Interface

by Neal Stephenson

  The Radhakrishnan Institute had been surrounded by two million people.

  They were all pumping their fists in the air and chanting. Like starlings. They covered the ground for miles in every direction, flowing in a smooth carpet around buildings and vehicles, like the monsoon floods.

  The mob seemed to have no particular center. But a few hundred yards away, he could see a kind of vortex, a swirling center of activity, moving slowly through the crowd. Moving toward the institute.

  It was an elephant. Unlike the mob, most of whom were poorly, minimally clad, the elephant was stunningly clothed in gold and brightly colored, embroidered silk. A man was sitting on the back of the elephant. Sitting in a chair on the animal’s back. Tied into the chair, actually, so he wouldn’t flop out.

  Dr. Radhakrishnan recognized the man. He was an ex-patient. And then, at last, he figured out what the crowd was chanting.

  WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA.

  Zeldo’s telephone rang again in the late afternoon; probably another one of his friends calling to ask him if he had heard about Presidents Cozzano and Richmond. Zeldo didn’t have time for it now. He had been at the California branch of the Radhakrishnan Institute for almost twenty-four hours, going over some data from one of their newest patients - one Aaron Green. Green had been committed here around the time of Election Day, plagued by psychological troubles - posttraumatic stress from the Pentagon Towers bloodbath. Finally, he had volunteered to have several chips implanted in his head.

  Zeldo jerked the phone out of its cradle. “What?”

  “It’s me.” Zeldo would have known the voice anywhere: it was Mary Catherine Cozzano. “They’re covering their tracks. We’ve been hearing some weird stuff from the Pentagon and we think you’re in trouble. Get on that bike of yours and pedal like your life depends upon it, because it does. See you at dinner.”

  Something in Mary Catherine’s voice got Zeldo up out of his chair. He grabbed his backpack, skittered down the stairs, and yanked his mountain bike from the employee bike rack out front. He rode across the small parking lot of the Radhakrishnan Institute and into the entrance of the bicycle path.

  He was about half a mile away from the Institute when some­thing caught his eye: an airplane. Usually you didn’t notice airplanes, they were part of the scenery. But this one drew his attention because it was flying incredibly low. He thought maybe it was coming in for a landing at the airstrip. But it was going way too fast to make a landing. It was streaking across the landscape, actually kicking up a dust trail from the ground. It was very small, and dark.

  Zeldo recognized the shape. He had seen a documentary about these things once, on 60 minutes, a few years ago. It was a Gale Aerospace Stealth Cruise Missile. It had achieved great notoriety for going way off course during its test flights.

  The cruise missile shot over the airstrip, made a minor course correction, and then headed directly toward the Radhakrishnan

  Institute, making no effort to slow down. Finally, to Zeldo’s relief, it popped up in the air. It was going to miss the building and fly harmlessly out to sea.

  But it didn’t. It shot up several hundred feet, then nosed down into a power dive. It covered the last mile of its trajectory in a few seconds and finally entered the Institute through a skylight, which took it straight down a central atrium.

  Vast surges of white flame vomited out of every door and window in the Institute. The image was burned on to Zeldo’s retina in an instant and then he was blinded for a moment. The shock wave knocked him off his bicycle and sent him sprawling off the bike path, into the dust.

  He didn’t feel a things. His mind was stuck on the last thing she’d said: See you at dinner.

  President Richmond traveled up Pennsylvania Avenue and took possession of the White House at five p.m., bringing the party and congressional leaders with her. The first thing she did was to fire all of the administrative assistants and transition team, who had moved into the place during the change of power. Several of these people were also taken into custody by the formidable FBI contingent that was now following her around, under the direction of the Attorney General, scooping up conspirators and loading them into buses en masse.

  There was a lot to do. She ensconced herself in the Oval Office even while the FBI men were scanning it for listening devices. At seven o’clock, all the important people in Washington came into the office: the Congressional leaders, party leaders, several of the Joint Chiefs, all of the acting Cabinet members, heads of various major agencies including the CIA and the NSA. She was not in any mood, or any position, to be ceremonious; these people piled into her office like a tour group from Oskaloosa and stood around the edges of the room staring at her. She stared back at them over a desk piled with cardboard boxes and loose documents from the black envelope.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “This can’t be happening. This bitch can’t possibly be our president. It won’t last. Well, it is happening. I am the President. And I will continue to be for the next eight years. You’d better get used to it. Thank you for coming in. Now go out there and do your jobs.”

  There were boxes all over the place. Cozzano’s boxes had been moved in this morning. Eleanor’s boxes had been moved in at the Naval Observatory. Now Cozzano’s boxes were being taken away and Eleanor’s boxes were being hustled down and brought into the White House.

  She had one of the movers keep his eye out for one item in particular: a very long, skinny one. An eight-foot cardboard tube. Eventually he showed up carrying the tube over his shoulder like a spear. He got the tape off the end for her and then she pulled out what was inside: a strip of cheap wooden moulding with a few nails sticking out of it. Eleanor borrowed a hammer from the White House maintenance people and put it up herself, nailing it right into the wall of the Oval Office, to the shock and chagrin of the housekeeping staff, who came running when they heard those pounding noises. It looked flimsy and cheap, and it was. But anyone who came closer could see horizontal lines drawn across it in ballpoint pen, with dates and the names of her children written next to them. Eleanor liked it.

  It wasn’t until about nine o’clock that she was able to keep her date with Mary Catherine. They met on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, accompanied by the motley assortment of football players and graying Vietnam vets who had been following them around all day.

  The area was checked out and cleared. Eleanor and Mary Catherine climbed up the steps of the Memorial, turned around, and looked out across the Tidal Basin toward the White House, a mile and a half away, brilliant under the lights.

  Eleanor and Mary Catherine sat together on the top step, huddled together against a chilly wind coming off the Potomac . Mary Catherine put her head on Eleanor’s shoulder and cried for a while. Eleanor held her patiently, stroking her hair in the way of mothers, and waiting for her to get it all out.

  Then she waved her arm toward the Mall. “Look. It’s beautiful,” she said.

  The air-traffic moratorium was still in place over D.C. National Airport, just across the river and it was quiet for the first time in decades. Consequently the Tidal Basin was the way it was supposed to be: placid, undisturbed by the shrieking and thundering of 767s veering in for their slam-dunk landings. The sky was cobalt blue and Venus was out, looking exactly like a diamond over the curved towers of the tall buildings in Rosslyn. The ring of half-staffed American flags around the Washington Monument flickered their silhouettes, lower than usual, against the white limestone.

  “It is nice,” Mary Catherine said, feeling better all of a sudden. “But I’m freezing.”

  “Me too,” Eleanor confessed. Then she nodded across the Mall toward the White House. “Would you like to come over to my place and help me unpack?”

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