Distraction

Then three similar aircraft appeared, skidding and puttering just above the treetops. They flew like fishing lures tempting a trout. Their pilots were gloved and goggled and bulky, so wrapped in their padding that they resembled human bales of burlap.

One of the pilots detached himself from formation, settled down like a falling leaf, and gently circled the roadside bus. It was like being buzzed by a hay bale. Everyone looked up from their food and waved politely. The pilot waved back, mimicked eating with one gauntlet, and headed east.

“Airborne nomads,” Fontenot said, squinting. “They’re heading east,” Oscar noted.

“Green Huey’s very tight with the leisure unions.” Fontenot shoved his bowl aside, rose deliberately, and went into the bus to see to his machines. He had the face he wore when he meant business.

Oscar’s krewe returned to their food. They ate silently now and with more purpose. No one had to remark on the obvious: that there would soon be more nomads arriving.

Fontenot emerged from the bus, where he had been checking road reports. “We may have to move soon,” Fontenot said. “The Regulators have been rallying at the Alabama-Coushatta reservation, and their rally is coming through now. These local proles, they aren’t tame.”

“Well, we’re strangers here too, you know,” Negi said. Negi had spent time on the road, back in the old days when homeless people didn’t have cellphones and laptops.

Two nomad scouts arrived ten minutes later, in a motorcycle and sidecar. They were dressed for winter. They wore wraparound kilts, striped ponchos, and huge coarse cloaks beautifully embroidered with old twentieth-century corporate logos. Their skin gleamed with a thick layer of wind-resistant, insulating grease. They had dipped their legs up to mid-calf in a plastic bootlike substance with the look and sheen of vinyl.

The scouts pulled over, dismounted, and walked over. They were silent and proud, and carrying cellular videocams. The driver was chewing on a large square chunk of artificial food, like a green butter stick of compressed alfalfa.

Oscar beckoned them over. It transpired that these nomads were not, in fact, the legendary Regulators. These were Texan road drifters, far less advanced in their peculiar ways than the proles of Louisiana. These people spoke only Spanish. Oscar’s childhood Spanish was worse than rusty, and Do

The nomads politely complimented them on their bus. They offered square sticks of veggie greenery. Oscar and Rebecca politely declined the nomad silage and counteroffered some oyster gumbo. The nomads carefully gulped down the last of the hot stew, comment-ing at length on the flavor. As the animal fats hit their bloodstreams, they became less suspicious. They inquired nonchalantly about the possible availability of scrap metal: nails, metal, copper? Corky Shoeki, who was the camp majordomo and recycling expert, obliged with some empty cans from the bus.

Oscar was deeply bothered by their nomad laptops. They were using nonstandard keyboards, boards where QWERTYUIOP had been junked and the letters redesigned for efficient typing. The wretches didn’t even type like normal people. Somehow this bothered him far more than the fact that these particular nomads were Mexican illegals.

Moving as if they had all the time in the world, because they did, the two men drove off. Suddenly there was very little traffic on the highway. People had gotten wind of the oncoming movement of the Regulator horde, and were already avoiding the roads. Two police cars passed, lights flashing silently. The nomad tribes weren’t afraid of local police. There were far too many of them to safely arrest, and in any case, the proles had their own police.

The first fringe of the Regulator convoy arrived. Plastic trucks and buses cruising by at maybe thirty miles an hour, sipping fuel and saving wear on their engines. Then came the core of the operation, the nomad technical base. Flatbed trucks and tankers, loaded with harvesting equipment, pillers, crushers, welders, rollers, fermenting pans, pipes, and valves. They lived on grass, they lived off roadside weeds and cultured yeast. Women wearing skirts, shawls, veils. Swarms of young children, their vibrant little bodies saturated with mul-ticolored beads and handmade quillwork.

Oscar was entranced by the spectacle. These weren’t the low-key dropouts of the Northeast, people who managed on cheap food and public assistance. These were people who had rallied in a horde and marched right off the map. They had tired of a system that offered them nothing, so they had simply invented their own.

The krewe cleaned up their picnic. Fontenot set to work, finding a route back to the Collaboratory that would avoid the migrating swarm. Fontenot would escort them there, towing his battered Cajun stove behind his electric hummer. Even when engulfed by a horde of Regulators, they should be safe enough, locked in the metal shell of their campaign bus. Though the situation was unlikely, they would probably simply blend in.

Oscar’s phone suddenly emitted a personal ring. “Oh, Oscar,” Rebecca teased him. “There’s that sparky phone again.”

“I’ve been expecting this call,” said Oscar. “Excuse me.” He stepped around the back of the bus as the others continued to pack.

It was his girlfriend, Clare, back in Boston. “How are you, Os-car?”

“Fine. It’s going pretty well down here, all things considered. Very interesting. How’s life at the homestead? I miss you.”

“Your house is fine,” Clare said. Too quickly.

A hairline fracture shot through him. Don’t get anxious, he thought. Don’t think too fast. This isn’t one of the other ones, this is Clare. This is Clare, this is doable.

Oscar wanted direly to confront the source of trouble. That would be very stupid. Work around it. Let her open up first. Be fu

“We’ve been having a picnic,” he blurted.

“That sounds lovely. I wish I were there.”

“I wish you were, too,” he said. Inspiration struck him. “How about it? Can you fly down? We have some plans here, you’d be interested. ”

“I can’t go to Texas now.”

“You’ve heard about the Louisiana air base situation, right? The Senator’s hunger strike. I’ve got very good sources here. It’s a solid story, you could fly down, you could cover the local angle.”

“I think your friend Sosik’s got that story sewn up already,” Clare said. “I’m not doing Boston politics. Not anymore.”

“What?” He was stu

“The net’s reassigned me. They want me to go to Holland.”

“Holland? What did you tell them?”

“Oscar, I’m a political journalist. How could I not do The Hague? It’s the Cold War, it’s a dream gig. This is a big break for me, my biggest career break ever.”

“Well, how long is your assignment overseas?”

“Well, that depends on how well I do at the job.”

Oscar’s brain began to hum. “I can appreciate that. Of course you want to do well. But still… the diplomatic situation… the Dutch are so provocative. They’re very radical.”

“Of course they’re radical, Oscar. Their country is drowning. We’d be extremists too, if most of America was below sea level. The Dutch have got so much to lose, they’ve really got their backs against the dikes. That’s why they’re so interesting now.”

“You don’t even speak Dutch.”

“They all speak English there, you know.”

“The Dutch are militant. They’re dangerous. They make crazy demands from Americans, they really resent us.”

“I’m a reporter, Oscar. I’m not supposed to scare easily.”

“So you’re really going to do it,” Oscar concluded leadenly. “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you?”