Sixty Days and Counting. Kim Stanley Robinson

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      Just do the obvious things, Vanderwal. Do the necessary.

      Diane was already acting in the manner suggested by most long-term strategy theory, because in any scenario conceivable, copious amounts of clean solar energy would almost certainly be a good thing. It was, therefore, a robust plan.

      So, solar power:

      1) there were the photovoltaics, in which sunlight was transformed into alternating current by way of photons stimulating piezoelectricity in silicon.

      2) There were the Stirling engines, external heat engines that used mirror dishes controlled by computers to reflect sunlight onto a hydrogen-filled closed element that heated to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, driving pistons which generated the electricity. The engine had been designed by a Scot named Stirling in 1816.

      All solar technologies had efficiency rates measured as a percentage of the sunlight’s photonic energy transferred successfully to alternating current electricity. They had been getting some really good numbers from solar panels, up to twenty percent, but this Stirling engine got thirty, Given the amount of photons raining down, that was really good. That would add up fast.

      Then he found a link to a site that explained that Southern California Edison had built a Stirling system to power a 500 megawatt plant; most traditionally-powered plants were 500 or a thousand megawatts, so this was full size. That meant there was some practical experience with real-world, commercial versions of this technology. Also some manufacturing ability, ready to be deployed. All good news when contemplating the need for speed.

      Banishing the thought (recurrent about every hour) that they should have been doing this a long time ago, Frank called SCE and asked a long string of questions of the CPM (the Cognizant Program Manager, a useful acronym that only NSF appeared to use). This turned out to be a man who was more than happy to talk – who would have talked all day, maybe all night. With difficulty Frank got him to stop. Lots of enthusiasm for the Stirling system there.

      Well, more grist for the mill. Over the past year Frank had been giving alternative energy about a quarter of his working time, and now he saw he was going to have to bump that up. Everything from now on would be jacked to emergency levels. Not a comfortable feeling, but there was no avoiding it. It was like an existential condition, as if he had become Alice’s White Rabbit: I’m late! I’m late! I’m late! And most of the time he managed to obscure from his conscious train of thought the true source of his anxiety.

      One day, later that week, when he was deep in work’s oblivion, Diane appeared in his doorway, startling him. He was pleased, then nervous; they had not yet found a new balance. After Caroline had called Frank with her emergency situation, Frank had hastily called Diane to cancel before thinking of any plausible non-other-woman-related reason for doing so, and so had given no explanation at all – which opacity was suspicious, and probably more impolite than the cancellation per se. Opacity seldom conducive to rapport.

      ‘Hi, Diane,’ he said now, aping normality. ‘What’s happening?’

      She looked at him with a curious expression. ‘I just got a call from Phil Chase.’

      ‘Wow, what did he want?’

      ‘He asked me if I would be his science advisor.’

      Frank found he was standing. He reached out and shook Diane’s hand, then hugged her. ‘Now that is news we have to celebrate,’ he declared, seizing the bull by the horns. ‘I’m sorry about that the other night, I still owe you dinner! Can I take you out tonight?’

      ‘Sure,’ she said easily, as if there had been no problem. She was so cool; maybe there never had been a problem. Frank couldn’t be sure. ‘Meet you at,’ she checked her watch, ‘at six, okay? Now I’m going to go call my kids.’

      But then she stopped on her way out, and again looked at him oddly. ‘You must have had something to do with this,’ she said suddenly.

      ‘Me? I don’t think so. What do you mean?’

      ‘Talking to Charlie Quibler, maybe?’

      ‘Oh, no. I mean, of course I’ve talked to Charlie about some of our stuff, generally –’

      ‘And he’s been Chase’s environment guy.’

      ‘Well yes, but you know, Charlie’s just part of a large staff, and he’s been staying at home with Joe, so he hasn’t been a major factor with Chase for some time, as I understand it. Mostly just a voice on the phone. He says he doesn’t get listened to. He says he’s kind of like Jiminy Cricket was to Pinocchio, when Pinocchio’s nose was at its longest.’

      Diane laughed. ‘Yeah sure. Let’s meet over at Optimodal, shall we? Let’s say seven instead of six. I want to run some of this off.’

      Now that was something he could understand. ‘Sure. See you there.’

      Frank sat in his chair feeling his chest puffed out: another cliché revealed to be an accurate account of emotion’s effects on the body. Everyone was the same. It occurred to him that maybe Charlie had had something to do with it, after all. Someone had to have advised Chase whom to choose for this post, and as far as Frank knew, Chase and Diane had never met. So – that was interesting.

      Frank went over to the Optimodal Health Club just after six, waved to Diane on the elliptical in the next room, and stomped up the stairmaster for the equivalent of about a thousand vertical feet. After that he showered and dressed, getting into one of his ‘nicer’ shirts for the occasion, and met Diane out in the lobby at the appointed time. She too had changed into something nice, and for a second Frank considered the possibility that she lived out of her office and Optimodal, just as he had contemplated doing before building his treehouse. What evidence did he or anyone else have to disprove it? When they arrived in the morning she was there, when they left at night she was there. There were couches in her big office, and she went to Optimodal every morning of the week, as far as he knew.…

      But then again, she certainly had a home somewhere. Everyone did, except for him. And the bros in the park. And the fregans and ferals proliferating in the metropolis. Indeed some twenty or thirty million people in America, he had read. But one thought of everyone as having a home.

      Enough – it was time to refocus on the moment and their date. It had to be called that. Their second date, in fact – the first one having occurred by accident in New York, after discussing the North Atlantic project at the UN. And now they were in a Lebanese restaurant in Georgetown that Diane had recently discovered.

      And it was very nice. Now they could celebrate not only the actual salting itself, but its subsequent success in restarting the thermohaline; and now, also, Diane’s invitation to become the new Presidential science advisor.

      She was pleased with this last, Frank could see. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said to her when they were settled into the main course. ‘Is it a good position? I mean, what does the science advisor do?’ Did it have any power, in other words?

      ‘It all depends on the President,’ Diane said. ‘I’ve been looking into it, and it appears the position began as Nixon’s way of spanking the science community for publicly backing Johnson over Goldwater. He sent СКАЧАТЬ