“The Dutch never paid me a thing.”
“But there was an arrangement, wasn’t there?”
“In a manner of speaking … I’d have to take you out to Col-orado. I’d have to show you the timber. You know, ever since we Native Americans got into the drug and casino businesses, we’ve been buying back little bits of this great country of ours. Mostly the cheap ones, the parts too ruined for any commercial use. If you leave them alone long enough, seven generations, sometimes they come back a little. But they’ll never come back the same way. Extinction is perma-nent. A futuristic swamp full of homemade monsters really isn’t the same as a native wetlands. We really did kill the buffalo, and the native flowers, and the native grasses, and the primeval forests, and we did it for a cheap buck, and it’s gone forever. And that’s bad. It’s very bad. It’s worse than we can ever repay. It’s like a hideous war crime. It haunts America like genocide haunts Germany, like slavery haunts the South. We turned our brother creatures into toys. And the Dutch are right about that. All the people whose homes are drowning are dead right, morally right, ethically right, physically right. Yes, we Ameri-cans spewed more greenhouse gas than anyone else in the world. We are the single biggest problem. So yes, I intend to implement some Dutch policies in this country. Not every last one of them, the ones that I think make most sense. And that change would never, ever happen by them conquering us. It could only happen by us conquer-ing them.”
“Then you are a Dutch agent.”
“Oscar, we own them. They surrendered. We’re a large and slowly drowning country that defeated a small and quickly drowning country. That’s reality, it’s the world, it’s what we live in.”
“Mr. President, I agree with you. I’m glad that I know the truth now. It’s a shattering truth that just destroyed every ambition I have ever had, but I’m glad that I know the truth. It’s the highest value I have, as the person that I am, and I won’t surrender it. I don’t want your job.”
“Well, you’ll never work in this town again, son. I’ll have to fix it that way.”
“I know that, Mr. President. Thank you for your courtesy.”
The Mississippi River had cut New Orleans in half, but if anything, the flooding had added to the city’s raffish charm. The spectral isola-tion of the French Quarter was only intensified by its becoming an island; there was an almost Venetian quality to it, intensified by the gondolas.
The official parades down Canal Street were well policed, but it was very loud on Bourbon Street, where spontaneous crowds ac-creted, with no raison d’ etre other than entertaining one another.
Greta stepped away from the green and peeling window shutters. “It’s so good to be here,” she said.
Oscar enjoyed the Mardi Gras crowds. He felt at ease as the only sober being in a huge, jostling mess of flat-footed drunks. Among them, but never quite of them. It was the story of his life. “You know, I could have gotten us onto one of those parade floats. Throwing out beads and bangles and free software: That looked like fun.”
“Noblesse oblige,” she murmured.
“It’s a local krewe thing. Very old, very New Orleans. The local debs booked up all their dance cards in the 1850s, but they tell me that cadging a float ride is doable. If you know who to know.”
“Maybe next year,” she told him. A subtle rap came at the door’s mahogany paneling. Hotel staffers in white jackets and boutonnieres arrived with a rattling sandalwood pushcart. Oysters, shrimp, iced champagne. Greta left for the bedroom to change for dinner. The locals silently busied themselves at the linen table, lighting the candela-brum, opening the bottle, brimming the glasses. Oscar patiently es-corted them back to the hall. Then he clicked off the light.
Greta returned and examined the candelabrum. She was dressed in deep brown antebellum lace and a feathered vizard. The mask really worked for him. He loved the mask. Even in the thickest sprawl of Mardi Gras she would be a striking creature.
“Chocolate truffles?” she said eagerly.
“I didn’t forget. Later.” Oscar lifted his champagne flute, ad-mired the golden bubbles, set it back down.
“You still don’t drink, do you?”
“You go ahead. I’ll just admire it. With half an eye.”
“I’ll just have a sip,” she said, licking her long upper lip below the feathered edge of the mask. “I have this little problem with im-pulse control…”
“Why let that slow you down? This is Mardi Gras.”
She sat. They dabbed a bit at their shrimp cocktails. There were deadly little crystal plates of horseradish. “Did I tell you that I had a cellular cleansing done?”
“You’re kidding.”
“I resented it, you know. That I hadn’t chosen to do it to myself. And then, there was the blood pressure, the stroke risk. So, I had my brain tissue cleaned out.”
“How was it? Tell me.”
“It all felt very normal. Very fiat. Like living in black and white. I had to go back again, I don’t care anymore, I just had to.” She put her long pale hands on the tabletop. “What about you? Can you stop?”
“I don’t want to stop it. It works for me.”
“It’s bad for you.”
“No, I love bicamerality. That’s what I really like about our little gift and affliction. All those other troubles, humanity’s stinking little prejudices, the race thing, the ethnic thing … It’s not that they disappear, you know. That’s too much to hope for. They never disap-pear, but the new problems screw them up so much that the old problems lose center stage. Besides, now I can multitask. I really can do two things at once. I’m much more effective. I can run a business full-time while I work full-time for legalization.”
“So you’re nuking money again.”
“Yes, it’s a thing I tend to do.” Oscar sighed. “It’s the basic American way. It’s my only real path to legitimacy. With serious money, I can finance candidates, run court challenges, set up founda-tions. It’s no use wandering around the margins with our bears and tambourines, dancing for pennies. Cognition will become an industry soon. A massive, earthshaking, new American industry. Someday, the biggest ever.”
“You’re going to turn my science into an industry? When it’s illegal now, when people think it’s crazy just to mess with it? How is that supposed to happen?”
“You can’t stop me from doing it,” Oscar told her, lowering his voice. “No one can stop me. It will come on very slowly, very gently, so quietly that you hardly feel it at first. Just a gentle lifting of the veil. Very tender, very subtle. I’ll be taking it away from the realm of ab-stract knowledge, and bringing it into a real and dirty world of sweat and heat. It won’t be ugly or sordid, it’ll seem lovely and inevitable. People will want it, they’ll long for it. They’ll finally cry out for it. And at the end, Greta, I’ll possess it totally.”
A long silence. She shivered violently in her chair, and the feath-ered mask dipped. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. She lifted a silver oyster fork, probed at the quiescent gray blob on her plate, and set the fork back down. Then she looked up, searchingly. “You look older.”
“I know I do.” He smiled. “Shall I put my mask on?”
“Is it all right to worry about you? Because I do.”
“It’s all right to worry, but not during Mardi Gras.” He laughed. “You want to worry? Worry about people who get in my way.” He swallowed an oyster.
Another long silence. He was used to her silences now. They came in flavors; Greta had all kinds of silences. “At least they let me work in the lab now,” she murmured. “There’s not much danger they’ll ever put me in power again. I wish I were better at my work, that’s all. It’s the only thing I regret. I just wish I had more time and that I were better.”
“But you’re the best that there is.”
“I’m getting old, I can feel it. I can feel the need leaving me, that devouring gift. I just wish that I were better, Oscar, that’s all. They tell me I’m a genius but I’m always, always full of discontent. I can’t do anything about that.”