“There isn’t anyplace for me to get you any of that.”
“You’re a politician, Oscar. But you gotta be something better than just that. You have got to be a statesman. You’ve got to find some way to make me some honor.”
A phone rang in the office. Kevin groaned, picked up a laptop, and ran a trace with a function key. “Nobody is supposed to have this number,” he complained.
“I thought you had all of that taken care of by now.”
“Typical politician’s remark. What I got is a series of cutouts, dummies, and firewalls, and you would not believe the netwar attacks those things are soaking up.” He examined the tracing report on his laptop. “What the hell is this thing?” He answered the phone. “Yes?”
He paused and listened intently for forty-five seconds. Oscar took the opportunity to examine Kevin’s office. It was the least likely police office he had ever seen. Girlie pinups, dead coffee cups, ritual masks, disemboweled telecom hardware driven into the walls with tenpenny nails…
“It’s for you,” Kevin announced at last, and handed Oscar the phone.
Their caller was Jules Fontenot. Fontenot was angry. He’d been unable to reach Oscar through any conventional phone. He had finally been reduced to calling the Collaboratory’s police headquarters through a Secret Service office in Baton Rouge. The runaround had irritated him greatly.
“I apologize for the local communications systems, Jules. There’s been a lot of change here since you left us. It’s good to hear from you, though. I appreciate your persistence. What can I do for you?”
“You still mad at Green Huey?” Fontenot rasped.
“I was never ‘mad’ at Huey. Professionals don’t get mad. I was dealing with him.”
“Oscar, I’m retired. I want to stay retired. I didn’t ever want to make a call like this again. But I had to.”
What was wrong with the man? It was Fontenot, all right, but his native accent had thickened drastically. It was as if the man were speaking through a digital “Cajun Dialect” vocoder. “To meck a caw lak diss…”
“Jules, you know that I always respect your advice. Your leaving the business hasn’t changed that for me. Tell me what’s troubling you.”
“Haitian refugees. You get me? A camp for Haitians.”
“Did you just say ‘Haitians’? Do you mean black, Francophone people from the Caribbean?”
“That’s right! Church people from Haiti. Huey gave ’em political asylum. Built a little model village for ’em, in the backwoods. They’re living way back in mah swamps now.”
“I’m with you, Jules. Disaster evacuations, Haitian refugees, charity housing, French language, that’s all very Huey. So what is the problem?”
“Well, it’s somethin’. It’s not just that they’re foreigners. Religious foreigners. Black, voodoo, religious, refugee foreigners who speak Creole. It’s something lots weirder than that. Huey’s done something strange to those people. Drugs, I think. Genetics maybe. They are acting weird. Really weird.”
“Jules, forgive me, but I have to make sure that I have this straight.” Oscar lifted his hand silently and began gesturing frantically at Kevin—Get This On Tape. Open Your Laptop. Take Notes! “Jules, are you telling me that the Governor of Louisiana is using Haitian refugees as human guinea pigs for behavioral experiments?”
“I wouldn’t swear to that in a court of law—because I cain’t get anyone to come out here and look! Nobody’s complaining about it, that’s the problem. They’re the happiest goddamn Haitians in the whole world.”
“It must be neural, then. Some kind of mood-altering treatment.”
“Maybe. But it’s not like any kind of dope I ever saw or heard tell of. I just don’t have the words to properly describe this situation. I just don’t have the words.”
“And you want me to come and see it with you.”
“I’m not saying that, Oscar. I’m just saying…well, the parish police are crooked, the state militia is crooked, the Secret Service won’t listen to me anymore, and nobody even cares. They’re Haitians, from a barren, drowning island, and nobody cares. Not a damn soul cares.”
“Oh, believe me, I care, Jules. Trust me on that one.”
“It’s more than I can stand, that’s all. I can’t sleep nights, thinkin’ about it.”
“Rest easy. You have done the right and proper thing. I am definitely going to take steps. Is there a way that I can contact you? Safely, confidentially?”
“Nope. Not anymore. I threw all my phones away.”
“How can I pursue this matter, then?”
