Distraction

by Bruce Sterling

  “Vodka gives me headaches. Tequila tastes nasty.” She placed her pointed upper lip on the rim of her bistro glass and had a long meditative sip. Then she shuddered. “Yum! You don’t drink at all, do you?”

  “No. And you should take it a little easier. Straight gin kills neurons by the handful.”

  “I kill neurons for a living, Oscar. Let’s play.”

  They had a third game. The booze had melted something inside her head and she was playing hard. He fought as if his life depended on it. He was barely holding his own.

  “Nine free stones are way too many for you,” he said. “We should cut you back to six.”

  “You’re going to win again, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe twenty points.”

  “Fifteen. But we don’t have to finish this one now.”

  “No.” He was holding a white stone between two fingertips. “We don’t have to finish.”

  He reached out across the board. He touched his two fingers to the underside of her chin very gently. She looked up in surprise, and he drew a caress along the line of her jaw. Then he leaned in slowly, until their lips met.

  A throwaway kiss. Barely there, like eiderdown. He slipped his hand to the nape of her neck and leaned in seriously. The bright taste of gin parched his tongue.

  “Let’s get in bed,” he said.

  “That really isn’t smart.”

  “I know it isn’t, but let’s do it anyway.”

  They levered themselves from the floor. They crossed the room and climbed into the square brass bed.

  It was the worst sex he had ever had. It was halting, jittery, analytical sex. Sex devoid of any warm animal rapport. All the simple, liberating pleasure of the act was somehow discounted in advance, while postcoital remorse and regret loomed by their bedside like a pair of drooling voyeurs. They didn’t so much finish it, as negotiate a way to stop.

  “This bed’s very rickety,” she said politely. “It really squeaks.”

  “I should have bought a new one.”

  “You can’t buy an entire new bed just for one night.”

  “I can’t help the one night; I leave for Washington tomorrow.”

  She levered herself up in the shiny sheets. Her china-white shoulders had a fine network of little blue veins. “What are you going to tell them in Washington?”

  “What do you want me to tell them in Washington?”

  “Tell them the truth.”

  “You always tell me that you want the truth, Greta. But do you know what it means when you get it?”

  “Of course I want the truth. I always want the truth. No matter what.”

  “All right, then I’ll give you some truth.” He laced his hands behind his head, drew a breath, and stared at the ceiling. “Your laboratory was built by a politician who was deeply corrupt. Texas lost the space program when it shut down. They never quite made the big time in digital. So they tried very hard to move into biotech. But East Texas was the stupidest place in the world to build a genetics lab. They could have built it in Stanford, they could have built it in Raleigh, they could have built it on Route 128. But Dougal convinced them to build it miles from nowhere, in the deep piney woods. He used the worst kind of Luddite panic tactics. He convinced Congress to fund a giant airtight biohazard dome, with every possible fail-safe device, just so he could line the pockets of a big gang of military contractors who’d fallen off their gravy train and needed the federal contracts. And the locals loved him for that. They voted him in again and again, even though they had no idea what biotechnology was or what it really meant. The people of East Texas were simply too backward to build a genetic industry base, even with a massive pork-barrel jump start. So all the spin-offs moved over the state border, and they ended up in the pockets of Dougal’s very best pal and disciple, a ruthless demagogue from Cajun country. Green Huey is a populist of the worst sort. He really thinks that genetic engineering belongs by right in the hands of semiliterate swamp-dwellers.”

  He glanced at her. She was listening.

  “So Huey deliberately—and this took a weird kind of genius, I’ll admit this—he deliberately boiled down your lab’s best research discoveries into plug-and-play recipes that any twelve-year-old child could use. He took over a bunch of defunct Louisiana oil refineries, and he turned those dead refineries into giant bubbling cauldrons of genetic voodoo. Huey declared all of Louisiana a free-fire zone for unlicensed DNA gumbo. And you know something? Louisianans are extremely good at the work. They took to gene-splicing like muskrats to water. They have a real native gift for the industry. They love it! They love Huey for giving it to them. Huey gave them a new future, and they made him a king. Now he’s power-mad, he basically rules the state by decree. Nobody dares to question him.”

