“Wonderful, Greta. It sounds great!”
“We’ll do cute, attractive, sexy science, with small amounts of equipment. That’s what science has to be in America now. We can’t do it the European way, where there’s all kinds of moral fretting and worrying about what technology will do to people; there’s no fun in that, it’s just not American. We’ll be like Orville Wright in the bicycle shed from now on. It won’t be easier for us. It’ll be harder for us. But we’ll have our freedom. Our American freedom. It’s a vote of confi-dence in the human imagination.”
“You are a politician, Greta! You’ve had a big breakthrough here. I’m with you all the way.” He felt so proud.
“Sure — it might be wonderful, if it were somebody else doing this. I hate doing this to science. I’m deeply sorry that I’m doing it. But I’m on the cutting edge, and I just don’t have any choice.”
“What would you rather be doing?”
“What?” she demanded. “I’d rather be finishing my paper on inhibition of acetylcholine release in the hippocampus. It’s all I ever wanted to do! I live and dream that someday this horrible mess will all be finished, and somehow, somebody will let me do what I want.”
“I know that’s what you want. I really understand that now. I know what it means, too, Greta: it means I’ve failed you.”
“No. Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. The big picture is going to work.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I can show you.” She found her purse and left the room. A light came on. He heard water running. It occurred to Oscar that he had entirely forgotten the original subject of his visit. Huey. Huey, and his purported refugee camp full of Haitians. He was absolutely sure that Huey, obsessed with Cognition as the Next Big Thing, had done something ecstatic and dreadful. He knew it had something to do with Greta’s neural work. Hellishly, Greta herself had absolutely no interest in the practical implications of the things she did. She couldn’t bear the strangling intellectual constraints involved in having to care. She couldn’t abide the foul and endless political and moral implica-tions of the pure pursuit of knowledge. They bored her beyond all reason. They just weren’t science. There was nothing scientific about them. The reactions of society no longer made any sense. Innovation had burned out the brakes. What could become of scientists in a world like that? What the hell was to be done with them?
She entered the room. She’d given herself a rapid little makeover at the bathroom sink. Her eyes were lined in jagged black, her cheeks streaked in colored war paint.
He was stunned.
“I didn’t invent this myself,” she said defensively. “Your image consultant did it for me — for the party tonight. I was going to wear it to the party for you, but it was just too ridiculous. So I scraped it all off at the last minute.”
“Oh, that was a big mistake,” he said, and laughed in astonish-ment. “That is beautiful. That is truly hot. That is beyond amazing. It is so transgressive. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”
“You’re seeing a thirty-six-year-old Jewish woman who’s made up like a crazy derelict.”
“Oh no. The fact that it’s Greta Penninger, that’s what makes it work. That it’s a Nobel Prize-winning federal lab Director who is still in her hose and a lab coat, and she’s outed herself as an urban guer-rilla.” He bit his lip. “Turn around for me. Show me.”
She spread her hands and whirled in place. She had a junk-jewelry headdress of linked beads clipped in the back of her head. “You like this, don’t you? I guess it’s not that bad. I don’t look any weirder than the President does, do I?”
“Greta…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t understand how well that works. That really works for me. I’m getting all hot and bothered. ”
She gazed at him in surprise. “Huh. My mother always said a good makeover would get a guy’s attention.”
“Take the lab coat off. In fact, take your blouse off.”
“Wait a minute. Put your hands down.”
“You know how long it’s been? Absolutely forever. I can’t even remember the last time.”
“Okay! Later! In a bed! And when your face isn’t that color.” He put his hand to his cheek. His skin was blazing. Surprised, he touched his ears. His ears were so hot they felt stir-fried. “Wow,” he muttered. “I’m all overcome.”
“It’s just makeup.”
“No it isn’t. Now I know why Donna wanted to stay around here — now I know why Donna said that things were just getting in-teresting. That woman is a little genius. You can’t claim that’s just skin-deep. That’s a lie, it’s like saying that a vow of chastity and a nun’s veil are just some words and some black cloth. Sure, it’s just a symbol, but it puts you in a whole different moral universe. I’m hav-ing a major brain wave here.”
“No, Oscar. I think you’re having some kind of fit.”
“This is going to work. This is huge. We’ve been thinking way too small. We’ve got to break out of the box. We’re going to carry the war right to the enemy. Listen. I need to go to Louisiana.”
“What? Why?”
“We’ll both go there together. We’re great whenever we’re there. Louisiana really works for us. We’ll go on a triumphal tour of the state. We will throw Huey and the Regulators totally on the de-fensive. We’ll go in a fleet of limos, with maximum media coverage. We’ll hire campaign buses, we’ll do a campaign tour. We’ll get sound trucks and copters. We will saturate the whole state. It’ll be totally romantic. We’ll give scandalous, teasing interviews. You’ll become a sexy science pop star. We’ll do pinups of you, T-shirts, bumper stick-ers, your own fragrance and lingerie. We’ll build little Collaboratories wherever we go. I’ve got all kinds of astounding plans from Bambakias that we can put to use right away. We’ll lead a people’s march on Baton Rouge. We’ll picket the statehouse. We’ll beard Huey right in his den. We’ll nail him down and erase him.”
“Oscar, you’re having a fit. You’re ranting.”
“I am? Really?”
“We can’t go to Louisiana. It’s too dangerous. We can’t leave the Collaboratory now. We’re having an Emergency here. People are afraid, they’re deserting us every day.”
“Get more people.”
“We can attract all the Moderators we want, but there’s no room for them here.”
“Build extensions onto the lab. Take over the town of Buna.”
“Oscar, you scare me when you’re like this.”
He lowered his voice. “Do I?”
“A little.” Her face was flushed beneath the war paint.
His heart wa pounding. He took a few deep breaths. He was past being frantic now. He was leveling out; he was cruising on a higher plane; he was exalted. “Darling, I’m going on a secret mission. I think it may be the crux of all our problems, but I may never come back. This may be the last private moment that we ever have together. I know I’ve upset you. I know I haven’t been everything you ex-pected. I may never see you again, but I’m leaving you with such a full and happy heart. I want to remember you looking like this, always. You are so special and dear to me that I can’t express it. You’re just such a brilliant, radiant creature.”
She put her hand to her forehead. “Oh my God. I just don’t know what to do with myself when you’re like this … You’re just so persuasive! Oh, well, never mind, come on with me, take your clothes off There’s plenty of room for us up here on the lab table.”