“That’s an even more interesting theory.”
“Oh, well, yeah. You BELIEVE ME on that one,” the Governor boomed. “You stole my damn clothes, you sorry kid! You stole my science facility. You stole my data. There was just one damn thing left that you didn’t know about, one damn important thing you didn’t know how to steal! So that’s what I gave to ya.”
“I see.”
“You can’t say that Huey ain’t generous. You outed me on everything you possibly could. Chased me up and down in the press. Sicced a Senator on me. Turned the President against me. You’re a busy guy. But you know something? You don’t have any SPIRIT, boy! You don’t have any SOUL! You don’t BELIEVE! There’s not one fresh idea in your pointy head. You’re like a dang otter raidin’ a beaver’s nest, you’re like this streamlined thing that kills and eats the beaver’s children. Well, I got big news for you, Soapy. You’re a genuine beaver now.”
“Governor, this is truly fascinating. You say you’ve studied me; well, I’ve studied you. I learned a lot. You’re a man of tremendous energy and, talent. What I don’t understand is why you carry out your aims in such absurd, tacky, uncivilized ways.”
“Son, that one’s dead easy. It’s because I’m a dirt-poor, dirt-ignorant hick from a drowning swamp! Nothin’ came easy for us twenty-first-century hicks. Nothing is elegant here. They took all our oil, they cut our timber, they gillnetted our fish, they poisoned the earth, they turned the Mississippi into a giant sewer that killed the Gulf for five hundred miles around. Then hurricanes started comin’ and the seas rose up to get us! What the hell did you expect from us, when you were up in Boston polishing the silver? We Cajuns need a future just like anybody else. We been here four hundred years! And we didn’t forget to have children, like the Cabots and the Lodges did. If you had a workin’ brain in your head, you’d have blown off that sorry architect and come down here to work for me.”
“I didn’t like your methods.”
“Hell, you used enough of ’em. You used damn near every one. Hell, I ain’t particular about any methods. You got a better method for me, spit it out! Let’s talk it over.”
“Hey, Huey,” Kevin said. “What about me? I have methods too.”
“You’re last year’s news, Mr. Whitey. You’re the hired help now, you’re lucky to have a damn job. Lemme talk to the Genetic Wonder here. We’re talking cognition now. This is for grown-ups.”
“Hey, Huey!” Kevin insisted. “My methods still work. I outed you on the Haitians. I figured that one out, I flew people over your border.”
Huey’s brow wrinkled in distaste. “My point is,” Huey said to Oscar, “we’re in the same boat now. If I’d just kept hold of that Collaboratory, I could have spread a new cognition on a massive scale. In fact, I’m still gonna do that—I’m gonna make the people of this state the smartest, most capable, most creative people on God’s green earth. You put a serious crimp in my production facilities—but hell, that’s all history now. Now you’ve got no real choice but to help ol’ Huey. Because you been hanging on to power by the skin of your teeth, cadgin’ favors, hiding your past. Now you’re a freak twice over. But! If you come on over to Huey now—and if you bring along your loving girlfriend, who’s the source of all this goodness in the first place, and is in the same boat as you—then you get a brand-new lease on life. In fact, the sky’s your limit.”
“First I’d have to get my temper back, Etienne.”
“Oh, pshaw! Real players don’t get angry. Why get all ticked off at me? I actually accept you. I love your goddamn background problem. See, I finally got you all figured out. If America settles down and gets all normal, then you’re on the outside for good. You’re always gonna have your nose pressed up against the glass, watchin’ other folks drink the champagne. Nothing you do will last. You’ll be a sideshow and a shadow, and you’ll stay one till you die. But, son, if you get a big head start in the coming revolution of the human mind, you can goddamn have Massachusetts. I’ll give it to ya.”
“Hey, Huey! Yo! Were you always this crazy, or did the dope do it?”
Huey ignored Kevin’s interruption, though his scowl grew deeper. “I know you can attack me for this. Sure, go ahead and do it. Tell everybody what a freak you are now. Tell everybody that your Senator’s former lover—and Moira’s now in France, by the way—took revenge on you, for the dirty trick that you pulled to cover his sorry ass. Step out in public like the fire-eatin’ boy, and nicely set fire to yourself. Or else, just see sense and come on board with me! You’ll be doin’ just exactly what you did before. But instead of just fast-talkin’ people into a new way of life—hell, words never stick anyhow—you can blast ’em into it. When you do that to ’em, they don’t go back, son. Just like you’re never going back.”
