Distraction Page 5

  “He will?” She blinked. “Why?”

  “And of course Pelicanos and Lana Ramachandran and I will be plugging away…So there will be work for you here. Not like the campaign was, of course, nothing so intense or hectic, but proper image is still very important to us. Even here. Maybe especially here.”

  “I might stay on with you awhile,” Donna said serenely, “but I wasn’t born yesterday. So you’d better tell me something better than that.”

  Oscar slapped his laptop shut, and stood up. “Donna, you’re right. We should talk seriously. Let’s go for a little stroll.”

  Donna quickly closed her sewing basket and got to her feet. She’d come to know Oscar’s basic routines, and was pleased to be out with him on one of his confidential walking conferences. Oscar was touched to see her being so streetwise—she kept glancing alertly over her shoulder, as if expecting to find them trailed by sinister operatives in black trench coats.

  “You see, it’s like this,” Oscar told her soberly. “We won that election, and we won it walking away. But Alcott Bambakias is still a newcomer, a political outsider. Even after he’s sworn into office, he still won’t have much clout or credibility. He’s just the junior Senator from Massachusetts. He has to pick and choose the issues where he can make a difference.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “He’s an architect, a large-scale builder with a very innovative practice. So science and technology issues are naturals for him.” Oscar paused judiciously. “And, of course, urban development. But housing’s not our problem at the moment.”

  “This place is our problem.”

  Oscar nodded. “Exactly. Donna, I know that working in a giant, airtight, gene-splicing lab might seem pretty mundane. Obviously this isn’t a plum Senate assignment, compared to the Dutch Cold War or those catastrophes out in the Rockies. But this is still a major federal installation. When this place started, it worked pretty well: a lot of basic advances in biotechnology, some good jump starts for American industry, especially next door in Louisiana. But those glory days were years ago, and now this place is a pork-barrel bonanza. Kickbacks, payoffs, sweetheart deals…I hardly know where to start.”

  She looked pleased. “It sounds like you’ve already started.”

  “Well…Officially, I’m here to work for the Senate Science Committee. I no longer have any formal ties to Bambakias. But the Senator has arranged that, deliberately. He knows that this place requires a serious shaking-up. So, our agenda here is to provide him with what he needs for a real reform effort. We’re laying the groundwork for his first legislative success.”

  “I see.”

  Oscar took her elbow politely as they sidestepped a passing okapi. “I’m not saying that the work will be easy. It could get ugly. There are a lot of vested interests here. Hidden agendas. Much more here than meets the eye. But if this were easy work, everybody would do it. Not people with our talents.”

  “I’ll stay on.”

  “Good! I’m glad.”

  “I’m glad that you’re leveling with me, Oscar. And you know? I think I need to tell you this, right now. Your personal background problem—I just want you to know, that whole business never bothered me. Not for one minute. I mean, I just thought the issue through, and then I put it right out of my mind.”

  __________

  It seemed unlikely that anybody would be doing anything ambitious with the telephones in the children’s playground. So Fontenot had arranged for Oscar to take the Senator’s voice call there. Oscar watched a ragged pack of scientists’ children screaming like apes on the jungle gym.

  Fontenot carefully hooked a Secret Service-approved encryptor to the wallphone’s candy-colored mouthpiece.

  “You’ll notice a time lag,” Fontenot warned Oscar. “They’re doing traffic analysis countermeasures back in Boston.”

  “What about the locals? Are they a monitoring threat?”

  “Have you been to the police offices here?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I have. Maybe ten years ago they were still taking security seriously. Now you could knock this place over with a broomstick.” Fontenot hung the brightly colored handset in its plastic cradle, then turned and studied the capering children. Like their parents, they were bareheaded and shaggy and wore geekish, ill-fitting clothes. “Nice-looking kids.”

  “Mmmmh.”

  “Never had the proper time for little ones…” Fontenot’s hooded eyes were full of obscure distress.

  The phone rang. Oscar answered it at once. “Yes?”

  “Oscar.”

