Distraction - Bruce Sterling [41]
Of course he was familiar with security; during the campaign, everyone had known that there might be incidents, that the candidate might be hurt. The candidate was mixing with The People, and some few of The People were just naturally evil or insane. There had indeed been a few bad moments on the Massachusetts campaign trail: nasty hecklers, nutty protesters, vomiting drunks, pickpockets, fainting spells, shoving matches. The unpleasant business that made good campaign security the functional equivalent of seat belts or fire extinguishers. Security was an empty trouble and expense, ninety-nine times in a hundred. On the hundredth instance you were very glad you had been so sensible.
The modern rich always maintained their private security. Bodyguards were basic staff for the overclass, just like majordomos, cooks, secretaries, sysadmins, and image consultants. A well-organized personal krewe, including proper security, was simply expected of modern wealthy people; without a krewe, no one would take you seriously. All of this made perfect sense.
And yet none of it had much to do with the stark notion of having one’s flesh pierced by a bullet.
It wasn’t the idea of dying that bothered him. Oscar could easily imagine dying. It was the ugly sense of meaningless disruption that repelled him. His game board kicked over by a psychotic loner, a rule-breaker who couldn’t even comprehend the stakes.
Defeat in the game, he could understand. Oscar could easily imagine himself, for instance, swept up in a major political scandal. Crapped out. Busted. Cast into the wilderness. Broken from the ranks. Disgraced. Shunned, forgotten. A nonperson. A political hulk. Oscar could very well imagine that eventuality. It definitely gave the game a spice. After all, if victory was guaranteed, that wouldn’t be victory at all.
But he didn’t want to be shot. So Oscar gave up working on the building project. It was a sad sacrifice, because he truly enjoyed the process, and the many glorious opportunities it offered for shattering the preconceptions of backward East Texans. But it tired him to envision the eager and curious crowds as a miasma of enemies. Where were the crosshairs centered? Constant morbid speculation on the subject of murder was enough to convince Oscar that he himself would have made an excellent assassin—clever, patient, disciplined, resolute, and sleepless. This painful discovery rather harmed his self-image.
He warned his krewe of the developments. Heartwarmingly, they seemed far more worried about his safety than he was himself.
He retreated back inside the Collaboratory, where he knew he was much more secure. In the event of any violent crime, Collaboratory security would flip a switch on their Escaped Animal Vector alarms, and every orifice in the dome would lock as tight as a bank vault.
Oscar was much safer under glass—but he could feel himself curtailed, under pressure, his life delimited by unseen hands. However, he still had one major field of counterattack. Oscar dived aggressively into his laptop. He, Pelicanos, Bob Argow, and Audrey Avizienis had all been collaborating on the chains of evidence.
Senator Dougal and his Texan/Cajun mafia of pork-devouring good old boys had been very dutiful at first. Their relatively modest graft vanished at once, slipping methodically over Texas state lines into the vast money laundries of the Louisiana casinos. The funds oozed back later as generous campaign contributions and unexplained second homes in the names of wives and nephews.
But the years had gone on, and the country’s financial situation had become stormy and chaotic. With hyperinflation raging and major industries vanishing like pricked balloons, it was hard to keep up pretenses. Covering their tracks had become boring and tiresome. The Senator’s patronage of the Collaboratory was staunch and tireless, and the long-honored causes of advancing science and sheltering endangered species still gave most Americans a warm, generous, deeply uncritical feeling. The