Parked high in the vice president's usual spot behind and above the podium, Godwin Pope surveyed the House of Representatives chamber in the Capitol building. The panorama wasn't his uniquely, of course; on Godwin's left, Herman Vanick, the fleshy, cunning former gym teacher who had elbowed his way into the speakership of the House four years ago, had nearly the same perspective from his seat, though Godwin doubted the ass-patting towel-snapper saw what he did. Vanick looked at the room and saw pretty much what the president saw -- a dunghill populated by ants who loved, hated, feared or owed him but who were basically merchants, here to buy and sell favors, markers, pork. Godwin looked at the room and saw history -- John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn, a beardless Lincoln and a callow Kennedy, measuring themselves within the room's quiet magnificence. Well, yes, okay, those men, along with an army of ambitious sharpies who had managed to maneuver their hands in the people's business -- and in their pockets. But that's civilization, right? The strong and smart and clever have always tried to get something out of the credulous and besotted -- and not only get something out of them but make them think giving it up was the right thing to do. The divine right of kings, Godwin snickered to himself. Now there was a sell job.

Meanwhile, Godwin noted, the customary members of the tribe had assembled.

On the right, the guardians, our military chiefs, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not our most valiant warriors, mind you, but six professionally accomplished commanders who have learned through decades of bureaucratic maneuvers that the answer to every military question, whether it's about money, time, firepower or troops, is "We need more."

Next to them are our great justices, the members of the Supreme Court, resplendent in their robes. Nine judicial high priests with nary a shred of practical experience among them, who try like a fat woman with a pair of bicycle shorts to stretch an 18th century document around 21st century issues.

To their left sits the Cabinet -- forgettable, interchangeable people whose proudest accomplishment, now and always, will be to say, "I headed a government agency." Headed. Like Pelé.

And filling the room are the mighty solons of Congress, the 535 wise men and women of the Senate and House, the Jacks and Jills and Shaniquas and Billy Bobs, the ex-fraternity house presidents and prom committee chairgirls, the former school board members and state assemblymen who learned their trade debating liquor laws and zoning regulations and who now get to kick around questions of war and peace, poverty and abundance, enrichment and enslavement.

All waiting for.

The back doors of the Chamber opened, and a minuscule man called out to the throng. "Mister Speaker! Mister Speaker! The president of the United States!"

Look at him, thought Godwin. Good old Jack Mahone. Smilin' Jack. Happy Jack. Crafty Jack. President Jack. Big Jack Off. We rise and salute his arrival.

The president was a Louisiana man, Baton Rouge, 59 years old, ex-governor, ex-senator, passably handsome, garrulous, louche, a man who possessed a common touch, a man of the people. He won 36 states on Election Day, and 13 short, fast months later he's managed to plunge to the lowest favorability rating that any president ever had at the end of his freshman year.

Godwin kept applauding as he watched Jack run the gantlet of Cabinet cheerleaders, reach the dais, bound up the steps and grasp the speaker's outstretched arm. "Hey there, Herm. How they hangin'?" Jack fairly bellowed, loud enough that Godwin was afraid the whole room would hear. "Think you'll applaud anything I say tonight?"

"My guess is you'll say something I agree with, Mr. President," replied Herm, his professional bonhomie in perfect form.

"Hey, Godwin," Jack chimed, reaching for his vice president's hand.

"Good evening, Mr. President."

"Chet went over everything with you, right? When to applaud, when to lead a standing ovation -- "

"Yes, Mr. President."

"And how to look. You have to look confident."

"I will."

"And proud."

"Yes, Chet and I went over this."

"And interested! For fuck's sake, look interested. No yawning in the background."

"Yes, Mr. President."

"Oh, and one more thing." Mahone motioned Godwin closer. On TV, commentators were remarking on this as a sign of the close collaboration the two men enjoyed. "Godwin," Jack was asking, "are you coming back to the residence after?"

"After the speech?" The question stunned Godwin. Mahone tended to reserve such invitations for his closest cronies, a small category of humanity to which Godwin neither belonged nor aspired. "I hadn't planned on it, sir. I don't think I was actually invited."

"Well, it would mean a lot to me if you came."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." A wide, warm smile lit Jack's face. "Isn't this the Mahone-Pope administration?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, let's act like it."

"Yes, sir. And thank you, sir. I'll be there."

"All righty. Now, could you do me a favor?"

"Certainly, sir."

"A friend of mine came in from out of town unexpectedly -- you see her? Up in the gallery? About four or five rows behind the first lady? And over -- to the right?"

The two men looked into the gallery. The plump, extravagantly coiffed first lady smiled sweetly and waved, and the men waved back. Over and to the right, Godwin could see a heavy-lidded blonde whom he took to be the president's out-of-town pal. She had two large Tupperware bowl-shaped mounds of flesh prominently emerging from her low-for-the-occasion neckline, and she was using the long red fingernail on her left pinkie to daub at her mascara.

"The elegant blonde, Mr. President?"

"That's her. You didn't bring a date, did you?"

"To the State of the Union address? No, sir."

"So there'd be no problem if we said she was your date when we went back to the residence, would there?"

"None."

