“Fine. And thank you very much for your proposal.”
Cochran broke the connection and stood up, feeling pumped. Fred would definitely go for it, and it would probably double the column inches he got. Quadruple his name recognition. The challenge would be to keep Millennium content with what he wrote; he did not intend to be their PR flack.
He went to the kitchen again. Adrielle stood with her back to him, wearing one of his flannel shirts as a robe, its tails down well toward her knees. He stepped over to her, put his arms around her and murmured in her ear.
“When did you say that first class is? Something good just happened to me, and I feel like celebrating.” Chuckling, she reached back and groped him.
“Nothing till two. I can leave here as late as 12:30.”
* * *
Before supper, he and Lor Lu had come to an agreement. He’d fly to Pueblo that Thursday. It seemed to him his future was made. Especially if he could learn what—or who—lay behind Ngunda and Millennium. He’d already read what he could find in the WebWorld—including a ferret search—before he’d done the interview. And found little more than the public faces of Ngunda Aran and his organization.
There’d be more though. There always was.
He almost phoned Adrielle again, but resisted. Don’t get addicted, he told himself. Call Ginny instead. Director of marketing research for Latscher and Kearney, Ginny had a salary two or three times his. She was mature and independent, and shared his attitude toward affairs. Which he classified into three main kinds: (1) strictly physical but good—extremely good in Adrielle’s case; (2) brief and passionate, hot, generally with someone’s guilt-troubled wife; and (3) good, comfortable, and convenient, between peers.
Ginny couldn’t screw like Adrielle, but she was good in bed, and she could carry on a mature conversation. They could do dinner, followed by a show or concert, then make love, and enjoy all of it.
He wondered if he really was turning into a fogey.
8
Headline News Fax, Oct. 7, 9:30 a.m.
In Rome today, at 3:07 p.m..—that’s 9:07 this morning, Eastern Time—the traditional plume of smoke issued from a chimney on the roof of the Vatican palace, signalling the election of a new pope. He is Irish-born Joseph Cardinal Flannery, ex-Archbishop of Toronto. For more than twenty years he has served in administrative posts in the Vatican. He also served as mediator in developing the Ottawa Accords that ended a resurgence of religious terrorism in Northern Ireland. His major acclaim, however, was for helping engineer the Irish Republican Army’s denunciation of its own unregenerate terrorists. This effectively defused a terrorist campaign that threatened to undo the good work done in Ottawa and earlier.
The new pope is seventy-six years old. Though said to be somewhat liberal, he is not expected to initiate changes in the Church. He is seen as a compromise between conservative and liberal factions.
A congressional bill to withdraw the United States from the International Ecosystem Accord was vetoed this morning by President Metzger. She had earlier recognized the need for revisions in the Accord, and will make a speech this afternoon at 12:30 Eastern Time, outlining her approach to the problems.
By a vote of 52 to 50, the Senate this morning passed the so-called “Anti-Militia” Bill. This allows the government to use military force against anyone resisting lawful arrest by means of armed groups, or with military weapons. All nine America Party senators voted against the bill, along with thirty-three Republicans, four Centrists, and four Democrats.
Eighteen senators who rejected essentially the same bill a year ago, this time voted in favor. When asked what caused them to change their votes, most specified the so-called “Walpai War”—the Arizona Militia’s raid and takeover of the Walpai County courthouse and jail last September. In that affair, eight county employees were killed, including the sheriff, four deputies, a county prosecuter, a judge, and the judge’s fifty-year-old female secretary. Four Bureau of Land Management employees also were killed in execution-style murders. All nine jail inmates were released, recruited, and armed. . . .
The hunger for a savior has surfaced again. In Esfahan, Iran, yesterday, forty-year-old Mohammed Ahmed was proclaimed by a Shiite faction as “the Mahdi,” the long-awaited Islamic Messiah. This brings the count of proclaimed messiahs to eight since the year 2005. Seven have acknowledged the honor. They include one other Mahdi, in Syria; one Buddhist Maitreya, in Burma; and five Christians, two of them in Russia, one in Bolivia and one in Brazil. Another, in the United States, has not accepted the nomination. So far no Jewish or Hindu messiah has been proclaimed.