“Just that it may make it kind of hard for you to get your message across to the Great Unwashed. Unless you want to shell out the price of an aircraft carrier to buy your own television time.”

“You mean national television time? Why would I spend money on that? This is Arizona, Les.”

“I didn’t get the impression you wanted to run for President of Arizona.”

Forrester only smiled. Suffield said, “The point is the networks are lining up a lot of big guns. I’ve heard rumors about rumors to the effect that the President himself may throw a few needles your way at his next TV press conference.”

“I always Welcome publicity.”

“Not that kind you don’t. Believe me. But I think you don’t recognize that the parent companies of all three TV networks are deeply committed in aerospace contract work. Ordinarily the network bias runs toward the liberal side of things, as Mr. Agnew pointed out a few years ago, but when you start tromping on aerospace you’re stepping on a very sore corn.”

“I take it this is Lesson Number Four in Suffield’s Elementary Politics.”

“Like I said, I’m just staying aboard ship to point out the shoals. I still think you’ve tackled an elephant with a flyswatter, but if that’s your game I’ll help out all I can, right up to the funeral.” Suffield ran strong fingers through his shaggy pelt of gray hair. “How’d it go with Guest arid Trumble?”

“I’ve been ditched as far as the primary’s concerned. Trumble may run against me, but I’ve got a pledge from both of them that if I win the primary in spite of their opposition I’ll get the full backing of the party in the election campaign.”

“That’s better than nothing, then.”

“Frankly it’s more than I expected to get.”

“Nuts. You like to undersell yourself—I’ve pointed it out before. They need you almost as much as you need them, when you come right down to it. Neither party has very many hotshots around with your brand of vote-getting charisma. Aside from Lindsay, who’s left besides you? All the rest of them are tired. No—Woody Guest will go pretty far off his usual base if that’s what it takes to keep you from switching over to the Democratic Party. You may get more Republican support than you think.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t forget they ditched Lindsay in the primaries when he ran for reelection.”

“And then he won in spite of it and they welcomed him back into the fold because if they hadn’t he could have made hell for them.”

“Maybe,” Forrester said again, not at all convinced. “Anyhow I think we’ve got to assume I’m not going to be the fair-haired Republican boy for a while. I’ve got to run an independent campaign without clubhouse support and we’ve got to plan accordingly.”

“Yeah. A paper clip, a Band-Aid, a rubber band, a wad of chewing gum and a shoestring.”

“A pretty thick shoestring. I expect it’ll take half a million dollars to beat the machine in the primaries and if I have to I’m prepared to put it up myself.”

“Jesus. You really are serious about this. You’d have to mortage the ranch.”

“No. Old James Hayden Forrester socked away a pretty good pile of real estate and invested capital and I’m good for a few million without dipping into the cookie jar at home.”

“But if you spend it and lose you won’t have a thing to show for it.”

“If Defense spends thirty billion dollars on Phaeton Three and one of the damned things blows up in its silo what do you think we’ll have to show for that?”

“Okay, okay.”

“Have you seen Top Spode?”

“Today? No. He called and talked to Ronnie but she didn’t tell me what it was all about.”

“He’s on a job for me and I think I want to call him off. If he calls after I leave, tell him to get me at the ranch.”

“All right. But I think maybe I’d better spend the rest of the afternoon making the rounds, seeing what kind of support we can drum up for you in the primary. You must have a few friends left and I want to reach them before the opposition gets to them.”

“Good idea.”

“I’ll use the phone in the front office, then.” Suffield uncoiled himself and strolled to the connecting door. He paused there and turned and spoke after an interval. “Listen, about Ronnie—”

“What about her?”

“Just—well, this might not be a good time to let it ripen into something. You know?”

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“I mean, it’s not so long since Angie died, is it? You’ve got the voters to think about.”

“For God’s sake, Les!”

Suffield showed his discomfiture. “What would it look like, right now? Rich prominent widowed Senator gets hot pants for his dewy-eyed secretary. I mean, you’d be laying yourself open to all kinds of locker-room snickers, and you don’t need that kind of gossip right now—things are tough enough without it.”

“Let’s just leave my personal life and Ronnie’s out of this.”

“In politics that ain’t so easy, amigo.” Suffield turned through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

Forrester stared at the closed door for a long time before he reached toward the In box.

Tucson was a prime example of how boulevards and superhighways created a centrifugal force that flung vital energies out of the downtown area. The stores had moved out to glittering suburban shopping centers and the old-town decay was particularly depressing in the hard sunshine: the abandoned business sites seemed singularly out of place under the vast cobalt sky. A traffic light halted Forrester between a cut-rate furniture store, peeling yellow stucco, and a rancid little hotel with its doors wide open and its sagging chairs inhabited by girls in thin dresses who would come out on parade after dark. A theater marquee advertised “mature adult films” and the titles were in Spanish.

He let in the clutch and the Mercedes growled up the ramp and out into the left lane. He went southeast at a good clip, driving too fast for the traffic, darting from lane to lane to pass daydreamers and trucks. Past the VA Hospital towers and the municipal airport and the dusty end of Davis Monthan Air Force Base; past the Truckers’ One Stops and dreary motels, out into the uninhabited cactus flats with distant mountains on all the horizons. Dinosaur-shaped billboards flashed by—SEE Colossal Cave! I Mi.

He left the Interstate at Mountain View Junction and sped south into the hills on the blacktop county road, tires whistling on the sharp turns. He had all the windows open and the wind roared in his ears and tangled his hair.

The arid plain gave way to brush hills and now he was coming into the grass country with scrub timber on the higher slopes; he made the acute turn into the secondary road and the Mercedes leaped forward toward home.

The Forrester ranch had been carved out of the old Spanish Baca Float grant; it was the size of a small European nation. He passed herds of browsing Angus cattle and saw a jeep bouncing across a distant pasture; dust raveled high in the Mercedes’ wake. Beyond the low ridge to the southeast he could see the big red-rock landmark Ronnie had painted: it rode along with him.

He passed the manager’s big house and half a mile of workings: crew quarters, outbuildings, feedlots, corrals, smithy, gasoline pumps, the grass landing strip. The gravel drive took him up the long curve through great heavy trees to the hilltop from which the hacienda commanded twenty miles of Forrester grass in any direction. His grandfather’s vaqueros had dubbed it the hacienda; in fact it was an Edwardian architect’s idea of a Georgian manor and the front was a white colonnade two stories high. Angie hadn’t liked it very much: it was too much house, she had felt diminished by it. It had been built in an era when servants were more plentiful than masters.

Ronnie had heard the snarl of the Mercedes and she was on the porch when he walked out of the garage. He watched for her quick slanting smile, teeth white against her tan face. She wore a light sweater with the sleeves pushed up casually above the elbows. The wind spun her hair around her face; she combed it away with her fingers and tossed it back with a shake of her head. When he started up the steps her mouth softened and parted and her breasts lifted; when he reached the top step and lifted his hands she came obediently into his arms. Her nails dug into him and her voice was thick and sweet in his ear: “Welcome home.”