Bruce Sterling - Distraction

Huey coughed loudly and resumed bellowing into the phone.

“They call me a ‘rogue Governor’ — well, what else can I be? All them ‘Emergency committees’ — they’re totally illegal, oppressive, and un-constitutional! Look at this new President! He’s a trigger-happy killer — and that’s the very best man you got! That man wants me driven out of my own statehouse — hell, the President would like to kill me! I’m under constant threats to my life now! I watch the skies every minute so’s I don’t get fried like a fritter by goddamn X-ray lasers! And you — you think that I wanna lobotomize Nobel Prize win-ners! Are you as nuts as your boss? My God Almighty, why would I do that? Where is that supposed to get me?”

“Governor, if you’d told me these things earlier, I think we could have come to an understanding.”

“Why the hell am I supposed to tell you a damn thing? You don’t rank! You don’t count! Am I supposed to drop my pants to every pipsqueak Senate staffer in America? You are a political nightmare, kid — a player with no history and no power base, who comes totally out of left field! If it weren’t for you, everything would have been perfect! The air base would have gone broke. The science lab would have gone broke. All the people would have left nice and peaceable. I woulda picked ’em all up for a song.”

Kevin arrived in the laboratory. He was wearing an ill-fitting cop’s uniform, and he looked as if his feet ached badly. “Just a moment, Governor,” Oscar said. He put his hand over the mouth-piece. “Kevin, how’d you find me in here?”

“There are location trackers in those phones.”

Oscar throttled the phone with his fist. “You never told me that. ”

“You didn’t need to know.” Kevin frowned. “Oscar, pay atten-tion, man. We have to go to the media center, right away. The Presi-dent of the United States is on the line.”

“Oh.” Oscar removed his hand from the phone’s mouthpiece.

“Excuse me, Governor. I can’t continue our discussion now — I have to field a call from the President.”

“Now?” Huey yelled. “Doesn’t anybody sleep anymore?”

“Good-bye, Governor. I appreciate your call.”

“Wait! Wait. Before you do something stupid, I want you to know that you can still come and talk to me. Before everything gets out of hand… next time, let’s talk it out first.”

“It’s good to know that we have that option, Your Excellency.”

“Kid, listen! One last thing! As Governor of Louisiana, I strongly favor genetic industries. I got no problem at all with your personal background problem!”

Oscar hung up. His nerves were buzzing like a shattered electrical transformer. His eyes burned and the bare walls seemed to pitch. He threw an arm over Kevin’s shoulder. “How are your feet, Kevin?”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m really dizzy.” He snorted. His heart was pounding.

“Must be allergies,” Kevin said. “Everybody gets allergies when they work in the Hot Zone. Kind of an occupational hazard.”

Kevin’s blather was light-years away. “Uh, why do you say that, Kevin?”

“Understanding workplace hazards is a basic mandate for the se-curity professional, man.”

The event affecting Oscar didn’t feel like allergy. It felt like an undiagnosed concussion. Maybe some evil side effect of military knockout gas. Maybe an oncoming case of bad flu. It was bad. Very bad. He wondered if he was going to survive it. His heart gave a sudden lurch and began beating fast and lightly in his rib cage, like a trapped moth. He stumbled and almost fell.

“I think I need a doctor.”

“Sure, man, later. Just as soon as you talk to the President.” Oscar blinked repeatedly. His eyes were swimming with tears. “I can’t even see.”

“Take some antihistamines. Listen, man — you can’t blow it now, because this is the President! Get it? This is the big casino. If you don’t chill him out about this Sabine River shootout, I’m done for. I’ll be doing a bad-whitey terrorist rap, right next to my dad. And you, you personally, and Dr. Penninger too, you’re both gonna go down in major flames. Okay? You have got to handle this.”

“Right,” Oscar said, straightening his back. Kevin was absolutely correct. This moment was the crux of his career. The President was waiting. Failure at this point was unthinkable. And he was having a heart fibrillation.

Kevin led him through the Hot Zone airlock. Then he pulled a monster beltphone and called a cab, and a fleet of twelve empty cabs arrived at once. Kevin picked one, and it took them to the media center. Up an elevator. Kevin led him to the green room, where Oscar scrubbed his head in the sink. He was coming apart. There were scarlet hives on his chest and throat. His hands were palsied. His skin was taut and prickly. But still, somehow, a gush of cold water on the nape of his neck brought him to snakelike alertness.

“Is there a comb?” Oscar asked.

“You won’t need a comb,” Kevin said. “The President’s calling on a head-mounted display.”

“What?” Oscar said. “Virtual reality? You’re kidding! That stuff never works.”

“They had VR installed in all the federal labs. Some high-bandwidth initiative from a million years ago. There’s a VR set in the White House basement.”

“And do you really know how to run this gizmo?”

“Hell no! I had to roust up half the lab just to find somebody who could boot it. Now there’s a huge crowd sitting in there. They all know it’s the President calling. You know how long it’s been since a President took any notice of this place?”

Oscar fought for breath, staring in the mirror, willing his heart to slow. Then he walked into the studio, where they produced a casque like a deep-sea diver’s helmet. They bolted it over his head.

The President was enjoying a stroll through amber waves of grain below the purple majesty of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Oscar, after a moment’s disorientation, recognized the backdrop as one of Two Feathers’s campaign ads. Apparently this was the best virtual backdrop that the new White House staff could produce on short notice.

Leonard Two Feathers was a creature in stark contrast to a gener-ation of prettified American politicians. The President had huge flat cheekbones, a great prow of a nose, a bank-vault slit of a mouth. Long black-and-gray hair streamed down his shoulders, which were clad in his trademark fringed buckskin jacket. The President’s black, canny eyes seemed as wide apart as a hammerhead shark’s.

“Mr. Valparaiso?” the President said.

“Yes? Good evening, Mr. President.”

The President gazed at him silently. Apparently, to the Presi-dent’s eye, Oscar was a disembodied face floating somewhere at shoul-der level.

“How is the situation at your facility? You and the Director, Dr. Penninger — are you safe and well?”

“So far so good, sir. We’ve sealed the premises. We suffered a severe netwar attack that trashed our financial systems, so we’ve had to cut most of our phone and computer lines. We still have internal problems with a group of malcontents who are occupying a building here. But our situation seems stable at this hour.”

The President considered this. He was buying the story. It wasn’t making him happy. “Tell me something, young man. What have you gotten me into? Why did it take a French submarine and three hun-dred Cajun guerrillas to kidnap you and some neurologist?”

“Governor Huguelet wanted to see us. He wants this facility, Mr. President. He has a great deal of irregular manpower. He has more manpower than he can properly control.”

“Well, he can’t have that facility.”