Power Surge

by Ben Bova

  There was a mob swarming each of the bars that had been set up in the corners of the ballroom, but a pert waitress smiled through the crowd, carrying a tray of champagne flutes. Jake took one from her and started shouldering his way toward the happy couple.

  “Jake! Hey!”

  Turning at the sound of his name, Jake saw Bob Rogers grinning at him.

  “Bob!” he said, genuinely pleased. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Rogers was the head of the MHD power generator program at the university back home, in Montana. He looked distinctly out of place among this Washington crowd in his western-cut tan jacket and bolo neckpiece: a working physicist in the midst of politicians and appointees.

  Rogers was nearly ten years older than Jake. He had the seamed, leathery face of an outdoorsman, crinkly pale blue eyes, and wispy sandy hair.

  “I got an invitation from the senator,” Rogers explained, smiling boyishly, “and I wanted to touch base with you anyway, so here I am.”

  “Good to see you,” Jake said, really meaning it.

  “Keeping busy?”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Jake replied fervently. “I’m just the science advisor to a junior senator, but everybody from fracking experts to astronauts wants to sell me his favorite scheme. Stem cell researchers, fundamentalists who’re against stem cell research, oilmen, environmentalists, biofuels people, NIH, NSF … I must be the most popular guy in town.”

  “So how’s your social life?”

  With a shrug, Jake said, “Pretty close to zero. Too much to do at the office. Too many hustlers. You have no idea how many people have barged in on me, pushing their favorite schemes.”

  “You won’t forget about MHD, will you?” Rogers smiled as he asked, but Jake could see real concern in his eyes.

  “Hell no. MHD is going to be part of our energy plan, an important part.”

  “Noisy, isn’t it?” Rogers said, looking around at the crowd uneasily.

  “Too many people,” said Jake.

  “All talking at once. Nobody’s listening.”

  Jake laughed. “Come on, let’s congratulate the newlyweds and then get the hell out of here.”

  “Good thinking.”

  As they pushed through the crowd, Jake asked, “How’s Tim and the rest of the team?”

  “Tim’s as cantankerous as ever,” Rogers replied, grinning, “but he’s got the big rig close to seventy-five megawatts.”

  “For how long?”

  “Sixty hours, the latest run.”

  Jake knew that the university and the National Association of Electric Utilities were committed to building a demonstration MHD power plant once the experimental rig in the town of Lignite reached a hundred megawatts for a thousand hours continuously. He had the feeling the NAEU felt that such a goal was unattainable and that they wouldn’t ever have to put up any money for the demo plant.

  “Still got a long way to go,” Jake said.

  With an easygoing nod, Rogers said, “We’ll get there. Tim won’t stop until we do.”

  Jake wondered if the utility people really meant to honor their commitment or whether they were simply stalling, holding off the decision as long as possible.

  Then he surprised himself by asking, “And Glynis? How’s she?”

  “She and Tim got married last month. Didn’t you know?”

  Jake had expected that, but he still felt it like a punch to the solar plexus.

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “They ran off to Las Vegas. All of a sudden, just like that.” Rogers snapped his fingers.

  Jake had cared for Glynis Colwyn and she knew it. But she had married rough, sour-faced, hard-driving Tim Younger. It’s not my day, Jake thought.

  They finally reached Tomlinson and Amy, surrounded by well-wishers. Jake mumbled his congratulations while Rogers stood beside him and shook the senator’s hand. Amy smiled her bright cheerleader’s smile.

  Tomlinson was grinning from ear to ear. Not his patented politician’s smile, but a real beaming expression of happiness.

  “Where you going on your honeymoon?” one of the others asked.

  “It’s a secret,” said Tomlinson.

  “He won’t even tell me,” Amy said happily. “He just told me to pack a bikini and my passport.”

  Jake knew Tomlinson was going to sail his yacht to Bermuda and back. Just the two of them on the boat for two weeks or so. Tomlinson might want to keep his plans secret from most people, even his bride, but he had to let his office staff know where he would be.