  Oscar straightened a little. “Yes, Senator.”

  “Good to hear from you,” Bambakias announced. “Good to hear your voice. I sent you a few files a while ago, but that’s never the same, is it.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I want to thank you for bringing that Louisiana matter to my attention. Those tapes you sent.” Bambakias’s resonant voice glided upward into its podium pitch. “That roadblock. The Air Force. Amazing, Oscar. Outrageous!”

  “Yes sir.”

  “It’s a complete scandal! It beggars belief! Those are citizens serving in the uniform of the United States! Our own armed forces!” Bambakias drew a swift breath, and grew yet more intense and sonorous. “How on earth can we expect to command the loyalties of the men and women who are sworn to defend our country, when we cynically use them as pawns in a cheap, sordid power struggle? We’ve literally abandoned them to starve to death, freezing in the dark!”

  Fontenot had joined the children at the teeter-totter. Fontenot had shed his vest and hat and was cordially helping a squirming three-year-old onto the end of the board. “Senator, nobody starves nowadays. With food as cheap as it is, that’s almost impossible. And they’re not likely to freeze here in the Deep South, either.”

  “You’re evading my point. That base has no funding. It’s lost its legal standing. If you believe the Emergency budget committee, that Air Force base no longer even exists! They’ve simply been written out of the record. They’ve been turned into political nonpersons by a stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen!”

  “Well, that’s certainly true.”

  “Oscar, there is a major issue here. America’s had her ups and downs, nobody denies that, but we’re still a great power. No great power can treat its soldiers this way. I can’t recognize any extenuating circumstances for this. It’s absurd, it’s rank folly. What if this behavior spreads? Do we want the Army, the Navy, and the Marines shaking down the citizens—the voters—just so they can scratch up enough cash to live? That’s mutiny! It’s open banditry! It’s close to treason!”

  Oscar turned from the shrieking children and cradled the phone at his ear. Oscar knew full well that roadblocks were a very common business. On any particular day, hordes of people blocked roads and streets all over the USA. Roadblocking was no longer considered “highway robbery,” it had become a generally tolerated form of civil disobedience. Roadblocking was just a real-world analog for the native troubles that had always existed on information highways: jamming, spamming, and denial of service. To have the Air Force getting into the act was just a somewhat exotic extension of a very common practice.

  But on the other hand, Bambakias’s rhetoric clearly had merit. It sounded very strong and punchy. It was clear, it was quotable. It was a bit far-fetched, but it was very patriotic. One of the great beauties of politics as an art form was its lack of restriction to merely standard forms of realism.

  “Senator, there’s a great deal to what you say.”

  “Thank you,” Bambakias said. “Of course, there’s nothing much we can do about this scandal, legislatively speaking. Since I’m not yet officially in office and won’t be sworn in until mid-January.”

  “No?”

  “No. So, I believe a moral gesture is necessary.”

  “Aha.”

  “At least—at the very least—I can demonstrate personal solidarity with the plight of our soldiers.”

&nb
sp; “Yes?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I’m holding a net conference here in Cambridge. Lorena and I are declaring a hunger strike. Until the United States Congress agrees to feed our men and women in uniform, my wife and I will go hungry as well.”

  “A hunger strike?” Oscar said. “That’s a very radical move for an elected federal official.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to lead any hunger strikes after I take office,” Bambakias said reasonably. He lowered his voice. “Listen, we think this is doable. We’ve discussed it at the Washington office and the Cambridge HQ. Lorena says that we’re both fat as hogs from six months of those campaign dinners. If this gambit is going to work at all, it might very well work right now.”

  “Is it”—Oscar chose his words—“is it fully consonant with the dignity of the office?”

  “Look, I never promised the voters dignity. I promised them results. Washington’s lost its grip, and everything they try just makes it worse. If I don’t seize the initiative from these sons of bitches on the Emergency committees, then I might as well declare myself a decorative bookend. That’s not why I wanted the job.”

  “Yes sir,” Oscar said. “I know that.”

