Bruce Sterling - Distraction

The General picked up the thread. “You see, son — and Dr. Pen-ninger” — he nodded at Greta in courtly fashion — “we’re all the he-roes of our own story. You tell me you’ve got a big problem — hell, we’ve all got big problems.”

“Let’s discuss them,” Oscar said.

“I got some excellent career advice for you overachievers. Why don’t you clowns just give up? Just quit! Knock it off, hit the road! Are you enjoyin’ life? Do you have a community? Do you even know what a real community is? Is there any human soul that you poor haunted wretches can really trust? Don’t answer that! ’Cause I already know. You’re a sorry pair of washouts, you two. You look like coyotes ate you and crapped you off a cliff. Now you got some crisis you want me to help you with… Hell, people like you are always gonna have a crisis. You are the crisis. When are you gonna wake up? Your system don’t work. Your economy don’t work. Your politicians don’t work. Nothing you ever do works. You’re over.”

“For the time being,” Oscar said.

“Mister, you’re never gonna get ahead of the game. You’ve had a serious wake-up call here. You’re disappeared, you’re dispossessed. You’ve been blown right off the edge of the earth. Well, you know something? There’s a soft landing down here. Just go ahead and leave! Burn your clothes! Set fire to your damn diploma! Junk all your ID cards! You’re a sickening, pitiful sight, you know that? A nice, charming, talented couple… Listen, it’s not too late for you two to get a life! You’re derelicts right now, but you could be bon vivants, if you knew what life was for.”

Greta spoke up. “But I really need to get back to my lab.”

“I tried,” said Burningboy, flinging up both hands. “See, if you just had the good sense to listen to me, that fine advice of mine would have solved your problems right away. You could be eatin’ mulliga-tawny stew with us tonight, and probably getting laid. But no, don’t mind old Burningboy. I’m much, much older than you, and I’ve seen a lot more of life than you ever have, but what do I know? I’m just some dirt-ignorant fool in funny clothes, who’s gonna get arrested. Because some rich Yankee from outta town needs him to commit some terrible criminal act.”

“General, let me give you the briefing,” said Oscar. He pro-ceeded to do this. Burningboy listened with surprising patience.

“Okay,” Burningboy said at last. “Let’s say that we go in and strong-arm this giant glass dome full of scientists. I gotta admit, that’s a very attractive idea. We’re extremely nice, peaceful people in the Moderators, we’re all love and sunshine. So we might do a thing like that, just to please you. But what’s in it for us?”

“There’s money,” Oscar said.

Burningboy yawned. “Sure, like that’ll help us.”

“The lab is a self-sufficient structure. There’s food and shelter inside,” Greta offered.

“Yeah, sure — as long as it suits you to give it to us. Once that’s done, then it’s the run-along as usual.”

“Let’s be realistic,” Oscar said. “You’re a mob. We need to hire some mob muscle to back up our labor strike. That’s a very traditional gambit, isn’t it? How hard can that be?”

“They’re very small, timid cops,” Greta offered. “They hardly even have guns.”

“Folks, we carry our own food and shelter. What we don’t have is bullet holes in us. Or a bunch of angry feds on our ass.”

Oscar considered his next move. He was dealing with people who had profoundly alien priorities. The Moderators were radical, dissident dropouts — but they were nevertheless people, so of course they could be reached somehow. “I can make you famous,” he said.

Burningboy tipped his hat back. “Oh yeah? How?”

“I can get you major net coverage. I’m a professional and I can spin it. The Collaboratory a very famous place. Dr. Penninger here is a Nobel Prize winner. This is a major political scandal. It’s very dra-matic. It’s part of a major developing story, it ties in with the Bambakias hunger strike, and the Regulator assault on a U.S. Air Force base. You Moderators could get excellent press by restoring order at a troubled federal facility. It would be the very opposite of the dreadful thing that the Regulators did.”

Burningboy reached thoughtfully into his jacket. He removed three small bars of substances resembling colored chalk. He set them onto a small slab of polished Arkansas whetstone, drew a pocketknife, and began chopping the bars into a fine powder.

Then he sighed heavily. “I really hate having my chain pulled just because a hustler like you happens to know that we Mods have it in for the Regulators.”

“Of course I know that, General. It’s a fact of life, isn’t it?”

“We love those Regulators like brothers and sisters. We got nothingin common with you. Except that… well, we’re Modera-tors because we use a Moderator network. And the Regulators use a Regulator interface, with Regulator software and Regulator proto-cols. I don’t think that a newbie creep like you understands just how political a problem that is.”

“I understand it,” Kevin said, speaking up for the first time.

“We used to get along with the Regulators. They’re a civilized tribe. But those Cajun goofballs got all puffed up about their genetic skills, and their state support from Green Huey… Started bossin’ other people around, doing talent raids on our top people, and if you ask me, them gumbo yaya voodoo-krewes are way too fond of gas and poison…”

Sensing weakness, Oscar pounced. “General, I’m not asking you to attack the Regulators. I’m only asking you to do what the Regula-tors themselves have done, except for much better motives, and under much better circumstances.”

General Burningboy arranged his chopped powder into straight lines, and dumped them, one by one, into a small jar of yellow grease, He stirred the grease with his forefinger, and rubbed it carefully be-hind his ears.

Then he waited, blinking. “Okay,” he said at last. “I’m putting my personal honor on the line here, on the say-so of total strangers, but what the hell. They call me ‘General’ because of my many hard won years of cumulative trust ratings, but the cares of office hang kinda heavy on my hands right now, quite frankly. I might as well destroy everything I’ve built in one fell swoop. So, I’m gonna do you three rich creep palookas a very, very big favor. I’m going to loan you five platoons.”

“Fifty Moderator toughs?” Kevin said eagerly.

“Yep. Five platoons, fifty people. Of course, I’m not sayin’ our troops can hold that lab against a federal counterassault, but there’s no question they can take it.”

“Do these men have the discipline that it takes to maintain civil order in that facility?” Oscar said.

“They’re not men, pal. They’re teenage girls. We used to send in our young men when we wanted to get tough, but hey, young men are extremely tough guys. Young men kill people. We’re a well-established alternative society, we can’t afford to be perceived as murdering marauders. These girls keep a cooler head about urban sabotage. Plus, underage women tend to get a much lighter criminal sentencing when they get caught.”

“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, General, but I’m not sure you grasp the seriousness of our situation.”

“No,” Greta said. “Teenage girls are perfect.”

“Then I reckon I’ll be introducing you to some of our chaperone field commanders. And you can talk about tactics and armament.”

Oscar rode back to Buna in a phony church bus, crammed with three platoons of Moderator nomad soldiers. He might have ridden with Kevin, but he was anxious to study the troops.