“The environment commissioner?”
“Yes. She’s got a high public profile, and she’s Ms. Super-Clean as far as her career is concerned. The media has never been able to dig up anything on her.”
“Jesus Christ, a politician who behaves herself. Maybe she should stand for pope.”
“Her commitment is actually her major weakness. She’s a fanatical Green. The clean-emission legislation she’s churned out is hurting companies right across Europe. She’s even opposed to the room-temperature superconductor project.”
“That’s stupid,” he said automatically. “Nothing is more environmentally sound than HTS.”
“She thinks anything that can increase energy production is fundamentally flawed. Our efforts should be focused on reducing consumption.”
“She won’t like me, then?”
“No. She considered rejuvenation to be a terrible waste of resources.”
“I guess I’ll be voting Lacey, then.”
THERE WAS A HUGE CROWD around the Weston Castle Hotel that evening. The police had thrown up a secure zone around the immediate vicinity, complete with barricades. It took Jeff’s limousine thirty minutes to get through the crush. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to get in on the act now that Lacey had announced his decision. There were well-wishers and party loyalists with LACEY FOR PRESIDENT banners, though they were in the minority, and corraled by the police for their own safety. Just about every mainstream and fringe political cause on the planet was represented by a batch of their supporters, determined to make Lacey consider their point of view. They’d come equipped with their own banners, and effigies, and PA systems, and sonic howlers, and spray paint. With the secure zone covered by cameras, a majority of them were wearing Rob Lacey face masks to avoid identification by Europol surveillance. The thin layer of plastic flesh produced a perfect replica of the prime minister’s features.
“Christians and lions,” Jeff muttered as some woman’s face was squashed against the car’s darkened window. She was being held there while two big police officers handcuffed her; then she abruptly slid downward, disappearing from sight as a truncheon was whacked across the back of her legs.
“Jesus wept,” Jeff said. It was Third World nation police officers who did that to protestors, not good old English bobbies.
Lucy Duke was looking the other way.
A big loop of road directly in front of the hotel had been kept clear. As they eased on to the start of it, Jeff saw a five-limo convoy complete with police outriders sweep up to the hotel’s entrance portico ahead of them. Rob Lacey stepped out of the second limo. The chanting and jeering reached a crescendo. He just smiled and waved at the crowd pressed up against the distant barricade before his security team closed ranks around him. It was the most bizarre sight Jeff had seen in a long while, the genuine article greeting a sea of his own faces. Authorized camera crews circled around as the hotel manager greeted the prime minister warmly and ushered him inside.
By the time Jeff’s limo reached the front of the hotel, the protestors had calmed down. Lieutenant Krober was on the portico steps waiting for him. Jeff fiddled nervously with his bow tie and gave the camera crews a tight smile before hurrying up the steps. There was a chorus of whistles from the crowd. He stopped and turned to look at them. Cheers and clapping drifted through the muggy evening air. When he checked with Lucy Duke her face was expressionless. So he did the only thing he could think of, and gave the people behind the barricades an inane double thumbs-up. The volume of the cheering actually rose slightly.
His humor picked up no end. “Maybe I should run for president,” he said as they walked through the wide entrance into the lobby. Lucy Duke strode on ahead, the suggestion unanswered.
The idea behind the joint sciences council was to coordinate all scientific research funded by the government, ensuring that taxeuros were spent sensibly and that there was an end “product.” In order to obtain a grant, the applicant had to provide a project plan that listed benefits, economic gain, and end result application. It was the sort of review board that Jeff thoroughly disapproved of; hands-on bureaucratic interference in university and agency programs always led to pure science being impoverished. In this case it was even worse. The two original councils hadn’t been abolished to make way for the new; instead the joint council had been created to complement them, producing another tier of bureaucracy complete with overpaid civil servants and increasing the time it took to process applications.
With true civil service instinct to protect itself from criticism, the joint sciences council had created the annual project awards to shower praise and continued finance on the most productive ventures conducted under its auspices. In reality the event was just another rubber chicken dinner bringing together edgy researchers with bored junior ministers and loafing reporters.
This year, though, the joint council chair had gotten more attention for the awards than she could ever have dreamed of. It resulted in her giving one of the worst after-dinner speeches Jeff had ever winced his way through, with utterly obscure technical references and jokes a ten-year-old wouldn’t bother telling. It was his turn after that. Decades of experience had made him insist on a short self-deprecating speech that was mainly anecdotes about the pitfalls of recovering from rejuvenation—along with one botanist and butterfly joke, which got a big laugh. Then he had to present the five awards for outstanding achievement. After that it was Rob Lacey’s job to sum up, which he did with admirable dignity, saying how indebted society was to the unsung heroes of the research teams, and the inevitable promise of more money for science when he was elected president. The round of applause he won at the end was genuine enough.
THE BRUNEL CLUB was thankfully a damn sight more lively than the hotel ballroom where the dinner had been held. It had a long curving bar in the lounge, and a darkened dance floor. The DJ was playing an energetic mix of eighties and noughties tracks, and the bar staff boasted about the range of cocktails they could make.
He saw the chair of the joint council sitting at a table in the corner of the lounge, her head in her hands. Three cut crystal tumblers were standing on the polished table in front of her, only one with any scotch left in it. Other members of the council were clustered around her, offering heartfelt support. As Brutus had done for Caesar, Jeff thought.
“I’d like to introduce you to the Downing Street deputy chief,” Lucy Duke said. “If you’re up to it.”
“Sure, wheel him on,” Jeff said.
The spin doctor made her way over to the bar. On her way she passed a girl in a glittery dark purple evening gown who smiled coyly at Jeff as she approached.
“Hi,” he said. She was in her late twenties—genuinely, he thought. Her dark hair was cut short to curve around a very pretty freckled face. Now that she was standing just in front of him, he couldn’t help glancing at her breasts. It was a reflex he found himself committing a lot more recently. In fact, just looking at women in general was something he’d been doing more of since the treatment, certainly compared to the decade before.
“Hi yourself,” she drawled back. “Good speech, by the way. Liked the joke about the butterfly. Did you really slide off the toilet in the Brussels hospital?”