“He would speak of you,”
Virgil doubted the truth of this never mind the basis for its expansive tone.
“But, of course, he didn’t need to.”
Perhaps he was being too modest, but Virgil still refused to take the compliment seriously. Although he didn’t need to be told that he was known, like Jason he similarly acknowledged the show of recognition.
“Thank you, Mr. President. As Humphrey’s friends we owe each other condolences. He always spoke highly of you,” – his took his own moment to show expansiveness – “and, as for myself, policy differences aside, you have always had my respect. It is an honour to meet you.”
He waited, satisfied that his articulation of their shared loss and his further sentiments accorded with these Olympian heights that should draw the best out of one; and he had succeeded, had he not, in banishing the circumstantially necessary but unwelcome other invisible presence? He had dealt with Death, whose dark wing had hovered above them and by extension in this office above the nation as a whole, dismissively. It was established that they were civilized men who could talk away the passing of a friend in the sentimental manner the subject deserved and had forborne from assertions regarding the nature of the event – whether or not it was absolute – a subject that men of ideas might even enjoy. After all, what passes and what doesn’t? Nullity itself is but an idea, a supposition: the ending of life cannot be settled as easily as the emptying of a teacup or a scotch glass.
Virgil and the President shared in a tacit, socially stipulated claim of human continuance. Both their tone and utterance conveyed the metaphysical bias, while leaving Death’s wing as more than shadow; it had dust beneath it.
“Believe me, Virgil, I’ve always learned from what you had to say. Saw how the words were meant and never took them to heart. Never. Why would I?”
Yes, why wouldn’t he absorb all the attacks and criticisms when self-congratulation and a satisfied smile were his reward? It was an old trick, but he was the first Republican President of any real substance in decades to employ it.
“You’re wondering why you’re here.”
Virgil was, in fact, enjoying the laundered moment in that it promised some kind of fulfillment that he hoped to employ over what might be awaiting him. The Oval Office exuded care and power and the accomplishments that come from attention to detail. The air itself consisted of an infinite number of turning points, each a pearled moment to be flung outward in a straight line, or braided about the privileged neck. Where might exactitude on his part take him?
“Allow me, Virgil, to dredge up an old word – ‘nemesis’. Nemesis is what kept us back although, let me say this, our party had a return to power through our own merits not through raising spectres that were no more than fabricated scandals as the trick once was, and I say this without blushing, Virgil, and I will add, the people – the voters – seem to have smartened up somewhat – not to put too fine a point on it – but it’ll happen if they’re led off a cliff more than once, although you’d think once would be enough. And we’ve smartened up with them – it’s what I mean by ‘merits’. We did do awful things, Virgil – off the record, of course – awful things, there’s no denying even if some still do, but it’s true for both sides, in different times, and let’s face it, it will probably be true again, but not on my watch, not if I have a say.”
A clicking sound came from the President’s mouth. Must have been the tip of the tongue against palette in order to punctuate a politician’s confidence. Why they might even become friends, with no end in sight, you never know! Virgil entertained himself with the thought. It ended with their being in a cage together, in Times Square, and picking at each other’s pelts. He wasn’t going to push the conversation beyond a respectful prod:
“Nemesis, Mr. President?” His tone camouflaged that he was in possession of at least some of the answer.
“Rove. Karl Rove. Hate to say the name but there it is. You didn’t think that I had you here to help with the economy, hah! We beat him back with all that trans-human nonsense,” he said abruptly. “Wanted to live forever. That was his reason for opposing the amendment. He thought his brain – his intelligence – to be more than sufficient for what might result. It wasn’t enhancement he was looking for – too late for that – but survival, and not in the usual three score and ten sense. Rove would do anything he could get away with to increase the odds in whatever he undertook. The man should have been thrown down an unused well a long time ago. And now that he’s had to come around…”
Clay Eastwood stopped to wonder if he should explain himself and, as he considered Virgil’s sympathetic expression, decided to risk taking him on as an early ally.
“Sonufabitch,” he began. “I know you don’t need to look it up. Tricks, dirty tricks, always the same, and they finally took us down – ‘Can’t fool all the people all the time!’ – Well, you can do it enough of the time and that’s a safe bet. So much pride – he could put any empty suit into office – this office – didn’t care if it wasn’t himself long as they knew where to go for the decisions. And they couldn’t do anything without him, could they?”
The President stared at Virgil as though asking for agreement. Satisfied, he ploughed on.
“Read his biography sometime, the history of the man, even as a kid he was up to his game – high school debates, trucking in mountains of file boxes where but one was called for, just to intimidate, nothing written on the cards and these were big sons a’ bitches, big cards 4x6 when 3x5 was standard. All of it for show. Oh, he had the brains, but he wanted to win no matter what side he was on, no matter the tactics. Then years on, they try to suppress the vote, keep the ethnics and the blacks, the working poor not to turn out. New i.d. laws at the last moment, less polling stations, and long line-ups. In Florida, it was like his debating days all over, the ballot with so many options that it took forever to fill, and people would just plain give up and go home; at least, that was the plan, except that this time enough of them persevered. No matter how much was tried, he couldn’t repeat what had previously worked.”
