“They had VR installed in all the federal labs. Some high-bandwidth initiative from a million years ago. There’s a VR set in the White House basement.”
“And do you really know how to run this gizmo?”
“Hell no! I had to roust up half the lab just to find somebody who could boot it. Now there’s a huge crowd sitting in there. They all know it’s the President calling. You know how long it’s been since a President took any notice of this place?”
Oscar fought for breath, staring in the mirror, willing his heart to slow. Then he walked into the studio, where they produced a casque like a deep-sea diver’s helmet. They bolted it over his head.
The President was enjoying a stroll through amber waves of grain below the purple majesty of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Oscar, after a moment’s disorientation, recognized the backdrop as one of Two Feathers’s campaign ads. Apparently this was the best virtual backdrop that the new White House staff could produce on short notice.
Leonard Two Feathers was a creature in stark contrast to a gener-ation of prettified American politicians. The President had huge flat cheekbones, a great prow of a nose, a bank-vault slit of a mouth. Long black-and-gray hair streamed down his shoulders, which were clad in his trademark fringed buckskin jacket. The President’s black, canny eyes seemed as wide apart as a hammerhead shark’s.
“Mr. Valparaiso?” the President said.
“Yes? Good evening, Mr. President.”
The President gazed at him silently. Apparently, to the Presi-dent’s eye, Oscar was a disembodied face floating somewhere at shoul-der level.
“How is the situation at your facility? You and the Director, Dr. Penninger — are you safe and well?”
“So far so good, sir. We’ve sealed the premises. We suffered a severe netwar attack that trashed our financial systems, so we’ve had to cut most of our phone and computer lines. We still have internal problems with a group of malcontents who are occupying a building here. But our situation seems stable at this hour.”
The President considered this. He was buying the story. It wasn’t making him happy. “Tell me something, young man. What have you gotten me into? Why did it take a French submarine and three hun-dred Cajun guerrillas to kidnap you and some neurologist?”
“Governor Huguelet wanted to see us. He wants this facility, Mr. President. He has a great deal of irregular manpower. He has more manpower than he can properly control.”
“Well, he can’t have that facility.”
“No sir?”
“No, he can’t have it — and neither can you. Because it belongs to the country, dammit! What the hell are you up to? You can’t hire Moderator militia and overpower a federal lab! That is not in your job description! You are a campaign organizer who has a patronage job. You are not Davy Crockett!”
“Mr. President, I completely concur. But we had no other realis-tic option. Green Huey is a clear and present danger. He’s in league with a foreign power. He completely dominates his own state, and now he’s launching paramilitary adventures over state borders. What else could I do? My security staffer informed your national security office as soon as he could. In the meantime, I took what steps I could.”
“What is your party affiliation?” the President said.
“I’m a Federal Democrat, sir.”
The President pondered this. The President’s party was the So-cial Patriotic Movement, the “Soc-Pats.” The Soc-Pats were the lead-ing faction in the Left Tradition Bloc, which also included the Social Democrats, the Communist Party, Power to the People, Working America, and the ancient and shriveled Democratic Party. The Left Tradition Bloc had been suffering less ideological disarray than usual, lately. They had been able — barely — to seize the American Presi-dency.
“That would mean Senator Bambakias of Massachusetts?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you ever see in him?”
“I liked him. He has imagination and he’s not corrupt.”
“Well,” the President said, “I am not a mentally ill Senator. I happen to be your President. I am your newly sworn-in President, and I have naive, new-hire staffers who are easily fooled by fast-talking hustlers with family links to white-supremacist gangsters. Now, thanks to you, I am also a President who has had the misfortune to kill and wound several dozen people. Some of them were foreign spies. But most of them were our fellow citizens.” Despite his expressed regret, the President looked quite ready to kill again.
“Mr. Valparaiso, I want you to listen to me carefully. I have about four more weeks — maybe three weeks — of political capital to expend. Then the honeymoon is over, and my office will be broken on the rack. I will have to face all the lawsuits, constitutional chal-lenges, palace revolutions, outings, banking scandals, and Emergency machinations that have screwed every American President in the past twenty years. I want to survive all that. But I have no money, because the country is broke. I can’t trust the Congress. I certainly can’t trust the Emergency committees. I can’t trust my own party apparatus. I’m the nation’s Commander in Chief, but I can’t even trust the armed forces. That leaves me with one source of direct Presidential power. My spooks.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“My spooks are gung ho! They just shot up a bunch of people in the dark of night, but at least they’re not politicians, so at least they do what they’re told. And since they’re spooks, they don’t officially exist. So the things they do don’t officially happen. So if all the relevant parties keep their mouths shut, I might not have to account for this bloody debacle last night on the Louisiana border. Are you following me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to resign your Senate post, first thing tomorrow. You cannot pull a stunt like the one you just pulled and call yourself a congressional staffer. Forget the Senate, and forget your poor friend the Senator. You are a pirate. The only way you can survive this situation is if you join my National Security staff. So, that’s what you’ll have to do. From now on, you’ll be working for your President. You will be reporting to me. Your new title will be — NSC Science Adviser.”
“I understand, sir. If I may say so, that’s a very good situational analysis.” There was no question that he would take the job. It would mean pruning himself away from the Bambakias inner circle; it would also mean abandoning months of painstaking backstage work in the Senate Science Committee. That was like losing two lobes of his brain in an instant. But of course he would drop everything to work for the President. Because it meant an instant leap to a much higher pinnacle of power — a pinnacle where options bloomed all around him like edelweiss. “Thank you for your offer, Mr. President. I’m honored. I accept with pleasure.”
“You have been a cowboy. That was bad. Very bad. However, from now on, you are my cowboy. And just to make sure there are no more of these untoward incidents, I’m sending in a paratroop regi-ment of crack U.S. Army personnel to secure the lab’s perimeter. You can expect them by seventeen hundred hours, tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“My staff will be sending along a prepared statement for your Director to read to the cameras. That’ll establish who’s who and what’s what, from now on. Now these are your marching orders, direct from your Commander in Chief. You keep that place out of the hands of Governor Huguelet. You will keep the data away from him, you will keep the personnel away from him, you will keep that place sewn up completely, until I understand just why that little man is so desperate to have it. If you succeed, I’ll bring you into the White House. Fail, and we’ll both go down in flames. But you will go down first, and hardest, and hottest, because I will be landing on top of you. Are we clear?”