But Harker merely smiled and shook his head. "No, I won't be Governor any more, Paul. I'm going to visit Mr. Winstead. He's the Governor now."
"Oh," the boy said gravely.
Harker reached the West Side jet terminal at ten after nine. The big 150-seater was out on the field, surrounded by attendants. It would make the trip to Albany in just under thirteen minutes.
It was a silly business. It took him twice that long to get to the terminal from his home. But modern transportation was full of such paradoxes.
At nine-thirty-five the great ship erupted from the landing-strip; not much later it was roaring over Westchester, and not very much after that it was taxiing to a smooth and uneventful landing just outside Albany.
Thirteen minutes. And it took twenty-five minutes more for the jetport bus to bring them across the Hudson into Albany proper after the flight.
His appointment with Governor Winstead was for eleven that morning. Declining the public transport service, Harker walked through town to the governor's mansion—a walk that he had come to know well, in his four years in Albany.
The town hadn't changed much. Still third-rate, dirty, bedraggled; one of his proposed reforms had been to move the Capitol downstate to New York City, where it really belonged, but naturally the force of sentiment was solidly against him, not to mention the American-Conservative Party, whose New York stronghold Albany was.
He smiled at the memory. He had fought so many losing battles, in his four years as Governor.