Distraction

by Bruce Sterling

  “Yes he did, Kevin. He mentioned you specifically.”

  Kevin turned to the person nearest at hand, who happened to be Lana Ramachandran. Lana had been rousted from a shower and had rushed to the media center in her dressing gown and slippers. “The President noticed me!” Kevin told her loudly, rising to his full height with a look of ennobled astonishment. “He talked about me! I really count for something! I matter to the President.”

  “God, you are hopeless!” Lana told him, gritting her teeth. “How could you do this to poor Oscar?”

  “Do what?”

  “Look at him, stupid! He’s covered with hives!”

  “Those aren’t hives,” Kevin corrected, staring at Oscar analytically. “It’s more like heat rash or something.”

  “What is this huge bloody lump on his head? You’re supposed to be his bodyguard, you dumb bastard! You’re killing him! He’s only flesh and blood!”

  “No he’s not,” Kevin said, wounded. His phone rang. He answered it. “Yes?” He listened, and his face fell.

  “That big stupid cop-dressing faker,” Lana growled. “Oscar, what’s wrong with you? Say something to me. Let me feel your pulse.” She seized his wrist. “My God! Your skin’s so hot!”

  The front of Lana’s dressing gown fell open. Oscar examined a semicircle of puckered brown nipple. The hair stood up on his neck. He suffered a sudden, violent, crazy surge of sexual arousal. He was out of control. “I need to lie down,” he said.

  Lana looked at him, biting her lip. Her doelike eyes brimmed with tears. “Why can’t they tell when you’re coming apart? Poor Oscar! Nobody even cares.”

  “Maybe a little ice water,” he muttered.

  Lana found his hat and set it gently on his head. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  “Oscar!” Kevin shouted. “The south gate is open! The lab is being invaded! There are hundreds of nomads!”

  Oscar responded instantly, with whipcrack precision. “Are they Regulators or Moderators?” But the emerging words were gibberish. His tongue had suddenly swollen inside his head. His tongue was bloated and huge. It was as if his mouth had two tongues in it.

  “What’ll we do?” Kevin demanded.

  “Just get away from him! Let him be!” Lana shrieked. “Somebody help me with him! He needs help.”

  __________

  Once checked into the Collaboratory clinic, Oscar got the reaction he always received from medical personnel: grave puzzlement and polite distress. He was exhibiting many symptoms of illness, but he couldn’t be properly diagnosed, because his metabolism simply wasn’t entirely human. His temperature was soaring, his heart was racing, his skin was erupting, his blood pressure was off the scale. Given his unique medical background, there was no obvious course of treatment.

  Nevertheless, a proper head bandage, an ice pack, and a few hours of silence did him a lot of good. He finally drifted into a healing sleep. He woke at noon, feeling weary, sore, and shaken, but back in control. He sat up in his hospital bed, sipping tomato juice and examining news on his laptop. Kevin had abandoned him. Lana had insisted that the rest of the krewe leave him alone.

  At one o’clock Oscar had an impromptu gaggle of visitors. Four hairy, booted nomads burst into his private room. The first was General Burningboy. His three young toughs looked impossibly sinister—war-painted, glowering, muscular.

  The General had brought him a large bouquet. Holly, yellow daffodils, and mistletoe. The floral symbolism was painfully obvious.

  “Howdy,” said Burningboy, appropriating a vase and dumping its previous contents. “Heard you were feelin’ poorly, so me and my boys dropped by to cheer you up.”

  Oscar gazed thoughtfully at the invaders. He was glad to see them. It improved his morale to be back on the job so quickly. “That’s very good of you, General. Do have a seat.”

  Burningboy sat on the foot of the clinic bed, which squealed alarmingly under his weight. His three followers, ignoring the room’s two chairs, crouched sullenly on the floor. The oldest one set his back firmly against the door.

  “Not ‘General.’ Corporal. I’m Corporal Burningboy now.”

  “Why the demotion, Corporal?”

