"I'm James Harker. I have an appointment with the Senator for half-past-eleven."
The secretary looked troubled. "I'm sorry, Mr. Harker. The Senator appears to be ill."
"Ill?"
"That's right, sir. He hasn't reported to his office yet today. He's always here by nine sharp, and it's almost eleven now, so we figure he must be sick."
So far as Harker knew, Clyde Thurman had not known a day's illness yet in the twenty-first century. It was strange that he should fall ill this day of days, when Harker had an appointment to see him.
But it was not like Thurman to run away from a knotty problem, either. Harker said, "Have you checked with his home?"
"No, sir." The secretary appeared to resent Harker's question. "The Senator's private life is his own."
"For all you know Thurman died this morning!"
A shrug. "We have not received word of any sort whatever."
Harker paced up and down in the antechamber for fifteen minutes, sitting intermittently, fidgeting, glancing up nervously every time the big outer door opened to admit someone. He thought back thirty-odd years, to the time when eight-year-old Jimmy Harker was reported to his school principal for some obscure, forgotten offense. He had sat in just this manner in the anteroom of the principal's office, waiting for the principal to come back from lunch to administer his punishment—his head popping around every time a clerk opened the big door, his stomach quivering in fear that this might be the principal this time.