"No, it isn't. It's true-he's had a mental breakdown. That's a problem. It's an image problem. When you get a problem that big, you can't stonewall it. You have to shine a light on it. This is the problem: he starved himself half to death in a sincere protest, and now he's lost his mind. But our keyword here isn't 'crazy.' Our keywords are 'sincere' and 'protest.' " Sosik turned up his coat collar. "Look, you can't possibly play it that way and get away with it."

"Yes, Leon, I could. The question here is whether you could."

"We can't have a Senator who's non compos mentis! How the hell could he ever get a bill passed?"

"Alcott was never cut out to be a legislative technician. We've had enough of those nitpickers. Alcott's a charismatic, he's a moral leader. He can wake the people up, he can guide them. and show them the mountaintop. What he needs is a way to compel their attention and make them. believe in him. And now, he's finally got it."

Sosik considered this. "Kid, if you did that and it really worked, it would mean that the whole country's gone crazy."

Oscar said nothing.

"How exactly would you angle it?" Sosik said at last.

"We have to demonize Huey on the patriotism issue, while we come clean on the medical problem. Constant bedside reports when-ever Al is lucid. Winston Churchill was bipolar. Abraham Lincoln was a depressive. We call in all our chits from the FedDems, we get the party to stay with him. We fly the wife in, she's a fighter, she's stand-ing by him loyally. Grass-roots sympathy mail, we're spooling it in by the ton. I think it's doable."

"If that's doable, then I've lost touch. That's not the America I know. I don't have the stomach for that. I'd have to resign. You'd have to be chief of staff."

"No, Leon, you've got to be chief of staff You're the seasoned professional, you've got Beltway credibility, and I'm ... Well, I can't be in the picture at all. With my personal background, I can't possibly front a big medical-publicity spin."

"I know you want my job."

"I've got my hands full already."

Sosik snorted. "Don't give me that."

"All right," Oscar said. "I admit that I'd like to have your job, but I have my own agenda to look after now. You see, it's Greta."

"Who?"

"The scientist, damn it! Dr. Penninger."

Sosik was astonished. "What? Her? She's pushing forty and she's got a face like a hatchet! What is it with you, kid? Not two months ago you had your pants around your ankles for some campaign jour-nalist. You were lucky as hell not to be outed on that. And now her?"

"Yeah. That's right. Her."

Sosik rubbed his chin. "I forgot how hard up a young guy can get. . . . Can it possibly be that good?"

"No, it's not that good," Oscar told him. "It's no good at all, it's bad. It's real bad. It's worse than you could imagine, it's terrible. If we're ever caught, we get outed. She's a fanatic workaholic-science is the only thing in the world that doesn't bore her to death. Huey adores her and wants to recruit her for some kind of mad-genius brain lab he's building in a salt mine .... She drinks too much. She has allergies. She's eight years older than me. . . . And oh, she's also Jewish. Though for some reason the Jewish thing hasn't come up much."

Sosik sighed, his breath steaming in the air. "So that's your situa-tion, huh?"

"That's almost it. Except for one more thing. She's truly a ge-nius. She's a unique, brilliant, wonderful thing."

Kevin Hamilton was visiting Oscar's house for a neighborly chat. Kevin, a man of deeply irregular schedules, had brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bag of dried banana chips.

"Politics are irrelevant now," Kevin informed him airily.

''I'm not asking you to become a political activist, Kevin. I'm just asking you to join my krewe and run my security."

Kevin munched a handful of banana chips and had a swig of chocolate milk. "Well, you being the guy you are, I guess you've got the money for that sort of thing. . . ."

Oscar adjusted his laptop on the conference table. "There's not a lot of time for idle chitchat here, so let's put our cards on the table. I know you're a rather special guy, but you're not the only guy in the world who can do net research. So can I. You've got a civil disobedience record as long as my arm. You spent ten years with no visible means of support. Your dad is a convicted computer criminal on elec-tronic parole. You're a police informant and a surveillance freak. I really think I need a guy like you in my outfit."

"Nice of you not to mention my dicey ethnic background," Kevin said. He set his sandwich aside and produced his own laptop from a battered valise. The ancient machine was pasted together with tension straps and travel decals.

"I never, ever mention that sort of thing," Oscar said.

"Not that you would. You're not an 'ethnic' guy." Kevin con-sulted his own screen. "As far as I can figure out, you're some kind of lab product."

"Guilty as charged."

"My dad went bad after his business crashed-but your dad was a genuine gangster. Good thing for you that the feds don't like to bust movie stars."

"Yeah, and his films were criminal acts, too."

"You must be really hard up, man. I don't do bodyguard work. I've got it together to run a successful neighborhood watch. It's a good gig for a guy who was a big-time nomad-I get to sit still now, and I've got a roof over my head. But you're a dodgy politician with some major-league enemies. I could get killed working for a guy like you."

