“The fuck is she doing here?” His finger jabbed violently at Ms. Li Song as he looked from myself to Rathbone, who simply grimaced. Ms. Li Song, for her part, stared at him coolly. “No, really, someone explain? What is industry’s walking multitool doing here?”
Said Secretary Rathbone: “Tony. Easy.”
“Or are we just here to trade away the last of a habitable planet for a few concessions on light-duty vehicle standards?”
Ms. Li Song attempted: “Dr. Pietrus, I don’t know what I can do to assure you I’m here in good faith—”
“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. We’re here to cut the heads off your members once and for all.”
Ms. Li Song spoke over him: “… But I represent industries vital to the functioning of the global economy. I also represent industries that know they have to change. That’s why I’m here. To help pave the way for a transition of their business models. Everyone can come away from this process having won.”
Tony stood, his face pink. He craned his neck forward and roared: “Get fucked, lady!”
Then he stormed out of the room. Alice McCowen glared at me like I was the one who’d erupted.
“Hasan, what are you—? Go fucking get him!”
I said: “Dr. Pietrus has a point, doesn’t he? With no offense intended toward Ms. Li Song, her presence does seem inappropriate. Industry is represented but homeowners who’ve lost everything are not.”
Rathbone pushed his hands through his silver hair, while McCowen simply stared at me in disbelief. Finally, she heaved her bulk up from the table and walked around to me, blinking rapidly. She stuck one enormous index finger in my face, and I could see she’d bitten the cuticle of the nail until it had bled.
“Listen to me, you fucking golem, we’re not starting with the optics disaster of a key scientist walking after thirty seconds. The point of having Pietrus and Song in a room together is to show a united front against the crisis.”
“If good press is the aim, perhaps it’s better to hire a PR firm than recruit a physical oceanographer anyway.”
“Hasan. If you don’t go get him back in here right now, so help me God—I am a dyke with a dick and I will fuck you with it until your colon prolapses.”
Upon the barking of the word fuck—so loud that Hani jumped in her chair—a good deal of spittle escaped Alice’s mouth and landed on my face. I wiped it away. “Colorful.”
I found Tony in his room, packing. He did not even look over his shoulder when I came in.
“Don’t try to talk me into going back in there. Not if she’s a part of this.”
“We don’t have a choice, Tony.”
“Yeah, we do. I’ll get on TV and scream bloody murder. Shame this fidgeting fuckwit Hamby until he takes her off the task force.”
“As usual, Tony, you’re thinking about this emotionally and not logically.”
Tony threw a pair of underwear across the room with the theatrics of an actor trying to shatter a glass in a film. Instead, the pair of boxers poofed against the wall and flopped to the carpet.
“Fuck logically. Don’t you get it? We’re the stage dressing, Ash. We’re here to give them cover, so they can put something together that’ll calm the markets just enough to restore order without changing anything.”
“Tony, if that’s the case, I’ll be there alongside you denouncing it.”
This reassurance produced a tic in his face, the opening I was looking for. Tony had spent seventeen months wrongfully imprisoned in a federal detention center from mid-2033 through 2034 and had nothing to say on the matter. When I’d asked him about it, he waved it away like a vacation gone poorly. He was clearly traumatized but would likely never acknowledge it, let alone seek out a mental health professional. Wounded people, I’ve noticed, tend to welcome camaraderie. It is a key component of getting them to agree to what you want. I continued:
“I will stand before the microphones and cogitate against anything less than what’s necessary. But we need to begin work right away. This crisis will either not go to waste or become a historical marker for the unraveling of our civilization. I’d prefer to make it the former, but that may require you to keep your cool, so to speak, over the next few weeks.”
Tony grunted and looked bashfully at the floor. “It’s definitely not appealing that the goddamned fate of the world relies on me keeping my cool.”
The next day, I set the agenda with a forthright holograph deck about the fundamental issue we faced. The thirty-minute presentation included ghostly blue animations demonstrating the retreat of the Thwaites Glacier and the rapidity with which global sea levels would rise. There was a bowl of Starburst in the center of the table, which got passed around with gusto. Soon a mess of waxy rainbow-colored paper littered the surface.
I concluded: “We’ve talked preliminarily about a solution that could restore confidence in the financial sector. Dr. Rathbone?”
He held his growing middle-aged belly, languidly swiveling to deliver an explanation he felt self-evident: “It’s pretty simple. We draw a line around the coast. Every square inch. It’s not a bathtub model. It’ll factor in topographical distinction and storm surge, but on one side of this line, we vow to defend by any means or cost necessary the property and infrastructure. On the other side, we initiate a managed retreat using a range of tools to draw homeowners, business, and communities back from the shores. We offer buyouts at pre-crisis rates for two years as the carrot. We reengineer the coasts to restore wetlands and plant mangrove forests—whatever we can do to create shock absorbers for storms and sea level.”
The magnitude of this policy had the room in silence.
Finally, Jane cleared her throat: “That sounds alarmingly top-down. We have to ask who this is landing on? Mostly communities of color and the poor. We’d need a near-bottomless slush fund to finance a transition.”
Said Alice to her former lover: “After all this time, gal, you’re about to get your way like Santa backed up the BRINKS truck.”
Tufariello shot her former partner a look. They had been steering very wide berths around each other since arriving in Idaho. I knew their relationship ended over a disagreement about when they would each retire. Alice had told Jane they’d have to cut her head off before she stopped working.
Rathbone went on: “Not to hand-wave at the relocation element of this, but that will be the relatively easy part. The hard part is generating rock-solid confidence in the line. We need to demonstrate clearly what homes, businesses, and infrastructure still have value.”
Admiral Dahms’s voice was the sound of raking graveclass="underline" “Exactly. I’m less concerned with the particulars of the retreat. Where do we draw this imaginary line?”
Because he did his homework, Joe Otero was ready with the Republican offer. “Our caucus is asking for something in line with the IPCC predictions: three feet by 2100.”
In her surprise, Haniya reached out and touched my elbow. “Three feet? The rate of rise is accelerating.”
“Keep in mind,” said Secretary Rathbone, “every inch we move that line back increases the cost of this project exponentially, not to mention displaces more people. We need to be careful about sparking a new wave of panic-selling. We want to solve the problem, not exacerbate it.”