"Where I say that I refuse my own salary."

"Yeah, I thought voluntarily cutting it in half might be good--I'd like to see the Collaboratory's budget cut about in half-but it's a better and stronger gesture if you just refuse your pay altogether. You refuse to take government pay until the lab is put back in order. That's a great conclusion, it shows you're really serious and it gets you out with a punch, and a nice hot sound bite. Then you sit back and watch the fireworks."

"I sit back, and the Director fires me on the spot."

"No, he won't. He won't dare. He's never been his own man, and he's just not bright enough to react that quickly. He'll stall for time, and he's all out of time. Getting the Director out of office is not a problem. The next big step is getting you in as Director. And the real challenge will be keeping you in office-long enough for you to push some real reforms through." She sighed. "And then, finally, when that's all over, do I get to go back and do my labwork?"

"Probably." He paused. "No, sure, of course. If that's what you really want."

"How am I supposed to eat with no salary?"

"You've got your Nobel Prize money, Greta. You've got big piles of Swedish kronor that you've never even touched."

She frowned. "I kept thinking I would buy new equipment with it, but the lab procurement people wouldn't let me do all the paper-work."

"Okay, that's your problem in a nutshell. Fire all those sorry bastards first thing."

She shut her laptop. "This is serious. When I do this, it will make a terrible stink. Something will happen."

"We want things to happen. That's why we're doing all this." She turned in her seat, anxiously poking him with a kneecap. "I just want to be truthful. Not political. Truthful."

"This is an honest political speech! Everything there can be doc-umented."

"It's honest about everything but you and me."

Oscar exhaled slowly. He'd been expecting this development.

"Well, that's where we have to pay the price. After tomorrow, you're on campaign. Even with the best will and intention, we won't have any time for ourselves anymore. When we had our stolen moments, we could meet in Boston or Louisiana, and that was lovely, and we could get away with that. But we lose that privilege from now on. This is the last time that you and I can meet privately. I won't even be in the audience when you speak tomorrow. It mustn't look like I'm prompting you."

"But people know about us. A lot of people know. I want people to know."

"All political leaders lead double lives. Public, and private. That's not hypocrisy. That's just reality."

"What if we're outed?"

"Well, there's two ways to play that development. We could stonewall. That's simplest and easiest-just deny everything, and let them try to prove it. Or, we could be very coy and provocative, and say that we're flattered by their matchmaking. We could lead them on a little, we could be sexy and glamorous. You know, play it the good old Hollywood way. That's a dangerous game, but I know that game pretty well, and I like that one better, myself."

She was silent for a moment. "Won't you miss me?"

"How can I miss you? I'm managing you. You're the very center of my life now. You're my candidate."

Oscar and Yosh Pelicanos were enjoying a healthful stroll around the china tower of the Hot Zone. Pelicanos wore a billed hat, khaki walk-ing shorts, and a sleeveless pullover. Two months inside the dome had caused almost all of Oscar's krewe to go native. Oscar, by stark con-trast, wore his nattiest suit and a sharp new steam-blocked hat. Oscar rarely felt the need of serious exercise, since his metabolic rate was eight percent higher than that of a normal human.

Their walk was a deliberate and public promenade. The Col-laboratory's board was meeting, Greta was about to speak, and Oscar was very conspicuously nowhere near the scene. Oscar was especially hard to miss when publicly trailed by his bodyguard: the spectral Kevin Hamilton, parading in his motorized wheelchair.

"What is it with this Hamilton guy?" Pelicanos grumbled, glanc-ing over his shoulder. "Why on earth did you have to hire some Anglo hustler? His only credential is that he limps even worse than Fontenot. "

"Kevin's very gifted. He got that netwar program off my back. Besides, he works cheap."

"He dresses like a loan shark. The guy gets eighteen package deliveries a day. And that headphone and the scanning gear-he's sleeping in it! He's getting on our nerves."

"Kevin will grow on you. I know he's not the standard team player. Be tolerant."

"I'm nervous," Pelicanos admitted.

"No need for that. We've laid all the groundwork perfectly," Oscar said.

''I've got to hand it to the krewe, you've really done me proud here." Oscar's mood was radiant. Unbearable personal tension, stress, and agonizing suspense always brought out his boyish, endearing side. "Yosh, you did first-class work on those audits. And the push-polling was superb, you handled that beautifully. A few dozen loaded questions on the Science Committee letterhead, and the locals are hopping like puppets, they're gun-shy now, they're ready for anything. It's been a tour de force all around. Even the hotel's making money! Especially now that we lured in all those expense-account headhunters from out of state."

"Yeah, you've got us all working like mules-you don't have to tell me that. The question is, is it enough?"

"Well, nothing's ever enough. . . . Politics isn't precision ma-chinery, it's a performance art. It's stage magic. It's a brand-new year, and now the curtain's going up. We've got our plants primed in the audience, we've got scarves and ribbons up our sleeve, we've saturated the playing field with extra hats and rabbits. . . ."

