Ultimatum (12 page)

“You tell me. I think we need a year. At least to get the legislation in place. That’s the minimum.”

“So you’re not going to say anything at the inaugural?”

Benton closed his eyes. He let out a long breath. “How do I lie to the American people?”

“It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.”

“Sophistry,” murmured Benton.

Eales didn’t reply. He finished his scotch.

Joe Benton could literally feel the pressure bearing down on him. “I can tell you one thing, John. We need to be a hundred and ten percent above board. We’re going to need every scrap of support to get New Foundation through. Every hit we take is going to damage our chances. I don’t want a single skeleton in anyone’s closet. Every appointment we make, every single person we bring in, every one of them needs to be clean as a whistle.”

~ * ~

Saturday, December 25

Benton Ranch, Wickenberg, Arizona

The Bentons had been getting together with the Travises for Christmas lunch for close on twenty years. Joe Benton had no intention of changing that now, any more than Heather did. So it was Christmas Day as usual at the Benton ranch outside of Wickenberg—apart from the bevy of Secret Service agents who were taking turns patrolling the grounds and having their own lunch in the kitchen, which Heather insisted on providing for them.

Ray Travis had been elected to Congress for the Arizona fifth district in the same year that Joe Benton first went to Washington, and it had been that experience, two Arizona Democrat freshers on the Hill, that had sealed their bond. And the fact that their wives got on. And the match with their kids. Ray and Emmy Travis had two girls, Penny and June. June, the younger, was almost exactly the age of Amy Benton. And everyone had always joked that some day Greg would marry Penny.

Ray Travis had served two terms in the House before he went back home and settled into a law partnership in Phoenix. Joe Benton stayed on in Washington. Inevitably, their worldviews had diverged somewhat over the years. But the friendship remained strong, and it was never long before the talk turned political when they were together.

“So where do you think your main opposition inside the party’s going to come from?” asked Ray, while they were having eggnog before lunch.

“Where I least expect it,” said Joe.

Ray laughed.

“Ray,” said Emmy, “I’m sure Joe doesn’t want to talk politics today.” She glanced at Joe, and almost blushed. Although she had known Joe for twenty years, the mantle of president-elect made her somewhat in awe of him.

“Sure he does,” said Ray. “That’s all he ever wants to talk about.”

“That’s true,” said Heather.

“The House is solid but the Senate’s flaky,” said Ray.

Joe nodded. “The Senate’s always flaky, Ray, you know that.”

“Christopher and Bales will come on board,” said Amy. “Dad’ll get ‘em on board.”

“You think so?”

Amy nodded. Joe smiled. More often than not, Amy was right.

“Greg, what do you think?”

Greg shrugged. “I don’t know anything about politics, Mr. Travis. God invented politics to keep boring people from boring the rest of us. With politics, they just bore each other.”

Joe smiled indulgently. He didn’t rise to the bait. He had learned to avoid that with Greg.

“So you think that’s right?” asked Ray. “Christopher and Bales are going to line up behind you?”

“Of the fifty-six senators we have, there are seven or eight we’ll have to treat very carefully. Are Christopher and Bales among them? Yes, I think they are. Can we handle them the right way? I hope so.”

“You’ve just got to increase funding for the Farm Reversion Program, Daddy. Christopher, Bales, right across the Midwest they’ll get behind you.”

“And what about Montera?” said Ray. “You think you’ll get him through?”

The allegation of a scandal in Hugo Montera’s past had broken two days before Christmas. Benton had spoken to Montera, who had explained it. Benton couldn’t see that he was guilty of any wrongdoing.

“We’ll get him through,” he said quietly.

Ray Travis sat forward in his seat. “Here’s the thing, Joe. The Relocation package, where’s it all going to come from? Just how high are you going to put our taxes?”

“Ray, I’ve got some of the smartest brains in the country working on that right now.”

“But you are going to put taxes up?”

“It’ll be selective. I’ve said there’ll be a cost. How can there not be?”

“The American people voted for it,” said Amy. “I don’t think Daddy hid anything.”

“Honey, politicians always hide something.”

“Amy’s right,” said Joe. “People knew. They recognize there’s a need to do something here. The Gartner Relocation package was a miserly, stingy piece of work that would have condemned millions of people to poverty for generations. And I’m not only talking about the poor souls who have to be moved, I’m also talking about the communities they’re moving into.”

“Four trillion dollars over ten years, Joe. You could hardly say that’s miserly.”

“It is. It’s not only miserly, it’s shortsighted. This movement of people can be a tremendous moment in our history. We can use it as a platform of growth. Or it can be a sinkhole of misery. Make your choice.”

“I’m not arguing with that.”

“You can’t just move them. You can’t just give them a bus ticket and put them in a trailer someplace and give them a couple of hundred thousand compensation and say get on with your lives. That’s what Gartner’s bill did. We can do better. We have to do better. You’ve got to put in the infrastructure. You’ve got to prime the pump. Put those people into communities with health care, education, jobs, and within ten years, five years, they’ll be flourishing, not languishing. That’s why it’s a package, Ray. That’s why I kept saying it and saying it and saying it. And I’ll keep on saying it. Health, education, relocation, jobs. They all come together. And it’s our role as government to make sure they do come together.”