  “Simple matter, really. I used up all my network trust and credibility when I ordered fifty girls into this facility. Those young women have fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters—boyfriends, even. I put those little darlings into harm’s way, just on my own recognizance. And, well, that pretty much burned out all my credibility. Years of effort, right down the drain! Now, I’m just some little jasper.”

  Oscar nodded. “I take it this has something to do with reputation servers and your nomad networks of trust.”

  “Yup. You got it.”

  “It seems absurd that you should be demoted, when your paramilitary operation was such a signal success.”

  “Well now…” Burningboy squinted. “I might recoup some of my lost prestige—if it could be shown that we Moderators were derivin’ some benefit from all this risky activity.”

  “Aha.”

  “So far, we haven’t gotten a dang thing outta any of this, except a sleepless night for the worried families of our valiant warriors.”

  “Corporal, you are right. I completely concur with your analysis. Your help was invaluable, and as yet, we’ve done nothing for you in return. I acknowledge that debt. I am a man of my word. You were there for us when we needed you. I want to see you happy, Corporal Burningboy. Just tell me what you want.”

  Burningboy, all beard-grizzled smiles, turned to one of his companions. “Did you hear that? Beautiful speech, wasn’t it? Didya get all that down on tape?”

  “Affirmative,” the nomad thug growled.

  Burningboy returned his attention to Oscar. “I seem to recall a lot of pretty promises about how we Moderators were going to get a lovely press spin out of this, and how we were going to be knights and paladins of federal law and order, and all about how we were going to embarrass our old rivals the Regulators…And not that I doubt your sworn word for a minute, Mr. Presidential Science Adviser, sir, but I just figured that with four hundred Moderators in-house, that would be…how do I put this?”

  “You said it was an incentive,” offered thug number two.

  “That’s the very word. ‘Incentive.’”

  “Very well,” Oscar said. “The facility is in your hands. Your troops took it over last night; and now you’ve occupied it with hundreds of squatters. That wasn’t a part of our original agreement, but I can understand your motives. I hope you can also understand mine. I talked to the President of the United States last night. He told me he’s sending in troops.”

  “He did, eh?”

  “Yes. He promised that a crack brigade of armed paratroops would be flying in this very evening, actually. You might want to take that matter under advisement.”

  “Man, that’s Two Feathers all over,” Burningboy sighed. “I’m not sayin’ that old Geronimo actually lied to you or anything, but he’s kind of famous for that gambit. We Moderators go back pretty far in Colorado, and back when Two Feathers was Governor, he was always sayin’ he’d roust out the National Guard and restore so-called law and order…Sometimes he actually did it, enough to keep you off balance. But just ’cause Two Feathers is wearin’ his war paint, that don’t guarantee any war.”

  “So you’re alleging that the President won’t send troops?”

  “No. I’m just sayin’ that we don’t plan to leave until these so-called troops show up. In fact, we probably won’t leave, even after they show up. I’m not sure you grasp this situation, you being from Massachusetts and all. But we Moderators have had some dealings with the Governor of Colorado. In fact, he owes us some favors.”

  “That’s an interesting allegation, Corporal.”

  “We nomads tend to stick around in times and places where nobody else can survive. That makes us pretty useful sometimes. Especially given that Wyoming was on fire recently, and all that.”

  “I
see.” Oscar paused. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Well, sir, I hate to badger a man when he’s feeling poorly…But frankly, you’re the only man I can tell these things to. You seem to be pretty much all there is around here. I mean, we just got a very firm lecture from your so-called Director. The woman just don’t listen. She has no idea how people live! We were explainin’ to her that we hold all the cards now, and she’s totally at our mercy and so on, but she’s just not buyin’ any of it. She just waits for my lips to stop movin’, and then she launches into this nutty rant about intellectual freedom and the advancement of knowledge and Christ only knows what else…She’s really weird. She’s just a weird-actin’, weird-looking, weird, witchy woman. Then we tried talkin’ to your so-called chief of police…What is it with that guy?”

  “What do you mean, Corporal?”

