“The only problem I see here is you. And your problem is that you can’t do me any harm.”

Oscar sighed. “Yes, I can, actually. I’ve read your lab reports.”

“What are you talking about? I’m in administration! I haven’t published a paper in ten years.”

“Well, I’ve read your papers, Mr. Director. Of course, I’m not a trained geneticist, so, sad to say, I didn’t understand them. But I did audit them. They all received full-scale, nitpicking scans from an op-positional research team. You published seventy-five papers in your scientific career, everyone of them jam-packed with numerical tables. Your numbers add up beautifully. Too beautifully, because six of them have the same sets of data.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that someone got lazy at the lab bench, and skipped the boring gruntwork.”

Felzian turned red. “What? You can’t prove that.”

“Unfortunately for you, yes, I can prove it. Because it’s all there in black and white. Back in your publish-or-perish days, you were in a big hurry, you had to cut some corners. And that’s bad. It’s very bad. For a scientist, it’s professionally fatal. Once we out you as a scientific fraud, you won’t have a friend left to your name. Your colleagues will break your sword and tear off your epaulets.”

Felzian said nothing.

Oscar shrugged. “As I said before, I’m not a scientist. I don’t take scientific fraud with the lethal seriousness that you scientists do. Personally, I don’t see how your fraud did any great harm, since no one was paying attention to those papers anyway. You were just a fair-to-middling talent in a very competitive field, trying to pad out your rйsumй.”

“I was completely unaware of this so-called problem. It must have been my grad students.”

Oscar chuckled. “Look, we both know that can’t get you off the hook. Sure, you can hide behind buck-passing when it comes to mere financial fraud. But this isn’t mere money. These are your lab results, your contribution to science. You cooked the books. If I out you on that, we both know you’re through. So why discuss this any further? Let’s get to the real agenda.”

“What is it you want from me?”

“I want you to resign, and I need your help in establishing the new Director.”

“Greta Penninger.”

“No,” Oscar said at once, “we both know that’s just not doable. Greta Penninger has been tactically useful to me, but I have another candidate that will be much more to your liking. In fact, he’s an old colleague of yours — Professor John Feduccia, the former president of Boston University.”

Felzian was astonished. “John Feduccia? How did he get onto the A-list?”

“Feduccia’s the ideal candidate! He’s very seasoned in adminis-tration, and he had an early career at the University of Texas, so that gives him the necessary local appeal. Plus, Feduccia is a personal friend of Senator Bambakias. Best of all, Feduccia is politically sound. He’s a Federal Democrat.”

Felzian stared at him in amazement. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been leading on poor Greta Penninger, while all this time you’ve been planning to bring in some Yankee who’s a personal crony of your boss?”

Oscar frowned. “Look, don’t be uncharitable. Of course I ad-mire Greta Penninger. She was perfectly suited for the role that she’s already played here. She’s created a groundswell for change, but she can’t possibly run this facility. She doesn’t understand Washington. We need a responsible adult for that job, a seasoned hand from out-side, someone who understands political reality. Feduccia’s a pro. Greta’s naive, she’s too easily swayed. She’d be a disaster.”

“Actually, I think she might do very well.”

“No, she’ll do much better where she belongs — back behind her lab bench. We can ease her off the board now, and back to her proper role as a working researcher, and everything will fall neatly into place.”

“So that you can continue having an affair with her, and nobody will bother to notice it.”

Oscar said nothing.

“Whereas, if she became Director, she’d be right in the public spotlight. So your sordid little dalliance becomes impossible.”

Oscar stirred in his seat. “I really didn’t expect this of you. This is truly beneath you. It’s not the act of a gentleman and scholar.”

“You didn’t think I knew anything about that business, did you? Well, I’m not quite the helpless buffoon that you take me for! Pen-ninger is the next Director. You and your scurvy krewe can sneak back to Washington. I’m leaving this office — no, not because you’re forcing me out, but because I’m sick to death if this Job!”

Felzian banged his desk. “It’s very bad here now. Since we lost our support in the Senate, it’s impossible. It’s a farce now, it’s untena-ble! I’m washing my hands of you, and Washington, and everything that you stand for. And keep one thing in mind, young man. With Penninger in office here, if you out me, I can out you. You might embarrass me — even humiliate me. But if you ever try it, I’ll out you and the new Director. I’ll break you both in public, like a pair of matchsticks.”

8

The abrupt departure of Dr. Felzian gave Oscar a vital window of opportunity. With the loss of his patron Bambakias, he had very little to fall back on. He had to seize the initiative. Their numbers were small, their re-sources narrow, their budget nonexistent. The order of the day was sheer audacity.

During Greta’s first day as Director, her followers formed a Strike Committee and physically occupied the Hot Zone. Strikers commandeered the airlocks overnight, overriding all the police-installed safety locks and replacing them with brand-new strikers’ pass-cards. Seizing the Hot Zone made excellent strategic sense, since the giant ce-ramic tower dominated the facility. The Hot Zone was a natural fortress.

Given this physical safe haven, the second order of business in Oscar’s internal coup was to attack and seize the means of information. The Hot Zone’s computers re-ceived a long-postponed security overhaul. This revealed an appalling number of police back doors, unregistered users, and whole forests of snooping crackerware. These freeloaders were all swiftly purged.

The lab’s internal phone system was still under the control of the Collaboratory police. The lab’s tiny corps of police were something of a comic-opera outfit, but they had been suborned by Huey long ago. They represented the greatest local threat to Greta’s fledgling administration. The lab’s phone system was rid-dled with taps, and beyond secure repair.

So, the strikers simply abandoned the phone system entirely, and replaced it with a homemade network of dirt-cheap nomad cellphones. These semi-licit gizmos ran off relay stakes, hammered into walls, ceilings, roofs, and (in a particularly daring midnight ma-neuver) all across the underside of the dome.

Greta’s first official act as Director was to abolish the Public Re-lations department. She accomplished this through the lethally effec-tive tactic of zeroing-out the PR budget. She then returned the funds to Congress. Given the ongoing federal budget crisis, this was a very difficult move to parry politically.

Within the lab itself, abolishing the PR department was a hugely popular decision. At long last, the tedious jabber of the obnoxious pop-science pep squad ceased to irritate the local populace. There was no more chummy propaganda from on high, no more elbow-grabbing official email, no more obligatory training videos, nothing but blissful quiet and time to think and work.

The Collaboratory’s official PR was replaced by Oscar’s revolu-tionary poster campaign. A Strike, of course, needed effective propa-ganda even more than did the dead Establishment, and Oscar was just the man to supply this. The giant cyclopean walls inside the dome were absolutely perfect for political poster work. Oscar had never run a campaign among people with such extremely high levels of literacy. He took real pleasure in the antique handicrafts involved.