“Mister, those are condemned roads. They’ve all been condemned by the State Highway Department. Tarmac pollutes the environment. So we’re cleaning up these roads as a public service. Tarmac is petro-leum-based, so we can crack it for fuel. We need the fuel so our little kids don’t freeze to death. Okay?”
Oscar touched his mute and the video windows in the campaign bus fell silent. He called out, “Hey, Jimmy, how are we doing for fuel?”
“We’re still okay, man,” Jimmy said distantly.
Oscar looked at the bunks. Lana, Donna, and Moira were fast asleep. The bus seemed painfully empty now, like a half-eaten tin of sardines. His krewe was dwindling away. He’d been forced to leave most of them in Texas, and he missed them sorely. He missed looking after his people, he missed cheering them up and cheering them on. He missed loading them and pointing them at something vulnerable.
Moira was fiercely determined to quit, and she was bitter about it. Fontenot was out of the picture for good now; he had dumped his phone and laptop in a bayou and moved into his new shack with a boat and fishing tackle. The Bambakias campaign team was the finest thing he had ever built, and now it was history, it was scattering to the winds. This realization inspired Oscar with deep, unreasoning dread.
“What do you make of all this?” he called out to Jimmy.
“Look, I’m driving,” Jimmy said reasonably. “I can’t watch the news and drive.”
Oscar made his way up the aisle to the front of the bus, where he could lower his voice. “I meant the nomads, Jimmy. I know you’ve had experience with them. I just wondered what you make of this development. Regulator guerrillas, strangling a U.S. Air Force base.”
“Everyone else is asleep, so now you have to talk to me, huh?”
“You know I always value your input. You have a unique perspective.”
Jimmy sighed. “Look, man, I don’t do ‘input.’ I just drive the bus. I’m your bus driver. Lemme drive.”
“Go ahead, drive! I just wondered if… if you thought they were a serious threat.”
“Some are serious… Sure. I mean, just because you’re a no-mad, and you’re on a reputation server with a big trust-rating, and you’re eating grass and home-brewing all kinds of weird bio-stuff… Look, that doesn’t make you anything special.”
“No. ”
“No, but some of ’em are pretty serious guys, because, well, you might bust some homeless loser someday who looks shabby and acts nuts, but it turns out he has heavy-duty netfriends from all over, and bad weird stuff starts happening to you out of thin air… But hell, Oscar, you don’t need me to tell you about that. You know all about power networks.”
“Yeah.”
“You do that kind of stuff yourself, that’s how you got that guy elected. ”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You’re on the road all the time. You’re a nomad yourself, just like they are. You’re a suit-nomad. Most people who meet you — if they don’t know you like we do — they have you figured for a really scary guy, man. You don’t have to worry about your reputation. There might be some nomad netgods who are scarier guys than you are, but not many, believe me. Hell, you’re rich.”
“Money isn’t everything.”
“Oh, come on! Look, I’m not smart enough to talk to you, okay?” Jimmy shrugged irritably. “You should be sleeping right now. Everybody else sleeps.” Jimmy checked a readout and gripped the wheel.
Oscar silently waited him out.
“I can drive eighteen hours a day, when I have to,” Jimmy said at last. “I don’t mind it. Hell, I like it. But I get tired out just watching you, man. Just watching you operate, it wears me all out. I just can’t keep up with you. I’m not in your league. I’m just a normal guy, okay? I don’t want to take over federal science bases. I’m just a work-ing guy from Boston, man. I drive buses.”
Jimmy checked the overhead scanner, and took a breath. “I’m gonna drive this bus back to Boston for you, and I’m gonna turn the bus in; and then I’m all done with you. Okay? I’m gonna take some time off after this. I mean, I want some real, no-kidding time off. I mean some leisure, that’s what I want. I’m gonna drink a lot of beer and go bowling, and then maybe if I’m lucky, then maybe I’ll get laid. But I’m not gonna hang out with politicians anymore.”
“You’d really leave my krewe, Jim?” Oscar said. “Just like that?”
“You hired me to drive this bus, man! Can’t you leave it at that? It’s a job! I don’t do crusades.”
“Don’t be hasty. I’m sure we could find another role for you in the organization.”
“No, man. You don’t have any role for me. Or for any guys like me. Why are there millions of nomads now? They don’t have jobs, man! You don’t care about ’em! You don’t have any use for ’em! You can’t make any use for them! They’re just not necessary to you. Not at all. Okay? So, you’re not necessary to them, either. Okay? They got real tired of waiting for you to give them a life. So now, they just make their own life by themselves, out of stuff they find lying around. You think the government cares? The government can’t even pay their own Air Force.”
“A country that was better organized would have a decent role for all its citizens.”
“Man, that’s the creepy part — they’re a lot better organized than the government is. Organization is the only thing they’ve got! They don’t have money or jobs or a place to live, but organization, they sure got plenty of that stuff. See, they’re exactly like you are, man. You and your campaign krewe, you’re a lot more organized than those dinosaur feds that are running the Collaboratory. You can take over that place anytime, right? I mean, that’s exactly what you’re going to do! You’re gonna take that place over. Whether they like it or not. You want it, so you’re just gonna take it.”
Oscar said nothing.
“That’s the part I’m gonna miss most, man. Watching you put your moves on people. Like that weird science chick you’re recruiting. Man, that move was totally brilliant. I just didn’t have the heart to leave, before I saw if you’d score with that science chick. But you nailed her, all right. You can do anything you want.” Jimmy laughed. “You’re a genius! But I’m not a genius, okay? I’m just not up for that. It’s too tiring.”
“I see.”
“So stop worrying so much, man. You wanna worry about something, worry about DC. We’re gonna be in DC by morning, and if this bus makes it out of that town in one piece, I’m gonna be a real happy guy.”
Washington, DC, enjoyed a permanent haze of aerial drones. Helicopters were also extremely common, since the authorities had basically surrendered the streets. Large sections of the nation’s capital were permanently impassable. Dissidents and protesters had occupied all public areas, permanently.
Nonviolent noncooperation had reached unheard-of strategic and tactical heights in the American capital. Its functional districts were privatized and guarded by monitors and swarms of private thugs, but huge sections of the city had surrendered to the squatters. The occupying forces came in a great many ideological flavors, and while they had come to an uneasy understanding with the government per se, they violently despised one another. Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, and the area east of Capitol Hill boasted murder rates of almost twentieth-century proportions.
In many neighborhoods of Washington the division of streets and housing had simply dissolved. Entire city blocks had been abandoned to the protesters, who had installed their own plumbing, water sys-tems, and power generators. Streets were permanently barricaded, swathed in camou nets and rain-streaked plastic sheeting.
The most remarkable of Washington’s autonomen were the groups known as “martians.” Frustrated by years of studied nonreaction to their crazy grievances, the martians had resolved to act as if the federal government simply didn’t exist. The martians treated the entire structure of Washington, DC, as raw material.