Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [191]
Anna could always tell when Charlie had written what Phil was saying, because Charlie would hold his breath for however long it took Phil to say it. “Whew! Am I crazy?” he would gasp afterward. “I must be crazy! Why is Phil trusting me? He’s freaking me out here!”
And yet all this seemed to be part of what was helping Phil’s numbers; maybe even the main part. He had always polled highest the more he ignored conventional inside-the-Beltway political wisdom. As a California politician this was more or less a traditional tactic, reinforced by each subsequent success, as with their recent grandstanding governor. Just go for it, baby! Washington punditry was for girlie men!
Thus now, when Phil was asked about the “Virtual Scientist Candidate,” he would smile his glorious smile. “In Europe a candidate like that is called a shadow candidate. I take the people inventing this candidate to be our allies, because if you judge the effect of your vote by rational scientific criteria, then you will never throw it away on a splinter party that doesn’t have a chance in our winner-take-all system. You vote for the potential winner most likely to express something like your views, and at this moment I’m that man. So the science guy is my shadow.”
His numbers rose again. It seemed to Anna that it was going to be a really close election; so close she could hardly stand to contemplate it.
Edgardo agreed. “People like it that way. Seesaw back and forth, try to get it perfectly level for election day. Confound the polls by sitting inside their margins of error. That way the day itself will bring a surprise. A bit of drama, just for its own sake. Policy has nothing to do with it, life and death have nothing to do with it. People just like a good race. They like their little surprises.”
“They may get a big surprise this time,” Anna said.
“They don’t like big surprises. Only little surprises will do.”
On it went. The summer passed, giving them several weeks in a row of weather so cool and pleasant that abrupt climate change began to seem like a blessing. During that time several of the FCCSET programs were linked, and suddenly Department of Energy was on their side—it was actually unnerving—and they were in hot pursuit of what looked like a really powerful photovoltaic cell. Previously the polymers in plastic solar cells had absorbed only visible light, converting about six percent of the sun’s energy to electrical power; now researchers were mixing semiconducting nanoparticles called quantum dots into one of the layers, which absorbed infrared light and generated electricity as well. A layering of both yielded an efficiency of thirty percent, and now the mythical ten-by-ten mile array of cells, set somewhere in New Mexico and powering the whole country, was beginning to look like an actual possibility.
Anna went on to her other work, feeling pleased. Perturbation of the network! Cat’s cradle, slip and pull! When she went home she would be able to sit there and listen to Charlie’s talk about the campaign without getting as anxious and irritated as before—knowing, as she watched the news sprawl across the screen like a giant Jerry Springer show they could not escape, that always underneath it the great work rolled on.
ANNA’S GREAT WORK, HOWEVER, WAS BASICALLY a linear process; and it existed in a world with some important nonlinear components, acting in different realms. One morning at home with Joe, Charlie got a call from Roy Anastophoulus. “Roy!”
“Charlie are you sitting down?”
“I am not sitting down, I never sit down, but nothing you can tell me will need me sitting down!”
“That’s what you think! Charlie I’ve got Wade Norton on the other line and I’m going to patch him in. Wade? Can you still hear me?”
A