Distraction - Bruce Sterling [190]
“I didn’t want the job!” Kevin protested. “He didn’t tell me how bad it was. Honest! You want the bodyguard job back? Take the damn job.”
“No,” Fontenot said, with finality. They climbed into the little boat, three men in a tub, and headed out into the bayou again.
“He did some great things for us,” Fontenot said. “Of course, everything he ever did was always about Huey first. Huey was always item number one on the Huey agenda, everybody knew that. But he did good things for the people. He gave ’em good breaks that they hadn’t had in a hundred years. It’s still the future.”
“Yeah,” Oscar said, “Huey’s got his own new order—but it isn’t new, and it isn’t order. Huey’s a funny guy. He can crack a joke and pound the ol’ podium, he’ll buy everybody a drink and make public fun of himself. But he’s got it all: total control over the legislature and the judiciary. A brownshirt militia on the rampage. His own private media network—his own economy, even. A blood-and-soil ideology. Secret retreats full of vengeance weapons. Huey kidnaps people. He abducts whole little populations, and makes them disappear. I suppose he does it all for the best of reasons, but the ends don’t matter when you’re using means like that. And now, he’s dosed himself with some off-the-wall treatment that makes people permanently schizoid! He can’t possibly get better after this. He can only get worse and worse.”
Fontenot sighed. “Let me ask one favor. Don’t tell anybody that I led you to this. I don’t want any press. I don’t want my poor neighbors knowin’ that I sold old Huey out. This is my home. I want to die here.”
Kevin spoke up. “You keep saying that this place is the future. Why do you want to die, old man?”
Fontenot looked at him with baggy-eyed tolerance. “Kid, everybody goes to the future to die. That’s where the job gets done.”
Oscar shook his head. “Don’t feel guilty. You don’t owe Huey any loyalty.”
“We all owe him, dammit. He saved us. He saved the state. We owe him for the mosquitoes, if nothing else.”
“Mosquitoes? What mosquitoes?”
“There aren’t any. And we’re in the middle of a swamp. And we don’t get bit. And you didn’t even notice, did you? I sure as hell notice.”
“Well, what happened to the mosquitoes?”
“Before Huey came along, the mosquitoes were kicking our ass. Mosquitoes love the Greenhouse future. When it got hotter and wetter, they came in tidal waves. Carrying malaria, dengue fever, encephalitis.… After the big Mississippi floods, mosquitoes boiled out of every ditch in the state. It was a major health emergency, people were dyin’. And Huey had just been sworn in. He just wouldn’t have it, he said, ‘Take action, get rid of ’em.’ He sent out the fogger trucks. Not insecticide, not that poison gas like before—DDT and toxins. That screwed up everything—not doable, everybody knows that. But Huey figured it out—he didn’t gas the bugs, he gassed the people. With airborne antibodies. They’re like breathable vaccinations. The people of Louisiana are toxic to mosquitoes now. Our blood literally kills them. If a mosquito bites a Cajun, that mosquito dies on the spot.”
“Neat hack!” Kevin enthused. “But that wouldn’t kill all the mosquitoes, would it?”
“No, but the diseases vanished right away. Because disease couldn’t spread from person to person anymore. And the skeeters are going, too. See, Huey’s gassing the livestock, wild animals, he’s gassing everything that breathes. Because it works! Those bloodsuckers used to kill the people in job lots. For thousands of years they were a biblical plague around here. But Green Huey nailed ’em for good.”
The hovercraft puttered on. The three of them fell thoughtfully silent.
“What’s that bug on your arm, then?” Kevin said at last.
“Dang!” Fontenot swatted it. “Must have blown in from Mississippi!”
Oscar knew that his new allegations were extremely grave. Properly handled, this scandal would finish Huey. Handled badly, it could finish Oscar in short order. It might even finish the President.
Oscar composed what he considered the finest memo of his career.