“Yes, I know, Etienne.”
“It’s a cryin’ shame, you fillin’ out them federal grants in quintu-plicate. A woman like you needs a free hand! Let’s just say that you fancy workin’ on… blocking the uptake of methylspiropedirol in extrastriatal dopamine receptors. Might sound kinda funny to the layman, but that’s all the difference between sanity and total schizophre-nia. I defy you to find a single elected federal official who can even pronounce them words! But that’s the coming thing. Digital… biological… and now cognitive. Plain as the nose on my brain. You think we’re gonna sit here in Acadiana, as the only nonnative people in America ever subjected to forced ethnic cleansing, and watch a bunch of POINTY-HEADED FAT CATS tryin’ to OUT-THINK US? Out-goddamn-THINK us? In a pig’s eye, sister!”
“I don’t do cognition, Etienne. I’m just a neural tech.”
“You won the Nobel for establishing the glial basis of attention, and you’re claiming you don’t do cognition?”
“I do neurons and glial cells. I do neurochemical wave propaga-tion. But I don’t do consciousness. That’s not a term of art. It’s meta-physics.”
“You’re a mile deep, darlin’. But you’re an inch wide. It ain’t metaphysics when it’s sitting on a table in front of you with an apple in its mouth. Look, we known each other a long time. You know old Huey, don’t you? You’re a friend of Huey’s, you can have anything you want. Anything you want!”
“I just want to work in my lab.”
“You got it! Send me the specs! What do you want, airtight? We got sulfur and salt mines a mile down, holes bigger than downtown Baton Rouge. Do whatever the hell you want down there! Seal the doors behind you. Science, the endless frontier, darlin’! Can’t ask for better than that! Never sign an impact statement again! Just get your results and publish, that’s all I’m askin’! Just get your results and pub-lish.”
Oscar and Greta returned to the beach house at four in the morning. They watched from the deck railings as the headlights of their six-car state police escort turned and faded into darkness.
The krewe, alerted by Fontenot, had been carefully guarding the beach house. It had not been entered or searched. That seemed like a small comfort. “I can’t believe that people came up to him and kissed his hands,” Oscar said.
“There were only three of them.”
“They kissed his hands! They were weeping, and kissing his hands!”
“He’s made a lot of difference to the local people,” Greta said, yawning. “He’s given them hope.” She stepped into the bathroom with her overnight bag, and shut the door.
Oscar went into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door. His hands were shaking. Huey hadn’t cracked him. Oscar hadn’t lost his temper or his nerve; but he was appalled at the speed of the man’s reaction and the swift price he’d had to pay for taking foolish risks in Huey’s sphere of influence. He found an apple in the fridge and picked it up absently. Then he went in and sat in the hideous armchair. He stood up again, immediately. “He had that place packed with armed goons, and those people were kissing his hands!”
“The Governor needs bodyguards, he lives a very dangerous life,” Greta said from behind the bathroom door. “Oscar, why did he call you the ‘Soap Salesman’?”
“Oh, that. That was my first company. A biotech app. We made emulsifiers for dishwashing liquid. People don’t think these things through, you know. They think biotech should be fancy and elaborate. But soap is a major consumer item. You get a five percent processing edge in a commodity market like soap, and the buyout guys will beat your doors down…” His words trailed off. She was brushing her teeth, she wasn’t listening.
She came out in a white flannel nightgown. It was ankle-length and had a little pastel bow at the neck. She opened her overnight bag and pulled out a compact air filter.
“Allergies?” Oscar said.
“Yes. The air outside the dome… well, outside air always smells funny to me.” She plugged in her filter. It emitted a powerful hum.
Oscar checked the windows to make sure they were shut and curtained, then stared at her. All unknowing, his feelings about her had undergone a deep and turbulent sea change. His encounter with the Governor had roiled him inside. He was all stirred and clotted now. He was passionate. He felt aggressive and possessive. He was sick with jealousy. “Are you going to sleep in that?”
“Yes. My feet always get so cold at night.”
Oscar shook his head. “You’re not going to sleep in that. And we won’t use the bed. This time, we’ll use the floor.”
She examined the floor. It had a lovely hooked rug. She looked up at him, her face flushed to the ears.
He woke just after dawn. He was asleep on the rug. Greta had stripped the bed and placed the sheet and coverlet over him. She was sitting at the bureau, scribbling in her notebook.
Oscar slowly examined the water-stained ceiling. His kneecaps were rug-burned. His back felt sore. There was a slimy damp spot congealing under his hip. He felt truly at peace with himself for the first time in weeks.
5
Without the services of Fontenot to scope out trouble and smooth his way, Oscar found travel difficult. Traffic in Alabama was snarled by manic Christian tent-revival shows, “breathing fresh life into the spirit” with two-hundred-beat-per-minute gospel raves. In Tennessee, Oscar’s progress was stymied by battalions of Mexican migrant workers, battling the raging kudzu hands-on, with pick and shovel. Oscar was enjoying the relative safety of a bogus biohazard bus, but there were circumstances when even this couldn’t help him.
But while Lana, Donna, and Moira grew bored in the bus and often petulant, Oscar was never idle. As long as he had his laptop and a net-link, the world was his oyster. He tended his finances. He memorized the dossiers of his fellow staffers on the Senate Science Committee. He traded mash email with Greta. Greta was particularly good with email. She mostly spoke about her work — work was the core of Greta’s being — but there were entire para-graphs now in which he was actually comprehending what she said.
Political news ran constantly on the bus’s back win-dows. Oscar made a special point of following the many ramifications of Bambakias’s hunger strike.
Developments in the scandal were rapid and profound. By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, the Louisiana air base had been placed under siege.
The base’s electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.
Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing a federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead, the rogue Governor employed proxy guerril-las.
Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana’s many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesti-cides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.