Within ten days simulation studies at the University of Texas Computer Center were completed. Within weeks a prototype full-scale seasled with eight forward-mounted propfan engines, delivering half again as much power as pure jets at 35 percent less cost, was undergoing trials. Fitted with hydrofoils, the newly christened Nola Ann could thunder along at 85 knots at 40 percent power. Ripley Forte himself was in command on its maiden voyage to the Grand Banks, where he immediately went in search of the enemy.
Peering through binoculars, he could now discern the first of two imperiled rigs through the mist at a distance of six kilometers to the south. Free and adrift, the berg he had roped would certainly have smashed into the other within the next three hours. But under tow by the powerful Nola Ann, it was steadily being dragged off its collision course. In an hour he could cast it adrift, a menace no more. Floating south, the berg would meet the warm waters of the northward-flowing Gulf Stream and melt away. After a day or two the ice giant would become a “bergy bit,” and with the passage of another hour or two a “growler,” a pussycat of an iceberg no longer able to devour a 5,000-ton drilling rig in one bite, a mere scratcher of paintwork.
The thunder of the engines faded from his consciousness as Ripley Forte, alone on the starboard wing of the flying bridge, contemplated the rosy future. On the credit side, he had an experienced, smoothly functioning crew, nine rigs with four more on order, and nearly four billion tons of sweet crude ready to gush up from the wellheads. On the debit side was more than a billion dollars in loans, not to mention another two hundred million that would still be needed to put the field into full production. But the bankers, lately fractious and inaccessible, fearing that icebergs would defeat Forte, would now come running, briefcases bulging with greenbacks, impatient to cash in at last. What with the rising price of oil, he figured to be free and clear within eighteen months.
More than five years in Arctic waters filled with peril and back-breaking labor lay behind him. Ahead lay the financial resources to build a corporate empire that would challenge, defeat, and devour Raynes Oceanic Resources. His day had finally come.
Forte’s ideas of the hereafter were vague but absolute. Somewhere up there, he was certain, Gwillam Forte was looking down upon him, a proud smile on his lips. At last he knew what Ripley Forte was made of.
Too bad Ned Raynes had died of a heart attack three years before, depriving Ripley Forte of the pleasure of bankrupting him. On the other hand, Ned’s widow, Jennifer Red Cloud, was still in business.
Forte smiled. Not for long, sweetheart.
3. CEMETERY
3 NOVEMBER 2004
“WAIT AT THE GATE OF THE NEW HOPE CEMETERY. TEN P.M., November 3.”
Castle complied with the instructions. This time he was better prepared. He wore a raincoat and rain hat and
carried a flashlight and umbrella, although the thick ground fog seemed to preclude rain any time soon. He switched on his flashlight and looked at his watch. A few minutes before ten, punctual as always.
Suddenly he sensed an alien presence and whirled to confront a large figure that had materialized behind him. An arm reached forward and gently disengaged the flashlight from his unresisting hand.
“You won’t need this,” said a voice he recognized as that of Grayle’s chauffeur. “Follow me.”
“You have a problem, Congressman,” said William S. Grayle as the limousine, its interior dark as before, picked up speed. “You want to be President of the United States. That is not, of course, an uncommon ambition among politicians. However, the realists among them usually have something more specific to offer–I must speak frankly– than a hunger for preferment. You have no large popular following like former Navy pilot Pastor Dave Berg, the Flying Fundamentalist. You haven’t the blazing rhetoric of our modern black messiah, Governor Randy Nixon of New Jersey. You have authored no significant legislation, proposed no new foreign or domestic initiatives, wed no beautiful movie actress, been involved in none of those juicy but endearing scandals which voters are so willing to forgive in their elected officials. Negatives, sir–all negatives. Now, then, can you give me one positive reason why the average American would favor you for President over, say the city recorder of Toledo, Ohio?”
Castle was silent.
“Just as I thought. You have none. As matters stand, therefore, no reasonable man would give you a Chinaman’s chance of even getting nominated, let alone elected. But as you know, politicans are not elected on the basis of such qualities as reason, or integrity, or a compulsion to serve the public interest. If they were, the halls of Congress would be a lonely place.
“Nevertheless, I can conceive of one faint possibility: to seize the attention of the American people with an electrifying issue, one which will mesmerize, galvanize, terrorize them, a crisis which will so engage their passions
that they will have no time for rational examination of its implications, an emergency pregnant with overtones of life and death for citizen and nation, for which only David D. Castle has a solution to lead the great American people out upon the broad sunlit uplands of prosperity and happiness.”
“Yes, I thought–”
“You need a castastrophe-in-the-making, something that will scare the hell out of the American electorate. In the best of times, only fifty percent of our electorate exercises its franchise. These regular voters are captive to conventional appeals of party demagogues. Therefore, you must create a totally new constituency. Your issue will be simple, elemental. Your weapon–naked fear.
“America’s problems are many, and they are pressing. But for your purposes we can straightaway eliminate most of them. First of all, forget diplomatic initiatives. Americans have never really been concerned with foreign relations. Besides, thanks to our two oceans and Russia’s recent conquest of Europe, South America, and most of Africa, which appear to be as much as it can digest at present, we have achieved a temporary, if uneasy, truce. So long as it prevails, Americans just aren’t going to get excited over foreign affairs.
“Domestic social and political issues? Worthless. American standards of living have never been higher. And when the people prosper, politics takes a back seat.
“Religion? Now, that’s always an active possibility. Invent a new one and you can become governor of California. But of course the California vote alone won’t put you in the White House. Neither will the votes of those fractions of the American population obsessed with parochial concerns–abortion, states’ rights, drug abuse, education, health, women’s rights, pollution, space travel, and so on. No one group’s votes will be decisive. A single issue, therefore, must be found which will galvanize them all.
“Now, then, Mr. Castle,” said William S. Grayle gently, “let me tell you exactly what your $250,000 has bought. Your needs required careful study by the best minds in many fields. To conduct that study, I selected a number
of specialists, each to forecast developments during the next five years in his area of competence. What I sought was a crisis or problem that: a, will affect the vast majority of Americans; b, is presently unperceived by that vast majority; c, though of insignificant dimensions at present will grow at such a rate as to become a national problem with potentially catastrophic consequences within two or three years; and, d, be susceptible to solution within four years at the outside.
“They were to list the coming crises according to national priority. Some listed as many as nine which fit my guidelines, others only one. Their two-page appreciations of each potential crisis were delivered to me last week.”
“Can I get a copy?” said Castle eagerly.
“Of course. The fee is one hundred thousand dollars.”
Castle nearly choked on the Bloody Mary Grayle had mixed for him.
“By far the most intriguing and far-reaching issue we considered,” Grayle continued, “was that of population. Cutting back our present 274 million population to, say, 50 million would solve nearly every social, political, and economic ill that now afflicts us.
“Think of it, Congressman Castle. Children would again become precious, and family life would be revivified. Our overworked farms would rest and regain their fertility. Pollution would disappear. Tomatoes would taste like tomatoes again, not like cardboard.”
“Negative,” said Castle emphatically. “I’d lose the Catholics, fundamentalists, Hispanics, and blacks, all in a lump. May I make a suggestion? What about the waste of our mineral resources?” Natural resources was a topic about which Castle was informed, as ranking member of the House Interior and Insular Affairs committee.
“Natural resources is an excellent issue. It is the best issue you can have–for your reelection campaign, since the curve of mineral resources exhaustion will peak about 2010. As President, you will be able not only to predict that crisis but have in hand a plan to cope with it, which I will be happy to supply.”