Kim Stanley Robinson - Fifty Degrees Below

Frank nodded, looked at Anna and Charlie: ‘So you’re really going?’

Anna said, ‘I thought it would be good for the boys. But I can’t be away from work for long.’

‘Or else her head will explode,’ Charlie said, raising a hand to deflect Anna’s elbow from his ribs. ‘Just joking! Anyway,’ addressing her, ‘you can work on the plane and I’ll watch Joe. I’ll watch him the whole way.’

‘Deal,’ Anna said swiftly.

‘Charlie very funny,’ Rudra said again.

Frank said, ‘Well, I’ll think it over. It sounds interesting. And I appreciate the invitation,’ nodding to Rudra.

‘Thank you,’ Rudra said.

Sucandra raised his glass. ‘To Khembalung!’

‘No!’ Joe cried.

One Saturday Charlie was out on his own, Joe at home with Anna, Nick out with Frank tracking animals. After running some errands he browsed for a bit in Second Story Books, and he was replacing a volume on its shelf when a woman approached him and said, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find William Blake?’

Surprised to be taken for an employee (they were all twenty-five and wore black), Charlie stared blankly at her.

‘He’s a poet,’ the woman explained.

Now Charlie was shocked; not only taken for a Second Story clerk, but for the kind who did not know who William Blake was?

‘Poetry’s back there,’ he finally got out, gesturing weakly toward the rear of the store.

The woman slipped past him, shaking her head.

Fire fire burning bright! Charlie didn’t say.

Don’t forget to check the oversized art books for facsimiles of his engravings! he didn’t exclaim.

In fact he’s a lot better artist than poet I think you’ll find! Most of his poetry is trippy gibberish, I think you’ll find! He didn’t shout.

His cell phone rang and he snatched it out of his pocket. William Blake was out of his mind!’

‘Hello, Charlie? Charlie is that you?’

‘Oh hi Phil. Listen, do I look to you like a person who doesn’t know who ‘William Blake was?’

‘I don’t know, do you?’

‘Shit. You know, great arias are lost to the world because we do not speak our minds. Most of our best lines we never say.’

‘I don’t have that problem.’

‘No, I guess you don’t. So what’s up?’

‘I’m following up on our conversation at the Lincoln Memorial.’

‘Oh yeah, good! Are you going to go for it?’

‘I think I will, yeah.’

‘Great! You’ve checked with your money people?’

‘Yes, that looks like it will be okay. There are an awful lot of people who want a change.’

‘That’s for sure. But, you know … do you really think you can win?’

‘Yes, I think so. The feedback I’ve been getting has been positive. But …’

‘But what?’

Phil sighed. ‘I’m worried about what effect it might have on me. I mean – power corrupts, right?’

‘Yes, but you’re already powerful.’

‘So it’s already happened, yes, thank you for that. But it’s supposed to get worse, right? Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Was it William Blake who said that?’

‘That was Lord Acton.’

‘Oh yeah. But he left out the corollary. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and a little bit of power corrupts a little bit.’

‘I suppose that must be so.’

‘And everyone has a little bit of power.’

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘So we’re all a little bit corrupt.’

‘Hmm –’

‘Come on, how does that not parse? It does parse. Power corrupts, and we all have power, so we’re all corrupt. A perfect syllogism, if I’m not mistaken. And in fact the only people we think of as not being corrupt are usually powerless. Prisoners of conscience, the feeble-minded, some of the elderly, saints, children –’

‘My children have power.’

‘Yes, but are they perfectly pure and innocent?’

Charlie thought of Joe, faking huge distress when Anna came home from work. ‘No, they’re a little corrupt.’

‘Well there you go.’

‘I guess you’re right. And saints have power but aren’t corrupt, which is why we call them saints. But where does that leave us? That in this world of universal corruption, you might as well be President?’

‘Yes. That’s what I was thinking.’

‘So then it’s okay.’

‘Yes. But the sad part is that the corruption doesn’t just happen to the people with power. It spreads from them. They spread it around. I know this is true because I see it. Every day people come to me because I’ve got some power, and I watch them debase themselves or go silly in some way. I see them go corrupt right before my eyes. It’s depressing. It’s like having the Midas touch in reverse, where everything you touch turns to shit.’

‘The solution is to become saintlike. Do like Lincoln. He had power, but he kept his integrity.’

‘Lincoln could see how limited his power was. Events were out of his control.’

‘That’s true for us too.’

‘Right. Good thought. I’ll try not to worry. But, you know. I’m going to need you guys. I’ll need friends who will tell me the truth.’

‘We’ll be there. We’ll call you on everything.’

‘Good. I appreciate that. Because it’s kind of a bizarre thing to be contemplating.’

‘I’m sure it is. But you might as well go for it. In for a penny in for a pound. And we need you.’

‘You’ll help me with the environmental issues?’

‘As always. I mean, I’ve got to take care of Joe, as you know. But I can always talk on the phone. I’m on call any time – oh for God’s sake here she comes again. Look Phil I’d better get out of here before that lady comes to tell me that Abraham Lincoln was a president.’

‘Tell her he was a saint.’

‘Make him your patron saint and you’ll be fine bye!’

‘That’s bye Mr President.’

Under surveillance.

After he had come down from the euphoria of seeing Caroline, talking to her, kissing her, planning to meet again – Frank was faced with the unsettling reality of her news. Some group in Homeland Security had him under surveillance.

A creepy thought. Not that he had done anything he needed to hide – except that he had. He had tried to sink a young colleague’s grant proposal, in order to secure that work in a private company he had relations with; and the first part of the plan had worked. Not that that was likely to be what they were surveiling him for – but on the other hand, maybe it was. The connection to Pierzinski was apparently why they were interested in him in the first place. Evidence of what he had tried to do – would there be any in the records? Part of the point of him proceeding had been that nothing in what he had done was in contradiction to NSF panel protocols. However, among other actions he was now reviewing, he had made many calls to Derek Gaspar, CEO of Torrey Pines Generique. In some of these he had perhaps been indiscreet.

Well, nothing to be done about that now. He could only focus on the present, and the future.

Thinking about this in his office, Frank stared at his computer. It was connected to the internet, of course. It had virus protections, firewalls, encryption codes; but for all he knew, there were programs more powerful still, capable of finessing all that and probing directly into his files. At the very least, all his e-mail. And then phone conversations, sure. Credit rating, sure, bank records, all other financial activity – all now data for analysis by participants in some kind of virtual futures market, a market trading in newly emerging ideas, technologies, researchers. All speculated on, as with any other commodity. People as commodities – well, it wouldn’t be the first time.