Distraction - Bruce Sterling [120]
Pelicanos nodded. “Okay. Then we’ll have to raise funds ourselves. How about the standard campaign methods? Direct mail. Rubber-chicken banquets. Raffles, garage sales, charity events. Who are the core prospects here?”
“Well, if this were a normal campaign …” Oscar rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’d hit up the alumni of her alma mater, Jewish temple groups, scientific professional societies.… And of course the Collaboratory’s business suppliers. They’re plenty mad at us right now, but they’ll fall out of the trough completely, if the place ever closes down. We might be able to sweet-talk them into fronting us some cash, if we threaten them with total destruction.”
“Are there any rich, overclass scientists? There have got to be some rich scientists, right?”
“Sure there are—in Asia and Europe.”
“You guys sure don’t think very big,” Kevin chided.
Oscar gazed at him tolerantly. He was growing rather fond of Kevin. Kevin really worked hard; he’d become the heart and soul of the foulest part of the coup. “How big are we supposed to think, Kevin?”
“You guys don’t realize what you have here. You’ve got a perfect nomad rally-ground inside that lab. It’s like you’ve roadblocked the place; you can do anything you want with it. Why don’t you ask all the scientists in America to come down here and join you?”
Oscar sighed. “Kevin, bear with us. You’ve got the problem exactly backward. The point is, we’re trying to feed and supply two thousand people, even though they’re on strike. If we get a million of them, we’re sunk.”
“No you’re not,” Kevin said. “If a million scientists showed up here and joined you, that wouldn’t be just a strike anymore. It would be a revolution. You wouldn’t just take over this one federal lab. You could take over the whole town. Probably the whole county. Maybe a big part of the state.”
Pelicanos laughed. “How are we supposed to manage a giant horde of freeloading scientists?”
“You’d use nomads, man. Who else knows how to run a giant horde of people with no money? You throw open your airlocks, and you promise them shelter in there. You give ’em propaganda tours, you show ’em all the pretty plants and animals. You get the cops and the feds off their backs for once, and you give them a big role to play in your own operation. The proles would become a giant support krewe for your egghead contingent. See, it’s people power, street power. It’s an occupying army, just like Huey likes to use.”
Oscar laughed. “They’d tear this place apart!”
“Sure, they could do that—but what if they decided not to? Maybe they’d decide that they liked the place. Maybe they’d look after it. Maybe they’d build it even bigger.”
Oscar hesitated. The construction angle hadn’t occurred to him. He’d always done extremely well by the construction angle. The construction angle was the best political wild card he’d ever had. Most politicians couldn’t create luxury hotels out of software and sweat equity, but those who could had an off-the-wall advantage. He was sitting inside the construction angle at this very moment, and it was working out just fine. “How much bigger?”
“How big would we need it?” Pelicanos said.
“Well, how many nomad proles would be joining our construction krewe?”
“You want me to load a spreadsheet?” Kevin said.
“Forget it, it’s too good to be true,” Pelicanos said. “Sure, maybe we could get distributed instantiation to scale-up. But we’d never be able to trust nomads. They’re all in Huey’s pockets.”
Kevin snorted. “The Regulators are in Huey’s pockets, but good Lord, fellas, Louisiana proles are not the only proles around. You guys have spent too much time in Boston. Wyoming was on fire, man! There are proles and dissidents all over the USA. There’s millions of proles.”
With a stern effort of will, Oscar forced himself to consider Kevin’s proposal seriously. “An army of unemployed nomads, constructing giant, intelligent domes.… You know, that’s really a compelling image. I really hate to dismiss that idea out of hand. It’s so modern and photogenic and nonlinear. There’s a lovely carrying-the-war-to-the-enemy