“Oscar, you can’t arrest me. It’s against the law.”
“Mitch, just relax. You play ball with Dr. Penninger, probably we can work something out! Sure, I guess you can stand on principle, if you want to get all stiff-necked about it. But if you sit in that truck with a loaded shotgun all night, what on earth will that get you? It’s not going to change a thing. It’s over. Come on out.”
Karnes left the truck. Oscar produced a pair of handcuffs, looked at the plastic straps, shrugged, put them back in his pocket. “We really don’t need this, do we? We’re grown-ups. Let’s just go.”
Karnes fell into step with him. They left the basement, and walked out together beneath the dome. There were winter stars be-yond the glass. “I never liked you,” Karnes said. “I never trusted you. But somehow, you always seem like such a reasonable guy.”
“I am a reasonable guy.” Oscar clapped the policeman on the back of his flak jacket. “I know things seem a little disordered now, Chief: but I still believe in the law. I just have to find out where the order is.”
After seeing the former police chief safely incarcerated, Oscar con-ferred with Kevin and Greta in the commandeered police station. The nomad girls had changed from their dainty infiltration gear into cloth-ing much more their style: webbing belts, batons, and cut-down com-bat fatigues. “So, did you get our internal publicity statemnt released?”
“Of course,” Kevin said. “I called up every phone in the lab at once, and Greta went on live. Your statement was a good pitch, Oscar. It sounded really…” He paused. “Soothing.”
“Soothing is good. We’ll have new posters up by morning, de-claring the Strike over. People need these symbolic breathers. ‘The Strike Is Over.’ A declaration like that takes a lot of the heat off” All enthusiasm, Kevin pitched from the chief’s leather chair and crawled on his hands and knees to a floor-level cabinet. It was crammed with telecom equipment, a dust-clotted forest of colored fiber optics. “Really neat old phone system here! It’s riddled with taps, but it’s one of a kind; it has a zillion cool old-fashioned features that nobody ever used.”
“Why is it so dirty and neglected?” Oscar said.
“Oh, I had to turn these boards backward to get at the wiring.
I’ve never had such total control over a switching station. A couple of weeks down here, and I’ll have this place ticking like a clock.” Kevin stood up, wiping clotted grime from his fingers. “I think I’d better put on one of these local cop uniforms now. Does anybody mind if I wear a cop uniform from now on?”
“Why do you want to do that?” Oscar said.
“Well, those nomad girls have uniforms. I’m now your chief of security, right? How am I supposed to control our troops, if I don’t have my own uniform? With some kind of really cool cop hat.”
Oscar shook his head. “That’s a moot point, Kevin. Now that they’ve conquered the lab for us, we really need to usher those little witches out of here just as soon as possible.”
Kevin and Greta exchanged glances. “We were just discussing that issue.”
“They’re really good, these girls,” Greta said. “We won the lab back, but nobody got killed. It’s always very good when there’s a coup d’ etat and nobody gets killed.”
Kevin nodded eagerly. “We still need our troops, Oscar. We have a gang of dangerous Huey contras who are holed up in the Spinoffs building. We have to break them right where they stand! So we’ll have to use heavy nonlethals-spongey whips, peppergas, ultrasonic bull-horns… Man, it’s gonna be juicy.” Kevin rubbed his hands to-gether.
“Greta, don’t listen to him. We can’t risk serious injury to those people. We’re in full command of the lab now, so we need to behave responsibly. If we have trouble from Huey’s loyalists, we’ll behave like normal authorities do. We’ll just glue their doors shut, cut their phone and computer lines, and starve them out. Overreaction would be a serious mistake. From now on, we have to worry about how this plays in Washington.”
Greta’s long face went bleak. “Oh, to hell with Washington! They never do anything useful. They can’t protect us here. I’m sick of them and their double-talk.”
“Wait a minute!” Oscar said, wounded. “I’m from Washington. I’ve been useful.”
“Well, you’re the one exception.” She rubbed her skinned wrists angrily. “After what happened to me today, I know what I’m up against. I don’t have any more illusions. We can’t trust anyone but ourselves. Kevin and I are going to seize the airlocks and seal this entire facility. Oscar, I want you to resign. You’d better resign before the people in Washington fire you.” She began jabbing her spidery fingers at him. “No, before they arrest you. Or indict you. Or im-peach you. Or kidnap you. Or just plain kill you.”
He gazed at her in alarm. She was losing it. The skin of her cheeks and forehead had the taut look of a freshly peeled onion. “Greta, let’s go for a little walk in the fresh air, shall we? You’re overwrought. We need to discuss our situation sensibly.”
“No more talking. I’m through being played for a sucker. I won’t be gassed and handcuffed again, unless they come in here with tanks.”
“Darling, nobody uses ‘tanks.’ Tanks are very twentieth century. The authorities don’t have to use violent armed force. The world is past that phase as a civilization. If they want to pry us out of here, they’ll just …’
Oscar fell silent suddenly. He hadn’t really considered the op-tions from the point of view of the authorities. The options for the authorities didn’t seem very promising. Greta Penninger — and her allies — had just seized an armored biological laboratory. The place was blast-resistant and riddled with underground catacombs. There were hundreds of highly photogenic rare species inside, forming a combination mobile food source and corps of potential hostages. The facility had its own water supply, its own power supply, even its own atmosphere. Financial threats and embargoes were meaning-less, because the financial systems had already been ruined by netwar viruses.
The place was sewn up tight. Greta’s pocket revolutionaries had seized the means of information. They had commandeered the means of production. They had a loyal and aroused populace in a state of profound distrust for the outside world. They had conquered a mighty fortress.
Greta returned her attention to Kevin. “When can we junk these lousy prole phones and get our regular system back?”
Kevin was all helpfulness. “Well, I’ll have to make sure it’s fully secure first… How many programmers can you give me?”
“I’ll run a personnel search for telecom talent. Can you find me my own office here in the police station? I may be spending a lot of time in here.”
Kevin grinned gamely. “Hey, you’re the boss, Dr. Penninger!”
“I need some time off,” Oscar realized. “Maybe a nice long nap. It’s really been a trying day.” They cordially ignored him. They were busy with their own agenda. He left the police station.
As he tottered through the darkened gardens toward the looming bulk of the Hot Zone, weariness overcame him with an evil metabolic rush. His day’s experiences suddenly struck him as being totally in-sane. He’d been abducted, gassed, bombed; he’d traveled hundreds of miles in cheerless, battered vehicles; he’d concluded an unsavory alliance with a powerful gang of social outcasts; he’d been libeled, accused of embezzlement and criminal flight across state bound-aries… He’d arrested a group of police; he’d talked an armed fugitive into surrendering… And now his sometime lover and his dangerously unbalanced security director were uniting to plot behind his back.