So Oscar was awake in darkness, and working. He generally ended each day with a diary annotation, a summary of the options taken and important operational events. Tonight, he wrapped up his careful annotations of the audiotape with the Air Force highway ban-dits. He shipped the file to Alcott Bambakias, encrypted and denoted “personal and confidential.” There was no way to know if this snippet of the modern chaos in Louisiana would capture his patron’s mercurial attention. But it was necessary to keep up a steady flow of news and counsel across the net. To be out of the Senator’s sight might be very useful in some ways, but to drift out of his mind would be a profes-sional blunder.

Oscar composed and sent a friendly net-note to his girlfriend, Clare, who was living in his house in Boston. He studied and updated his personnel flies. He examined and totaled the day’s expenditures. He composed his daily diary entries. He took comfort in the strength of his routines.

He had met many passing setbacks, but he had yet to meet a challenge that could conclusively defeat him.

He shut his laptop with a sense of satisfaction, and prepared him-self for sleep. He twitched, he thrashed. Finally he sat up, and opened his laptop again.

He studied the Worcester riot video for the fifiy-second time.

2

The scientist wore plaid bermuda shorts, a faded yel-low tank top, flip-flop sandals, and no hat. Oscar was prepared to tolerate their guide’s bare and bony legs, and even his fusty beard. But it was hard to take a man entirely seriously when he lacked a proper hat.

The beast in question was dark green, very fibrous, and hairy. This was a binturong, a mammal once native to Southeast Asia, long since extinct in the wild. This speci-men had been cloned on-site at the Buna National Col-laboratory. They’d grown it inside the altered womb of a domestic cow.