"And that's all you have to do. Bring her by, and then you can bug out if you want. Or stay. Whatever."

And with a wave of his hand Jack turned and faced the business at hand, namely, attempting to right his already perilously off-course administration, leaving Godwin to settle into his seat and, behind a good soldierly facade, slip into a sulk worthy of Achilles.

No one would ever have predicted that Godwin Pope would someday become vice president. His earliest progenitors on these shores were flinty, suspicious Yankees who possessed a certain ingenuity and clever heads for business. At one point the family controlled 87 percent of the pin-and-needle market in North America, and still great-great-grandfather Obediah undercut incipient competitors as ruthlessly as a Rockefeller. Over the years, the family fortune rose and fell, depending on whether it was one of the periods when the heirs boldly and successfully led National Metal Fasteners Inc. into paper clips or staples, or whether it was one of the periods when the heirs -- different heirs, of course, wastrel heirs -- threw chunks of the family fortune at a promoter of commercial seaweed farming or a maharishi from Philadelphia who preached the Tao of Free Love or one of about a hundred dealers of fine cocaine.

By the time Godwin enrolled in Princeton, National Metal Fasteners Inc. was owned by a midlevel Japanese copier company, and the family's riches had dwindled to the point at which Godwin still had enough money in the bank to be able to choose between one family tradition and the other. He had begun sizing up the cocaine dealers when fate interceded and assigned him Tom Ralston as his freshman-year roommate. Ralston was a precocious 14 years old, didn't much like to wash, paused in the middle of conversations to pick his nose and thought everyone else was stupider than he was. Which was largely true, and in the case of mathematics, incontestably correct. Tom Ralston could solve foot-long algorithms in his head in seconds.

With breathtaking ease Tom graduated two semesters early and joined IBM in Palo Alto, where Godwin visited him over spring break. They were both complaining. Godwin had been accepted to half a dozen law schools, none of which he had any interest in attending. And Tom found IBM distressingly boring. "They're so fucking slow!" Tom screamed. "You can't get approval for anything without 14 people signing off!"

"Approval for what?" Godwin asked.

"Like, to write programs."

"Television programs?"

"No, software. This personal-computer thing is going to take off. Any moron can see that. People are going to buy these fucking things."

"What the fuck for?"

"To do stuff -- their taxes, to play games, to run small businesses. But to do any of that, they need programs."

"What makes you think you can write programs?" Godwin asked.

"They're just algorithms," Tom said, and showed him: There were algorithms for an address book and algorithms for an appointments calendar. There were dozens, dozens of algorithms that caused the computer to do things.

At that point Godwin made up his mind to leave Princeton and invest what was left of his share of the Pope fortune in Tom Ralston's ability to solve equations. He and Tom formed Zephyr Inc., which turned out to be a brilliant partnership. Tom, with his technical virtuosity and head for product, designed the programs; Godwin, with his taste for competition, ran the business. Seventeen years later, after Zephyr was swallowed whole by the Microsoft Corporation, Godwin and Tom each were worth $1.63 billion dollars. Tom bought the Washington Redskins, and under his whiny, demanding, infantile, free-spending ownership, the team won two Super Bowls. Godwin wasn't so easily entertained. For years he had been the public face of the company, and he had come to enjoy being quoted and cited and pictured and courted in all the power centers of the globe. Suddenly he discovered he had nothing to do.

All that changed the night he allowed Ralston to drag him along to a dinner party thrown by Shohreh Pashvalavoo, the voluptuous, raven-haired political pundit. A glamorous Iranian emigrant who had parlayed her beauty into three strategically placed marriages and three highly remunerative divorces, Shohreh took a particular interest in Godwin and, to the neglect of her other guests, spent the evening hanging on his every word. Later that night, straddling him in her bed, she asked if he would mind answering a question.

"No, of course not."

"Why are you wasting your life?"

Needless to say, he was caught off guard. "That's hardly the sort of question guaranteed to bring this evening to a happy climax," Godwin replied.

"Whatever reasons you come up with, they're all bullshit. You are rich, healthy, tremendously intelligent, enormously sophisticated, in the prime of your life and beholden to no one. You should run for public office. Every day the world is at a crossroads. I can think of no one I trust more to determine in which direction we should go."

Whether it was what she said or where she then put her mouth, either way he felt a dam burst of motivation. Hell yes, he thought, I could make a difference.

Eight brisk, busy, free-spending months later, Godwin got himself elected to the Senate. Four years after that, long after Shohreh left Washington to take up with her lesbian lover in Northampton, Massachusetts, Godwin glumly concluded she was wrong. He was making no difference whatsoever. That's when he decided to run for president.

At first he thought it was the most brilliant decision he had ever made, and he floated on an ebullience the likes of which he had never experienced. He found he liked campaigning, liked getting up in front of crowds and spouting off. What surprised him was that they listened. He refused to talk about flag burning or homosexual marriages, issues he disdainfully described as 20th century concerns. Let's move on, he said. Can't we establish a health insurance program that makes us more competitive? Can't we figure out a better way to pay for education? Promises, promises, his opponents chided and asked about the costs. "Tomorrow is right around the corner," Godwin replied. "Are you ready?"