Norman alertly fetched a motorbike from the rack on the back of the bus. The bikes were designed and sold in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and were covered with union labels, antilitigation safety warnings, and software cheatsheet stickers. It was very typical of Bambakias to buy motor bicycles with more onboard smarts than a transcontinental airliner.
Norman hooked up the sidecar, and checked the battery. “No hotdogging,” Oscar warned him, clambering into the sidecar and placing his hat in his lap. They tugged on dainty foam helmets, then pulled onto the highway behind a passing electric flatbed.
Norman, as always, drove like a maniac. Norman was young. He had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems. He rode the motorbike with intense lack of physical grace, as if trying to do algebra with his legs.
Dusk began to settle gently over the pines. Traffic was backed up for two kilometers on the east side of the Sabine River bridge. Oscar and Norman buzzed up along the road shoulder, the smart bike and sidecar scrunching over the oyster shells with oozy cybernetic ease. The people trapped within the stalled traffic looked stoic and resigned. The big road professionals — eerie-looking biochemical tankers and big, grimy, malodorous seafood trucks — were already turning and leaving. Roadblocks were a sadly common business these days.
The state of Louisiana’s office of tourism maintained a roadside hospitality depot, perched at the riverside just at the state border. The tourist HQ was a touchingly ugly structure of faux-antebellum brick and white columns.
The building had been surrounded with fresh, razor-edged concertina wire. The highway into Texas was thoroughly blockaded with sentry boxes, striped barriers, and nonlethal clusters of glue mines and foam mines.
A huge matte-black military helicopter perched on its skids at the side of the highway, mechanically attentive and deeply bizarre. The black copter lit the tarmac with searing bluish spotlights. The colossal machine was armed to the teeth with great skeletal masses of U.S. Air Force weaponry. The ancient air-to-ground weapons were so insanely complex and archaic that their function was a complete mystery to Oscar. Were they Gatling flechettes? Particle accelerators? Rayguns of some kind, maybe? They were like some nightmare mix of lamprey fangs and sewing machines.
Within the brilliant frame of helicopter glare, small squads of blue-uniformed Air Force personnel were stopping and confronting the cars attempting to leave Louisiana. The people within the cars, mostly Texan tourists, seemed suitably cowed.
The Air Force people were engaged in an elaborate roadblock shakedown. They were pulling white boxes out of refrigerated trishaws, and confronting travelers with their contents.
Norman-the-Intern was an engineering student. He tore his fascinated gaze from the copters’ appalling weaponry. “I thought this was gonna be a party roadblock, more like those cool gypsy bikers back in Tennessee,” Norman observed. “Maybe we’d better just get out of here.”
“There’s Fontenot,” Oscar parried.
Fontenot waved them over. His advance vehicle, a sturdy all-terrain electric hummer, was straddling the roadside ditch. The campaign security manager wore a long yellow slicker and muddy jeans.
It was always reassuring to see Fontenot. Fontenot was a former Secret Service agent, a security veteran of presidential caliber. Fontenot knew American Presidents personally. In fact, he had been serving as bodyguard to an ex-President when he had lost his left leg.
“The Air Force flew in around noon,” Fontenot informed them, leaning on the padded bumper of his hummer and lowering his binoculars. “Got their glue bombs down, and some crowd-foamers. Plus the sawhorses and the tanglewire.”
“So at least they didn’t destroy the roadbed?” Norman said. Fontenot cordially ignored Norman. “They’re letting the lane from Texas through with no problems, and they’re waving everybody with Louisiana plates right through. There’s been no resistance. They’re shaking down the out-of-staters as they leave.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Oscar said. He put his helmet aside, adjusted his hair with a pocket comb, and donned his hat. Then stepped carefully out of the bike’s sidecar, trying not to dirty his shoes. The Louisiana bank of the Sabine was essentially a gigantic marsh.
“Why are they doing this?” Norman said.
“They need the money,” Fontenot told him.
“What?” Norman said. “The Air Force?”
“Got no federal funding to pay their power bills at the local air base. Either they pony up, or the utility cuts ’em off.”
“The continuing Emergency,” Oscar concluded.
Fontenot nodded. “The feds have wanted to decommission that air base for years, but Louisiana’s real mulish about it. So Congress wrote ’em out of the Emergency resolutions last March. Kinda dropped a whole air base right through the cracks.”
“That’s bad. That’s really bad. That’s terrible!” Norman said. “Why can’t Congress just have a straight-up vote on the issue? I mean, how hard can it be to close down a military base?”
Fontenot and Oscar exchanged meaningful glances.
“Norman, you had better stay here and mind our vehicles,” Oscar said kindly. “Mr. Fontenot and I need a few words with these military gentlemen.”
Oscar joined Fontenot as the ex-Secret Service agent limped up the long line of traffic. They were soon out of Norman’s earshot. It felt pleasant to be strolling slowly in the open air, where technical eavesdropping was unlikely. Oscar always enjoyed his best conversations when outside of machine surveillance.
“We could just pay them off, y’know,” Fontenot said mildly. “It’s not the first time we’ve seen a roadblock.”
“I don’t suppose it’s remotely possible that these soldiers might shoot us?”
“Oh no, the Air Force won’t shoot us.” Fontenot shrugged. “It’s nonlethal deployment and all that. It’s all political.”
“There are circumstances where I would have paid them off,” Oscar said. “If we’d lost that campaign, for instance. But we didn’t lose. We won. The Senator’s in power now. So now, it’s the principle.”
Fontenot removed his hat, wiped the permanent hat-crease in his forehead, and put the hat back on. “There’s another option. I’ve mapped us an alternate route. We can back off, head north up Highway 109, and still make that lab in Buna by midnight. Save a lot of risk and trouble all around.”
“Good idea,” Oscar told him, “but let’s have a look anyway. I think I can smell an issue here. The Senator always likes issues.” People were glaring at the two of them from within the stalled cars. Fontenot was easily passing for a native, but Oscar was drawing resentful and curious stares. Very few people in southwest Louisiana dressed like Beltway political operatives.
“It’s a big stinkin’ issue all right,” Fontenot agreed.
“This local Governor is a real character, isn’t he? A stunt like this… There must be better ways for a state politician to provoke the feds.”
“Green Huey is crazy. But he’s the people’s kind of crazy, these days. The State of Emergency, the budget crisis — it’s no joke down here. People really resent it.”
They stopped near the searing glare of the copter lights. An Air Force lieutenant was addressing a pair of day tripping Texan civilians through the open window of the couple’s car. The lieutenant was a young woman: she wore a padded blue flight suit, a body-armor vest, and an elaborate flight helmet. The helmet’s screen-crowded interior was busily ticking and flashing as it hung from her webbing belt.
The Texan man looked up at her cautiously, through the driver’s window. “It’s what?” he said.
“An Air Force bake sale, sir. Louisiana bake sale. We got your corn bread, your muffuleta bread, croissants, beignets… Maybe some chicory coffee? Ted, we got any of that chicory coffee left?”
“Just made us a fresh carafe,” Ted announced loudly, opening the steaming lid of his rickshaw. Ted was heavily armed.