Distraction

“I really don’t mind a bit about those stinking, lousy dorm rooms,” Do

Do

This particular specimen looked as eager and healthy as a model on a cereal box; its tusks were caries-free, its spiky fur seemed moussed. Nevertheless, Oscar felt a very strong intuition that the ani-mal would take enormous pleasure in killing and eating him. This was the animal’s primary impulse in their brief relationship. Somehow, it had lost the will to follow through.

“Do you happen to know the name of this creature?” Oscar asked her.

Do

“That’s not a pig.”

“Well, whatever it is, I think it likes me. It’s been following me around all morning. It’s cute, isn’t it? It’s ugly, but it’s cute-ugly…The animals here never hurt anyone. They did something weird to them. To their brains or something.”

“Oh yes.” Oscar tapped a key. In rapidity and silence, his laptop collated a huge series of Collaboratory purchase orders with five years’ worth of public-domain Texas arrest records. The results looked very intriguing.

“Are you going to get an exotic animal for Mrs. Bambakias?”

“After the weekend. Pelicanos is back in Boston,…Fontenot is out house hunting with Bob and Audrey … Right now, I’m just try-ing to get some of the local records in order.” Oscar shrugged.

“I liked her, you know? Mrs. Bambakias? I liked dressing her for the campaign. She was really elegant, and nice to me. I thought she might take me to Washington. But I just don’t fit in there.”

“Why not?” Oscar deftly twitched a fingertip and activated a search engine, which sought out a state-federal coordination center in Baton Rouge, and retrieved the records of recent pardons and grants of clemency issued by the Governor of Louisiana.

“Well… I’m too old, you know? I worked for a bank for twenty years. I didn’t start tailoring until after the hyperinflation.”

Oscar tagged four hits for further investigation. “I think you’re selling yourself short. I never heard Mrs. Bambakias mention your age. ”

Do

“But you dress us. Look at the way we dress compared to these local people.”

“You don’t understand,” Do

Oscar examined a passing local, riding a bike with his shirt hang-ing out. He wore no socks and tattered shoes. No hat. His hair was dreadful. Noone could possibly dress that badly by accident.

“I take your point,” Oscar said.

Do

“How is your ex-husband, Do

“He still thinks real people work nine-to-five jobs. He’s an idiot.” She paused. “Also, he’s fired, and he’s broke.”

Men and women in white decontamination suits had appeared amid the genetically upgraded crops. They were wielding shiny alumi-num spray-wands, gleaming chromium shears, high-tech titanium hoes.

“I love it inside here,” Do

Oscar hotlinked back to the minutes of the Senate Science and Technology Committee for 2029. These sixteen-year-old volumes of committee minutes had the works on the original founding of the Buna National Collaboratory. Oscar felt quite sure that no one had closely examined these archives for ages. They were chock-full of hid-den pay dirt. “It was a hard-fought campaign. It’s right to relax for a while. You certainly deserve it,”

“Yeah, the campaign wore me out, but it was worth it. We really worked well together; we were well organized. You know, I love po-litical work. I’m an American female in the fifty-to-seventy demo-graphic, so life never made any sense to me. Nothing ever turned out the way I was taught to expect. Ever since the economy crashed and the nets ate up everything… But inside politics, it all feels so dif-ferent. I’m not just a straw in the wind. I really felt like I was changing the world, for once. Instead of the world changing me.”

Oscar bent a kindly gaze upon her. “You did a good job, Do

“Why are you being so good to me, Oscar? Aren’t you about to fire me now?”

“Not at all! I want you to stay on with us. At least another month. I know that isn’t much to promise you, since a woman of your talents could easily find some more permanent position. But Fontenot will be staying on with us.”

“He will?” She blinked. “Why?”

“And of course Pelicanos and Lana Ramachandran and I will be plugging away … So there will be work for you here. Not like the campaign was, of course, nothing so intense or hectic, but proper image is still very important to us. Even here. Maybe especially here.”

“I might stay on with you awhile,” Do

Oscar slapped his laptop shut, and stood up. “Do

Do

She’d come to know Oscar’s basic routines, and was pleased to be out with him on one of his confidential walking conferences. Oscar was touched to see her being so streetwise — she kept glancing alertly over her shoulder, as if expecting to find them trailed by sinister operatives in black trench coats.

“You see, it’s like this,” Oscar told her soberly. “We won that election, and we won it walking away. But Alcott Bambakias is still a newcomer, a political outsider. Even after he’s sworn into office, he still won’t have much clout or credibility. He’s just the junior Senator from Massachusetts. He has to pick and choose the issues where he can make a difference.”

“Well, of course.”

“He’s an architect, a large-scale builder with a very i

“This place is our problem.”

Oscar nodded. “Exactly. Do