  “There is a fallback option…If a hunger strike doesn’t get results, then we can start a convoy and lead our own rescue mission. We’ll ride down to Louisiana and feed that air base ourselves.”

  “You mean,” Oscar said, “something like our campaign construction rallies.”

  “Yes, except nationwide this time. Put the word out through the party apparatus and the net, organize our activists, and rally in Louisiana. Nationwide, Oscar. Rapid construction teams, disaster relief people, the grass-roots charities, pickets, marchers, full coverage. The works.”

  “I like that,” Oscar said. “I like it a lot. It’s visionary.”

  “I knew you’d appreciate that aspect. So you think it’s a credible fallback threat?”

  “Oh yes,” Oscar said at once. “Sure. They know you can afford to do it. Of course a giant protest march is credible. A pro-military protest, that sounds great. But I do have a word of advice, if you’d like to hear it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “The hunger strike is very dangerous. Dramatic moral gestures are very strong meat. They really bring out the sharks.”

  “I realize that, and I’m not afraid of it.”

  “Let me put it this way, Senator. You and your wife had better really starve.”

  “That’s all right,” Bambakias said. “That’s doable. We’ve been hungry for years.”

  __________

  Like most elements of modern American government, the Buna National Collaboratory was run by a committee. The source of local authority was a ten-person board, chaired by the Collaboratory’s Director, Dr. Arno Felzian. The members of the board were the heads of the Collaboratory’s nine administrative divisions.

  Sunshine laws required the board’s weekly meetings to take place publicly. The modern legal meaning of “public” meant camera coverage on a net-accessible address. The older tradition of a public meeting still held true in Buna, though. Collaboratory workers often showed up in person for board meetings, especially if they expected to see some personal ox gored.

  Oscar had chosen to physically attend all of the Collaboratory board meetings. He had no plans to formally announce himself, or to take any part in the committee’s business. He was attending strictly in order to be seen. To make sure that his ominous presence fully registered, he brought with him his net administrator, Bob Argow, and his oppo researcher, Audrey Avizienis.

  The board’s public studio was on the second floor of the Collaboratory’s media center, across an open-air flywalk from the central administration building. The studio had been designed for public meetings back in 2030, with slanted racks of seats, decent acoustics, and nicely placed camera coverage.

  But the Collaboratory’s local government had had a checkered history. The net-center had been looted and partially burned during the lab’s violent internal brawls of 2031. The damaged studio had naturally been somewhat neglected during the ensuing federal witch-hunts and the economic warfare scandals. It had crawled some distance back toward respectable order and repair in 2037, when the Collaboratory had shored up its perennially crisis-stricken finances. Repair contractors had papered over the burn marks and spruced the place up somewhat. The place was a miniature jungle of attractive potted plants.

  The board’s stage was fully functional, with sound baffles, overhead lighting, standard federal-issue table and chairs. The automatic cameras were in order. The board members were gamely plowing through the week’s agenda. The issue currently at hand was replacing the ailing plumbing system in one of the Collaboratory cafeterias. The head of the Contracts & Procurements Division had the floor. He was mournfully reading a list of repair charges from a spreadsheet.

  “I can’t believe it’s this bad,” Argow muttered.

  Oscar deftly adjusted the screen of his laptop. “Bob, there’s something I need to show you.”

  “This is just so impossibly awful.” Argow was ignoring him. “Before I came here, I never really understood the damage we’ve done. The human race, I mean. The terrible harm we’ve done to our planet. Once you really think about it, it’s absolutely horrifying. Do you realize how many species have been killed off in the past fifty years? It’s just a total, epic catastrophe.”

  Audrey leaned in over Oscar’s shoulder. “You promised you’d stop drinking, Bob.”

  “I’m sober as a judge, you little shrew! While you’ve been sitting in the dorm with your nose in your screen, I’ve been touring the gardens here. With the giraffes. And the golden marmosets. All wiped out in a holocaust! We’ve poisoned the ocean, we’ve burned down and plowed the jungles, and we even screwed up the weather. All for the sake of modern life, right? Eight billion psychotic media-freaks!”

