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“You’re last year’s news, Mr. Whitey. You’re the hired help now, you’re lucky to have a damn job. Lemme talk to the Genetic Wonder here. We’re talking cognition now. This is for grown-ups.”

“Hey, Huey!” Kevin insisted. “My methods still work. I outed you on the Haitians. I figured that one out, I flew people over your border.”

Huey’s brow wrinkled in distaste. “My point is,” Huey said to Oscar, “we’re in the same boat now. If I’d just kept hold of that Collaboratory, I could have spread a new cognition on a massive scale. In fact, I’m still gonna do that — I’m gonna make the people of this state the smartest, most capable, most creative people on God’s green earth. You put a serious crimp in my production facilities — but hell, that’s all history now. Now you’ve got no real choice but to help ol’ Huey. Because you been hanging on to power by the skin of your teeth, cadgin’ favors, hiding your past. Now you’re a freak twice over. But! If you come on over to Huey now — and if you bring along your loving girlfriend, who’s the source of all this goodness in the first place, and is in the same boat as you — then you get a brand-new lease on life. In fact, the sky’s your limit.”

“First I’d have to get my temper back, Etienne.”

“Oh, pshaw! Real players don’t get angry. Why get all ticked off at me? I actually accept you. I love your goddamn background problem. See, I finally got you all fIgured out. If America settles down and gets all normal, then you’re on the outside for good. You’re always gonna have your nose pressed up against the glass, watchin’ other folks drink the champagne. Nothing you do will last. You’ll be a sideshow and a shadow, and you’ll stay one till you die. But, son, if you get a big head start in the coming revolution of the human mind, you can goddamn have Massachusetts. I’ll give it to ya.”

“Hey, Huey! Yo! Were you always this crazy, or did the dope do it?”

Huey ignored Kevin’s interruption, though his scowl grew deeper. “I know you can attack me for this. Sure, go ahead and do it. Tell everybody what a freak you are now. Tell everybody that your Senator’s former lover — and Moira’s now in France, by the way — took revenge on you, for the dirty trick that you pulled to cover his sorry ass. Step out in public like the fire-eatin’ boy, and nicely set fire to yourself. Or else, just see sense and come on board with me! You’ll be doin’ just exactly what you did before. But instead of just fast-talkin’ people into a new way of life — hell, words never stick any-how — you can blast ’em into it. When you do that to ’em, they don’t go back, son. Just like you’re never going back.”

“Why would I make thousands of people into sideshow freaks? Why should everyone be as unhappy as I am?”

“Nothin’ unhappy about it! The science really works! It works just great!”

“Hey, Huey! Give it up, dude! I know this guy. You’ll never make him happy! He doesn’t know what the word means! You can’t get away with this, man — you’ve made him twice as bad!”

Huey had lost patience. He gestured absently for his bodyguards.

A pair of pistol-toting goons emerged from the gilded shadows of the elegant room behind the balcony. Kevin fell silent.

“Get his hands free,” Huey told the bodyguard. “Get him a coat and hat. He’s a player. We’re talking seriously now.”

The bodyguard freed Oscar’s hands. Oscar began rubbing his wrists. The bodyguard threw someone’s dark jacket over Oscar’s prison coveralls.

Huey sidled a little closer. “Oscar, let’s talk turkey now. This thing is a great gift. Sure, it’s a little tough on you at first, like ridin’ a bicycle. It’s multitasking, that’s its very nature. I’m not saying it’s per-fect. Nothing technical is ever perfect. It’s a very real-world thing. It speeds up your heartbeat — has to speed up the chip a little. And it is multitasking, so you do get certain operations that kinda hang… And others that pop up suddenly… And every once in a while, you get two streams of thought going that get kinda stuck; so you freeze there, and you have to drop your working memory. But you just give the old head a good hard shake, and you boot right back up again.”

“I see.”

“See, I’m really leveling with you here. This isn’t snake oil, this is the McCoy. Sure, you have some language problems, and you do tend to mutter sometimes. But, son … you’re twice the man you were! You can think in two languages at once! If you work at it, you can do amazing things with both your hands. And the best of all, boy — is when you get two good trains of thought going, and they start switch-ing passengers. That’s what intuition is all about — when you know things, but you don’t know how you know. That’s all done in the preconscious mind — it’s thought that you don’t know you’re thinking. But when you’re really bearing down, and you’re thinking two things at once — ideas bleed over. They mix. They flavor each other. They cook down real rich and fine. That’s inspiration. It’s the finest mental sensation you’ll ever have. The only problem with that is — sometimes those ideas are so confounded great, you have a little problem with impulse control.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that little impulse problem.”

“Well, son, most people hide their light under a bushel and they never act on impulse. That’s why they end up buried in un-marked graves. A real player’s got initiative, he’s a man of action. But sure, I admit it: the impulse thing is a bug. That’s why a major player needs good counselors. And if you don’t have a top-of-the-line, raccoon-tailed political adviser, maybe you can make yourself one.”

“Heeeey!” Kevin screeched. He had given up on Huey; he had suddenly turned his attention to the crowd below. “Hey, people! Your Governor’s gone nuts! He uses poison and he’s gonna turn you into crazy zombies!”

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.