them go down more easily. Emily knew she was safe with us because, unlike our peers, Shaun and I don’t abuse innocent people for the sake of a few marketable quotes. We have politicians to abuse when we need that sort of thing.
I checked my watch as I strode down the hall toward the main entrance. A shortcut through the press pen would take me to the governor’s offices, where his chief of staff would be happy to stall me for as long as possible. My interview wasn’t for a guaranteed sixty minutes; I’d need a lot more pull if I wanted to achieve something like that. No, I just got whatever questions I could ask and have answered in the span of an hour, no matter what else came up during that time. I wanted to make him wait no more than ten minutes. That would make a point but still leave me the time to get the answers I both wanted and needed to have. His chief of staff would not only want to make
There are moments when I look at the world I’m living in, all the cutthroat politics and the incredibly petty, partisan deal mongering, and I wonder how anyone could be happy doing anything else. After this, local politics would seem like a bake sale. Which means I need to stay exactly where I am, and
People called greetings my way as I cut through the press pen. I waved distractedly, attention focused on the route ahead. I have a reputation for aloofness in certain parts of the press corps. I guess I deserve it.
“Georgia!” called a man I vaguely recognized from Wagman’s press pool. He shouldered his way through the crowd, drawing up alongside me as I continued toward the door to Governor Tate’s offices. “Got a second?”
“Not so much,” I said, reaching for the doorknob.
He put a hand on my shoulder, ignoring the way I tensed, and said, “The congresswoman just dropped out of the race.”
I froze, swinging my head around to face him before tugging my sunglasses down enough to allow me an unobstructed view of his face. The overhead lights burned my eyes. That didn’t matter; I could see his expression well enough to know that he wasn’t lying. “What do you want?” I asked, pushing my glasses back up.
He looked over his shoulder toward the rest of the gathered journalists. None of them seemed to have realized that there was blood in the water. Not yet, anyway. They’d catch on fast, and once they did, we were cornered.
“I bring you what I have—and there’s footage, too, lots of stuff, all the votes, details on where she’s throwing what’s left of her weight—and you let me on the team.”
“You want to follow Ryman?”
“I do.”
I considered this, keeping my face impassive. Finally, incrementally, I nodded. “Be at our rooms in an hour, with copies of all your recent publications, and everything you’ve got on Wagman. We’ll talk there.”
“Great,” he said, and stepped back, letting me continue on my way.
Governor Tate’s security agents nodded as I stepped through the doorway into the governor’s offices, holding up my press pass for their review. It passed muster; they didn’t stop me.
Governor Tate’s quarters looked just like Senator Ryman’s, and were, I’m sure, close to identical to Wagman’s. Since presidential hopefuls are packed into contiguous convention centers these days, the folks organizing the conventions go out of their way to prevent the appearance that they’re “showing favor” to any particular candidate. One of our guys was going to come away the Crown prince of the party while the other went begging for scraps, but until the votes were counted, they’d be standing on equal footing.
The office was full of volunteers and staffers, and the walls were plastered with the requisite “Tate for President” posters, but the atmosphere still managed to be quiet and almost funereal. People didn’t look frightened, just focused on what they were doing. I tapped the button on my lapel, triggering its internal camera to start taking still shots every fifteen seconds. There was enough memory to keep it doing that for two hours before I needed to dump the pictures to disk. Most of the shots would be crap, but there would probably be one or two that I could use.
I killed a few minutes pouring myself an unwanted cup of coffee and doctoring it to my supposed satisfaction before walking over to show my press pass to the guards waiting at the governor’s office door.
“Georgia Mason, After the End Times, here to see Governor Tate.”
One of them looked over his sunglasses at me. “You’re late.”
“Got held up,” I replied, smiling. My own sunglasses were firmly in place, making it difficult, if not impossible, to tell whether the smile was reaching my eyes.
The guards exchanged a look. I’ve found that men in sunglasses really hate it when they can’t see your eyes—it’s like the air of mystique they’re trying to create isn’t meant to be shared with anyone else, especially not a silly little journalist who happens to suffer from an ocular medical condition. I held my ground and my smile.
Late or not, they didn’t have a valid reason to keep me out. “Don’t do it again,” said the taller of the two, and opened the door to the governor’s private office.
“Right,” I said, and let my smile drop as I walked past them. They closed the door behind me with a sharp click. I didn’t bother to turn. I’d only get one first look at the private office of the man who stood the best shot at putting me out of a job. I wanted to savor it.
Governor Tate’s office was decorated austerely. He’d chosen to cover the room’s two windows; shelves blocked them almost completely, and the ambient light was provided by soft overhead fluorescents. Two massive flags covered most of the rear wall, representing, respectively, the United States and Texas. There were no other personal touches in evidence. This office was a stopping place, not a destination.
The governor himself was behind his desk, carefully placed so he was framed by the flags. I could imagine his handlers spending hours arguing about how best to create the image that he was a man who would be strong, both for his country and for the world. They’d done it; he looked perfectly presidential. If Peter Ryman was all boyish good looks and all-American charm, Governor David Tate was the embodiment of the American military man, from his solemn demeanor down to his respectable gray crew cut. I didn’t need to call up his service record; the fact that he had one while Senator Ryman didn’t has been the source of a lot of ads paid for by “concerned citizens” since the campaign cycle began. Three-star general, saw combat in the Canadian Border Cleansing of ’17, when we took back Niagara Falls from the infected, and then again in New Guinea in ’19, when a terrorist action involving aerosolized live-state Kellis-Amberlee nearly cost us the country. He’d been wounded in battle, he’d fought for his nation and for the rights of the uninfected, and he understood the war we fight every day against the creatures that used to be our loved ones.
There are a lot of good reasons the man scares the crap out of me. Those are just the beginning.
“Miss Mason,” he said, indicating the chair on the far side of his desk with a sweep of one hand as he rose. “I trust you didn’t get lost? I was beginning to think you weren’t intending to come.”
“Governor,” I replied. I walked over and sat down, pulling my MP3 recorder from my pocket and placing it on the table. The action triggered at least two video cameras concealed in my clothing. Those were the ones I knew about; I was sure Buffy had hidden half a dozen more in case someone got cute with an EMP pulse. “I was unavoidably detained.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, sitting back down. “Those security checks can be murder, can’t they?”
“They certainly can.” I leaned over to turn on the MP3 recorder with a theatrical flick of my index finger. Smoke and mirrors: If he thought that was my only recording device, he’d worry less about what was really going on the record. “I wanted to thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today and, of course, with our audience at After the End Times. Our readers have been following this campaign with a great deal of interest, and your platform is something that they’re eager to understand in more depth.”
“Clever folks, your readers,” the governor drawled, settling back in his seat. I glanced up without moving my head; the ability to see your interviewees when they don’t know you’re looking is one of the great advantages to living your life behind tinted glass.
It was easier to look than it was to avoid flinching at what I saw. The governor was watching me with undisguised blankness, like a little boy watching a bug he intended to smash. I’m used to people disliking reporters, but that was a bit much. Sitting up again, I straightened my glasses and said, “They are among the most discriminating in the blogging community.”
“Is that so? Well, I suppose that explains their unflagging interest in this year’s race. Been glorious for your ratings, hasn’t it?”
