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“That’s the problem with you tree-hugger types,” he said. “Yeah, doing the right thing may be the right thing, but if you want people to do them nothing beats self-interest. Watch and learn.”
He walked into a Senator’s office. “Hello, Senator Cardine, sorry for the delay. I uh, ran into one of my assistants—literally it turns out, as you can see.” Senator Joseph Cardine let out a snort of laughter. He was a round, jolly-looking man, a sort of beardless Santa Claus figure, except that he wore a suit and was one of the most reactionary figures in Congress. Jane felt her stomach curdle—Cardine wasn’t one of the senators on her list of might-be-persuadeds. If anything he was one of the ones that Bill had written off as a waste of time. “Some people believe in God more than reality,” was how Bill had put it. But here, in his office, he seemed almost friendly.
“Anyway, did you have a chance to look over the plans that I’m running through Nebraska?” Malcolm continued.
“They were impressive,” the senator said. “But I’m not sure what they have to do with security.”
Malcolm stepped around behind the senator and flashed Jane a quick wink. “Here, let me show you,” he said, taking a roll out of his briefcase. “This is the power grid for the United States.”
“If this is going to be a lecture about infrastructure—”
“It’s not about infrastructure, sir, it’s about bypassing the need for infrastructure. Imagine: solar panels on every house, every shed, every roof, feeding a distributed network of batteries. Each house would be its own node—and each node could bleed a few kilowatts into a nationwide network.”
“You’re talking about production on the scale of millions,” said the Senator. “That would be—”
“It is a lot work, to say nothing of maintenance and battery facilities—oh, I didn’t mention that? Well, let me be frank, sir—the main problem with solar is that it generates most of its energy during the day, but people need energy most at night—that’s when they clean, that’s when most of them cook, that’s when they’re out buying groceries—imagine a method of storing that solar energy so that people can use it whenever and wherever they need it.”
The Senator frowned. Jane could see him mulling over the proposal, probably debating whether it was worth pissing off the coalition from the people building the Matrix.
Malcolm continued, “The point is, Senator, no matter how you hang onto it, oil is dying. Any idiot who can do the math can figure that out. The only question is, do you want to be caught short when it does?”
Jane could hear Malcolm’s tone shift. Suddenly it was no longer wheedling—now it had become an overt threat. “Solar is coming, Senator, whether you want it or not. The only thing that matters in the end, of course, is who profits from it—the US, or China?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Solar panels are the hottest industry in China at the moment,” said Malcolm. “The government there is offering massive tax breaks for manufacturing, and R&D—but I’m a patriot, or too lazy to learn Chinese, which amounts to the same thing. I need your backing to make it worthwhile to stay in the US.”
“What sort of backing are you talking about?” asked the Senator, his voice gruff, but Jane could tell who’d lost the conversation.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
***
It had been a dazzling two hours, but Malcolm was an expert at seeing the objections that Senator Cardine would raise, seemingly ten questions before he opened his mouth to ask them. He played the senator like a fiddle, knowing when to cajole, when to present facts, when to make threats, and when to let him have his say. It’d been a thing of beauty, watching the senator who’d started the meeting adamantly opposed to anything to do with solar ending with a promise to make their case before the vote that week. Jane had sat through various meetings in her time at Rigel, but she’d never seen such virtuosity at converting someone who was so thoroughly opposed to solar into such a powerful ally.
She was telling him so as they were leaving the Capital building when he turned to her and said, “Do me a favor?”
He’s going to ask me for a date.
“Anything,” she said, swallowing her breathlessness awkwardly. Come on, get it together, Jane—not every guy wants to be your boyfriend.
“Don’t tell anybody about this meeting.”
“What? But you’ve just converted our biggest opponent to our cause! Why should I keep it a secret?”
He looked around. Suddenly his demeanor changed, going from friendly adversary to downright hostile in a flash. “Come with me,” he hissed. “They’re watching me. Say something to me. Something mean.”
Who’s watching? But she spat out, “People like you are the reason that nobody thinks ahead! They think you’ll always be there and that you’re working for their interests but you can’t fool me—”
And then he was all smiles again. “Okay,” she said. “What the hell was that?”
He shook his head. “Come with me dinner and I’ll explain everything,” he said.
“That’s a rather involved way to ask a woman out to dinner,” she said.
“That’s the only way to be involved with me,” he said, hailing a cab. “Come with me—I have standing reservations at this marvelous little place in Alexandria.”
Thirty minutes later she was stepping out of a cab and into a little restaurant called “Alexandria”. It was a rather unpretentious, almost working-class place, and when he saw her looking at him he laughed and said, “Don’t be fooled by the outside, the food is great.”
