“ ‘Upset’?” Bambakias said, lifting his chin as the dresser tucked in his ascot. “I wouldn’t say ‘upset.’ I would say ‘realistic.’ ”

“Well… realism is a matter of opinion.”

“I’ve triggered a state and federal crisis. Four hundred and twelve million dollars’ worth of military hardware has been looted by anar-chist bandits and has vanished into the swamps. It’s the worst event of its kind since Fort Sumter in 1861; what’s there to be upset about?”

“But, Al, that was never your intention. You can’t be blamed for those developments.”

“But I was there,” Bambakias insisted. “I was with those people. Yeah… I talked to all of them, I gave them my word of honor… I have the tapes to prove it! Let’s run through all the evidence just one more time. We should see this together. Where’s my sysadmin? Where’s Edgar?”

“Edgar’s in Washington,” the dresser told him quietly.

The Senator’s hollow face tightened drastically. “Do I have to do everything myself?”

“I followed the siege situation,” Oscar said. “I’m very up to speed on developments.”

“But I was there!” Bambakias insisted. “I could have helped. I could have built barricades. I could have brought in generators… But when that gas hit them, they lost their minds. That’s when it all really hit me. This wasn’t a game at all. It was no game. We weren’t players. We’d all gone mad.”

There was an evil silence.

“He spent a lot of time on the net with those Air Force people,” the dresser told them meekly. “He really was almost there with them. Practically.” Suddenly her eyes brimmed with tears. “I’ll find his hat,” she said, and left with her head hung low.

A lunch trolley arrived, set for two. The chowder was served. Oscar moved his featherweight responsive chair and flicked a linen napkin ostentatiously. “This is not a defeat, Al. It’s just a skir-mish. There’s still plenty of space on the old go board. A Senate term lasts six years.”

“A lot of good that does them. They’re in camps now! Can you believe that our government is that cynical? They’ve left our soldiers in the hands of the man who gassed them!” Bambakias waved a hand at the flickering screen behind him… “I’ve been watching him spin this. Huey. As if he’d rescued them. The son of a bitch is their public savior!”

“Well, it was a very ugly incident, but at least there were no fatalities. We can put that behind us now. Tomorrow’s another day.” Oscar lifted his gleaming soup spoon and creamed off a layer of chow-der. He sipped it pretentiously. It was, as always, superb.

“Hold on,” he told Greta, who had made no move to eat. “This isn’t right.” He sat up. “What’s with your chef, Alcott? Canned chowder?”

Bambakias scowled. “What?”

“This is not your special chowder.”

“Of course it is. Has to be.”

“Try it,” Oscar insisted.

Greta nodded permission, unneeded since the Senator had lunged from his bed and grabbed at her spoon. He sampled the bowl.

“Kind of a coppery undertaste,” Oscar alleged, squinting.

Bambakias had two more spoonfuls. “Nonsense,” he growled. “It’s delicious.”

The two of them ate rapidly, in rabid silence. “I’ll find another chair,” Greta murmured. She rose and left the room.

Bambakias settled into Greta’s vacated chair and crunched half a handful of oyster crackers. His dresser arrived again, and set the Sena-tor’s hat and cape nearby. Bambakias ignored her, bending over his bowl with a painful effort. His hands were badly palsied; he could barely grip his spoon.

“I could sure do with a milk shake right now,” Oscar mused. “You know, like we used to have on the campaign.”

“Good idea,” Bambakias said absently. He lifted his chin, ges-tured with two fingertips, and spoke into apparently empty air. “Vince; two campaign power milk shakes.”

“Did Sosik show you the latest polls, Al? You’ve done a lot better by this episode than you seem to think.”

“No, that’s where you are both totally wrong. I’ve ruined every-thing. I provoked a major crisis before I was even sworn into office. And now that I’m a stinking criminal just like the rest of them, I’ll have no choice — from now on I’ll have to play the game just the way they like it. And the Senate is a sucker’s game.”

“Why do you say that?” Oscar said.

Bambakias swallowed painfully and raised one bony finger.

“There are sixteen political parties in this country. You can’t govern with a political culture that fragmented. And the parties are just the graphic interface for the real chaos underneath. Our education system has collapsed. Our health system is so bad that we have organ-sharing cliques. We’re in a State of Emergency.”

“You’re not telling me anything new here,” Oscar chided. He leaned over and stared enviously into Barnbakias’s chowder. “Are you going to finish that?”

Bambakias hunched over his bowl with a wolfish glare.

“Okay, no problem.” Oscar raised his voice to address the hid-den microphones. “Vincent, hurry up with those shakes! Bring us more chowder. Bring dinner rolls.”

“I don’t want any damn dinner rolls,” Bambakias muttered. His eyes were watering and his face was flushed. “Our wealth disparities are insane,” he mumbled into his soup. “We have a closed currency and a shattered economy. We have major weather disasters. Toxic pol-lution. Plunging birth rates. Soaring death rates. It’s bad. It’s really bad. It’s totally hopeless, it’s all over.”

“Vincent, bring us something serious. Quick. Bring us teriyaki. Bring us some dim sum.”

“What are you rambling on about?” Bambakias said.

“Alcott, you’re embarrassing me. I promised Dr. Penninger some good food here, and you’ve gone and eaten her lunch!”

Bambakias stared at the dregs of chowder. “Oh my God …”

“Alcott, let me handle this. The least you can do is sit here with us and see that your guest is properly fed.”

“God, I’m sorry!” Bambakias moaned. “God, I’ve been so wrong about everything. You handle it, Oscar! You handle it.”

Two milk shakes arrived in fluted glasses, their bases caked with frost. The chef himself brought them in, on a cork-lined salver. He gazed at Oscar with a look of dazed gratitude and backed hastily out of the office.

Bambakias’s lean Adam’s apple glugged methodically. “Let me tell you something really awful,” he said, wiping his mouth on his shirtsleeve. “This whole business has been a tragic error from day one. The Emergency committee never meant to drop that air base. Their management and budget software was buggy. Nobody ever double-checked, because everything the stupid bastards do is an offi-cial emergency! So when the screwup became obvious, everybody just assumed it had been done deliberately — because it was such a clever, sneaky way to screw with Huey. They’re dying to screw him, because Huey’s the only politician in America who knows what he wants and can stick with it. But when I went looking for the silent genius who was running this brilliant conspiracy, there was nobody there.”

“They gave you that line of guff? I hope you didn’t believe that,” Oscar said, silently switching Bambakias’s empty glass for his own. “These Emergency creeps are geniuses at sleight of hand.”

“Yeah? Then tell me who has been trying to get you shot!” Bambakias belched. “Same issue, same controversy — you could have been killed because of this! But whose fault is it? Nobody’s fault. You hunt for the man responsible, and it’s some nasty piece of software half a light-year out of the chain of command.”

“That’s not political thinking, Alcott.”

“Politics don’t work anymore! We can’t make politics work, be-cause the system’s so complex that its behavior is basically random. Nobody trusts the system anymore, so nobody ever, ever plays it straight. There are sixteen parties, and a hundred bright ideas, and a million ticking bleeping gizmos, but nobody can follow through, exe-cute, and deliver the goods on time and within specs. So our politics has become absurd. The country’s reduced to chaos. We’ve given up on the Republic. We’ve abandoned democracy. I’m not a Senator! I’m a robber baron, a feudal lord. All I can do is build a personality cult.”