Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

“True.”

“I wonder what would happen if the reinsurance companies refused to insure oil companies that didn’t get with the cap program right now?”

“Good idea.” She sighed. “Boy, if only we could sic them on the World Bank and the IMF too.”

“Maybe we can. Phil Chase is president now.”

“So maybe we can! Hey, it’s two already—have you had lunch?”

In his office, Frank smiled. “No, you wanna?”

“Yes. Give me five minutes.”

“Meet you at the elevator.”

So they had lunch, and among other things talked over the move to the White House, and what it meant. The danger of becoming an advisory body only, of having no budget to do things—as against the potential advantage of being able to tell all the federal agencies, and to an extent the whole government, what to do.

Diane said, “My guess is Chase is still trying to work out what’s really possible. He’s talked quite a line but now push has come to shove, and it’s a big machine he’s got to move. I’ve gotten a whole string of questions about the technical agencies, and just today I got an e-mail asking me to submit a thorough analysis of all the particulars of the New Deal—what he called the scientific aspects of the New Deal. I have no idea what he means.”

Nevertheless, she had looked into it. There had been five New Deals, she said. Each had been a distinct project, with different goals and results. She listed them with a pen on the back of a napkin:

1) Hundred Days, 1933

2) Social Security, 1935

3) Keynesian stimulation 1938 (this package, she explained, had been enacted partly to re-prime the pump, partly to restore what the Supreme Court had blocked from New Deal 2)

4) the defense buildup of 1940–41, and

5) the G.I. Bill of Rights of 1944

“Number five was entirely FDR’s idea, by the way. Nothing’s ever done more for ordinary Americans, the analysis said. It was what made the postwar middle class, and the baby boom.”

“Encouraging,” Frank said, studying the list.

“Very. Granted, this all took twelve years, but still. It doesn’t even count the international stuff, like getting us prepared for the war, or winning it. Or starting the UN!”

“Impressive,” Frank said. “Let’s hope Chase can do as well.”

Here Diane looked doubtful. “One thing seems pretty clear already,” she confessed. “He’s too busy with other stuff for me to be able to make many of our arguments to him in person. I mean, I’ve barely met him yet.”

“ That’s not good.” Frank was surprised to hear this.

“Well, he’s pretty good at replying to his e-mail. And his people get back to me when I send along questions or requests.”

“Maybe that’s where I should ask Charlie for help. He might be able to influence the decision about how to allocate Chase’s meeting time.”

“That would be good.”

It seemed to Frank, watching her and thinking about other kinds of things, that she appeared to have forgotten his abrupt cancellation of their post–North Atlantic date. Or—since no one ever really forgot things like that—to have let it go. Forgiven, if not forgotten—all he could expect, of course. Maybe it had only been a little weird. In any case a relief, after his experiences with Marta, who neither forgot nor forgave.

Which reminded him that he had to talk to Marta sometime soon about Small Delivery Systems’ Russian experiment. Damn.

As always, the thought of having to communicate with his ex-partner filled Frank with a combination of dread and a perverse kind of anticipation, which came in part from trying to guess how it would go wrong this time. For go wrong it would. He and Marta had always had a stormy relationship, and Frank had come to suspect that all Marta’s intimate relationships were stormy. Certainly her relations with her ex-husband had been inflamed, which had been one of the reasons she and Frank too had come to a nasty end. Marta had needed to keep her name off the paperwork on the house she and Frank had bought together, in order to keep it clear of the divorce and bankruptcy morass created by Marta’s always soon-to-be ex. This absence of her name had created the possibility for Frank later to sign a third mortgage, in effect taking all their equity out of the place and losing it in a surefire biotech that had guttered out.

A very bad idea. One of a string of bad decisions that Frank had made in those years, many clustered around Marta. There had to be some kind of nostalgia for bad times involved in Frank’s desire to talk to her. In any case he had to call her, because she was his contact with the Russian lichen project, and he needed to know more about how that was going. Given the ongoing opacity of Russian government and science—the weird mix of Kremlinocracy and nouveau-capitalist corporate secrecy—a (semi)reliable informant was crucial if he was going to learn anything solid. So the call had to be made. Or rather the visit. Because he wanted to see the new facility too. NSF had rented the very same building once occupied by Torrey Pines Generique, and the committee involved had offered contracts to an array of very good people in the relevant sciences, including Yann and Marta. The geosciences were hot these days, and the new head of the institute had called a conference to discuss various proposals for new action. Frank was unsurprised to see that Yann and Marta were on the program. He called down to the travel office to have them book a flight for him.

FOR THE QUIBLERS AS FOR THE RESTof the capital’s residents, the winter’s blackouts had developed their own routines, with the inconveniences balanced by the seldom-indulged pleasures of the situation: fire in the fireplace, candles, blankets, blocks, and books. Anna had taken up knitting again, so when the power went out she helped get things settled and then got under a comforter and clicked away. Charlie read aloud to them. He and Anna discussed whether they should get satellite cell phones, so they could stay in contact if they happened to get caught out somewhere when the next one hit. The blackouts were getting more frequent; it was widely debated whether they were caused by overdemand, mechanical failure, sabotage, computer viruses, corporate rigging, or the cold drought, but no one could deny they were becoming regular occurrences. And sometimes they lasted for two days.

On this particular dark evening, after Anna had gone to the appropriate drawer and cabinets and got out their blackout gear, there came a knock at their door, very unusual. So much so that Nick said, “Frank must be here!”

And so he was.

He stamped in looking freeze-dried, put the back of his hand to their cheeks and had them shrieking. “Is it okay?” he asked Charlie uncertainly.

“Oh sure, sure, what do you mean?”

“I don’t know.”

It seemed to Charlie almost as if Frank’s thinking had been chilled on the hike over; his words were slow, his manner distracted. He had been out snowshoeing in Rock Creek Park, he said, checking on his homeless friends, and had decided afterward to drop by.

“Good for you. Have some tea with us.”

“Thanks.”

Nick and Joe were delighted. Frank brought a new element to the power-free evening with his hint of mystery and strangeness. “Tiger man!” Joe exclaimed. Nick talked with him about the animals at the zoo, and still at large in the park. Joe plucked the appropriate plastic animals out of his big box as they spoke, lining them up in a parade on the floor for their inspection. “Tiger tiger tiger!” he said, pleasing Charlie very much; lately he had been showing a preference for zebras and dolphins and hippos.