Distraction - Bruce Sterling [77]
“Very good choice.”
“I need a feeling here that’s responsible, and yet fully responsive. Very restrained, very American Republic, but nothing kitschy or colonial. Very Boston, you see?—but not too Boston. Not all identity-politics, not all Paul Revere. With an ensemble like this, something has to give. You have to make sacrifices. You can’t have everything at once. Elegance is restraint.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m going to have to give up my binturong.”
“Oh no,” Oscar said, “not Stickley the binturong.”
“I know you took a lot of trouble to obtain Stickley for me, and he really is a lovely conversation piece. But I just don’t have room to showcase a rare animal here in Washington. An openwork terrarium, that would have been lovely, and I had such nice ideas for the schema. But an animal clone just clashes. He does. He’s not in period. He’s a distraction.”
“Well, that’s doable,” Oscar said judiciously. “I don’t think anyone has ever returned an animal to the Collaboratory. That would be a nice gesture.”
“I might do a small clone. A bat, or a mole, or such.… Not that I don’t enjoy Stickley. He’s very well behaved. But you know? There’s something weird about him.”
“It’s that neural implant they give them at the Collaboratory,” Oscar said. “It’s all about aggression, eating, and defecation. If you control those three behaviors, you can live in peace with wild animals. Luckily, that deep neural structure is very similar across a wide range of mammals.”
“Including humans, I imagine.”
“Well, of course.” Oscar’s phone rang. He politely turned it off without answering it.
“The neural control of eating certainly has advanced a lot,” Lorena said. “I’m on appetite controllants right now. They’re very neural.”
“Neural is a hot technology now.”
“Yes. Neural sounds very attractive.”
She was telling him that she knew about Greta. Well, of course Lorena would know about Greta. Except that Lorena had also known all about Clare. Because Clare had given Lorena Bambakias some very nice press coverage. So Lorena was rather in Clare’s corner. But surely Lorena must see sense there. After all, Clare had left him.…
Lorena’s own phone rang. She answered it at once. “Yes? What? Oh dear. Oh dear. And how is Alcott taking the news? Oh, poor dear. Oh, this is very sad. You’re quite sure? Really? All right. Thank you very much.” Lorena paused. “Would you like to talk to Oscar Valparaiso about this? He happens to be here for tea. No? Very well, then.” She hung up.
“That was Leon Sosik, our chief of staff,” she announced, slipping the phone into her wide-cut sleeve. “There’s been a major development in our hunger strike.”
“Oh?”
“It’s the air base. A fire has broken out. There’s some kind of toxic spill there. They’re having the whole base evacuated.”
Oscar sat up in his lyre-backed mahogany chair. “ ‘Evacuated,’ is that the story?”
“The federal troops are leaving. They’re running for their lives. So of course those horrid little prole people are pouring in after them, they’re swarming right over the fences.” Lorena sighed. “That means that it’s over. It’s ending right now. It’s finally over.” She swung out her legs, sat up on her couch, and put one slender wrist to her forehead. “Thank God.”
Oscar ran his hand over his newly coiffed hair. “Good Lord, what next?”
“Are you kidding? Christ, I’m going to eat.” Lorena rang a bell on her tea trolley. A krewe member arrived—a new person, someone Oscar had never seen before. “Elma, bring me some tea cake. No, bring me some petit fours, and some chocolate strawberries. Bring me … oh, what’s the use, bring me a jumbo roast beef sandwich.” She looked up. “Would you like something, Oscar?”
“I could do with a black coffee and some media coverage.”
“Good idea.