conversation with me right now."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ray and Dr. Escobedo grinning at each other. This was like a carnival ride for them.

Dr. Morgan's secretary was cheerful enough about it. If she was pissed off, she was good enough not to show it in front of Eleanor. She reached Dr. Morgan on his car phone; he was on his way in.

Within fifteen minutes, Dr. Morgan, Eleanor, Ray and Dr. Escobedo were all sitting around a table in Morgan's office. They made small talk about what kind of additives they wanted in their coffee and what a nice day it was. Then things got quiet, and Eleanor found that everyone was looking at her expectantly. She folded her hands in her lap and composed herself for a moment.

"I'm not very good at this sort of thing," she said, "so maybe the best way for me to proceed is just to come out and say something."

"Shoot," Dr. Morgan said.

"This is an exercise in raw political brute force. You will give Bianca Ramirez treatment in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber or else the Senator, I'm sure, will make it his mission in life to turn this medical centre into a smoking hole in the ground."

"Consider it done," Dr. Morgan said cheerfully. "Dr. Escobedo, you'll make the arrangements to send Bianca over?"

"Yes."

"Excellent," Dr. Morgan said. He seemed pleased and cheerful, as if he woke up every morning of his life and got slapped around by a U.S. Senator. "Now, is there anything else on the agenda?"

"God," Eleanor said, an hour later, over breakfast with Ray, "I really overdid it. I'm so embarrassed."

Ray shrugged. Significantly, he didn't try to disagree with her. "Don't worry about it," he said. "You got what we wanted."

After she had dropped Escobedo off at the county hospital; it had come to their attention that neither one of them had had any breakfast. So now they were at a little family place not far from the Alamo. Eleanor was having huevos rancheros. Ray was licking his lips over a huge steaming bowl of tripe.

"I tend to forget how powerful a senator is," Eleanor said. "I probably could have just made a phone call and gotten the same result. Instead I came in like Rambo. Used a flame thrower where I could have flicked a Bic."

"Hey, if nothing else it was great theatre," Ray said. "That's your genius, you know."

"Huh?"

Ray was studying her face interestedly. "You don't know, do you?" he said. "You just do it on instinct."

"Do what on instinct?"

Ray shook his head flirtatiously. "I don't want to make you self-conscious and ruin it."

"What are you talking about?"

"I really admire what you did to Earl Strong, you know," he said, changing the subject none too subtly.

"Yeah, you tell me that every time we see each other."

"Now what we need to do is get that flame thrower aimed at the right target."

"Aha," she said. "The hidden agenda comes out."

"I told you I was paying for breakfast. What did you think?"

"And an excellent breakfast it is," she mumbled, chewing her first mouthful. They ate in silence for a minute. Both of them were ravenous. Emotion burns calories.

"I talked to Jane Osborne," Ray said. "I was all ready to be pissed at her, but she's nice."

"Here's the part where I ask who Jane Osbourne is."

"She's a forest ranger out in La Junta."

"A forest ranger? In the prairie?"

"Funny, that's exactly what she said when she was assigned there," Ray said. "She likes forests. She went into the Forest Service hoping she would end up in one."

"Logical enough."

"She didn't count on the fact that the Forest Service owns a lot of grassland. Including the piece of land where the Ramirez family was living until yesterday. And they need people to look after that land. These people are called forest rangers. They wear Smokey Bear hats and everything. So Jane Osbourne is stuck out there, not a single tree, much less a forest, for a hundred miles, in this shitty, dead-end GS-12 position, driving around in a pickup truck chasing dirt bikers and replacing signs that have been shotgun-blasted by the local intellectuals."

"Must be disappointing."

"Yeah. But it's not as bad as what comes next."

"And what's that?"

"She's about ready to turn in for the evening when she gets a call from On High and she is ordered to personally evict about a hundred migrant workers from this patch of grazing land."

"How does a single woman do that?"

"She called in a few other rangers and brought in some federal marshals too, as a show of force."

"Who gave the order?"