Distraction

7

Life in the Collaboratory lacked the many attractive facilities of the Back Bay in Boston.

Oscar and Greta met in a broken car in the dark parking lot behind the Vehicle Repair Facility. This assig-nation spot was Kevin Hamilton’s idea. Kevin was very big on secure meetings inside anonymous cars. Kevin was no Secret Service agent, but he brimmed over with rule-of-thumb street smarts.

“I’m afraid,” Greta confessed.

Oscar adjusted his jacket, tugging for elbow room.

The car was so small that they were almost sitting in each other’s laps. “How could you have stage fright over such a simple thing? You gave a Nobel Prize speech in Stock-holm once.”

“But then I was talking about my own work. I can always do that. This is different. You want me to stand up in front of the board of directors and tell them off to their face. In front of a big crowd of my friends and colleagues. I’m not cut out for that.”

“Actually, you are cut out for it, Greta. You’re abso-lutely perfect for the role. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”

Greta examined her laptop screen. It was the only light inside the dead vehicle, and it underlit their faces with a gentle glow. They were meeting at two in the morning. “If it’s really this bad here — as bad as you claim it is — then it’s really no use fighting, is it? I should just resign.”

“No, you don’t have to resign. The point of this speech is that they have to resign.” Oscar touched her hand. “You don’t have to say anything you don’t know to be true.”

“Well, I know some of these things are true, because I leaked them to you myself. But I would never have said them out loud. And I wouldn’t have said them this way. This speech, or this rant, or what-ever it is — it’s a violent political attack! It’s not scholarly. It’s not objective.”

“Then let’s talk about how you should say it. After all, you’re the speaker — you’re the one who has to reach the audience, not me. Let’s go over your talking points.”

She scrolled up and down fitfully, and sighed. “All right. I guess this is the worst part, right here. This business about scientists being an oppressed class. ‘A group whose exploitation should be recognized and ended.’ Scientists rising up in solidarity to demand justice — good Lord, I can’t say that! It’s too radical, it sounds crazy!”

“But you are an oppressed class. It’s the truth, it’s the central burning truth of your existence. Science took the wrong road some-where, the whole enterprise has been shot to hell. You’ve lost your proper niche in society. You’ve lost prestige, and your self-respect, and the high esteem that scientists once held in the eyes of the public. Demands are being made of you that you’ll never be able to fulfill. You don’t have intellectual freedom anymore. You live in intellectual bondage.”

“That doesn’t make us some kind of ‘oppressed class.’ We’re an elite cadre of highly educated experts.”

“So what? Your situation stinks! You have no power to make your own decisions about your own research. You don’t control the purse strings. You don’t have tenure or job security. You’ve been robbed of your peer review traditions. Your traditional high culture has been crushed underfoot by ignoramuses and fast-buck artists. You’re the technical intelligentsia all right, but you’re being played for suckers and patsies by corrupt pols who line their pockets at your expense.”

“How can you say that? Look at this amazing place we live in!”

“You just think that this is the ivory tower, sweetheart. In reality, you’re slum tenants.”

“But nobody thinks that way!”

“That’s because you’ve been fooling yourselves for years now. You’re smart, Greta. You have eyes and ears. Think about what you’ve been through. Think about how your colleagues really have to live now. Think a little harder.”

She was silent.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Take your time, think it through.”

“It is true. It’s the truth, and it’s awful, and I’m very ashamed of it, and I hate it. But it’s politics. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “Let’s move on into the speech.” “Okay.” She wiped her eyes. “Well, this is the really sick and painful part. Senator Dougal. I know that man, I’ve met him a lot of times. He drinks too much, but we all do that nowadays. He’s not as bad as all this.”

“People can’t unite against abstractions. You have to put a face on your troubles. That’s how you rally people politically. You have to pick your target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Dougal’s not your only enemy, but you don’t have to worry about that. The rest of them will come running out of the woodwork as soon as you nail him to the wall.”

“But he built everything here, he built this whole laboratory!”

“He’s a crook. We’ve got chapter and verse on him now. No-body dared to cross him while he was in power. But now that he’s shipping water and going down fast, they’ll all rat him out. The kick-backs, the money laundering… You’re in charge of Instrumenta-tion. Dougal and his cronies have been skimming your cream for years. You’ve got a legal and moral obligation to jump on him. And best of all, jumping on Dougal is a free ride politically. He can’t do a thing about it. Dougal is the easy part.” Oscar paused. “It’s Huey that I’m really worried about.”

“I don’t see why I have to be so nasty.”

“You need an issue, and there’s no such thing as a noncontrover-sial issue. And ridicule is the radical’s best weapon. The powers that be can stand anything but being laughed at.”

“It’s just not me.”

“Give it a chance first. Try the experiment. Launch one or two of those zingers, and see how your audience responds.”

She sniffed. “They’re scientists. They’re not going to respond to partisan abuse.”

“Of course they are. Scientists fight like crazed weasels. Look at your own history here at the lab! When Dougal got this place built, he had to cash in a lot of favors. He needed the Christian fundie vote before he could build a giant gene-splicing lab in the East Texas Bible Belt. That’s why the Collaboratory used to have its own Creation Science department. That setup lasted six weeks! There were fistfights, riots, and arson! They had to call in the Texas Rangers to restore order. ”

“Oh, the creation-science problem wasn’t all that bad.”

“Yes it was! Your little society has blocked out that memory because it was so embarrassing. That wasn’t the half of it. Next year they had a major brawl with the Buna residents, regular town-gown riots… And it really hit the fan during the economic war. There were federal witch-hunts for foreign science spies, there was hyperin-flation and lab guys living on bread crusts… See, I’m not a scien-tist like you. I don’t have to take it on faith that science is always a noble endeavor. I actually look these things up.”

“Well, I’m not a politician like you. So I don’t have to spend my life digging up ugly scandals.”

“Darling, we’ll have a little chat sometime about your twentieth-century Golden Age — Lysenkoism, atom spies, Nazi doctors, and ra-diation experiments. In the meantime, though, we need to stick to your speech.”

She gazed at her laptop. “It just gets worse and worse. You want me to cut our budget and get people fired.”

“The budget has to be cut. Cut drastically. People have to be fired. Fired by the truckload. The lab’s sixteen years old, it’s full of bureaucratic deadwood. Get the deadwood out of here. Fire the Spin-offs department, they’re all Dougal’s cronies and they’re all on the take. Fire the lab procurement drones and put the budgets back into the hands of researchers. And, especially, fire the police.”

“I can’t possibly fire the police. That’s crazy.”

“The police have to go as soon as possible. Hire your own po-lice. If you don’t control your own police, you live on sufferance. The police are the core of any society, and if you don’t have them on your side, you can’t hold power. Huey knows that. That’s why Huey owns the cops in here. They may be feds officially, but they’re all in his pockets.”