  Jake couldn’t help saying, “Well, smooth sailing, wherever you go.”

  Tomlinson started to frown, caught himself, and said, “You just make sure you show up at the office bright and early every day, Jake. No days off for the staff.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said Jake.

  Hart Senate Office Building

  In a wryly ironic way, it amused Jake that the Senate office buildings were known throughout Washington as S.O.B.s. The Hart S.O.B. was the newest of them, modernistic in design where the older buildings were quasi-Greek temples in style. Still, the building was clad in marble, inside and out. DC formica, Jake called it.

  For a new senator, Tomlinson had a respectable suite of offices, on the building’s second floor. Jake could hustle up the marble stairs instead of waiting for an elevator. The rooms themselves were almost plush, with real walnut paneling for the offices of the senator and his top staff aides. Jake’s office, on the other side of the suite, had plaster walls, painted eggshell white.

  As soon as he stepped into the outer office, the head of the secretarial staff called to him in her toothache of a voice, “You have a visitor, Dr. Ross.”

  It was barely nine a.m.

  Surprised, Jake asked, “A visitor?”

  The woman was an old hand at running government offices. She was nearly retirement age, lean and flinty, her flaming red hair obviously dyed. She calmly picked a calling card from her desk and read in her shrill adenoidal tone, “Steven Brogan, Department of Energy.”

  The outer office was only half filled, Jake saw. There were more people clustered around the coffeemaker than at their desks.

  Jake asked, “Where is he?”

  “In your office, Dr. Ross.”

  “In my office?”

  The secretary shrugged. “I thought he’d be more comfortable there.”

  “Great.” Jake frowned as he turned and started down the hallway toward his office.

  “Would you like some coffee?” the secretary called after him.

  “Yeah. Sure,” he replied over his shoulder.

  Who the hell is this guy from the Department of Energy? he asked himself. Why’s he here? What does he want? He doesn’t have an appointment; he just barged in here first thing in the morning.

  Jake had a meeting scheduled for ten thirty with a pair of NASA executives and a luncheon at noon with the head of an environmental lobbying firm. I’ve got to finish the outline of the energy plan before Frank gets back from his honeymoon, he reminded himself.

  Jake’s office was neither large nor fancy. There was room for a government-issue wooden desk, two reasonably comfortable chairs for visitors, a file cabinet, and a mostly empty bookcase. No pictures on the walls; nothing personal in sight. Not yet. The one window looked out on the north façade of the Supreme Court building.

  Sitting half slumped in one of the visitor’s chairs was a rumpled-looking man who had probably been a solid middleweight at one time, but now he had apparently let himself get seriously out of shape. He was balding, flabby, his suit jacket hanging unbuttoned around his spreading middle, his open-necked shirt looking wrinkled, as if he’d slept in it all night.

  He pushed himself up from the chair as Jake stepped in.

  “Dr. Ross, I presume.” The man’s voice was a low rumble. His face was sagging, his eyes pouchy.

  “Mr., eh…” Jake struggled to remember. “Brogan, is it?”

  “Yeah. Steve
Brogan.”

  Jake went around his desk and sat down. Brogan sank back into his seat.

  “Department of Energy?” Jake asked.

  With a curt nod, Brogan said, “Office of Coal Utilization.”

  Trying to be polite, Jake said, “I can only give you a few minutes, Mr. Brogan. I have a very busy schedule.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What do you want?”

  Brogan almost smiled. “No, that’s not the way you do it. You ask your visitor, ‘What can I do for you?’”

  Puzzled and more than a little annoyed, Jake replied, “Okay, what can I do for you?”

  Brogan pulled a single sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. As he unfolded it, he explained, “It’s about this request for a report on my office’s program plans for the coming five years.”

  “I sent that request to every division of the Energy Department.”

  The door swung open and another of the staff secretaries—much younger, attractive in a nubby light blue sweater—carried in a tray with two steaming mugs on it.