"The plan here is that I don't get killed, and you get paid for that. "

"I dunno why I'm even listening to you, man. But you know-I gotta admit that I kinda like your proposal. I like a guy who knows what he wants and just goes right after it. There's something about you that . . . I dunno . . . it just inspires confidence."

Time to play the next card. "Look, I understand about your father, Kevin. A lot of decent people suffered when intellectual prop-erty crashed. Friends of mine in the Senator's office could talk to the Governor about a grant of clemency. I believe I could do something for you here."

"Now, that would be great. You know, my dad really got a raw deal. He was never your typical racist white-power bomber. The feds just brought up that terror-and-conspiracy indictment, so he would plead out on the embezzlement and wiretapping charges."

"He must have had a good lawyer."

"Sorta . . . his lawyer had the good sense to defect to Europe when the real heat came down." Kevin sighed. "I almost went to Europe myself, and then I thought . . . what the hell? You can drop out as a road prole and it's almost the same as leaving the country."

"You don't mind traveling to Texas? You don't mind missing Christmas? We'll be flying there right away."

"I don't care. Not as long as I can still log on to my own servers." The door chimed. Moments later, Donna arrived with an airmailed packet.

"Is that for me?" Kevin said brightly. He eviscerated the package with a massive Swiss Army knife. "Mayonnaise," he announced un-convincingly, producing a sealed jar of unlabeled white goo. "This stuff could be really handy." He stuffed the jar into his accordion-sided valise.

"She's arrived," Donna whispered.

"I have to see another guest," Oscar told Kevin.

"Another 'guest'?" Kevin winked. "What happened to the cute one in the bathrobe?"

"Can you get back to me in the morning with your decision?"

"No, man, I've made up my mind. I'm gonna do it."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, it sounds like a nice change of pace. I'll get right on the job. Clear it with your sysadmin, and I'll see what I can do about shoring up your net." 7 Life in the Collaboratory lacked the many attractive facilities of the Back Bay in Boston.

Oscar and Greta met in a broken car in the dark parking lot behind the Vehicle Repair Facility. This assig-nation spot was Kevin Hamilton's idea. Kevin was very big on secure meetings inside anonymous cars. Kevin was no Secret Service agent, but he brimmed over with rule-of-thumb street smarts.

''I'm afraid," Greta confessed.

Oscar adjusted his jacket, tugging for elbow room.

The car was so small that they were almost sitting in each other's laps.

"How could you have stage fright over such a simple thing? You gave a Nobel Prize speech in Stock-holm once."

"But then I was talking about my own work. I can always do that. This is different. You want me to stand up in front of the board of directors and tell them off to their face. In front of a big crowd of my friends and colleagues. I'm not cut out for that."

"Actually, you are cut out for it, Greta. You're abso-lutely perfect for the role. I knew it from the moment I saw you."

Greta examined her laptop screen. It was the only light inside the dead vehicle, and it underlit their faces with a gentle glow. They were meeting at two in the morning. "If it's really this bad here-as bad as you claim it is-then it's really no use fighting, is it? I should just resign."

"No, you don't have to resign. The point of this speech is that they have to resign." Oscar touched her hand. "You don't have to say anything you don't know to be true."

"Well, I know some of these things are true, because I leaked them to you myself. But I would never have said them out loud. And I wouldn't have said them this way. This speech, or this rant, or what-ever it is-it's a violent political attack! It's not scholarly. It's not objective."

"Then let's talk about how you should say it. After all, you're the speaker-you're the one who has to reach the audience, not me. Let's go over your talking points."

She scrolled up and down fitfully, and sighed. "All right. I guess this is the worst part, right here. This business about scientists being an oppressed class. 'A group whose exploitation should be recognized and ended.'

Scientists rising up in solidarity to demand justice-good Lord, I can't say that! It's too radical, it sounds crazy!"

"But you are an oppressed class. It's the truth, it's the central burning truth of your existence. Science took the wrong road some-where, the whole enterprise has been shot to hell. You've lost your proper niche in society. You've lost prestige, and your self-respect, and the high esteem that scientists once held in the eyes of the public. Demands are being made of you that you'll never be able to fulfill. You don't have intellectual freedom anymore. You live in intellectual bondage."

"That doesn't make us some kind of 'oppressed class.' We're an elite cadre of highly educated experts."

"So what? Your situation stinks! You have no power to make your own decisions about your own research. You don't control the purse strings. You don't have tenure or job security. You've been robbed of your peer review traditions. Your traditional high culture has been crushed underfoot by ignoramuses and fast-buck artists. You're the technical intelligentsia all right, but you're being played for suckers and patsies by corrupt pols who line their pockets at your expense."

"How can you say that? Look at this amazing place we live in!"

"You just think that this is the ivory tower, sweetheart. In reality, you're slum tenants."

"But nobody thinks that way!"

"That's because you've been fooling yourselves for years now. You're smart, Greta. You have eyes and ears. Think about what you've been through. Think about how your colleagues really have to live now. Think a little harder."