The car jostled with a thump and a creak. Oscar yelped. A shapeless black beast was bumping and clawing at the hood.

“It’s a lemur,” Greta said. “They’re nocturnal.”

The lemur stared through the windshield with yellow eyes the size and shape of golf balls. Pressed flat against the glass, its eldritch protohuman mitts gave him a serious turn. “I’ve had it with these animals!” Oscar shouted. “They’re like Banquo’s ghost, they never let us alone! Whose bright idea was this anyway? Wild animals loose in a science lab? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“They are ghosts,” Greta said. “We raised them from the dead. It’s something we learned how to do here.” She opened her door and stepped half out, waving one arm. “Go on. Shoo.”

The lemur sidled off reluctantly.

Oscar had broken into a cold sweat. His hair was standing on end and his hands were shaking. He could actually smell his own fear: a sharp pheromonal reek. He crossed his arms and shivered violently. His reaction was all out of whack, but he couldn’t help it: he was very inspired tonight. “Give me a minute … Sorry … Where were we?”

“I can’t stand up in public and start screaming for people to be fired.”

“Don’t prejudge the evidence. Try it out first. Just suggest that a few of these creeps should be fired, and see what the public response is.” He drew a breath. “Remember the climax — you do have a final ace to play.”

“Where I say that I refuse my own salary.”

“Yeah, I thought voluntarily cutting it in half might be good — I’d like to see the Collaboratory’s budget cut about in half — but it’s a better and stronger gesture if you just refuse your pay altogether. You refuse to take government pay until the lab is put back in order. That’s a great conclusion, it shows you’re really serious and it gets you out with a punch, and a nice hot sound bite. Then you sit back and watch the fireworks.”

“I sit back, and the Director fires me on the spot.”

“No, he won’t. He won’t dare. He’s never been his own man, and he’s just not bright enough to react that quickly. He’ll stall for time, and he’s all out of time. Getting the Director out of office is not a problem. The next big step is getting you in as Director. And the real challenge will be keeping you in office — long enough for you to push some real reforms through.”

She sighed. “And then, finally, when that’s all over, do I get to go back and do my labwork?”

“Probably.” He paused. “No, sure, of course. If that’s what you really want.”

“How am I supposed to eat with no salary?”

“You’ve got your Nobel Prize money, Greta. You’ve got big piles of Swedish kronor that you’ve never even touched.”

She frowned. “I kept thinking I would buy new equipment with it, but the lab procurement people wouldn’t let me do all the paper-work.”

“Okay, that’s your problem in a nutshell. Fire all those sorry bastards first thing.”

She shut her laptop. “This is serious. When I do this, it will make a terrible stink. Something will happen.”

“We want things to happen. That’s why we’re doing all this.” She turned in her seat, anxiously poking him with a kneecap. “I just want to be truthful. Not political. Truthful.”

“This is an honest political speech! Everything there can be doc-umented.”

“It’s honest about everything but you and me.”

Oscar exhaled slowly. He’d been expecting this development.

“Well, that’s where we have to pay the price. After tomorrow, you’re on campaign. Even with the best will and intention, we won’t have any time for ourselves anymore. When we had our stolen moments, we could meet in Boston or Louisiana, and that was lovely, and we could get away with that. But we lose that privilege from now on. This is the last time that you and I can meet privately. I won’t even be in the audience when you speak tomorrow. It mustn’t look like I’m prompting you.”

“But people know about us. A lot of people know. I want people to know.”

“All political leaders lead double lives. Public, and private. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s just reality.”

“What if we’re outed?”

“Well, there’s two ways to play that development. We could stonewall. That’s simplest and easiest — just deny everything, and let them try to prove it. Or, we could be very coy and provocative, and say that we’re flattered by their matchmaking. We could lead them on a little, we could be sexy and glamorous. You know, play it the good old Hollywood way. That’s a dangerous game, but I know that game pretty well, and I like that one better, myself.”

She was silent for a moment. “Won’t you miss me?”

“How can I miss you? I’m managing you. You’re the very center of my life now. You’re my candidate.”

Oscar and Yosh Pelicanos were enjoying a healthful stroll around the china tower of the Hot Zone. Pelicanos wore a billed hat, khaki walk-ing shorts, and a sleeveless pullover. Two months inside the dome had caused almost all of Oscar’s krewe to go native. Oscar, by stark con-trast, wore his nattiest suit and a sharp new steam-blocked hat. Oscar rarely felt the need of serious exercise, since his metabolic rate was eight percent higher than that of a normal human.

Their walk was a deliberate and public promenade. The Col-laboratory’s board was meeting, Greta was about to speak, and Oscar was very conspicuously nowhere near the scene. Oscar was especially hard to miss when publicly trailed by his bodyguard: the spectral Kevin Hamilton, parading in his motorized wheelchair.

“What is it with this Hamilton guy?” Pelicanos grumbled, glanc-ing over his shoulder. “Why on earth did you have to hire some Anglo hustler? His only credential is that he limps even worse than Fontenot. ”

“Kevin’s very gifted. He got that netwar program off my back. Besides, he works cheap.”

“He dresses like a loan shark. The guy gets eighteen package deliveries a day. And that headphone and the scanning gear — he’s sleeping in it! He’s getting on our nerves.”

“Kevin will grow on you. I know he’s not the standard team player. Be tolerant.”

“I’m nervous,” Pelicanos admitted.

“No need for that. We’ve laid all the groundwork perfectly,” Oscar said. “I’ve got to hand it to the krewe, you’ve really done me proud here.” Oscar’s mood was radiant. Unbearable personal tension, stress, and agonizing suspense always brought out his boyish, endearing side. “Yosh, you did first-class work on those audits. And the push-polling was superb, you handled that beautifully. A few dozen loaded questions on the Science Committee letterhead, and the locals are hopping like puppets, they’re gun-shy now, they’re ready for anything. It’s been a tour de force all around. Even the hotel’s making money! Especially now that we lured in all those expense-account headhunters from out of state.”

“Yeah, you’ve got us all working like mules — you don’t have to tell me that. The question is, is it enough?”

“Well, nothing’s ever enough… Politics isn’t precision ma-chinery, it’s a performance art. It’s stage magic. It’s a brand-new year, and now the curtain’s going up. We’ve got our plants primed in the audience, we’ve got scarves and ribbons up our sleeve, we’ve saturated the playing field with extra hats and rabbits…”

“There’s way too many hats and rabbits.”

“No there aren’t! Can’t have too many! We’ll just use the ones that we need, as we need them. That’s the beauty of multitasking. It’s that fractal aspect, the self-similarity across multiple political layers …”

Pelicanos snorted. “Stop talking like Bambakias. That highbrow net-jive gets you nowhere with me.”

“But it works! If the feds somehow fail us, we’ve got leaks in at the Texas comptroller’s office. The Buna city council loves us! I know they’re not worth much politically, but hey, we’ve paid more atten-tion to them in the past six weeks than the Collaboratory has paid them in fifteen years.”