“I’m retired! Hell, Oscar, don’t let anybody know that I outed this thing! I live here now. I love this place. I wanna die here.”
“Now, Jules, you know that’s not right. This is a very serious matter. You’re either a player, or you’re not a player. You can’t teeter along on the edge like this.”
“Okay. I’m not a player.” The phone went dead.
Oscar turned to Kevin. “Were you following the gist of that?”
“Who was that guy? Is he nuts?”
“That’s my former krewe security chief, Jules Fontenot. He ran security for the Bambakias campaign. He happens to be a Cajun. He retired just before I met you, and he’s been out in the bayou, fishing, ever since.”
“And now he’s calling you up with some cock-and-bull story about a scandal, and he’s trying to lure you into the backwoods of Louisiana?”
“That’s right. And I’m going.”
“Hold on, cowboy. Think about this. What’s more likely? That Huey is running weird atrocity camps in the bayou, or that your former friend the Cajun has just been turned against you? This is a trap, man. So they can kidnap you just like they tried before. They’re gonna curb-stomp you and feed you to the alligators.”
“Kevin, I appreciate that hypothesis. That’s good, street-smart, bodyguard-style thinking. But let me give you the political angle on this. I know Fontenot. He was a Secret Service special agent. I trusted that man with my life—and with the Senator’s life, the life of the whole krewe. Maybe he’s plotting to kidnap and murder me now. But if Huey can turn Jules Fontenot into a murderous traitor, then America as we know it has ceased to exist. It would mean that we’re doomed.”
“So you’re going into Louisiana to investigate these things he told you about.”
“Of course I am. The only question is, how and under what circumstances. I’m going to have to give this project some serious thought.”
“Okay, I’m going with you, then.”
Oscar narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
“A lot of reasons. I’m supposed to be your bodyguard. I’m in your krewe. You pay me. I’m the successor of this Fontenot guy that you’re so impossibly respectful of. But mostly—it’s because I’m so sick and tired of you always being four steps ahead of me.” Kevin slapped his desk. “Look at me, man. I’m a very smart, clever, sneaky guy. I’m a hacker. And I’m good at it! I’m such a net-dot-legend that I can take over federal science labs. I slot right into the Moderators. I even hang out with NSC agents. But no matter what I do, you always do something crazier. You’re always ahead of me. I’m a technician, and you’re a politician, and you’re always outthinking me. You don’t even take me seriously.”
“That is not true. I know that you count! I take you with complete seriousness, Captain Scubbly Bee.”
Kevin sighed. “Just make a little room for me in the back of your campaign bus, all right? That’s all I ask.”
“I need to talk to Greta about this development. She’s my neural science expert.”
“Right. No problem. Just a second.” Kevin stood up and limped barefoot to a desktop computer. He typed in parameters. A schematic map of the Collaboratory appeared. He studied it. “Okay. You’ll find Dr. Penninger in her supersecret lab in the fourth floor of the Human Resources division.”
“What? Greta’s supposed to be here at the party.”
“Dr. Penninger hates parties. She
bores real easily. Didn’t you know that? I like doing favors for Dr. Penninger. Dr. Penninger’s not like most women—you can talk to her seriously about stuff that matters. She needed a safe house in case of attacks, so I built her a cute little secret lab over in Human Resources. She fired all those clowns anyway, so there’s plenty of room now.”
“How do you know where she is at this very moment?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I’m Security, and she’s the lab’s Director. I always know where the Director is.”
__________
After considerable ceremonial pressing of the flesh, Oscar left the party to find Greta. Thanks to Kevin’s explicit surveillance, this wasn’t difficult.
Kevin and his prole gangs had assembled a hole-in-the-wall workspace for Greta. Oscar punched in a four-digit code, and the door opened. The room was dark, and he saw Greta crouched over her dissecting microscope, its lights the only illumination. Both her eyes were pressed to the binocular mounts and both her hands were encased in step-down AFM dissection gloves. She had thrown a lab coat over her glamorous party gear. The room was as bare as a monk’s cell, and Greta was utterly intent: silently and methodically tearing away at some tiny fabric of the universe.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She looked up, nodded, and returned her attention to the lenses.
