Termination Shock полностью

Ruud was the leader of the center-right party that in general got the most votes and anchored the ruling coalition. But there always had to be a coalition of some sort; in this country, it never happened that one party got enough votes to form a government all by itself. Ruud’s party had to form that coalition with parties that were either to the right or to the left of it. It had been the case for the last few years that Ruud was able to get almost all the votes he needed from a party that was more conservative. It was not quite a fringe party. It did, however, include a fair number of climate change skeptics. New elections were coming up next year and the big center-left party was predicted to make a strong showing. By forming a coalition with single-issue parties on the far left they might be able to wrest the government away from Ruud’s party.

So Ruud was guarding his left flank here. Throwing a bone—blanket condemnation of geoengineering schemes—to the Greens, to blunt the force of the opposition’s campaign next year. He had probably been up all night hitting “refresh” on numerous browser tabs, watching his political foes “connect the dots” on Saskia’s trip to Texas and the Pina2bo bombshell. This made him potentially responsible—according to the letter of the Grondwet—for any fallout. Inserting this language into the queen’s speech would serve a dual purpose of protecting not just Ruud but Saskia as well from the repercussions of T.R.’s actions in Texas.

Saskia had pulled the speech from Ruud’s hand. She allowed him to meditate over the weird cosplay scene below while she flipped through the pages looking for the section about the klimaat nood, the climate emergency. This over the last few Third Tuesdays had been working its way steadily up the agenda and occupying more space on the page. Pocking hooves and grinding wheel rims announced the departure of that first carriage.

She found it and read it under her breath. In her peripheral vision she could see Fenna sneaking up on her in the comically exaggerated mincing tiptoe gait, owing a lot to vintage Warner Brothers cartoons, that she used when she was well aware that she was annoying Saskia in the middle of more important duties. The dressmaker was drafting along behind Fenna, like a bike racer allowing a stronger rider to break the wind. Moments later she could feel deft hands messing with her hair and her skirts.

“I realize that you wrote this ten minutes ago . . .” Saskia said.

“More like an hour. Traffic was unbearable.”

“But taken literally it would mean we are going to turn off the pumps. Allow the dikes to melt away. Decommission the Maeslantkering. That’s the literal meaning of what you’ve written here. Which I know is not what you mean. But you are just handing the right wing an opportunity to make fun of you. ‘Look, he’s just virtue signaling, he doesn’t actually mean a word of this.’ So . . . perhaps here?” She placed a recently manicured fingernail, still redolent of volatile organic solvents, on a phrase in the text.

Ruud took it from her, tilted it toward the light, read it, and nodded. Fenna swung in between them like a basketball player boxing out a defender and had a last go with a makeup brush. The Golden Coach was approaching.

Saskia heard a faint metallic snick as Ruud drew a pen—she couldn’t see it, but it would be some tour de force of minimalist industrial design, made of metals from the far reaches of the Periodic Table—from his breast pocket. “I’ll add a few words,” he said, “just so you-know-who doesn’t jump down our throats.” He referred to Martijn Van Dyck, the charismatic leader of the far-right party, who could be relied upon to notice what Saskia had noticed, and to point it out, if the Queen of the Netherlands came out in opposition to dikes and windmills. “See you there, Your Majesty.”

Willem just walked. It was the easiest thing to do, and it felt good to stretch his legs. It wasn’t much more than a kilometer from his office in Noordeinde Palace to the Binnenhof, and the authorities had cleared the way by lining the route with crowd control barriers. A few royal superfans had begun showing up last night to stake out the best viewing spots. For their efforts they were now reaping the reward of standing with their bellies to the barricades where their predominantly orange clothing and accessories were on glorious display. Many had brought banners that they had zip- tied to the barricades themselves. As long as these were handmade and in reasonably good taste they were allowed to remain.