“So you’re keeping all your options open.”

“Exactly. ”

“You always say that you hate doing that.”

“What? I never said that. You’re just being morose. I feel very upbeat about this, Yosh — we’ve had a few little setbacks, but taking this assignment was a wise decision. It’s been a broadening professional experience. ”

They paused to let a yak cross the road. “You know what I really like about this campaign?” Oscar said. “It’s so tiny. Two thousand political illiterates, sealed inside a dome. We have complete voter profiles and interest-group dossiers on every single person in the Col-laboratory! It’s so sealed off and detached-politically speaking, there’s something perfect and magical about a setup like this.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I’m determined to enjoy this, Yosh. We might be crushed here, or we might soar to glory, but we’ll never have the chance to do something quite like this again.”

A supply truck lumbered past them, laden with mutant seedlings.

“You know something?” Pelicanos said. “I’ve been so busy playing the angles that I never got the chance to understand what they actually do in here.”

“I think you understand it a lot better than they do.”

“Not their finances, I mean the actual science. I can understand commercial biotech well enough — we were in that business together, in Boston. But the real cutting edge here, those brain people, the cognition people… I know I’m missing something important there.”

“Yeah? Personally, I’ve been trying to get up to speed on ‘amy-loid fibrils.’ Greta really dotes on those things.”

“It’s not just that their field is technically difficult to grasp. It is, but I also have a feeling they’re hiding something.”

“Sure. That’s science in its decadence. They can’t patent or copyright their findings anymore, so sometimes they try for trade secrets.” Oscar laughed. “As if that could really work nowadays.”

“Maybe there’s something going on in this place that could help Sandra.”

Oscar was touched. His friend’s dark mood was clear to him now, it had opened up before him like an origami trick. “Where there’s life, there’s hope, Yosh.”

“If I had more time to figure it out, if there weren’t so many distractions … Everything is hats and rabbits now. Nothing’s pre-dictable, nothing makes sense anymore, it’s all rockets and potholes. There’s no foundation left in our society. There’s no place left for us to take a stand. There’s a very dark momentum going, Oscar. Some-times I really think the country’s going mad.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, just look at us. I mean, look what we’ve been dealing with.” Pelicanos hunched his head and began counting off on his fingers. “My wife is a schizophrenic. Bambakias has major depression. Poor Moira finally cracked in public, and pitched a fit. Dougal is an alcoholic. Green Huey is a megalomaniac. And those sick lunatics trying to kill you — there was an endless supply of those people.”

Oscar walked on silently.

“Am I reading too much into this? Or is there a genuine trend here?”

“I’d call it a groundswell,” Oscar said thoughtfully. “That accounts for those sky-high poll ratings ever since Bambakias’s break-down. He’s a classic political charismatic. So even his personal negatives boost his political positives. People just sense his authenticity, they recognize that he’s truly a man of our time. He represents the American people. He’s a born leader.”

“Does he have it together to take action for us in Washington?”

“Well, he’s still a name for us to conjure with… But practi-cally speaking, no. I’ve got good backchannel from Lorena, and frankly, he’s really delusionary now. He’s got some weird fixation about the President, something about hot-war with Europe… He sees Dutch agents hiding under every bed… They’re trying him out with different flavors of antidepressant.”

“Will that work? Can they stabilize him?”

“Well, the treatments make great media copy. There’s a huge Bambakias medical fandom happening, ever since his hunger strike, really… They’ve got their own sites and feeds… Lots of get-well email, home mental-health remedies, oddsmaking on the death-watch … It’s a classic grass-roots phenomenon. You know, T-shirts, yard signs, coffee mugs, fridge magnets … I dunno, it’s getting kind of out of hand.”

Pelicanos rubbed his chin. “Kind of a tabloid vulture pop-star momentum there.”

“Exactly. Perfect coinage, you’ve hit the nail on the head.”

“How bad should we feel about this, Oscar? I mean, basically, this is all our fault, isn’t it?”

“You really think so?” Oscar said, surprised. “You know, I’m so close to it I can’t really judge anymore.”

A bicycle messenger stopped them. “I’ve got a packet delivery for a Mr. Hamilton.”

“You want that guy in the wheelchair,” Oscar said.

The messenger examined his handheld satellite readout. “Oh yeah. Right. Thanks.” He pedaled off.

“Well, you were never his chief of staff,” Pelicanos said.

“Yeah, that’s true. That’s a comfort.” Oscar watched as the bike messenger engaged in the transaction with his security chief. Kevin signed for two shrink-wrapped bundles. He examined the return ad-dresses and began talking into his head-mounted mouthpiece.

“You know that he eats out of those packages?” Pelicanos said.

“Big white sticks of stuff, like straw and chalk. He chews ’em all the time. He kind of grazes.”

“At least he eats,” Oscar said. His phone rang. He plucked it from his sleeve and answered it. “Hello?”

There was a distant, acid-scratched voice. “It’s me, Kevin, over.” Oscar turned and confronted Kevin, who was rolling along in his chair ten strides behind them. “Yes, Kevin? What’s on your mind?”

“I think we have a situation coming. Somebody just pulled a fire alarm inside the Collaboratory, over.”

“Is that a problem?”

Oscar watched Kevin’s mouth move. Kevin’s voice arrived at his ear a good ten seconds later. “Well, this is a sealed, airtight dome. The locals get pretty serious about fires inside here, over.”

Oscar examined the towering gridwork overhead. It was a blue and lucid winter afternoon. “I don’t see any smoke. Kevin, what’s wrong with your telephone?”

“Traffic analysis countermeasures — I routed this call around the world about eight times, over.”

“But we’re only ten meters apart. Why don’t you just roll up over here and do some face-time with me?”

“We need to cool it, Oscar. Stop looking at me, and just go on walking. Don’t look now, but there are cops tailing us. A cab in front and a cab behind, and I think they have shotgun mikes. Over.”

Oscar turned and threw a companionable arm over Pelicanos’s shoulder, urging him along. There were, in point of fact, some labora-tory cops within sight. Normally the cops employed their “Buna Na-tional Collaboratory Security Authority” trucks, macho vehicles with comic-opera official seals on the doors, but these officers had com-mandeered a pair of the Collaboratory’s little phone-dispatched cabs. The cops were trying to be inconspicuous.

“Kevin says the cops are tailing us,” Oscar told Pelicanos.

“Delighted to hear it,” Pelicanos said mildly. “There were three attempts on your life in here. You must be the most excitement that these local cops have had in years.”

“He also says there’s been a fire alarm.”

“How would he know that?”

A bright yellow fire truck emerged from the bowels of the Oc-cupational Safety building. It set its lights flashing, opened up with a klaxon blare, and headed south, off the ring road.

