Distraction - Bruce Sterling [28]
“You’re being so sweet.” He could feel himself hemorrhage.
“I’m really sorry that I was never able to … you know … quite get over your personal background thing.”
“No,” Oscar said bitterly, “I’m very used to that.”
“It’s just—it’s just one of those permanent tragedies. Like, you know, my own troubled minority background.”
Oscar sighed. “Clare, I don’t think anybody really holds it against you that you’re a white Anglo-Saxon.”
“No, life is hard in a racial minority. It just is. I mean, you of all people ought to have some feeling for what that really means. I know you can’t help the way you were born, but still … I mean, that’s one of the real reasons I want to do this Dutch assignment. There’s been so much white flight from America back into Europe.… My people are there, you know? My roots are there. I think it might help me, somehow.”
Oscar was finding it hard to breathe.
“I feel bad about this, sweetheart, like I’ve really let you down.”
“No, this is better,” Oscar said. “It hurts a lot, but it hurts less than dragging it on and keeping up a false pretense. Let’s part as friends.”
“I might be back, you know. You don’t have to be all hasty like that. You don’t have to turn on a dime. Because it’s just me, your pal Clare, you know? It’s not like an executive decision.”
“Let’s have a clean break,” he said firmly. “It’s best for us. For both of us.”
“All right. If you’re sure, then I guess I understand. Good-bye, Oscar.”
“It’s over, Clare. Good-bye.” He hung up. Then he threw the phone into the trees.
“Nothing works,” he told the red dirt and gray sky. “I can’t ever make anything work!”
3
Oscar peeled a strip of tape from a yellow spool and wrapped the tape around a cinder block. He swept a hand-scanner over the block, activating the tape. It was close to one in the morning. The wind out of the tall black pines was damp and nasty, but he was working hard and the weather felt bleakly appropriate.
“I’m a cornerstone,” the cinder block announced.
“Good for you,” Oscar grunted.
“I’m a cornerstone. Carry me five steps to your left.”
Oscar ignored this demand, and swiftly taped six more blocks. He whipped the scanner across each of them, then pulled the last block aside to get at the next level in the stack.
As he set his gloved hands to it, the last block warned him, “Don’t install me yet. Install that cornerstone first.”
“Sure,” Oscar told it. The construction system was smart enough to manage a limited and specific vocabulary. Unfortunately, the system simply didn’t hear very well. The tiny microphones embedded in the talking tape were much less effective than the tape’s thumbnail-sized speakers. Still, it was hard not to reply to a concrete block when it spoke up with such grace and authority. The concrete blocks all sounded like Franklin Roosevelt.
Bambakias had created this construction system. Like all of the architect’s brainchildren, his system was very functional, yet rife with idiosyncratic grace-notes. Oscar had full confidence in the system, a pragmatic faith won from much hands-on experience. Oscar had labored like a mule in many Bambakias construction sites. No one ever won the trust of Alcott Bambakias, or joined his inner circle, without a great deal of merciless grunt work.
Heavy labor was the heart and soul of the Bambakias intellectual salon. W. Alcott Bambakias had quite a number of unorthodox beliefs, but chief among them was his deep conviction that sycophants and rip-off artists always tired easily. Bambakias, like many members of the modern overclass, was always ready with an openhearted gesture, a highly public flinging of golden ducats. His largesse naturally attracted parasites, but he rid himself of “the summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots,” as he insisted on calling them, by demanding frequent stints of brute physical work. “It’ll be fun,” Bambakias would announce, rolling up his tailored sleeves and grinning fiercely. “We’ll get results.”
Bambakias