“Oh my God.” Fontenot groaned aloud. “It’s beyond bad. It’s the worst. It’s the very worst. I knew I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew I shouldn’t have outed this thing.”

“No, it was the right thing to do. Huey’s a great man, and he’s a visionary, but Huey is around the bend. He’s not just your standard southern-fried good-old-boy megalomaniac anymore. Now I know the full truth. These Haitians? They were just his proof of concept. Huey’s done something weird to himself. Something very dark and neural.”

“And you have to tell the President about that.”

“Yes, I do. Because our President is not like that. The President is not insane. He’s just a hard-as-nails, ambitious, strong-arm politi-cian, who is going to bring law and order to this two-horse country, even if it means setting fire to half of Europe.”

Fontenot considered this subject at length. Finally he turned to Kevin. “Hey, Hamilton.”

“Yes sir?” Kevin said, startled.

“Don’t let them kill this guy.”

“I didn’t want the job!” Kevin protested. “He didn’t tell me how bad it was. Honest! You want the bodyguard job back? Take the damn job. ”

“No,” Fontenot said, with finality. They climbed into the little boat, three men in a tub, and headed out into the bayou again.

“He did some great things for us,” Fontenot said. “Of course, everything he ever did was always about Huey first. Huey was always item number one on the Huey agenda, everybody knew that. But he did good things for the people. He gave ’em good breaks that they hadn’t had in a hundred years. It’s still the future.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said, “Huey’s got his own new order — but it isn’t new, and it isn’t order. Huey’s a funny guy. He can crack a joke and pound the ol’ podium, he’ll buy everybody a drink and make public fun of himself But he’s got it all: total control over the legislature and the judiciary. A brownshirt militia on the rampage. His own private media network — his own economy, even. A blood-and-soil ideology. Secret retreats full of vengeance weapons. Huey kidnaps people. He abducts whole little populations, and makes them disappear. I suppose he does it all for the best of reasons, but the ends don’t matter when you’re using means like that. And now, he’s dosed himself with some off-the-wall treatment that makes people permanently schizoid! He can’t possibly get better after this. He can only get worse and worse.”

Fontenot sighed. “Let me ask one favor. Don’t tell anybody that I led you to this. I don’t want any press. I don’t want my poor neigh-bors knowin’ that I sold old Huey out. This is my home. I want to die here.”

Kevin spoke up. “You keep saying that this place is the future. Why do you want to die, old man?”

Fontenot looked at him with baggy-eyed tolerance. “Kid, every-body goes to the future to die. That’s where the job gets done.”

Oscar shook his head. “Don’t feel guilty. You don’t owe Huey any loyalty.”

“We all owe him, dammit. He saved us. He saved the state. We owe him for the mosquitoes, if nothing else.”

“Mosquitoes? What mosquitoes?”

“There aren’t any. And we’re in the middle of a swamp. And we don’t get bit. And you didn’t even notice, did you? I sure as hell notice.”

“Well, what happened to the mosquitoes?”

“Before Huey came along, the mosquitoes were kicking our ass.

Mosquitoes love the Greenhouse future. When it got hotter and wet-ter, they came in tidal waves. Carrying malaria, dengue fever, enceph-alitis… After the big Mississippi floods, mosquitoes boiled out of every ditch in the state. It was a major health emergency, people were dyin’. And Huey had just been sworn in. He just wouldn’t have it, he said, ‘Take action, get rid of ’em.’ He sent out the fogger trucks. Not insecticide, not that poison gas like before — DDT and toxins. That screwed up everything — not doable, everybody knows that. But Huey figured it out — he didn’t gas the bugs, he gassed the people. With airborne antibodies. They’re like breathable vaccinations. The people of Louisiana are toxic to mosquitoes now. Our blood literally kills them. If a mosquito bites a Cajun, that mosquito dies on the spot.”

“Neat hack!” Kevin enthused. “But that wouldn’t kill all the mosquitoes, would it?”

“No, but the diseases vanished right away. Because disease couldn’t spread from person to person anymore. And the skeeters are going, too. See, Huey’s gassing the livestock, wild animals, he’s gas-sing everything that breathes. Because it works! Those bloodsuckers used to kill the people in job lots. For thousands of years they were a biblical plague around here. But Green Huey nailed ’em for good.”

The hovercraft puttered on. The three of them fell thoughtfully silent.

“What’s that bug on your arm, then?” Kevin said at last. “Dang!” Fontenot swatted it. “Must have blown in from Missis-sippi!”

Oscar knew that his new allegations were extremely grave. Properly handled, this scandal would finish Huey. Handled badly, it could fin-ish Oscar in short order. It might even finish the President.

Oscar composed what he considered the finest memo of his ca-reer. He had the memo passed to the President — hopefully, for his eyes only. Oscar was unhappy at bypassing his superiors to the top of the chain of command, but he was anxious to avoid any further deba-cles from the paramilitary zealots of the NSC. Their killer helicopter attack during his kidnapping had probably saved his life, but true pro-fessionals simply didn’t behave that way.

Oscar appealed to the President. He was calm, factual, rational, well organized. He pinpointed the locale of the Haitian camp, and recommended that human intelligence be sent in. Someone discreet, harmless-looking. A female agent would be a good choice. Someone who could thoroughly tape the place, and take blood samples.

For three days, Oscar followed his memo with a barrage of anx-ious demands and queries of the NSC higher-ups. Had the President seen his memo? It was of the greatest importance. It was critical.

There was no answer.

In the meantime, serious difficulties pressed at the Collaboratory. Morale was cracking among the civilian support staff. None of them were being paid anymore. None of the support staff enjoyed the pres-tige and glamour of the scientists, who were rapidly accustoming themselves to being followed by worshipful krewes of hairy-eyed Moderators. The civilian staff were miffed. The Collaboratory’s medi-cal staff were especially upset. They could get good-paying jobs else-where — and they could scarcely be expected to run a decent, ethical medical facility without a steady flow of capital and up-to-date sup-plies.

There was continued and intensifying Moderator/Regulator feuding in the Sabine River valley. Scouting patrols by rival nomad youth gangs were degenerating into bushwhackings and lynchings. The situation was increasingly volatile, especially since the sheriffs of Jasper and Newton counties had been forced to resign their posts. The good-old-boy Texan sheriffs had been outed on outrageous bribery scandals. Someone had compiled extensive dossiers on their long-time complicity in bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution — all those illicit delights that could be outlawed, but never made unpopular.

It didn’t take genius to understand that civil order in East Texas was being deliberately undermined by Green Huey. Texas state gov-ernment should have risen to this challenge, but Texas state govern-ment was well known for its lack of genius. The state held endless hearings on the shocking problem of endemic police corruption — apparently hoping that the riots would subside if fed enough paper-work.

The biggest wild card on the state border was the provocative presence of European and Asian news crews. America’s hot war with the gallant, minuscule Dutch had made America hot copy again. Sav-age confrontations between armed criminal gangs had always been an activity that endeared America to its fans around the world. Dutch journalists had been banned in the USA — but French and German ones were everywhere, especially in Louisiana. The British were kind enough to suggest that the French were secretly arming Huey’s Regu-lator gangs.