Lana looked at him, biting her lip. Her doelike eyes brimmed with tears. “Why can’t they tell when you’re coming apart? Poor Oscar! Nobody even cares.”
“Maybe a little ice water,” he muttered.
Lana found his hat and set it gently on his head. “I’ll get you out of here.”
“Oscar!” Kevin shouted. “The south gate is open! The lab is being invaded! There are hundreds of nomads!”
Oscar responded instantly, with whip crack precision. “Are they Regulators or Moderators?” But the emerging words were gibberish. His tongue had suddenly swollen inside his head. His tongue was bloated and huge. It was as if his mouth had two tongues in it.
“What’ll we do?” Kevin demanded.
“Just get away from him! Let him be!” Lana shrieked. “Some-body help me with him! He needs help.”
Once checked into the Collaboratory clinic, Oscar got the reaction he always received from medical personneclass="underline" grave puzzlement and po-lite distress. He was exhibiting many symptoms of illness, but he couldn’t be properly diagnosed, because his metabolism simply wasn’t entirely human. His temperature was soaring, his heart was racing, his skin was erupting, his blood pressure was off the scale. Given his unique medical background, there was no obvious course of treat-ment.
Nevertheless, a proper head bandage, an ice pack, and a few hours of silence did him a lot of good. He finally drifted into a healing sleep. He woke at noon, feeling weary, sore, and shaken, but back in control. He sat up in his hospital bed, sipping tomato juice and exam-ining news on his laptop. Kevin had abandoned him. Lana had insisted that the rest of the krewe leave him alone.
At one o’clock Oscar had an impromptu gaggle of visitors. Four hairy, booted nomads burst into his private room. The first was General Burningboy. His three young toughs looked impossibly sinister — war-painted, glowering, muscular.
The General had brought him a large bouquet. Holly, yellow daffodils, and mistletoe. The floral symbolism was painfully obvious.
“Howdy,” said Burningboy, appropriating a vase and dumping its previous contents. “Heard you were feelin’ poorly, so me and my boys dropped by to cheer you up.”
Oscar gazed thoughtfully at the invaders. He was glad to see them. It improved his morale to be back on the job so quickly. “That’s very good of you, General. Do have a seat.”
Burningboy sat on the foot of the clinic bed, which squealed alarmingly under his weight. His three followers, ignoring the room’s two chairs, crouched sullenly on the floor. The oldest one set his back firmly against the door.
“Not ‘General.’ Corporal. I’m Corporal Burningboy now.”
“Why the demotion, Corporal?”
“Simple matter, really. I used up all my network trust and credi-bility when I ordered fifty girls into this facility. Those young women have fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters — boyfriends, even. I put those little darlings into harm’s way, just on my own recognizance. And, well, that pretty much burned out all my credibility. Years of effort, right down the drain! Now, I’m just some little jasper.”
Oscar nodded. “I take it this has something to do with reputa-tion servers and your nomad networks of trust.”
“Yup. You got it.”
“It seems absurd that you should be demoted, when your paramilitary operation was such a signal success.”
“Well now …” Burningboy squinted. “I might recoup some of my lost prestige — if it could be shown that we Moderators were der-ivin’ some benfjit from all this risky activity.”
“Aha.”
“So far, we haven’t gotten a dang thing outta any of this, except a sleepless night for the worried families of our valiant warriors.”
“Corporal, you are right. I completely concur with your analysis. Your help was invaluable, and as yet, we’ve done nothing for you in return. I acknowledge that debt. I am a man of my word. You were there for us when we needed you. I want to see you happy, Corporal Burningboy. Just tell me what you want.”
Burningboy, all beard-grizzled smiles, turned to one of his com-panions. “Did you hear that? Beautiful speech, wasn’t it? Didya get all that down on tape?”
“Affirmative,” the nomad thug growled.
Burningboy returned his attention to Oscar. “I seem to recall a lot of pretty promises about how we Moderators were going to get a lovely press spin out of this, and how we were going to be knights and paladins of federal law and order, and all about how we were going to embarrass our old rivals the Regulators… And not that I doubt your sworn word for a minute, Mr. Presidential Science Adviser, sir, but I just figured that with four hundred Moderators in-house, that would be… how do I put this?”
“You said it was an incentive,” offered thug number two. “That’s the very word. ‘Incentive.’ ”
“Very well,” Oscar said. “The facility is in your hands. Your troops took it over last night; and now you’ve occupied it with hundreds of squatters. That wasn’t a part of our original agreement, but I can understand your motives. I hope you can also understand mine. I talked to the President of the United States last night. He told me he’s sending in troops.”
“He did, eh?”
“Yes. He promised that a crack brigade of armed paratroops would be flying in this very evening, actually. You might want to take that matter under advisement.”
“Man, that’s Two Feathers all over,” Burningboy sighed. “I’m not sayin’ that old Geronimo actually lied to you or anything, but he’s kind of famous for that gambit. We Moderators go back pretty far in Colorado, and back when Two Feathers was Governor, he was always sayin’ he’d roust out the National Guard and restore so-called law and order… Sometimes he actually did it, enough to keep you off balance. But just ’cause Two Feathers is wearin’ his war paint, that don’t guarantee any war.”
“So you’re alleging that the President won’t send troops?”
“No. I’m just sayin’ that we don’t plan to leave until these so-called troops show up. In fact, we probably won’t leave, even after they show up. I’m not sure you grasp this situation, you being from Massa-chusetts and all. But we Moderators have had some dealings with the Governor of Colorado. In fact, he owes us some favors.”
“That’s an interesting allegation, Corporal.”
“We nomads tend to stick around in times and places where nobody else can survive. That makes us pretty useful sometimes. Espe-cially given that Wyoming was on fire recently, and all that.”
“I see.” Oscar paused. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Well, sir, I hate to badger a man when he’s feeling poorly. But frankly, you’re the only man I can tell these things to. You seem to be pretty much all there is around here. I mean, we just got a very firm lecture from your so-called Director. The woman just don’t listen. She has no idea how people live! We were explainin’ to her that we hold all the cards now, and she’s totally at our mercy and so on, but she’s just not buyin’ any of it. She just waits for my lips to stop movin’, and then she launches into this nutty rant about intellectual freedom and the advancement of knowledge and Christ only knows what else … She’s really weird. She’s just a weird-actin’, weird-looking, weird, witchy woman. Then we tried talkin’ to your so-called chief of police… What is it with that guy?”
“What do you mean, Corporal?”
Burningboy became uneasy, but he was determined to see the matter through. “It’s not that I have anything against Anglos! I mean, sure there are good, decent, law-abiding Anglo people. But — you know — look at the statistics! Anglos have white-collar crime rates right off the scale. And talk about violent-man, white people are the most violent ethnic group in America. All those cross burnings, and militia bombings, and gun-nut guys… the poor bastards just can’t get a grip.”