Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson Read Free Book Online Page B

Senator Winston’s ongoing battle with the Southern Club, and for that matter with the southern hemisphere in general, home in Winston’s mind of all ungodly sloth and indolence. Also the renegotiated treaty continuedto contain the bans on oil, mineral, and other resource extraction that it had had since the 1991 environmental protocol had been attached; of course Wall Street had been unhappy about that, as it did not fit with their ongoing campaign to dismantle all remaining global environmental regulations and any other constraints to the full exercise of the free market, etc.
    All part of the ordinary contemporary political battlefield, in other words; and interesting in that respect; but the idea that Wade was therefore an expert on Antarctica was laughable, as Phil was proving at this very moment. Wade had learned what he had needed to know the way one crams for a test, and afterward retained the usual portion of knowledge from such efforts. Antarctica! as he and the staff had often proclaimed at that time—the highest, coldest, driest, iciest, windiest, and least significant of the continents!
    Through Chase’s last chuckles he said, “I didn’t learn that much about it, Phil. I like my ice in Bloody Marys.”
    “You’re very wise in your modesty, Wade. Here, wait a second while I make this drive. Ooh. But you’re my staff expert on the place, Wade, and there’s been some things come up in the last month that I want you to look into for me. It appears the absence of a ratified treaty is beginning to wreak some havoc down there, and if we can find out anything that we could use against Winston, naturally it would be a good thing. Of course I’d go myself to have a look around, it sounds great, but I have—ah come on!—business in Kashmir that can’t wait.”
    “What have you heard?” Wade asked cautiously.
    “Well, some funny stuff has been going on down there. I’ve got friends who’ve been telling me about it, and it looks funny to me. Something’s going on downthere. Get the NSF rep on site to give you a full report, I’m not sure I’ve heard it all yet anyway. But if we can get something to use against Winston and his gang, it would be good. That guy is really beginning to get on my nerves, just between you and me—”
    “And the rest of humanity.”
    “—screwed the population planning, the foreign aid, the debt-for-nature, the UN payments, really this guy has to be stopped, he’s like
leading
the
Götterdämmerung
. He’s riding all four horses at once, that’s why he’s so bowlegged. We’ve got to see if we can find some kind of crowbar to whap him on the knees a little, straighten those legs up so to speak, and send him packing. I swear I cannot understand why the American people elect guys like him, it’s absurd. Congress from one party and President from the other, they do it more often than not, what can they be thinking? All it does is make it impossible to do anything!”
    “That’s the point. That’s what they’re hoping for.”
    “But why hope for gridlock? No one likes to see it in traffic.”
    “They’re hoping that if the government can’t do anything, then history will stop happening and things will always stay just like they are right now.”
    “What’s so great about right now!”
    “Not much, but they figure it can only get worse. It’s a damage-control strategy. They can see just as clearly as anyone that the globalized economy means they’re all headed for the sweatshop.”
    “True, that’s what I say all the time, but there are better ways to deal with it than gridlock in Washington!”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Sure I’m sure! There sure as hell should be anyway.”
    “Should be. But right now the voters have to go with what they have. Stop history and hang on. Hope for the best.”
    “Well, I find that very sad. They’re waiting for something, Wade. They’re waiting for us to pick up the ball and run with it.”
    “From out of the