Distraction - Bruce Sterling [53]
With these major acts of reform, the stage would finally be set to attack the nation’s real problems. This had to be done without malice, without frenzy, and without repellent attacks of partisan histrionics. Oscar felt that this could be done. It looked bad … it looked very bad … to the outside observer, it looked well nigh hopeless. Yet the American polity still had great reserves of creativity—if the country could be rallied and led in the right direction. Yes, it was true that the nation was broke, but other countries had seen their currencies annihilated and their major industries rendered irrelevant. This condition was humiliating, but it was temporary, it was survivable. When you came down to it, America’s abject defeat in economic warfare was a very mild business compared to, say, twentieth-century carpet bombing and armed invasion.
The American people would just have to get over the fact that software no longer had any economic value. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t just, but it was a fait accompli. In many ways, Oscar had to give the Chinese credit for their cleverness in making all English-language intellectual property available on their nets at no charge. The Chinese hadn’t even needed to leave their own borders in order to kick the blocks out from under the American economy.
In some ways, this brutal collision with Chinese analog reality could be seen as a blessing. As far as Oscar had it figured, America hadn’t really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World’s Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people’s military coming home in boxes for a while. The American national character really wasn’t suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World’s Movie Star. The world’s tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world’s acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.
Oscar turned on the brown ribbed sands of the beach and began retracing his steps. He was enjoying being out of touch like this; he’d abandoned his laptop back in the krewe bus, he’d even left all the phones out of his sleeves and pockets. He felt that he should do this more often. It was important for a professional political operative to step back periodically, to take the time necessary to put his thoughts and intuitions into order and perspective. Oscar rarely created these vital little moments for himself—he’d somehow dimly intuited that he’d have plenty of time to develop his personal philosophy if he ever ended up behind bars. But he was giving himself some time for thought now, in this forgotten world of sand and wind and waves and chilly sunlight, and he could feel that it was doing him a lot of good.
An internal pressure had been building. He’d learned a great deal in the past thirty days, devouring whole reams of alien data in order to get up to speed, but hadn’t yet put it into an organized perspective. His data-stuffed head had become a disassembled mass of jumbled blocks. He was keyed up, tense, distracted, getting a little snappish.
Maybe it was just that long drought between women.
They were expecting Greta before noon. Negi had prepared a lovely seafood lunch for her. But Greta was late. The krewe ate lavishly inside the bus, popping corks and keeping up appearances, even joking about the no-show. But when Oscar left them, his mood had grown much darker.
He went into the beach house to wait for Greta, but the rooms that had once seemed louche yet charming now revealed themselves to him as merely sordid. Why was he fooling himself, taking such pains to imitate a love nest? Genuine love nests were places full of real meaning for lovers, full of things conveying some authentic emotional resonance. Little things, silly mementos maybe, a feather, a seashell, a garter, framed photos,