her appeal was her complete indifference to decorum. It had worked with Texas voters for more than two decades, and it had landed her a high, seven-figure “appreciation” from the very industry that she’d represented so ably in the Senate. The revolving door of government and politics had landed her in this unapologetically opulent, marble-floored building designed entirely along classical Greek lines: symmetrical and perfectly proportional right down to the Ionic columns that graced both sides of the vaulted lobby. It reeked of riches, the enduring power of fossil fuels.
“And you,” she pointed the gleaming titanium tip at a male intern who could have moonlighted as a model, “a club sandwich with mayo. Some joker got me one last week that was drier than a Texas pee pot.”
This is going to be fun, Higgens mused to herself. Even though she’d always said—often very loudly—that patience was a “vastly overrated virtue,” persistence had now paid off: Geoengineering would give oil and coal a new lease on life. Many new leases, she thought merrily.
The senator took her place at the head of a conference table, club sandwich in easy reach, wholly unselfconscious about eating while her staff settled into their seats and she chatted up an aide about his newborn son. Higgens had a superb politician’s gifts of empathy and curiosity; in her case, both were genuine. People liked her, even people who abhorred her politics. The perfect voice for USEI.
She smiled at the staffers assembled around the table. Twelve of them. My disciples, she thought without a smidgeon of seriousness or sanctimony.
“Okay, boys and girls, life’s going to change around here. Y’all are fired.”
She relished their shocked silence, but only for a moment. “Ease up, for chrissakes. Can’t y’all tell when an old cowgirl’s ringin’ your bell? We are in bidness, folks, like never before. The White House has signed on to ge-o-en-gin-eer-ing, all six lu-cra-tive syllables. No leaks about this to the media. You hear me? No leaks.” She broke into laughter. “’Cept to the usual suspects. Now, I want updated reports on all of the following. Ready?”
She took another bite of her sandwich, loving the smooth mayo spreading over her tongue. That cute little intern’s got a future. Then she wheeled on a young man directly to her left, rangy as a fence post on her Abilene ranch, which she hadn’t seen in two years. “You’ve been looking at sequestration of CO2.” Pumping carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs, coal mines, saline aquifers, and the like to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. “Keep at it. Give me the latest costs, which—” She put up her hand to shush the fellow. “I know they’re enormous. The risks?” Raising a question no one at the table was now foolish enough to try to answer. “Comme ci, comme ça. But probably on the safer side. Give me footnotes, too, to show we did our homework. I want it by Friday. You may leave,” she said to the rangy one. All of them knew that meant: “Get to work.”
“You two.” She waved the turkey-stuffed sandwich at a middle-aged man and a younger woman rumored to have posted a video of themselves on the Net having blindfolded sex in the office. “I want you to give me the postmortem on filtering CO2 from air. That’s DOA but I want to be able to say ‘Big bucks and big problems,’ so dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Go.” They left. To work, she hoped.
Higgens gave a sigh that might have been rooted in longing or nostalgia, then tapped the table with a fingernail as pink as her umbrella. Her gaze had landed on another edible youngster, as she thought of the twenty-somethings. “Charles,” spoken as another, more maternal woman might offer the name of a long-lost son, “you get mineral carbonation.” Turning CO2 to stone. “List the advantages, say that it’s not too risky for the faint of heart, but make sure that you point out that the engineering challenges are a killer. And Charles,” she mewed again, “make this sink like a … stone. It’s a time waster, and what’s time?”
“Money,” he answered to her beaming approval.
“Scoot. Now you, Prince Harry,” she said, smiling, to a junior researcher who shared the royal’s first name, cherubic well-scrubbed looks, and upswept ginger hair. “You get to tackle clouds and space mirrors. I know, Prince Harry,” as if he actually had the cojones to object, “it’s another defensive move, but if we don’t line up all