Oscar felt an odd skin-creeping feeling, then a violent huff of atmospheric pressure. An invisible door slammed shut in his head. The Collaboratory had just fully sealed its airlocks. The entire massive structure had gone tight as a drum.

“Jesus, it is a fire!” Pelicanos said. Acting on instinct, he turned and began jogging after the fire truck.

Oscar thought it more sensible to stay with his bodyguard. He tucked his phone in his sleeve and walked over to join Kevin.

“So, Kevin, what’s in those delivery packets?”

“Heavy-duty sunblock,” Kevin lied, yawning to clear his ears. “It’s an Anglo thing.”

Oscar and Kevin left the ring road, heading south past the Com-putation Center. Their police escorts were still dutifully trailing them, but the little cabs were soon lost in a curious pedestrian crowd emerg-ing from their buildings.

The fire truck stopped outside the Collaboratory’s media center.

This building was the site of Greta’s public board meeting. Oscar’s carefully drummed-up capacity crowd was pouring from the exits, loudly milling in confusion.

A fistfight had broken out on the steps at the eastern exit. A gray-haired man with a bloody nose was cowering under the metal handrails, and a young tough with a cowboy hat and shorts was strug-gling to kick him. Four men were grappling reluctantly at the young man’s arms and shoulders, trying to restrain him.

Kevin stopped his wheelchair. Oscar waited at Kevin’s elbow and examined his watch. If all had gone as planned — which it clearly hadn’t — then Greta should have finished her speech by now. He looked up again to see the cowboy lose his hat. To his deep astonish-ment he recognized the assailant as his krewe gofer, Norman-the-Intern.

“Come with me, Kevin. Nothing that we want to see here.” Oscar turned hastily on his heel and walked back the way he’d come. He glanced over his shoulder, once. His police escort had abandoned him. They had dashed forward with gusto, and were busy arresting young Norman.

Oscar waited until he received official notification from the police about Norman’s arrest. He then went to police headquarters, in the east central side of the dome. The Collaboratory’s police HQ was part of a squat fortress complex, housing the fire department, the power generators, the phone service, and the internal water supply.

Oscar was quite familiar with the internal routines of the local police headquarters, since he’d visited three of his would-be assailants in custody there. He presented himself to the desk officer. He was informed that young Norman had been charged with battery and disturbing the peace.

Norman was wearing orange coveralls and a wrist cuff. Norman looked surprisingly spiffy in his spotless prison gear — he was rather better dressed than most Collaboratory personnel. The cuff was a locked-on shatterproof bracelet studded with tiny mikes and surveil-lance lenses.

“You should have brought a lawyer,” Norman said from behind the cardboard briefing table. “They never turn off this cuff unless there’s attorney-client privilege.”

“I know that,” Oscar said. He opened his laptop and set it on the table.

“I never knew how awful this was,” Norman mourned, rubbing at his monster cuff. “I mean, I used to see guys on parole wearing these things, and I’d always wonder, you know, what’s with this evil scumbag… But now that I’ve got one myself… They’re really demeaning. ”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Oscar said blandly. He began typing. “I knew this kid at school once who got into trouble, and I used to hear him spoofing his cuff… You know, he’d sit there in math class muttering ‘crime drugs robbery murder assault…’ Because the cops run voice recognition scans. That’s how these cuffs surveil you. We thought he was totally nuts. But now I get why he did that.”

Oscar turned his laptop screen to face Norman, showing a dimly legible set of 36-point capitals. WE’LL KEEP UP THE SMALL TALK AND I’LL LEVEL WITH YOU ON THIS.

“You don’t have to worry about the local law enforcement peo-ple. We can talk freely here,” Oscar said aloud. “That device is meant for your own protection as well as the safety of others.” JUST KEEP YOUR ARM DOWN IN YOUR LAP SO THE CAMERAS CAN’T READ THIS SCREEN. He erased the screen with a key-stroke.

“Am I in big trouble, Oscar?”

“Yes you are.” NO YOU’RE NOT. “Just tell me what hap-pened.” TELL ME WHAT YOU TOLD THE POLICE.

“Well, she was giving one heck of a speech,” Norman said. “I mean, you could barely hear her at first, she was so nervous, but once the crowd started yelling, she really got pretty worked up. Everybody got really excited … Look, Oscar, when the cops arrested me, I lost my head. I told them a lot. Pretty much everything. I’m sorry.”

“Really,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, like, I told them why you sent me there. Because we knew from the profiles who was likely to make trouble, and that it would probably be this guy Skopelitis. So that’s who I was casing. I was sitting right behind him in the fifth row… So every time he got all ready to stand up and really give it to her, I ran a preemption. I asked him to explain a term for me, I got him to take off his hat, I asked him where the rest room was…”

“All perfectly legal behavior,” Oscar said.

“Finally he screamed at me to shut up.”

“Did you stop conversing with Dr. Skopelitis when you were asked to stop?”

“Well, I started eating my bag of potato chips. Nice and crunchy.” Norman smiled wanly. “He sort of lost his head then, he was trying to find cues in his laptop. And I was shoulder-surfing him, and you know, he had a whole list of prepared statements there. He went in there loaded. But she was really tearing through her material by then, and they were applauding, and cheering, even… lots of major laugh lines. They couldn’t believe how funny she was. He finally jumped up and yelled something totally stupid about how dare she this, and how dare she that, and the place just went ape. They just shouted him down. So he walked out of the meeting in a major huff. And I followed him.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Mostly just to distract him some more. I was really enjoying myself.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m a college student, and he’s just like this professor I had once, a guy I really couldn’t stand. I just wanted him to know that I had his number. But once he was outside the briefing room, he took off running. So then I knew he was up to something bad. So I fol-lowed him, and I saw him trip a fire alarm.”

Oscar removed his hat and set it on the table. “You say you actually witnessed this?”

“Heck yeah! So I had it out with him. I ran up to him and I said, ‘Look, Skopelitis, you can’t pull a dirty stunt like that! It’s not profes-sional.’ ”

“And?”

“And he denied it to my face. I said, ‘Look, I saw you do it.’ He panics and takes off I run after him. People are pouring into the halls because of the fire alarm. It gets really exciting. I’m trying to appre-hend him. We get into a fight. I’m a lot stronger than him, so I punch his lights out. I’m running down the hall after him, jumping down the steps, he’s got a bloody nose, people are yelling at us to stop. I pretty much lost my temper.”

Oscar sighed. “Norman, you’re fired.”

Norman nodded sadly. “I am?”

“That’s not acceptable behavior, Norman. The people in my krewe are political operatives. You’re not a vigilante. You can’t beat people up.”

“What was I supposed to do, then?”

“You should have informed the police that you saw Dr. Skope-litis committing a crime.” HE’S FINISHED! GOOD WORK! TOO BAD I HAVE TO FIRE YOU NOW.

“You’re really going to fire me, Oscar?”

