Distraction - Bruce Sterling [174]
Kevin swung his oily feet from the desk. “I enlisted, man. I signed up with the mob. I’m a made guy, I’m a Moderator now.”
“I understood that much,” Oscar told him. “New alias and everything. ‘Scubbly Bee,’ am I right? What is that? Not ‘Stubbly’?”
“No, Scubbly. Scubbly Bee.” Kevin pointed to a nearby shredder. “I just trashed all my official ID. I can’t tell you how great that felt. This is the best party I ever had.”
“What’s the significance of ‘Scubbly Bee’? It must mean something of drastic importance in order to sound so silly.”
Kevin grinned. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, chump.”
Burningboy shook Kevin’s hand. “I’ll be going soon,” he said. “You keep your nose clean, all right, Captain? This is the last time I want to see you so drunk.”
“I’m not all that drunk,” Kevin lied. “It’s mostly that intoxicating endorphin rush from my feet.”
Burningboy left the office, throwing his arms over the willing shoulders of the two nomad women. Oscar sat down. “I hope you didn’t destroy your voter registration, too.”
“As if absentee voting in Boston is somehow gonna help us down here.”
“He’s really put you in direct charge over his own people inside the facility?”
Kevin yawned. “Y’know, when this party is over, I’m gonna have a serious talk with you, man. In the meantime, you need to eat something. Maybe even have a drink. After all, you’re the guy who’s paying for all this.”
“I won’t take much of your valuable party time, Captain Bee. This is just a friendly krewe-style chat.”
“If we’re going to be all friendly, then you’d better call me ‘Scubbly.” ’ Kevin pulled his socks over his reddened, liniment-reeking feet, with a theatrical series of winces. “You’ve just got to know why he did that, don’t you? You’ve got to be on top of developments, you can’t even wait till morning to learn. Well, it’s because he’s setting me up, that’s why. He’s getting off the hot seat, and he’s putting me right on it. See, he thinks the Regulators are gonna cross the border and come after us with everything they have. Because that’s what he wants, that’s his agenda. The Regulators will stomp this place, and then the Regulators will catch a truly massive counterreaction from the feds.”
“That seems like a far-fetched gambit, doesn’t it?”
“But that’s the way he set this up, man. He didn’t come here because he wanted to help your little pet scientists. You’re too straight, you just don’t understand these guys’ priorities. They gave up on you a long, long time ago. They don’t expect any law or justice from the U.S. government. They don’t even expect the government to be sane. The whole federal system just detached itself from them and floated off into deep space. They think of the government as something like bad weather. It’s something you just endure.”
“You’re wrong, Kevin—I understand all of that perfectly.”
“When they want to take action, they take actions that matter to them. The other proles, that’s who matters. They’re like tribes who are wandering through an enormous hostile desert made of your laws and money. But the Moderators hate the Regulators. The Regulators are strong and scary now. They’ve got a state Governor as their big secret Grand Dragon Pooh-bah. They overwhelmed an Air Force base. The Moderators … all they own is a few dozen ghost towns and national parks.”
Oscar nodded encouragement.
“Then you came along. All of a sudden there was a chance to take over this place. It’s a federal science facility, a much better facility than a pork-barrel Air Force base. It has big prestige. Grabbing it is an intolerable insult to Regulator prestige, because their main man Huey built this place, and he thinks he owns it by right. He’s nuts about green genetic gumbo and weird cognition crap. So that’s why Burningboy helped you. And that’s why he’s getting out now, while the getting is good. He set a trap for the other side, and to his eyes, we’re just poisoned bait.”
“How do you know all this?”
Kevin opened a desk drawer. He removed a large and highly illegal revolver, and a bottle of whiskey. He sipped from the whiskey