Distraction - Bruce Sterling [178]
“It’s me,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She looked up, nodded, and returned her attention to the lenses.
“Why did you leave the party?”
“Why shouldn’t I? You weren’t paying any attention to me.”
Oscar was surprised, even mildly thrilled, to see Greta being coy. “We’re in the Emergency Committee. You see me for hours and hours every day.”
“We’re never together. You’ve lost interest in me. You’re neglecting me.”
Oscar paused. He was certainly interested now. It occurred to him suddenly that he deeply enjoyed this part of a relationship. Women always seemed more interesting to him as objects of negotiation than they were as lovers or partners. This was a sinister self-revelation. He felt very contrite about it.
“Greta, I don’t like to admit it, but you’re right. Now that everyone knows we’re lovers, we never have time for ourselves. We were together in a public situation tonight, and I tactlessly deserted you. I admit that. I regret it. I’m going to make it up to you.”
“Listen to yourself. It’s like you’re addressing a committee. We’re just two politicians now. You talk to me like a diplomat. I have to read speeches from the President that are full of lies. I don’t get to work at anything that interests me. I spend my whole life in an endless political crisis. I hate administration. God, I feel so guilty.”
“Why? It’s important work. Someone has to do it. You’re good at it! People respect you.”
“I never felt this guilty when we were off in beach hotels having sleazy, half-violent sex. It wasn’t the center of my life or anything, but it was really interesting. A good-looking, charming guy with hundred-and-one-degree core body heat, that’s pretty fascinating. A lot more interesting than watching all my research die on the vine.”
“Oh no, not you too,” Oscar said. “Don’t tell me you’re turning on me now when I’ve put so much effort into this. So many people have left me now. They just don’t believe it can work.”
She looked at him with sudden pity. “Poor Oscar. You’ve got it all backward. That’s not why I feel guilty. I’m guilty because I know it’s going to work. Talking with those Moderators for so long … I really understand it now. Science truly is going to change. It’ll still be ‘Science.’ It’ll have the same intellectual structure, but its political structure will be completely different. Instead of being poorly paid government workers, we’ll be avant-garde dissident intellectuals for the dispossessed. And that will work for us. Because we can get a better deal from them now than we can from the government. The proles are not so new; they’re just like big, hairy, bad-smelling college students. We can deal with people like that. We do it all the time.”
He brightened. “Are you sure?”
“It’ll be like a new academia, with some krewe feudal elements. It’ll be a lot like the Dark Ages, when universities were little legal territories all their own, and scholars carried maces and wore little square hats, and whenever the university was crossed, they sent huge packs of students into the streets to tear everything up, until they got their way. Except it’s not the Dark Ages right now. It’s the Loud Ages, it’s the Age of Noise. We’ve destroyed our society with how much we know, and how quickly and randomly we can move it around. We live in the Age of Noise, and this is how we learn to be the scientists of the Age of Noise. We don’t get to be government functionaries who can have all the money we want just because we give the government a lot of military-industrial knowledge. That’s all over now. From now on we’re going to be like other creative intellectuals. We’re going to be like artists or violin-makers, with our little krewes of fans who pay attention and support us.”
“Wonderful, Greta.