Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [128]
5) Investigating amorphous or glassy metals, in particular amorphous steel, made by a new method that scrambled the atomic structures of the metal by yttrium, chromium, and boron, making the resulting “glassy steel” stronger, nonmagnetic, and less corrosive. The Navy was interested in making ship hulls of this stuff, and it seemed tothe materials team working with Frank that all kinds of ocean-proofed machinery could perhaps be improved, enough so that practical methods of tapping into the ocean’s energy might be built.
6) Talking to General Wracke over the phone about the salt-mining and transport capabilities of modern civilization. Wracke was upbeat; the quantities being discussed were not completely off the charts when compared to the amount of oil shipped around the globe, and the oil tanker fleet included a significant percentage of single-hulled ships due to be replaced, or rather overdue. As for salt availability, they were still looking into it, but as the general said, “There’s a lot of salt in this world.”
Money was a different matter. The Pentagon had recently gotten in trouble with Congress, Wracke said, for its practice of hiding money left over at the ends of budget years, then using these savings for its own purposes, calling them “reprogrammed funds.” Congress did not approve, and any high-profile project was likely to have to get conventional funding.
“Does it look like it will be expensive?” Frank asked.
“Depends what you call expensive. Billions for sure.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Thanks. Oh—different subject—does the Pentagon have an intelligence service of its own?”
Wracke laughed. “Is that a trick question?”
“No, how could it be?”
“You’ll have to ask the CIA about that. But yes, sure. After the other intelligence agencies in this town let us down so bad, we almost had to have one, to get good data. We were the ones getting killed you know. So there’s the Strategic Support Branch, and they’re an intelligence-gathering unit publicly acknowledged. They’re sometimes a bit more hands-on than the other agencies, but gathering intelligence is their job. Why, is there some secret climate group you’re having trouble with? Clandestine cloud seeding?”
“No no. I was just curious. Thanks. See you at the next meeting.”
“I look forward to it. You guys are doing great.”
______
In that same couple of weeks, along with everything else, Frank made an effort to locate Chessman. He centered the search on Dupont Circle, because that was the city’s outdoor chess epicenter. So much so, he found, that chesshounds converged on it from everywhere, and of course dispersed back out, using all eleven of the streets that met there. To ask about a young black kid was to ask about more than half the chess-playing population, and no one appreciated an inquiry framed that broadly. His motives also appeared to be questioned. So after a while, rather than ask, Frank simply walked and watched, played and lost and walked again, checking out the games, noting also the new little semi-winterized shelters popping up here and there all over town.
Cleveland Park sported many of these camps, especially in the fringe of buildings damaged by the flood and abandoned. Spencer’s crowd, clearly, as well as others less organized and competent. It seemed from his observations that the homeless population of Northwest alone must be in the thousands. The formal shelters and newspaper