Bruce Sterling - Distraction

“That’s how it looks, all right.”

“He’s not superhuman, Yosh. Well, I take that back — I’m pretty sure that Huey is superhuman. But Huey screwed up. If Huey hadn’t screwed up, Greta and I would be languishing in some private prison in a dismal swamp right now.”

Greta’s handcuffs parted, with a ping and snap so loud that Oscar heard it from outside the car. Greta opened the back door of Kevin’s wretched car, and she climbed out, stretching her cramped back and shoulders. While Kevin stowed the bolt cutter in the trunk, Greta came to join them. She approached Pelicanos’s car and looked through the driver’s window, rubbing her sore wrists.

“What’s the game plan?” she said.

“We have the element of surprise,” Oscar said. “And we’ll have to use that for all it’s worth.”

“When can I go back to the lab? I really want to go back to my lab.”

“We’ll go. But when we go, we’ll have to go back very hard. We’ll have to attack the Collaboratory and take it over by force.”

Pelicanos stared at Oscar as if he had lost his mind. Greta rubbed her chilly arms, and looked grave and troubled.

“Now you’re talking!” Kevin announced, punching the air.

“It’s doable,” Oscar said. He opened the car door and stepped into the cold winter wind. “I know it sounds crazy, but think it through. Greta is still the legitimate Director. The Collaboratory’s cops aren’t crack troops, they’re just a bunch of functionaries.”

“You can’t ask the people in the Collaboratory to attack the police,” Greta said. “They just won’t do that. It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s unethical, it’s unprofessional … and, besides, it’s very danger-ous, isn’t it?”

“Actually, Greta, I’m dead certain that your scientists would love to beat up some cops, but I take your point. It would take us far too long to talk those harmless intellectuals into clobbering anyone. My little krewe of pols aren’t exactly hardened anarchist street-fighters, either. But if we can’t restore order in the lab, right away, today, then your administration is doomed. And your lab is doomed. So we have to risk it. This crisis requires total resolve. We have to physically seize that facility. What we need at this juncture are some tough, revolu-tionary desperados.” Oscar drew a breath. “So let’s drive into this flea market and hire ourselves some goons.”

They abandoned Pelicanos’s perfectly decent car for security rea-sons, and piled together into Kevin’s unlicensed junker. Then they drove on.

Their first challenge was a Moderator roadblock, south of Can-ton. The Texan prole lads manning the roadblock gave them curious stares. Oscar’s hat was askew, barely hiding the bandaged gash in his head. Kevin was unshaven and twitchy. Greta had her arms crossed to hide her chafed wrists. Pelicanos looked like an undertaker.

“Come down from outta state?” the Moderator said. He was a freckle-faced Anglo kid with blue plastic hair, headphones, eight wooden beaded necklaces, a cellphone, and a fringed deerskin jacket. His legs were encased from the knees down in giant mukluks of furry plastic.

“Yo!” Kevin said, offering a wide variety of secret high signs. The Moderator watched Kevin’s antics with bemusement. “Y’all ever been to Texas before?”

“We’ve heard of the Canton flea market,” Kevin assured him.

“It’s famous.”

“Could I have a five-dollar parkin’ fee, please?” The Moderator pocketed his plastic cash and glued a sticker to their windshield. “Y’all just follow the beeps on this sticker, it’ll lead to y’all’s parking lot. Have a good time at the fair!”

They drove slowly into the town. Canton was a normal East Texas burg of modest two- and three-story buildings: groceries, clin-ics, churches, restaurants. The streets were swarming with weirdly dressed foot traffic. The huge crowds of proles seemed extremely well organized; they were serenely ignoring the traffic lights, but they were moving in rhythmic gushes and clumps, filtering through the town in a massive folk dance.

Kevin parked below a spreading pine tree in a winter-browned cow pasture, and they left their vehicle. The sun was shining fitfully, but there was an uneasy northern breeze. They joined a small crowd and walked to the edge of the market.

The sprawling market campground was dominated by the soar-ing plastic spines of homemade cellular towers. Dragonfly flocks of tinkertoy aircraft buzzed the terrain. The biggest shelters were enor-mous polarized circus tents of odd-smelling translucent plastic on tall spindly poles.

Kevin bought four sets of earclips from a blanket vendor. “Here, put these on.”

“Why?” Greta said.

“Trust me, I know my way around a place like this.”

Oscar pinched the clamp onto his left ear. The device emitted a little wordless burbling hum, the sound a contented three-year-old might make. As long as he moved with the crowd, the little murmur simply sat there at his ear, an oddly reassuring presence, like a child’s make-believe friend. However, if he interfered with the crowd flow — if he somehow failed to take a cue — the earcuff grew querulous. Stand in the way long enough, and it would bawl.

Somewhere a system was mapping out the flow of people, and controlling them with these gentle hints. After a few moments Os-car simply forgot about the little murmurs; he was still aware of them, but not consciously. The nonverbal nagging was so childishly insistent that accommodating it became second nature. Soon the four of them were moving to avoid the crowds, well before any ap-proaching crowds could actually appear. Everyone was wearing the earcuffs, so computation was arranging human beings like a breeze blowing butterflies.

The fairground was densely packed with people, but the crowd was unnaturally fluid. All the snack-food stands had short, brisk lines. The toilets were never crowded. Children never got lost.

“I’ll line up someone that we can talk to seriously,” Kevin told them. “When I’ve made the arrangements, I’ll call you.” He turned and limped away.

“I’ll help you,” Oscar said, catching up with him.

Kevin turned on him, his face tight. “Look, am I your security chief, or not?”

“Of course you are.”

“This is a security matter. If you want to help me, go watch your girlfriend. Make sure that nobody steals her this time.”

Oscar was annoyed to find himself persona non grata in Kevin’s private machinations. On the other hand, Kevin’s anxiety made sense-because Oscar was the only man in this crowd of thousands who was wearing a full-scale overclass ensemble of suit, hat, and shoes. Oscar was painfully conspicuous.

He glanced over his shoulder. Greta had already vanished.

He quickly located Pelicanos, and after four increasingly anxious minutes they managed to find Greta. She had somehow wandered into a long campground aisle of tents and tables, which were packed with an astounding plethora of secondhand electronic equipment.

“Why are you wandering off on your own?” he said.

“I didn’t wander! You wandered.” She dipped her fingers through a shallow brass tray full of nonconductive probes.

“We need to stick together, Greta.”

“I guess it’s my little friend here,” she said, touching her earcuff. “I’m not used to it.” She wandered bright-eyed down to the next table, which bore brimming boxes of multicolored patch cables, faceplates, mounting boxes, modular adaptors.

Oscar examined a cardboard box crammed with electrical wares. Most were off-white plastic, but others were nomad work. He picked an electrical faceplate out of the box. It had been punched and molded out of mashed grass. The treated cellulose was light yet rigid, with a crunchy texture, like bad high-fiber breakfast cereal.