“It’s me,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She looked up, nodded, and returned her attention to the lenses.

“Why did you leave the party?”

“Why shouldn’t I? You weren’t paying any attention to me.” Oscar was surprised, even mildly thrilled, to see Greta being coy.

“We’re in the Emergency Committee. You see me for hours and hours every day.”

“We’re never together. You’ve lost interest in me. You’re neglect-ing me.”

Oscar paused. He was certainly interested now. It occurred to hirn suddenly that he deeply enjoyed this part of a relationship. Women always seemed more interesting to him as objects of negotia-tion than they were as lovers or partners. This was a sinister self-revelation. He felt very contrite about it.

“Greta, I don’t like to admit it, but you’re right. Now that ev-eryone knows we’re lovers, we never have time for ourselves. We were together in a public situation tonight, and I tactlessly deserted you. I admit that. I regret it. I’m going to make it up to you.”

“Listen to yourself It’s like you’re addressing a committee. We’re just two politicians now. You talk to me like a diplomat. I have to read speeches from the President that are full of lies. I don’t get to work at anything that interests me. I spend my whole life in an endless political crisis. I hate administration. God, I feel so guilty.”

“Why? It’s important work. Someone has to do it. You’re good at it! People respect you.”

“I never felt this guilty when we were off in beach hotels having sleazy, half-violent sex. It wasn’t the center of my life or anything, but it was really interesting. A good-looking, charming guy with hun-dred-and-one-degree core body heat, that’s pretty fascinating. A lot more interesting than watching all my research die on the vine.”

“Oh no, not you too,” Oscar said. “Don’t tell me you’re turning on me now when I’ve put so much effort into this. So many people have left me now. They just don’t believe it can work.”

She looked at him with sudden pity. “Poor Oscar. You’ve got it all backward. That’s not why I feel guilty. I’m guilty because I know it’s going to work. Talking with those Moderators for so long … I really understand it now. Science truly is going to change. It’ll still be ‘Science.’ It’ll have the same intellectual structure, but its political structure will be completely different. Instead of being poorly paid government workers, we’ll be avant-garde dissident intellectuals for the dispossessed. And that will work for us. Because we can get a better deal from them now than we can from the government. The proles are not so new; they’re just like big, hairy, bad-smelling college students. We can deal with people like that. We do it all the time.”

He brightened. “Are you sure?”

“It’ll be like a new academia, with some krewe feudal elements. It’ll be a lot like the Dark Ages, when universities were little legal territories all their own, and scholars carried maces and wore little square hats, and whenever the university was crossed, they sent huge packs of students into the streets to tear everything up, until they got their way. Except it’s not the Dark Ages right now. It’s the Loud Ages, it’s the Age of Noise. We’ve destroyed our society with how much we know, and how quickly and randomly we can move it around. We live in the Age of Noise, and this is how we learn to be the scientists of the Age of Noise. We don’t get to be government functionaries who can have all the money we want just because we give the government a lot of military-industrial knowledge. That’s all over now. From now on we’re going to be like other creative intellec-tuals. We’re going to be like artists or violin-makers, with our little krewes of fans who pay attention and support us.”

“Wonderful, Greta. It sounds great!”

“We’ll do cute, attractive, sexy science, with small amounts of equipment. That’s what science has to be in America now. We can’t do it the European way, where there’s all kinds of moral fretting and worrying about what technology will do to people; there’s no fun in that, it’s just not American. We’ll be like Orville Wright in the bicycle shed from now on. It won’t be easier for us. It’ll be harder for us. But we’ll have our freedom. Our American freedom. It’s a vote of confi-dence in the human imagination.”

“You are a politician, Greta! You’ve had a big breakthrough here. I’m with you all the way.” He felt so proud.

“Sure — it might be wonderful, if it were somebody else doing this. I hate doing this to science. I’m deeply sorry that I’m doing it. But I’m on the cutting edge, and I just don’t have any choice.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

“What?” she demanded. “I’d rather be finishing my paper on inhibition of acetylcholine release in the hippocampus. It’s all I ever wanted to do! I live and dream that someday this horrible mess will all be finished, and somehow, somebody will let me do what I want.”

“I know that’s what you want. I really understand that now. I know what it means, too, Greta: it means I’ve failed you.”

“No. Yes. Well, it doesn’t matter. The big picture is going to work.”

“I don’t see how.”

“I can show you.” She found her purse and left the room. A light came on. He heard water running. It occurred to Oscar that he had entirely forgotten the original subject of his visit. Huey. Huey, and his purported refugee camp full of Haitians. He was absolutely sure that Huey, obsessed with Cognition as the Next Big Thing, had done something ecstatic and dreadful. He knew it had something to do with Greta’s neural work. Hellishly, Greta herself had absolutely no interest in the practical implications of the things she did. She couldn’t bear the strangling intellectual constraints involved in having to care. She couldn’t abide the foul and endless political and moral implica-tions of the pure pursuit of knowledge. They bored her beyond all reason. They just weren’t science. There was nothing scientific about them. The reactions of society no longer made any sense. Innovation had burned out the brakes. What could become of scientists in a world like that? What the hell was to be done with them?

She entered the room. She’d given herself a rapid little makeover at the bathroom sink. Her eyes were lined in jagged black, her cheeks streaked in colored war paint.

He was stunned.

“I didn’t invent this myself,” she said defensively. “Your image consultant did it for me — for the party tonight. I was going to wear it to the party for you, but it was just too ridiculous. So I scraped it all off at the last minute.”

“Oh, that was a big mistake,” he said, and laughed in astonish-ment. “That is beautiful. That is truly hot. That is beyond amazing. It is so transgressive. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

“You’re seeing a thirty-six-year-old Jewish woman who’s made up like a crazy derelict.”

“Oh no. The fact that it’s Greta Penninger, that’s what makes it work. That it’s a Nobel Prize-winning federal lab Director who is still in her hose and a lab coat, and she’s outed herself as an urban guer-rilla.” He bit his lip. “Turn around for me. Show me.”

She spread her hands and whirled in place. She had a junk-jewelry headdress of linked beads clipped in the back of her head. “You like this, don’t you? I guess it’s not that bad. I don’t look any weirder than the President does, do I?”

“Greta…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t understand how well that works. That really works for me. I’m getting all hot and bothered. ”

She gazed at him in surprise. “Huh. My mother always said a good makeover would get a guy’s attention.”

“Take the lab coat off. In fact, take your blouse off.”

“Wait a minute. Put your hands down.”

“You know how long it’s been? Absolutely forever. I can’t even remember the last time.”

“Okay! Later! In a bed! And when your face isn’t that color.” He put his hand to his cheek. His skin was blazing. Surprised, he touched his ears. His ears were so hot they felt stir-fried. “Wow,” he muttered. “I’m all overcome.”