Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [86]
At Phil’s they rolled around the rooms trying to find the best spots in the falls of chilled air pouring from the air-conditioning vents. Everyone was doing this, drifting around like a science museum exercise investigating the Coriolis force.
Charlie parked Joe out with Evelyn, who loved him, and went to work on Phil’s revisions to the climate bill. It certainly seemed like a good time to introduce it. More money for CO2 remediation, new fuel efficiency standards and the money to get Detroit through the transition to hydrogen, new fuels and power sources, carbon capture methods, carbon sink identification and formation, hydrocarbon-to-carbohydrate-to-hydrogen conversion funds and exchange credit programs, deep geothermal, tide power, wave power, money for basic research in climatology, money for the Extreme Global Research in Emergency Salvation Strategies project (EGRESS), money for the Global Disaster Information Network (GDIN)—and so on and so forth. It was a grab bag of programs, many designed to look like pork to help the bill get the votes, but Charlie had done his best to give the whole thing organization, and a kind of coherent shape, as a narrative of the near future.
There were many in Phil’s office who thought it was a mistake to try to pass an omnibus or comprehensive bill like this, rather than get the programs funded one by one, or in smaller related groupings. But the comprehensive had been Phil’s chosen strategy, and Charlie felt that at this late point it was better to stick to that plan. He added language to make the revisions Phil wanted, pushing the envelope in each case, as it seemed now, if ever, was the time to strike.
Joe was beginning to get rowdy with Evelyn, he could hear the unmistakable sound of dinosaurs hitting walls. All this language would get chopped up anyway; still, all the more reason to get it precise and smooth, armored against attack, low-keyed and unobjectionable, invisibly effective. Bill language as low-post moves to the basket, subtle, quick, unstoppable.
He rushed to a finish and took the revised bill in to Phil, with Joe leading the way in his stroller. They found the senator sitting with his back directly against an air-conditioning duct.
“Jeez Phil, don’t you get too cold sitting there?”
“The trick is to set up before you’re all sweaty, and then you don’t get the evaporative cooling. And I keep my head above it,” banging the wall with the back of his noggin, “so I don’t catch as many a-c colds. I learned that a long time ago, when I was stationed on Okinawa.”
He glanced over Charlie’s new revision, and they argued over some of the changes. At one point Phil looked at him: “Something bugging you today?” He glanced over at Joe. “Joe here seems to be grooving. The President’s favorite toddler.”
“It’s not Joe that’s getting to me, it’s you. You and the rest of the Senate. This is it, Phil—the current situation requires a response that is more than business as usual. And that’s worrying me, because you guys are only geared to do business as usual.”
“Well…” Phil smiled. “We call that democracy, youth. It’s a blessing when you think of it. Some give and take, and then some agreement on how to proceed. How can we do without that? There’s a certain accountability to it. So if you have a better way of doing it you tell me. But please, meanwhile, no more ‘If I Were King’ fantasies. There’s no king and it’s up to us. So help me get this final draft as tight as we can.”
“Okay.”
They worked together with the speed and efficiency of old teammates. Sometimes collaboration could be a pleasure, sometimes it really was a matter of only having to do half of it, and the two halves adding up to more than their parts.
Then Joe got restive, and nothing would keep him in his stroller but a quick departure and a tour of the street scene. “I’ll finish,” Phil said.
So, back out into the stupendous heat. Charlie