Twenty-four more feverish hours of War ticked by. Then, the Administration accused the Governor of Louisiana of conducting un-ethical medical experiments on illegal aliens. This news arrived in the very midst of the martial fife-playing and drumbeating. It was a shock-ing distraction. But it was serious — bad, very bad, unbelievably bad. The surgeon general and the cabinet head of Health Services were wheeled out in public, burdened with grim looks, medical evidence, and terrifying cranial flip charts.
The PR attack on Huey was badly handled, amateurish, graceless even. But it was lethal. Huey had laughed off many other scandals, sidestepped them, passed the buck, silenced his critics, suborned them. But this scandal was beyond the pale. It was all about invisible, help-less, rootless people, deliberately driven out of their minds as an indus-trial process. That was just a little too close to home for most Americans. They couldn’t live with that.
When his phone rang, Oscar was, for once, entirely ready. “You little SCUMBAG!” Huey screamed. “You evil Yankee narc! Those people were perfectly happy! It was heaven on earth! And the feds came in the dark and kidnapped them! They burned them alive!”
“Good evening, Governor! I take it you’ve seen tonight’s Ad-ministration briefing.”
“You’re FINISHED, you jumped-up little creep! I’m gonna make you sorry you were ever cloned! I made promises to those peo-ple, they were under my care. You outed them! I know it was you. Admit it!”
“Governor, of course I admit it. Let’s be adults here. That news was bound to come out, whether I leaked it or not. You can’t run two years of secret neural experiments on hundreds of human subjects and not have leaks. Scientists talk to each other. Even your pet scientists. Even nonpedigreed chicken-fried scientists who live down in salt mines doing gruesome things to foreigners. Scientists communicate their findings, that’s just the way scientists are. So of course your pet goons in the salt mines leaked word to other neuroscientists. And of course I got wind of it. And of course I told the President. I work for the President.” He cleared his throat. “Mind you, I didn’t design that presentation tonight. If I had, it would have looked more profes-sional.”
He wondered if Huey would swallow this boldly prepared lie.
He’d done his best to make it sound plausible. He’d done it in order to shield Fontenot, his real source. Maybe the deception would work. In any case it would surely distract and irritate Huey and his state-supported neuro quacks.
“You can’t believe that racist poppycock they’re handing out about my Haitians. Those folks aren’t monsters! They’re just very devout people with some strange drug practices. Blowfish zombie poi-sons, and all that.”
“Governor, you’re making me cry. Am I ten years old? Are you afraid I’m taping this? If you’re not going to talk to me seriously, you might as well hang up.”
“Oh no,” Huey grunted. “You and I go back a little too far for that. I can always talk to you, Soap Boy.”
“Good. I’m glad that our previous understanding still holds. Let’s try to avoid cross-purposes, this time.”
“At least I know that you can talk to the President. That son of a bitch won’t return my calls! Me — the most senior Governor in Amer-ica! I know that dumb bastard, I met him at Governors’ conferences. Hell, I did him a whole lot of favors. I taught him everything he knows about proles and how you deal with ’em. ‘Moderators’ — what the hell is all that about? He’s killing my people! He’s kidnapping my people. You tell the President that he’s crossed the wrong man. I’m not puttin’ up with the strong-arm from the Featherweight. He got eighteen percent of the popular vote! You tell him that! You tell him Huey don’t forget these things.”
“Governor, I’ll be glad to convey your sentiments to the Presi-dent, but may I make a reasonable suggestion first? Shut up. You are finished. The President has you cornered. This thing you did with the Haitians was totally unconscionable! You’ve shot your own feet off in public.”
“So I should have left them on their drowning island to be tor-tured to death.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what you should have done. Leave them alone. You don’t own people just because you helped them survive. You want to blow people’s minds by giving weird dope to uninformed experimental subjects? Go back to the 1960s and join the CIA! You’re not God, Huey! You’re just a damn Governor! You went way, way too far! And you can’t wiggle out of this one, because your fingerprints are all over it-your brain prints are all over it!”
Huey laughed. “You just watch me and see.”
“They’re gonna demand that you go in for a PET-scan next, Huey. Then, they’re going to find the dual synchronized waves of chemical gradients, and the shifting electrical patterns through the corpus callosum, and all that other boring neural crap that you and I are the only politicians in the world who have learned to pronounce properly! They’re gonna out you as a bolt-in-the-neck monster. Peo-ple are gonna Frankenstein you! You’re gonna be barbecued by a torch-wielding mob. You’re not just gonna be politically embarrassed by this. You’re gonna get killed.”
“I know all that,” Huey said quietly. “Let ’em do their worst.”
Oscar sighed. “Etienne — can I call you that? I feel that we know and understand one another so much better these days… Etienne, please don’t make people kill you. That can happen very easily, and it’s just not worth it. Listen to me. I sympathize with you. I take a deep, lasting, personal and professional interest in politicians who hap-pen to be monsters. Believe me, it doesn’t get any better after this part. After this part, it just gets worse and worse.”
“You know that I’m going to out you big-time for this, don’t you? ‘Colombian Clone Freak in Seaside Love Nest with Nobel Scientist.’ ”
“Etienne, I’m not just a Colombian clone freak. I am also a professional campaign adviser. Let me give you some very sincere campaign advice, right now. Give up. Go away. Just get yourself some cash out of the slush fund, and get your lovely wife if she really wants to come along, and go into exile. Go into self-imposed exile. You know? Leave the country. It happens. It’s traditional. It’s a legitimate political maneuver.”
“I’m not gonna run away. Huey don’t do that.”
“Of course ‘Huey do that,’ dammit! Go aboard a nice French submarine — I know you got a dozen of ’em lurking offshore. Have ’em take you to a nice villa, on Elba, or St. Helena or something. Take a few pet bodyguards. It’s doable! You eat well, you write the mem-oirs, you’re tanned, rested, and ready. Maybe… maybe even, someday… if somehow things get much, much worse here in America… maybe you’ll even look good. It sounds insane, but I’m not sure I can even judge anymore. Maybe, someday, deliberately im-posing schizoid states of mind on unsuspecting human beings will become politically fashionable. But it sure as hell isn’t now. Read to-morrow’s opinion polls. You’re toast.”
“Kid, I’m Huey. You’re toast. I can destroy you, and your un-grateful bitch girlfriend, and your entire research facility, which, in point of fact, is, and always will be, my research facility.”