Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“You’re welcome.” She glanced at him searchingly across the airy pool of glare. It might have been a piquant glance if he had found her attractive.

“You should visit us in daylight, when we have the full krewe at work. It’s the coordination of elements, the teamwork, that’s the key to distributed instantiation. The structure simply flies up all at once sometimes, as if it were crystallizing. That’s well worth watch-ing.”

She touched her gloved hand to her chin and examined the block wall. “Shouldn’t we do some plumbing now?”

Oscar was surprised. “How long have you been watching me?” Her shoulders lifted briefly within the baggy jacket. “The plumbing is obvious.” Oscar realized that he had disappointed her. She had hoped that he was smarter than that.

“Time for a break,” he announced. Oscar knew that he lacked the searingly high IQ of Greta Penninger. He’d examined her career stats-of course-and Dr. Greta Penninger had always been a compul-sive, overachieving, first-in-her-class techie swot. Still, there was more than one kind of smarts in the world. He felt quite sure he could distract her if he simply kept changing the subject.

He walked inside the jagged circuit of raw cinder-block walls, where a fire burned in an old iron barrel under a spread of plastic awning. His back hurt like a toothache. He had really overdone it. “Cajun beef jerky? The krewe really dotes on this stuff.”

“Sure. Why not.”

Oscar handed over a strip of lethally spiced meat, and ripped into another blackened chunk with his teeth. He waved one hand. “The site looks very chaotic now, but try to imagine this all assembled and complete. ”

“Yes, I can visualize that… I never realized your hotel was going to be so elegant. I thought it was prefabricated.”

“Oh, it is prefabricated. But the plans are always adjusted by the system to fit the exact specifics of the site. So the final structure is always an original. That pile of cantilevers there, those will go over the porte cochere… The patio will be here where we’re standing, and just beyond that entrance loggia is the pergola… Those long dual wings have the guest rooms and the diner, while the upper floor has our library, the various balconies, and the conservatory.” Oscar smiled. “So, when we’re all finished, I hope you’ll visit us here. Rent a suite. Stay awhile. Have a nice dinner.”

“I doubt I can afford that.” Clouded and moody.

What on earth was the woman up to? In the blue-lit gloom, Dr. Penninger’s wide-set, chocolate-drop eyes seemed to be two different sizes… but surely that was just some weird illusion, something about her unplucked brows, and the visible tension wrinkling her eyelids. She had a big squarish chin, a protruding, oddly dimpled, and elaborate upper lip. No lipstick. Small, slanted, nibbling teeth. A long, cartilaginous neck, and the look of a woman who had not witnessed real sunlight in six years. She looked really and genuinely peculiar, a sui generis personage. A close examination didn’t make the woman any less odd. It made her more so.

“But you’ll be my personal guest,” he told her. “Because I’m inviting you now.”

That worked. Something clicked over in Dr. Penninger’s wool-hatted head. Suddenly he had her entire and focused attention. “Why did you send me those flowers?”

“Buna’s a city for flowers. After sitting through those committee meetings, I knew you must need a bouquet.” Red poppies, parsley, and mistletoe — he presumed she knew the flower code. Perhaps she was so hopelessly detached from mainstream society that she couldn’t even read a flower code. Well, if she didn’t, no great harm done. It had been a very witty message, but maybe it was just as well if it were lost on her.

“Why do you send me those mail notes with all those ques-tions?” Dr. Penninger persisted gamely.

Oscar put aside his peppered stub of jerky and spread his gloved hands. “I needed some answers. I’ve been studying you, during those long board meetings. I’ve really come to appreciate you. You’re the only member of that board who can stick to the point.”

She examined the dead grass at her feet. “They’re really incredi-bly boring meetings, aren’t they?”

“Well, yes, they are.” He smiled gamely. “Present company ex-cepted.”

“They’re bad meetings. They’re really bad. They’re awful. I hate administration. I hate everything about it.” She looked up, her odd face congealing with distaste. “I sit there listening to them drone, and I can feel my life just ticking away.”

“Mmmhmm!” Oscar deftly poured two cups from a battered cooler. “Here, let’s enjoy this sports-performance pseudo-lemon con-coction.” He dragged a folded tarp near to the fire barrel, careful not to scorch himself. He sat.

Dr. Penninger collapsed heedlessly to earth in a sharp sprawl of kneecaps. “I can’t even think properly anymore. They don’t let me think . I try to stay alert during those meetings, but it’s just impossible. They won’t let me get anything accomplished.” She sipped cautiously at the yellow swill in her biodegradable cup, then put the cup on the grass. “Lord knows I’ve tried.”

“Why did they put you into administration in the first place?”

“Oh,” she groaned, “a slot opened up on the board. The guy running Instrumentation had to resign, after Senator Dougal cracked up … The board asked for me by name because of the Nobel award nonsense, and the neuro krewe told me I should take the post. We do need the labware. They nickel and dime us to death on equip-ment, they just don’t understand our requirements. They don’t even want to understand us.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve noticed that the bookkeeping at the Collaboratory is not in standard federal formats. There seem to have been some irregularities in supply.”

“Oh, that’s not the half of it,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

Oscar leaned forward slowly on his folded tarp. “What is the half of it?”

“I just can’t tell you,” she said, morosely hugging her shins. “Be-cause I don’t know why you want to know that. Or what you’d do about it, if you knew.”

“All right,” Oscar said, sitting back deliberately. “That answer makes sense. You’re being very cautious and proper. I’m sure I’d feel much the same about it, if I were in your position.” He stood up.

The plumbing pipes were made of a laminated polyvinyl the color of dried kelp. They had been computed and built in Boston to specifically fit this structure, and they were of a Chinese-jigsaw com-plexity that only a dedicated subroutine could fully understand.

“You have real talent with the mortar, but this plumbing is seri-ous work,” Oscar said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you gave up and left now.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t have to hit the lab until seven AM.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?”

“No, I just don’t sleep much. Maybe three hours a night.”

“How odd. I never sleep much, either.” He knelt at the side of the plumbing case. She alertly handed him a nearby pair of snips, slapping them into his gloved hand, handle first.

“Thank you.” He snapped through three black plastic packing bands. “I’m glad you came here tonight. I was rather wasting my time working alone on a group project like this. But it’s therapeutic for me. He pried up the lid of the case and threw it aside. “You see, I’ve always had a rather difficult professional life.”

“That’s not what your record shows.” She was hugging her jacketed arms. The wool hat had slipped down on her forehead.

“Oh, I suppose you’ve run some searches on me, then.”

“I’m very inquisitive.” She paused.