“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.