"There's way too many hats and rabbits."

"No there aren't! Can't have too many! We'll just use the ones that we need, as we need them. That's the beauty of multitasking. It's that fractal aspect, the self-similarity across multiple political layers ... " Pelicanos snorted. "Stop talking like Bambakias. That highbrow net-jive gets you nowhere with me."

"But it works! If the feds somehow fail us, we've got leaks in at the Texas comptroller's office. The Buna city council loves us! I know they're not worth much politically, but hey, we've paid more atten-tion to them in the past six weeks than the Collaboratory has paid them in fifteen years."

"So you're keeping all your options open."

"Exactly. "

"You always say that you hate doing that."

"What? I never said that. You're just being morose. I feel very upbeat about this, Yosh-we've had a few little setbacks, but taking this assignment was a wise decision. It's been a broadening professional experience. " They paused to let a yak cross the road. "You know what I really like about this campaign?" Oscar said. "It's so tiny. Two thousand political illiterates, sealed inside a dome. We have complete voter profiles and interest-group dossiers on every single person in the Col-laboratory! It's so sealed off and detached-politically speaking, there's something perfect and magical about a setup like this."

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."

"I'm determined to enjoy this, Yosh. We might be crushed here, or we might soar to glory, but we'll never have the chance to do something quite like this again."

A supply truck lumbered past them, laden with mutant seedlings.

"You know something?" Pelicanos said. "I've been so busy playing the angles that I never got the chance to understand what they actually do in here."

"I think you understand it a lot better than they do."

"Not their finances, I mean the actual science. I can understand commercial biotech well enough-we were in that business together, in Boston. But the real cutting edge here, those brain people, the cognition people . . . I know I'm missing something important there."

"Yeah? Personally, I've been trying to get up to speed on 'amy-loid fibrils.' Greta really dotes on those things."

"It's not just that their field is technically difficult to grasp. It is, but I also have a feeling they're hiding something."

"Sure. That's science in its decadence. They can't patent or copyright their findings anymore, so sometimes they try for trade secrets." Oscar laughed.

"As if that could really work nowadays."

"Maybe there's something going on in this place that could help Sandra." Oscar was touched. His friend's dark mood was clear to him now, it had opened up before him like an origami trick. "Where there's life, there's hope, Yosh."

"If I had more time to figure it out, if there weren't so many distractions .... Everything is hats and rabbits now. Nothing's pre-dictable, nothing makes sense anymore, it's all rockets and potholes. There's no foundation left in our society. There's no place left for us to take a stand. There's a very dark momentum going, Oscar. Some-times I really think the country's going mad."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, just look at us. I mean, look what we've been dealing with." Pelicanos hunched his head and began counting off on his fingers. "My wife is a schizophrenic. Bambakias has major depression. Poor Moira finally cracked in public, and pitched a fit. Dougal is an alcoholic. Green Huey is a megalomaniac. And those sick lunatics trying to kill you-there was an endless supply of those people."

Oscar walked on silently.

"Am I reading too much into this? Or is there a genuine trend here?"

''I'd call it a groundswell," Oscar said thoughtfully. "That accounts for those sky-high poll ratings ever since Bambakias's break-down. He's a classic political charismatic. So even his personal negatives boost his political positives. People just sense his authenticity, they recognize that he's truly a man of our time. He represents the American people. He's a born leader."

"Does he have it together to take action for us in Washington?"

"Well, he's still a name for us to conjure with. . . . But practi-cally speaking, no. I've got good backchannel from Lorena, and frankly, he's really delusionary now. He's got some weird fixation about the President, something about hot-war with Europe. . . . He sees Dutch agents hiding under every bed. . . . They're trying him out with different flavors of antidepressant."

"Will that work? Can they stabilize him?"

"Well, the treatments make great media copy. There's a huge Bambakias medical fandom happening, ever since his hunger strike, really. . . . They've got their own sites and feeds. . . . Lots of get-well email, home mental-health remedies, oddsmaking on the death-watch .... It's a classic grass-roots phenomenon. You know, T-shirts, yard signs, coffee mugs, fridge magnets .... I dunno, it's getting kind of out of hand." Pelicanos rubbed his chin. "Kind of a tabloid vulture pop-star momentum there."

"Exactly. Perfect coinage, you've hit the nail on the head."

"How bad should we feel about this, Oscar? I mean, basically, this is all our fault, isn't it?"

"You really think so?" Oscar said, surprised. "You know, I'm so close to it I can't really judge anymore."

A bicycle messenger stopped them. "I've got a packet delivery for a Mr. Hamilton."

"You want that guy in the wheelchair," Oscar said. The messenger examined his handheld satellite readout. "Oh yeah. Right. Thanks." He pedaled off.

"Well, you were never his chief of staff," Pelicanos said.

"Yeah, that's true. That's a comfort." Oscar watched as the bike messenger engaged in the transaction with his security chief. Kevin signed for two shrink-wrapped bundles. He examined the return ad-dresses and began talking into his head-mounted mouthpiece.

