"My alarm threshold is pretty high. It has been for the past twenty years. I'm surprised it's taken them so long to wake up to what's happening."
The glance between Prothero and Ingrid Van Dorn was laden with coded information. Chase didn't bother trying to decipher it; he was curious, intrigued, and restive all at once.
Prothero said, "It's our belief that the government is abandoning its federal responsibility. Instead of facing the situation and tackling it-- and being open and honest about what's really happening--they're moving their fat hides as quickly as possible to a place of safety. All they've done up to now is to declare six states Official Devastated Areas and send in the National Guard to shoot looters. As a member of the Senate I find that reprehensible and pathetic beyond words. Both of us --Madam Van Dorn and myself--believe it is time for independent action. Above all else we need practical solutions and not empty rhetoric." Prothero clasped his long brown hands and rested his chin on his extended index fingers; this was the musing academic. "You'll be familiar, Dr. Chase, with the legislation we've tried to push through in recent years--and, I hardly need add, failed on nearly every count. Too many vested interests. Commerce and industry closing ranks and screaming "regressive" at the tops of their voices. Anything we've managed to push through--and precious damn little it's been--is merely a sop to the environmentalists. And anyway doesn't make one iota of difference because the government turns a blind eye to breaches of federal law and point-blank refuses to enforce it."
Chase had been slow. Kenneth J. Prothero was for years chief administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency until it became moribund. He remembered Prothero had been highly active: speeches, articles, campaigning for radical change in government attitudes.
"So what happens?" Prothero said, spreading his hands. "Everybody sees the problem as being somebody else's, and so it ends up being nobody's."
"You tried to make it everyone's concern when you were with the EPA," said Chase. "It didn't come off."
"Made me damned unpopular into the bargain," Prothero said with feeling. "You wouldn't believe the crank calls, the hate mail, the abuse, the threats. Anyone would think I was trying to destroy the environment, not save it."
Chase smiled grimly. "I know. People get the strange notion you're somehow personally to blame. If only you'd shut up the threat would go away."
"Of course, you get all that crap too." The eyes behind the thick lenses softened a little, as if the shared experience had forged a common bond between them. "Well, that probably makes it easier for you to understand our feeling, Dr. Chase. As concerned citizens we have to act--independently of government--and try to find a way out of this mess. We have no choice, because if
"You have a son, Daniel, sixteen," said Ingrid Van Dorn. She was watching him closely. When Chase looked at her without responding, her lips twitched in a smile. "We have investigated you in depth, Dr. Chase. Background, career, family, everything. We had to."
Chase continued to look at her steadily. "What has my son to do with this?"
"I mention him simply to make the point that the only hope of survival for future generations is if people like us are prepared to take upon ourselves the responsibility that the governments of the world have abdicated. It is
This sounded to Chase like part of a speech she had prepared for the General Assembly. It began to dawn on him that all this, including the informal atmosphere, had been deliberately engineered. His being here was the culmination of a long process whose aim was to achieve . . . what?
"We greatly admire the work you've been doing," Prothero told him. "Earth Foundation is a most laudable concept. However, we don't believe it can provide the solution to the problem. What's needed is a concerted effort by a group of dedicated specialists--scientists, ecolo-gists, engineers--and yes, even though the. coinage has been debased, politicians too. People with a common goal who will do what must be done."
"Are you planning a world revolution?" Chase said. "Or is it something simple like overthrowing the government of the United States?"
"This isn't a joking matter," Ingrid Van Dorn rebuked him, showing more of the Nordic iceberg that resided below the surface.
"It isn't? Then let me get this straight." Chase raised two fingers to point to them both. "You're proposing that a group of private individuals--specialists in their own fields--should band together to halt the slide toward ecological disaster that all the world's governments are unable or unwilling to achieve. Is that it? Have I got it right?" The skepticism in his voice was thinly veiled.