  Neither Jake nor Brogan said a word as she placed the mugs on Jake’s desk and left, closing the door softly behind her.

  Jake ignored his coffee. Brogan placed his sheet of paper on Jake’s desk and reached for his mug with both hands, as if his life depended on it.

  “I’m drafting a comprehensive national energy plan for Senator Tomlinson,” Jake explained while Brogan gulped away. “It’s time that this nation had a plan—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Brogan said impatiently, still clutching the mug with both hands. “Your senator wants to produce a national energy strategy. Big deal.”

  “It’s important.”

  “Sure it is. The US is becoming the biggest producer of petroleum and natural gas in the world, thanks to fracking and shale oil, and you want to write a national energy plan.”

  Jake felt himself frowning. Jabbing a finger at Brogan, he argued, “Now’s the time to work out a rational plan that will secure our energy future. We can’t just go on lurching from one crisis to another.”

  “There isn’t any crisis,” Brogan countered. “We’re doing damned well now. Christ, we’re even starting to export oil again.”

  “But it won’t always be that way.”

  Brogan shrugged and conceded, “Maybe not.”

  “So where’s your report?”

  “Right here.” Brogan pushed the single sheet across Jake’s desk.

  Frowning at the paper, Jake said, “This is my request for your report. Where’s the report?”

  “Right there.” Brogan pointed. “At the bottom of the page.”

  Jake stared at the paper. At the bottom of his neatly typed letter was scrawled, If it runs against the coal and oil lobbies, forget it.

  Looking up at Brogan, Jake said, “What is this, some kind of a joke?”

  “No joke.” Brogan drained his coffee mug and put it back on the desk.

  “I want a comprehensive—”

  Shaking his head, Brogan interrupted, “You can put together all the effing comprehensive plans you want. If the coal and oil people don’t want it to happen, it won’t happen. Period.”

  “But—”

  “I’m saving us both a lot of busywork. If you really want to know what the Office of Coal Utilization’s projected five-year program is, you can look it up on our Web site. But I’m telling you this: anything you put in your big, fancy five-year projection that the coal and oil guys don’t like is never going see the light of day. Never.”

  Jake felt anger stirring inside him. “You mean solar, wind energy, synfuels, the government won’t support them?”

  “Not in any meaningful way. Lip service, that’s all.”

  “What about electric cars? The government gives buyers a subsidy.”

  “A seventy-five-hundred-dollar tax break if you buy a ninety-thousand-dollar car,” Brogan scoffed. “Big effing subsidy.”

  Frowning, Jake said, “Part of my plan includes MHD power generation. Based on western coal.”

  “That might get through. But the electric utilities are switching away from coal, to natural gas. It’s cheaper and cleaner. They’ve already cut the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions by more than ten percent.”

  “With MHD we can make coal competitive again,” Jake insisted.

  Looking almost exasperated, Brogan explained, “Yeah, maybe. But why should the utilities build new power plants? They like the ones they’ve got just fine. They’re a regulated industry, there’s no incentive for them to sink a lot of money into new plants.”

  “You make it sound like a big conspiracy.”

  “It’s not a conspiracy. It’s politics.” Brogan shifted his weight in the chair. “Newcomers like you, you think you’re going to change everything. Solar power. Windmills. Electric cars. Hydrogen fuels to replace gasoline. Forget it! Nobody has more muscle in this town than the fossil fuel industry. You can write all the fancy plans you want to, and it won’t get you anything but writer’s cramp.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Jake said.

  With an impatient shake of his head, Brogan said, “Look, pal, it’s a different world inside the Beltway. Different set of rules, different priorities.”

  “Not really.”

  Brogan scoffed, “Oh no? Remember the Keystone pipeline? The environmentalists said it would be a disaster. The president of the United States said he was against it, sort of. What happened?”

  “They built the pipeline,” Jake admitted grudgingly.

