Distraction - Bruce Sterling [226]
“Why let that slow you down? This is Mardi Gras.”
She sat. They dabbed a bit at their shrimp cocktails. There were deadly little crystal plates of horseradish. “Did I tell you that I had a cellular cleansing done?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I resented it, you know. That I hadn’t chosen to do it to myself. And then, there was the blood pressure, the stroke risk. So, I had my brain tissue cleaned out.”
“How was it? Tell me.”
“It all felt very normal. Very flat. Like living in black and white. I had to go back again, I don’t care anymore, I just had to.” She put her long pale hands on the tabletop. “What about you? Can you stop?”
“I don’t want to stop it. It works for me.”
“It’s bad for you.”
“No, I love bicamerality. That’s what I really like about our little gift and affliction. All those other troubles, humanity’s stinking little prejudices, the race thing, the ethnic thing.… It’s not that they disappear, you know. That’s too much to hope for. They never disappear, but the new problems screw them up so much that the old problems lose center stage. Besides, now I can multitask. I really can do two things at once. I’m much more effective. I can run a business full-time while I work full-time for legalization.”
“So you’re making money again.”
“Yes, it’s a thing I tend to do.” Oscar sighed. “It’s the basic American way. It’s my only real path to legitimacy. With serious money, I can finance candidates, run court challenges, set up foundations. It’s no use wandering around the margins with our bears and tambourines, dancing for pennies. Cognition will become an industry soon. A massive, earthshaking, new American industry. Someday, the biggest ever.”
“You’re going to turn my science into an industry? When it’s illegal now, when people think it’s crazy just to mess with it? How is that supposed to happen?”
“You can’t stop me from doing it,” Oscar told her, lowering his voice. “No one can stop me. It will come on very slowly, very gently, so quietly that you hardly feel it at first. Just a gentle lifting of the veil. Very tender, very subtle. I’ll be taking it away from the realm of abstract knowledge, and bringing it into a real and dirty world of sweat and heat. It won’t be ugly or sordid, it’ll seem lovely and inevitable. People will want it, they’ll long for it. They’ll finally cry out for it. And at the end, Greta, I’ll possess it totally.”
A long silence. She shivered violently in her chair, and the feathered mask dipped. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. She lifted a silver oyster fork, probed at the quiescent gray blob on her plate, and set the fork back down. Then she looked up, searchingly. “You look older.”
“I know I do.” He smiled. “Shall I put my mask on?”
“Is it all right to worry about you? Because I do.”
“It’s all right to worry, but not during Mardi Gras.” He laughed. “You want to worry? Worry about people who get in my way.” He swallowed an oyster.
Another long silence. He was used to her silences now. They came in flavors; Greta had all kinds of silences. “At least they let me work in the lab now,” she murmured. “There’s not much danger they’ll ever put me in power again. I wish I were better at my work, that’s all. It’s the only thing I regret. I just wish I had more time and that I were better.”
“But you’re the best that there is.”
“I’m getting old, I can feel it. I can feel the need leaving me, that devouring gift. I just wish that I were better, Oscar, that’s all. They tell me I’m a genius but I’m always, always full of discontent. I can’t do anything about that.”
“That must be hard. Would you like me to get you a private lab, Greta? There would be less overhead, you could run it for yourself. It might help.”
“No thank you.”
“I could build a nice place for you. Someplace we both like. Where you can concentrate. Oregon, maybe.”
“I know that you could build an institute, but I’m never going to live in your pocket.”
“You’re so proud,” he said mournfully. “It could be doable. I could marry you.”
She shook her masked head. “We’re not going to marry.”