Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [58]
Now he saw Joe sacked out on Charlie’s back, and stepped around Charlie to get a better view. “What’s this, Charles, you got your kid with you?”
“Yes sir, I was called in on short notice when Dr. Strengloft asked for a meeting with Phil and Wade, they’re both out of town.”
The President found this amusing. “Ha! Well, good for you. That’s sweet. Find me a marker pen and I’ll sign his little head.” This was another signature move, so to speak. “Is he a boy or a girl?”
“A boy. Joe Quibler.”
“Well that’s great. Saving the world before bedtime, that’s your story, eh Charles?” He smiled to himself and moved restlessly over to the chair at the window end of the table. One of his people was standing in the door, watching them without expression.
The President’s face was smaller than it appeared on TV, Charlie found. The size of an ordinary human face, no doubt, looking small precisely because of all the TV images. On the other hand it had a tremendous solidity and three-dimensionality to it. It gleamed with reality.
His eyes were slightly close-set, as was often remarked, but apart from that he looked like an aging movie star or catalog model. A successful businessman who had retired to get into public service. His features, as many observers had observed, mixed qualities of several recent presidents into one blandly familiar and reassuring face, with a little dash of Ross Perot to give him a piquant antiquity and edgy charm.
Now his amused look was like that of everyone’s favorite uncle. “So they reeled you in for this on the fly.” Then, holding a hand up to stop all of them, he nearly whispered: “Sorry—should I whisper?”
“No sir, no need for that,” Charlie assured him in his ordinary speaking voice. “He’s out for the duration. Pay no attention to that man behind the shoulder.”
The President smiled. “Got a wizard on your back, eh?”
Charlie nodded, smiling quickly to conceal his surprise. It was a pastime in some circles to judge just how much of a dimwit the President was, how much of a performing puppet for the people manipulating him; but facing him in person, Charlie felt instantly confirmed in his minority position that the man had such a huge amount of low cunning that it amounted to a kind of genius. The President was no fool. And hip to at least the most obvious of movie trivia. Charlie couldn’t help feeling a bit reassured.
Now the President said, “That’s nice, Charles, let’s get to it then, shall we? I heard from Dr. S. here about the meeting this morning, and I wanted to check in on it in person, because I like Phil Chase. And I understand that Phil now wants us to join in with the actions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to the point of introducing a bill mandating our participation in whatever action they recommend, no matter what it is. And this is a UN panel.”
“Well,” Charlie said, shifting gears into ultradiplomatic mode, not just for the President but for the absent Phil, who was going to be upset with him no matter what he said, since only Phil should actually be talking to the President about this stuff. “That isn’t exactly how I would put it, Mr. President. You know the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a number of hearings this year, and Phil’s conclusion after all that testimony was that the global climate situation is quite real. And serious to the point of being already almost too late.”
The President shot a glance at Strengloft. “Would you agree with that, Dr. S.?”
“We’ve agreed that there is general agreement that the observed warming is real.”
The President looked to Charlie, who said, “That’s good as far as it goes, certainly. It’s what follows from that that matters—you know, in the sense of us trying to do something about it.”
Charlie swiftly rehearsed the situation, known to all: average temperatures up by six degrees Fahrenheit already, CO2 levels in the atmosphere topping six hundred parts per million, from a start before the industrial revolution of 280, and predicted to hit a thousand ppm within a decade, which would be higher than it had been at any