"That doesn't help! Bambakias would have trusted you implic-itly-the President won't even give you a real post. He's never sent us anything but empty promises. He's left you exposed, he's hanging you out to dry. So, in the meantime, we're relying on these Moderators. And there's just no future in a gangster protection racket."

"Sure there is."

"No there isn't. The proles are worse even than the Left Progres-sives. They have funny slang, and funny clothes, and laptops, and bio-tech, so they're colorful, but they're still a mafia. This good old boy, Captain Burningboy ... he's sucking up to you, but he's not what you think he is. You think he's a charming old coot who's a diamond in the rough, the kind of guy you could fit inside your krewe. He's not. He's an ultraradical cultist, and he definitely has his own agenda."

Oscar nodded. "I know that."

"And then there's Kevin. You haven't been paying enough atten-tion to Kevin. You have put a bandit in charge of the police here. The kid is like a pocket Mussolini now. He's into the phones, he's in the computers, he's in the security videos, the place is saturated with his bugs. Now he's got a pack of tattletale snoop informants, some weird-sister gang of little old nomad ladies on the net in a trailer park, somewhere in the blazing wreckage of Wyoming .... The kid is off the rails. It just isn't healthy."

"But Kevin's from Boston, like we are," Oscar said. "Intense surveillance yields low rates of street violence. Kevin's getting the job done for us, and he never balks when we bend the rules. He was a really good personnel choice."

"Oscar, you're obsessed. Forget the nifty-keen social concepts and all the big-picture blather. Get down to brass tacks, get down to reality. Kevin works here because you're paying his salary. You're pay-ing the salaries of all your krewe, and your krewe are the people who are really running this place. Nobody else has any salaries-all they do is eat prole food and work in their labs. I'm your accountant, and I'm telling you: you can't afford this much longer. You can't pay people enough to create a revolution."

"There's no way to pay people enough to do that."

"You're not being fair to your krewe. Your krewe are Massachu-setts campaign workers, not miracle workers. You never explained to them that they had to become a revolutionary junta. This place has no real financial support. You don't even have a salary yourself. You don't even have an official post in the government. The Collaboratory is running off your capital."

"Yosh, there's always more funding. What's really interesting is governing without it! Managing on pure prestige. Consider the Mod-erators, for instance. They actually have a functional, prestige-based economy. It's all been worked out in fantastic detail; for instance, they have a rotating Australian electronic ballot system . . . . "

"Oscar, have you been sleeping at all? Do you eat properly? Do you know what you're doing here anymore?"

"Yes, I do know. It's not what we planned to do at first, but it's what has to be done. I am stealing Huey's clothes."

"You're in a personal feud with the Governor of Louisiana."

"No. That's not it. The truth is that I'm conducting a broad-scale struggle with the greatest political visionary in contemporary America. And Huey is years ahead of me. He's been cultivating his nomads for years now, winning their loyalty, building their infrastruc-ture. He's set it up so that homeless drifters are the most technically advanced group in his state. He's made himself the leader of an under-ground mass movement, and he's promising to share the knowledge and make every man a wizard. And they worship him for that, because the whole structure of their network economy has been regulated that way, surreptitiously and deliberately. It's corruption on a fantastic scale-it's an enterprise so far off the books that it isn't even 'corrup-tion' anymore. He has created a new alternative society, with an alter-native power structure, that is all predicated on him: Green Huey, the Swamp King. I'm working here as fast and as hard as I can, because Huey has already proved to me that this works-in fact, it works so well that it's dangerous. America is on the ropes, and Green Huey is a smiling totalitarian who's creating a neural dictatorship!"

"Oscar, do you realize how crazy that sounds? Do you know how pale you look when you talk like that?"

"I'm leveling with you here. You know I always level with you, Yosh."

"Okay, you're leveling with me. But I can't do that. I can't live that way. I don't believe in it. I'm sorry."

Oscar stared at him.

"I've hit the wall with you, Oscar. I want some real food, I want a real roof over my head. I can't close my eyes and jump blind and take that kind of risk. I have a dependent. My wife needs me, she needs looking after. But you-you don't need me anymore. Because I'm an accountant! You're setting up a situation here where I have no function. No role. No job. There's nothing to account."