  “Well,” sniffed Audrey, “you’re a fine one to talk on that score.”

  Argow flinched theatrically. “That’s right! Rub it in! Look, I know full well that I’m part of the problem. I’ve wasted my life running networks, while the planet was destroyed all around me. Well, so have you, Audrey. We’re both guilty, but the difference is that I can recognize the truth now. The truth has really touched me. It’s touched me in here.” Argow pounded his bulky chest.

  Audrey’s grainy voice grew silkier. “Well, I wouldn’t fret too much, Bob. You’re not good enough at your work to be any real menace.”

  “Take it easy, Audrey,” Oscar said mildly.

  Audrey Avizienis was a professional opposition researcher. Once roused, her critical faculties were lethal. “Look, we all came down here, and I’m doing my damn job. But laughing boy here is being a big, holier-than-thou, depressive bringdown. What, he thinks I can’t appreciate nature just because I spend a lot of time on the net? I know plenty about the birds and the bees, and the butterflies, and the cabbages, and all the rest of that stuff.”

  “What I know,” Argow muttered, “is that the planet is coming apart, and we’re sitting in this stupid building with these hopeless bureaucratic morons dithering on and on about their sewage problems.”

  “Bob,” Oscar said calmly, “you’re missing something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s every bit as bad as you say. It’s worse than you say. Much worse. But this is the biggest bio-research center in the world. These people in front of us—these are the people who are in charge of this place. So you’re at the front lines now. You’re guilty all right, but you’re nowhere near as guilty as you will be, if you don’t shape up. Because we are in power and you are the responsible party now.”

  “Oh,” Argow said.

  “So get a grip.” Oscar flipped back his laptop screen. “Now, take a look at this. You too, Audrey. You’re systems professionals, and I need your input here.”

  Argow examined Oscar’s laptop screen, his owlish eyes glowing. A lime-green plane with lumpy reddish moun
tains. “Uhm…yeah, I’ve seen those before. That’s a, uhm…”

  “It’s an algorithmic landscape,” Audrey said intently. “A visualization map.”

  “I just received this program from Leon Sosik,” Oscar said. “This is Sosik’s simulation map for current public issues. These mountains and valleys, they’re supposed to model current political trends. Press coverage, the feedback from constituents, the movement of lobbying funds, dozens of factors that Sosik fed into his simulator…But now watch this. See, I’m moving these close-up crosshairs…See that big yellow amoeba sitting on that purple blur? That is the current public position of Senator-elect Alcott Bambakias.”

  “What,” Argow said skeptically, “he’s way down that slope?”

  “No he’s not, not anymore. He’s actually moving up the slope…” Oscar double-clicked. “See, this huge khaki mountain range represents military affairs…Now I’ll kick the simulation back a week, and run it back up to the Bambakias press conference this morning…See the way he kind of oozes up to the issue, and then suddenly jets across the landscape?”

  “Wow!” Audrey said. “I’ve always loved old-fashioned hotshot computer graphics.”

  “It’s garbage,” Argow grumbled. “Just because you have a cute simulation doesn’t mean you’re actually connecting to political reality. Or to any kind of reality.”

  “Okay, so it’s not real. I know it’s not real, that’s obvious. But what if it works?”

  “Well,” Argow mused, “even that doesn’t help much. It’s just like stock-market analysis. Even if you get some technique that does work, that’s strictly temporary. Pretty soon everyone else gets the same analytical tools, and then your advantage disappears. You’re right back where you started. Except for one thing. From then on, everything becomes much, much more complicated.”

  “Thanks for that technical insight, Bob. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Oscar paused. “Audrey, why do you suppose Leon Sosik sent me this program?”

  “I guess he appreciates the way you airmailed him that binturong,” Audrey said.

  “Maybe he thought you’d be impressed by this,” Argow said. “Or maybe he’s so old and out-of-it that he really thinks this stuff is new.”