Power Surge

by Ben Bova

  From his minuscule kitchen, Jake replied, “Saving the energy plan.” He pulled a bottle of Killian’s Red from his minifridge, then yanked its one tray of ice cubes out.

  “You’ve got a one-track mind,” O’Donnell said, practically growling.

  “And,” Jake added, “getting Santino the Majority Leader’s post.”

  The three of them sat up straighter.

  “If you can do that…” The senator’s father let the thought dangle.

  Jake placed the beer and the ice water on the coffee table, then wheeled his desk chair to the coffee table and sat down. He noticed that O’Donnell hadn’t cranked the recliner back from its upright position.

  “How’s the energy plan going to help Santino?” O’Donnell asked. Almost pugnaciously.

  Jake took in a breath, then plunged, “Instead of burying the plan and kowtowing to Perlmutter and the farm lobby, we show how the plan can help farmers to feed the world’s poor people.”

  O’Donnell’s bony face twisted into a sour frown. Senator Tomlinson said, “Santino doesn’t want to hear a peep about the energy plan. You might as well try to talk him into nuking South Dakota.”

  Jake shook his head. “Frank, you’ve got to convince Santino that the energy plan is the only way for him to flatten Perlmutter.”

  “Have you ever seen the senator from South Dakota?” O’Donnell asked. “It would take the whole defensive line of the Chicago Bears to flatten that overweight bastard.”

  The senator chuckled, but his father demanded, “What makes you crazy enough to think the energy plan can help Santino?”

  Jake said, “First of all, Santino has got to bring out the point that growing crops to make ethanol pushes up food prices around the world. Perlmutter is starving poor people in Asia, Africa, the Middle East.”

  Tomlinson senior reached for his ice water as he asked, “Starving children?”

  Nodding, Jake added, “And babies.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true, Jake,” said the senator.

  “It’s true. I’ve checked it out.”

  O’Donnell took a swig of his beer. “So how’s your plan going to feed starving babies in Afghanistan?”

  Hunching closer to the coffee table, Jake replied, “We produce methanol for the oil companies. Farmers go back to selling their crops for food.”

  “But that means the farmers lose their ethanol money.”

  Jake went on, “Yes, but methanol will lower the prices for the fuels that farmers need to power their combines and reapers and other equipment. They come out ahead, economically.” Before any of them could react to that, Jake went on, “And as new energy technologies like MHD kick in, the price of electricity comes down as well.”

  “The power companies don’t want that,” Tomlinson senior pointed out.

  “But by selling the carbon dioxide their power plants emit to the methanol producers, instead of footing the costs of burying their CO2 in the ground, they’ll be way ahead economically.”

  The senator mused, “And farms can convert to solar energy and wind power. That’ll save them money, too.”

  “You’re cutting into the power companies’ profits again,” his father warned.

  “Not if they get involved in solar and wind systems themselves,” Jake countered. “They can make profits from that, too. And show that they’re really interested in protecting the environment.”

  “Pie in the sky,” O’Donnell groused.

  “No,” Jake snapped. “It’s a fundamental shift in our energy priorities. If we carry it off properly, everybody can gain.”

  Tomlinson senior murmured, “Obamacare.”

  “No, no, no,” Jake insisted. “The plan doesn’t call for federal control of the energy industries. It offers tax subsidies for developing new energy technology. Coal-fired power plants can keep on burning coal, and sell their carbon dioxide emissions to the methanol industry. Oil companies’ costs will come down, especially as we stop importing so much foreign oil.”

  The senator rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t think Santino will see things your way, Jake.”

  “He will if you convince him that the energy plan will win him the Majority Leader job,” Jake insisted. Ticking points off on his fingers, “It’ll help people in poor nations and even lower the price of food here in the States. It’ll cut back on the seven trillion dollars we send overseas every year for foreign oil. Do you realize that two-thirds of our balance of trade deficit comes from importing foreign oil?”

  O’Donnell’s eyes widened slightly. “Two-thirds?”

