Ill Wind

Chapter 1

Crashing through 20-foot waves, the supertanker Zoroaster drove through the Pacific night like a great steel behemoth.

Longer than three football fields and 170 feet wide, the Oilstar supertanker was one of the largest objects ever constructed. Weather and salt water had left a patina of blisters and rust on a deck that had once been painted silver. Behind the ship, the wake looked like a bubbling cauldron of green foam, lit by a wash of moonlight.

Four days earlier, the supertanker had left the Alaskan port of Valdez after filling its twelve massive tanks with crude oil piped from Prudhoe Bay. Fully loaded, the Zoroaster had churned out of the Gulf of Alaska, bound for the Oilstar refineries in the San Francisco Bay.

Oilstar representatives claimed the massive ship could function with a minimal crew of 28 because of highly efficient computer warning and navigation systems. Internal corporate memos included terms like “increased profit margin” and “downsizing.” Only the long, exhausting shifts broke the tedium for the crew.

No one wanted to think about what could go wrong with so large a ship… and so few people to respond to it.

The lower corridor of the Zoroaster’s deckhouse was empty. Good. The only sounds were the continuous groans of the tanker, the whisper of the Pacific, and the distant throb of the engines. Everyone asleep. Along the corridor, the gunmetal-gray cabin doors had been sealed against the deep night. This ship always stank of fumes.

Connor Brooks did not hesitate. Sweating with excitement, he yanked down the fire alarm. It would create one hell of a diversion, and he would be glad to destroy the papers and get his sorry ass out of sight. Let the Oilstar pricks do all the explaining.

Electronic whoops clamored through the intercom, making the whole ship echo. Christ, it was loud enough! Connor grabbed his metal food tray and raced up the narrow corrugated stairs to the bridge. Keep everything moving. His entire plan depended on timing. Come on, come on!

Connor’s heart hammered as he bounded up the stairs. His shaggy blond hair flew backward; his scalp prickled with sweat. That butthead, Captain Miles Uma, would take a few seconds to respond to the emergency, and Connor would get his chance. About time, too.

He had to get everyone off the bridge so he could break into his personnel file, trash the evidence that was going to get him in trouble with the authorities. As the Zoroaster approached the end of her four-day journey to San Francisco, Connor’s time was running out. The supertanker would pass through the Golden Gate in less than an hour.

He wanted to kick someone in the kneecaps with his heavy workboot. So he had been caught with a few credit cards he had lifted from the wallets of other crew members—big fucking deal! Nobody was liable for more than fifty bucks or so from purchases made on a stolen card anyway. Besides, Connor had never imagined anybody would notice until long after he jumped ship in San Francisco. What would someone use a credit card for on an oil tanker, for crying out loud?

Connor deserved a decent break in his life. Just one. He had run to Alaska in the first place to hide from a lot of things he did not want to remember, things that other people refused to forget. The port of Valdez in Prince William Sound was full of dirty jobs, working the slime line in fisheries or scrubbing out tankers before they refilled from the Trans-Alaska pipeline. He had hired onto the Zoroaster as a bottom-rank seaman, which meant serving meals and cleaning toilets. Connor hadn’t counted on the captain being such a stuffed-shirt butthead! Why was the world so full of pricks?

Uma wasn’t going to give him a break, so Connor had to take matters in his own hands.

Still running from the deafening fire alarms below, Connor reached the top deck with the tray of food. He wore a stained cook’s apron over his muscular frame.

He paused a second to catch his breath before stepping onto the bridge. He was tempted to whistle a bit, just to show how casual he felt, but that would be too obvious. Old Butthead had the night watch—didn’t the man ever leave his station? Damned Eskimo/Negro mixup. Short and bearlike, Butthead’s swarthy skin, frizzy black hair, huge beard, and heavy eyebrows, made him look like a gorilla trying to pass himself off as human. He kept his Oilstar uniform neat, and he didn’t drink booze. At all.

Butthead Uma whirled upon hearing Connor. “Brooks! What the hell are you doing here?”

Amid the confusion of panicked sounds, Connor put on a big ‘Yes sir!’ smile. “Brought your late-night snack, Captain.”

Butthead ignored him and turned instead to the second mate. “Where is that damned alarm coming from, Dailey?”

The second mate looked up from a display panel, shoving his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. “Two decks down, sir!”

“Right here in the deckhouse?” Butthead said. “At least it’s not out by the cargo holds.”

