Distraction

“My God, Greta. I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

She blinked. “I don’t think I ever even thought like this before.”

“What you’re saying is completely true. It’s the hard cold truth, and it’s bad, it’s impossibly bad, it’s worse than I ever imagined, but you know, I’m glad that I know it now. I always like to know what I’m facing. I refuse to admit defeat here. I refuse to pack up my tent. I don’t want to leave you, I can’t bear it. You’re the only woman who ever really understood me.”

“I’m sorry that I understand you well enough to tell you what you just can’t do.”

“Greta, don’t give up on me. Don’t dump me. I’m having a genu-ine breakthrough here, I’m on the edge of something really huge. You’re right about the dictatorship problem, it’s a dirt-real, basic, po-litical challenge. We’ve worked ourselves to the bone now, we’re all burned out, we’re all bogged down in the little things. Daily tactics won’t do it for us anymore, but abandoning it to its own devices is a cop-out. We need to create something that is huge and permanent, we need a higher truth. No, not higher, deeper, we need a floor of granite. No more sand castles, no more improvising. We need genius. And you’re a genius.”

“Yes, but not that kind.”

“But you and I, we could do it together! If we only had some time to really concentrate, if we could just talk together like this. Listen. You have totally convinced me: you’re wiser than I am, you’re more realistic, I’m with you all the way. We’ll leave this place. We’ll run off together. Forget the big state marriage and the rings and the rice. We’ll go to… well, not some island, they’re all drowning now… We’ll go to Maine. We’ll stay there a month, two months, we’ll stay a year. We’ll drop off the net, we’ll use pens and candlelight. We’ll really, seriously concentrate, without any distractions at all. We’ll write a Constitution.”

“What? Let the President do that.”

“That guy? He’s just more of the same! He’s a socialist, he’s go

“Oscar, your face is getting really red.” She reached out.

He jerked his wrist back. “Stop trying to feel my pulse. You know I hate it when you do that. Listen to me carefully, I’m making perfect specimen sense lab-table really love me. I’m doing this all for you, Greta. I’m totally serious, we can do it tomorrow morning. A long sabbatical together in Maine, at some lovely romantic cabin. I’ll have Lana rent us one, she knows all about it.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Tomorrow? Lana? Wilderness? We can’t just abandon romantic Clare Lana Ramachandran little Kama Sutra girl.”

Oscar stared. “What did you say?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that about Lana. Lana can’t help how she feels about you. But I’m not sorry I said it about Clare. You were having drinks with her! Kevin told me.”

Oscar was stu

An angry flush rose up Greta’s neck. “I always think about it — I just never say it out loud! Clare, and Lana, and the Senator’s wife, and Moira, all these painted pointed glamour women with their claws…”

“Greta, stop that. Trust me! I’m asking you to marry me. Moira! Get it through your head. This is for real, this is permanent and solid. Tell me once and for all, will you marry Moira?”

“What? Moira’s one of your krewewomen, isn’t she? She came over to make amends.”

“But Moira works for Hueyl When did you see Moira?”

“Moira came to my office. She brought me a brand-new air filter. She was very nice.”

Oscar stared in mounting horror at the air filter at his elbow. He was so used to them now. They were everywhere, and so i

“She said it was your gift. Because it smells of roses.” She patted the box, and then looked up in pain and bewilderment, and a dawn-ing and terrible knowledge. “Oh, sweetheart, I thought you knew. I thought you knew everything.”

The Collaboratory was, by design, equipped to deal with biological contamination. They had to shut down the entire Administration building. The gas from the booby-trapped air filter was of particularly ingenious design, micronized particles the size and shape of ragweed pollen. The particles stuck to the nasal tract like a painless snort of cocaine, whereupon their contents leaked through the blood-brain barrier, and did mysterious and witchy things.

Oscar and Greta, having wearily crammed themselves into de-contamination suits, were carried red-faced and stumbling to the Hot Zone’s clinic. There they were ritually scrubbed down, and subjected to gingerly examination. The good news was immediate: they were not dying. The bad news took longer to arrive. Their blood pressure was up, their faces were congested, their gait and posture were af-fected, they were suffering odd speech disabilities. Their PET-scans were exhibiting highly abnormal loci of cognitive processing, two wandering hot blobs where a normal human being would have just one. The primal rhythm of their brain waves had a distinct backbeat.

Oscar had been slowly and gently poisoned as he was making the speech of his life. This foul realization sent him into a towering animal rage. This reaction revealed yet another remarkable quality of his poisoned brain. He could literally think of two things at once; but it stretched him so thin that he had very little impulse control.

A nurse suggested a sedative. Oscar cordially agreed that he was feeling a bit hyperactive, and accented this by screaming personal in-sults and repeatedly kicking the wall. This behavior produced a seda-tive in short order. Dual unconsciousness resulted.

By noon, Oscar was conscious again, feeling sluggish yet simulta-neously hair-trigger. He paid a visit to Greta, in her separate decon-tamination cell. Greta had passed a quiet night. She was now sitting bolt upright in her hospital bed, legs folded, hands in her lap, staring straight into space. She didn’t speak, she didn’t even see him. She was wide-awake and indescribably, internally busy.

A nurse stood guard for him, while Oscar stared at her with bittersweet melange. Bitter; sweet; bitter / sweet: bittersweet. She was exalted, silent, full of carnivorous insight: Greta had never looked more like herself It would have been a profanation to touch her.

Accompanied by his nurse, Oscar tottered back to his cell. He wondered how the effect felt for Greta. It seemed to hit people differ-ently. Maybe there were as many ways to think doubly as there were to think singly.

When he closed his eyes, Oscar could actually feel the sensation, somatically. It was as if his overtight skull had a pair of bladders stuffed inside, liquid and squashy, like a pair of nested yin-yangs. One focus of attention was somehow in “the front” and the other in “the back,” and when the one to the front revolved into direct consciousnes, the other slipped behind it. And the blobs had little living eyes inside them. Eyes that held the nascent core of other streams of conscious-ness. Like living icons, awaiting a mental touch to launch into full awareness.