“Why would I make thousands of people into sideshow freaks? Why should everyone be as unhappy as I am?”
“Nothin’ unhappy about it! The science really works! It works just great!”
“Hey, Huey! Give it up, dude! I know this guy. You’ll never make him happy! He doesn’t know what the word means! You can’t get away with this, man—you’ve made him twice as bad!”
Huey had lost patience. He gestured absently for his bodyguards. A pair of pistol-toting goons emerged from the gilded shadows of the elegant room behind the balcony. Kevin fell silent.
“Get his hands free,” Huey told the bodyguard. “Get him a coat and hat. He’s a player. We’re talking seriously now.”
The bodyguard freed Oscar’s hands. Oscar began rubbing his wrists. The bodyguard threw someone’s dark jacket over Oscar’s prison coveralls.
Huey sidled a little closer. “Oscar, let’s talk turkey now. This thing is a great gift. Sure, it’s a little tough on you at first, like ridin’ a bicycle. It’s multitasking, that’s its very nature. I’m not saying it’s perfect. Nothing technical is ever perfect. It’s a very real-world thing. It speeds up your heartbeat—has to speed up the chip a little. And it is multitasking, so you do get certain operations that kinda hang…And others that pop up suddenly…And every once in a while, you get two streams of thought going that get kinda stuck; so you freeze there, and you have to drop your working memory. But you just give the old head a good hard shake, and you boot right back up again.”
“I see.”
“See, I’m really leveling with you here. This isn’t snake oil, this is the McCoy. Sure, you have some language problems, and you do tend to mutter sometimes. But, son…you’re twice the man you were! You can think in two languages at once! If you work at it, you can do amazing things with both your hands. And the best of all, boy—is when you get two good trains of thought going, and they start switching passengers. That’s what intuition is all about—when you know things, but you don’t know how you know. That’s all done in the preconscious mind—it’s thought that you don’t know you’re thinking. But when you’re really bearing down, and you’re thinking two things at once—ideas bleed over. They mix. They flavor each other. They cook down real rich and fine. That’s inspiration. It’s the finest mental sensation you’ll ever have. The only problem with that is—sometimes those ideas are so confounded great, you have a little problem with impulse control.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that little impulse problem.”
“Well, son, most people hide their light under a bushel and they never act on impulse. That’s why they end up buried in unmarked graves. A real player’s got initiative, he’s a man of action. But sure, I admit it: the impulse thing is a bug. That’s why a major player needs good counselors. And if you don’t have a top-of-the-line, raccoon-tailed political adviser, maybe you can make yourself one.”
“Heeeey!” Kevin screeched. He had given up on Huey; he had suddenly turned his attention to the crowd below. “Hey, people! Your Governor’s gone nuts! He uses poison and he’s gonna turn you into crazy zombies!”
The bodyguards seized Kevin’s pinioned arms and began to pummel him.
“They’re torturing m
e!” Kevin screamed in anguish. “The cops are torturing me!”
Huey turned. “Goddammit, Boozoo, don’t punch him in public like that! Haul him inside first. And, Zach, stop using your damn fists every time. Use your sap. That’s what it’s for.”
Despite his bound arms, Kevin wasn’t going quietly. He spun in place, began hopping up and down. His howls were of little use, for the crowd below was rapt inside the embrace of their headphones. But not all of them were dancing, and some were looking up.
Boozoo pulled a sap from within his clothing. Kevin aimed a clumsy kick. Boozoo half stepped back, tripped over the foot of a second guard, tangled suddenly in the spindly legs of a white iron balcony chair. He tumbled backward, landing with a crash. The second bodyguard tried to leap forward, tangled with the struggling Boozoo, and fell to his knees with a squawk.
“Aw hell,” Huey grumbled. He swiftly reached into his own jacket, removed a chromed automatic pistol, and absently emptied a shot into Kevin. Struck high in the chest and with his hands still bound, Kevin catapulted backward, smashed into the railing, and tumbled to the earth below.
