Distraction - Bruce Sterling [139]
“He’s not superhuman, Yosh. Well, I take that back—I’m pretty sure that Huey is superhuman. But Huey screwed up. If Huey hadn’t screwed up, Greta and I would be languishing in some private prison in a dismal swamp right now.”
Greta’s handcuffs parted, with a ping and snap so loud that Oscar heard it from outside the car. Greta opened the back door of Kevin’s wretched car, and she climbed out, stretching her cramped back and shoulders. While Kevin stowed the bolt cutter in the trunk, Greta came to join them. She approached Pelicanos’s car and looked through the driver’s window, rubbing her sore wrists.
“What’s the game plan?” she said.
“We have the element of surprise,” Oscar said. “And we’ll have to use that for all it’s worth.”
“When can I go back to the lab? I really want to go back to my lab.”
“We’ll go. But when we go, we’ll have to go back very hard. We’ll have to attack the Collaboratory and take it over by force.”
Pelicanos stared at Oscar as if he had lost his mind. Greta rubbed her chilly arms, and looked grave and troubled.
“Now you’re talking!” Kevin announced, punching the air.
“It’s doable,” Oscar said. He opened the car door and stepped into the cold winter wind. “I know it sounds crazy, but think it through. Greta is still the legitimate Director. The Collaboratory’s cops aren’t crack troops, they’re just a bunch of functionaries.”
“You can’t ask the people in the Collaboratory to attack the police,” Greta said. “They just won’t do that. It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s unethical, it’s unprofessional … and, besides, it’s very dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Actually, Greta, I’m dead certain that your scientists would love to beat up some cops, but I take your point. It would take us far too long to talk those harmless intellectuals into clobbering anyone. My little krewe of pols aren’t exactly hardened anarchist street-fighters, either. But if we can’t restore order in the lab, right away, today, then your administration is doomed. And your lab is doomed. So we have to risk it. This crisis requires total resolve. We have to physically seize that facility. What we need at this juncture are some tough, revolutionary desperados.” Oscar drew a breath. “So let’s drive into this flea market and hire ourselves some goons.”
They abandoned Pelicanos’s perfectly decent car for security reasons, and piled together into Kevin’s unlicensed junker. Then they drove on.
Their first challenge was a Moderator roadblock, south of Canton. The Texan prole lads manning the roadblock gave them curious stares. Oscar’s hat was askew, barely hiding the bandaged gash in his head. Kevin was unshaven and twitchy. Greta had her arms crossed to hide her chafed wrists. Pelicanos looked like an undertaker.
“Come down from outta state?” the Moderator said. He was a freckle-faced Anglo kid with blue plastic hair, headphones, eight wooden beaded necklaces, a cellphone, and a fringed deerskin jacket. His legs were encased from the knees down in giant mukluks of furry plastic.
“Yo!” Kevin said, offering a wide variety of secret high signs.
The Moderator watched Kevin’s antics with bemusement. “Y’all ever been to Texas before?”
‘We’ve heard of the Canton flea market,” Kevin assured him. “It’s famous.”
“Could I have a five-dollar parkin’ fee, please?” The Moderator pocketed his plastic cash and glued a sticker to their windshield. “Y’all just follow the beeps on this sticker, it’ll lead to y’all’s parking lot. Have a good time at the fair!”
They drove slowly into the town. Canton was a normal East Texas burg of modest two- and three-story buildings: groceries, clinics, churches, restaurants. The streets were swarming with weirdly dressed foot traffic. The huge crowds of proles seemed extremely well organized; they were serenely ignoring the traffic lights, but they were moving in rhythmic gushes and clumps, filtering through the town in a massive folk dance.
Kevin parked below a spreading pine tree in a winter-browned cow pasture, and they left their vehicle. The sun was shining fitfully, but there was an uneasy