“Is it” — Oscar chose his words — “is it fully consonant with the dignity of the office?”
“Look, I never promised the voters dignity. I promised them results. Washington’s lost its grip, and everything they try just makes it worse. If I don’t seize the initiative from these sons of bitches on the Emergency committees, then I might as well declare myself a decora-tive bookend. That’s not why I wanted the job.”
“Yes sir,” Oscar said. “I know that.”
“There is a fallback option… If a hunger strike doesn’t get results, then we can start a convoy and lead our own rescue mission. We’ll ride down to Louisiana and feed that air base ourselves.”
“You mean,” Oscar said, “something like our campaign con-struction rallies.”
“Yes, except nationwide this time. Put the word out through the party apparatus and the net, organize our activists, and rally in Louisi-ana. Nationwide, Oscar. Rapid construction teams, disaster relief peo-ple, the grass-roots charities, pickets, marchers, full coverage. The works.”
“I like that,” Oscar said. “I like it a lot. It’s visionary.”
“I knew you’d appreciate that aspect. So you think it’s a credible fallback threat?”
“Oh yes,” Oscar said at once. “Sure. They know you can afford to do it. Of course a giant protest march is credible. A pro-military protest, that sounds great. But I do have a word of advice, if you’d like to hear it.”
“Naturally. ”
“The hunger strike is very dangerous. Dramatic moral gestures are very strong meat. They really bring out the sharks.”
“I realize that, and I’m not afraid of it.”
“Let me put it this way, Senator. You and your wife had better really starve.”
“That’s all right,” Bambakias said. “That’s doable. We’ve been hungry for years.”
Like most elements of modern American government, the Buna Na-tional Collaboratory was run by a committee. The source of local authority was a ten-person board, chaired by the Collaboratory’s Di-rector, Dr. Arno Felzian. The members of the board were the heads of the Collaboratory’s nine administrative divisions.
Sunshine laws required the board’s weekly meetings to take place publicly. The modern legal meaning of “public” meant camera cover-age on a net-accessible address. The older tradition of a public meet-ing still held true in Buna, though. Collaboratory workers often showed up in person for board meetings, especially if they expected to see some personal ox gored.
Oscar had chosen to physically attend all of the Collaboratory board meetings. He had no plans to formally announce himself, or to take any part in the committee’s business. He was attending strictly in order to be seen. To make sure that his ominous presence fully regis-tered, he brought with him his net administrator, Bob Argow, and his oppo researcher, Audrey Avizienis.
The board’s public studio was on the second floor of the Col-laboratory’s media center, across an open-air flywalk from the central administration building. The studio had been designed for public meetings back in 2030, with slanted racks of seats, decent acoustics, and nicely placed camera coverage.
But the Collaboratory’s local government had had a checkered history. The net-center had been looted and partially burned during the lab’s violent internal brawls of 2031. The damaged studio had naturally been somewhat neglected during the ensuing federal witch-hunts and the economic warfare scandals. It had crawled some dis-tance back toward respectable order and repair in 2037, when the Collaboratory had shored up its perennially crisis-stricken finances. Repair contractors had papered over the burn marks and spruced the place up somewhat. The place was a miniature jungle of attractive potted plants.
The board’s stage was fully functional, with sound baffles, over-head lighting, standard federal-issue table and chairs. The automatic cameras were in order. The board members were gamely plowing through the week’s agenda. The issue currently at hand was replacing the ailing plumbing system in one of the Collaboratory cafeterias. The head of the Contracts Procurements Division had the floor. He was mournfully reading a list of repair charges from a spreadsheet.
“I can’t believe it’s this bad,” Argow muttered.
Oscar deftly adjusted the screen of his laptop. “Bob, there’s something I need to show you.”
“This is just so impossibly awful.” Argow was ignoring him.
“Before I came here, I never really understood the damage we’ve done. The human race, I mean. The terrible harm we’ve done to our planet. Once you really think about it, it’s absolutely horrifying. Do you realize how many species have been killed off in the past fifty years? It’s just a total, epic catastrophe.”
Audrey leaned in over Oscar’s shoulder. “You promised you’d stop drinking, Bob.”
“I’m sober as a judge, you little shrew! While you’ve been sitting in the dorm with your nose in your screen, I’ve been touring the gardens here. With the giraffes. And the golden marmosets. All wiped out in a holocaust! We’ve poisoned the ocean, we’ve burned down and plowed the jungles, and we even screwed up the weather. All for the sake of modern life, right? Eight billion psychotic media-freaks!”
“Well,” sniffed Audrey, “you’re a fine one to talk on that score.” Argow flinched theatrically. “That’s right! Rub it in! Look, I know full well that I’m part of the problem. I’ve wasted my life run-ning networks, while the planet was destroyed all around me. Well, so have you, Audrey. We’re both guilty, but the difference is that I can recognize the truth now. The truth has really touched me. It’s touched me in here.” Argow pounded his bulky chest.
Audrey’s grainy voice grew silkier. “Well, I wouldn’t fret too much, Bob. You’re not good enough at your work to be any real menace.’
“Take it easy, Audrey,” Oscar said mildly.
Audrey Avizienis was a professional opposition researcher. Once roused, her critical faculties were lethal. “Look, we all came down here, and I’m doing my damn job. But laughing boy here is being a big, holier-than-thou, depressive bringdown. What, he thinks I can’t appreciate nature just because I spend a lot of time on the net? I know plenty about the birds and the bees, and the butterflies, and the cab-bages, and all the rest of that stuff”
“What I know,” Argow muttered, “is that the planet is coming apart, and we’re sitting in this stupid building with these hopeless bureaucratic morons dithering on and on about their sewage prob-lems.”
“Bob,” Oscar said calmly, “you’re missing something.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s every bit as bad as you say. It’s worse than you say. Much worse. But this is the biggest bio-research center in the world. These people in front of us — these are the people who are in charge of this place. So you’re at the front lines now. You’re guilty all right, but you’re nowhere near as guilty as you will be, if you don’t shape up. Because we are in power and you are the responsible party now.”
“Oh,” Argow said.
“So get a grip.” Oscar flipped back his laptop screen. “Now, take a look at this. You too, Audrey. You’re systems professionals, and I need your input here.”
Argow examined Oscar’s laptop screen, his owlish eyes glowing.
A lime-green plane with lumpy reddish mountains. “Uhm… yeah, I’ve seen those before. That’s a, uhm …”
“It’s an algorithmic landscape,” Audrey said intently. “A visual-ization map.”
“I just received this program from Leon Sosik,” Oscar said.
“This is Sosik’s simulation map for current public issues. These moun-tains and valleys, they’re supposed to model current political trends. Press coverage, the feedback from constituents, the movement of lob-bying funds, dozens’ of factors that Sosik fed into his simulator… But now watch this. See, I’m moving these close-up crosshairs … See that big yellow amoeba sitting on that purple blur? That is the current public position of Senator-elect Alcott Bambakias.”