Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“How big would we need it?” Pelicanos said.

“Well, how many nomad proles would be joining our construction krewe?”

“You want me to load a spreadsheet?” Kevin said.

“Forget it, it’s too good to be true,” Pelicanos said. “Sure, maybe we could get distributed instantiation to scale-up. But we’d never be able to trust nomads. They’re all in Huey’s pockets.”

Kevin snorted. “The Regulators are in Huey’s pockets, but good Lord, fellas, Louisiana proles are not the only proles around. You guys have spent too much time in Boston. Wyoming was on fire, man! There are proles and dissidents all over the USA. There’s millions of proles.”

With a stern effort of will, Oscar forced himself to consider Kevin’s proposal seriously. “An army of unemployed nomads, con-structing giant, intelligent domes … You know, that’s really a compelling image. I really hate to dismiss that idea out of hand. It’s so modern and photogenic and nonlinear. There’s a lovely carrying-the-war-to-the-enemy momentum there.”

Pelicanos narrowed his eyes. “Kevin, who’s the heaviest prole mob you know?”

“Well, the Regulators are the heaviest. They have state support from Huey, and they just smashed a federal air base. So they’ve got to be the strongest mob around — everybody knows that by now. But, well, there’s the Moderators. The Moderators are big. Plus, they hate the Regulators’ guts.”

“Why is that?” Oscar said, leaning forward with galvanized interest.

Kevin shrugged. “Why do mobs always hate other mobs? Some-body stole somebody’s girlfriend, somebody hacked somebody’s phones. They’re mobs. So they have no laws. So they have to feud with each other. It’s tribal. Tribes always act like that.”

Pelicanos scratched his jaw. “You know, Oscar, there’s no ques-tion that the Collaboratory is a much more attractive facility than some run-down federal air base.”

“You’re absolutely right, Yosh. That dome has real charisma. There’s a definite demand-pull there.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence.

“Time for a coffee,” Oscar announced, rising and fetching some. “Let’s run a reality check, guys. Forget all this blue-sky stuff — what’s the agenda? Our agenda here is to gently embarrass the powers that be, and get them to cut some operational slack for federal researchers. At the end of the day, Congress will fund this place at about half last year’s fiscal levels. But in return, we’ll get more direct power into the hands of the lab people. So we’ll create a workable deal. We’ll keep the lab in business, but without all the pork and the graft. That’s a perfectly decent accomplishment. It’s something we could all be very proud of.”

He sipped his coffee. “But if we let this situation spin out of control like Kevin is suggesting… Well, I actually suspect that it’s possible. What Huey did to the Air Force, that proves that it’s possible. But it’s not doable, because there’s no brakes. There are no brakes, because I can’t control the course of events. I don’t have the author-ity. I’m just a Senate staffer!”

“That’s never stopped you so far,” Kevin pointed out.

“Well, I admit that, Kevin, but… Well, I don’t like your idea because it’s bad ideology. I’m a Federal Democrat. We’re a serious-minded Reform party. We’re not a revolutionary vanguard, we can leave all that to self-marginalizing, violent morons. I’m operating un-der a lot of legal and ethical constraints here. I can’t have huge mobs commandeering federal facilities.”

Kevin sniffed. “Well, Huey did it.”

“Huey’s a Governor! Huey has a legislative branch and a judi-ciary. Huey was elected by the people, he won his last race with seventy-two percent of a ninety-percent voter turnout! I can’t paralyze the country with insane stunts like that, I just don’t have the power! I’m not a magician! I’mjust a freshman Senate staffer. I don’t get my own way just because things are theoretically possible. Hell, I can’t even sleep with my own girlfriend.”

Kevin looked at Pelicanos. “Yosh, can’t you arrange it so this poor bastard can sleep with his girlfriend? She’d understand this sit-uation. He’s getting all mentally cramped now. He’s losing his edge.”

“Well, that’s doable,” Pelicanos said. “You could resign from the Senate Science Committee, and take over here as Greta’s official chief of staff I don’t think anyone would mind Greta sleeping with one of her staffers. I mean, technically it’s workplace sex harassment, but gee whiz.”

Oscar frowned darkly. “I am not leaving the Senate Science Committee! You people have no understanding of what I have been through all this time, massaging those creeps backstage in Washington. It is incredibly hard doing that over a network; if you’re not in the office doing face-time with the Hill rats, they always write you off and screw you. I’ve been wiring flowers to their goddamn sysadmin for three weeks. When I get back to Washington, I’ll probably have to date her.”

“Okay, then we’re back to square one,” Pelicanos said gloomily. “We still don’t know what we’re doing, and we still don’t have any money.”

Oscar was up at three in the morning, examining schedules of up-coming Senate hearings, when there was a tap at his door. He glanced over at Kevin, who was snoring peacefully in his hotel bunk. Oscar fetched his plastic spraygun, checked the squirt chamber to see that it was loaded, and sidled to the door. “Who is it?” he whispered.

“It’s me.” It was Greta.

Oscar opened the door. “Come in. What are you doing here? Are you crazy?”

“Yes.”

Oscar sighed. “Did you check to see if your clothes are bugged? Did you watch to see if anyone was tailing you? Would you not wake up my bodyguard please? Give me a kiss.”

They embraced. “I know I’m being terrible,” she whispered. “But I’m still awake. I wore the rest of them out. I had one little moment to myself. And I thought, I know what I want. I want to be with Oscar.”

“It’s impossible,” he told her, slipping his hand under her shirt. “This is risking everything, it’s really foolish.”

“I know we can’t meet anymore,” she said, leaning against the wall and closing her eyes in bliss. “They watch me every second.”

“My bodyguard’s right in this room with us. And he’s totally trigger-happy. ”

“I only came here to talk,” she said, pulling his shirt out of his trousers.

He led her into the bathroom, shut the door, flicked on the lights. Her lipstick was smeared and her pupils were like two saucers.

“Just to talk,” she repeated. She set her purse on the sink. “I brought you something nice.”

Oscar locked the bathroom door. Then he turned on the shower, for the sake of the cover noise.

“A little gift,” she said. “Because we don’t get to be together anymore. And I can’t stand it.”

“I’m going to take a cold shower,” he announced, “just in case Kevin gets suspicious. We can talk, but talk quietly.” He began unbut-toning his shirt.

Greta dug into her purse and removed a wrapped and ribboned box. She set the box on the bathroom counter, then turned and looked at him thoughtfully. Oscar dropped his shirt on the cold tiles.

“Hurry up,” she suggested, stepping out of her underwear. They threw a pair of towels on the floor, and slid onto them together. He got his elbows into the backs of her knees, bent her double, and went at it like a madman. It was a forty-second mutual frenzy that ended like an oncoming train.

When he’d caught his breath, he managed a weak smile. “We’ll just pretend that incident never happened. All right?”