Ill Wind (13 page)

Todd glanced at Iris, who only shrugged. Any contact from the pier could only mean trouble, and Todd was in no mood to stop now. Not in the middle of a job. He sighed and reached forward to take the handset. “Severyn here. What is it, Mr. Plerry?”

After a short squawk, Plerry’s feathery voice burst from the radio. “Mr. Severyn, things are getting a bit out of hand here. This group does have a legitimate court order, and I’m afraid they are insisting that you cease immediately and return to the pier.”

Todd rolled his eyes. No frigging way! He had a job to do and he was going to get it done, for the good of the whole country. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” He had read about similar things during the
Exxon Valdez
cleanup—serious cleanup attempts stopped in mid-stream by bureaucratic bickering. He pushed the microphone out the open window, allowing the outside air to blast over it. He pulled it back in and shouted, “Getting some interference here, Plerry. We must be flying too low.”

“Mr. Severyn,” Plerry continued, sounding panicked. “I can read you the court order over the radio. They don’t have to hand-deliver it to you. I think it best that you stop your spraying operations. A gesture of good faith on our part.”

Todd shoved the microphone out the window again, this time giving it a good thump against the side of the helicopter. “All I’m getting is static, Plerry. You’re fading fast. We’ll have to check out the radio systems when we get back. Severyn out.”

He tossed the microphone back to the pilot. Both she and Iris looked at him. He shrugged. “What? You can’t close the barn door after the horses are loose, to use a cliche you’ve probably heard before. We’re already spraying. We may as well finish the job.”

“That’s rather unethical, isn’t it, Tex?” Iris said.

Todd clenched his teeth.
Unethical
? Didn’t anybody understand priorities? “Look, I told Oilstar I’d get this done—and I’m a man of my word. I’d rather apologize afterward than get bogged down asking permission from those wackos in the first place. I plan to get this oil spill cleaned up the best way I know how. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

She shrugged. “For better or worse.”

#

On the Oilstar pier, trying to stay away from other people, Alex Kramer monitored the test from the metal storage shack. A flutter of dread and nervousness kept his stomach taut. His joints felt like they were gliding on ground glass.

Outside the protesters swamped Plerry, who had given up trying to answer their questions. Two minicam vans from local TV stations pulled up. Alex ducked inside the shack. The wolves would push their way through the door in a moment. He could imagine the ghost of Erin among them. He closed his eyes and drew deep breaths. All the brutal attention he had endured in the last few days had taken its toll, but he only had to hold on for another hour. Then there would be no stopping Prometheus.

 
Since the spill, Alex had begun to wonder if fate had intentionally backed him into a corner, making certain that he had nothing to lose.
Nothing at all.
It had been an enormous decision; but now that Prometheus was deployed, he had nothing to worry about. Cool relief washed over him.

Todd Severyn had managed to complete the spraying run, and the helicopter was even now returning to the pier. Soon all hell would break loose.

Someone pounded on the door of the shack. Before Alex could answer, the door rattled open. “Dr. Kramer, would you step outside please?” The man wore a t-shirt beneath a hooded sweatshirt. “The police are here to arrest you and Mr. Severyn.”

Alex blinked as he stepped into the sunshine, walking like an automaton. The bright green Oilstar helicopter chattered its way across the sky toward the pier. Jake Torgens, the bearded man who had charged through the gate waving his court order, shooed people away so the copter would have a place to land. Plerry sat all by himself on the hood of his car, staring at his loafers.

After the helicopter settled onto the wooden pier, several protesters pushed forward, ducking low. Torgens shouted, “Just wait a minute!”

When the helicopter’s passenger door popped open, Todd swung out. Torgens came forward with his court order, accompanied by a uniformed police officer. “You should have stopped!”

“Mr. Severyn, I have to place you under arrest,” said the police officer.

“Yeah? On what charge?” Todd asked.

“Reckless endangerment of human life and property. Dispersing a possibly hazardous or toxic substance.”

Todd made a rude noise. “Bogus charges, and you know it. I’m doing this to help people and property by cleaning up the whole danged mess. It would be a crime
not
to use Dr. Kramer’s stuff if it can get rid of the spill.”

The policeman shrugged. Alex came up to stand next to Todd. For the first time in months he felt light on his feet, freed of an enormous weight. He could let go. The hard part was over. “Will you need to use handcuffs?” he asked.

The policeman looked surprised. “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

Todd shook his head and spoke to Alex. “Don’t worry, Doc. Oilstar will bail us out in a few hours.”

“I know,” Alex said. “What’s done is done.”

Todd laughed, ostensibly talking to Alex, but raising his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Isn’t it funny that these wackos didn’t show up until they knew it would be too late? They want to have it both ways. If your Prometheus bug doesn’t work, they can press charges. If it does clean up the spill, they’ll just keep their mouths shut. They can’t lose. But at least
we
did the right thing, regardless!”

“Yes,” Alex said, “yes we did.”

They moved toward the police car. As he climbed into in the back seat, Alex felt a calming resignation. He had never been in a police car before.

The door thumped shut, sealing him next to Todd in the warm, stale-smelling car. He didn’t feel like a criminal. He really did have nothing left to lose. He had given the Earth a legacy.

Nothing like the
Zoroaster
spill would ever happen again.
Guaranteeing that was worth sacrificing everything.

Chapter 15

Straining to see through the smeared windshield of his rental Mazda, Spencer Lockwood followed the signs to Visitor Parking in front of the Sandia Lab administration building. He grabbed his briefcase and ran into the lobby. He was a half an hour late, which meant his tour of somebody’s lab was going to be cut short. He hoped it didn’t tick off one of the colleagues who might support his smallsat project.