She was silent.

"Go ahead," he said. "Take your time, think it through."

"It is true. It's the truth, and it's awful, and I'm very ashamed of it, and I hate it. But it's politics. There's nothing anyone can do about it."

"We'll see about that," he said. "Let's move on into the speech." "Okay." She wiped her eyes. "Well, this is the really sick and painful part. Senator Dougal. I know that man, I've met him a lot of times. He drinks too much, but we all do that nowadays. He's not as bad as all this."

"People can't unite against abstractions. You have to put a face on your troubles. That's how you rally people politically. You have to pick your target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Dougal's not your only enemy, but you don't have to worry about that. The rest of them will come running out of the woodwork as soon as you nail him to the wall."

"But he built everything here, he built this whole laboratory!"

"He's a crook. We've got chapter and verse on him now. No-body dared to cross him while he was in power. But now that he's shipping water and going down fast, they'll all rat him out. The kick-backs, the money laundering. . . . You're in charge of Instrumenta-tion. Dougal and his cronies have been skimming your cream for years. You've got a legal and moral obligation to jump on him. And best of all, jumping on Dougal is a free ride politically. He can't do a thing about it. Dougal is the easy part." Oscar paused. "It's Huey that I'm really worried about."

"I don't see why I have to be so nasty."

"You need an issue, and there's no such thing as a noncontrover-sial issue. And ridicule is the radical's best weapon. The powers that be can stand anything but being laughed at."

"It's just not me."

"Give it a chance first. Try the experiment. Launch one or two of those zingers, and see how your audience responds."

She sniffed. "They're scientists. They're not going to respond to partisan abuse."

"Of course they are. Scientists fight like crazed weasels. Look at your own history here at the lab! When Dougal got this place built, he had to cash in a lot of favors. He needed the Christian fundie vote before he could build a giant gene-splicing lab in the East Texas Bible Belt. That's why the Collaboratory used to have its own Creation Science department. That setup lasted six weeks! There were fistfights, riots, and arson! They had to call in the Texas Rangers to restore order. "

"Oh, the creation-science problem wasn't all that bad."

"Yes it was! Your little society has blocked out that memory because it was so embarrassing. That wasn't the half of it. Next year they had a major brawl with the Buna residents, regular town-gown riots. . . . And it really hit the fan during the economic war. There were federal witch-hunts for foreign science spies, there was hyperin-flation and lab guys living on bread crusts. .

. . See, I'm not a scien-tist like you. I don't have to take it on faith that science is always a noble endeavor. I actually look these things up."

"Well, I'm not a politician like you. So I don't have to spend my life digging up ugly scandals."

"Darling, we'll have a little chat sometime about your twentieth-century Golden Age-Lysenkoism, atom spies, Nazi doctors, and ra-diation experiments. In the meantime, though, we need to stick to your speech." She gazed at her laptop. "It just gets worse and worse. You want me to cut our budget and get people fired."

"The budget has to be cut. Cut drastically. People have to be fired. Fired by the truckload. The lab's sixteen years old, it's full of bureaucratic deadwood. Get the deadwood out of here. Fire the Spin-offs department, they're all Dougal's cronies and they're all on the take. Fire the lab procurement drones and put the budgets back into the hands of researchers. And, especially, fire the police."

"I can't possibly fire the police. That's crazy."

"The police have to go as soon as possible. Hire your own po-lice. If you don't control your own police, you live on sufferance. The police are the core of any society, and if you don't have them on your side, you can't hold power. Huey knows that. That's why Huey owns the cops in here. They may be feds officially, but they're all in his pockets."

The car jostled with a thump and a creak. Oscar yelped. A shapeless black beast was bumping and clawing at the hood.

"It's a lemur," Greta said. "They're nocturnal." The lemur stared through the windshield with yellow eyes the size and shape of golf balls. Pressed flat against the glass, its eldritch protohuman mitts gave him a serious turn. "I've had it with these animals!" Oscar shouted. "They're like Banquo's ghost, they never let us alone! Whose bright idea was this anyway? Wild animals loose in a science lab? It doesn't make any sense!"

"They are ghosts," Greta said. "We raised them from the dead. It's something we learned how to do here." She opened her door and stepped half out, waving one arm. "Go on. Shoo."

The lemur sidled off reluctantly.

Oscar had broken into a cold sweat. His hair was standing on end and his hands were shaking. He could actually smell his own fear: a sharp pheromonal reek. He crossed his arms and shivered violently. His reaction was all out of whack, but he couldn't help it: he was very inspired tonight.

"Give me a minute .... Sorry .... Where were we?"

"I can't stand up in public and start screaming for people to be fired."

"Don't prejudge the evidence. Try it out first. Just suggest that a few of these creeps should be fired, and see what the public response is." He drew a breath. "Remember the climax-you do have a final ace to play."