  She had gone very pale.

  “The Texans never voted Dougal out of office. Texans would never do that. They don’t care how much he stole, he’s their patron, the alcalde, the godfather, he stole it all for Texas, so that’s good enough for them. No, the damn guy just drank himself stupid. He kept boozing till he blew out his liver, and couldn’t make a quorum call anymore. So now Dougal’s finally out of the picture for good. So do you know what that means to you?”

  “What?” she said flatly.

  “It means your party’s almost over. It costs a fortune to run that giant cucumber-frame, much more than the place is really worth to anybody, and the country is broke. If you’re going to do genetic research nowadays, you can do it very cheaply, in very simple buildings. In somebody else’s constituency.”

  “But there’s the animals,” she said. “The genetic facilities.”

  “That’s the truly tragic part. You can’t save an endangered species by cloning animals. I admit, it’s better than having them completely exterminated and lost forever. But they’re curios now, they walk around looking pretty, they’ve become collector’s items for the ultra-rich. A living species isn’t just the DNA code, it’s the whole spread of genetic variety in a big wild population, plus their learned behaviors, and their prey and their predators, all inside a natural environment. But there aren’t any natural environments anymore. Because the climate has changed.”

  He sat up, the bedsprings crunching loudly. “The climate’s in flux now. You can’t shelter whole environments under airtight domes. Only two kinds of plants really thrive in today’s world: genetically altered crops, and really fast-moving weeds. So our world is all bamboo and kudzu now, it has nothing to do with the endangered foxglove lady’s slipper and its precious niche on some forgotten mountain. Politically, we hate admitting this to ourselves, because it means admitting the full extent of our horrible crimes against nature, but that’s ecological reality now. That’s the truth you asked me for. That is reality. Paying tons of money to preserve bits of Humpty Dumpty’s shell is strictly a pious gesture.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to tell your Senators.”

  “No, no, I never said that.” Oscar sighed. “I just wanted to tell you the truth.”

  “What do you want to tell your Senators?”

  “What do I want? I want you. I want you to be on my side. I want to reform your situation, and I want you to help me and counsel me.”

  “I have my own krewe, thank you.”

  “No, you don’t have anything. You have a very expensive facility that is on a short-term loan. And you’re dealing with people in Washington who can misplace an air base and laugh about it. No, when I look at your game from your position, I see that you have two realistic options. Number one, get out now, before the purge. Take another post, academia maybe, even Europe. If you angle it right, you can probably take some of your favorite grad students and bottle-washers with you.”

  She scowled. “What’s option number two?”

  “Take power. A preemptive strike. Just take the place over, and root out every one of those crooked sons of bitches. Come clean about everything, get ahead of the curve, and blow the place wide open.” Oscar levered himself
up on one elbow. “If you leak it at just the right time, through just the right sources, and in just the right order, with just the right spin, you can get rid of the featherbedders and save most of the people who are doing actual research. That’s a very risky gambit, and it probably won’t succeed, and it will make you stacks of bitter enemies for life. But there is one saving grace there: if you’re turning the place upside down yourself, Congress will be so amazed that they won’t get around to shutting you down. If you get good press, and if they like your style, they might even back you.”

  She sank back, crushed, against the pillow. “Look, I just want to work in my lab.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “It’s very important work.”

  “I know it is, but that’s just not an option.”

  “You don’t really believe in anything, do you?”

  “Yes I do,” he said passionately. “I believe that smart people working together can make a difference in this world. I know you’re very smart, and if we work together, then maybe I can help you. If you’re not with me, then you’re on your own.”

  “I’m not helpless. I have friends and colleagues who trust me.”