"You know that he eats out of those packages?" Pelicanos said.

"Big white sticks of stuff, like straw and chalk. He chews 'em all the time. He kind of grazes."

"At least he eats," Oscar said. His phone rang. He plucked it from his sleeve and answered it. "Hello?"

There was a distant, acid-scratched voice. "It's me, Kevin, over." Oscar turned and confronted Kevin, who was rolling along in his chair ten strides behind them. "Yes, Kevin? What's on your mind?"

"I think we have a situation coming. Somebody just pulled a fire alarm inside the Collaboratory, over."

"Is that a problem?"

Oscar watched Kevin's mouth move. Kevin's voice arrived at his ear a good ten seconds later. "Well, this is a sealed, airtight dome. The locals get pretty serious about fires inside here, over."

Oscar examined the towering gridwork overhead. It was a blue and lucid winter afternoon. "I don't see any smoke. Kevin, what's wrong with your telephone?"

"Traffic analysis countermeasures-I routed this call around the world about eight times, over."

"But we're only ten meters apart. Why don't you just roll up over here and do some face-time with me?"

"We need to cool it, Oscar. Stop looking at me, and just go on walking. Don't look now, but there are cops tailing us. A cab in front and a cab behind, and I think they have shotgun mikes. Over."

Oscar turned and threw a companionable arm over Pelicanos's shoulder, urging him along. There were, in point of fact, some labora-tory cops within sight. Normally the cops employed their "Buna Na-tional Collaboratory Security Authority" trucks, macho vehicles with comic-opera official seals on the doors, but these officers had com-mandeered a pair of the Collaboratory's little phone-dispatched cabs. The cops were trying to be inconspicuous.

"Kevin says the cops are tailing us," Oscar told Pelicanos.

"Delighted to hear it," Pelicanos said mildly. "There were three attempts on your life in here. You must be the most excitement that these local cops have had in years."

"He also says there's been a fire alarm."

"How would he know that?"

A bright yellow fire truck emerged from the bowels of the Oc-cupational Safety building. It set its lights flashing, opened up with a klaxon blare, and headed south, off the ring road.

Oscar felt an odd skin-creeping feeling, then a violent huff of atmospheric pressure. An invisible door slammed shut in his head. The Collaboratory had just fully sealed its airlocks. The entire massive structure had gone tight as a drum.

"Jesus, it is a fire!" Pelicanos said. Acting on instinct, he turned and began jogging after the fire truck.

Oscar thought it more sensible to stay with his bodyguard. He tucked his phone in his sleeve and walked over to join Kevin.

"So, Kevin, what's in those delivery packets?"

"Heavy-duty sunblock," Kevin lied, yawning to clear his ears. "It's an Anglo thing."

Oscar and Kevin left the ring road, heading south past the Com-putation Center. Their police escorts were still dutifully trailing them, but the little cabs were soon lost in a curious pedestrian crowd emerg-ing from their buildings.

The fire truck stopped outside the Collaboratory's media center. This building was the site of Greta's public board meeting. Oscar's carefully drummed-up capacity crowd was pouring from the exits, loudly milling in confusion.

A fistfight had broken out on the steps at the eastern exit. A gray-haired man with a bloody nose was cowering under the metal handrails, and a young tough with a cowboy hat and shorts was strug-gling to kick him. Four men were grappling reluctantly at the young man's arms and shoulders, trying to restrain him.

Kevin stopped his wheelchair. Oscar waited at Kevin's elbow and examined his watch. If all had gone as planned-which it clearly hadn't-then Greta should have finished her speech by now. He looked up again to see the cowboy lose his hat. To his deep astonish-ment he recognized the assailant as his krewe gofer, Norman-the--Intern.

"Come with me, Kevin. Nothing that we want to see here." Oscar turned hastily on his heel and walked back the way he'd come. He glanced over his shoulder, once. His police escort had abandoned him. They had dashed forward with gusto, and were busy arresting young Norman.

Oscar waited until he received official notification from the police about Norman's arrest. He then went to police headquarters, in the east central side of the dome. The Collaboratory's police HQ was part of a squat fortress complex, housing the fire department, the power generators, the phone service, and the internal water supply.

Oscar was quite familiar with the internal routines of the local police headquarters, since he'd visited three of his would-be assailants in custody there. He presented himself to the desk officer. He was informed that young Norman had been charged with battery and disturbing the peace. Norman was wearing orange coveralls and a wrist cuff. Norman looked surprisingly spiffy in his spotless prison gear-he was rather better dressed than most Collaboratory personnel. The cuff was a locked-on shatterproof bracelet studded with tiny mikes and surveil-lance lenses.

"You should have brought a lawyer," Norman said from behind the cardboard briefing table. "They never turn off this cuff unless there's attorney-client privilege."

"I know that," Oscar said. He opened his laptop and set it on the table.