Distraction - Bruce Sterling [143]
Greta spoke up. “But I really need to get back to my lab.”
“I tried,” said Burningboy, flinging up both hands. “See, if you just had the good sense to listen to me, that fine advice of mine would have solved your problems right away. You could be eatin’ mulligatawny stew with us tonight, and probably getting laid. But no, don’t mind old Burningboy. I’m much, much older than you, and I’ve seen a lot more of life than you ever have, but what do I know? I’m just some dirt-ignorant fool in funny clothes, who’s gonna get arrested. Because some rich Yankee from outta town needs him to commit some terrible criminal act.”
“General, let me give you the briefing,” said Oscar. He proceeded to do this. Burningboy listened with surprising patience.
“Okay,” Burningboy said at last. “Let’s say that we go in and strong-arm this giant glass dome full of scientists. I gotta admit, that’s a very attractive idea. We’re extremely nice, peaceful people in the Moderators, we’re all love and sunshine. So we might do a thing like that, just to please you. But what’s in it for us?”
“There’s money,” Oscar said.
Burningboy yawned. “Sure, like that’ll help us.”
“The lab is a self-sufficient structure. There’s food and shelter inside,” Greta offered.
“Yeah, sure—as long as it suits you to give it to us. Once that’s done, then it’s the run-along as usual.”
“Let’s be realistic,” Oscar said. “You’re a mob. We need to hire some mob muscle to back up our labor strike. That’s a very traditional gambit, isn’t it? How hard can that be?”
“They’re very small, timid cops,” Greta offered. “They hardly even have guns.”
“Folks, we carry our own food and shelter. What we don’t have is bullet holes in us. Or a bunch of angry feds on our ass.”
Oscar considered his next move. He was dealing with people who had profoundly alien priorities. The Moderators were radical, dissident dropouts—but they were nevertheless people, so of course they could be reached somehow. “I can make you famous,” he said.
Burningboy tipped his hat back. “Oh yeah? How?”
“I can get you major net coverage. I’m a professional and I can spin it. The Collaboratory a very famous place. Dr. Penninger here is a Nobel Prize winner. This is a major political scandal. It’s very dramatic. It’s part of a major developing story, it ties in with the Bambakias hunger strike, and the Regulator assault on a U.S. Air Force base. You Moderators could get excellent press by restoring order at a troubled federal facility. It would be the very opposite of the dreadful thing that the Regulators did.”
Burningboy reached thoughtfully into his jacket. He removed three small bars of substances resembling colored chalk. He set them onto a small slab of polished Arkansas whetstone, drew a pocketknife, and began chopping the bars into a fine powder.
Then he sighed heavily. “I really hate having my chain pulled just because a hustler like you happens to know that we Mods have it in for the Regulators.”
“Of course I know that, General. It’s a fact of life, isn’t it?”
“We love those Regulators like brothers and sisters. We got nothing in common with you. Except that … well, we’re Moderators because we use a Moderator network. And the Regulators use a Regulator interface, with Regulator software and Regulator protocols. I don’t think that a newbie creep like you understands just how political a problem that is.”
“I understand it,” Kevin said, speaking up for the first time.
“We used to get along with the Regulators. They’re a civilized tribe. But those Cajun goofballs got all puffed up