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efficiency of a heat engine operating with such a small temperature difference is about seven percent, past OTEC trials have achieved only one or two percent. With our proprietary technology, we can…”
    Dillon took down his first note. This could be real. He did not begrudge Kayla her full fifteen minutes. “So you’re going to save the world,” he probed.
    â€œHardly. We need many ways to generate power, Resetter fanatics notwithstanding. OTEC can be one method. It should be one, in the tropics, anyway.” She rattled off more of OTEC’s virtues. Finally, she took a breath. “Will Russo Venture Capital Partners back us?”
    â€œI’ll have to touch base in-house.” That was a stall, because as principal partner Dillon’s was the only opinion that mattered. He only took aboard investors cowed by his reputation, being especially partial to the pension funds of small towns in flyover states. Well, there was one exception, but Yakov’s interests were … different. Yakov was different: fascinating and worldly-wise. If Yakov sometimes demanded more involvement than Dillon’s usual partners, he also brought resources none of Dillon’s other partners could offer.
    Kayla persisted. “If you have further questions…?”
    â€œBut I will admit to being intrigued.” Dillon spared her the briefest of smiles. “Perhaps sometime I could tour your prototype.”
    â€œAbsolutely!” Her discipline finally slipped. With a grin, she whipped a folded datasheet from her jacket pocket. “Let’s set that up now.”
    â€œWe’re about out of time,” he countered. “I’ll be in touch.”
    She all but floated from his office—at the last, as naïve as any of the day’s supplicants. As naïve, in her own way, as the Resetter activists whom she disdained.
    Nodding welcome to yet another earnest entrepreneur, Dillon thought: That’s how I can do what I do.
    Â 
    Thursday, April 13
    Valerie Clayburn glowered at her datasheet. Neither it nor the wildly colored globe it projected deserved her wrath—but they were here . Telecommuting was fine in its place, but much of her job demanded the personal touch.
    And with that moment of resentment, she felt rotten, as though she were shortchanging the sick little boy in the next room.
    Not that Simon sounded sick. He was making the deep-in-his-throat, revving and growling noise that all little boys make—to the amusement and consternation of their mothers—whether playing with cars, G.I. Joes, or toy dinosaurs.
    She had three sisters. None of them ever made sounds like her son and his friends did.
    She had once found Simon galloping in circles “flying” a toy stuffed rabbit, its floppy ears bent sideways like wings, making those same annoying/adorable noises. Something she and her sisters would never have thought to try. He had been about three. Smiling at the memory, she went to check on him.
    She found him deep in his toy box, playthings strewn about his bare feet. From the doorway to his bedroom, the little-boy noises sounded a bit different than usual. Deeper. Phlegmy. “Back in bed, kiddo,” she commanded.
    â€œBut Mom , I was only—”
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” she said. “Pick a toy and get back under the covers.”
    He emerged from the toy box, one hand clutching little cars and the other action figures. Testing the limits. She let it pass. “Bed. Now. Move.”
    He dumped his double handful of toys on his blanket. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
    Predictable. As he passed her in the doorway she felt Simon’s forehead: still warm. His blond hair was dark with sweat. The jungle-camouflage pajamas (little boys!) he wore were snug and inches too short, but he would not give them up until she replaced them. If he would only stay in bed, the bare ankles and wrists would hardly matter.
    Heading off