“Why did you leave the party?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You weren’t paying any attention to me.”
Oscar was surprised, even mildly thrilled, to see Greta being coy. “We’re in the Emergency Committee. You see me for hours and hours every day.”
“We’re never together. You’ve lost interest in me. You’re neglecting me.”
Oscar paused. He was certainly interested now. It occurred to him suddenly that he deeply enjoyed this part of a relationship. Women always seemed more interesting to him as objects of negotiation than they were as lovers or partners. This was a sinister self-revelation. He felt very contrite about it.
“Greta, I don’t like to admit it, but you’re right. Now that everyone knows we’re lovers, we never have time for ourselves. We were together in a public situation tonight, and I tactlessly deserted you. I admit that. I regret it. I’m going to make it up to you.”
“Listen to yourself. It’s like you’re addressing a committee. We’re just two politicians now. You talk to me like a diplomat. I have to read speeches from the President that are full of lies. I don’t get to work at anything that interests me. I spend my whole life in an endless political crisis. I hate administration. God, I feel so guilty.”
“Why? It’s important work. Someone has to do it. You’re good at it! People respect you.”
“I never felt this guilty when we were off in beach hotels having sleazy, half-violent sex. It wasn’t the center of my life or anything, but it was really interesting. A good-looking, charming guy with hundred-and-one-degree core body heat, that’s pretty fascinating. A lot more interesting than watching all my research die on the vine.”
“Oh no, not you too,” Oscar said. “Don’t tell me you’re turning on me now when I’ve put so much effort into this. So many people have left me now. They just don’t believe it can work.”
She looked at him with sudden pity. “Poor Oscar. You’ve got it all backward. That’s not why I feel guilty. I’m guilty because I know it’s going to work. Talking with those Moderators for so long…I really understand it now. Science truly is going to change. It’ll still be ‘Science.’ It’ll have the same intellectual structure, but its political structure will be completely different. Instead of being poorly paid government workers, we’ll be avant-garde dissident intellectuals for the dispossessed. And that will work for us. Because we can get a better deal from them now than we can from the government. The proles are not so new; they’re just like big, hairy, bad-smelling college students. We can deal with people like that. We do it all the time.”
He brightened. “Are you sure?”
“It’ll be like a new academia, with some krewe feudal elements. It’ll be a lot like the Dark Ages, when universities were little legal territories all their own, and scholars carried maces and wore little square hats, and whenever the university was crossed, they sent huge packs of students into the streets to tear everything up, until they got their way. Except it’s not the Dark Ages right now. It’s the Loud Ages, it’s the Age of Noise. We’ve destroyed our society with how much we know, and how quickly and randomly we can move it around. We live in the Age of Noise, and this is how we learn to be the scientists of the Age of Noise. We don’t get to be government functionaries who can have all the money we want just because we give the government a lot of military-industrial knowledge. That’s all over now. From now on we’re going to be like other creative intellectuals. We’re going to be like artists or violin-makers, with our little krewes of fans who pay attention and support us.”
“Wonderful, Greta. It sounds great!”
“We’ll do cute, attractive, sexy science, with small amounts of equipment. That’s what science has to be in America now. We can’t do it the European way, where there’s all kinds of moral fretting and worrying about what technology will do to people; there’s no fun in that, it’s just not American. We’ll be like Orville Wright in the bicycle shed from now on. It won’t be easier for us. It’ll be harder for us. But we’ll have our freedom. Our American freedom. It’s a vote of confidence in the human imagination.”
“You are a politician, Greta! You’ve had a big breakthrough here. I’m with you all the way.” He felt so proud.
“Sure—it might be wonderful, if it were somebody else doing this. I hate doing this to science. I’m deeply sorry that I’m doing it. But I’m on the cutting edge, and I just don’t have any choice.”
“What would you rather be doing?”
“What?” she demanded. “I’d rather be finishing my paper on inhibition of acetylcholine release in the hippocampus. It’s all I ever wanted to do! I live and dream that someday this horrible mess will all be finished, and somehow, somebody will let me do what I want.”