“Yes, Norman, you are fired. I’ll go to the clinic, I’ll apologize to Dr. Skopelitis personally. I hope I can persuade him to dismiss the charges against you. Then I’m sending you home to Cambridge.”

Oscar went to visit Skopelitis in the Collaboratory clinic. He brought flowers: a lushly symbolic bouquet of yellow carnations and lettuce. Skopelitis had a private room, and with Oscar’s sudden arrival, he had hastily returned to his bed. He had a black eye and his nose was heavily bandaged.

“I hope you’re not taking this too badly, Dr. Skopelitis. Let me ring the nurse for a vase.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Skopelitis said nasally.

“Oh, but I insist,” Oscar said. He went through the agonizing ritual, shuttling the nurse in, accepting her compliments on the flow-ers, small-talking about water and sunshine, carefully judging the pa-tient’s growing discomfort. This shaded into open horror as Skopelitis glimpsed Kevin in his wheelchair, stationed outside in the hall.

“Is there anything we can do to assist in your convalescence? A little light reading matter, maybe?”

“Stop it,” Skopelitis said. “Stop being so polite, I can’t stand it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look, I know exactly why you’re here. Let’s cut to the chase. You want me to get the kid off. Right? He assaulted me. Well, I’ll do that on one condition: he has to stop telling those lies about me.”

“What lies are those?”

“Look, don’t play your games with me. I know the score. You had your dirty tricks team in there. You set up that whole thing from the very beginning, you wrote that speech for her, those slanders against the Senator, you planned it all. You waltzed into my lab with your big campaign machine, muckraking all the tired old stories, try-ing to wreck people’s careers, trying to destroy people’s lives… You make me sick! So I’m giving you one chance, straight across: you shut him up, and I’ll drop the charges. That’s my best offer. So take it or leave it.”

“Oh dear,” Oscar said. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. We don’t want the charges dropped. We intend to contest them in court.”

“What?”

“You’re going to twist in the wind for weeks. We’re going to have a show-trial here. We’re going to squeeze the truth out of you under oath, drop, by drop, by drop. You have no bargaining position with me. You’re sunk. You can’t pull a stunt like that on an impulse! You left DNA traces on the switch. You left your fingerprints on it. There’s an embedded vidcam inside the thing! Didn’t Huey warn you that the lab’s alarms are bugged?”

“Huey has nothing to do with this.”

“I could have guessed that. He wanted you to disrupt the speech, he didn’t want you to fly totally off the handle and send the whole population into the streets. This is a science lab, not a ninja academy. You dropped your pants like a circus clown.”

Skopelitis had gone a light shade of green. “I want a lawyer.”

“Then get one. But you’re not talking to a cop here. You’re just having a friendly bedside chat with a U.S Senate staffer. Of course, once you’re questioned by the U.S. Senate, you’ll surely need a lawyer then. A very expensive lawyer. Conspiracy, obstruction of jus-tice… it’ll be juicy.”

“It was just a false alarm! A false alarm. They happen all the time.”

“You’ve been reading too many sabotage manuals. Proles can get away with urban netwar, because they don’t mind doing jail time. Proles have nothing much to lose — but you do. You came in there to shout her down and cover your own ass, but you lost your temper and destroyed your own career. You just lost twenty years of work in the blink of an eye. And you’ve got the nerve to dictate terms to me? You dumb bastard, I’m gonna crucify you. You just pulled the bonehead move of your life. I’m going to make you a public laughingstock, from sea to shining sea.”

“Look. Don’t do that.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t do that to me. Don’t ruin me. Please. He broke my nose, okay? He broke my nose! Look, I lost my head.” Skopelitis wiped tears from his blackened eye. “She never acted like that before, she’s turned on us, it was like she’d gone crazy! I had to do something, it was just… it just…” He broke into sobs. “Jesus…”

“Well, I can see I’m distressing you,” Oscar said, rising. “I’ve enjoyed our little confab, but time presses. I’ll be on my way.”

“Look, you just can’t do this to me! I only did one little thing.”

“Listen.” Oscar sat back down and pointed. “You’ve got a laptop there. You want off the hook? Write me some mail. Tell me all about it. Tell me every little thing. Just between the two of us, privately. And if you’re straight with me… well, what the hell. He did break your nose. I apologize for that. That was very wrong.”

Oscar was studying the minutes from the latest Senate Science Com-mittee meeting when Kevin walked into the room.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” Kevin said, yawning.

“No, not particularly.”

“I’m kind of gathering that.” Kevin dropped his cane and sat down in a sling chair. Oscar had a rather spartan room at the hotel. He was forced to move daily for security reasons, and besides, the best suites were all taken by paying customers.

Oscar shut his laptop. It was quite an intriguing report — a federal lab in Davis, California, was sorely infested with hyperintelligent lab mice, provoking a lawsuit-slinging panic from the outraged locals — but he found Kevin very worthwhile.

“So,” Kevin said, “what happens next?”

“What do you think: happens next, Kevin?”

“Well,” Kevin said, “that would be cheating. Because I’ve seen this sort of thing before.”

“You don’t say.”

“Yeah. Here’s the situation. You’ve got a group of people here who are about to all lose their jobs. So you’re gonna organize them and fight back politically. You’ll get a lot of excitement and solidarity for about six weeks, and then they’ll all get fired. They’ll shut the whole place down and lock the gates in your face. Then you’ll all turn into proles.”

“You really think so?”

“Well, maybe not. Maybe basic research scientists are somehow smarter than computer programmers, or stock traders, or assembly-line workers, or traditional farmers… You know, all those other people who lost their professions and got pushed off the edge of the earth. But that’s what everybody always thinks in these situations. ‘Yeah, their jobs are obsolete now, but people will always need us.’ ”

Oscar drummed his fingers on his laptop. “It’s good of you to take such a lively interest, Kevin. I appreciate your input. Believe it or not, what you’re saying isn’t exactly news to me. I’m very aware that huge numbers of people have been forced out of the conventional economy and become organized network mobs. I mean, they don’t vote, so they rarely command my professional attention, but over the years they’re getting better and better at ruining life for the rest of us.”

“Oscar, the proles are ‘the rest of us.’ It’s people like you who aren’t ‘the rest of us.’ ”

“I’ve never been the rest of anybody,” Oscar said. “Even people like me are never people like me. You want a coffee?”

“Okay.”

Oscar poured two cups. Kevin reached companionably into his back pocket and pulled out a square white baton of compressed vege-table protein. “Have a chew?”

“Sure.” Oscar gnawed thoughtfully on a snapped-off chunk. It tasted like carrots and foam.

“You know,” Oscar ruminated, “I have my share of prejudices — who doesn’t, really? — but I’ve never had it in for proles, per se. I’m just tired of living in a society permanently broken into fragments. I’ve always hoped and planned for federal, democratic, national reform. So we can have a system with a decent role for everyone.”

