Power Play (7 page)

“I know I’m early, Mrs. Cee,” he began.

“Of course you are,” she said cheerily. “You’ve never been late in all the years we’ve known you.”

Jake nodded ruefully. It was a habit he couldn’t seem to break; he was always fearful of showing up late, so he usually arrived a little early. Sometimes embarrassingly early. He tried to bolster his self-confidence by remembering Admiral Nelson’s claim that he owed his success in life to always being a quarter of an hour early for everything. Some people were nettled when he showed up early; they
expected
their guests to be fashionably late. Jake had never learned how to do that.

Commenting absently on the seasonably hot weather, Mrs. Cardwell showed Jake into the living room. “Lev’s in the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll fetch him for you.”

The Cardwells’ home always looked to Jake like something out of a children’s tale: the rooms were small, ceilings low. There was a fireplace in the living room, dark and empty in midsummer. Bookshelves lined the walls. Upholstered old sofa and armchairs that felt more comfortable to Jake than the secondhand furniture in his own apartment.

Leverett Cardwell stepped into the living room with a pair of tall beer-filled glasses in his hands. He was in his shirtsleeves, but his usual jaunty little bow tie was knotted beneath his round chin.

“Sit down, Jake,” he said. “Relax.” Handing one of the glasses to Jake, he asked, “How did things go today?”

By the time Mrs. Cardwell announced dinner, Jake had told Lev about the test run and the tension between Tim Younger and Glynis Colwyn.

Cardwell shook his head. “Personalities. They always get in the way of progress.”

They sat at the undersized dining room table, barely big enough to hold four, as Mrs. Cardwell brought in a platter of roast pork. It sizzled and smelled delicious. Jake suppressed a grin. In all the years he’d had dinner at the Cardwells he couldn’t remember Mrs. Cee cooking anything but roast pork. He wondered if she knew how to cook anything else.

“So they’re making progress with the bigger generator?” Lev prompted, once his wife had served out their portions.

With a fork in his right hand, Jake said, “Forty-eight megawatts this morning.”

“That’s good. How long did the run last?”

“About a minute or so.”

Lev nodded absently. “They’ll have to do some long-duration runs before they can get the utilities interested.”

Jake swallowed a chunk of pork, then said, “If the MHD system really is more efficient than ordinary power generators, that could give Tomlinson an energy plank for his platform. If he runs.”

“Oh, he’ll run, all right,” Lev said. “He’s just being careful about when he announces that he’s running.”

“Politics,” Jake muttered.

With his quizzical little smile, Cardwell said, “Politics is the way things get done, Jake. Remember that. A politician is someone who can get free people to work together. It’s not always a dirty business.”

“I guess so.” Jake returned his attention to the food on his plate. The beets were just the way he liked them, slightly tart with vinegar.

“So what are you going to tell Tomlinson?” Cardwell asked.

A vision of Amy Wexler flashed into Jake’s mind. “I’ll work for him. If he’ll have me.”

“You have to give him something he can use.”

Nodding, “Energy efficiency. MHD can produce more kilowatts per pound of fuel than ordinary generators. Twice as much. We could cut people’s electric bills in half.”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Cardwell said, “but not too big a whopper.”

Jake disagreed. “Bob Rogers claims—”

Patiently, Cardwell said, “There’s a difference between how efficient Dr. Rogers’s generator is and how big a cut in electric bills that it might eventually bring about.”

Mrs. Cardwell piped up, “But don’t politicians always stretch things a little when they’re campaigning for office?”

Her husband laughed. “More than a little, Alice, dear. More than a little.”

“So energy efficiency is the issue I’ll give to Tomlinson,” Jake said.

“Energy efficiency,” Cardwell echoed.

“And it’ll be clean energy, too,” said Jake. “No sulfur emissions. No carbon dioxide greenhouse gas.”

Cardwell nodded as he picked up his glass of beer. “And what else?”

“What else?”

After a sip of his beer, Cardwell asked, “What did you think of Lignite?”

Mildly surprised at the seeming change of subject, Jake shrugged. “It’s pretty much of a dump. Practically a ghost town.”

“Lev and I honeymooned there,” said Mrs. Cardwell.

“You did?”