“I know that’s what you want. I really understand that now. I know what it means, too, Greta: it means I’ve failed you.”
“No. Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. The big picture is going to work.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I can show you.” She found her purse and left the room. A light came on. He heard water running. It occurred to Oscar that he had entirely forgotten the original subject of his visit. Huey. Huey, and his purported refugee camp full of Haitians. He was absolutely sure that Huey, obsessed with Cognition as the Next Big Thing, had done something ecstatic and dreadful. He knew it had something to do with Greta’s neural work. Hellishly, Greta herself had absolutely no interest in the practical implications of the things she did. She couldn’t bear the strangling intellectual constraints involved in having to care. She couldn’t abide the foul and endless political and moral implications of the pure pursuit of knowledge. They bored her beyond all reason. They just weren’t science. There was nothing scientific about them. The reactions of society no longer made any sense. Innovation had burned out the brakes. What could become of scientists in a world like that? What the hell was to be done with them?
She entered the room. She’d given herself a rapid little makeover at the bathroom sink. Her eyes were lined in jagged black, her cheeks streaked in colored war paint.
He was stunned.
“I didn’t invent this myself,” she said defensively. “Your image consultant did it for me—for the party tonight. I was going to wear it to the party for you, but it was just too ridiculous. So I scraped it all off at the last minute.”
“Oh, that was a big mistake,” he said, and laughed in astonishment. “That is beautiful. That is truly hot. That is beyond amazing. It is so transgressive. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”
“You’re seeing a thirty-six-year-old Jewish woman who’s made up like a crazy d
erelict.”
“Oh no. The fact that it’s Greta Penninger, that’s what makes it work. That it’s a Nobel Prize-winning federal lab Director who is still in her hose and a lab coat, and she’s outed herself as an urban guerrilla.” He bit his lip. “Turn around for me. Show me.”
She spread her hands and whirled in place. She had a junk-jewelry headdress of linked beads clipped in the back of her head. “You like this, don’t you? I guess it’s not that bad. I don’t look any weirder than the President does, do I?”
“Greta…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t understand how well that works. That really works for me. I’m getting all hot and bothered.”
She gazed at him in surprise. “Huh. My mother always said a good makeover would get a guy’s attention.”
“Take the lab coat off. In fact, take your blouse off.”
“Wait a minute. Put your hands down.”
“You know how long it’s been? Absolutely forever. I can’t even remember the last time.”
“Okay! Later! In a bed! And when your face isn’t that color.”
He put his hand to his cheek. His skin was blazing. Surprised, he touched his ears. His ears were so hot they felt stir-fried. “Wow,” he muttered. “I’m all overcome.”
“It’s just makeup.”
“No it isn’t. Now I know why Donna wanted to stay around here—now I know why Donna said that things were just getting interesting. That woman is a little genius. You can’t claim that’s just skin-deep. That’s a lie, it’s like saying that a vow of chastity and a nun’s veil are just some words and some black cloth. Sure, it’s just a symbol, but it puts you in a whole different moral universe. I’m having a major brain wave here.”
“No, Oscar. I think you’re having some kind of fit.”
“This is going to work. This is huge. We’ve been thinking way too small. We’ve got to break out of the box. We’re going to carry the war right to the enemy. Listen. I need to go to Louisiana.”
“What? Why?”
“We’ll both go there together. We’re great whenever we’re there. Louisiana really works for us. We’ll go on a triumphal tour of the state. We will throw Huey and the Regulators totally on the defensive. We’ll go in a fleet of limos, with maximum media coverage. We’ll hire campaign buses, we’ll do a campaign tour. We’ll get sound trucks and copters. We will saturate the whole state. It’ll be totally romantic. We’ll give scandalous, teasing interviews. You’ll become a sexy science pop star. We’ll do pinups of you, T-shirts, bumper stickers, your own fragrance and lingerie. We’ll build little Collaboratories wherever we go. I’ve got all kinds of astounding plans from Bambakias that we can put to use right away. We’ll lead a people’s march on Baton Rouge. We’ll picket the statehouse. We’ll beard Huey right in his den. We’ll nail him down and erase him.”
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