Connor spoke up. “Yeah, I just came from down there. It looked pretty bad, and the others were calling for you. The intercom is busted or something.” He shrugged. The alarm kept yammering.

“Fire control activated, Captain,” said the second mate.

Uma seemed suspicious. “Dailey, take the conn. Brooks, put that food down and come with me. Why didn’t you let me know?”

Connor cursed under his breath. Now he had to go with Butthead! How the hell was he going to get at the records?

The second mate looked out the wide, salt-spattered windows of the bridge, squinting through thick glasses toward the glimmering lights that stood out on the coast. “Captain, we’re approaching the Point Bonitas lighthouse. Only two miles out of the Golden Gate. The Bay pilot is on his way to come aboard and take us through.”

“I can’t sit around if there’s a fire on my ship.” Uma dashed to the bridge doorway. “Brooks, get a move on!”

Connor refrained from “assisting” Butthead down the stairwell with a hard kick in the ass. He had to delay, get the second mate out of the picture. The captain’s heavy boots clomped down the corrugated stairs like bricks falling on a brass gong.

Connor set the food down on the chart table, keeping the heavy metal tray. The moment the captain disappeared from view, Connor whirled, smashing the metal tray against the second mate’s head. The second mate held up an arm to fend off Connor, then fell to one knee; his glasses broke as they clattered to the floor. Two more blows to the head knocked the man unconscious.

“Sorry, shipmate,” Connor said as he ground the broken eyeglasses under the heel of his stained boot. “You should have gone with Butthead.”

He tossed the tray to the side, and the clatter vanished in the throbbing noise of the alarm. He rushed over to the personnel records bureau next to the captain’s station. Secure locks had never been a high priority, considering the supertanker’s limited crew and long voyages. Connor diddled with the lock, using the screwdriver in his pocket. He slapped his palm against the handle of the screwdriver, and the drawer popped open.

Connor dug through the manila folders, finding his own file: Connor’s hiring record, Uma’s incident report, and an arrest order. His face darkened. He had to be long gone before everybody stopped running around in circles.

Connor yanked out more of the files, shuffling them, anything to gain a little more time when they started hunting him down. Maybe he could slip off the ship without anyone seeing. Glancing out the bridge window, he saw the fog-dimmed lights of the approaching city. It seemed very far away. He had to hurry.

Connor turned to get out of there. The captain would know by now that the fire alarm was a hoax, and he would have no doubt who had done it. Dailey remained stone cold on the floor next to his broken glasses.

Time to haul ass.

He pulled the metal fire door shut behind him as he left the bridge and twisted tight the wheel-lock. During the entire four-day trip down the west coast, Connor had never seen the bridge door closed. Bracing himself against the wall, he kicked viciously at the wheel-lock with his heavy work boot. The wheel bent, jammed.

The grin returned. “Try explaining that one, Captain Butthead!” They would need a blowtorch to get the door open again. Connor sprinted to the long cargo deck. This just might work out after all.

Fire alarms screeched. Cabin doors slammed open as groggy, offduty crewmembers scrambled into the corridors. Seamen shouted to each other, wanting to know what was going on. Instinctively three crewmen stumbled into the brisk night to man the water cannons, but they saw none of the crude-oil cargo burning.

On deck two, Captain Miles Uma found no sign of fire. Cramming his cap down on his frizzy hair, he stood by the alarm on the wall, saw that it had been pulled intentionally. Realization fell into place as a wave of cold anger coursed through him. His skin prickled. “I’m going to kill Brooks!”

Uma’s stomach soured with dread as he suddenly realized his mistake. Brooks had not followed him down the stairs. The slimeball must still be up on the bridge with Dailey. Even with such a small crew, Uma knew he should have locked the bastard up.

They were close to the narrow and treacherous Golden Gate. Too close. And Brooks was pulling some stupid stunt. Uma bounded back up to the bridge deck.

The door to his own bridge stood shut against him, the wheel-lock bent. Uma strained against the wheel, but it remained jammed. He hammered with a fist. “Open this door right now!”

He received no answer. Listening, he could hear the automatic collision-avoidance radar beeping a warning. His mind whirled, and his stomach tangled in impossible knots. Of their four-day, 2000 mile journey, this was the most crucial point, “threading the needle” through the deep channel under the Golden Gate Bridge to Oilstar’s North Bay refineries. Dead Man’s Curve.