  “Well, that’s lovely. You can all be helpless together.”

  “No, it’s not lovely. Because you’re sleeping with me. And you’re telling me you’re going to destroy everything I work for.”

  “Look, it’s the truth! Would it be better if I slept with you and didn’t tell you what was going on? Because the possibility distinctly occurred to me. But I don’t have the heart.”

  “You have the wrong person for this. I hate administration. I can’t take power. I’m no good at it.”

  “Greta, look at me. I could make you good at it. Don’t you understand that? I run political campaigns, I’m an expert. That’s my job.”

  “What a horrible thing to say.”

  “We could do it, all right. Especially if you weighed in with us, if you’d let us advise you and help you. My krewe and I, we took an architect who had five percent approval ratings and we made him Senator from Massachusetts. Your sad little fishbowl has never seen people like us.”

  “Well…” She sighed. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Good. You do that. I’ll be gone for a while. Washington, Boston…Give the subject some serious thought.” His stomach rumbled. “After all that ranting, I’m not a bit sleepy. Are you sleepy?”

  “God, no.”

  “I’m starving. Let’s go get something to eat. You brought a car, right?”

  “It’s a junker car. Internal combustion.”

  “It’ll get us into a real town. I’ll take you out tonight. We’ll go out somewhere, we’ll paint the town together.”

  “Are you nuts? You can’t do that. Crazy people are trying to kill you.”

  He waved a hand. “Oh, who cares? We can’t live that way. What’s the use? Anyway, the risk is minimal here. It would take a major-league intelligence operation to track us down here in this dump. I’m much safer at some random restaurant than I’ll be in Washington or Boston. This is our only night together. Let’s be brave. Let’s find the nerve to be happy.”

  __________

  They dressed, left the beach house, got into the car. Greta started it with a metal key. The engine growled in ugly piston-popping fashion. Then Greta’s phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” Oscar said.

  She ignored him. “Yes?” She paused, then handed it over. “It’s for you.”

  It was Fontenot. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Are you still awake? We’re going out for dinner.”

  “Of course I’m awake! I was up as soon as you left the safe house. You can’t leave Holly Beach, Oscar.”

  “Look, it’s the middle of the night, nobody knows we’re here, we’re in a rented car with no history, and we’re picking a town at random.”

  “You want to eat? We’ll bring you in some food. What if you get pulled over by a parish sheriff? They’ll punch you into the state police net. You think that’ll be a fun experience for a Yankee who’s crossed Green Huey? Think otherwise, pal.”

  “Should that happen, I’ll lodge a complaint with the American embassy.”

  “Very funny. Stop being stupid, okay? I finessed the Holly Beach thing for you, and that wasn’t easy. If you depart from the itinerary, I can’t be responsible.”

  “Keep driving,” Oscar told Greta. “Jules, I appreciate your professionalism, I really do, but we need to do this, and there’s no time to argue about it.”

  “All right,” Fontenot groaned. “Take the highway east and I’ll get back to you.”

  Oscar hung up and gave Greta her phone. “Did you ever have a bodyguard?” he said.

  She nodded. “Once. After the Nobel announcement. It was me and Danny Yearwood. After the big news broke, Danny started getting all these threats from the animal rights people…Nobody ever threatened me about it, and that was so typical. They just went after Danny. We shared the Nobel, but I was the one doing all the labwork…We had some security during the press coverage, but the stalkers just waited them out. Later they jumped poor Danny outside his hotel and broke both his arms.”

  “Really.”

  “I always figured it was the fetal-tissue people who were the real anti-science crazies. The righters mostly just broke into labs and stole animals.”

  She peered carefully into the moving pool of headlights, grasping the wheel with her narrow hands. “Danny was so good about the credit. He put my name first on the paper—it was my hypothesis, I did the labwork, so that was very ethical, but he was just such an angel about it. He just fought for me and fought for me, he never let them overlook me. He gave me every credit that he could, and then they stalked him and beat him up, and they completely ignored me. His wife really hated my guts.”