Smiling at the memory, she said, “Lignite was a bustling town in those days. And the Main Street Hotel was a lovely place.”

“The coal mines were prosperous then,” said Cardwell. “My first job, out of college, was in the company’s laboratory out there.”

“Really?”

“We were developing products out of coal tar.”

“That was more than forty years ago,” Mrs. Cardwell said.

“You’ve been married that long?”

“I was barely out of my teens,” Cardwell said, grinning across the table at his wife. “Alice was practically jailbait.”

She blushed prettily.

“Yes, Lignite was quite a town back then.”

Jake nodded and turned his attention back to the remains of his dinner. And then it hit him.

He looked up at Cardwell. “MHD can use high-sulfur coal!”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Cardwell said mildly.

“I mean,” Jake said, growing excited, “MHD could make the high-sulfur coal in Lignite profitable again. It could revitalize the state’s coal industry!”

Obviously pleased that Jake had finally figured it out, Cardwell said, “Now that’s an issue that can get Tomlinson elected to the U.S. Senate.”

JACOB ROSS’S APARTMENT

Jake was still bubbling with excitement when he got home. That’s what Lev was after all along, he told himself as he parked in his space behind the apartment building and bounded up the steps to the second floor. Push MHD power generation as a way to bring back the state’s coal industry. Plenty of votes in that!

He unlocked his front door, flicked on the lights, and rushed to his desk to look up Amy Wexler’s phone number. The apartment was small: one bedroom, a living room that Jake had turned into a paper-strewn office, and a kitchen that he barely used except for the microwave oven. When Louise died, he couldn’t bear to stay in the home they’d built together, so he returned to the run-down part of town near his old neighborhood and took the first apartment he saw.

Amy’s phone was ringing. Jake had her number and e-mail address on his desktop computer screen. After three rings her voice came on: “Hello. I’m not home at the moment. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Jake nodded to himself. Of course she’d be out. She’s probably having dinner at one of the nice restaurants uptown. She’s a busy woman. She’s probably got a dozen guys chasing after her.

“Uh, this is Jake Ross,” he said, even while his mind was wandering. “I’ve got an important idea that I want to talk over with you, Amy. I think it could be a winning issue for Mr. Tomlinson.”

He left his number and hung up. For a moment he considered calling her cell phone number, but decided he didn’t want to disturb her if she was out having dinner with some guy. Sagging back in his creaking desk chair, he surveyed the room. A mess. Newspapers and magazines littered the sofa. The books in his makeshift bookcase were jammed in helter-skelter, with no rhyme or reason. Whenever he wanted a particular book he had to search through all the damned shelves from scratch. Through the open bedroom door he could see that he hadn’t bothered to make the bed for several days.

Maybe I should get a housekeeper to straighten up the place once a week, he thought. But he shook his head, dismissing the idea. Not in this neighborhood. That’d be an open invitation to have the place looted.

Not that there’s much to steal, he realized. The computer’s good. And the TV was new: big plasma flat screen that he’d bought so he could watch football games. Alone. Nobody to disturb his concentration on the game’s tactics and strategy.

Christ, I wish somebody was here to disturb my concentration. I wish—

The phone rang.

He snatched it up. Amy’s voice said, “Jake, you sounded excited.”

“Hi! I guess I am. I think I’ve got an issue that can get Tomlinson elected.”

“Wow! That’d be great. What is it?”

He hesitated. “It’s a little complicated…”

“Science stuff, huh?”

“It’s not just that. It could bring back the state’s coal industry, create lots of jobs.”

“And votes!”

“I think so.”

Her voice took on a new eagerness. “I want you to tell me all about it. I’ll be right over.”

“Not here! I … my place is a mess.”

“Don’t worry about that, silly. I’ve got your address. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, maybe less.”

Jake swallowed hard. “Okay. It’s … it’s not the best part of town, you know.”

“I’m not coming over to look at real estate.”

“Well … um, there’s a parking lot behind the building. Park there. It’s safer. I’ll meet you down there.”

With a light laugh, Amy said, “You’re very protective, aren’t you?”

“I grew up here, Amy.”