Uma was appalled at his own stupidity, his overconfidence. Captain Joseph Hazelwood had done the same thing on the Exxon Valdez—left the command post at a critical moment. Uma angrily slapped the bulkhead; his hand stung. Stupid!

Uma stepped back and kicked as hard as he could. The thick metal door did not give.

A crewman panted up the stairs, followed by two others. Uma briefly wished they had given him a few more moments to get through the door; now everyone could see his helplessness.

“What is it, Captain?” asked the crewman. Uma did not turn to look at him.

“The door’s jammed.” He kicked again, hard enough to send a sharp pain through his shin. Uma threw his shoulder against it. His voice suddenly turned hoarse. “Help me get in there now!” He shoved the crewman forward. Another man joined him, but the three of them slammed against the door in vain.

Uma turned and pointed at the crewmen on the stairwell. “Get me a battering ram—anything. Move it!”

Muffled through the door, the collision-avoidance alarms kept beeping.

Out on the vast, cluttered deck, alarms bleated into the night. Connor wondered if Captain Butthead had made it back to the bridge yet. He wished he could be there to watch Uma’s expression as he tried to cope with the jammed door.

Connor hurried out to the storage shacks, pump control banks, and water-cannon valves. Everything was wet with spray, slimy with oil residue. He crumpled the incriminating papers as he faced the stiff ocean breeze and tossed the wad overboard. The white ball glimmered in the moonlight, then vanished forever. If he could just hide until the ship docked at the terminal, then slip off….

He looked across the ship, the twelve tank hatches, the catwalk down the center of the deck, the pressure and vacuum relief valves. The Zoroaster was so long the crew had to take bicycles from one end to the other. He would have little trouble finding a place to lie low for a few hours.

He couldn’t jump and swim to shore; years ago, maybe with a wetsuit and surfboard, he would have tried. The cold, fast-moving waters of the Bay were notorious—and even fully loaded, the tanker rode six stories above the water. He should have thought of that part before setting all this in motion, but Connor hated to waste time over-planning. He did what he needed to do, then tried to be flexible if the details didn’t work out right.

The alarms suddenly ceased, plunging the ship into an echoing silence. Off in the distance, he heard the asynchronous hoots and chimes of foghorns around the Golden Gate. Through sparse fog, the coastal cities lit up the shoreline like Christmas lights. Connor was glad to be approaching civilization again.

The twinkling outline of the Golden Gate Bridge seemed very, very close.

Using a pipe as a battering ram, the crew finally broke through the bridge door, letting it hang on one twisted hinge. Uma kicked the door aside, allowing access. He spotted second mate Dailey on his knees, groaning and trying to pull himself up.

The Golden Gate Bridge was much too close.

Uma ran three steps toward the controls, then stopped to stare across the Zoroaster’s sprawling deck at what lay ahead. The Golden Gate loomed, a narrow opening into the calm waters of the Bay. The Bridge cut across their path with a flickering necklace of automobile headlights. Rocky headlands crouched in the surf, where lighthouses sent their beacons out to sea.

Uma knew the north tower of the Bridge stood on rocks extending from the Marin shore; but the south tower rose straight out of the sea on the San Francisco side, built on a shelf of rock fifty feet deep and a quarter mile from land.

For a fraction of a second, Uma froze. His career was over. He could never save the ship in time. His mind numbed, unable to grasp the disaster about to happen in front of his eyes, all because of his stupidity.

The supertanker took about a mile to turn, and she’d had four days to build up speed. But he couldn’t just stand there.

He slapped at the intercom. “Full reverse!”

The grinding hum from the engine room sounded strained and uncooperative. The Zoroaster shuddered with the sudden change as the engine responded.

Collision-avoidance radar bleeped, a sound that frightened him much more than the fire alarms. He scanned the screens at the navigator’s station. Red danger circles overlapped the tanker’s silhouette and the south pier of the Bridge. Over the radio, the voice of a Coast Guard operator kept calling for a response.

At the radio station, he switched channels to the Coast Guard frequency. “Mayday, mayday! This is Oilstar Zoroaster. We are headed for the Golden Gate. Declaring an emergency and prepared to abandon ship!”

Uma squinted at the radar, watching the tanker’s projected path. The ship headed straight for one of the two great towers that supported the Golden Gate Bridge. He grunted, moving the rudder as far to port as the electronic control would allow.

He might be able to make the great ship swing just enough. Just by a fraction. Uma sounded the whooping general quarters alarm. He wondered how many of the Zoroaster’s crew would assume it to be another false emergency and go back to their bunks.

