"Alcott, let me handle this. The least you can do is sit here with us and see that your guest is properly fed."

"God, I'm sorry!" Bambakias moaned. "God, I've been so wrong about everything. You handle it, Oscar! You handle it."

Two milk shakes arrived in fluted glasses, their bases caked with frost. The chef himself brought them in, on a cork-lined salver. He gazed at Oscar with a look of dazed gratitude and backed hastily out of the office. Bambakias's lean Adam's apple glugged methodically. "Let me tell you something really awful," he said, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. "This whole business has been a tragic error from day one. The Emergency committee never meant to drop that air base. Their management and budget software was buggy. Nobody ever double-checked, because everything the stupid bastards do is an offi-cial emergency! So when the screwup became obvious, everybody just assumed it had been done deliberately-because it was such a clever, sneaky way to screw with Huey. They're dying to screw him, because Huey's the only politician in America who knows what he wants and can stick with it. But when I went looking for the silent genius who was running this brilliant conspiracy, there was nobody there."

"They gave you that line of guff? I hope you didn't believe that," Oscar said, silently switching Bambakias's empty glass for his own. "These Emergency creeps are geniuses at sleight of hand."

"Yeah? Then tell me who has been trying to get you shot!" Bambakias belched. "Same issue, same controversy-you could have been killed because of this! But whose fault is it? Nobody's fault. You hunt for the man responsible, and it's some nasty piece of software half a light-year out of the chain of command."

"That's not political thinking, Alcott."

"Politics don't work anymore! We can't make politics work, be-cause the system's so complex that its behavior is basically random. Nobody trusts the system anymore, so nobody ever, ever plays it straight. There are sixteen parties, and a hundred bright ideas, and a million ticking bleeping gizmos, but nobody can follow through, exe-cute, and deliver the goods on time and within specs. So our politics has become absurd. The country's reduced to chaos. We've given up on the Republic. We've abandoned democracy. I'm not a Senator! I'm a robber baron, a feudal lord. All I can do is build a personality cult."

Five of Bambakias's krewepeople arrived in force. They were thrilled to see the man eating. The room became an instant bedlam of kevlar picnic tables, flying silverware, packs of appetizers and aperitifs.

"I know that it's chaos," Oscar insisted, raising his voice above the racket. "Everybody knows that the system is out of control. That's a truism. The only answer to chaos is political organization."

"No, it's too late for that. We're so intelligent now that we're too smart to survive. We're so well informed that we've lost all sense of meaning. We know the price of everything, but we've lost all sense of value. We have everyone under surveillance, but we've lost all sense of shame." The sudden wave of nourishment. was hitting Bambakias hard. His face was beet-red and he was having trouble breathing. And he had apparently stopped thinking, for he was quot-ing his campaign stump speech by rote. Greta reappeared at the doorway, dodging the hospital bed as two krewemen wheeled it out. She entered and sat demurely in a newly structured chair.

"So you might as well just grab whatever you can," Bambakias concluded.

"Thank you, Senator," Greta said, deftly seizing a skewer of ter-iyaki chicken. "I enjoy these little office brunches."

"See, it all moves too fast and in too complex a fashion for any human brain to keep up."

"I suppose that's why we can sit on it!" Greta said.

"What?" Oscar said.

"This furniture thinks much faster than a human brain. That's why this fragile net of sticks and ribbons can become a functional chair." She examined their stunned expressions. "Aren't we still dis-cussing furniture design? I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize, Doctor," Bambakias told her. "That's my worst regret. I should have stayed in architecture, where I was needed. I was getting things accomplished there, you see? A truly modern sense of structure . . . that could have been my monument. I might have done wonderful things . . . . Doctor, that old glass dome of yours in Texas, it's twenty years behind the times. Nowadays we could create a dome ten times that size out of straw and pocket money! We could make your sad little museum really live and bloom-we could make that experiment into everyday reality. We could integrate the natural world right into the substance of our cities. If we knew how to use our power properly, we could guide herds of American bison right through our own streets. We could live in an Eden at peace with packs of wolves. All it would take is enough sense and vision to know who we are, and what we want."

"That sounds wonderful, Senator. Why don't you do it?"

"Because we're a pack of thieves! We went straight from wilder-ness to decadence, without ever creating an authentic American civili-zation. Now we're beaten, and now we sulk. The Chinese kicked our ass in economic warfare. The Europeans have sensible, workable poli-cies about population and the weather crisis. But we're a nation of dilettantes who live on cheap hacks of a dead system. We're all on the take! We're all self-seeking crooks!"

Oscar spoke up. "You're not a criminal, Alcott. Look at the polls. The people are with you. You've won them over now. They trust your intentions, they sympathize."

Bambakias slumped violently into his chair, which thrummed alertly.