  “Right. And the plan will help the fossil fuel industries to grow without damaging the environment. It’s got something for everybody!”

  Tomlinson senior asked, “Including the solar power people and all the other greenies?”

  “Including the renewables, yes,” said Jake.

  Turning to O’Donnell, the senator asked, “What do you think, Kevin?”

  Looking sourer than usual, the staff chief said, “It all sounds lovely. But our bright boy here has overlooked the fundamental problem: the fossil fuel industries don’t want a new energy plan. They like things as they are.”

  “Including the environmental regulations that’re coming down the pike?” Jake challenged. “With my plan they can make money selling their carbon dioxide emissions to produce methanol.”

  “That’s a point, Kevin,” Senator Tomlinson said, softly.

  Rolling his chair slightly toward the recliner O’Donnell was sitting in, Jake asked, “Couldn’t you get a few of the key fossil fuel lobbyists together with Frank and Santino to discuss the matter? See if they’ll go for it?”

  The elder Tomlinson mused, “If you can convince Santino that this will help him become Majority Leader…”

  “It’s a long shot,” O’Donnell said.

  “But it might be worth trying,” said the senator.

  “It could get you into Santino’s good graces,” his father muttered.

  “Is this the miracle we need?” asked his son.

  “It could be,” Jake said. “This plan will do it. If you can convince Santino to use it properly.”

  Senator Tomlinson made a long, exaggerated sigh. Then, turning to his chief of staff, he asked, “Kevin, can you put such a meeting together?”

  O’Donnell shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I can get the lobbyists. Even somebody from Santino’s office. But the Little Saint?” He shook his head. “You’ll have to talk to him yourself, Franklin.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Tomlinson said, without enthusiasm.

  Tomlinson senior got to his feet, slowly, and extended his hand to Jake. “If this piece of political jujitsu actually works, my boy, you’ll be worth your weight in gold.”

  Surprised, Jake took the old man’s proffered hand in his own and heard himself blurt, “All I want is my old job back.”

  O’Donnell snorted dismissively.

  Jake smiled wryly and said, “It’s a lot safer parking in the Hart S.O.B. than at WETA.”

  Getting the Ball Rolling

  Jake thought that Margarita Viera gave the lie to the cliché that all Hispanic women are warm, emotional, and overweight. WETA-TV’s chief of programming was lean to the point of anorexia, as dispassionate as a blank wall, and as cold as a hired assassin.

  When Jake arrived in his office at the station on Tuesday and booted up his desktop computer, the first item on his agenda for the day was a note from Viera: See me. 9:30.

  Jake almost smiled. He had arrived early, as usual; his desk clock read 8:49 a.m. Still have some time to grab a mug of coffee and check out the rest of the day’s schedule.

  Promptly at nine thirty he rapped once on Viera’s office door, then pushed it open. She was at her desk, on the phone. With her free hand she waved him to the chair in front of the desk.

  “Yes, I’ll tell him,” she said into the phone in her sharp adenoidal tone. “I’ll have him call you back.”

  As she hung u
p the phone and Jake sat down, Viera focused on Jake’s bandaged brow. “That’s from the mugging?”

  Jake nodded. “Six stitches.”

  Nudging her sharp chin in the telephone’s direction, she said, “That call was from the police. They’re looking for you. They say they’ve found your wallet.”

  “Great!”

  Looking almost pleased, she added, “No cash in it. And the credit cards are all gone.”

  With a groaning sigh, Jake said, “I had expected that.”

  “Sergeant Quintero. He says he gave you his card.”

  Jake nodded again, although he couldn’t remember where he’d put the police sergeant’s card.

  Viera shifted to station business. “This NASA guy, Knowles, he says he’s got an idea for a special he wants us to produce.”

  “He does?”

  “He says you gave him the idea for it.”

  “Oh,” Jake said. “The space solar power thing.”

  “Would you be kind enough to tell me what you’re cooking up?”