He held the rudder hard to port. His body felt drained, exhausted. Behind him, one of the seamen muttered, “Come on, we’ll make it… we’ll make it.”

Uma stared out the windows. The Bridge came at them like a giant pillar. Momentum would carry the Zoroaster through, and all he could do was sit and watch.

The Zoroaster almost missed her doom.

But with a 200,000 ton ship as big as the Empire State Building, “almost” is not good enough. The tanker struck the concrete fender surrounding the south tower and crushed it.

Slowed, but not stopped by the impact, the Zoroaster scraped her starboard side against the jagged concrete and steel. The double hulls offered protection against minor grounding and maritime accidents, but not a monstrous impact such as this. The inertia ripped open both hulls like so much paper. The Zoroaster hung up on the wreckage of the concrete fender, settling downward to the deep shelf of rock.

Five of the supertanker’s twelve holds immediately split; within minutes, metal fatigue breached three additional holds.

The Zoroaster held more than a million barrels of oil—42 million gallons. Most of which began to pour into the San Francisco Bay.

Crude oil gushed like black blood.

Chapter 2

The phone rang again.

Alone in his stables, Alex Kramer tended the two horses. He insisted on ignoring the ache, no matter how much the leukemia tortured him. He had plenty of experience with pain.

The telephone extension he had wired out to the barn sounded tinny, invasive. He hated it.

Alex looked up, but didn’t move. The ringing phone seemed to cut through him. He didn’t want to talk to anybody. In happier days, Jay or Erin would have rushed to grab the call—Jay expecting his college buddies, Erin a high-school boyfriend. If his wife Maureen didn’t get the phone first. Alex never had to worry about answering it before.

But in one disastrous year, he had lost his entire family—Maureen and Erin killed when a gasoline truck slammed into them on a winding road, Jay a casualty of the latest Middle East conflict. Cocking his head to look behind him at the large, empty ranch house, Alex wondered why he bothered to stay behind in such a hollow place.

Because I don’t ever want to leave those ghosts behind.

The phone kept ringing. Let the answering machine in the house get it.

Finally, after four rings, the phone fell silent. The only noises were the restless stirring of the horses, the morning breeze rustling through the live oaks and pines, and the birds in the wooded hills of Marin County, California. Alex turned back to the horses, feeling numb relief. Dealing with people, even trivial matters, was too much effort. Too much effort.

He gathered the tack for his ritual ride. Moving cautiously from the pain in his body, and reverently with his memories, he saddled his daughter’s mare, Stimpy, a chocolate quarter-horse with a blond mane. Tomorrow he would take Ren, his own horse, for a ride. The two horses loved their exercise, and Alex needed the excuse to get out.

Holding the bridle, Alex hooked an arm between the horse’s ears, then slid the bit into Stimpy’s mouth. After settling the headstall, he buckled it. Lifting the bulky western saddle required most of his remaining strength, but the horse waited graciously. Alex rested a moment, holding himself up by the saddle horn; it even hurt to breathe. He reached under Stimpy’s belly to tighten the cinch strap. Finally, brushing himself off, he levered himself up into the saddle.

Without prodding, Stimpy walked out of the stables into the sunshine. In the fresh air, Alex’s lethargy cleared. For longer than he could remember, he had used the unpaved fire roads in the wooded hills north of San Francisco for morning rides; he and Erin had explored them years before, racing, picnicking, eating the sloppy “secret recipe” peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches she always made before a ride.

Under the stands of oaks, surrounded by an ocean of rustling grass, Alex found it quiet, peaceful… a far cry from the nightmarish hell of the Oilstar refinery where he worked. He drove to his office three days a week—management’s concession “until you recover from your grief,” as if that were possible.

Oilstar had forced him to go for five sessions with their “psychological fitness and health” counselor, a flinty-eyed young woman with short blonde hair that seemed a mass of cowlicks. She had tapped a red-enameled fingernail as she explained the stages of severe grief to him: shock, then disbelief, anger, and finally resignation. Alex had listened to her politely, contributing as little as possible. Each time he left a session, he felt no different, understood no more about why his family had been taken from him, and felt no more fit for work. At least it proved that Oilstar considered his bioremediation research valuable.

As Alex rode out, the morning was so bright and fresh, it mocked him.