  Burningboy became uneasy, but he was determined to see the matter through. “It’s not that I have anything against Anglos! I mean, sure there are good, decent, law-abiding Anglo people. But—you know—look at the statistics! Anglos have white-collar crime rates right off the scale. And talk about violent—man, white people are the most violent ethnic group in America. All those cross burnings, and militia bombings, and gun-nut guys…the poor bastards just can’t get a grip.”

  Oscar considered this. It always offended him to hear his fellow Americans discussing the vagaries of “white people.” There was simply no such thing as “white people.” That stereotype was an artificial construct, like the ridiculous term “Hispanic.” In all the rest of the world, a Peruvian was a Peruvian and a Brazilian was a Brazilian—it was only in America that people somehow became this multilingual, multinational entity called a “Hispanic.” Oscar himself passed for a “Hispanic” most of the time, though his own ethnic background was best described as “Not of Human Origin.”

  “You need to get to know my friend Kevin,” he said. “Kevin’s a diamond in the rough.”

  “Okay. Sure. I like a man who sticks up for his friends,” Burningboy said. “But that’s the real reason we’re here now, Oscar. You’re the only man in this place who can talk sense to us. You’re the only one who even knows what’s going on.”

  Oscar now worked for the President of the United States. His new position was enormously helpful in dealing with two thousand naive scientists inside a dome in East Texas. As a practical matter, however, it merely added a new layer of complexity to Oscar’s life.

  Oscar swiftly discovered that he was not, in fact, the National Security Council’s official Science Adviser. A routine security check by the White House krewe had swiftly revealed Oscar’s personal background problem. This was a serious hitch, as the President did not currently employ anyone who was a product of outlaw South American genetic engineering. Given the circumstances, hiring one seemed a bad precedent.

  So, although Oscar had obediently resigned his Senate committee post, he failed to achieve an official post with the National Security Council. He was merely an “informal adviser.” He had no official ranking in the government, and did not even receive a paycheck.

  Despite the President’s assertion, no “crack U.S. Army personnel” arrived in Buna. It seemed that a Presidential order had been issued, but the Army deployment had been indefinitely delayed due to staffing and budget problems. These “staffing and budget problems” were certainly likely enough—they were chronic in the military—but the deeper problems were, of course, political. The U.S. Army as an institution was very mulish about being ordered into potential combat against American civilians. The U.S. Army hadn’t been involved in the gruesome and covert helicopter shoot-out on the banks of the Sabine River. The Army wasn’t anxious to take the political heat for trigger-happy spooks from the NSC.

  As a sop to propriety, Oscar was told that an NSC lieutenant colonel would soon arrive, with a crack team of very low-profile Marine aviators. But then the lieutenant colonel was also delayed, due to unexpected foreign-policy developments.

  An American-owned fast-food multinational had accidentally poisoned a number of Dutch citizens with poorly sterilized hamburger meat. In retaliation, angry Dutch zealots had attacked and torched several restaurants. Given strained Dutch-American relations, this was a serious scandal and close to a casus belli. The President, faced with his first foreign-policy crisis, was blustering and demanding reparations and formal apologies. Under these circumstances, military disorder within the U.S. was not an issue that the Administration cared to emphasize.

  These were all disappointments. However, Oscar bore up. He was peeved to be denied a legitimate office, but he wasn’t surprised. He certainly wasn’t under the illusion that the presidency worked any better than any other aspect of contemporary American government. Besides, there were distinct advantages to his questionable status. Despite the humiliations, Oscar was now far more powerful than he had ever been before. Oscar had become a spook. Spookhood was doable.

  Oscar swiftly made himself a factor with the new powers lurking in the basement below the Oval Office. He studied their dossiers, memorized their names and the office flowcharts, and asserted himself in the organization by humbly demanding favors. They were small, easily granted favors, but they were carefully arranged so that a failure to grant them was sure to provoke a turf war in the White House staff. Consequently, Oscar got his way.

  He resolved one nagging problem by obliterating the local police force. He had the Collaboratory’s captive police flown out of Texas in an unmarked cargo helicopter. They were transferred to a federal law enforcement training facility in West Virginia. The Collaboratory’s cops were not fired, much less were they tried for malfeasance and bribe-taking; but the budget of their tiny agency was zeroed-out, and the personnel simply vanished forever into the mazes of federal reassignment.

