Lunch was a spicy Chilean shrimp and scallop stew. There were other men in the room, Latinos and Africans, eating the stew and talking in Spanish or English. Then they left in a group for the machine shop, and Carlos and X and Wade sat at a lab table under one of the end windows, and talked looking out at the view. Wade described his mission to Antarctica, and told them some of what he had discovered at the South Pole and back at McMurdo. Carlos nodded, then expressed his admiration for Phil Chase. “He is very important now, very important.”
Wade said, “Do you mind if I try to transmit our conversation to him? He’d like to hear this, I’m sure.”
“Oh no problem, no problem.”
Wade tapped the Congressman’s button on his wrist phone, hoping it was not the middle of the night wherever Chase was now; or that he was feeling insomniac again. Voices in the night: that was how Phil spent many a sleepless hour.
“First,” Wade said, “can you tell me if your hovercraft has ever been out to the South Pole, either with you, or piloted by someone else?”
Carlos looked surprised. “To the Pole? It’s more than two hundred kilometers away.”
“Couldn’t the hovercraft get there?”
“Not without refueling.”
“Couldn’t fuel caches be out there?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. I mean there are, at our field stations. But they are all located over this basin under the ice that we are investigating, the Pothole as we call it. We don’t go toward the Pole much.”
“And no one else could have used the hovercraft?”
“No way.”
Wade nodded, thinking it over. “Tell me more about this place.”
Carlos described the nature of the work going on at the station, emphasizing its exploratory nature, the new fail-safe technologies being employed in the hunt, and the fact that the main quarry at this point was methane hydrates, which if burned as fuel rather than released into the atmosphere would actually help the overall picture concerning global warming. He listed the points of the suspended Antarctic Treaty, and described how they were in fact conforming to all of them: “especially at this point, when the drilling is being done for science only.”
Wade nodded throughout this description, then said, “It’s very interesting, but you must agree that there is a lot of criticism and opposition to your project.”
“This is political in nature.”
“Well, some from Antarctic scientists too. If the project is as harmless or as beneficial as you say it is, then why are they making these objections?”
Carlos rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately there are a fairly large number of scientists who are not completely scientific. Not good scientists when it comes to life outside their own field of study. It’s part of a more general crisis ongoing among scientists worldwide, concerning how to behave in the world outside their field. You have been down here long enough to notice, I hope, that this continent is run by scientists, and mostly for their own benefit. They are funded by governments to come down here, and they generate the only export of the continent so far, which is scientific papers. Knowledge, you can say, but say also papers, careers, livings.”
X was nodding deeply as Carlos said this, and Wade looked to him to invite him to explain why.
“That’s the way it looked in McMurdo,” X said. “Beaker utopia. And the rest of the people down here making things nice for them, freeing up their time, but just making wages for themselves. It’s a caste system.”
“Exactly,” Carlos said. “Most scientists have analyzed life scientifically, and realized that sufficiency is all that you really need, and that pursuing money beyond the point of sufficiency only degrades life. So that it is no coincidence that very rich people are often fools or crazed, while scientists are smart people who have carved their little utopia out of the world system, by extending their efforts after knowledge rather than money. They know that knowledge can become power, and with the power that science wields in this world, they control things. Control even the political realm, but without the hassle of politics per se. They just advise the decision makers what is possible and what is advisable, and ask for money, and go out and do what they want.”
Wade said, “So you’re saying scientists control not just Antarctica, but the whole rest of the world?”
Carlos got up and took their bowls to the stove for refills. “Exactly true! And this illustrates a very important principle of mine, which is that whatever is true in Antarctica is also true everywhere else in the world. But in Antarctica there are no, no,” he waved at the blank featureless white plain outside the window, “no distractions. No trees or billboards. You can see what really is true, naked out here. So if you come down here and see a continent ruled by scientists for their own convenience, it is true also then on all the other continents as well.”
Wade said, “Well, but, I don’t know … I’m not used to thinking of scientists actually being the ones in control. I don’t think most of them would agree that’s the case. I doubt they would even want it to be.”
“Oh no, not explicitly! Of course not! Who would want that, it is obviously such a hassle! Politicians—” he looked at Wade, raised a palm to say, What can you say? “No sane person would want that, apologies to Senator Chase. It violates the principle of sufficiency. But tell me, who do you think rules the world?”
“Governments,” Wade said.
“Okay, but not politicians per se. The whole government.”
“Yes.”
“Meaning you. I mean, in that the politicians get elected, and they have staff people who actually know how to work the system. And so when they want to get something done, they ask their staff how they can do it, and if the staff likes the project they tell the politician how, and if they don’t like it, they subvert it.”
“Yes, Minister,” X said. “Great show.”
Wade had to agree. “I certainly am in complete control of my politician,” he said distinctly toward his wrist phone. “Sir Humphrey has nothing on me.”
“So,” Carlos said, “but when you make your decisions, who do you consult? Do you call yourself a bureaucrat?”
“No, not really.”
“Because they are just functionaries, they do not set policy?”
“That’s right.”
“But what about technocrats? What about scientific staff, who tell the politicians what is physically possible and what isn’t? Are you a technocrat?”
“Perhaps,” Wade said. “But not usually. I have an expertise, I suppose, but I’m no scientist.”
“A bureaucrat then! Or staff assistant, or political aide. Whatever you call it. Let’s just say government, like you said at first. But you make your decisions by consulting with a technical staff, the technocrats, and they make their decisions by consulting with the scientific bodies, the scientists. And so the scientists call the shots!”
Wade and X stared at each other in consternation.
“And now we have overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity,” Carlos went on as he gave them full bowls. “We have maybe two, maybe three billion more people than we can support. And this global warming, the bad weather. It’s an emergency situation. Governments have to guide us through this tight spot in history, if we are going to get through it without supercatastrophes. But how will they do that? Who will tell them how to do it?”
“Beakers,” X said.
Carlos nodded.
“But they’re not even trying!” X objected. “They’ve got their island utopia, like you said, and so they just come down here or wherever else and hang out in the field or the lab and do their thing, and they’re not doing anything to save the world, as far as I can tell. They’re just part of the capitalist machinery.”