The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [88]
There was something else weighing on Dottie’s mind. He could see it was something important. “So then what?” Van said.
Dottie shrugged. “So then, I guess they just got bored with us after a while. I mean, we’re just a bunch of astronomers. Besides, our telescope isn’t even up and running yet. We don’t even have a proper PR department to do public outreach. I mean, I am the PR department now, basically. That’s me.”
“It’s all right now? Those Greenies don’t bug you anymore?”
“Oh, DeFanti gave them so much money that they put him on their board. They’ve got some really nice offices in Boulder now that were built by this same guy. He’s a really famous Green architect now. They, like, love him in Holland.”
Insight came to Van in a rush. Tony Carew had gamed the poor bastards. Tony had been their ruin. Because once upon a time, his enemy had been quick, and quiet, and probably always on time. A small, dangerous gang of Green fanatics. But with a warm smile and a big checkbook, Tony had lured them into the system. He made them get official and slow and bureaucratic, so that all these wild-eyed yarn-hat tree-huggers had to put on suits and ties, and play their office game, and totally lose their edge. Nothing left of their wild spirit now but their name and maybe their old logo . . .
Was Tony that smart? Yes, of course Tony was that smart. If Tony had the opportunity, if he found a way to angle it just right . . .
“What was Tony’s angle in all this?” Van said.
“Well, DeFanti was just so thrilled. It was Tony’s idea to name this place after DeFanti’s real father, ‘Alfred A. Griffith,’ some totally obscure guy who died when DeFanti was seven. That was the best thing that ever happened to us astronomers. Tom DeFanti got this big reputation as this steward of the land . . . That was eight or nine years ago now. A major project like this takes a long time.”
“Where were Tony’s big bucks?”
“Do there have to be any big bucks? It’s a telescope!”
Van tugged at his beard. “You know this is Tony Carew, right?”
Dottie winced. “Oh, honey, he’s your best friend . . .”
“Yeah. I know. That’s why I know all this stuff.”
Dottie was hurt. She looked him in the eye and looked away. “Well, word does get around . . . I don’t really know this for a fact, but . . .”
“But Tony had an angle,” he said.
She lowered her voice. “Do you know about pipeline easements?”
“You mean like legal permission to lay fiber-optic? Yeah, sure.”
“Well, Colorado passed a lot of Internet easements once. They were trying to wire up the rural part of the state, you know, equal access rights to the Info Superhighway, and all that. But then, a couple of years later, DeFanti got that law changed in the state legislature into gas pipeline easements. Just a word or two in some state committee, real quiet. Then came that big energy crunch in California. That huge natural gas shortage they had. There were some really big energy companies involved in that. Companies with really big friends.”
Van grunted. The Grease Machine. Of course. There were only so many ways over the continental backbone of the Rocky Mountains. California’s thirst for energy was colossal.
If you committted a corporate crime in a forest, and nobody knew it was there, was it even a crime at all? What if you turned right around and gave the cash to charity, like Carnegie did, or Rockefeller? The underprivileged kids of America, noses pressed to their computer screens so they could see their stars . . . Van paced