A weariness – a sense of beating something that would always refuse to die – brought the words to an end.
In fact, Clay Eastwood recoiled at going further into the sordid and corrupt details, not that he was a stranger to such matters, but the office itself exerted its influence that he had the sensibility to feel and, sometimes, to obey. It was the presidential thing to do – a democratic equivalent to noblesse oblige – and not without reward in self-esteem. In the end, he was exposing the political family’s entrails. Having become more and more rueful as he shared with Virgil, anointing him with the status of confidante, he adopted an off-hand tone.
“We thought we’d rid ourselves of him. People forget.” That he spoke the line as though he couldn’t abide the idea – not usual for a politician – generated a modicum of respect in Virgil.
“They won’t make the hard choices, and they put anyone in, anyone, without looking who’s behind him, Virgil…I guess I’m getting carried away,” the President laughed. “As I said, it’s an embarrassment that I don’t need and, while I’m in Office, that the country doesn’t need.”
Jason shuffled in his seat, and he coughed.
Virgil took the cue.
“Mr. President, I am still in the dark, I feel.”
Clay Eastwood reached under a side table, whereupon four men in black waistcoats entered from a side door, one of them designated to speak.
“What can we get you, Mr. President?”
Clay Eastwood looked at Jason and Virgil.
“Gentlemen? Whiskey? What is your pleasure?”
“Whiskey would be fine.”
Both nodded their agreement. Not that Virgil particularly liked whiskey, but it would have to be quality stuff. Being of the opinion that an otherwise unaffordable experience went a long way once undergone, he would take the opportunity to expand himself.
; The four men retreated with discipline as the tone of the place required although their superfluous number was showy and excessive. The President smiled for what was at his disposal as he and his guests waited in silent enjoyment of this display of luxury and power: fruit on the nation’s tree that ever extended its roots and explored the skies. No one man in either a four or an eight-year term could know the vastness of it.
Clay Eastwood knew one thing: that his position wasn’t about power – this thought abided in the world’s most powerful man. It was the hard lesson that democracy had taught him no less so than here at the pinnacle. He also knew that any truth can be circumvented by the successful conniver. He had himself engaged in these practises through a belief in the rightness and the principle of his action and that it had less to do with himself than it might appear. His positions didn’t shift and they were out there for all to see so that he could justify what he did for their sake. You could tear a man down for what was right even if it was ultimately proved wrong, as long as it was out there in public view. Clay Eastwood projected a compelling presence that wasn’t about to flinch. He wouldn’t abide a big-brained cockroach with a nature ever in the shadow, not if it came in the way of his foot.
It was an embarrassment, as he’d said, that the party had been unable to fumigate. Memories were short except in the instances where they were long. And this was one of them. Long on both sides of the aisle for their own reasons. With what went on in the past continuing to fill its veins, even progress won’t prove an antidote.
The whiskeys arrived. One server managed the task, and withdrew.
“Gentlemen, to your health!”
“To your health, Mr. President.”
Clay Eastwood sipped and set down his tumbler; and then fixed them with a gaze that passed through still upraised cut crystal.
The blue-centred stars of the President’s eyes didn’t strike Virgil in themselves so much as their highly charged concentration. Was the man aware of their power? Or were his eyes no more than a serendipitously impressive construct, the import of their god-like fixity merely decorative. Did they speak to an inner state of being substantially different and possibly at odds with Virgil’s own? Usually he considered himself as aligning to the general human run of things, fluid in nature, where persons experience each other with an ease that is interchangeable, common, and empathetic. A Clay Eastwood challenged the whole view, as he sat there, a completely separate entity, concrete and immoveable in character and identity, an original. He provided leadership that one followed if only to uncover his secret – ever a fool’s errand when it came to the compulsions of presence. Analogous to the fine whiskey that Virgil continued to sip and that was subtly acting on his perceptions.
“Twenty years in the barrel,” the President murmured with helpful pride. “Jason, why don’t you brief Virgil as to what this is all about and what we’d like of him!”
Clay Eastwood bent his head and waited, his salt and pepper locks no longer in constant need of the trim whose subliminal message had caused so much froth on the campaign trail. – “Friends, a haircut is the last thing on my mind. Time enough for that.”
“We suspect,” began Jason. “Sorry, we know,” he corrected himself in response to a presidential grunt, “that this Rove character is responsible for what happened to Humphrey. How he did it is another matter. He could very well have been driving the car himself, in some capacity or other, that is.”
Jason’s eyes flickered toward the President, anticipating another objection. When none came, he returned momentarily to the consternation on Virgil’s face before speaking into the middle distance. Follow me in this, spoke his manner.
“The thing of it is, as you may or may not know, Rove the man – the human – is dead, recently dead. Made it to a hundred as a matter of fact.”
“Must have been to test us,” interjected Clay Eastwood with a theological tone out of some apparent need to justify the ways of providence. With a wave of the hand, “Continue, Jason!” he bid.
“Stubborn, I’d say,” muttered an unreclaimed Jason, atheistically laying down his own marker, “and lived long enough to make himself a problem once again.”