He signed in at the visitor’s desk while the receptionist paged Moira Tibbett, his Sandia contact. Tibbett, a deputy leader of one of Sandia’s energy programs, had agreed to give Spencer the standard tour. She had faxed him a preliminary agenda—but he had lost it on his cluttered desk at White Sands.

Sipping bitter coffee from a
styrofoam
cup in the reception area, Spencer fidgeted. He glanced at the colorful technical brochures on display, all of which described how Sandia would solve the nation’s energy problems for the next century.

Not a good sign,
he thought, since he was an outsider with a competing concept. Sitting down, he flipped through his viewgraphs again, balancing them on his knees. He wondered if he should take the clip-on necktie out of his briefcase and wear it. This may be laid-back California, but Sandia had a reputation for being more formal than the other national labs.

When Moira Tibbett came through the gate, Spencer stood to shake her hand. “Sorry about being late. The
traffic.
. .”

Tibbett was tall and straight-backed, dressed in an uncomfortable-looking plaid suit. “Don’t worry about it. We know all about traffic out here.” She led him to the chain-link gate and handed the uniformed guard the pink copy from an escort request form. “We appreciate you coming up to have a look, Dr. Lockwood. Are you familiar with our energy programs?”

“A little.” Spencer already felt his muscles tense. He’d come here to promote his
own
program, maybe scare up some support. Sandia’s “exchange of ideas” sounded like a one-way filter.

#

That afternoon, discouraged to the point of surrender, Spencer entered the Sandia auditorium, trying to haul his spirits up by his bootstraps. He had put on his tie after all.

In tour after tour, researchers had soapboxed about their projects, strongly implying that everyone else was wasting the taxpayers’ time and money. Busy enough battling their
coworkers,
they had no room to endorse some outsider’s solar-power program. Maybe this whole trip wasn’t such a good idea.

The auditorium was already half filled. The room had three hundred seats, each covered with deep blue cushioning. Moira Tibbett stood tall and severe at a podium at the center of the wooden stage. The sounds of gathering people made a white-noise murmur. Spencer made a mental note to project his voice, even though these people didn’t seem to be in a listening mood.

Below, waiting for his cue, Spencer shook hands with some of the scientists, muttering appropriate words about how he had enjoyed touring their laboratories; in response, they expressed eagerness to hear his talk. Sincerity seemed as scarce as extra funding, though. He found it difficult to keep up the act.

Tibbett tapped the microphone to quiet the crowd.
Showtime!
Spencer thought. He reconsidered his viewgraphs, trying to pick a better slant for his talk. Nothing felt right.

“The Director’s colloquium series is pleased to present Dr. Spencer Lockwood.” Tibbett pulled a few index cards out of the pocket of her plaid suit and glanced at her notes. “Dr. Lockwood is a Caltech ‘hat trick,’ having received his Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate in physics there—very unusual for Caltech. He worked under Dr. Seth Mansfield in particle physics, helping to lay the foundation for Mansfield’s Nobel
prize
.”

Spencer smiled tightly at the scattered applause. He always downplayed his contribution; he had been only an assistant, a second author on three of Mansfield’s papers.

“.
. . his power-beaming experiment, for which he won last year’s E. O. Lawrence Award. Dr. Lockwood has expanded his initial microwave work to incorporate dozens of small solar-power satellites, recently completing a series of
ground-breaking
tests on which he’ll now report. Dr. Lockwood?”

Spencer looked out over the crowd. Placing the first viewgraph on the projector, he picked up the laser pointer and prepared for the worst. He could handle it. He had faced skeptical audiences before.

He felt like a shipwreck survivor being circled by sharks.

#

Forty minutes later, the coldly polite comments kept coming. Spencer’s last viewgraph, a bulleted list of CONCLUSIONS, shone on the screen, but no one looked at it. His colleagues asked questions phrased as springboards for discussions of their own projects, rather than reflecting any interest in Spencer’s work.

“—
much
less efficient than geothermal—”

“—
what
about impact ionization effects, which are of course not present in fusion-power concepts?”

Spencer answered each comment as precisely as he could; in the back of his mind he thought of Galileo defending his findings to the Inquisition. Out of the audience’s view, he gripped the podium, digging his fingernails into the fake wood. He found himself repeatedly sipping his glass of water, knowing it was a nervous gesture but unable to stop. The water tasted bitter.

“—
isn’t
it true that artificial ethanol is easier to access?”

“—
now
that the inherently safe TRIGA nuclear plant is cheaper to make—”

The rebellious “young hotshot” part of Spencer was amused at their behavior—how different from the popular stereotype of cool, logical eggheads. He had heard it said that scientists were the only army in the world that killed their own wounded.

Finally, he had enough of the bullshit. Spencer snapped off the viewgraph projector and gathered his transparencies. “Thank you for your time,” he said.
Numbskulls
, he wanted to add, but gave them a tight smile instead.

As a wave of hypocritical applause rippled through the auditorium, Spencer tried to let the tension wash off of him. These people were not looking for results, or even alternate answers. Each person was responsible for a different solution to the same energy crisis, and each person wanted to validate only one individual area of research. If Lance Nedermyer enjoyed this political game back in Washington, he could have it.

Moira Tibbett led him out the side door of the auditorium. “Dr. Lockwood, I must apologize.” Her eyes downcast, she looked beaten. “Everyone views this as a zero-sum game. There’s only a fixed amount of money to go around, and if anything new gets funded, something has to die. It’s not that they disagree with you on a scientific level—”

“I understand.” Spencer forced a smile to soften his abrupt reply. He unclipped his guest badge and handed it to her. “If you’ll escort me back to the gate, I can find my rental car.”

“Of course,” she said, taking the lead with brisk steps. “I can recommend some local restaurants, if you’d like.”