  Jake tried to ignore her sarcasm. “I think it’s something that can get NASA the kind of public backing the agency hasn’t had since the old Apollo days.”

  “I was just a child then,” Viera said. “My brothers were real interested in it. Stayed up to watch the TV broadcasts from the Moon.”

  “It was an exciting time,” Jake said.

  Viera’s lean face was totally indifferent. “The first landing was exciting, I guess. The rest of them were just the same old thing.”

  Jake resisted the impulse to shake his head in disappointment.

  “So what’s the bright idea that’s got Knowles so worked up?”

  “Space solar power,” said Jake. “Using satellites to generate electricity from sunlight in space and then beaming the power down to the ground. Clean electricity. No power plants on the ground burning coal or oil.”

  “Or natural gas,” Viera added.

  “Right. The power plant is the sun, ninety-three million away.”

  Looking thoughtful, Viera asked, “Could this replace nuclear power, too?”

  “It could.”

  “Power plants in space.”

  “NASA could lead the way on this, and show the taxpayers that space technology can help them, the man on the street.”

  “May I remind you that you work for WETA-TV, not NASA?”

  “I know. But if we do this show right—and promote it properly—it could be a big winner for the station, get us lots of viewers.”

  Viera eyed Jake for a silent moment, then said, “So you think we should produce a special on the subject.”

  “I think it could be a good idea.”

  “Of course you do, since it was your idea in the first place.”

  “It would make a great show,” Jake urged.

  “It would be a damned expensive show.”

  Shaking his head, Jake countered, “NASA could provide most of the footage. NASA and some of the industry contractors that’ve done studies on the idea. All we’d have to do is shoot interviews with key players.”

  “And man-in-the-street interviews,” Viera added. “They’re cheap enough.”

  “I think it would make a really great show.”

  “Maybe,” Viera said, with just the trace of a smile on her thin lips. “Let me get some cost figures run up. Knowles says he can put us in contact with the industry people.”

  “Good. I think we could win an Emmy with this.”

  Viera’s expression turned scornful. “Don’t get carried away with yourself, Jake. Don’t start writing your acceptance speech.”

  He grinned at her. “You’d be the one accepting the Emmy, not me.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. You get Knowles to give you the contacts for getting footage. And I mean good footage. Hardware. Animation. CGI. Not talking heads.”

  Jake got to his feet. “I’ll call him right away.”

  He got as far as the door before Viera told him, “And phone that police sergeant.”

  “Right,” said Jake, hoping he could remember where he’d left the cop’s card.

  As he headed back toward his own little office he wondered if this special about space solar power could be used in the campaign to make his energy plan a weapon in Senator Santino’s struggle against Senator Perlmutter. Probably not, he thought. By the time the station produces the show and gets it on the air, the battle over the next Senate Majority Leader will be already decided.

  And yet there was something in that kernel of an idea, something that nagged at the edge of his consciousness. If I can get Tami to tell some of her friends in the news media about how the energy plan can help to feed poor people around the world … maybe that could start the ball rolling.

  Then he remembered that Senator Tomlinson was scheduled to deliver a commencement speech in a few weeks at some university in Pennsylvania. Get him to talk about how energy policy influences the price for food around the world. Get major news coverage, splash it over the blogosphere. That’d get the ball rolling!

  Suddenly he remembered where he’d left Sergeant Quintero’s card: it was right there in his back pocket, inside a folded-over envelope that he’d used as a makeshift wallet, until he could get to a store and buy a new one.

  But now I won’t need a new one, Jake thought happily, if Quintero’s found my old one.

  * * *

  Jake had expected the Metro Police station to be a seedy, rundown affair. Instead, it was bright, modern-looking, clean, and well lit. A young woman in police uniform sat at a desk just inside the front door and pointed him toward Quintero’s office.

  “You’re lucky,” she said as she put down her phone. “In another five minutes he’d be on his way to lunch.”