“But the economy’s out of control. Money just doesn’t need human beings anymore. Most of us only get in the way.”

“Well, money isn’t everything, but just try living without it.”

Kevin shrugged. “People lived before money was invented. Money’s not a law of nature. Money’s a medium. You can live without money, if you replace it with the right kind of computation. The proles know that. They’ve tried a million weird stunts to get by, road-blocks, shakedowns, smuggling, scrap metal, road shows… Heaven knows they never had much to work with. But the proles are almost there now. You know how reputation servers work, right?”

“Of course I know about them, but I also know they don’t really work.”

“I used to live off reputation servers. Let’s say you’re in the Reg-ulators — they’re a mob that’s very big around here. You show up at a Regulator camp with a trust rep in the high nineties, people will make it their business to look after you. Because they know for a fact that you’re a good guy to have around. You’re polite, you don’t rob stuff, they can trust you with their kids, their cars, whatever they got. You’re a certifiable good neighbor. You always pitch in. You always do people favors. You never sell out the gang. It’s a network gift econ-omy.”

“It’s gangster socialism. It’s a nutty scheme, it’s unrealistic. And it’s fragile. You can always bribe people to boost your ratings, and then money breaks into your little pie-in-the-sky setup. Then you’re right back where you started.”

“It can work all right. The problem is that the organized-crime feds are on to the proles, so they netwar their systems and deliberately break them down. They prefer the proles chaotic, because they’re a threat to the status quo. Living without money is just not the Ameri-can way. But most of Africa lives outside the money economy now — they’re all eating leaf protein out of Dutch machines. Polynesia is like that now. In Europe they’ve got guaranteed annual incomes, they’ve got zero-work people in their Parliaments. Gift networks have always been big in Japan. Russians still think property is theft — those poor guys could never make a money economy work. So if it’s so impracti-cal, then how come everybody else is doing it? With Green Huey in power, they’ve finally got a whole American state.”

“Green Huey is a pocket Stalin. He’s a personality cultist.”

“I agree he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s a giant son of a bitch. His state government runs Regulator servers now. And they didn’t over-run that air base by any accident. Huey’s nomads really have what it takes now — no more of this penny-ante roadblock and wire-clipper nonsense. Now they’ve got U.S. Air Force equipment that’s knocked over national governments. It’s a silent coup in progress, pal. They’re gonna eat the country right out from under you.”

“Kevin, stop frightening me. I’m way ahead of you here. I know that the proles are a threat. I’ve known it since that May Day riot in Worcester, back in ’42. Maybe you didn’t care to notice that ugly business, but I have tapes of all that — I’ve watched it a hundred times. People in my own home state tore a bank apart with their hands. It was absolute madness. Craziest thing I ever saw.”

Kevin munched his stick and swallowed. “I didn’t have to tape it. I was there.”

“You were?” Oscar leaned forward gently. “Who ordered all that?”

“Nobody. Nobody ever orders it. That was a fed bank, they were running cointelpro out of it. The word bubbled up from below, some heavy activists accreted, they wasp-swarmed the place. And once they’d trashed it, they all ducked and scattered. You’d never find any ‘orders,’ or anyone responsible. You’d never even find the software. That thing is a major-league hit-server. It’s so far underground that it doesn’t need eyes anymore.”

“Why did you do that, Kevin? Why would you risk doing a crazy thing like that?”

“I did it for the trust ratings. And because, well, they stank.” Kevin’s eyes glittered. “Because the people who rule us are spooks, they lie and they cheat and they spy. The sons of bitches are rich, they’re in power. They hold all the cards over us, but they still have to screw people over the sneaky way. They had it coming. I’d do it again, if my feet were a little better.”

Oscar felt himself trembling on the edge of revelation. This was almost making sense. Kevin had just outed himself, and the facts were finally falling into place. The situation was both a lot clearer and rather more dangerous than he had imagined.

Oscar knew now that he had been absolutely right to follow his instincts and hire this man. Kevin was the kind of political creature who was much safer inside the tent than outside it. There had to be some way to win him over, permanently. Something that mattered to him. “Tell me more about your feet, Kevin.”

“I’m an Anglo. Funny things happen to Anglos nowadays.” Kevin smiled wearily. “Especially when four cops with batons catch you screwing with traffic lights … So now, I’m a dropout’s dropout. I had to go straight, I couldn’t keep up on the road. I got myself a crap security gig in a tony part of Beantown. I put most of the old life behind me … Hey, I even voted once! I voted for Bambakias.”

“That’s extremely interesting. Why did you do that?”

“Because he builds houses for us, man! He builds ’em with his own hands and he never asks for a cent. And I’m not sorry I voted for him either, because you know, the man is for real! I know that he blew it, but that’s for real — the whole country has blown it. He’s rich, and an intellectual, and an art collector, and all that crap, but at least he’s not a hypocrite like Huey. Huey claims he’s the future of Amer-ica, but he cuts backroom deals with the Europeans.”

“He sold out our country, didn’t he?” Oscar nodded. “That’s just too much to forgive.”

“Yup. Just like the President.”

“Now what? What’s the problem with Two Feathers?”

“Actually, the President’s not a bad guy in his own way. He’s done some good refugee work out in the West. It’s really different out there now; since the giant fires and relocations, they’ve got nomad posses taking over whole towns and counties… But that doesn’t cut much ice with me. Two Feathers is a Dutch agent.”

Oscar smiled. “You lost me there. The President is a Dutch agent?”

“Yeah, the Dutch have been backing him for years. Dutch spooks are very big on disaffected ethnic groups. Anglos, Native Americans … America’s a big country. It’s your basic divide-and-conquer hack.”

“Look, we’re not talking Geronimo here. The President is a bil-lionaire timber baron who was Governor of Colorado.”

“We are talking Geronimo, Oscar. Take away America’s money, and you’ve got a country of tribes.”

Once the charges were dismissed against Norman-the-Intern, Oscar’s krewe held a nice going-away party for him. It was very well attended. The hotel was crowded with Collaboratory supporters, who professed heartfelt admiration for Norman and deeply appreciated the free drinks and food.

“This is such a beautiful hotel,” said Albert Gazzaniga. Greta’s majordomo had arrived in the company of Warren Titche and Cyril Morello — two of the Collaboratory’s permanently disaffected activists. Titche fought for perks and cafeteria fare like a radical wolverine, while Morello was the only man in the Human Resources Depart-ment who could be described as honest. Oscar was delighted to see the three of them spontaneously coalescing. It was a sure sign that trends were going his way.

Gazzaniga was clutching a hurricane glass with a little paper par-asol. “Great little restaurant here, too. I’d eat here every day if I didn’t have to breathe all this filthy outside air.”

“It’s a shame about your allergy problems, Albert.”

“We’ve all got allergies in there. But I just had a good idea — why don’t you roof over a street between here and the dome?”

