The zenith angle by Bruce Sterling Page B

loved to play the peacemaker.
    “This smells good!” declared Helga, eagerly helping herself to the chicken bucket. Then everyone went for the chow in a merry outburst of chattering, except for Van, who had lost his appetite. To cover his pain and confusion, he gave an extra-crispy thigh to his grandfather, who seemed lost in the crowd now, tired and bewildered, forgotten.
    Van could not understand why his painful personal problems were suddenly the business of Swedes, Indians, and Chinese. They seemed pretty pleased with the fast food he had brought them, but how could such a thing have ever happened?
    “Son, this is Rachel Weissman,” his father said, introducing the latest girlfriend.
    “Hi,” Van told her reluctantly.
    Rachel half curtseyed to grab up her chicken from the cardboard bucket. There was something very wrong with her hip.
    “Where are you from, Rachel?” Dottie asked her.
    “I’m from Bogota,” Rachel lied. “I work in oil.”
    “Rachel and I have a beautiful residencia north of the city,” his father aided and abetted. Dottie blinked at them. “So you’re really at home in Colombia now, Robert? To stay?”
    “It’s never like it sounds in the media. ‘Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.’
    ” Van’s father gave Rachel a warm, protective look. Rachel was in even worse trouble than Van had imagined.
    Rachel was obviously Jewish, but she wasn’t Colombian, Van concluded. His father looked much more Colombian than Rachel did, despite his blondness and his hefty bulk. Van’s father was solid as a bear, but even before he had joined the CIA, there had always been something spacey and strange about him. When they’d finally shunted him into Counter-Narcotics, that dead end of any intelligence career, that was when his pride had broken down.
    During the eighties, Afghanistan had cheered him up for a while. He’d shaped up physically, patched up the marriage, and even taken Van camping and fishing in the California mountains. But in Angola, he’d done something indescribable. Generally the CIA never gave its top agents Third World assignments that risked malaria and guaranteed diarrhea, but Van’s father was a charmer. He had a genius for working himself into situations where he was unwelcome, unneeded, unwanted, and way too smart for the job. In Angola, Van’s father had crossed some line, into some mess he just couldn’t mentally manage. Something oily and permanent had stuck to him for good in Angola. He’d returned from Angola with unblinking eyes like two saucers, quoting more poetry than ever before . . . Nightmare episodes in Van’s adolescence, when his mother would scream in betrayed anguish, and his father would storm into his home office, to snort cocaine and translate Walt Whitman into African dialects. Those were the moments when Van would quietly shut his bedroom door, warm up the modem, and vanish deep, deep, deep into his computer. In some sense, Van had never come out.
    Dottie was doing all the talking for the group. Her lips were moving rapidly as Van stood there, moored in his silent crisis. For the first time Van realized what Dottie was actually saying. She had had a lot of time to think in the car, and she had bravely made up her mind about something. Dottie was talking about quitting her lab post in Boston and taking up an entirely different job.
    “So it’s the perfect time for me to undertake a transition, if Derek is also switching careers,” she confided to everyone.
    “Mmm-hmmm.” His father nodded unhelpfully.
    “I do have a standing offer. Because Tony Carew . . . have you ever heard of Tony Carew? Tony is the only friend of ours who’s really famous. The Davos Forum, the Renaissance Weekend . . .”
    “I’ve certainly heard of those,” said Rachel, looking interested for the first time.
    “Oh, I see,” said his father. “So then, Derek. Tony must be that good friend of yours who works for Thomas DeFanti.”
    Van saw