Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [195]
“Try me and see,” Phil said. “Given the situation, it makes perfect sense. The president isn’t going to do anything. He and his oil-and-guns crowd will just try to find an island somewhere to skip to when they’re done raiding the world. They’ll leave us in the wreckage and build themselves bubble fortresses, that’s been their sick plan all along. Building a good world for our kids is our plan, and it’s scientific as can be, but only if you understand science as a way of being together, an ethical system and not just a method for seeing the world. What this political endorsement underlines is that science contains in it a plan for dealing with the world that we find ourselves in, a plan which aims to reduce human suffering and increase the quality of life on Earth for everyone. In other words science is a kind of politics already, and I’m proud to be endorsed by the scientific community, because its goals match the values of justice and fairness that we all were taught are the most important part of social life and government. So welcome aboard, and I appreciate the help, because there’s a lot to do!”
Thus ended the most active part of the first Social Science Experiment in Elective Politics. There would be much analysis, and the follow-up studies would suggest new experiments the next time around, presumably. The committee was there in place at the National Academy of Sciences, and it would have looked bad at that point if anyone inside or outside the Academy had tried to shut it down.
Diane, under stupendous heat from Republicans in Congress for appearing to have used a federal agency to support a political candidate, went to the hearings and shrugged. “We’ll study it,” she said. “We funded an experiment in our usual way.”
“Would you fund an experiment like that one again?” demanded Senator Winston.
“It would depend on its peer review,” she said. “If it was given a good ranking by a peer-review panel, it would be considered, yes.”
One of the Democratic senators on the panel pointed out that this would not be the first federal agency to get involved in a political campaign, that in fact several were at this moment working explicitly and directly for the president’s campaign, including the Treasury Department and the Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Commerce. While on the other hand NSF had just funded an experiment that had happened to catch on with the public.
The debate of the day roared on. The National Science Foundation had jumped into politics and the culture wars. Its age of innocence was over at last.
FRANK AND RUDRA CAKRIN CONTINUED TO spend the last hour of most nights out in their shed, talking. They talked about food, the events of the day, the contents of their shed, the garden, and the nature of reality. Most of their talk was in English, where Rudra continued to improve. Sometimes he gave Frank a Tibetan lesson.
Rudra liked to be outside. His health seemed to Frank poor, or else he was frail with age. On their trips out together Frank gave him an arm at the curbs, and once he even pushed him in a wheelchair that was stored inside the house underneath the stairwell. A few times they went for a drive in Frank’s van.
One day they drove out to see their future home. The Khembalis had finalized the purchase of the land in Maryland they had located, a property upstream on the Potomac that had been badly damaged in the great flood. A farmhouse on the high point of the acreage had been inundated to the ceiling of the first floor, and a passing rowboat crowded with refugees from other farms had hacked through the roof to get into the attic. Padma and Sucandra had decided that the building could be made habitable again, and in any case the land would be worth it; apparently it was zoned in a way that would allow most of the Khembalis in the metro area to live there.
So Frank drove out the George Washington Parkway to the Beltway, Rudra peering out from the passenger seat with a lively eye, talking in Tibetan. Frank tried to identify what words he could,