"You know something? That had never occurred to me. But wait; there's bound to be some kind of income transfer. There's scrap cash around, we're going to need bits of equipment and such . . . . "

"You're establishing a strange, tiny, alien regime here. It's not a market society. It's a cult society. It's all based on people looking deep into each other's eyes and giving each other back rubs. It's theoreti-cally interesting, but when it fails and falls apart, it'll all become camps and purges just like the Communist Era. If you're determined to do that, Oscar, I can't save you. Nobody can save you. I don't want to be with you when the house of cards comes down. Because you will be going to prison. At best." Oscar smiled wanly. "So, you don't think the 'congenital in-sanity' plea will get me off?"

"It's not a joke. What about your krewe, Oscar? What about the rest of us? You're a great campaign manager: you really have a gift. But this is not an election campaign. It's not even a strike or a protest anymore. This is a little coup d'etat. You're like a militia guru in a secessionist compound here. Even if the krewepeople agree to stay with you, how can you put them at that kind of risk? You never asked them, Oscar. They never got a vote." Oscar sat up straight. "Yosh, you're right. That's a sound analysis. I just can't do that to my krewepeople; it's unethical, it's bad practice. I'll have to lay it on the line to them. If they leave me, that's just a sacrifice I'll have to accept."

"I have a job offer in Boston from the Governor's office," Peli-canos said.

"The Governor? Come on! He's a worn-out windbag from the Forward, America Party."

"Forward, America is a Reformist party. The Governor is or-ganizing an antiwar coalition, and he's asked me to be treasurer."

"No kidding? Treasurer, huh? That's a pretty good post for you."

"The pacifist tradition is big in Massachusetts. It's multipartisan and cuts across the blocs. Besides, it has to be done. The President is really serious. He's not bluffing. He really wants a war. He'll send gunboats across the Atlantic. He's bullying that tiny country, just so he can strengthen his own hand domestically."

"You really believe that, Yosh? That's really your assessment?"

"Oscar, you're all out of touch. You're in here all night, every night, slaving away on this minutiae about the tiny differences be-tween nomad tribes. You're pulling all the backstage strings inside this little glass bubble. But you're losing sight of national reality. Yes, Presi-dent Two Feathers is on the warpath! He wants a declaration of war from the Congress! He wants martial law! He wants a war budget that's under his own command. He wants the Emergency committees overridden and abolished overnight. He'll be a virtual dictator."

It instantly occurred to Oscar that if the President could achieve even half of those laudable goals, the loss of Holland would be a very small price to pay. But he bit back this response. "Yosh, I work for this President. He's my boss, he's my Commander in Chief. If you really feel that way about him and his agenda, then our situation as colleagues is untenable." Pelicanos looked wretched. "Well, that's why I came here."

''I'm glad you came. You're my best and oldest friend, my most trusted confidant. But personal feelings can't override a political dif-ference of that magnitude. If you're telling the truth, then we really have come to a parting of the ways. You're going to have to go back to Boston and take that treasury job."

"I hate to do it, Oscar. I know it's your hour of need. And your private fortune needs attention too; you've got to watch those invest-ments. There's a lot of market turbulence ahead."

"There's always market turbulence. I can manage turbulence. I just regret losing you. You've been with me every step of the way."

"Thus far and no farther, pal."

"Maybe if they convict me in Boston, you could put in a good word with your friend the Governor on the clemency issue."

''I'll send mail," Yosh said. He wiped at his eyes. "I have to clean out my desk now."

Oscar was deeply shaken by the defection of Pelicanos. Given the circumstances, there had been no way to finesse it. It was sad but necessary, like his own forced defection from the Bambakias camp when he had moved to the President's NSC. There were certain issues that simply could not be straddled. A clever operative could dance on two stools at once, but standing on seven or eight was just beyond capacity.

It had been some time since Oscar had spoken to Bambakias. He'd kept up with the man's net coverage. The mad Senator's per-sonal popularity was higher than ever. He'd gained all his original weight back; maybe a little more. His krewe handlers wheeled him out in public; they even dared to propel him onto the Senate floor. But the fire was out. His life was all ribbon cuttings and teleprompters now.

