Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“Obviously not,” Oscar said. “Roadblocks, NIMBY suits, emi-nent-domain hassles … that’s tailor-made for Huey. Once he’s got federal contractors stuck knee-deep in the swamp, he could rip off a leg and bleed the whole budget to death.”

“Exactly. So we’re stuck. We were trashing Huey big-time on the patriotism charge, but he’s turned the tables on us. He’s wrapping himself in the very same flag that we stitched for him. We’ve played right into his hands. And we can’t ignore his radar hole, because he’s already exploiting it. Last night, French unmanned aircraft started buzzing South Louisiana. They’re flying over the swamps, playing French pop music.”

“French pop music?”

“Multichannel broadcasts off unmanned aerial drones. It’s the Cajun Francophone card.”

“Come on. Even Huey can’t seriously believe that anybody lis-tens to French pop music.”

“The French believe it. They can smell Yankee blood in the wa-ter. It’s your basic culture-war gambit. The French have always loved French-language confrontations. Now they can turn up their amps till we pull every burger joint out of Paris.”

“Leon, calm down. You’re a professional. You can’t let him get you rattled like this.”

“He does have me rattled, damn it. The son of a bitch just doesn’t play by the rules! He does two contradictory things at once, and he screws us coming and going. It’s like he’s got two brains!”

“Get a grip,” Oscar said. “It’s a minor provocation. What are we supposed to do about this so-called problem? Declare war on France?”

“Well …” Sosik said. He lowered his voice. “I know this sounds strange. But listen. A declaration of war would dissolve the Emergency committees by immediate fiat.”

“What!” Oscar shouted. “Are you crazy? We can’t invade France! France is a major industrial democracy! What are we, Nazis? That’s totally out of the question!”

Oscar looked up. He confronted a looming crowd of astonished scientists. They’d left their own discussion and had gathered on the far side of the lab bench, where they were straining to overhear him.

“Listen, Oscar,” Sosik continued tinnily, “nobody’s suggesting that we actually fight a war. But the concept is getting a pretty good float in DC. A declaration of war is a manual override of the federal system. As a domestic maneuver, a foreign war could be a real trump card. France is much too much, I agree with that — hell, the French still have nuclear power! But we could declare war on Holland. Hol-land’s a tiny, unarmed country, a bunch of radical pipsqueaks. So we throw a proper scare into the Dutch, the phony war lasts a week or so, and then the President declares victory. The Emergency is over. Then, once the dust settles, we have a fully functional Congress again.”

Oscar removed the phone from his ear, stared at it with distaste, and replaced it at his ear. “Look, I gotta get back to you later, Leon. I have some serious work to accomplish here.”

“The Senator’s very big on this idea, Oscar. He really thinks it could fly. It’s visionary.”

Oscar hung up. “They’re playing French pop music in Louisi-ana,” he told his impromptu audience.

Albert Gazzaniga scratched his head. “Big deal! So what?”

The crux of the matter was, of course, the money. It had always been the money. Money was the mother’s milk of politics. And although scientific politics were several steps removed from conventional poli-tics, money was the milk of science, too.

All strikes were, at the bottom line, struggles over economic power. All strikers made a bold declaration that they were willing to outstarve their employers, and if they backed it up with enough bad press and moral pressure, they were sometimes right.

So it was lovely to declare that Greta and her cadre were ready and eager to do science for nothing, asking for nothing, and refusing to supply anything but the results they themselves found of scientific interest. It was a holy crusade. But even a holy crusade needed a revenue stream.

So Oscar, Yosh, and the omnipresent Kevin found an empty cor-ner in the hotel kitchen to discuss finances.

“We could hit up Bambakias for a couple of million, just to tide us over,” Pelicanos said. “There’s no question he’s got the funds.”

“Forget it,” Oscar said. “The Senate’s a billionaire’s club, but if they start running the country right out of their own pockets, that’s feudalism. Feudalism is not professional.”

Pelicanos nodded. “Okay. Then we’ll have to raise funds our-selves. How about the standard campaign methods? Direct mail. Rub-ber-chicken banquets. Rallies, garage sales, charity events. Who are the core prospects here?”

“Well, if this were a normal campaign…” Oscar rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’d hit up the alumni of her alma mater, Jewish temple groups, scientific professional societies… And of course the Collaboratory’s business suppliers. They’re plenty mad at us right now, but they’ll fall out of the trough completely, if the place ever closes down. We might be able to sweet-talk them into fronting us some cash, if we threaten them with total destruction.”

“Are there any rich, overclass scientists? There have got to be some rich scientists, right?”

“Sure there are — in Asia and Europe.”

“You guys sure don’t think very big,” Kevin chided.

Oscar gazed at him tolerantly. He was growing rather fond of Kevin. Kevin really worked hard; he’d become the heart and soul of the foulest part of the coup. “How big are we supposed to think, Kevin?”

“You guys don’t realize what you have here. You’ve got a perfect nomad rally-ground inside that lab. It’s like you’ve roadblocked the place; you can do anything you want with it. Why don’t you ask all the scientists in America to come down here and join you?”

Oscar sighed. “Kevin, bear with us. You’ve got the problem ex-actly backward. The point is, we’re trying to feed and supply two thousand people, even though they’re on strike. If we get a million of them, we’re sunk.”

“No you’re not,” Kevin said. “If a million scientists showed up here and joined you, that wouldn’t be just a strike anymore. It would be a revolution. You wouldn’t just take over this one federal lab. You could take over the whole town. Probably the whole county. Maybe a big part of the state.”

Pelicanos laughed. “How are we supposed to manage a giant horde of freeloading scientists?”

“You’d use nomads, man. Who else knows how to run a giant horde of people with no money? You throw open your airlocks, and you promise them shelter in there. You give ’em propaganda tours, you show ’em all the pretty plants and animals. You get the cops and the feds off their backs for once, and you give them a big role to play in your own operation. The proles would become a giant support krewe for your egghead contingent. See, it’s people power, street power. It’s an occupying army, just like Huey likes to use.”

Oscar laughed. “They’d tear this place apart!”

“Sure, they could do that — but what if they decided not to? Maybe they’d decide that they liked the place. Maybe they’d look after it. Maybe they’d build it even bigger.”

Oscar hesitated. The construction angle hadn’t occurred to him. He’d always done extremely well by the construction angle. The con-struction angle was the best political wild card he’d ever had. Most politicians couldn’t create luxury hotels out of software and sweat eq-uity, but those who could had an off-the-wall advantage. He was sitting inside the construction angle at this very moment, and it was working out just fine. “How much bigger?”