“How so?” asked Virgil deciding to enter into the perilously structured narrative, and added, suddenly not wishing to see the President embarrassed, “I have heard it said, Mr. President, that it is the tough ones that make it to your desk.”
His effort opened an opportunity for Jason to seed his own non sequitur.
“You’d be surprised at the number of memorials and funerals a President attends.”
“Never mind that, Jason. Politics make it necessary. Go on.” Another wave of the hand.
“Sorry, Mr. President. As I was saying…where was I…the old fart Rove dies…” He paused for Clay Eastwood to give him absolution.
“I will allow that.”
“…dies and yet doesn’t die since he manages before the end to get as much of himself as he can into one of Humphrey’s latest units, don’t ask how! We suspect that Humphrey’s competitive curiosity had prevailed since similar work is going on elsewhere in the world – we believe that he found out the breach and intended to pull the plug. He had no love for Rove and, like most liberals, would have relished this guilt-free opportunity for retribution. Laws don’t apply here. Nothing illegal about killing a man who’s already dead. Needless to say events turned out quite differently. Quite the opposite from what Humphrey planned. As for Rove, what he purposed…”
This time, in the middle of his own speech, it is Jason himself who raises a forestalling hand.
“…and those who conspired with him, who knows, but it would seem obvious enough in the near term. Some would say he was reluctant to meet his Maker. Illogical on more than one front.”
A chortle from Clay Eastwood.
“A lot like that I expect.”
“It was always power alone that interested Rove, and made him feel alive. If he continued to have it, he’d be cheating death. – Hell, he’d been cheating it more than most. – And his disciples don’t want to lose his way of thinking and his guidance as long as they can have it. For him, what better validation is there? He’s reborn and among us still.”
Jason stopped before the theological parallel. He had stated the facts and wasn’t about to involve himself in a self-inflicted challenge to his lack of belief.
Mildly amused by Jason’s bringing himself up short like this, Virgil did ponder his words although not so much the final comment. Why, in this place, did they quiver before a humanoid?
“Guidance?” he at last chose to ask.”It’s…”
“…just a humanoid, we know, but one with his way of thinking, his way of doing, his history and his influences. It could very well be the same as the original and more so. And who is to say that it’s not in every sense that counts the original Rove?”
“Still…”
“His mind in a humanoid with unlimited resources and computational powers. Is it capable of affecting other humanoids? Apparently. Can it reproduce itself? Why not. Each one as powerful as the last. And subject to what control?”
Voice something and you alter everything, Still it seemed ridiculous to Virgil that he should feel this sense of impotence here of all places. Clay Eastwood, the President, sat in his chair as though propped there, stuffed with sand that trickled beneath his desk from a tear somewhere on his person. Jason sweated around the collar, having strained to pull a plough, as he tried to get the information out of his system. The presidential seal, large and decorative, meant to remind not reassure, hung in front of the desk. Better to wait, Virgil counselled himself, and see what came next.
An exasperated tone came from Jason that didn’t quite hide a sense of personal defeat – surprising to Virgil who recalled him as technologically adept. “You and the humanoid Humphrey sent you. We’d like to see what will come, if we return her to you. Apparently, she won’t listen to anyone else. She’s say
ing that the password is her relationship with you. Ironic, isn’t it? Humphrey’s most sophisticated creation has bonded to you. You’re its mother duck. All we can get out of her is details about you. Not very interesting. We’re asking for your help, Virgil.”
Clay Eastwood looked at his watch; he wasn’t about to await a possible refusal.
“Thank you in advance, Virgil.” He had risen from his chair. “We probably won’t be meeting again about this. Do as you think best,” he added in an expansive meaningful spirit. Virgil was also on his feet, shaking the President’s extended hand, the shadowy figure of Jason attentive beside him ready to lead him out.
“It’s been an honour, Mr. President.”
Afterwards he congratulated himself for repressing the words that came to mind: “You can count on me.”
20
A State of Grace
Chloé awaited him in the garage, in the backseat of a limousine.
Jason leaned down to the window that Virgil lowered for him. “No hard feelings” were his last words at the last moment.
Virgil allowed himself to rise above it all, buoyed as it were by the occasion, and went so far as to set aside his rough treatment. He would invest faith in the staying power of compunction.
“I’m not sure what I can do.”
Jason proffered his hand and Virgil shook it. The car moved off with the sound of the window going up. He settled back next to a complacent Chloé, envious at her show of alert indifference. No harm done to her. What would have been the point? He could see no marks and didn’t expect to. As for Molly, hadn’t it been a dead man whose malevolence had reached her?
Two agents who kept to a distance alternately watched over them, the one spelling the other according to their own rhythms. As instructed by Jason he didn’t interact. Eventually, their dark-clothed presence no longer alarmed him in the way that they had the first week or two. They did, from the beginning, make him feel special and they at last became a part of the reassuring background of his daily life. He assumed whatever was the danger had passed him by and, settling once more into complacency, went on as before despite the jagged edge that remained on his sense of things. He made Chloé privy to all the information he had received, but she effectively drew a blank in her response to it, disconcerting him when she asked,
THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT Page 14