Using his newly installed NSC satphone, Oscar arranged a video conference to Washington. Bambakias had a new scheduler, a woman Oscar had never seen before. Oscar managed to get half an hour pen-ciled in. When the call finally went through he found himself confronting Lorena Bambakias.

Lorena looked good. Lorena, being Lorena, could never look less than good. But on the screen before him, she seemed brittle and crispy. Lorena had known suffering.

His heart shrank within him at the sight of her. He was surprised to realize how sincerely he had missed her. He'd always been on tiptoe around Lorena, highly aware of her brimming reservoirs of feminine menace; but he'd forgotten how truly fond he was of her, how much she represented to him of the life he had abandoned. Dear old Lorena: wealthy, sophisticated, amoral, and refined-his kind of woman, really; a creature of the overclass, a classic high-maintenance girl, a woman who was really put together. Seeing Lorena like this-all abraded in her sorrow-gave him a pang. She was like a beautiful pair of scissors that had been used to shear through barbed wire.

"It's good of you to call, Oscar," Lorena told him. "You never call us enough."

"That's sweet of you. How have things been? Tell me really."

"Oh, it's a day at a time. A day at a time, that's all. The doctors tell me there's a lot of progress."

"Really?"

"Oh, it's amazing what millions of dollars can do in the Arneri-can health-care system. Up at the high end of the market, they can do all kinds of strange neural things now. He's cheerful."

"Really. "

"He's very cheerful. He's stable. He's lucid, even, most of the time."

"Lorena, did I ever tell you how incredibly sorry I am about all this?" She smiled. "Good old Oscar. I'm used to it now, you know? I'm dealing with it. I wouldn't have thought that was possible-maybe it isn't possible-but it's doable. You know what really bothers me, though? It isn't all the sympathy notes, or the media coverage, or the fan clubs, or any of that. . . . It's those evil fools who somehow believe that mental illness is a glamorous, romantic thing. They think that going mad is some kind of spiritual adventure. It isn't. Not a bit of it. It's horrible. It's banal. I'm dealing with someone who has be-come banal. My darling husband, who was the least banal man I ever met. He was so multifaceted and wonderful and full of imagination; he was just so energetic and clever and charming. Now he's like a big child. He's like a not very bright child who can be deceived and managed, but not reasoned with."

"You're very brave. I admire you very much for saying that." Lorena began weeping. She massaged her eyes with her beauti-fully kept fingertips. "Now I'm crying but . . . Well, you don't mind that, do you?

You're one of the people who really knew what we were like, back then."

"I don't mind."

Lorena looked up after a while, her brittle face composed and bright.

"Well, you haven't told me how you are doing."

"Me, Lorena? Couldn't be better! Getting amazing things ac-complished over here. Unbelievable developments, all completely fas-cinating. "

"You've lost a lot of weight," she said. "You look tired."

"I've had a little trouble with my new allergies. I'm fine as long as I stay around air filters."

"How is your new job with the President? It must be exciting to be in the NSC when there's almost a war on."

Oscar opened his mouth. It was true; he was on the National Security Council, and there was a war in the works, and despite his tangential status and his deep disinterest in foreign affairs, he knew a great deal about the coming war. He knew that the President planned to send out a flotilla of clapped-out battleships across the Atlantic, without any air cover. He knew that the President was utterly deter-mined to provoke his token war, whether the Congress could be talked into declaring one or not. He knew that in a world of precisely targeted cheap missiles and infinite numbers of disposable drone air-craft, the rust-bucket American fleet was a fleet of sitting ducks.

He also knew that he would lose his job and perhaps even face espionage charges if he revealed this to a Senator's wife on an NSC satphone. Oscar closed his mouth.

''I'm just a science adviser," he said at last. "The Senator must know a great deal more about this than I do."

"Would you like to talk to him?"

"That would be great."

Lorena left. Oscar opened his nomad laptop, examined the screen for a moment, shut it again.

The Senator arrived on-camera. He was wearing pajamas and a blue velvet lounge robe. His face looked plump, polished, and strangely shapeless, as if the personality behind had lost its grip on the facial muscles.

"Oscar!" Bambakias boomed. "Good old Oscar! I think about you every day."

"That's good to know, Senator."

