Payoff
by David J. Strumfels
Larry Kraus took a deep lungful of the warm, dry air that would make the walk to his favorite Vietnamese restaurant so pleasant today. It was rare for Washington to be so comfortable this time of year; rare enough that he’d be a fool not to enjoy it. Which Larry Kraus was not.
Still, his mind went back to work as he walked. He ground his teeth at how little had been accomplished in the four months since he’d taken over the Department of Energy. Four months of—of being lobbied by businesses looking for a bigger teat at the federal sow; of negotiating with Congressmen over their pet projects; of wrangling over staff decisions, office policies, and which way the toilet paper should hang in the rest rooms. And worst of all, having to listen to every crank, quack, and lunatic with inside connections… Damn! If he could just replace the bureaucrats and political hacks with doers; but that just wasn’t the way it worked. No, Washington was very good at stopping people from doing things, but getting it to do: There it functioned more like the body’s immune system, tearing apart the old and keeping the new from getting in. While the body just withered away. Sometimes he lay awake at nights, wondering what kind of bombshell it would take to finally get things moving. A big one, that was for sure.
At the restaurant he ordered his favorite bowl of phó—the Vietnamese rice noodle soup he’d come to love so long ago—and sat back to contemplate it. At least he had that. And always would, as long as he had anything to say about it. He’d never seen reason to deny himself phó simply because it didn’t fit the image people expected him to fit. Besides, probably no one even knew exactly where he went for lunch every day.
“Hello, Larry.”
He almost didn’t realize that the voice was addressing him. When he did—he turned into openmouthed stone at the face he was suddenly staring at. It couldn’t be... and yet only a moment in his database told him that it was.
“Jennifer? Jennifer DePaulo?”
A lifetime collapsed to a singularity. More feelings and memories than he could sort out rushed at him like a tidal wave at a small island. Jennifer was wearing one of her old smiles, a little thin and cracked around the edges, but still with the magic it once held for him. Ditto the soft, round face, and brown eyes. Only her hair with its short perm was substantially different; older, with hints of experience and maturity he could only guess at. The navy-blue business suit also made a distinct contrast from the sweatshirts and beat-up jeans she used to wear, though on a figure which couldn’t be a pound heavier.
“This isn’t a very polite way to say hello to an old friend, Larry,” she chided him. “How about ‘Please sit down and join me’ instead? I haven’t eaten yet and it looks like you’re just starting. It’s nice to know I made at least one permanent impression on you,” she added, gesturing at his bowl.
The gesture made him notice the case, which though small, looked heavy in her elegant hands. He remembered his manners in time and stood up. “I’m sorry. Please, sit down. Christ, Jennifer, is it really you? I can’t believe it. How many years…” He grabbed the waitress and duplicated his order without finishing the sentence.
“More than enough.” They sat, Jennifer placing the case on her lap gingerly as though it held something precious. “So Larry: how are you? What have you been doing all these years? I see you’ve done pretty well by yourself lately, at least. The Secretary of Energy.” She raised an eyebrow approvingly. “You must have done some things right these last twenty years.”
“A few,” Larry agreed, unsure exactly what she meant by the remark. He decided not to worry about it, however. “But you’re taking advantage of common knowledge. Tell me what you’ve been up to first, and then we’ll start on even grounds. As I recall, you were getting ready for medical school when we… when we parted company.”
“You have a fairly good memory,” Jennifer confirmed. “To fill you in on the rest, I do get to put MD after my name. But you’re forgetting the other part. Remember? It’s practically the reason why we broke up.”
Larry had to think a few moments. Whereupon he shook his head decisively. “I was never against your becoming an astronaut, Jennifer. If you blame it on that, you’re wrong.”
She looked at him as though he were a politician weaseling out of a campaign promise. “Like hell you weren’t against me. You were against anyone becoming an astronaut. And thanks to people like you, nobody is anymore. These days NASA’s just a second-rate organization with a few labs and a cut-rate planetary mission once every few years.
“Bui I didn’t follow you here to have all the old arguments over again,” she quickly backed off. “What’s done is done. Besides, you wanted to know what I’ve been up to. Fortunately, that’s the reason I’m here. You see, I’ve also been working in the energy field, if from a slightly different angle than yours.”
What she said didn’t click immediately. “You?”
“Surprised? Well, it is a rather complicated story. Which isn’t important. What’s important is this.”
Her hand reached into her case. It emerged holding a small globe of the Earth, made of glass or Plexiglas, or maybe even quartz crystal, it was so bright and smooth. Like a perfectly round sea-polished pebble, gleaming in the Sun. An Earth complete with mother-of-pearl ice and cloud patterns, sapphire blue of oceans and emerald of rain forests, and the varied stains of simple soil and rock. It was so perfect that it even had a day and a night side, the latter sparkling with the same lights of civilization you would see from space. It was a work of art, created by hands whose skills Larry had to admit were beyond his comprehension.
She set the globe down in a plastic holder on the table before him. Larry found himself staring at it admiringly. But also without understanding. “What is it?”
“One of the members of our group is an artist,” Jennifer answered cryptically. “You don’t care about that, though. What you care about is what it does. Here, I’ll show you.”
She placed a fingertip in Larry’s water glass, pulling away a single, pearly drop of liquid which she deposited on the north pole. The surface must have been permeable at the spot; the drop vanished within seconds, leaving no indication that anyone had disturbed the area. In fact, it looked exactly as it had before.
“Now watch.”
He didn’t notice the change at first. When he did, he realized he’d missed it because it was happening continuously. The day/night line was moving, and the cycle was speeding up. Within a couple of minutes it had accelerated to the point where it was hard to focus on any feature of the object before it vanished into either darkness or light. Soon the entire surface became smeared in the purple and gray of permanent twilight as the terminator raced across the globe faster than the eye could follow, in a crazed, inexhaustible mania. It was like a stroboscope at breakneck speed. Finally he turned away, realizing that the effect would make him nauseous if he watched it for too long.
He was about to demand that she stop it somehow when she pulled something else from her case: a spray can with a long plastic tube on the nozzle. She jammed the end of the tube against the same spot she’d placed the water. There was a brief hissing sound, then the globe began its slow return to normal rotation. She put the can away.
“Chloroflourocarbons,” she explained. “Temporarily poisons the coordination sites on the catalyst. Always have a way of turning the power off. We learned that with fission.”
Larry was staring agape. He finally realized he’d become mesmerized, and shook off the fog. “So: what do you think?” Jennifer asked him. “Impressed by my little toy?”