“All right. I won’t get out of the car unless I see you. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Jake launched himself into a frenzy of straightening up his living room. Most of the scattered papers and magazines he toted into the bedroom and stuffed into the clothes closet. He pulled the sheets up onto the bed and smoothed them a little. Shutting the bedroom door behind him, he looked over the place. Not all that bad. Needs a dusting, but what the hell.

Once he stepped out into the darkened parking lot he realized that the night had grown chilly. He looked up at the stars. Not much to see in the glare of the city’s lights. He made out Orion’s blazing Rigel and its belt of three blue giant stars. Sirius was hidden behind a factory tower. The Perseid meteor shower’s due next week, he realized. I could see them a lot better out in Lignite.

A car swung into the parking lot. That’s not her Jag, he said to himself. Then he remembered that it was Glynis who owned the Jaguar. Amy drove a silver BMW, and that was her car nosing into a parking slot by the building’s rear wall. He hurried over to the car as she turned off the rumbling engine.

Amy opened the door and stepped out, almost bumping into Jake, he was standing so close.

“No muggers out tonight?” she teased.

“You park that BMW out on the street and it’ll be stripped by the time you come back for it.”

“Really? It’s that bad?”

He shrugged, easing a little. “It can be. Sometimes.”

“It’s chilly,” Amy said.

Taking her by the arm, Jake led her to the building’s door, up the concrete stairs, and into his apartment.

She looked around. “Cozy.”

Jake thought that “cozy” was her word for “rat’s nest.”

“Can I get you something?” he asked.

“Do you have any cognac?”

He almost laughed. “No. I’ve got some wine in the fridge. California, I think.”

“That’ll be fine.” She went to the sofa and sat down. Jake saw that she was wearing a short-skirted black dress, with glittering jewelry at her wrists, her throat, and her earlobes. Her thick, dark blond hair framed her face. Her legs were long and shapely.

With an effort he turned his attention to the refrigerator and pulled out the half-gone bottle of chardonnay. He found a pair of clean wineglasses in the cabinet over the dishwasher and carried them to the coffee table in front of the sofa.

As Jake sat and yanked the plastic cork out of the wine bottle, Amy said, “Now tell me about this hot idea of yours.”

“It’s a way to produce more energy, cleanly, from the kind of coal we’ve got in this state.”

“More energy? Cleanly?”

Nodding as he poured the wine, Jake said, “It’s a better way to generate electrical power: MHD power generation.”

“MHD?” she asked. “What’s MHD?”

“Magnetohydrodynamics.”

Her jaw dropped. “Oh my god.”

Jake waggled a hand in the air. “Don’t let the term buffalo you. Just call it MHD. It could be Tomlinson’s ticket to the Senate.”

For more than an hour Jake explained the MHD generator to Amy, stressing how it was much more efficient than ordinary power generators.

“And it can burn the kind of high-sulfur coal that we have here, cleanly. They take out the sulfur before it can get out into the environment.”

Amy sipped wine and listened. She didn’t ask many questions, but whenever she looked doubtful Jake explained that point more carefully. It was a skill he had learned from years of teaching classes. Most students are too embarrassed to ask a question and show their peers that they don’t understand something. Jake had learned to recognize that hazy look of confusion or incomprehension and explain the doubtful point without the student having to raise a hand.

At last Jake finished. “That’s it,” he said, feeling excited about the idea again. He ticked off points on his fingers. “More electrical power. More efficient power generation. Lower electric bills. Clean power, no damage to the environment. Reopen the state’s coal mines. Create thousands of new jobs.”

Amy looked impressed. But she asked, “This device actually works?”

“I’ll take you up to Lignite. That’s where they have the big rig. It produced forty-eight megawatts this morning.”

“That sounds impressive,” she said.

“They’ll have to show that it can run for thousands of hours continuously, the way regular generators do,” Jake said. “That could be a big hurdle.”

Amy shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to work, Jake. It just has to have the potential of working. If Franklin can offer the potential of reopening the coal mines, of creating all those jobs—that’ll be good enough, believe me.”

“But—”

“I know. You’re a scientist and you want it to work. But this is politics, Jake. The promise is more important than the reality.”

Even though he didn’t want to, Jake frowned at her.

“Don’t scowl,” Amy said, tapping his cheek lightly. “If this helps Franklin to get elected he’ll push for federal funding for the project. You help him, he’ll help you.”