Whether or not the world was ending, the prediction itself was having a real effect. The economy had been hit: crime, suicides, a loss of business confidence. There had been a flight into gold, as if that would help. This was, the think tankers believed, ironically a by-product of a recent growth in responsibility. After generations of gloomy warnings about Earth’s predicament, people had by and large begun to take responsibility for a future that extended beyond the next generation or two. Perhaps in the

1950s, the world two centuries hence would have seemed im-

possibly remote. Now it seemed around the corner, awfully

close, within the bounds of current plans and thinking.

It was ironic that people had begun to imagine the deeper future just as it was snatched from them.

Above all we must beware Schopenhauerian pessimism, she read. Schopenhauer, obsessed with the existence of evil, wrote that it would have been better if our planet had remained lifeless, like the Moon. From there it is only a short step to thinking that we ought to make it lifeless. It may be that this motivates some of the destructiveness seen recently in our urban communities, although the disruption caused by the so-called “Blue children “phenomenon at a fundamental level — that is, nuclear family level — is no doubt contributing.

It was a complex of responses, an unstable species sent into a spin by the bad news from the future. Perhaps what would bring down humankind in the end was not nature or science, but a creeping philosophical disaster.

In the midst of all this, Malenfant was summoned to appear before the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology in Washington, D.C., an appearance that might be — as Maura realized immediately — his last chance to save his sorry ass.

Emma Stoney:

On the morning Malenfant was due to give his testimony,

Emma — nervous, unsleeping — was up early.

She took a walk around Washington, D.C. It was a hot, flat morning. The traffic noise was a steady rumble carried through the sultry air.

She followed the Mall, the grassy strip of parkland that ran a mile from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. The grass was yellow, the ground baked hard and flat, though it was only April. The heat rose in waves, as if she were walking across a hot plate. From here she could see several of the nation’s great buildings: seats of government, museums. A lot of neoclassical marble, grandly spaced: This was an imperial capital if ever there was one, a statement of power, if not of good taste.

She considered going to see the asteroid-exploration VR gallery Malenfant had donated to the Air and Space Museum. Typical Malenfant: influencing public opinion with what was ostensibly a gesture of generosity. Maybe another day, she thought.

She reached the. Washington Monument: simple and clean, seamlessly restored since its ‘08 near-demolition by Christian libertarians. But the flags that ringed it were all at half-mast in recognition of the American lives lost in the latest anti-American terrorist outrage in… she’d forgotten already. France, was it?

And then she turned, and there was the White House, right in front of her: still — arguably — the most important decision-making center on the planet. There was what looked like a permanent shantytown on the other side of the road, opposite the White House, panhandlers and protesters and religious crazies doing their stuff in full view of the chief executive’s bedroom window. Police drones buzzed languidly overhead.

D.C. was dense, real, crusted with history and power. Compared to this, Malenfant’s endeavors in the desert and off in space seemed foolish, baroque dreams.

Nevertheless, here Malenfant was, ready to fight his corner.

Maura eyed Emma. “So, about Malenfant. What is it with you two?”

“Umm?”

“I can’t understand how come you’re still together.”

“We’re divorced.”

“Exactly.”

Emma sighed. “It’s a long story.”

Maura grunted. “Believe me, at my age, everybody has a long story.”

To loosen them both up, Maura Della had taken Emma as a special guest to the House gym, in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building. It was smaller than Emma had expected, with a pool, steam and massage rooms, a squash court, and exercise equipment. Maura and Emma had opted for a swim, steam, and massage, and now Emma felt herself relax as her mechanical masseur pounded her back with plastic fingers.

They had married young — he in his thirties, she in her twenties.

Emma had had her own career. But she had been excited at the prospect of coming with him, of following his charming, childlike, outlandish dreams of a human expansion into space. She had known her public role would be as an air force wife, perhaps as a NASA wife, and those institutions were old and hidebound enough that she knew she would be forced to let her career shadow his. Raising air force brats, in fact. But the truth was they were partners, and would be for life.

But Malenfant had washed out of NASA at the first hurdle.

She had been stunned.

He had come back silent, sullen. He had never told her what

went wrong; she had learned not to press him on it.

And after that, nothing had been the same.

He was floored by his setback for a whole year before he resigned from the air force and started finding other directions to channel his energy. That had been the start of Bootstrap Incorporated, of Malenfant’s journey to riches and power. Emma had worked with him, even in those early days. But he had started to push her away.

“I still don’t understand why,” she told Maura. “We’d planned children, family years, a home somewhere. Somehow, all that had disappeared over the horizon. And then—”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Emma smiled, feeling tired. “It’s in the gossip columns. He had an affair. I found them together. Well, the marriage was finished. I’ll tell you the strangest thing. I’ve never seen him so unhappy as at that moment.”

In fact it had seemed to her that Malenfant was working to finish it, digging at its foundations: that he had taken a lover only to drive away Emma.

Her e-therapists had said he was reacting to the thwarting of his true ambition. Now that he knew he would never achieve his dreams, Malenfant was playing with the toys of youth one more time before the coffin lid started to creak down over him.

Or maybe, some of the e-therapists argued, it was just some hideous andropause thing.

“The only advantage of e-therapists,” Maura murmured, “is that their horseshit is cheaper than humans’.”

“Well, whatever, it hurt.”

“And it still does. Right?”

Emma shrugged. “Someday I’ll understand.”

“And then you’ll walk out the door?”

“That’s my plan. So. You think we’re going to get through

today?”

“I think so,” Maura said briskly, turning to business. “The danger man is Harris Rutter, from Illinois. One of the Gingrich generation. You know, once they arrive here people never leave, in office or not. You have strata of power, going back decades. Rutter has a lot of power. He’s on a number of appropriations subcommittees, sluiceways for federal money. But Rutter’s power is all negative. He likes to filibuster, raise delaying amendments, stall appointments — all means to frustrate the will of the majority, until he gets his own way, whatever that is. But I think I managed to blindside him this time.” “How?”

“Federal pork. Or at least, the promise of a slice, if Malenfant gets his way.”

“That’s looking a long way ahead, isn’t it?”

“You have to stay ahead of the power curve in this town, Emma,” Maura murmured, and she closed her eyes with a sigh, as her massager went back to work. “Did you know they didn’t let women in this gym until 1985?”