Deeply surprised, Huey walked to the railing, craned his head, and stared down. The pistol still gleamed in his grip. The crowd below him saw the gun, and billowed away in fear.
“Uh-oh,” the Governor blurted.
__________
“I still don’t know what to do with him,” the President said. “He murdered a man in broad daylight in front of a thousand people, but he still has his adherents. I’d love to jail him, but Jesus. We’ve put so many people through the prison system that they’re a major demographic group.”
Oscar and the President of the United States were having a stroll through the White House garden. The Rose Garden, like the White House itself, was swept for bugs with regularity. It didn’t help much. But it helped some. It was doable, if they kept moving.
“He always lacked a sense of decency, Mr. President. Everyone knows Huey went too far, even in Louisiana. They’ll wait until he’s dead before they name some bridges after him.”
“What do you think of Washington now, Oscar? It’s a different city now, don’t you agree?”
“I have to admit, Mr. President: it bothers me to see foreign troops stationed in the capital of the United States.”
“I agree with you there. But that solved the problem. People burrowing into the streets, barricading whole neighborhoods…no major government can survive in a capital like that. I can’t order American troops to pursue these people with the rigor it requires to break decentered network gangs. But the Dutch will clean the streets if it takes ten years. They’ll tough it out.”
“It is a different city now, sir. Much tidier.”
“You could live here, couldn’t you? If the salary were right? If the White House krewe looked after you.”
“Yes, sir; I like to think that I could live anywhere that duty called.”
“Well, it isn’t Louisiana, at least.”
“Actually, Mr. President, I’m very fond of Louisiana. I still keep up with developments there. It’s a bellwether state in many, many ways. I had some very fulfilling moments in Louisiana. I’ve come to think of it as my second home.”
“Really.”
“You see, the Dutch got so hard and desperate when the seas came up. I think Louisiana is on to something. I’m starting to think there’s a lot to be said for simply lying down in the ooze.”
The President stared. “Not that you yourself plan to do a lot of oozing.”
“Only on occasion, sir.”
“In an earlier discussion, Oscar, I told you that if you followed orders at the Collaboratory I’d find a post for you in the White House. There have been some interesting developments in your career since then, but none that give me any reason to doubt your ability. This is not an Administration for bigotry—or for scandal—and now that we have some grasp of constitutional coherency again, I’m going to cut the spook-and-cowboy business back to a dull roar. I’m actually governing this country now—even if I sometimes have to employ Dutch troops—and when I leave the Oval Office, I intend to leave a country that is sane, responsive, decent, and well behaved. And I think I have a role for you in that effort. Would you care to hear about it?”
“By all means, sir.”
“As you’re well aware, we still have sixteen goddamn political parties in this country! And I don’t intend to face reelection with a pipsqueak party like the Soc-Pats behind me. We need a massive shake-out and total political reconsolidation. We need to shatter all these calcified partisan lines and establish a workable, practical, sensible, bipolar system. It’s going to be Normalcy versus everything else.”
“I see, sir. Much like the old days. So are you left-wing, or right-wing?”
“I’m down-wing, Oscar. I have my feet on the ground, and I know where I stand. Everyone else can be up-wing. They can all be up in the air, scattering crazy, high-tech, birdbrained ideas, and the ones that fall to ground without shattering, those will belong to me.”
“Mr. President, I congratulate you on that formulation. You have a window of opportunity here where you can try anything that you please, and that formulation sounds doable.”
“You think so? Good. This is your role. You will be a White House congressional liaison to interface with the current party structure. You’ll shake the radicals and crazies out, and agglomerate them into the up-wing.”
“I’m not down-wing, sir?”
“Oscar, there is no down-wing without the up-wing. It doesn’t work unless I mold my own opposition. The up-wing is crucially important to the game plan. The up-wing has to be brilliant. It has to be genuinely glamorous. It has to be visionary, and it has to almost make sense. And it has to never, ever quite work out in real life.”
“I see.”
“I’m particularly concerned about that prole/scientist coalition. Those people have the bit between their teeth. They are already shaking down industries by threatening to research them. They’re the only truly novel and vigorous movement on the political landscape right now. They cannot possibly be inside my camp. I can’t buy them off. I can’t sweet-talk them. They’re inherently radical, because they’re our century’s version of the main motive force that transformed Western society during the past six centuries. To destroy them would be criminal, it would lobotomize the country. But to give them their head is insane.”
