A constitutional amendment was offered to create a new fourth branch of government for American citizens whose “primary resi-dences were virtual networks.” America’s eight hundred and seven federal police agencies would be streamlined into four. There was a comprehensive reform plan for the astoundingly victorious American military.
There was also a new national health plan, more or less on a sensible Canadian model. This would never work. It had been put there deliberately, so that the President’s domestic opposition could enjoy the pleasure of destroying something.
The President’s fait accompli was not to be resisted — least of all by the state of Louisiana. Recognizing the hurricane power of this turn of events, Green Huey bent with the wind.
Huey resigned his office as Governor. He begged the people’s forgiveness and shed hot tears on-camera, expressing deep regret for his past excesses, and promising a brand-new, hundred-percent, feder-ally approved Normalcy Cooperation Policy. His lieutenant governor also resigned, but he was not missed, as he had always been the most colorless of Huey’s stooges.
Huey’s supine State Senate swiftly installed an entirely new Gov-ernor. She was a spectacular young black woman from New Orleans, a former beauty queen, a woman of such untoward and astonishing lithe beauty (for a state chief executive, at least) that the world’s cam-eras simply could not keep their lenses off her.
The new Governor’s first act as chief executive was to issue blan-ket pardons to all members of the former state government, including, first and foremost, Green Huey. Her second act was to formalize Lou-isiana’s state relationships — “formal and informal” — with the Regula-tors. The Regulators would henceforth be loyal local members of a statewide CDIA, directly modeled on the federal agency that the wise President in his infinite mercy had imposed on the American Repub-lic. It was pointed out that some Haitian guests of the State of Louisi-ana were still being held by their federal captors, and the new Governor, being of Haitian extraction herself, asked that they be granted clemency.
An enterprising news team — obviously tipped off — managed to locate and interview some of the Haitian subjects, who had been wait-ing out the days and hours in their federal medical kraal. The Haitians, having been ripped from their homes and medically probed from stem to stern, naturally expressed a devout wish to return to their swamp compound. It was a very poetic set of pleas, even when crossing the boundaries of translation. But at the end of the day, they were just Haitians, so no one felt much need to pay attention to their wishes. They stayed in their illegal-migrant slammer, while the President waited for the ex-Governor’s next shoe to drop.
On the issue of the Buna National Collaboratory and its frenetic reformers, the President did and said precisely nothing. The President apparently had bigger and better matters on his mind-and this Presi-dent was in a position to see to it that his interests seized and held the limelight.
With the sudden and stunning end of the War, the mad immi-gration into Buna slowed to a crawl. Then, it began to reverse itself. People had seen enough. The gawkers, and the fakers, and the most easily distracted trendies, began to realize that a glamorous, noncom-mercial, intellectual-dissident Greenhouse Society was simply not for everyone. Living there was going to involve a lot of work. The mere fact that money was not involved did not signify that work was not involved; the truth was the exact opposite. This congelation of science and mass economic defection was going to require brutal amounts of dedicated labor, constant selfless effort, much of it by necessity wasted on experiments that washed out, on roads that were better not taken, on intellectually sexy notions that became blinding cul-de-sacs.
Beneath the fluttering party streamers, there was going to be serious science in Buna: “Science” with a new obsessive potency, because it was art pour l’art, science for its own sake. It was science as the chosen pursuit of that small demographic fraction that was entirely consumed by intellectual curiosity. But the hot air of revolutionary fervor would leak from their bubble, and the chill air of reality would leave it somewhat clammy, and unpleasant to the touch.
Work on the newly renamed Normalcy Committee, by its very nature, somehow lacked the brio attendant on Emergency and War. The work had always been exhausting, but the attendees had rarely been bored.
Now Greta and Oscar were discovering brief moments when they could think for themselves. Moments when they could speak, and not for public consumption. Moments when business took the rest of the Committee quorum elsewhere. Moments when they were alone.
Oscar gazed around the empty boardroom. The place looked the way his soul felt: drained, overlit, empty, spattered with official detri-tus.
“This is it, Greta. The campaign’s finally over. We’ve won. We’re in power. We have to settle down now, we have to learn to govern. We’re not the rebels anymore, because we can’t lead any strikes and marches against ourselves. We can’t even rebel against the President: he’s benignly ignoring us in a classically passive-aggressive fashion, he’s giving us rope. He’s going to see if we make it, or if we hang ourselves. We’ve got to deal with reality now. We have to con-solidate.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to tell me that. To tell me that I’m finally off the hook. No more Joan of Arc”
“I painted you as Joan of Arc because that’s the kind of image that a candidate needs when she’s leading a heroic crusade. You’re not Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was a fifteen-year-old female military genius who heard voices in her head. You don’t have voices in your head. All that noise you had to listen to all this time, that wasn’t the crying of angels, that was a very gifted and clever public relations campaign. Joan of Arc got burned at the stake. She was toast. I didn’t set this up so that you would be toast. I don’t want you to be toast, Greta. Toast isn’t worth it.”
“So what do you want from me, Oscar? You want a Joan of Arc who somehow gets away with it all. A schizoid peasant girl who suc-cessfully builds a grand castle, and becomes, what, a French duchess? A peasant duchess in beautiful brocade robes.”
“And with a prince, too. Okay?”
“What prince really wants or needs Joan of Arc? I mean — for the long term.”
“Well, the obvious candidate would have been Gilles de Rais-but that guy clearly lost his perspective. Never mind that; historical analogy only carries us so far. I’m talking about you and me now. We’re at the end of the road. This is finally it. Now we have to take a stand. We have to settle.”
Greta closed her eyes, drew a few deep breaths. The room was silent except for the subtle hiss of the air filter. Stress made her aller-gies worse; she carried her air filters around like handbags now. “So, at the end, this is all about you and me.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No it isn’t. Let me tell you all about you and me. When I first saw you, I was totally skeptical. I wasn’t looking for any trouble. But you just kept making these little passes at me. And I thought: what is he doing? He’s a political operative. I have nothing this guy wants. I’m just wasting my life on this board, trying to get proper equipment. I wasn’t even managing to accomplish that. But then it occurred to me, this remote speculation: this guy is actually hot for me. He thinks I’m sexy. He wants to sleep with me. It really is that simple.”
She took a breath. “And I thought: that is really a bad idea. But what’s the worst that can happen to me? They find me in bed with this character, and I’ll get a scolding and they’ll throw me off the board. Wonderful! Then I can go back to my lab! And besides: look at him! He’s young, he’s handsome, he writes funny notes, he sends big bouquets. And there’s something so different about him.”