Oscar laughed. “Why settle for half measures? Let’s roof over the whole damn town.”

Gazzaniga squinted. “Are you serious? I can never tell when you’re serious.”

Norman tugged at Oscar’s sleeve. His face was scarlet and his eyes were wet with sentimental tears. “I’m leaving now, Oscar. I guess this is my last good-bye.”

“What?” Oscar said. He took Norman’s suit-jacketed elbow and steered him away from the crowd. “You have to stay after the party. We’ll play some poker.”

“So you can send me back to Boston with a nice cash present, and it won’t have to show on the books?”

Oscar stared at him. “Kid, you’re the first guy on my krewe who’s ever said a word about that sad little habit of mine. You’re a big boy now, okay? You need to learn to be tactful.”

“No I don’t,” said Norman, who was very drunk. “I can be as rude as I want, now that you’ve fired me.”

Oscar patted Norman’s back. “That was strictly for your own good. You pulled a major coup, so you’re all used up now. From now on, they’d sandbag you every time.”

“I just wanted to tell you, no hard feelings. I have no regrets about any of this. I really learned a lot about politics. Also, I got to punch out a professor, and I got away with it. Heck, that was worth it all by itself.”

“You’re a good kid, Norman. Good luck in engineering school. Try and take it a little easy with the X-ray laser gambit.”

“I’ve got a car waiting,” Norman said, shuffling from foot to foot. “My dad and mom will be real glad to see me … It’s okay that I’m leaving. I hate to go, but I know it’s for the best. I just wanted to clear one last thing with you before I left. Because I never really leveled with you about the, uh… well, you know.”

“The ‘personal background problem,’ ” Oscar said.

“I never got used to that. Lord knows I tried. But I never got used to you. Nobody ever gets used to you. Not even your own krewepeople. You’re just too weird, you’re just a very, very weird guy. You think weird. You act weird. You don’t even sleep. You’re not exactly human.”

He sighed, and swayed a little where he stood. “But you know something? Things really happen around you, Oscar. You’re a mover and shaker, you matter. The country needs you. Please don’t let us down, man. Don’t sell us out. People trust you, we trust you. I trust you, I trust your judgment. I’m young, and I need a real future. Fight the good fight for us. Please.”

Oscar had time to examine the Director’s outer office as Dr. Arno Felzian kept him waiting. Kevin passed the time feeding bits of protein to Stickley the binturong, who had just arrived from Boston by air shipment. Stickley wore a radio-tracking collar; his claws were clipped, his fangs were polished, and he was groomed and perfumed like a prize poodle. Stickley scarcely smelled at all now.

Someone — some kreweman of Senator Dougal’s, presumably — had seen fit to decorate the Director’s federal offices in high Texas drag. There were wall-mounted rifles, steer heads, lariats, cowhide seats, a host of shiny commemorative plaques.

Felzian’s secretary announced him. Oscar hung his hat on a tow-ering antler rack inside the door. Felzian was sitting behind his inlaid oak-and-cedar desk, looking as unhappy as politeness would allow. The Director wore bifocal glasses. The metal-and-glass prosthetic gave Felzian a touchingly twentieth-century look. Felzian was a short, slen-der man in his sixties. He might have been bald and fat in a crueler century.

Oscar shook the Director’s hand and took a brindled leather chair. “Good to see you again, Dr. Felzian. I appreciate your taking the time to meet me today.”

Felzian was wearily patient. “I’m sure that’s quite all right.”

“On behalf of Senator and Mrs. Alcott Bambakias, I want to present you with this laboratory specimen. You see, Mrs. Bambakias takes a lively personal interest in animal welfare issues. So she had this specimen thoroughly examined in Boston, and she discovered that he has an excellent bill of health. Mrs. Bambakias congratulates the Col-laboratory on its sound animal rights practices. She also grew very fond of the animal personally, so although she’s returning him to you now, she’s also sending along this personal contribution to help assure his future welfare.”

Felzian examined the document Oscar proffered. “Is that really a signed, paper bank check?”

“Mrs. Bambakias likes a traditional, personal touch,” Oscar said. “She’s very sentimental about her friend Stickley here.” He smiled, and produced a camera. “I hope you don’t mind if I take a few fare-well photos now, for her family scrapbook.”

Felzian sighed. “Mr. Valparaiso, I know you didn’t come here to dump a stray animal in my lap. Nobody ever returns our animals. Never. Basically, they’re party favors. So if your Senator is returning a specimen to us, that can only mean he plans to do us real harm.”

Oscar was surprised to hear Felzian speaking so grimly. Given that this was the Director’s office, he’d naturally assumed that they were being taped. And bugged. Maybe Felzian had just given up on discretion. He accepted surveillance as a chronic disease — like smog, like asthma. “Not at all, sir! Senator Bambakias is deeply impressed by this facility. He strongly supports the federal research effort. He plans to make science policy a mainstay of his legislative agenda.”

“Then I can’t understand what you’re up to.” Felzian reached into a desk drawer and removed a sheaf of printout. “Look at these resignations. These are veteran scientists! Their morale has been crushed, they’re leaving us.”

“That would be Moulin, Lambert, Dulac, and Dayan?”

“They’re four of my very best people!”

“Yes, I agree that they’re very bright and determined. Unfortu-nately, they’re also Dougal loyalists.”

“So that’s it. So they’re very much in your way?”

“Yes, certainly. But you know, they’re not suffering by this. They’re moving out well ahead of the curve. They’ve all been snapped up by offers from private industry.”

Felzian leafed delicately through his papers. “How on earth do you arrange things like this? You’ve scattered them all over the coun-try. It’s amazing.”

“Thank you. It’s a difficult project, but with modern techniques, it’s doable. Let’s just take Dr. Moulin, for instance. Her husband’s from Vermont, and her son’s in school there. Her specialty is endocri-nology. So, we input the relevant parameters, and the optimal result was a small genetics firm in Nashua. The firm wasn’t eager to take her on a placement-service cold-call, but I had the Senator’s office call them, and talk about their domestic competition in Louisiana. The company was very willing to see reason then. And so was Dr. Moulin, once we queried her on those eccentricities in her lab’s expense ac-counts.”

“So you deliberately targeted her for elimination.”

“It’s attrition. It’s distraction. It looks perfectly natural. Those four are influential people, they’re local opinion leaders. They’re smart enough to create real trouble for us — if they had a mind to try it. But since they are, in fact, very smart people, we don’t have to beat them over the head with the obvious. We just point out the reality of their situation, and we offer them a golden parachute. Then they see sense. And they leave.”

“This is truly monstrous. You’re ripping the heart and soul out of my facility, and nobody will know — nobody will even see it.”

“No, sir, it’s not monstrous. It’s very humane. It’s good poli-tics. ”

“I can understand that you have the ability to do this. I don’t understand why you think you have the right.”

