Distraction

Negi laughed. “As if!”

“You know,” Oscar said, “I had a good idea recently.”

“Do tell,” said Fontenot.

“Our dorm situation inside the Collaboratory is clearly untena-ble. And the town of Buna can’t put us up properly, either. Buna’s never been a proper city: it’s greenhouses, florists, seedy little motels, some run-down light industry. The town just doesn’t have a proper place for us to stay; a place where we could entertain a visiting Senate committee, for instance. So, let’s build our own hotel.”

Fred Dillen, the krewe’s laundryman/janitor, put down his beer.

“Our own hotel?”

“Why not? We’ve relaxed in Buna for two whole weeks now. We have our breath back. It’s time for us to reorganize and really make our mark around here. We can create a hotel. That’s definitely within our means and abilities. After all, that was always our best campaign tactic. The other candidates would throw rallies and photo ops, and try to work the media. But Alcott Bambakias could bring a campaign crowd together and assemble permanent housing.”

“You mean we build a hotel for profit?” Fred said.

“Well, for our own convenience mostly, but yes, for profit, of course. We can get the design plans and software from Barnbakias’s firm. We can certainly build the structure ourselves, and best of all, we actually have the skills it requires to successfully run a hotel. A traveling political campaign is basically a mobile hotel, when you think about it. But in this case, we stay in one place, while the crowds will come to us. And then they pay us.”

“Man,” Fred said. “What a weird inside-out way to think …”

“I think it’s doable. You can all play the same roles that you did during the campaign. Negi, you can run the kitchen. Fred, you can handle the laundry and the rooms. Corky does guest relations and works the front desk. Rebecca does physical security and the occa-sional massage. Everybody pitches in, and if we need them, we can take on some temp gofers locally. And we make money.”

“How much money?”

“Oh, the top end of the market should be pretty generous. I’ve seen millionaire contractors inside the Collaboratory, crammed in right next door to postdocs and grad students. That’s just not natu-ral. ”

“Not nowadays,” Negi admitted.

“It’s a good market window. Yosh will put together our finance package. Lana will deal with local zoning and the Buna city authori-ties. We’ll front it all through a Boston corporation to sidestep any conflict-of-interest hassles. And when we’re done here, we just sell the hotel. In the meantime, we have a decent place to live and a revenue stream.”

“You know,” said Ando “Corky” Shoeki, “I saw that done ten times. I helped to do it, even. But I still can’t get used to the concept. I mean, that big crowds of unskilled people can construct permanent housing.”

“I agree, distributed instantiation still has some shock value. It’s made Bambakias very rich, but it’s still a novelty down here. I like the idea of doing that work in East Texas. It’ll show these local yokels what we’re made of”

“Y’know,” Fred said slowly, “I’m trying really hard, but I can’t think of any good reason not to do what Oscar says.”

“You’re all clever people,” Oscar said. “Find me some reason why it can’t be done.” He ducked back into the bus, to let them argue about it. Spelling it all out for them in black and white would only spoil their fun.

He hung his hat inside the bus. “So, Moira,” he said, “how’s the cause cйlиbre coming?”

“Oh, it’s great,” said Moira, spi

“Phenomenal.”

“Putting Alcott’s blood sugar levels onto the net — that was bril-liant. People are logging on around the clock just to watch him starve! Lorena, too. Lorena has massive female positives. She’s been on ten glamour sites since Wednesday. They love her bread and water diet, they just can’t get enough of her!”

“How about the situation on the ground? The Emergency com-mittees, have they done anything useful about that Air Force base yet?”

“Oh,” Moira said, “I haven’t quite gotten around to that part… I, uh, thought Audrey was go

Oscar grunted. “Okay.”

Moira touched her fingertips to her powdered chin. “Al-cott … he’s just so special. I’ve seen him give so many speeches, but that stand-up he just did with the hospital pajamas and the apple juice … It was just ninety seconds, but it was drama, it’s real con-frontation, it’s just pure gold. The standard site coverage wasn’t so hot at first, but the chat swaps and the downloads have been huge. Alcott’s coming up way behind ideological lines. He never used to get positives out of the Right Tradition Bloc, but even they are coming around now. You know, if Wyoming weren’t on fire right now, I really think this would be the political story. For this week, anyway.”

“How is that Wyoming thing shaping up, by the way?”

“Oh, the fire’s a lot worse now. The President’s there.”

“The old guy, or Two Feathers?”

“Two Feathers of course. Nobody cares about the old guy anymore, he’s finished, he’s just the duck now. I know Two Feathers hasn’t been sworn in yet, but people depreciate the post-election hang-time. People want in ahead of the curve.”

“Right,” said Oscar shortly. She was telling him the obvious.

“Oscar …” Moira looked at him with naked appeal. “Should I ask him to take me to Washington?”

Oscar silently spread his hands.

“He needs me. He’ll need someone to speak for him.”

“That’s not my decision, Moira. You need to take it up with his chief of staff”

“Can you put in a good word for me with Leon Sosik? Sosik seems to like you so much.”

“Let me get back to you on that,” Oscar said.

The bus door banged open. Norman-the-Intern stuck his tou-sled head inside and yelled, “We’re eating!”

“Oh, great!” said Moira, leaping from her chair. “Weird Cajun seafood, good good good!”

Oscar put on his hat and jacket and followed her outside. With a flourish, Fontenot was spooning great ladles of swimming brown murk. Oscar brought up the end of the line. He accepted a quilt-paper bowl and a biodegradable spoon.

Oscar gazed at his hot oily gumbo and thought mournfully of Bambakias. The Cambridge PR team had certainly done a thorough job surveilling the fasting Senator: blood pressure, heartbeat, tempera-ture, calorie consumption, borborygmus, bile production — there was no possible doubt about the raw authenticity of his hunger strike. The man’s entire corpus had become public domain. Whenever Bambakias had a sip of his famine apple juice, a forest of monitors twitched and heaved across the country.

Oscar followed them to a picnic table and sat down next to Negi. He examined his brimming spoon. He had seriously considered not eating this evening. That would be a very decent gesture. Well, let someone else make it.

“Angioplasty in a bowl,” Negi said blissfully.

Oscar sipped from his spoon. “Well worth dying for,” he nodded.

“I’m so old,” Negi mourned, blowing on her soup. “Back when I had tatts and piercings, people got on your case if you ate fats and drank yourself stupid. Of course, that was before they found out the full awful truth about pseudo-estrogen poisoning.”

“Well,” Oscar said companionably, “at least those massive pesti-cide disasters got us off the hook with that diet and exercise non-sense. ”

“Pass the bread, Norman,” Rebecca said. “Is that real butter? Real old-fashioned tub butter? Wow!”

A light aircraft flew overhead. Its tiny engine puttered energeti-cally, like fingernails tapping a snare drum. The aircraft seemed appall-ingly flimsy. With its eerie, computer-designed lifting surfaces, it resembled a child’s paper toy: something made with pinking shears, popsicle sticks, and tape. The wing edges trailed off into feathery rib-bons and long tattered kite tails. It seemed to be staying aloft through sheer force of will.