The bodyguards seized Kevin’s pinioned arms and began to pummel him.
“They’re torturing me!” Kevin screamed in anguish. “The cops are torturing me!”
Huey turned. “Goddammit, Boozoo, don’t punch him in public like that! Haul him inside first. And, Zach, stop using your damn fists every time. Use your sap. That’s what it’s for.”
Despite his bound arms, Kevin wasn’t going quietly. He spun in place, began hopping up and down. His howls were of little use, for the crowd below was rapt inside the embrace of their headphones. But not all of them were dancing, and some were looking up.
Boozoo pulled a sap from within his clothing. Kevin aimed a clumsy kick. Boozoo half stepped back, tripped over the foot of a second guard, tangled suddenly in the spindly legs of a white iron balcony chair. He tumbled backward, landing with a crash. The sec-ond bodyguard tried to leap forward, tangled with the struggling Boozoo, and fell to his knees with a squawk.
“Aw hell,” Huey grumbled. He swiftly reached into his own jacket, removed a chromed automatic pistol, and absently emptied a shot into Kevin. Struck high in the chest and with his hands still bound, Kevin catapulted backward, smashed into the railing, and tum-bled to the earth below.
Deeply surprised, Huey walked to the railing, craned his head, and stared down. The pistol still gleamed in his grip. The crowd be-low him saw the gun, and billowed away in fear.
“Uh-oh,” the Governor blurted.
“I still don’t know what to do with him,” the President said. “He murdered a man in broad daylight in front of a thousand people, but he still has his adherents. I’d love to jail him, but Jesus. We’ve put so many people through the prison system that they’re a major demo-graphic group.”
Oscar and the President of the United States were having a stroll through the White House garden. The Rose Garden, like the White House itself, was swept for bugs with regularity. It didn’t help much. But it helped some. It was doable, if they kept moving.
“He always lacked a sense of decency, Mr. President. Everyone knows Huey went too far, even in Louisiana. They’ll wait until he’s dead before they name some bridges after him.”
“What do you think of Washington now, Oscar? It’s a different city now, don’t you agree?”
“I have to admit, Mr. President: it bothers me to see foreign troops stationed in the capital of the United States.”
“I agree with you there. But that solved the problem. People burrowing into the streets, barricading whole neighborhoods… no major government can survive in a capital like that. I can’t order American troops to pursue these people with the rigor it requires to break decentered network gangs. But the Dutch will clean the streets if it takes ten years. They’ll tough it out.”
“It is a different city now, sir. Much tidier.”
“You could live here, couldn’t you? If the salary were right? If the White House krewe looked after you.”
“Yes, sir; I like to think that I could live anywhere that duty called.”
“Well, it isn’t Louisiana, at least.”
“Actually, Mr. President, I’m very fond of Louisiana. I still keep up with developments there. It’s a bellwether state in many, many ways. I had some very fulfilling moments in Louisiana. I’ve come to think of it as my second home.”
“Really. ”
“You see, the Dutch got so hard and desperate when the seas came up. I think Louisiana is on to something. I’m starting to think there’s a lot to be said for simply lying down in the ooze.”
The President stared. “Not that you yourself plan to do a lot of oozing. ”
“Only on occasion, sir.”
“In an earlier discussion, Oscar, I told you that if you followed orders at the Collaboratory I’d find a post for you in the White House. There have been some interesting developments in your career since then, but none that give me any reason to doubt your ability. This is not an Administration for bigotry — or for scandal — and now that we have some grasp of constitutional coherency again, I’m going to cut the spook-and-cowboy business back to a dull roar. I’m actually governing this country now — even if I sometimes have to employ Dutch troops — and when I leave the Oval Office, I intend to leave a country that is sane, responsive, decent, and well behaved. And I think I have a role for you in that effort. Would you care to hear about it?”
“By all means, sir.”
“As you’re well aware, we still have sixteen goddamn political parties in this country! And I don’t intend to face reelection with a pipsqueak party like the Soc-Pats behind me. We need a massive shake-out and total political reconsolidation. We need to shatter all these calcified partisan lines and establish a workable, practical, sensible, bipolar sys-tem. It’s going to be Normalcy versus everything else.”
“I see, sir. Much like the old days. So are you left-wing, or right-wing?”
“I’m down-wing, Oscar. I have my feet on the ground, and I know where I stand. Everyone else can be up-wing. They can all be up in the air, scattering crazy, high-tech, birdbrained ideas, and the ones that fall to ground without shattering, those will belong to me.”
“Mr. President, I congratulate you on that formulation. You have a window of opportunity here where you can try anything that you please, and that formulation sounds doable.”
“You think so? Good. This is your role. You will be a White House congressional liaison to interface with the current party struc-ture. You’ll shake the radicals and crazies out, and agglomerate them into the up-wing.”
“I’m not down-wing, sir?”
“Oscar, there is no down-wing without the up-wing. It doesn’t work unless I mold my own opposition. The up-wing is crucially important to the game plan. The up-wing has to be brilliant. It has to be genuinely glamorous. It has to be visionary, and it has to almost make sense. And it has to never, ever quite work out in real life.”
“I see.”
“I’m particularly concerned about that prole/scientist coalition. Those people have the bit between their teeth. They are already shak-ing down industries by threatening to research them. They’re the only truly novel and vigorous movement on the political landscape right now. They cannot possibly be inside my camp. I can’t buy them off. I can’t sweet-talk them. They’re inherently radical, because they’re our century’s version of the main motive force that transformed Western society during the past six centuries. To destroy them would be crimi-nal, it would lobotomize the country. But to give them their head is insane.”
The President drew a deep breath. “Because the spin-offs of their research built American capitalism, wrecked American capitalism, made the seas rise, poisoned the topsoil, wrecked the ozone layer, scattered radioactivity, filled the skies with contrails and the land with concrete, caused a population boom, caused a reproductive collapse, set Wyoming on fire… no, it’s even worse than that. It’s much, much worse. Now they’ve got our brains laid out like a virgin New World, and every last human being is a backward, undeveloped Indian. Someone has to deal seriously with these people. I suspect that you are just the man.”
“I think I understand you, sir.”
“They don’t have any grasp of political reality, but they’re going to blow the doors off the human condition unless something is done with them. I’m thinking: something subtle. Something attractive. Something glamorous, something that would make them behave less like Dr. Frankenstein and more like artists do. Modern poetry, that would be excellent. Costs very little, causes intense excitement in very small groups, has absolutely no social effect. So, I’m thinking mathe-matics. Nothing practical, just something totally arcane and abstract.”