  Jake hurried down the corridor the receptionist indicated and stepped into a large room filled with rows of desks, most of them unoccupied. Quintero was standing off by the windows with a pair of other cops, deep in conversation. But he noticed Jake threading his way through the desks and walked over to meet him.

  “Mr. Ross,” he said. Jake saw details he had missed on the night of the mugging. Quintero was well over six feet tall, his hair a grizzled, short-cropped salt-and-pepper, his mustache all gray. He had wide shoulders, but his gut hung over his belt noticeably.

  “Sergeant Quintero,” said Jake.

  Leading Jake back toward his desk, Quintero said, “We found your wallet. Money and credit cards weren’t in it, though.”

  “How did you find it?” Jake asked.

  Waggling one hand, the sergeant said, “Routine search of the neighborhood. It was in a trash can. Most police work boils down to pounding the pavement.”

  He opened his top desk drawer and pulled out a plastic baggie with Jake’s wallet inside.

  “Can you identify it?” Quintero asked.

  Frowning in thought for a moment, Jake said, “It’s got a picture of my late wife in it, if they didn’t take that, too.”

  “No, the picture’s still there,” Quintero said, holding the baggie with his fingertips. “What’s she wearing?”

  Jake squeezed his eyes shut, remembering. “A dress with a flower pattern. She’s blond … that is, she was blond.”

  Taking the wallet out of its protective plastic, Quintero handed it to Jake. “She was very pretty. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Jake nodded, surprised that just the thought of Louise’s photograph could cause him so much pain.

  As he accepted the wallet, Jake asked, “I don’t suppose you found any fingerprints or anything else you could use to track down the muggers.”

  “Nah, they wiped it down before they tossed it.” Before Jake could reply, the sergeant went on, “But they got a little careless with the credit cards. Used your gasoline card on I-95 in Maryland and again in Rhode Island.”

  “Rhode Island?”

  “Guess they didn’t realize we could track the card so fast.”

  Rhode Island, Jake thought. Christ Almighty, those goons wer
e sent by Jacobi!

  The Lehigh Speech

  As O’Donnell had expected, Senator Santino avoided meeting with Tomlinson. “The Little Saint considers our man persona non grata,” the staff chief told Jake.

  They were having lunch together at a busy delicatessen halfway between the WETA office and Capitol Hill. Jake found the corned beef sandwich delicious, especially with the tangy mustard. Lean though he was, O’Donnell ordered pastrami and wolfed it down greedily, much to Jake’s surprise. Kevin must have a high metabolism, he thought.

  “How about getting together with some of Santino’s people and a couple of the lobbyists?” Jake asked.

  “He’s stalling on that, too,” O’Donnell replied. He wiped his chin with his napkin, then said, “It’s like I told you, Jake: the Little Saint doesn’t want to have anything to do with Franklin or your energy plan.”

  Jake nodded, but he said to himself, Then we’re just going to have to change the Little Saint’s mind.

  Pulling a thumb-sized USB drive from his shirt pocket, Jake said, “I put together some ideas that Frank can use in that graduation speech he’s giving.”

  Accepting the drive, O’Donnell said dourly, “Lehigh University. Not the big leagues.”

  “I know,” Jake said, thinking, But we can make the big leagues take notice. If we play our cards right. After all, Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, wasn’t the big leagues, either. But Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech got plenty of attention, anyway.

  * * *

  “Lehigh University?” Tami asked. “That’s in Pennsylvania, isn’t it? Up in the hills.”

  Jake nodded. “In Bethlehem, about halfway between Philadelphia and New York.”

  Nearly three weeks had passed since his lunch with O’Donnell. They were sitting in Jake’s living room, picking at Chinese takeout set in cardboard cartons on the coffee table. Jake had opened a bottle of Chianti, reasoning that Chianti went with just about any food, even moo goo gai pan.

  Also on the coffee table was another USB drive, this one holding the entire finished speech that Senator Tomlinson was going to give at Lehigh the next week.

  “I’ve worked with Frank on this speech,” Jake explained. “It spells out the relationship between energy policy and world food prices.”