John Barnes - Directive 51

Chris Manckiewicz awoke, as he often did, to the vibration and the insistent, “Wake up, Chris, it’s the phone,” in his own voice, which came from the cell phone buttoned into the pocket of his soft cotton pajamas. He sat up in bed, put the phone to his ear, punched the “prep and stand by” button on the traveler’s autocafé that he kept ready by his bed, and said, “Yeah?”

“Your guy Norcross is about to give a speech about the shootdown of Air Force Two,” Cletus said. “Have you been asleep?”

“Yeah. Needed to catch up, Norcross’s a baseball nut, I figured he wouldn’t do much during a big game in the Series, my chance for a night’s sleep.”

Cletus chuckled sympathetically. “Oh, man, the fates really are after you, Chris. Brace yourself. Vice President Samuelson was on a secret peace mission when il’Alb kidnapped him and stole his plane, loaded it with some nasty-shit weapon, probably tried to crash it into Angel Stadium during the World Series, and his old best buddy and pal Prez Rog had to order it shot down. Air Force Two is burning like a fucking match head in the California desert right now, and the smoke from it is so deadly it’s knocking planes out of the air. And Pendano hasn’t been on the air with even one word about it, zip. Now that asshole Will Norcross is going to horn in and give a speech before the President does.”

“Well,” Chris said, trying not to sound pissed off, “you know, he is running for president.”

“Yeah. That’s what I meant. Cheap political stunt. Norcross just announced he’ll be making a statement twelve minutes from now, in the front lobby of the Radisson Dubuque. You’re in that hotel, right?”

“Right.” Chris’s practiced hand switched the autocafé on, and it gurgled as it began filling his carafe. “I’m on it. Live feed as it comes, and I’ll pack you a wrapped-and-ready ASAP after that. Standard procedure.”

“Hey, make sure it is standard procedure this time. This asshole is piling on our president at a real bad time. So do him no favors, you got it? Absolutely no fancy camerawork, plug in one camera, focus it on the podium, and just record the speech.”

“I’ve got six remotes and the big one on the computer, Cletus. It doesn’t cost any extra for me to use ’em, and you never know when the main cam will go out or something will pop. Using all the cams is standard—”

“Oh, horse shit. What was that last time, you got him at that church with all the screaming, weeping Jesus bitches practically busting out of their blouses, and that one-armed cowboy dude with that Navy thing on his hat and that big old tear in his eye—”

“He was a real vet, really was on Roosevelt when the suicide glider hit it, and he lost an arm fighting the fire—I verified that. And the tear was real. And my fucking story was real, Cletus.”

“Oh, yeah, real. Real. So real we had to bring in two editors to fix it and grab all your unused feed so we could show just Norcross’s face, which is what I fucking told you to shoot, just that and the empty corners of the room—”

“There weren’t any empty corners. It was packed.”

“Fuck you. If it wasn’t for the fucking lawyers, I’d have trashed your whole file, but we have to keep that piece of shit on file now for twenty years in case we get sued. Asshole. Now, listen, I’m telling you. Don’t stick us with more stuff we can’t broadcast—you know that’s what I mean. Now, one goddam camera, on Norcross, get his speech, don’t get anything more.”

“Cletus, what do you have against good video, anyway? You cut things like that hot girl losing it at the Save Our Nation rally—”

“Yes, I did. And I’ll do it again, and I cut that damn stupid huge African-American family all waving and grinning, and the old lady doing the Pledge of Allegiance with her hand over her heart. We are not giving Norcross one more thing than the minimum. What do you want, an Emmy for covering some jackass who will destroy our industry? You think someone’s going to thank you for that?”

“You keep shitcanning my best work,” Chris said. He set his cell phone down, put it on speakerphone and full vid, then turned to dress so that as he swiftly whipped his pajamas down, the camera pickup would point straight at his anus. Of course, this may be too subtle for Cletus.

Chris snatched his working suit from the closet. With just one guy on the job, thanks to the wonders of tech, every so often he had to be the man talking in front of a building.

He listened while Cletus screamed at him; it was the same fight they had every other day. Chris only prayed that when the campaign ended, ten days from now, 247NN would reassign him as far away from Cletus as possible, so he made sure these fights got plenty nasty.

After all, nothing else was at stake. Anyone could see that Pendano was gliding to reelection as smooth as if he had glass wheels.

Word was, even from Norcross’s own people, that since the ’pubs knew it wasn’t their year, with a popular Democrat running for reelection, they’d thrown the nomination to Mr. Jesus Guy just to hang the failure on that wing of the party.

Chris Manckiewicz knew all about how large organizations shaft enthusiastic people. One thing he really hated about this beat was that everyone who worked for Norcross knew that that they had no support, and, no matter how hard they worked, they’d been positioned to fail. I hate having so much in common with them.

Okay, maybe it was weird, even scary , that more than a third of the population was jumping up and down and wetting its Wal-Mart panties for a guy who wanted to add ten amendments to the Constitution to “make Jesus the Supreme Law,” whatever that was supposed to mean. Chris wasn’t going to vote for Norcross—but he wasn’t going to hate him, either. All he really wanted to do was report him.

He hadn’t said anything, being busy getting his tie on straight and running a fast suite-check on his gear, so Cletus felt ignored, and was screaming, “Listen to me, Manckiewicz!”

“I’m listening,” Chris said. “That’s why I’m not talking.” If he could just show everything about the Norcross campaign, Norcross would be understood—and then for sure he wouldn’t be elected. Did Cletus think the viewers were stupid, or what? Just last week he’d had some blond-maned teenage psychobitch for Jesus raving about killing all the gays, standing right in front of some weather-faced old farmer type, looked like a stock illo for “Farm country shot to hell,” who was obviously checking out her butt. If they’d broadcast that —

“Manckiewicz, you just remember to do your job when I tell you what it is. I need to deliver one thing to 247NN every day: twenty seconds per day of Norcross moving his mouth, to make things balanced. That’s all I need to do.”

“Well, you need to do that, and stay away from the bottle you’re thinking about right now, and not think about your ex-wife with a mouthful of that football player’s dick.”

That drew a long scream, and Chris reached over and hung up the phone. Two true shots. Okay, I’m a mean bastard. What’s a guy got to do to get fired anyway? I’ve got all my clips for my good work, I can hustle a new job in zip flat, especially because that asshole won’t talk about the things I say to him.

Besides, one time recently, he’d provoked Cletus into falling off the wagon, and a story had gone out just the way Chris wanted. This might be the biggest story remaining in the campaign and Chris was all they had.