Distraction - Bruce Sterling [11]
A young woman spoke up. “ ‘Zap’ Governor Huguelet?”
“I don’t mean kill him. That would be too obvious. I mean vaporize him. Just evaporate the guy! Shoes, suit, the works! They’d think he’s like … you know … off in some hotel chewing the feet of some hooker.”
It took the Air Force people some time to evaluate this proposal. The concept was clearly irritating them. “You can’t evaporate a whole human body with an airborne X-ray laser.”
“You could if it was tunable.”
“Tunable free-electron lasers aren’t radar-transparent. Besides, their power demand is out the roof.”
“Well, you could collate four or five separate aircraft into one overlapping fire zone. Besides, who needs clunky old free electrons when there are quantum-pitting band-gaps? Bandgaps are plenty tunable.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Oscar said. “Norman, we’re needed back at the bus now.”
The Air Force girl stared at Oscar, slowly taking him in, from perfect hat to shiny shoes. “Who’s the suit?”
“He’s … well, he’s with the U.S. Senate.” Norman smiled cheerily. “Really good friend of mine.”
Oscar put a gentle hand on Norman’s shoulder. “We need to move along, Norman. We’ve just made a group reservation at a great Cajun restaurant.”
Norman tagged along obediently. “Will they let me drink there?”
“Laissez les bon temps rouler,” Oscar said.
“Those were nice kids,” Norman announced. “I mean, roadblockers and all, but basically, they’re just really nice American kids.”
“They’re American military personnel who are engaging in highway robbery.”
“Yeah. That’s true. It’s bad. It’s really too bad. Y’know? They’re stuck in the military, so they just don’t think politically.”
They crossed the Texas border in the clammy thick of the night. The krewe was glutted with hot baked shrimp and batter-fried alligator tail, topped with seemingly endless rounds of blendered hurricanes and flaming brandied coffees. The food at the Cajun casinos was epic in scope. They even boasted a convenient special rate for tour buses.
It had been a very good idea to stop and eat. Oscar could sense that the mood of his miniature public had shifted radically. The krewe had really enjoyed themselves. They’d been repeatedly informed that they were in the state of Louisiana, but now they could feel that fact in their richly clotted bloodstreams.
This wasn’t Boston anymore. This was no longer the sordid tag end of the Massachusetts campaign. They were living in an interregnum, and maybe, somehow, if you only believed, in the start of something better. Oscar could not feel bad about his life. It was not a normal life and it never had been, but it offered very interesting challenges. He was rising to the next challenge. How bad could life be? At least they were all well fed.
Except for hardworking Jimmy the driver, who was paid specifically not to drink himself senseless, Oscar was the last person awake inside the bus. Oscar was almost always the last to sleep, as well as the first to wake. Oscar rarely slept at all. Since the age of six, he had customarily slept for about three hours a night.
As a small child, he would simply lay silently in darkness during those long extra hours of consciousness, quietly plotting how to manage the mad vagaries of his adoptive Hollywood parents. Surviving the Valparaiso household’s maelstrom of money, drugs, and celebrity had required a lot of concentrated foresight.
In his later life, Oscar had put his night-owl hours to further good use: first, the Harvard MBA. Then the biotechnology start-up, where he’d picked up his long-time accountant and finance man, Yosh Pelicanos, and also his faithful scheduler/receptionist, Lana Ramachandran. He’d kept the two of them on through the cash-out of his first company, and on through the thriving days of venture capital on Route 128. Business strongly suited Oscar’s talents and proclivities, but he had nevertheless moved on swiftly, into political party activism. A successful and innovative