“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.