“Neat hack!” Kevin enthused. “But that wouldn’t kill all the mosquitoes, would it?”
“No, but the diseases vanished right away. Because disease couldn’t spread from person to person anymore. And the skeeters are going, too. See, Huey’s gassing the livestock, wild animals, he’s gas-sing everything that breathes. Because it works! Those bloodsuckers used to kill the people in job lots. For thousands of years they were a biblical plague around here. But Green Huey nailed ’em for good.”
The hovercraft puttered on. The three of them fell thoughtfully silent.
“What’s that bug on your arm, then?” Kevin said at last. “Dang!” Fontenot swatted it. “Must have blown in from Missis-sippi!”
Oscar knew that his new allegations were extremely grave. Properly handled, this scandal would finish Huey. Handled badly, it could fin-ish Oscar in short order. It might even finish the President.
Oscar composed what he considered the finest memo of his ca-reer. He had the memo passed to the President — hopefully, for his eyes only. Oscar was unhappy at bypassing his superiors to the top of the chain of command, but he was anxious to avoid any further deba-cles from the paramilitary zealots of the NSC. Their killer helicopter attack during his kidnapping had probably saved his life, but true pro-fessionals simply didn’t behave that way.
Oscar appealed to the President. He was calm, factual, rational, well organized. He pinpointed the locale of the Haitian camp, and recommended that human intelligence be sent in. Someone discreet, harmless-looking. A female agent would be a good choice. Someone who could thoroughly tape the place, and take blood samples.
For three days, Oscar followed his memo with a barrage of anx-ious demands and queries of the NSC higher-ups. Had the President seen his memo? It was of the greatest importance. It was critical.
There was no answer.
In the meantime, serious difficulties pressed at the Collaboratory. Morale was cracking among the civilian support staff. None of them were being paid anymore. None of the support staff enjoyed the pres-tige and glamour of the scientists, who were rapidly accustoming themselves to being followed by worshipful krewes of hairy-eyed Moderators. The civilian staff were miffed. The Collaboratory’s medi-cal staff were especially upset. They could get good-paying jobs else-where — and they could scarcely be expected to run a decent, ethical medical facility without a steady flow of capital and up-to-date sup-plies.
There was continued and intensifying Moderator/Regulator feuding in the Sabine River valley. Scouting patrols by rival nomad youth gangs were degenerating into bushwhackings and lynchings. The situation was increasingly volatile, especially since the sheriffs of Jasper and Newton counties had been forced to resign their posts. The good-old-boy Texan sheriffs had been outed on outrageous bribery scandals. Someone had compiled extensive dossiers on their long-time complicity in bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution — all those illicit delights that could be outlawed, but never made unpopular.
It didn’t take genius to understand that civil order in East Texas was being deliberately undermined by Green Huey. Texas state gov-ernment should have risen to this challenge, but Texas state govern-ment was well known for its lack of genius. The state held endless hearings on the shocking problem of endemic police corruption — apparently hoping that the riots would subside if fed enough paper-work.
The biggest wild card on the state border was the provocative presence of European and Asian news crews. America’s hot war with the gallant, minuscule Dutch had made America hot copy again. Sav-age confrontations between armed criminal gangs had always been an activity that endeared America to its fans around the world. Dutch journalists had been banned in the USA — but French and German ones were everywhere, especially in Louisiana. The British were kind enough to suggest that the French were secretly arming Huey’s Regu-lator gangs.
The prestige-maddened hotheads in the Regulators were thrilled to receive worldwide net coverage. Young Regulator goons lived for reputations and respect, since they had so little else. The military crisis was distorting the odd underpinnings of the Regulator attention-economy. Violent hotheads were vaulting through the ranks by their daring attacks on Moderators.
The Moderators, in Oscar’s judgment, were a cannier and more ductile lot. Their networks were better designed and organized; the Moderators were cooler, less visible, far less confrontational. Still, it didn’t take much pushing to render them murderous.
On the fourth day after sending his memo, Oscar received a curt message from the President. Two Feathers indicated, in a couple of lines, that Oscar’s memo had been read and understood. Oscar was directly ordered not to speak further on the topic to anyone.
Forty-eight hours passed, and the scandal broke wide open. A squadron of U.S. helicopters had flown by night into the heart of Louisiana, where they rendezvoused in an obscure swamp village. Two of them promptly collided and crashed, crushing the homes of the sleeping natives, charring and killing innocent women and children. Undetermined numbers of the locals had been scandalously kidnapped by the abduction-crazed feds. Four federal spooks had been killed in the crash. Their bodies were paraded before Huey’s European cam-eras, their zippy black flight suits top-heavy with aging cyber-gear.
This bizarre allegation simply hung there, misfiring, for another forty-eight hours. There was no formal reaction from the Administra-tion. They simply declined comment on the issue, as if the demagogic raving of the Governor of Louisiana was too clownish for words. Pub-lic attention focused instead on the U.S. Navy, whose Atlantic armada was being launched against the Dutch in an archaic ritual of wind-snapping Old Glories. The gallant old warcraft wallowed out to sea from their half-drowned military dry docks. All eyes were on the War now — or at least, they were supposed to be.
Outside America, it was obvious to anyone, even the perennially suspicious Chinese, that a naval attack on the Dutch was an absurd and ridiculous gesture. It was the subject of amused lampoons in Europe. Only the Dutch seemed sincerely upset.
But the effect within America was profound. The nation was at War. Roused from its fatal lethargy by the cheering prospect of doing some serious harm, the Congress had actually declared a War. The result was instant, intense civil discord. Outflanked by the state of War, most of the Emergency committees promised to go quietly. A few defied the Congress and the President, risking arrest. In the mean-while, antiwar networks congealed and raged in the streets. They were sincerely disgusted to see the Constitution perverted, and the nation dishonored, for domestic political advantage.
Twenty-four more feverish hours of War ticked by. Then, the Administration accused the Governor of Louisiana of conducting un-ethical medical experiments on illegal aliens. This news arrived in the very midst of the martial fife-playing and drumbeating. It was a shock-ing distraction. But it was serious — bad, very bad, unbelievably bad. The surgeon general and the cabinet head of Health Services were wheeled out in public, burdened with grim looks, medical evidence, and terrifying cranial flip charts.
The PR attack on Huey was badly handled, amateurish, graceless even. But it was lethal. Huey had laughed off many other scandals, sidestepped them, passed the buck, silenced his critics, suborned them. But this scandal was beyond the pale. It was all about invisible, help-less, rootless people, deliberately driven out of their minds as an indus-trial process. That was just a little too close to home for most Americans. They couldn’t live with that.