  “They sure as hell did. So now they’re strip-mining Manitoba for the oil sands and piping the slurry down to our refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Big Oil, one; the environment, zero.”

  “Well,” said Jake, “that’s the kind of thing my boss wants to stop. That’s why he got himself put on the Senate’s energy committee.”

  “The energy committee.” Brogan actually smirked. “Somebody ought to introduce you to Senator Santino.”

  “Mario Santino, he’s the chairman of the Senate energy committee.”

  “Yeah, the Little Saint. That’s him.”

  “I’d like to meet him.”

  “Have one of your girls call one of his girls. He’ll be glad to see you. ’Specially if you bring your senator along with you.”

  “Senator Tomlinson’s on his honeymoon.”

  “So are you, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” Jake snapped.

  “Yeah, right. Sorry. It’s just that … you’re new to this town, you don’t know the ropes yet.”

  “And you do.”

  With an unhappy nod Brogan said, “Yeah, I do. I’ve put in more than twenty years on this merry-go-round. I know the ropes, all right.”

  “Do you know Senator Santino?”

  “I’ve seen him often enough, in committee hearings, cocktail parties. Can’t say we’re friends, though.”

  “What’s he like?”

  Brogan hesitated. Peering at Jake as if he were some rare specimen of an endangered species, he finally answered, “He’s the kind of guy who can smile at you while he’s knifing you in the back.”

  Despite himself, Jake chuckled. “You make him sound like a contortionist.”

  “That he is, pal. That he is.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  “You sure as hell will. When you shake hands with the Little Saint, be sure to count your fingers afterward.”

  Jake scowled at him.

  Brogan pushed himself out of the chair.

  “Wait a minute,” Jake said. Tapping the sheet of paper on his desk, he asked, “You came over here just to drop this in my lap?”

  “Oh, I was curious to see what you’re like. Word around my office is that you and your senator genuinely want to do some good. I was wondering how long that would last.”

  “As long as it takes to get the job done.”

  Shaking his head, Brogan said, “Or until you come down with Potomac fever.”

  “What do you mean by that?�
�

  “Look, I’ve taken up enough of your time. You’ve got better things to do and so do I.”

  “I’ve got until ten o’clock.”

  “I don’t.” Brogan started for the door, but turned back to Jake. “Tell you what. Meet me for a drink, six o’clock, Ebbitt Grill. Know where that is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “Good. I’ll explain what Potomac fever is to you. And a few other things.”

  Old Ebbitt Grill

  The place was a mob scene. People lined up four and five deep along the bar; all the tables and booths were filled. Mostly men, Jake saw, although there were plenty of women in the crowd. Everybody talking at once.

  Jake hated crowds. He hated having to strain to hear what the person next to him was saying, hated having to shout to make himself heard. Hated the senseless chatter and the game-playing that went on. The bigger the crowd, the worse everything was.

  Then he spotted Brogan sitting alone in a booth at the far end of the bar. The man looked even more tired and rumpled than he had that morning.

  Jake elbowed his way through the throng and slid into the booth, opposite Brogan.

  “I was starting to wonder if you’d show up,” Brogan said. He had a half-empty pilsner glass of beer in front of him. It looked flat, as if it had been poured some time ago.

  Leaning across the table to make himself heard, Jake answered, “I had some work to finish up.”

  Brogan waved toward the bar and an Asian-looking waitress in a black cocktail dress appeared at the booth, as if by magic.

  “Ready for another?” she asked Brogan, in a cheerful, chirpy voice.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “And you?”

  “White wine,” said Jake. “Soave, please.”

  “We got pinot grigio, is that okay?”

  “Okay.”

  The waitress flounced back into the mob. Loosening his necktie, Jake leaned across the table again and asked Brogan, “So what was that this morning about Potomac fever?”

  Brogan’s deep, rumbling voice penetrated the background noise. “It’s what happens to you after you’ve been in this town a while. You never leave.”

  Shaking his head, Jake said, “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in this nuthouse.”