Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“Pull over,” Oscar said at once, “he’s one of mine.”

Oscar left the truck. He checked briefly on Greta, who was dou-bled over in the truckbed, racked with car sickness. He then joined Kevin, who had thrown his door open and was beckoning wildly.

“Don’t go into Buna!” Kevin yelled as he drew near. “It’s hit the fan.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Kevin. Can you help me with Greta? Let’s get her into the backseat of the car. She’s all shaken up.”

“Right,” Kevin said. He gazed at the truck. Dewey had just decamped from the driver’s seat, carrying his rifle under his arm. Kevin reached below his own seat and pulled out an enormous chromed revolver.

“Cool it!” Oscar told him. “The kid’s on the payroll.” He stared at the handgun in alarm. He had never suspected Kevin of possessing such a thing. Handguns were extremely illegal, and a source of endless trouble.

Kevin hid his gun without another word, then limped out of the car. They helped Greta out of the truck, across the dirt, and into the backseat of Kevin’s ratty, ill-smelling rental car. Dewey stood beside his truck, chomping sugarcane and waiting patiently.

“What’s with the handgun, Kevin? We’ve got problems enough without that.”

“I’m on the lam,” Kevin told him. “There’s a counter-coup at the lab — they’re trying to put us all away. I’m not staying there to get busted, thank you. I had a lifetime’s worth of encounters with the properly constituted authorities.”

“All right, forget the handgun. Do you have any money?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah. Lots. I kinda took the liberty of clean-ing out the hotel till this morning.”

“Good. Can you give this kid three hundred dollars? I promised it to him …”

“Okeydoke.” Kevin reached behind the driver’s seat and pro-duced a well-stuffed Yankee carpetbag. He looked at Greta, who was stirring on the backseat in a futile search for comfort. “Where are your shoes, Dr. Penninger?”

“They’re in the truck,” she groaned. She was very pale.

“Let me take care of this,” Kevin said. “You two just aren’t your usual suave selves.” Kevin limped back to the pickup truck, had a few cordial words with Dewey, and presented him with a horse-choking wad of flimsy American currency. Kevin then returned with Greta’s shoes, started the car, and drove away from Buna. They left Dewey standing on the weed-strewn roadside, thumbing through his cash with an unbelieving grin.

As he drove, Kevin examined a cheap Chinese navigation screen, which was stuck to the cracked dashboard with a black suction cup. Then he ceremoniously rolled down his driver’s window and carefully flung both of Greta’s shoes out of the car and onto the side of the road. “I guess it’s time for me to explain how I found you,” Kevin said. “I bugged your shoes, Dr. Penninger.”

Oscar digested this information, then looked at his own feet.

“Did you bug my shoes too?”

“Well, yeah, but just short-range trackers. Not the full-audio bugs like hers.”

“You put listening devices into my shoes?” Greta croaked.

“Yeah. Nothing to it. And I wasn’t the only guy on the job, either. Your shoes had six other bugs planted inside the heels and seams. Very nice devices too — I figured them to be planted by players a lot heavier than I am. I could have removed them all, but I fig-ured … hey, this many? There must be some kind of gentlemen’s agreement going on here. I’ll do better if I just stand in line.”

“I can’t believe you’d do that to me,” Greta said. “We’re sup-posed to be on the same side.”

“You talking to me?” Kevin said, eyes narrowing. “I’m his body-guard. Nobody ever said I was your bodyguard. You ever pay me a salary? Did you ever talk to me, even? You don’t even live in my universe.”

“Relax, Kevin,” Oscar said. He flipped down a windshield visor, examined the cracked mirror, and brushed cautiously at a huge crust of blood in his hair. “It was good of you to show so much enterprise under these difficult circumstances. It’s been a rough day for the forces of reason. However, our options are multiplying now. Thanks to you, we’re regaining the tactical initiative.”

Kevin sighed. “It’s incredible that you can still spout that crap, even with your head knocked in. You know what? We’re in terrible shape, but I feel good, out on the road like this. It’s homey. You know? I’ve spent so much of my life dodging cops in beat-up cars. The old fugitive game … I guess it’s got its drawbacks, but it sure beats having them know your home address.”

“Tell me what’s been going on at the lab,” Oscar said.

“Well, it didn’t take me long to figure out you’d been kid-napped, what with my hotel security videos, and the fact that your phones didn’t answer, and the bugs in the doctor’s shoes. So I get up from my laptop screen, and I check my real-life windows. Sheriff’s department on the prowl outside, three AM. Not healthy … Time for Scenario B, discreet planned withdrawal.”

“So you robbed the hotel and ran away?” Greta said, raising her head.

“He was accumulating capital while enhancing his freedom of action,” Oscar pointed out.

“That was my best move under the circumstances,” Kevin said mournfully. “Because what I just saw — that was a leadership decapita-tion. It’s a classic cointelpro thing. A tribe that’s making big trouble-they’ve gotta have a charismatic leader. If you’re a sensible, modern cop, you don’t want to butcher a crowd in the streets — that’s old-fashioned, it looks bad. So you just target the big cheese. You knock that lead guy out, smear him somehow… Child abuse is a pretty good rap, satanic rituals maybe… Any kind of ugly-paint that’ll stick a little while and really stink… and in a pinch, you just steal him. So then, when all the second-rankers are wondering where King Bee went, that’s when you round ’em up. After that, even if Mr. Wonderful comes back, their big momentum’s over. They just give up and scatter.”

“They wouldn’t do that to us, though,” Greta said. “We’re not a mob, we’re scientists.”

Kevin laughed. “The word’s out already about you two! You’re a major scandal. You eloped together last night, and oh, by the way, while you were doing that, you somehow cleaned out the lab’s trea-sury. Terrible embarrassment for all your friends. While your krewes and your Strike Committee are scratching their heads, the Col-laboratory cops are gonna round everybody up. Because there’s no denying that story they planted. Because you’re not around to deny it. ”

“Well, I’m denying it now!” Greta said, wrenching herself up with her cuffed hands. “I’ll go back there and take them all on face-to-face.”

“ Softly, softly,” Oscar said. “When the timing’s right.”

“So, there I was, in a bad corner,” Kevin said. “I was thinking — who has the gall and the muscle to kidnap two famous people like that? And then spread all this killer disinformation about them…”

“Huey,” Oscar said.

“Who else? So now, it’s little me versus Green Huey, right? And who’s gonna help me against Huey? The lab’s cops? They’re all Huey’s people from way back. Buna city cops? Forget it, they’re way too dumb. Texas Rangers maybe? The Rangers are very scary people, but they wouldn’t believe me, I’m not Texan. So then I thought of Senator Bambakias — he’s an okay guy, I guess, and at least he’s a real sworn-in Senator now, but he’s somewhat insane at the moment. So, I’m ready to cash in my chips and head for sunny Mexico. But then, just before I go, I think — what the hell, what have I got to lose? I’ll call the President.”