She was brightening. “Well…”

The door of Room 358 opened, and a black woman came through, in a creaking motorized wheelchair. She had a shock of dirty gray hair and a load of green plastic trash bags.

“I understand about the work,” Oscar said into the phone, while backing cautiously away from the door. “Boston is totally doable.”

“Hi there!” said the wheelchair woman, waving one hand. Os-car slipped his fingers over the phone’s mouthpiece and nodded po-litely.

The black woman bounded up from her wheelchair, shut it down, and held the door open. Three Anglo men barged into the room, in denim overalls, boots, and battered straw hats. Their hair was dyed blue, their faces were streaked with nomad war paint, and they all wore sunglasses. One of them pushed a mighty wheelbarrow full of wires and flatscreens, and the two others carried large khaki-colored electrical toolboxes.

“You really think that fibrils are hot enough for you to do all that for me?” Greta said plaintively.

“Fibrils are extremely hot.”

The woman with the wheelchair tugged off her fright wig, re-vealing a neat set of cornrows. She then shrugged off her ragged caf-tan. Beneath it she wore a navy blue skirt, a blue vest, a silk blouse, and hose.

Her three technicians began assembling a conference network on the welder-stained workbench.

“I’m Oscar Valparaiso,” Oscar announced loudly. “I’m with the committee.”

“You’re early,” the woman told him. She fetched a power-strip and a new set of shoes from one of her trash bags.

“I enjoy a fresh start.” Oscar returned to his phone. “Okay. Okay. Good. I’m glad it’s working out. Lana and I will see to every-thing. Good-bye.” He crumpled his phone and tucked it in his sleeve.

“So,” he said aloud, “what’s your name?”

“Chris,” the new woman said, carefully straightening a seam. “I’m the committee sysop.” She smiled. “Just the lowly sysop.”

“And is this your krewe?”

“I don’t have a krewe. I’m just a GS-Five. These guys are net subcontractors, they all live here in the squat. See, it’s a little weird about this meeting room… I mean, for years we met in the Dirk-sen Senate Building. But the President’s transition team has requisi-tioned our old offices. So, the Senate Science Committee is kind of between permanent housing assignments right now.”

“I see.”

“They assigned us this room off the federal vacancy server. The trouble is, even though it’s still listed in the server, in reality, this whole building’s been a squat for three years. And we’re not an Emer-gency committee, so we can’t have the building cleared legally. We’re too low in the chain to have anyone evicted.”

“Well, at least it’s a nice big room,” Oscar said winningly.

“That’s true!” She smiled at him.

“And the two of us are here, so that’s a start. Your wheelchair bag-lady getup is extremely good, by the way.”

“Well, it sure helps a lot with the local roadblocks and ID checks.”

“I can see that you’re a true-blue Washingtonian, Chris.”

“That’s me — Southern efficiency and Northern charm.” Chris’s eye wandered and she elbowed one of her helpers aside. “No, that’s the visual outlet! It’s a sixteen-pin, okay? Let me do that!” She turned to a second man. “Get the router out of the bag. A router, and a squeegee. And a divot. Two data divots. No, not that one! Get me the green one.”

Oscar was charmed. “Do you do these metal sculptures, too, Chris?”

“Those are my boyfriend’s. He kind of guards this space for us, because he can leave the premises on short notice.” She glanced up. “It’s like multitasking, see?”

“I love multitasking.” Oscar’s second phone rang. He dragged it out of his vest pocket. “What? Yeah, Lana, book her through to Boston. To the AMAC conference. No, I don’t know what that acronym stands for. Just netsearch it.”

“Where’s the mediator? Get the baffles,” Chris riposted. She was watching him sidelong.

“Register her for the whole conference,” Oscar said, taking a half step closer and raising his voice for effect. “Get Yosh to finesse all that. And get her some catering. She likes Thai food. Burmese? Bur-mese is great, but mind her allergies.”

“Is it running DMAC? There’s a DMAC tower right on Fourteenth. See if they’re up.”

“The DMAC is up,” Oscar cross-posted loudly. “My phone runs on DMAC.” He switched ears. “Lana, book her into the con-vention hotel. Be sure to get air filters. And flowers. Flowers every day.”

“Did you put the compressor on the DNC?” Chris said intently, still watching Oscar with increasing interest. “You can’t load the router without the CMV first. Is that the EDFA? Well, use the packet squeegee.”

“Book her for a day over,” Oscar said. “For two days. Yeah. No. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” He crushed the phone.

“No, wiggle it,” Chris said. “It’s the cable.”

“It’s always the cable,” Oscar nodded.

The assembled screens flickered to life in a set of test patterns.

“Great,” Chris announced. “We’re up. Where’s the image groomer?”

“Got no groomer,” the contractor grumbled. “You didn’t say bring no groomer.”

“I didn’t know this new guy was gonna be here physically.”

“I can manage without an image groomer,” Oscar broke in. “I’ve brought my own makeup.”

Chris favored him with a precious moment of her full attention.

“You’re very traditional, Mr. Valparaiso.”

“Makeup is a vital part of Mr. Valparaiso’s heritage.” They were on the same wavelength. They were communicating beautifully on a nonverbal level. “Where’s everybody else, Chris? I understood we were meeting physically.”

Chris straightened warily. “Yeah, the sunshine laws do mandate open meetings, but this isn’t a senatorial meeting. It’s just a staff conference. No legislators present.”

“I thought the staff conferences were also physical meetings.”

“This is more of an informal on-line conferral, actually.”

Oscar offered her a calculated frown. “My event announcement specifically stated that this is a face-to-face staff conference.”

“Well, during the transition period we have to make procedural allowances … Look, I know this sounds goofy. But the staff hates going into squats like this. They called this a ‘conference,’ so they could get the hours logged and the conference perks. But really, it’s just a conferral.” She smiled meekly. “I’m just the sysop, you know. This isn’t my fault.”

“I understand perfectly that it’s not your fault, Chris. But if it’s just a conferral, we’re not being serious here. We won’t get results. ”

“You can get results at a conferral.”

“But I don’t want a conferral. If we’re going to shoptalk off-the-record, we could do it over dry martinis.”

The door opened. Three men and a woman came in. “Here’s Mr. Nakamura,” Chris said with relief, “I’m sure he can help you.” She retreated behind her machinery.

Nakamura stopped and read his secretary’s screen for forty sec-onds, establishing Oscar’s ID and dossier. He then moved forward briskly, hand outstretched. “Good to meet you again, Oscar! How was your trip from Texas?”

“My trip was lovely.”

“Where’s your krewe?” Nakamura gazed around the fire-blackened vault. “No support staff?”

“I have a secure tour bus. So I left my krewe on board there, and had them drop me off.”

Nakamura glanced at his two bodyguards, who were scoping the room for bugs with small handheld sniffers. “A secure tour bus. I wish you’d called me. I could have hitched a ride with you, and spared myself hiring these goons.”

Oscar felt very flattered to be offered such a blatant lie. “I’d have been delighted, sir.”

“I’m old-fashioned,” Nakamura declared. “Congress pays me, so I like to show up for duty.” Nakamura was the Science Committee’s longest-serving staffer. Nakamura had survived an astonishing number of purges, scandals, senatorial shake-ups-even repeated depredations and head-hunting raids from the Emergency committees.