They stared at him, appalled.

“I am talking sense to you here,” Oscar insisted, his voice rising to an angry buzz. “I am not ranting. I possess a perspective here that you people, who are locked in the ivory basements of your own sub-cultures, simply do not possess. It is no use my soft-pedaling the truth to you. You are in a crisis. This is a crux. You have both severed your lifelines to the rest of society. You need to overcome your stupid prejudice, and unite as a powerful coalition. And if you could only do this, the world would be yours!”

Oscar leaned forward. Inspiration blazed within him like Platonic daylight. “We can survive this Emergency. We could even prevail. We could grow. If we handled it right, this could catch on!”

“All right,” Greta said. “Calm down. I have one question. They’re nomads, aren’t they? What happens after they leave us?”

“You think that we’ll run away,” Burningboy said.

Greta looked at him, sad at having given offense. “Don’t you always run away? I thought that was how you people survived.”

“No, you’re the gutless ones!” Burningboy shouted. “You’re sup-posed to be intellectuals! You’re supposed to be our visionaries! You’re supposed to be giving people a grasp of the truth, something to look up to, the power, the knowledge, higher reality. But what are you people really? You’re not titans of intellect. You’re a bunch of cheap geeks, in funny clothes that your mom bought you. You’re just an-other crowd of sniveling hangers-on who are dying for a government handout. You’re whining to me about how dirty morons like us can’t appreciate you — well, what the hell have you done for us lately? What do you want out of life, besides a chance to hang out in your lab and look down on the rest of us? Quit being such a pack of sorry weasels — do something big, you losers! Take a chance, for Christ’s sake. Act like you matter!”

“He’s really lost it,” Gazzaniga said, goggling in wounded amazement. “This guy has no grasp of real life.”

Flagboy’s phone rang. He spoke briefly, then handed the phone to his leader.

Burningboy listened. “I gotta go,” he announced abruptly. “There’s been a new development. The boys have brought in a prisoner.”

“What?” Kevin demanded. As the new police chief, Kevin was instantly suspicious. “We already agreed that you have no authority to take prisoners.”

Burningboy wrinkled his large and fleshy nose. “They captured him in the piney woods east of town, Mr. Police Chief, sir. Several kilometers outside your jurisdiction.”

“So then’s he’s a Regulator,” Oscar said. “He’s a spy.”

Burningboy put his notes and laptop in order, and nodded at Oscar reluctantly. “Yup.”

“What are you going to do to this captured person?” Greta said.

Burningboy shrugged, his face grim.

“I think this Committee needs to see the prisoner,” Oscar said.

“Oscar’s right,” said Kevin sternly. “Burningboy, I can’t have you manhandling suspects inside this facility, just on your own recog-nizance. Let’s interrogate him ourselves!”

“What are we, the Star Chamber?” Gazzaniga said, aghast. “We can’t start interrogating people!”

Kevin sneered. “Okay, fine! Albert, you’re excused. Go out for an ice cream cone. In the meantime, us grown-ups need to confront this terrorist guerrilla.”

Greta declared a five-minute break. Alerted by the live coverage over the loudspeakers, several more Committee members showed up. The break stretched into half an hour. The meeting was considerably enlivened by an impromptu demonstration of the prisoner’s captured possessions.

The apprehended Regulator had been posing as a poacher. He had a pulley-festooned compound bow that would have baffled Wil-liam Tell. The bow’s graphite arrows contained self-rifling gyroscopic fletching and global-positioning-system locator units. The scout also owned boot-spike crampons and a climber’s lap-belt, ideal for exten-sive lurking in the tops of trees. He carried a ceramic bowie knife.

These deadly gizmos might have passed muster on a standard hunter, but the other evidence cinched the case against him: he had a hammer and a pack of sabotage tree-spikes. Tree-spikes, which ruined saw blades, were common enough for radical Greens; but these spikes contained audio bugs and cellphone repeaters. They could be hammered deep into trees, and they would stay there forever, and they would listen, and they would even take phone calls. They had bizarre little pores in them so that they could drink sap for their bat-teries.

The Committee passed the devices from hand to hand, studying them with grave attention, much as if they captured saboteurs every day. Producing a pocket multitool, Gazzaniga managed to pry one of the spikes open. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This thing’s got a mito-chondrial battery.”

“Nobody has mitochondrial batteries,” objected the new head of the Instrumentation division. “We don’t even have mitochondrial batteries, and the damned things were invented here.”

“Then I want you to explain to me how a telephone runs on wet jelly,” Gazzaniga said. “You know something? These spikes sure look a lot like our vegetation monitors.”

“It was all invented here,” Oscar said. “This is all Collaboratory equipment. You’ve just never seen it repackaged and repurposed.”

Gazzaniga put the spike down. Then he picked up a dented tin egg. “Now this thing here — see, this is the sort of thing you associate with nomad technology. Scrap metal, all crimped together, obviously homemade … So what is this thing?” He shook it near his ear. “It rattles.”

“It’s a piss bomb,” Burningboy told him.

“What?”

“See those holes in the side? That’s the timer. It’s genetically engineered corn kernels. Once they’re in hot water, the seeds swell up. They rupture a membrane inside, and then the charge ignites.”

Oscar examined one of the crude arson bombs. It had been cre-ated by hand: by a craftsman with a hole punch, a ball peen hammer, and an enormous store of focused resentment. The bomb was a dumb and pig-simple incendiary device with no moving parts, but it could easily incinerate a building. The seeds of genetically engineered maize were dirt-cheap and totally consistent. Corn like that was so uniform in its properties that it could even be used as a timepiece. It was a bad, bad gizmo. It was bad enough as a work of military technology. As a work of primitive art, the piss bomb was stunningly effective. Oscar could feel sincere contempt and hatred radiating from it as he held it in his hand.

The prisoner now arrived, handcuffed, and with an escort of four Moderators. The prisoner wore a full-length hunter’s suit of gray and brown bark-and-leaf camou, including a billed cap. His lace-up boots were clogged with red mud. He had a square nose, large hairy ears, heavy brows, black shiny eyes. He was a squat and heavy man in his thirties, with hands like callused bear paws. He’d suffered a swollen scrape along his unshaven jaw and had a massive bruise on his neck.

“What happened to him? Why is he injured?” Greta said.

“He fell off his bicycle,” Burningboy offered flatly.

The prisoner was silent. It was immediately and embarrassingly obvious to all concerned that he was not going to tell them a thing. He stood solidly in the midst of their boardroom, reeking of wood-smoke and sweat, radiating complete contempt for them, everything they stood for, and everything they knew. Oscar examined the Regulator with deep professional interest. This man was astoundingly out of place. It was as if a rock-hard cypress log had been hauled from the bat-haunted depths of the swamp and dumped on the carpet before them.

“You really think you’re a tough customer, don’t you?” Kevin said shrilly.

The Regulator signally failed to notice him.

“We can nuke you talk,” Kevin growled. “Wait’ll I load up my anarchy philes on improvising interrogation! We’ll do hideous and gruesome things to you! With wire, and matchsticks, and like that.”