“Forget it,” Oscar said. “The Senate’s a billionaire’s club, but if they start running the country right out of their own pockets, that’s feudalism. Feudalism is not professional.”
Pelicanos nodded. “Okay. Then we’ll have to raise funds our-selves. How about the standard campaign methods? Direct mail. Rub-ber-chicken banquets. Rallies, garage sales, charity events. Who are the core prospects here?”
“Well, if this were a normal campaign…” Oscar rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We’d hit up the alumni of her alma mater, Jewish temple groups, scientific professional societies… And of course the Collaboratory’s business suppliers. They’re plenty mad at us right now, but they’ll fall out of the trough completely, if the place ever closes down. We might be able to sweet-talk them into fronting us some cash, if we threaten them with total destruction.”
“Are there any rich, overclass scientists? There have got to be some rich scientists, right?”
“Sure there are — in Asia and Europe.”
“You guys sure don’t think very big,” Kevin chided.
Oscar gazed at him tolerantly. He was growing rather fond of Kevin. Kevin really worked hard; he’d become the heart and soul of the foulest part of the coup. “How big are we supposed to think, Kevin?”
“You guys don’t realize what you have here. You’ve got a perfect nomad rally-ground inside that lab. It’s like you’ve roadblocked the place; you can do anything you want with it. Why don’t you ask all the scientists in America to come down here and join you?”
Oscar sighed. “Kevin, bear with us. You’ve got the problem ex-actly backward. The point is, we’re trying to feed and supply two thousand people, even though they’re on strike. If we get a million of them, we’re sunk.”
“No you’re not,” Kevin said. “If a million scientists showed up here and joined you, that wouldn’t be just a strike anymore. It would be a revolution. You wouldn’t just take over this one federal lab. You could take over the whole town. Probably the whole county. Maybe a big part of the state.”
Pelicanos laughed. “How are we supposed to manage a giant horde of freeloading scientists?”
“You’d use nomads, man. Who else knows how to run a giant horde of people with no money? You throw open your airlocks, and you promise them shelter in there. You give ’em propaganda tours, you show ’em all the pretty plants and animals. You get the cops and the feds off their backs for once, and you give them a big role to play in your own operation. The proles would become a giant support krewe for your egghead contingent. See, it’s people power, street power. It’s an occupying army, just like Huey likes to use.”
Oscar laughed. “They’d tear this place apart!”
“Sure, they could do that — but what if they decided not to? Maybe they’d decide that they liked the place. Maybe they’d look after it. Maybe they’d build it even bigger.”
Oscar hesitated. The construction angle hadn’t occurred to him. He’d always done extremely well by the construction angle. The con-struction angle was the best political wild card he’d ever had. Most politicians couldn’t create luxury hotels out of software and sweat eq-uity, but those who could had an off-the-wall advantage. He was sitting inside the construction angle at this very moment, and it was working out just fine. “How much bigger?”
“How big would we need it?” Pelicanos said.
“Well, how many nomad proles would be joining our construction krewe?”
“You want me to load a spreadsheet?” Kevin said.
“Forget it, it’s too good to be true,” Pelicanos said. “Sure, maybe we could get distributed instantiation to scale-up. But we’d never be able to trust nomads. They’re all in Huey’s pockets.”
Kevin snorted. “The Regulators are in Huey’s pockets, but good Lord, fellas, Louisiana proles are not the only proles around. You guys have spent too much time in Boston. Wyoming was on fire, man! There are proles and dissidents all over the USA. There’s millions of proles.”
With a stern effort of will, Oscar forced himself to consider Kevin’s proposal seriously. “An army of unemployed nomads, con-structing giant, intelligent domes … You know, that’s really a compelling image. I really hate to dismiss that idea out of hand. It’s so modern and photogenic and nonlinear. There’s a lovely carrying-the-war-to-the-enemy momentum there.”
Pelicanos narrowed his eyes. “Kevin, who’s the heaviest prole mob you know?”
“Well, the Regulators are the heaviest. They have state support from Huey, and they just smashed a federal air base. So they’ve got to be the strongest mob around — everybody knows that by now. But, well, there’s the Moderators. The Moderators are big. Plus, they hate the Regulators’ guts.”
“Why is that?” Oscar said, leaning forward with galvanized interest.
Kevin shrugged. “Why do mobs always hate other mobs? Some-body stole somebody’s girlfriend, somebody hacked somebody’s phones. They’re mobs. So they have no laws. So they have to feud with each other. It’s tribal. Tribes always act like that.”
Pelicanos scratched his jaw. “You know, Oscar, there’s no ques-tion that the Collaboratory is a much more attractive facility than some run-down federal air base.”
“You’re absolutely right, Yosh. That dome has real charisma. There’s a definite demand-pull there.”
There was a long, thoughtful silence.
“Time for a coffee,” Oscar announced, rising and fetching some. “Let’s run a reality check, guys. Forget all this blue-sky stuff — what’s the agenda? Our agenda here is to gently embarrass the powers that be, and get them to cut some operational slack for federal researchers. At the end of the day, Congress will fund this place at about half last year’s fiscal levels. But in return, we’ll get more direct power into the hands of the lab people. So we’ll create a workable deal. We’ll keep the lab in business, but without all the pork and the graft. That’s a perfectly decent accomplishment. It’s something we could all be very proud of.”
He sipped his coffee. “But if we let this situation spin out of control like Kevin is suggesting… Well, I actually suspect that it’s possible. What Huey did to the Air Force, that proves that it’s possible. But it’s not doable, because there’s no brakes. There are no brakes, because I can’t control the course of events. I don’t have the author-ity. I’m just a Senate staffer!”
“That’s never stopped you so far,” Kevin pointed out.
“Well, I admit that, Kevin, but… Well, I don’t like your idea because it’s bad ideology. I’m a Federal Democrat. We’re a serious-minded Reform party. We’re not a revolutionary vanguard, we can leave all that to self-marginalizing, violent morons. I’m operating un-der a lot of legal and ethical constraints here. I can’t have huge mobs commandeering federal facilities.”
Kevin sniffed. “Well, Huey did it.”
“Huey’s a Governor! Huey has a legislative branch and a judi-ciary. Huey was elected by the people, he won his last race with seventy-two percent of a ninety-percent voter turnout! I can’t paralyze the country with insane stunts like that, I just don’t have the power! I’m not a magician! I’mjust a freshman Senate staffer. I don’t get my own way just because things are theoretically possible. Hell, I can’t even sleep with my own girlfriend.”
Kevin looked at Pelicanos. “Yosh, can’t you arrange it so this poor bastard can sleep with his girlfriend? She’d understand this sit-uation. He’s getting all mentally cramped now. He’s losing his edge.”
“Well, that’s doable,” Pelicanos said. “You could resign from the Senate Science Committee, and take over here as Greta’s official chief of staff I don’t think anyone would mind Greta sleeping with one of her staffers. I mean, technically it’s workplace sex harassment, but gee whiz.”
Oscar frowned darkly. “I am not leaving the Senate Science Committee! You people have no understanding of what I have been through all this time, massaging those creeps backstage in Washington. It is incredibly hard doing that over a network; if you’re not in the office doing face-time with the Hill rats, they always write you off and screw you. I’ve been wiring flowers to their goddamn sysadmin for three weeks. When I get back to Washington, I’ll probably have to date her.”