Distraction - Bruce Sterling [67]
Huey’s favorite proles were native Louisianans, displaced by rising seas, hurricane damage, and levee-smashing floods from the rampant Mississippi. Sinking into the depths of their tattered landscape, the Louisiana hordes had become creatures of an entirely different order from the scattered dissidents of the East Coast. These Louisianans were a powerful, ambitious, thriving counter-society, with their own clothing, their own customs, their own police, economy, and media. They could rather lord it over the nation’s less-organized dissies, hobos, and leisure unions. They were known as the Regulators.
Jungle war in the swamps of Louisiana gave Huey’s Regulator nomads a Maoist tactical advantage. Now Huey had unleashed his dogs of netwar, and persistent low-intensity hell was breaking loose around the federal air base.
As was sadly common with American political disputes, the best and most accurate news coverage was taking place in the European media. Oscar located a European satellite feed featuring a Louisiana press conference, held by a zealot calling herself “Subcommander Ooney Bebbels of the Regulator Commando.”
The guerrilla leader wore a black ski mask, mud-spattered jeans, and a dashiki. She stalked back and forth before her audience of journos, brandishing a feathered ebony swagger stick and a handheld remote control. Her propaganda conference was taking place in a large inflatable tent.
“Look at that display board,” she urged the massed cameras, the picture of sweet reason in her ski mask. “Do y’all have your own copies of that document yet? Brother Lump-Lump, beam some more government files to those nice French boys in the back! Okay! Ladies and gentlemen, this document I’m displaying is an official federal list of American Air Force bases. You can grab that budget document off the committee server for yourself, if you don’t believe me. Look at the official evidence. That air base you refer to? It don’t even exist.”
A journalist objected. “But, ma’am, we have that air base on live feed right now.”
“Then you gotta know that’s a derelict area. There’s no power, no fuel, no running water, and no food. So that’s no air base. You see any federal aircraft flying around here? The only thing flyin’ here is your press copters. And our private, harmless, sports-hobbyist ultralights. So y’all should can that disinformation about any so-called armed siege. That is total media distortion. We’re not armed. We just need shelter. We’re a whole lot of homeless folks, who need a roof over our heads for the winter. That big derelict area behind the barbed wire, that’s ideal for us. So we’re just waiting here outside the gates till we get some human rights.”
“How many nomad troops do you have on the battlefield, ma’am?”
“Not ‘troops,’ people. Nineteen thousand three hundred and twelve of us. So far. We’re real hopeful. Morale is really good. We got folks coming in from all over.”
A British journalist was recognized. “It’s been reported that you have illegal magnetic pulse devices in your guerrilla camps.”
The subcommander shook her ski-masked head impatiently. “Look, we hate pulse weapons, they strip our laptops. We strictly condemn pulse-blasting. Any pulse attacks coming from our lines will be from provocateurs.”
The British journo, nattily kitted-out in pressed khakis, looked properly skeptical. The British had larger investment holdings in the USA than any other nationality. The Anglo-American special relationship still had deep emotional resonance, especially where the return on investment was concerned. “What about