Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“Kevin says the cops are tailing us,” Oscar told Pelicanos.

“Delighted to hear it,” Pelicanos said mildly. “There were three attempts on your life in here. You must be the most excitement that these local cops have had in years.”

“He also says there’s been a fire alarm.”

“How would he know that?”

A bright yellow fire truck emerged from the bowels of the Oc-cupational Safety building. It set its lights flashing, opened up with a klaxon blare, and headed south, off the ring road.

Oscar felt an odd skin-creeping feeling, then a violent huff of atmospheric pressure. An invisible door slammed shut in his head. The Collaboratory had just fully sealed its airlocks. The entire massive structure had gone tight as a drum.

“Jesus, it is a fire!” Pelicanos said. Acting on instinct, he turned and began jogging after the fire truck.

Oscar thought it more sensible to stay with his bodyguard. He tucked his phone in his sleeve and walked over to join Kevin.

“So, Kevin, what’s in those delivery packets?”

“Heavy-duty sunblock,” Kevin lied, yawning to clear his ears. “It’s an Anglo thing.”

Oscar and Kevin left the ring road, heading south past the Com-putation Center. Their police escorts were still dutifully trailing them, but the little cabs were soon lost in a curious pedestrian crowd emerg-ing from their buildings.

The fire truck stopped outside the Collaboratory’s media center.

This building was the site of Greta’s public board meeting. Oscar’s carefully drummed-up capacity crowd was pouring from the exits, loudly milling in confusion.

A fistfight had broken out on the steps at the eastern exit. A gray-haired man with a bloody nose was cowering under the metal handrails, and a young tough with a cowboy hat and shorts was strug-gling to kick him. Four men were grappling reluctantly at the young man’s arms and shoulders, trying to restrain him.

Kevin stopped his wheelchair. Oscar waited at Kevin’s elbow and examined his watch. If all had gone as planned — which it clearly hadn’t — then Greta should have finished her speech by now. He looked up again to see the cowboy lose his hat. To his deep astonish-ment he recognized the assailant as his krewe gofer, Norman-the-Intern.

“Come with me, Kevin. Nothing that we want to see here.” Oscar turned hastily on his heel and walked back the way he’d come. He glanced over his shoulder, once. His police escort had abandoned him. They had dashed forward with gusto, and were busy arresting young Norman.

Oscar waited until he received official notification from the police about Norman’s arrest. He then went to police headquarters, in the east central side of the dome. The Collaboratory’s police HQ was part of a squat fortress complex, housing the fire department, the power generators, the phone service, and the internal water supply.

Oscar was quite familiar with the internal routines of the local police headquarters, since he’d visited three of his would-be assailants in custody there. He presented himself to the desk officer. He was informed that young Norman had been charged with battery and disturbing the peace.

Norman was wearing orange coveralls and a wrist cuff. Norman looked surprisingly spiffy in his spotless prison gear — he was rather better dressed than most Collaboratory personnel. The cuff was a locked-on shatterproof bracelet studded with tiny mikes and surveil-lance lenses.

“You should have brought a lawyer,” Norman said from behind the cardboard briefing table. “They never turn off this cuff unless there’s attorney-client privilege.”

“I know that,” Oscar said. He opened his laptop and set it on the table.

“I never knew how awful this was,” Norman mourned, rubbing at his monster cuff. “I mean, I used to see guys on parole wearing these things, and I’d always wonder, you know, what’s with this evil scumbag… But now that I’ve got one myself… They’re really demeaning. ”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Oscar said blandly. He began typing. “I knew this kid at school once who got into trouble, and I used to hear him spoofing his cuff… You know, he’d sit there in math class muttering ‘crime drugs robbery murder assault…’ Because the cops run voice recognition scans. That’s how these cuffs surveil you. We thought he was totally nuts. But now I get why he did that.”

Oscar turned his laptop screen to face Norman, showing a dimly legible set of 36-point capitals. WE’LL KEEP UP THE SMALL TALK AND I’LL LEVEL WITH YOU ON THIS.

“You don’t have to worry about the local law enforcement peo-ple. We can talk freely here,” Oscar said aloud. “That device is meant for your own protection as well as the safety of others.” JUST KEEP YOUR ARM DOWN IN YOUR LAP SO THE CAMERAS CAN’T READ THIS SCREEN. He erased the screen with a key-stroke.

“Am I in big trouble, Oscar?”

“Yes you are.” NO YOU’RE NOT. “Just tell me what hap-pened.” TELL ME WHAT YOU TOLD THE POLICE.

“Well, she was giving one heck of a speech,” Norman said. “I mean, you could barely hear her at first, she was so nervous, but once the crowd started yelling, she really got pretty worked up. Everybody got really excited … Look, Oscar, when the cops arrested me, I lost my head. I told them a lot. Pretty much everything. I’m sorry.”

“Really,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, like, I told them why you sent me there. Because we knew from the profiles who was likely to make trouble, and that it would probably be this guy Skopelitis. So that’s who I was casing. I was sitting right behind him in the fifth row… So every time he got all ready to stand up and really give it to her, I ran a preemption. I asked him to explain a term for me, I got him to take off his hat, I asked him where the rest room was…”

“All perfectly legal behavior,” Oscar said.

“Finally he screamed at me to shut up.”

“Did you stop conversing with Dr. Skopelitis when you were asked to stop?”

“Well, I started eating my bag of potato chips. Nice and crunchy.” Norman smiled wanly. “He sort of lost his head then, he was trying to find cues in his laptop. And I was shoulder-surfing him, and you know, he had a whole list of prepared statements there. He went in there loaded. But she was really tearing through her material by then, and they were applauding, and cheering, even… lots of major laugh lines. They couldn’t believe how funny she was. He finally jumped up and yelled something totally stupid about how dare she this, and how dare she that, and the place just went ape. They just shouted him down. So he walked out of the meeting in a major huff. And I followed him.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Mostly just to distract him some more. I was really enjoying myself.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m a college student, and he’s just like this professor I had once, a guy I really couldn’t stand. I just wanted him to know that I had his number. But once he was outside the briefing room, he took off running. So then I knew he was up to something bad. So I fol-lowed him, and I saw him trip a fire alarm.”

Oscar removed his hat and set it on the table. “You say you actually witnessed this?”

“Heck yeah! So I had it out with him. I ran up to him and I said, ‘Look, Skopelitis, you can’t pull a dirty stunt like that! It’s not profes-sional.’ ”

“And?”

“And he denied it to my face. I said, ‘Look, I saw you do it.’ He panics and takes off I run after him. People are pouring into the halls because of the fire alarm. It gets really exciting. I’m trying to appre-hend him. We get into a fight. I’m a lot stronger than him, so I punch his lights out. I’m running down the hall after him, jumping down the steps, he’s got a bloody nose, people are yelling at us to stop. I pretty much lost my temper.”