  This left the Collaboratory with no working budget for a police force. But that was doable. Because at the moment, there were no budgets of any kind at the Collaboratory. Everyone was working for no pay. They were living off barter, back gardens, surplus office equipment, and various forms of left-handed pin money.

  The days that followed were the most intense and productive of Oscar’s political life. The lab’s situation was an absolute shambles. Only organizational skill of genius could have retrieved it. Oscar didn’t possess the skill of genius. However, he could successfully replace genius through the simple expedient of giving up sleep and outworking everyone else.

  The first truly serious challenge was to mollify the giant invasion of Moderators. The Moderators had to be dissuaded from wrecking and sacking the facility. Oscar finessed this through the simple gambit of informing the Moderators that they now owned the facility. Obviously, they could wreck the place at will, but if they did so, the life-support systems would collapse, the atmosphere would sour, and all the glamorous and attractive rare animals would die. The Moderators would choke with everyone else, in an uninhabitable glass ghetto. However, if they came to working terms with the aboriginal scientists, the Moderators would possess a giant genetic Eden where they could live outdoors without tents.

  Oscar’s argument carried the day. There were naturally a few ugly incidents, in which proles abducted and barbecued some especially tasty animals. But the ghastly stench made it clear that open fires within the dome were counterproductive for everyone. The situation failed to explode. As days passed it began to show definite signs of stabilizing.

  A new committee was formed, to negotiate the terms for local coexistence between the scientists and the invading dropouts. It consisted of Greta, the board’s division heads, Kevin, Oscar himself, occasional consultant members of Oscar’s krewe, and a solemn variety of gurus, sachems, and muckety-mucks from Burningboy’s contingent. This new governing body needed a name. It couldn’t be called the “Strike Committee,” as that term had already been used. It swiftly became known as the “Emergency Committee.”

  Oscar regretted this coinage, as he loathed and despised all Emergency committees; but the
term had one great advantage. It didn’t have to be explained to anyone. The American populace was already used to the spectacle of its political institutions collapsing, to be replaced by Emergency committees. Having the Collaboratory itself run by an “emergency committee” was an easy matter to understand. It could even be interpreted as a prestigious step upward; it was as if the tiny Collaboratory had collapsed as grandly as the U.S. Congress.

  Oscar canceled his public relations poster campaign. The Strike was well and truly over now, and the lab’s new regime required a new graphic look and a fresh media treatment. After a brainstorming session with his krewe, Oscar decided on the use of loudspeakers. The Emergency Committee’s continuing negotiations would be broadcast live on half a dozen loudspeakers, situated in various public areas within the dome.

  This proved a wise design choice. The loudspeakers had a pleasantly makeshift, grass-rootsy feeling. People could gently drift in and out of the flow of political agitation. The antiquated technology provided a calming, peripheral media environment. People could become just as aware of the continuing crisis as they felt they needed to be.

  Thanks to the use of loudspeakers, the Collaboratory personnel and their mongrelized invaders were placed on an equal informational plane. As an additional gambit, tasteful blue plastic “soapboxes” were set up here and there, where especially foolish and irate people could safely vent their discontents. Not only was this a safety valve and a useful check on popular sentiment, but it made the gimcrack Emergency Committee seem very adult and responsible by contrast.

  This media campaign was especially useful in finessing the severe image problem presented by Captain (once General, once Corporal) Burningboy. In person or on video, the prole leader looked impossibly crazed and transgressive. However, he had a deep, fatherly speaking voice. Over the loudspeakers, Burningboy radiated the pious jollity of an arsonist Santa Claus.

  It was a misconception to imagine that the Moderators were merely violent derelicts. The roads of America boasted a great many sadly desperate people, but the Moderators were not a mob of hobos. The Moderators were no longer even a “gang” or a “tribe.” Basically, the Moderators were best understood as a nongovernmental network organization. The Moderators deliberately dressed and talked like savages, but they didn’t lack sophistication. They were organized along new lines that were deeply orthogonal to those of conventional American culture.