"Then tell me something," he growled. "What about Moira?"

"Why is that subject on the agenda?" Oscar said.

"Moira's in jail, Oscar. Tell me about that. Do you want to tell us all about that?"

Oscar chewed with polite deliberation on a dinner roll. The room had gone lethally silent. Against the glass block a mobile mosaic had established itself, gently altering the daylight. A maze of dainty lozenges, creeping like adhesive dominoes, flapping neatly across the glass.

Oscar pointed to a netfeed. "Could we have a look at that cover-age, please? Turn the sound up."

One of Bambakias's krewe spoke up. "It's in French."

"Dr. Penninger speaks French. Help me with this coverage, Doctor." Greta turned to the screen. "It's defection coverage," she trans-lated.

"Something about a French aircraft carrier."

Bambakias groaned.

"There's been a statement from the French foreign office," Greta said tentatively, "something about American military officers . . . Electronic warfare jets . . . Two American Air Force pilots have flown jets to a French aircraft carrier, offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. They're asking for political asylum."

"I knew it!" Oscar announced, throwing his napkin on the table.

"I knew Huey had people on the inside. See, now the other shoe drops. This is big, this is a major twist."

"Oh, that's bad," Bambakias groaned. He was ashen. "This is the final indignity. The final disgrace. This is the very end." He swal-lowed noisily.

''I'm going to be sick."

"Help the Senator," Oscar commanded, jumping to his feet. "And get Sosik in here, right away."

Bambakias vanished in a cluster of panicked retainers. The room emptied as suddenly as a Tokyo subway car. Oscar and Greta found themselves suddenly alone.

Oscar watched the screen. One of the American defectors had just appeared on-camera. The man looked very familiar, utterly cyni-cal, and extremely drunk. Oscar recognized him as an acquaintance: he was the public relations officer for the Louisiana air base. He was wearily delivering a prepared statement, with French subtitles. "What a genius move! Huey's dumped his Trojan horse people into the hands of French spooks. The French will hide those rogue airboys in some bank vault in Paris. We'll never hear from them again. They've sold out their country, and now the crooked sons of bitches will live like kings."

"What a convenient interruption that was," Greta told him. She was still eating lunch, pincering her chopsticks with surgical skill. "The Senator had you pinned down and right on the spot. I can't believe you had the nerve to pull that trick."

"Actually, I was keeping a weather eye on that screen all along, just in case I needed a nice distracting gambit."

She sampled the dim sum and smiled skeptically. "No you weren't. Nobody can do that."

"Actually, yes, I can do that sort of thing. I do it every day."

"Well, you're not distracting me. What was it about this Moira person? It must be something pretty awful. I could tell that much."

"Moira is not your problem, Greta."

"Ha! Nobody around here is addressing my problems." She frowned, then poured a little more soy. "Really good food here, though. Amazing food."

''I'm. going to get to your problems. I haven't forgotten them. I just had to shelve those issues for a minute while I was getting the poor man to eat."

"Too bad you couldn't get him to keep it down." Greta sighed. "This has certainly been eye-opening. I had no real idea what to expect from your Senator. Somehow, I imagined he'd be just like you."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Oh . . . a Machiavellian, showboating, ultra-wealthy political hack. But Alcott's not like that at all! Alcott's a real idealist. He's a patriot! It's a tragedy that he's clinically depressed."

"You really think that the Senator is clinically depressed?"

"Of course he is! It's obvious! He's crashed from starvation stress. And that myoclonic tremor in his hands-that's an overdose of neural appetite suppressants."

"He's supposed to be long off all those pills."

"Then he must have been hoarding them, and eating them se-cretly. Typical behavior in the syndrome. Those repeated presentations about his so-called criminality-those far-fetched guilt obses-sions . . . . He's very depressed. Then when you tricked him into eating, he turned manic. His affect is all over the map! You need to test him for cognitive deficits."

"Well . . . he was just faint from hunger. Normally, he'd see right through a childish gambit like that chowder stunt."

Greta put down her chopsticks and lowered her voice. "Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Did you ever notice that he's enormously outspoken and energetic in public, but then he always retreats and cocoons himself? For, say, two or three days?"

Oscar nodded slowly. "Yes."

"First, he's very expressive and charming, working twenty-hour days, throwing off a lot of sparks. Then, he's just gone. He claims he's thinking things over, or that he needs his privacy-but basically, he's dug himself a hole and pulled it over him. That's not uncommon with creative personalities. Your Senator has bipolarity. I imagine he's al-ways been bipolar."

"He's 'in the back of the bus.' " Oscar sighed. "That's what we used to call it, when he pulled that routine on the campaign."

"In the back of the bus, with Moira."

"Yeah. Exactly. Moira was very good at getting next to him when his guard was down."

