Bruce Sterling - Distraction

It instantly occurred to Oscar that if the President could achieve even half of those laudable goals, the loss of Holland would be a very small price to pay. But he bit back this response. “Yosh, I work for this President. He’s my boss, he’s my Commander in Chief. If you really feel that way about him and his agenda, then our situation as colleagues is untenable.”

Pelicanos looked wretched. “Well, that’s why I came here.”

“I’m glad you came. You’re my best and oldest friend, my most trusted confidant. But personal feelings can’t override a political dif-ference of that magnitude. If you’re telling the truth, then we really have come to a parting of the ways. You’re going to have to go back to Boston and take that treasury job.”

“I hate to do it, Oscar. I know it’s your hour of need. And your private fortune needs attention too; you’ve got to watch those invest-ments. There’s a lot of market turbulence ahead.”

“There’s always market turbulence. I can manage turbulence. I just regret losing you. You’ve been with me every step of the way.”

“Thus far and no farther, pal.”

“Maybe if they convict me in Boston, you could put in a good word with your friend the Governor on the clemency issue.”

“I’ll send mail,” Yosh said. He wiped at his eyes. “I have to clean out my desk now.”

Oscar was deeply shaken by the defection of Pelicanos. Given the circumstances, there had been no way to finesse it. It was sad but necessary, like his own forced defection from the Bambakias camp when he had moved to the President’s NSC. There were certain issues that simply could not be straddled. A clever operative could dance on two stools at once, but standing on seven or eight was just beyond capacity.

It had been some time since Oscar had spoken to Bambakias. He’d kept up with the man’s net coverage. The mad Senator’s per-sonal popularity was higher than ever. He’d gained all his original weight back; maybe a little more. His krewe handlers wheeled him out in public; they even dared to propel him onto the Senate floor. But the fire was out. His life was all ribbon cuttings and teleprompters now.

Using his newly installed NSC satphone, Oscar arranged a video conference to Washington. Bambakias had a new scheduler, a woman Oscar had never seen before. Oscar managed to get half an hour pen-ciled in.

When the call finally went through he found himself confronting Lorena Bambakias.

Lorena looked good. Lorena, being Lorena, could never look less than good. But on the screen before him, she seemed brittle and crispy. Lorena had known suffering.

His heart shrank within him at the sight of her. He was surprised to realize how sincerely he had missed her. He’d always been on tiptoe around Lorena, highly aware of her brimming reservoirs of feminine menace; but he’d forgotten how truly fond he was of her, how much she represented to him of the life he had abandoned. Dear old Lorena: wealthy, sophisticated, amoral, and refined — his kind of woman, really; a creature of the overclass, a classic high-maintenance girl, a woman who was really put together. Seeing Lorena like this — all abraded in her sorrow — gave him a pang. She was like a beautiful pair of scissors that had been used to shear through barbed wire.

“It’s good of you to call, Oscar,” Lorena told him. “You never call us enough.”

“That’s sweet of you. How have things been? Tell me really.”

“Oh, it’s a day at a time. A day at a time, that’s all. The doctors tell me there’s a lot of progress.”

“Really?”

“Oh, it’s amazing what millions of dollars can do in the Arneri-can health-care system. Up at the high end of the market, they can do all kinds of strange neural things now. He’s cheerful.”

“Really. ”

“He’s very cheerful. He’s stable. He’s lucid, even, most of the time.”

“Lorena, did I ever tell you how incredibly sorry I am about all this?”

She smiled. “Good old Oscar. I’m used to it now, you know? I’m dealing with it. I wouldn’t have thought that was possible — maybe it isn’t possible — but it’s doable. You know what really bothers me, though? It isn’t all the sympathy notes, or the media coverage, or the fan clubs, or any of that… It’s those evil fools who somehow believe that mental illness is a glamorous, romantic thing. They think that going mad is some kind of spiritual adventure. It isn’t. Not a bit of it. It’s horrible. It’s banal. I’m dealing with someone who has be-come banal. My darling husband, who was the least banal man I ever met. He was so multifaceted and wonderful and full of imagination; he was just so energetic and clever and charming. Now he’s like a big child. He’s like a not very bright child who can be deceived and managed, but not reasoned with.”

“You’re very brave. I admire you very much for saying that.”

Lorena began weeping. She massaged her eyes with her beauti-fully kept fingertips. “Now I’m crying but… Well, you don’t mind that, do you? You’re one of the people who really knew what we were like, back then.”

“I don’t mind.”

Lorena looked up after a while, her brittle face composed and bright. “Well, you haven’t told me how you are doing.”

“Me, Lorena? Couldn’t be better! Getting amazing things ac-complished over here. Unbelievable developments, all completely fas-cinating. ”

“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” she said. “You look tired.”

“I’ve had a little trouble with my new allergies. I’m fine as long as I stay around air filters.”

“How is your new job with the President? It must be exciting to be in the NSC when there’s almost a war on.”

Oscar opened his mouth. It was true; he was on the National Security Council, and there was a war in the works, and despite his tangential status and his deep disinterest in foreign affairs, he knew a great deal about the coming war. He knew that the President planned to send out a flotilla of clapped-out battleships across the Atlantic, without any air cover. He knew that the President was utterly deter-mined to provoke his token war, whether the Congress could be talked into declaring one or not. He knew that in a world of precisely targeted cheap missiles and infinite numbers of disposable drone air-craft, the rust-bucket American fleet was a fleet of sitting ducks.

He also knew that he would lose his job and perhaps even face espionage charges if he revealed this to a Senator’s wife on an NSC satphone. Oscar closed his mouth.

“I’m just a science adviser,” he said at last. “The Senator must know a great deal more about this than I do.”

“Would you like to talk to him?”

“That would be great.”

Lorena left. Oscar opened his nomad laptop, examined the screen for a moment, shut it again.

The Senator arrived on-camera. He was wearing pajamas and a blue velvet lounge robe. His face looked plump, polished, and strangely shapeless, as if the personality behind had lost its grip on the facial muscles.

“Oscar!” Bambakias boomed. “Good old Oscar! I think about you every day.”

“That’s good to know, Senator.”

“You’re doing marvelous things over there with the science facil-ity. Marvelous things. I really wish I could help you with that. Maybe we could fly over tomorrow! That would be good. We’d get results.”

Lorena’s voice sounded from off-camera. “There’s a hearing to-morrow, Alcott.”

“Hearings, more hearings. All right. Still, I keep up! I do keep up. I know what’s going on, I really do! Tremendous things you’re doing over there. You’ve got no budget, they tell me. None at all. Fill the place with the unemployed! Genius maneuver! It’s just like you always said, Oscar — push a political contradiction hard enough, it’ll break through to the other side. Then you can rub their noses in it. Great, great tactics.”