The President drew a deep breath. “Because the spin-offs of their research built American capitalism, wrecked American capitalism, made the seas rise, poisoned the topsoil, wrecked the ozone layer, scattered radioactivity, filled the skies with contrails and the land with concrete, caused a population boom, caused a reproductive collapse, set Wyoming on fire…no, it’s even worse than that. It’s much, much worse. Now they’ve got our brains laid out like a virgin New World, and every last human being is a backward, undeveloped Indian. Someone has to deal seriously with these people. I suspect that you are just the man.”
“I think I understand you, sir.”
“They don’t have any grasp of political reality, but they’re going to blow the doors off the human condition unless something is done with them. I’m thinking: something subtle. Something attractive. Something glamorous, something that would make them behave less like Dr. Frankenstein and more like artists do. Modern poetry, that would be excellent. Costs very little, causes intense excitement in very small groups, has absolutely no social effect. So, I’m thinking mathematics. Nothing practical, just something totally arcane and abstract.”
“You can’t trust abstract mathematics, sir; it always turns out to be practical.”
“Computer simulation, then. Extremely, extremely time-consuming, complex, and detailed simulations that never do any harm to reality.”
“I think that’s a lot more likely to produce your intended result, sir, but frankly, no one in the sciences takes cybernetics seriously anymore. That line of research is all mined out, it’s intellectually dowdy.
Even bio-studies and genetics have been mostly metabolized by now. It’s all about cognition now, sir. That’s the last thing left to them.”
“You must have suffered from that. Maybe you can convince them to try something much more pretty. With more sheer wonder in it.”
“Mr. President, there is one issue here. Aren’t you asking me to infiltrate them and betray them?”
“Oscar, I’m asking you to be a politician. It’s not our business to blow the damn doors off the human condition. That’s not in our job description. The job is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare. A job we politicians signally failed to do. You know something? It’s not a pretty thing to watch a nation go crazy. But it happens. To great countries sometimes, the greatest peoples on earth. Japan, Germany, Russia, China…and we Americans have just had a bad, bad spin in the barrel. We’re still very groggy. We were lucky. It could be the fire next time.”
“Sir, don’t you think the scientific community—such as it is—should be told all this? They’re citizens too, aren’t they? They’re rather bright people, if a little narrowly focused. I don’t really think that deceiving them is a tactic that can prosper in the longer term.”
“We’re all dead in the longer term, Oscar.”
“Mr. President, this really is a dream job that you’re offering me. I recognize its importance, I’m very impressed by your trust. I even think I might have the ability to do it. But before I engage in something that is this—what can I call it? So Benthamite/Machiavellian—I need you to tell me something. I need you to level with me on one issue. Are you in the pay of the Dutch?”
“The Dutch never paid me a thing.”
“But there was an arrangement, wasn’t there?”
“In a manner of speaking…I’d have to take you out to Colorado. I’d have to show you the timber. You know, ever since we Native Americans got into the drug and casino businesses, we’ve been buying back little bits of this great country of ours. Mostly the cheap ones, the parts too ruined for any commercial use. If you leave them alone long enough, seven generations, sometimes they come back a little. But they’ll never come back the same way. Extinction is permanent. A futuristic swamp full of homemade monsters really isn’t the same as a native wetlands. We really did kill the buffalo, and the native flowers, and the native grasses, and the primeval forests, and we did it for a cheap buck, and it’s gone forever. And that’s bad. It’s very bad. It’s worse than we can ever repay. It’s like a hideous war crime. It haunts America like genocide haunts Germany, like slavery haunts the South. We turned our brother creatures into toys. And the Dutch are right about that. All the people whose homes are drowning are dead right, morally right, ethically right, physically right. Yes, we Americans spewed more greenhouse gas than anyone else in the world. We are the single biggest problem. So yes, I intend to implement some Dutch policies in this country. Not every last one of them, the ones that I think make most sense. And that change would never, ever happen by them conquering us. It could only happen by us conquering them.”
Distraction Page 51
