Distraction - Bruce Sterling [16]
The Occupational Safety edifice was one of nine buildings on the central ring road circling the shiny china ramparts of the Hot Zone. The Hot Zone was surrounded by large pie-wedge plots of experimental gene-spliced crops: saltwater-sucking sorghum, and rampaging rice, plus a few genetically bastardized blueberries. The circular fields were themselves surrounded by a little two-lane road. This ring road was the major traffic artery within the Collaboratory dome, so it was an excellent place to sit and observe the quaint customs of the locals.
“I really don’t mind a bit about those stinking, lousy dorm rooms,” Donna remarked sweetly. “It feels and smells so lovely under this big dome. We could live outside the buildings if we wanted. We could just wander around naked, like the animals.”
Donna reached out and patted an animal on the head. Oscar gave the creature a long look. The specimen stared back at him fearlessly, its bulging black eyes as blankly suggestive as a Ouija board. The de-feralization process, a spin-off of the Collaboratory’s flourishing neural research, had left all the local animals in some strangely altered state of liquid detachment.
This particular specimen looked as eager and healthy as a model on a cereal box; its tusks were caries-free, its spiky fur seemed moussed. Nevertheless, Oscar felt a very strong intuition that the animal would take enormous pleasure in killing and eating him. This was the animal’s primary impulse in their brief relationship. Somehow, it had lost the will to follow through.
“Do you happen to know the name of this creature?” Oscar asked her.
Donna carefully stroked the animal’s long, wrinkled snout. It grunted in ecstasy and extruded a horrid gray tongue. “Maybe it’s a pig?”
“That’s not a pig.”
“Well, whatever it is, I think it likes me. It’s been following me around all morning. It’s cute, isn’t it? It’s ugly, but it’s cute-ugly.… The animals here never hurt anyone. They did something weird to them. To their brains or something.”
“Oh yes.” Oscar tapped a key. In rapidity and silence, his laptop collated a huge series of Collaboratory purchase orders with five years’ worth of public-domain Texas arrest records. The results looked very intriguing.
“Are you going to get an exotic animal for Mrs. Bambakias?”
“After the weekend. Pelicanos is back in Boston, Fontenot is out house hunting with Bob and Audrey.… Right now, I’m just trying to get some of the local records in order.” Oscar shrugged.
“I liked her, you know? Mrs. Bambakias? I liked dressing her for the campaign. She was really elegant, and nice to me. I thought she might take me to Washington. But I just don’t fit in there.”
“Why not?” Oscar deftly twitched a fingertip and activated a search engine, which sought out a state-federal coordination center in Baton Rouge, and retrieved the records of recent pardons and grants of clemency issued by the Governor of Louisiana.
“Well … I’m too old, you know? I worked for a bank for twenty years. I didn’t start tailoring until after the hyperinflation.”
Oscar tagged four hits for further investigation. “I think you’re selling yourself short. I never heard Mrs. Bambakias mention your age.”
Donna shook her graying head ruefully. “Young women nowadays, they’re much better at the new economy. They’re really trained for personal image services. They like being in a krewe; they like dressing the principal and doing her hair and her shoes. They make a real career of service work. Lorena Bambakias will want to entertain. She’ll need people who can dress her for Washington, for the Georgetown crowd.”
“But you dress us. Look at the way we dress compared to these local people.”
“You don’t understand,” Donna said patiently. “These scientists dress like slobs, because they can get away with that.”
Oscar examined a passing local, riding a bike with his shirt hanging out. He wore no socks and tattered shoes. No hat. His hair was dreadful. No one could possibly dress that badly by accident.