Greta narrowed her eyes. "You did something awful to Moira, didn't you?"

"Look, the man is a U.S. Senator. I put him into office, I have to look after his interests. He had an indiscretion during the campaign. So what?

Who am I to judge about that?" He paused. "And who are you, for that matter?"

"Well, I came here so that I could judge the Senator," she said. "I hoped he could really help me. We could have used an honest, decent Senator to back the lab, for once. Obviously, Alcott's some-one who could really understand us. But now he's been destroyed, because he went head-to-head against Huey-a man who just chews up people like him. Politics always chews up people like him." Her face grew long and grim. "Look what he's done with this hopeless old building, look at this beautiful work he's done. He must be some kind of genius, and now they've just crushed him. This really makes me sick at heart. What a loss. He's lost his mind. It's a national tragedy."

"Well, I admit that it's a setback."

"No, it's over. He's not going to come around just because you force-fed him. Because he is demented. He can't help you anymore--and that means that you can't help me. So it's all over, and it's time for me to give this thing up."

"We're not going to give up."

"Oscar, let me go back to my lab now. Let me work. It's the reasonable thing."

"Sure it is, but I'm. not a reasonable person, and these aren't reasonable times."

Leon Sosik came into the office. "Bit of a debacle there." His face was gray.

"Can you believe the audacity of that guy?" Oscar said. "Huey had a French aircraft carrier waiting offshore. The guy's a traitor! He's in league with a foreign power!"

Sosik shook his head. "That's not what I'm talking about."

"We can't acquiesce in a naked power grab like this. We've got to nail Huey's feet to the Senate floor and beat him like a drum." Sosik stared at him. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course I'm serious! Our man has flushed Huey out of the canebrake, and now he's revealed his true colors. He's a clear and present menace to national security. We've got to take him out."

Sosik turned to Greta with courtly concern. "Dr. Penninger, I wonder if you'd allow me to speak to Mr. Valparaiso privately for a moment."

"Oh, of course." Greta rose reluctantly, setting down her chop-sticks.

"I could get our chef to put together a little takeout box for you," Sosik said considerately.

"Oh no, I do need to be going .... If you could just get me a cab. There's a conference in town. I have work to do."

"I'll have our chauffeur take you to your meeting, Doctor."

"That would be perfect. Thank you very much." She gathered her purse and left.

Oscar watched her reluctantly, then spotted a screen remote and plucked it up. "I wish you hadn't done that," he told Sosik. "She has an agenda, you know. We could have gotten to her a little later."

"They told me you were like this," Sosik said soberly. "They told me you were exactly like this, and I couldn't believe it. Would you put down that remote control, please?"

Oscar squeezed his way through a set of feeds. "This is a break-ing development, Leon. We've got to spin this quick, and nail the guy before he launches his next cover story."

Sosik gently plucked the remote from Oscar's hand. He put his hand over Oscar's shoulder. "Kid," he said, "let's go for a walk. Let's do some serious face-time together."

"We don't have a lot of time to kill right now."

"Kid, I'm the chief of staff. I don't think I'll be wasting your time. All right?"

A krewewoman handed them their hats and coats. They took an elevator down to the street.

"Let's walk toward Somerville," Sosik said. "The audio surveil-lance is a lot less tight there."

"Is that a problem? We could walk apart and talk things over on encrypted phones."

Sosik sighed. "Would you slow down to human speed for a min-ute? I'm an old man."

Oscar said nothing. He followed Sosik north up Prospect Street, hunching his shoulders against the chill. Bare trees, straggling Christ-mas shoppers, the occasional Caribbean storefront.

"I can't stand it in that office just now," Sosik said. "He's throw-ing up, he's shaking like a leaf And the people in there, they all worship the ground the man walks on. They've had to watch him come apart at the seams."

"Yeah, and our walking out on them isn't likely to help their morale much."

"Shut up," Sosik explained. ''I've been in this business thirty years. I've seen a lot of politicians come to bad ends. I've seen them go drunk, I've seen them go crooked, sex scandals, money scan-dals. . . . But this is the first guy I ever saw who cracked up com-pletely before he even made it to Washington."

"Alcott's always ahead of the curve," Oscar nodded. "He's a visionary. " Sosik shot him a nettled glance. "Why'd you pick on this poor guy? He's not any kind of normal pol. Was it the wife? Did she have something on you? Was it the personal background thing?"

"Normal pols aren't getting the job done, Leon. These aren't normal times. America's not a normal country. We've used up all our normality. There isn't any left."

"You're not normal. What are you doing in politics?" Oscar shrugged. "Someone has to deal with your thirty-year leg-acy of solid professional achievement, Leon."

Sosik grimaced. "Well, he gave it his best shot. And now he's toast. "

"He's not toast. He's just crazy."

"Crazy is toast. Okay?"