Distraction - Bruce Sterling [105]
“Will that work? Can they stabilize him?”
“Well, the treatments make great media copy. There’s a huge Bambakias medical fandom happening, ever since his hunger strike, really … They’ve got their own sites and feeds.… Lots of get-well email, home mental-health remedies, oddsmaking on the death-watch.… It’s a classic grass-roots phenomenon. You know, T-shirts, yard signs, coffee mugs, fridge magnets.… I dunno, it’s getting kind of out of hand.”
Pelicanos rubbed his chin. “Kind of a tabloid vulture pop-star momentum there.”
“Exactly. Perfect coinage, you’ve hit the nail on the head.”
“How bad should we feel about this, Oscar? I mean, basically, this is all our fault, isn’t it?”
“You really think so?” Oscar said, surprised. “You know, I’m so close to it I can’t really judge anymore.”
A bicycle messenger stopped them. “I’ve got a packet delivery for a Mr. Hamilton.”
“You want that guy in the wheelchair,” Oscar said.
The messenger examined his handheld satellite readout. “Oh yeah. Right. Thanks.” He pedaled off.
“Well, you were never his chief of staff,” Pelicanos said.
“Yeah, that’s true. That’s a comfort.” Oscar watched as the bike messenger engaged in the transaction with his security chief. Kevin signed for two shrink-wrapped bundles. He examined the return addresses and began talking into his head-mounted mouthpiece.
“You know that he eats out of those packages?” Pelicanos said. “Big white sticks of stuff, like straw and chalk. He chews ’em all the time. He kind of grazes.”
“At least he eats,” Oscar said. His phone rang. He plucked it from his sleeve and answered it. “Hello?”
There was a distant, acid-scratched voice. “It’s me, Kevin, over.”
Oscar turned and confronted Kevin, who was rolling along in his chair ten strides behind them. “Yes, Kevin? What’s on your mind?”
“I think we have a situation coming. Somebody just pulled a fire alarm inside the Collaboratory, over.”
“Is that a problem?”
Oscar watched Kevin’s mouth move. Kevin’s voice arrived at his ear a good ten seconds later. “Well, this is a sealed, airtight dome. The locals get pretty serious about fires inside here, over.”
Oscar examined the towering gridwork overhead. It was a blue and lucid winter afternoon. “I don’t see any smoke. Kevin, what’s wrong with your telephone?”
“Traffic analysis countermeasures—I routed this call around the world about eight times, over.”
“But we’re only ten meters apart. Why don’t you just roll up over here and do some face-time with me?”
“We need to cool it, Oscar. Stop looking at me, and just go on walking. Don’t look now, but there are cops tailing us. A cab in front and a cab behind, and I think they have shotgun mikes. Over.”
Oscar turned and threw a companionable arm over Pelicanos’s shoulder, urging him along. There were, in point of fact, some laboratory cops within sight. Normally the cops employed their “Buna National Collaboratory Security Authority” trucks, macho vehicles with comic-opera official seals on the doors, but these officers had commandeered a pair of the Collaboratory’s little phone-dispatched cabs. The cops were trying to be inconspicuous.
“Kevin says the cops are tailing us,” Oscar told Pelicanos.
“Delighted to hear it,” Pelicanos said mildly. “There were three attempts on your life in here. You must be the most excitement that these local cops have had in years.”
“He also says there’s been a fire alarm.”
“How would he know that?”
A bright yellow fire truck emerged from the bowels of the Occupational Safety building. It set its lights flashing, opened up with a klaxon blare, and headed south, off the ring road.
Oscar felt an odd skin-creeping feeling, then a violent huff of atmospheric pressure. An invisible door slammed shut in his head. The Collaboratory had just fully sealed its airlocks. The entire massive structure had gone tight