“I was propping the player up,” Kevin said. “I was wiping the drool off his chin.”
Oscar and Kevin were wearing white plastic prison overalls. Their hands were neatly cuffed behind their backs. They’d been dragged onto the balcony in full sight of the crowd below, and the people seemed completely unperturbed to see’ them. Perhaps Huey spent large amounts of his retirement time chatting with handcuffed prisoners.
“I was thinking you’d call first,” said Huey, turning to Oscar. “I thought we had an understanding there — that you’d always call me up and clear the air when we had one of our little contretemps.”
“Oh, we were hoping for a personal audience, Governor. We just got a little distracted.”
“The guitar and the accordion gambit, that was especially good. You actually play the accordion, Oscar? Diatonic scales, and all that?”
“I’m just a beginner,” Oscar said.
“Oh, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to play music now. Dead easy. Play while you sing. Play while you dance. Hell, play while you dictate financial notes to a spreadsheet.”
“Cutting his hands free would be a good start,” Kevin suggested.
“They must have some awful soft jails up in Massachusetts, to have Limpy Boy here crackin’ wise so much. I mean, just ’cause we had you two boys stripped, and scrubbed, and checked under finger-nails, and had a nice long look up every orifice that opens, and some that don’t… That don’t mean I’m gonna cut the hands loose on the Hacker Ninja Boy here. He might have a blowgun up his finger bones, or sumpin’. You know there’s been five attempts on my life in the past two weeks? All these Moderator jaspers gunnin’ for ol’ Huey… they all wanna be Colonel This or Brevet General That; I dunno, it sure gets tiresome.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t stand here in the open air, then,” Oscar said. “There have been a lot of people anxious to kill me, too, and it would be a shame to see you catch a stray bullet.”
“That’s why I got all these guards, son! They’re not as bright as you are, but they’re a lot more loyal. You know something, Soap Boy? I like you. I enjoy these homemade scientific efforts that don’t work out commercially, but just refuse to stay down. I took a serious inter-est in you; I even got skin samples. Hell, I got a square yard of your skin, livin’ down there in a salt mine. Got enough of your skin to stretch on a dang drumhead. You’re quite a specimen, you are. You’re a real gumbo thing — little o’ this, little o’ that. There are chunks of you that are upside down, stretched all backward, duplicated… and no introns, that’s the cool part. I didn’t know a man could even live without introns.”
“I couldn’t recommend it, Governor. It has some technical drawbacks.”
“Oh, I know you’re a little frail, Brainy Boy. I was tryin’ to take it easy on you. Ran a lot of medical tests on that DNA of yours. Didn’t want to hurt you or nothin’.” Huey squinted. “You’re with me here, aren’t ya? You’re not all confused or anything.”
“No, Governor. I can follow you. I’m really concentrating.”
“You don’t think I’m funnin’ you about your DNA, do you? I mean, just ’cause I’m a coonass, that don’t mean I can’t hack DNA, bubba. ”
“Just as long as you don’t try cloning him as an army,” Kevin said.
“Got my own army, thanks.” Huey raised one arm of his linen jacket and patted his bulky armpit. “Man needs a whole dang army just to stay alive these days, sad to say.” He turned to Oscar. “That’s the problem with these pesky Moderators. They’re prole gangs all right, your basic army-of-the-night. All day long, it was power-to-the-people this, and revolutionary justice that. Really mountin’ up, though, y’know? Getting somewhere serious. Finally we get a chance to make our own rules and give the common man a real break.”
Huey snorted. “Then all of a sudden along comes a new Presi-dent, who deigns to take a little royal notice of ’em. Throws ’em a dog biscuit, maybe even two. They’re fallin’ all over themselves, they’re salutin’ his socks, they’re salutin’ his shorts. They’re killin’ their own brothers for the Man. Makes you sick.”
“The Man is a player. He’s got talent, Huey.”
“What the hell! The man’s a Dutch agent! He sold out the country to a foreign power! You don’t think the Dutch gave up that easy, do ya? Without one single shot being fired? This is the Dutch we’re talking about! When they get invaded, they flood their own country and die in the ditches with big pointy sticks in their hands. They gave up easy because they planned that whole damn gambit from the get-go.”
“That’s an interesting theory, Governor.”
“You should talk to the French about this theory sometime. They’re real big on theory, the French. The French know the score. We entertain ’em, they think Americans are natural clowns, they think our worst comedians are funny. But they’re scared of the Dutch. That’s the problem with modern America. We pulled up our borders, we’re all parochial now. We don’t know what’s goin’ on. Hell, we used to lead the whole world in science… lead ’em in everything. Country like France gets along great without science. They just munch some more fine cheese and read more Racine. But you take America without science, you got one giant Nebraska. You got guys living in teepees. Well, at least the teepee boys still want somethin’. Give them the science. Let them work it out.”
“That’s an even more interesting theory.”
“Oh, well, yeah. You BELIEVE ME on that one,” the Governor boomed. “You stole my damn clothes, you sorry kid! You stole my science facility. You stole my data. There was just one damn thing left that you didn’t know about, one damn important thing you didn’t know how to steal! So that’s what I gave to ya.”
“I see.”
“You can’t say that Huey ain’t generous. You outed me on ev-erything you possibly could. Chased me up and down in the press. Sicced a Senator on me. Turned the President against me. You’re a busy guy. But you know something? You don’t have any SPIRIT, boy! You don’t have any SOUL! You don’t BELIEVE! There’s not one fresh idea in your pointy head. You’re like a dang otter raidin’ a beaver’s nest, you’re like this streamlined thing that kills and eats the beaver’s children. Well, I got big news for you, Soapy. You’re a genu-ine beaver now.”
“Governor, this is truly fascinating. You say you’ve studied me; well, I’ve studied you. I learned a lot. You’re a man of tremendous energy and talent. What I don’t understand is why you carry out your aims in such absurd, tacky, uncivilized ways.”
“Son, that one’s dead easy. It’s because I’m a dirt-poor, dirt-ignorant hick from a drowning swamp! Nothin’ came easy for us twenty-first-century hicks. Nothing is elegant here. They took all our oil, they cut our timber, they gillnetted our fish, they poisoned the earth, they turned the Mississippi into a giant sewer that killed the Gulf for five hundred miles around. Then hurricanes started comin’ and the seas rose up to get us! What the hell did you expect from us, when you were up in Boston polishing the silver? We Cajuns need a future just like anybody else. We been here four hundred years! And we didn’t forget to have children, like the Cabots and the Lodges did. If you had a workin’ brain in your head, you’d have blown off that sorry architect and come down here to work for me.”
“I didn’t like your methods.”
“Hell, you used enough of ’em. You used damn near every one. Hell, I ain’t particular about any methods. You got a better method for me, spit it out! Let’s talk it over.”
“Hey, Huey,” Kevin said. “What about me? I have methods too.”