There was silence. Amy gazed at her father. Even Greg watched him out of the corner of his eye. Emmy, Heather and June, who had started talking about something else, looked around to see what was happening.

“I was just wondering where it’s all going to come from,” murmured Ray.

“Well, we’re working on that. But we’re going to have to pay. Our generation is going to have to put in. But it’s for our children, Ray, and our children’s children. And the way I see it, our generation is only living as good as it does because no one has paid yet. We haven’t taken any of the pain. And our parents didn’t, and our grandparents didn’t, but it’s no point complaining to them because they’re not here anymore. They figured we could keep growing our economies at the fastest pace and somehow with a nip here and a tuck there the environment would be okay and we could have the best of both worlds. Trading carbon credits would solve the problem. Well, you know what? It just made a bunch of traders rich. Or technology would do it for us. Well, plenty of time and money was spent on technology to get hold of fossil fuels that previously we couldn’t even access. Twenty, thirty years ago we should have started taxing fossil fuels at the true cost of the damage they do, like we’d do for any other commodity that causes public damage. We should have taken that money—and it would have been a huge amount of money—and put it right into research for the technologies that would replace those fuels.”

“Who?” said Ray. “Government?”

“Why not? Government funds basic health research, and we fund it out of taxes. Isn’t this just as important? Sure, at some point, you commercialize it. But if you’ve got a long-term crisis, and the market isn’t dealing with it because market incentives are focused on the short term, it’s the role of government to make sure the research gets done. That’s exactly what happens in health. Now, if we’d had that money and been putting it into research for the last thirty years, wouldn’t we have come up with solutions to replace fossil fuels? You bet we would. But we didn’t do that. We didn’t make fossil fuels pay their true cost because we were too damn scared it would take a little off our economic growth. And every time we had a slowdown, our fine words about saving the planet went right out the window and all we cared about wa s getting growth up again, whatever it took. Sure, we had plans. Too many of them. Obama’s plan, Currie’s plan. Some of them were even good plans, or would have been if we’d carried them through. The problem wasn’t not having enough plans, it was actually doing what we planned to do. Always some reason, some special interest group, some industry that needed an exemption. And we gave in to them, over and over and over. Come on, Ray. How much legislation, how many emissions targets have you and I seen go by the wayside because it turned out to be just too damn painful to stick to them and too damn easy to convince ourselves that the market or technology or some other thing would magically solve everything for us? And you want to know something—why not? Why should we have taken any pain, why should anyone, when you could be absolutely sure that no other government in the world was going to live up to the cuts they’d committed to make—not if it meant sacrificing even a single percentage point of growth—-and there was no mechanism to make them do it? That’s how it’s been. We haven’t done what we had to do, what we said we’d do. So for a start, we’re better off now than we have a right to be. And now the bill for the cost is here. It didn’t go away just because we ignored it. Someone’s got to pay.” Joe raised his hands. “It’s us. The buck stops here. It’s got to. We don’t pay the bill, it’s Amy, and it’s Greg, and it’s June and it’s Penny who are going to pay. And the bill will keep getting bigger. And you know what? Things happen when you don’t pay the bill. You go back to France in 1789. Hell, you don’t have to go to France. Look at 1776.”

Ray smiled. “You’re saying we’re going to have a revolution?”

“I’m asking you. I’m saying you’ve got ten million people suddenly dispossessed, in poverty, and what are they going to do? Now make that twenty million. Make it forty. I’m just saying we have to be aware of the historical processes we’re a part of. We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. If you think you know everything that’s been happening, if you think Gartner’s plan was sufficient, even at a minimum, even at the bare miserly, stingy minimum he proposed, then I’ve got to tell you...”

Joe stopped. Suddenly he was aware of the way everyone was looking at him.

“How many people did you say?” asked Heather.

Joe frowned for a moment, wondering how he had let that happen. He hadn’t meant to say that, or anything like it. “I was just saying ... if you don’t deal with it, who knows how bad it’ll get?”

There was silence.

He forced a smile. “At least there’s a saving grace. The American people understood. I can’t think of greater evidence of our common sense, of the spirit of our community, the spirit our Founding Fathers would have wanted to see in us, than that they said yes on November second. Because Mike Gartner was offering them the easy way, storing up more trouble for the future. And the American people said no, we’re going to face this trouble now.” The senator tapped his finger forcefully on the armrest of his chair. “We’re going to saddle up and go out and deal with it. They could have chosen the easy way but they didn’t. That’s what really makes me proud to be the next president of this country.”

“God bless America,” muttered Greg.

The senator turned to him sharply. “God
bless
America. You better believe it, Greg.”

There was silence again.

“Well, it’s Christmas,” said Heather. She cut the tension with a smile. “I’d say it’s about time for lunch.”

~ * ~

The Travises didn’t leave until almost sundown. Joe lingered outside, watching the sky go purple and the sun turn gold in the crisp winter air. The ranch was in the foothills of the Bradshaw Mountains, and the summits of Towers Mountain and Wasson Peak rose to the north.