“Dr. Felzian … it’s not a question of rights. I’m a professional political operative. That’s my job. Nobody ever elected people like me. We’re not mentioned in the Constitution. We’re not accountable to the public. But nobody can get elected without a campaign profes-sional. I admit it: we’re an odd class of people. I agree with you, it’s very peculiar that we somehow have so much power. But I didn’t invent that situation. It’s a modern fact of life.”

“I see.”

“I’m doing what this situation requires, that’s all. I’m a Federal Democrat from the Reform Party Bloc, and this place needs serious reform. This lab requires a new broom. It’s full of cobwebs, like, let me think… well, like that casino yacht in Lake Charles that was purchased out of the irrigation funds.”

“I had nothing to do with that matter.”

“I know you didn’t, not personally. But you turned a blind eye to it, because Senator Dougal went to Congress every session, and he brought you back your bacon. I respect the effort that it takes to run this facility. But Senator Dougal was chair of the Senate Science Committee for sixteen years. You never dared to cross him. You’re probably lucky you didn’t — he’d have crushed you. But the guy didn’t steal just a little bit — he ended up stealing truckloads, and the country just can’t afford that anymore.”

Felzian leaned back in his chair. Oscar could see that he was beyond mere horror now — he was finding a peculiar gratification in all this. “Why are you telling me these things?”

“Because I know you’re a decent man, Mr. Director. I know that this lab has been your life’s work. You’ve been involved in some contretemps, but they were meant to protect your position, to protect this facility, under very trying conditions. I respect the efforts you’ve undertaken. I have no personal malice against you. But the fact of the matter is that you’re no longer politically expedient. The time has come for you to do the decent thing.”

“And what would that be, exactly?”

“Well, I have useful contacts in the University of Texas system. Let’s say, a post in the Galveston Health Science Center. That’s a nice town, Galveston — there’s not a lot left to the island since the seas have risen, but they’ve rebuilt their famous Seawall and there’s some lovely old housing there. I could show you some very nice brochures.”

Felzian laughed. “You can’t outplace every last one of us.”

“No, but I don’t have to. I only have to remove key opinion leaders, and the opposition will collapse. And if I can win your coop-eration, we can get this all over with in short order. With dignity, maintaining all the proprieties. That’s in the best interests of the sci-ence community.”

Felzian crossed his arms triumphantly. “You’re sweet-talking me like this because you don’t really have anything on me.”

“Why should I resort to threats? You’re a reasonable man.”

“You’ve got nothing! And I’m supposed to collaborate with you, resign my Directorship, and quietly fall on my sword? You’ve got a lot of nerve.”

“But I’m telling you the truth.”

“The only problem I see here is you. And your problem is that you can’t do me any harm.”

Oscar sighed. “Yes, I can, actually. I’ve read your lab reports.”

“What are you talking about? I’m in administration! I haven’t published a paper in ten years.”

“Well, I’ve read your papers, Mr. Director. Of course, I’m not a trained geneticist, so, sad to say, I didn’t understand them. But I did audit them. They all received full-scale, nitpicking scans from an op-positional research team. You published seventy-five papers in your scientific career, everyone of them jam-packed with numerical tables. Your numbers add up beautifully. Too beautifully, because six of them have the same sets of data.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that someone got lazy at the lab bench, and skipped the boring gruntwork.”

Felzian turned red. “What? You can’t prove that.”

“Unfortunately for you, yes, I can prove it. Because it’s all there in black and white. Back in your publish-or-perish days, you were in a big hurry, you had to cut some corners. And that’s bad. It’s very bad. For a scientist, it’s professionally fatal. Once we out you as a scientific fraud, you won’t have a friend left to your name. Your colleagues will break your sword and tear off your epaulets.”

Felzian said nothing.

Oscar shrugged. “As I said before, I’m not a scientist. I don’t take scientific fraud with the lethal seriousness that you scientists do. Personally, I don’t see how your fraud did any great harm, since no one was paying attention to those papers anyway. You were just a fair-to-middling talent in a very competitive field, trying to pad out your rйsumй.”

“I was completely unaware of this so-called problem. It must have been my grad students.”

Oscar chuckled. “Look, we both know that can’t get you off the hook. Sure, you can hide behind buck-passing when it comes to mere financial fraud. But this isn’t mere money. These are your lab results, your contribution to science. You cooked the books. If I out you on that, we both know you’re through. So why discuss this any further? Let’s get to the real agenda.”

“What is it you want from me?”

“I want you to resign, and I need your help in establishing the new Director.”

“Greta Penninger.”

“No,” Oscar said at once, “we both know that’s just not doable. Greta Penninger has been tactically useful to me, but I have another candidate that will be much more to your liking. In fact, he’s an old colleague of yours — Professor John Feduccia, the former president of Boston University.”

Felzian was astonished. “John Feduccia? How did he get onto the A-list?”

“Feduccia’s the ideal candidate! He’s very seasoned in adminis-tration, and he had an early career at the University of Texas, so that gives him the necessary local appeal. Plus, Feduccia is a personal friend of Senator Bambakias. Best of all, Feduccia is politically sound. He’s a Federal Democrat.”

Felzian stared at him in amazement. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been leading on poor Greta Penninger, while all this time you’ve been planning to bring in some Yankee who’s a personal crony of your boss?”

Oscar frowned. “Look, don’t be uncharitable. Of course I ad-mire Greta Penninger. She was perfectly suited for the role that she’s already played here. She’s created a groundswell for change, but she can’t possibly run this facility. She doesn’t understand Washington. We need a responsible adult for that job, a seasoned hand from out-side, someone who understands political reality. Feduccia’s a pro. Greta’s naive, she’s too easily swayed. She’d be a disaster.”

“Actually, I think she might do very well.”

“No, she’ll do much better where she belongs — back behind her lab bench. We can ease her off the board now, and back to her proper role as a working researcher, and everything will fall neatly into place.”

“So that you can continue having an affair with her, and nobody will bother to notice it.”

Oscar said nothing.

“Whereas, if she became Director, she’d be right in the public spotlight. So your sordid little dalliance becomes impossible.”

Oscar stirred in his seat. “I really didn’t expect this of you. This is truly beneath you. It’s not the act of a gentleman and scholar.”

“You didn’t think I knew anything about that business, did you? Well, I’m not quite the helpless buffoon that you take me for! Pen-ninger is the next Director. You and your scurvy krewe can sneak back to Washington. I’m leaving this office — no, not because you’re forcing me out, but because I’m sick to death if this Job!”

Felzian banged his desk. “It’s very bad here now. Since we lost our support in the Senate, it’s impossible. It’s a farce now, it’s untena-ble! I’m washing my hands of you, and Washington, and everything that you stand for. And keep one thing in mind, young man. With Penninger in office here, if you out me, I can out you. You might embarrass me — even humiliate me. But if you ever try it, I’ll out you and the new Director. I’ll break you both in public, like a pair of matchsticks.”