“It’s just makeup.”

“No it isn’t. Now I know why Donna wanted to stay around here — now I know why Donna said that things were just getting in-teresting. That woman is a little genius. You can’t claim that’s just skin-deep. That’s a lie, it’s like saying that a vow of chastity and a nun’s veil are just some words and some black cloth. Sure, it’s just a symbol, but it puts you in a whole different moral universe. I’m hav-ing a major brain wave here.”

“No, Oscar. I think you’re having some kind of fit.”

“This is going to work. This is huge. We’ve been thinking way too small. We’ve got to break out of the box. We’re going to carry the war right to the enemy. Listen. I need to go to Louisiana.”

“What? Why?”

“We’ll both go there together. We’re great whenever we’re there. Louisiana really works for us. We’ll go on a triumphal tour of the state. We will throw Huey and the Regulators totally on the de-fensive. We’ll go in a fleet of limos, with maximum media coverage. We’ll hire campaign buses, we’ll do a campaign tour. We’ll get sound trucks and copters. We will saturate the whole state. It’ll be totally romantic. We’ll give scandalous, teasing interviews. You’ll become a sexy science pop star. We’ll do pinups of you, T-shirts, bumper stick-ers, your own fragrance and lingerie. We’ll build little Collaboratories wherever we go. I’ve got all kinds of astounding plans from Bambakias that we can put to use right away. We’ll lead a people’s march on Baton Rouge. We’ll picket the statehouse. We’ll beard Huey right in his den. We’ll nail him down and erase him.”

“Oscar, you’re having a fit. You’re ranting.”

“I am? Really?”

“We can’t go to Louisiana. It’s too dangerous. We can’t leave the Collaboratory now. We’re having an Emergency here. People are afraid, they’re deserting us every day.”

“Get more people.”

“We can attract all the Moderators we want, but there’s no room for them here.”

“Build extensions onto the lab. Take over the town of Buna.”

“Oscar, you scare me when you’re like this.”

He lowered his voice. “Do I?”

“A little.” Her face was flushed beneath the war paint.

His heart wa pounding. He took a few deep breaths. He was past being frantic now. He was leveling out; he was cruising on a higher plane; he was exalted. “Darling, I’m going on a secret mission. I think it may be the crux of all our problems, but I may never come back. This may be the last private moment that we ever have together. I know I’ve upset you. I know I haven’t been everything you ex-pected. I may never see you again, but I’m leaving you with such a full and happy heart. I want to remember you looking like this, always. You are so special and dear to me that I can’t express it. You’re just such a brilliant, radiant creature.”

She put her hand to her forehead. “Oh my God. I just don’t know what to do with myself when you’re like this … You’re just so persuasive! Oh, well, never mind, come on with me, take your clothes off There’s plenty of room for us up here on the lab table.”

11

After an extensive discussion of their options, Oscar and Captain Scubbly Bee decided to infiltrate Loui-siana by covert means and in deep incognito. Kevin, boldly lying, told the local Emergency Committee that he was leaving for a recruitment drive. Oscar himself would not even officially leave Buna. He was replaced by a body double, a Moderator volunteer who was willing to wear Oscar’s clothing, and to spend a great deal of time in a plush hotel room pretending to type on a laptop.

Their conspiracy swiftly assumed its own momen-tum. To avoid discovery, they decided to airmail them-selves into Louisiana in a pair of ultralight aircraft. These silent and stealthy devices were slow, unpredictable, dan-gerous, painful, and nauseating — basically devoid of crea-ture comforts of any kind. They were, however, more or less undetectable, and immune to roadblocks and shake-downs. Since they were guided by global positioning from Chinese satellites, the aircraft would arrive with pinpoint accuracy right on Fontenot’s doorstep — sooner or later.

Kevin and Oscar next took the deeply melodramatic step of dressing themselves as nomad air bums. They bor-rowed the customary flight suits from a pair of Moderator air jockeys. These snug garments were riveted, fiber-filled cotton duck. They were protective industrial gear, painstakingly tribalized by much hand-stitched embroidery and a richly personal reek of skin unguent. Kevlar gloves, black rubber boots, big furry crash helmets, and shatterproof goggles completed the ensemble.

Oscar gave a few final Method-acting tips to his good-natured body double, and wedged himself into his disguise. He became a crea-ture from an alien civilization. He couldn’t resist the temptation to stroll around downtown Buna in his nomad drag. The result aston-ished him. Oscar was very well known in Buna; his scandalous per-sonal life was common knowledge and the hotel he had built was locally famous. In the flight suit, goggles, and helmet, however, he was entirely ignored. People’s eyes simply slid over him without the fric-tion of a moment’s care. He radiated otherness.

Kevin and Oscar had synchronized their departure for midnight. Oscar arrived late. His wristwatch was malfunctioning. He’d been running a mild fever for days, and the contact heat had caused the watch’s mousebrain works to run fast. Oscar had been forced to reset his watch with its sunlight timer, but he had somehow botched it; his watch was jet-lagged now. He was running late, and it took far more effort than he had expected to climb to the roof of the Collaboratory. He’d never before been on the outside armor of the lab. In the sullen dark of a February night, the structure’s outer boundary was windy and intimidating, a wearying physical trial of endless steps and hand rungs.

Winded and trembling, he finally arrived on the starry roof of the Collaboratory, but the best window of weather opportunity was already gone. Kevin, wisely, had already launched himself. With the help of a bored Moderator ground crew, Oscar strapped into his flimsy craft, and left as soon as he could.

The first hour went rather well. Then he was caught by a Green-house storm front boiling off the sullen Gulf of Mexico. He was blown all the way to Arkansas. Cannily reading thousands of Doppler radars, the smart and horribly cheap little vehicle darted sickeningly up and down through dozens of local thermals and wind shears, stubbornly routing itself toward its destination with the dumb persis-tence of a network packet. Blistered by the chafing of his harness, Oscar fmally passed out, lolling in the aircraft’s grip like a sack of turnips.

The pilot’s lack of consciousness made no difference to the nomad machine. At dawn, Oscar found himself fluttering over the rainy swamp of the Bayou Teche.

The Bayou Teche was a hundred and thirty miles long. This quiet oxbow had once formed the main channel of the Mississippi River, some three thousand years in the past. During one brief and intensely catastrophic twenty-first-century spring, the Bayou Teche, to the alarm and horror of everyone, had once again become the main channel of the Mississippi River. The savage Greenhouse deluge had carried all before it, briskly disposing of floodproof concrete levees, shady, moss-strewn live oaks, glamorous antebellum plantation homes, rust-eaten sugar mills, dead oil rigs, and everything else in its path. The flood had ravaged the cities of Breaux Bridge, St. Martinville, and New Iberia.

The Teche had always been a world of its own, a swampy biome distinct and separate from the Mississippi proper and the rice-growing plains to the west. The destruction of its roads and bridges, and the consequent enormous growth of weedy swamp and marsh, had once again returned the Teche to eerie, sodden quietude. The bayou was now one of the wildest locales in North America — not because it had been conserved from development, but because its development had been obliterated.