  “How is Dr. Yearwood, these days? How could I get in touch with him?”

  “Oh, he’s out. He left science, he’s in banking now.”

  “You’re kidding. Banking? He won the Nobel Prize for medicine.”

  “Oh, the Nobel doesn’t count so much, since those Swedish bribery scandals…A lot of people said that was why we got the Prize in the first place, a woman still in her twenties, they were trying some kind of clean-slate approach. I don’t care, I just enjoy the labwork. I like framing the hypothesis. I like the procedures, I like proper form. I like the rigor, the integrity. I like publishing, seeing it all there in black and white, all very tight and straight. It’s knowledge then. It’s forever.”

  “You really love your work, Greta. I respect that.”

  “It’s very hard. If you get famous, they just won’t let you work anymore. They bump you up in the hierarchy, they promote you out of the lab, there’s a million stupid distractions. Then it’s not about science anymore. It’s all about feeding your postdoc’s children. The whole modern system of science is just a shadow of what it was in the Golden Age—the First Cold War. But…” She sighed. “I don’t know. I did all right personally. Other people have had it so much worse.”

  “Such as?”

  “There was this woman once. Rita Levi-Montalcini. You know about her?”

  “I’ll know if you tell me.”

  “She was another Nobelist. She was Jewish, in the 1930s, in Italy. A neuro-embryologist. The Fascists were trying to round her up, and she was hiding in this village in a shack. She made dissection tools out of wire and she got these hen’s eggs…She had no money, and she couldn’t show her face, and the government was literally trying to kill her, but she got her lab results anyway, major results…She survived the war and she got away. She ran to America, and they gave her a really great lab job, and she ended up as this ninety-year-old famous world-class neuro person. She’s exactly what it’s all about, Rita was.”

  “You want me to drive a little now?”

  “I’m sorry that I’m crying.”

  “That’s all right. Just pull over.�
��

  They stepped out in the darkness and switched positions in the car. He drove off with a loud crunch of roadside oyster shells. It had been a long time since he’d done any of his own driving. He tried to pay a lot of attention, as he was anxious not to kill them. Things were becoming so interesting. The sex had been a debacle, but sex was only part of it anyway. He was getting through to her now. Getting through was what counted.

  “You shouldn’t let them destroy my lab, Oscar. I know the place never lived up to its hype, but it’s a very special place, it shouldn’t be destroyed.”

  “That’s an easy thing to say. It might even be doable. But how hard are you willing to fight for what you want? What will you give? What will you sacrifice?”

  Her phone rang again. She answered it. “It’s your friend again,” she said, “he wants us to go to some place called Buzzy’s. He’s called ahead for us.”

  “My friend is really a very fine man.”

  __________

  They drove into the town of Cameron, and they found the restaurant. Buzzy’s was a music spot of some pretension, it was open late and the tourist crowd was good. The band was playing classical string quartets. Typical Anglo ethnic music. It was amazing how many Anglos had gone into the booming classical music scene. Anglos seemed to have some innate talent for rigid, linear music that less troubled ethnic groups couldn’t match.

  Fontenot had phoned them in a reservation as Mr. and Mrs. Garcia. They got a decent table not far from the kitchen, and a healthy distance from the bar, where a group of Texan tourists in evening dress were loudly drinking themselves stupid amid the brass and the mirrors. There were cloth napkins, decent silverware, attentive waiters, menus in English and French. It was cozy, and became cozier yet when Fontenot himself arrived and took a table near the door. It felt very warm and relaxing to have a bodyguard awake, sober, and checking all the arrivals.

  “I need seafood,” Oscar announced, studying his menu. “Lobster would be nice. Haven’t had a decent lobster since I left Boston.”

  “Écrevisse,” Greta said.

  “What’s that?”