"You're doing marvelous things over there with the science facil-ity. Marvelous things. I really wish I could help you with that. Maybe we could fly over tomorrow! That would be good. We'd get results." Lorena's voice sounded from off-camera. "There's a hearing to-morrow, Alcott."

"Hearings, more hearings. All right. Still, I keep up! I do keep up. I know what's going on, I really do! Tremendous things you're doing over there. You've got no budget, they tell me. None at all. Fill the place with the unemployed! Genius maneuver! It's just like you always said, Oscar-push a political contradiction hard enough, it'll break through to the other side. Then you can rub their noses in it. Great, great tactics." Oscar was touched. The Senator was obviously in a manic state, but he was a lot easier to take when he was so ebullient-it was like a funhouse-mirror version of his old charisma.

"You've done plenty for us already, Senator. We built a hotel here from your plans. The locals were very impressed by it."

"Oh, that's nothing."

"No, seriously, your design attracted a lot of favorable com-ment."

"No, I truly mean that it's nothing. You should see the plans I used to do, back in college. Giant intelligent geodesics. Huge reactive structures made of membrane and sticks. You could fly 'em in on zeppelins and drop 'em over starving people, in the desert. Did 'em for a U.N. disaster relief competition-back when the U.S. was still in the U.N."

Oscar blinked. "Disaster relief buildings?"

"They never got built. Much too sophisticated and high tech for starving, backward third worlders, so they said. Bureaucrats! I worked my ass off on that project." Bambakias laughed. "There's no money in disaster relief. There's no market-pull for that. I recast the concept later, as little chairs. No money in the little chairs either. They never appreciated any of that."

"Actually, Senator, we have one of those little chairs in the Di-rector's office, here at the lab. It's provoking a lot of strongly favorable reaction. The locals really love that thing."

"You don't say. Too bad that scientists are too broke to buy any upscale furniture."

"I wonder if you'd still have those disaster plans in your archives somewhere, Alcott. I'd like to see them."

"See them? Hell, you can have them. The least I can do for you, after everything I've put you through."

"I hope you'll do that for me, Senator. I'm serious."

"Sure, have 'em! Take anything you want! Kind of a fire sale on my brain products. You know, if we invade Europe, Oscar, it probably means a nuclear exchange."

Oscar lowered his voice soothingly. "I really don't think so, Al." "They're trifling with the grand old USA, these little Dutch creeps. Them and their wooden shoes and tulips. We're a superpower! We can pulverize them." Lorena spoke up. "I think it's time for your medication, Alcott."

"I need to know what Oscar really thinks about the war! I'm all in favor of it. I'm a hawk! We've been pushed around by these little red-green Euro pipsqueaks long enough. Don't you think so, Oscar?"

A nurse arrived. "You tell the President my opinion!" the Sena-tor insisted as the nurse led him away. "You tell Two Feathers I'm with him all the way down."

Lorena moved back into camera range. She looked grim and stricken.

"You have a lot of new krewepeople now, Lorena."

"Oh. That." She looked into the camera. "I never got back to you about the Moira situation, did I?"

"Moira? I thought we had that problem straightened out and packed away with mothballs."

"Oh, Moira was on her best behavior after that jail incident. Until Huey came looking for Moira. Now Moira works for Huey in Baton Rouge."

"Oh no."

"It got very bad for the krewe after that. Their morale suffered so much with the Senator's illness, and once Huey had our former press agent in his own court ... well, I guess you can imagine what it's been like."

"You've lost a lot of people?"

"Well, we just hire new ones, that's all." She looked up. "Maybe someday you can come back to us."

"That would be good. The reelection campaign, maybe."

"That should be a real challenge. . . . You're so good with him. You were always so good with him. That silly business with his old architecture plans. It really touched him, he was very lucid for a minute there. He was just like his old self with you."

''I'm not just humoring him, Lorena. I really want those disaster relief plans. I want you to make sure that they're sent to me here. I think I can use them."

"Oscar, what are you really doing over there? It seems like a very strange thing. I don't think it's in the interests of the Federal Demo-crats. It's not a sensible reform, it's not like what we had in mind."

"That's true-it's certainly not what we had in mind."

"It's that Penninger woman, isn't it? She's just not right for you. She's not your type. You know that Moira knows all about you and Greta Penninger, don't you? Huey knows too."