Interface by Neal Stephenson, J. Frederick George Page A

to Mary Catherine, its unnatural con centration of influence.
    Springfield liked to bill itself as "The City Lincoln Loved." Mel always referred to it as "The City Lincoln Left." Mel and Mary Catherine had to sit inside for a moment and let th e momentum of the rotor spin down a little. When she got the th umbs-up from the pilot, Mary Catherine put her hand on her h air and rolled out on to the white cross in her running shoes. She had thrown a trench coat on over her sweatshirt and jeans, and the b uckle whipped back and forth on the end of its belt; the wintry a ir, traveling at hurricane speed under the rotor blades, had a wind chill factor somewhere down around absolute zero. She didn't stop run ning until she had passed through the wide automatic glass doors and into the quiet warmth of the corridor that led to the c entral elevator shafts.
    Mel was right behind her. An elevator was already up and w aiting for them, doors open. It was a wide-mouth, industrial-s trength lift big enough to take a gurney and a whole posse of medical personnel. A man was waiting inside, middle-aged, dressed in a white coat thrown over a BEARS sweatshirt. This implied that he had been called into the hospital on short notice. It was Dr. Sipes, the neurologist.
    She was used to being in hospitals. But suddenly the reality hit her. "Oh, God," she said, and slumped against the elevator's pitiless stainless steel wall.
    "What's   going   on?"   Mel   said,   watching Mary   Catherine's reaction, looking at Dr. Sipes through slitted eyes.
    "Dr. Sipes," Sipes said.
    "Mel Meyer. What's going on?"
    "I'm a neurologist," Sipes explained.
    Mel looked searchingly at Mary Catherine's face for a moment and figured it out. "Oh. Gotcha."
    Sipes's key chain was dangling from a key switch on the control panel. Sipes reached for it.
    "Hang on a sec," Mel said. Since he had emerged from the chopper his head had been swinging back and forth like that of a Secret Service agent, checking out the surroundings. "Let's just have a chat before we go down to some lower floor where I assume that things will be in a state of hysteria."
    Sipes blinked and smiled thinly, more out of surprise than amusement, he wasn't expecting folksy humor at this stage in the proceedings. "Fair enough. The Governor said that I should be expecting you."
    "Oh. So he is talking?"
    This was a simple enough question, and the fact that Sipes hesitated before answering told Mary Catherine as much as a CAT scan.
    "He's not aphasic, is he?" she asked.
    "He is aphasic," Sipes said.
    "And in English this means?" Mel said.
    "He has some problems speaking."
    Mary Catherine put one hand over her face, as if she had a terrible headache, which she didn't. This kept getting worse. Dad really had suffered a stroke. A bad one.
    Mel just processed the information unemotionally. "Are these problems things that would be obviously noticeable to a layman?"
    "I would say so, yes. He has trouble finding the right words, and sometimes makes words up that don't exist."
    "A common phenomenon among politicians," Mel said, "but not for Willy. So he's not going to be doing any interviews anytime so on." "He's intellectually coherent. He just has trouble putting ideas into words."
    "But he told you to expect me." "He said that a back would be coming." "A back?"
    "Word substitution. Common among aphasics." Sipes looked at Mary    Catherine.    "I    assume    that    he    doesn't    have    a    living gra ndmother?"
    "His grandmothers are dead. Why?"
    "He said that his grandmother would be coming too, and that she was a scooter from Daley. Which means Chicago." "So 'grandmother' means 'daughter' and 'scooter-'" "He refers to me and all the other physicians as scooters," Sipes said.
    "Oy, fuck me," Mel said. "This is gonna be a problem." Mary Catherine had a certain skill for putting bad things out of her mind so that they would not cloud her judgement. She had be en trained that way by her father