“Should I pack?”
“Go ahead. Scoff. What the sane people and sane governments are trying to do is scuffle a little more breathing space, a little more time, before the collapse.”
“How much time have we got?”
‘of nobody pushes the wrong-button or puts a bomb under the wrong castle, I would give us five more years at worst, twelve at best. What is triggering it is the crisis of reduced expectations. All over the world people are suddenly coming to realize that their children and grandchildren are going to have it worse than they did, that the trend line is down. So they want to blame somebody. They want to hoot and holler in the streets and burn something down.”
‘whose side are you on?”
“I’m one of the scufflers. Cut and paste. FLX the world with paper clips and rubber bands.”
“Are you trying to depress me, old buddy?”
“On Pearl Harbor Day?”
“So it is.”
“And with each passing year it is going to seem ever more quaint, the little tin airplanes bombing the sleepy iron giants.”
“There you go again.”
He yawned and I noticed again how worn he looked. The international conference had been held in Zurich. There had been high hopes the news- papers said for a solution to the currency problems, but as it went on and on and on, interest could not be sustained, nor could hope.
“How was the trip back, Meyer?”
‘] was too sound asleep to notice.”
‘~id you all just sit around and read papers to each other?”
“There was some of that. Yes. But most of it was workshop, computer analysis. Peed all the known, unchangeable factors into the program, and then add the ones that can be changed, predicating inter- dependence, making the variations according to a pattern, and analyzing the shape of the world that emerges, each one a computer model. Very bright young specialists assisted. We came out all too
The Green Ripper close to the doom anticipated by the Club of Rome, no matter how we switched the data around. It comes down to this, Travis there are too many mouths to feed. One million three hundred thousand more every week! And of all people who have ever been alive on Earth, more than half are living right now. We are gnawing the planet bare, and technology can’t keep pace with need.”
I had never seen him more serious, or more depressed. I fixed him a fresh drink when Gretel arrived. I met her, and after the welcome lass, she looked over my shoulder and gave a whoop of surprise and pleasure at seeing Meyer. She thrust me aside and ran into his delighted bear hug. Then she held him off at arm’s long& and tilted her head to give him her brown-eyed measuring stare.
‘Lou look awful!” she said. Thou look lice you just got out of jail.”
“Fairly good guess. And you look fantastic, Gretel.,’
Yt goes wi& the job. I got sort of sloppy living on this barge, eating too much and drinking too much Today I jogged wi& four sets of raffles.. I must have done seven miles. I’ve got the greatest new job.”
“Travis was telling me about it.”
“You’ll have to come out and let me show you around.” Quite suddenly the enthusiasm had faded out of her voice. I couldn’t imagine why. She gave me a quick look and looked away, and went to the galley to fix herself one of her vegetable juice cocktails.
I followed her and said, “Is something wrong out there?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Hey, Grets. This here is me. Asking.”
HI hear you asking. I think I might fall right off the wagon right now. I’m down to where I can spare a few pounds. Straight Boodles and rocks, okay?”
“When you come down off it, you come down a way.”
She leaned against a storage locker as I fixed her drink. I looked at her, a great lithe woman who, on tiptoe, could almost look me in the eye. Thick brown sun-streaked hair, dark brown eyes, film jaw, broad mouth, high-bridged imperious nose. A woman of passion, intensity, good humor, mocking grace, and a very irritating and compelling need for total or almost total independence. During all the lazy weeks aboard The Busted Flush when, after the death of her brother in Timber Bay, I had brought her all the way around the peninsula to Fort Lauderdale, we had arrived at last at a relationship she had decided did not threaten her freedom. She was a hearty and sensuous woman, and for a long time she was suspicious and reluctant in lovemaking, apparently feeling that my in- creasing knowledge of her body’s resources, its needs and rhythms and special stimuli, was some