At noon, Alex returned to his echoing house, drawing the curtains to shield him from the cheery sunlight. He noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine, but decided he didn’t want to deal with it at the moment. He went past the living room and wet bar, down the hall where the kids’ rooms stood empty and silent, to the master bedroom. He showered, turning the water hot enough to scald away his body aches for a while, then dressed slowly as if his clothes were made out of glass. He thought about eating lunch, but his stomach wasn’t ready for it. He finally played the telephone message.

Resting one elbow on the tile countertop, he listened to the voice of Mitchell Stone, his deputy project manager in the microbiology lab. “Alex, where are you? Don’t you watch the news, for God’s sake! With the Zoroaster thing, the execs are scrambling for any way to save their butts. Maybe we can pull Prometheus out of the closet. Give me a call and get in here as soon as you can, okay?”

As the message ended, Alex frowned at the machine, upset at the intrusion. No, he did not watch the news, and it surprised him that Mitch assumed he did. He hadn’t even turned on the TV in a month. Prometheus? That work was over a year old, merely a precursor to the bacterial strains they were developing now.

Oilstar had funded Alex’s work as a showpiece, their nod to the popular “green” movements. Bioremediation was the catchword, cultivating natural microbes that had an appetite for the swill man wanted to destroy. Already, many companies were developing microbes that would digest toxic wastes, PCBs and PCPs, even break down garbage.

When his daughter Erin turned seventeen and suddenly awakened to political causes, she had first railed at Alex about working for a big oil company, spouting phrases she had memorized from leaflets; but then Erin had beamed with pride and relief when she learned he was attempting to get rid of the tons of styrofoam and non-biodegradable plastics clogging the nation’s landfills.

“Prometheus” had been just a step along the way, a strain that could metabolize certain components of crude oil, primarily octane and a few aromatic ring molecules. Not terribly useful, according to Oilstar.

What could Mitch have in mind now? And what on Earth was a Zoroaster? He clicked on the dusty television, but saw without surprise that his cable service had been cut off. The only stations he could get through the surrounding hills showed a soap opera and a grainy image of talking heads.

Resigned, Alex tried calling in, but the lines were busy. He listened to the buzzing signal, then returned the phone to its cradle. He felt like telling Mitch to solve his own damned problems and then hang up on him. By the time he finished the long drive to the refinery, maybe his thoughts would have cleared.

He slowly tugged on an old jacket against the spring chill and started for his four-wheel drive Ford pickup. Out in the corral, the horses nickered at him, and several crows rattled at him from up in the pine trees. He paused for a second, just breathing the air and thinking nothing, before getting into his truck. He drove along the winding road toward the freeway and the Richmond bridge.

He rode in silence, but then he switched on the radio to see if he could find out what Mitch had been talking about. Zoroaster. Thumbing the dial, he found only stations that had music or advertisements, but National Public Radio had a long discussion about the aftereffects of the Exxon Valdez spill, the Torreycanyon, the Shetland Islands spill, and other tanker accidents. Alex wondered why that had become so topical after all this time. Must be an anniversary of one of the disasters or something. He moved along at exactly the speed limit, other cars passing him regularly.

Alex was primarily an idea man at the bioremediation lab, leaving Mitch and the others to take care of bothersome details with management and record-keeping. Mitch panicked about deadlines at least once a month.

Half an hour after leaving home, Alex exited the freeway and turned toward the sprawling Oilstar refinery. As he approached the chain-link fence, he saw a crowd of protesters in front of the guard gate. TV camera crews stood on the sidelines. The demonstration seemed orderly; Oilstar had brought in extra rent-a-cops, along with a handful of California Highway Patrol officers.

Alex raised his eyebrows. One group or another found reason to rail at Oilstar several times a year, but whenever somebody planned a protest, they usually informed Oilstar in advance, along with the local media. He was so tired of all this, angry at the demonstrators for tossing more unpleasantness in his lap. He just wanted to sit at home and rest.

As his pickup crawled past the protesters, he saw the usual signs depicting oil-covered sea birds and otters, the skull-and-crossbones; the word Zoroaster was repeated over and over. Well, he thought, maybe it was something important after all. Maybe there had been another spill somewhere. He had worked for Oilstar long enough to know there would always be oil spills…and the oil companies would always swear that it would never happen again.

At another time, his daughter Erin might have been among the protesters. Erin had become outspoken whenever she found a cause, “Save the Whales” or “Don’t Use Colored Toilet Paper.” Though he had not always understood Erin’s drive, he had never been scornful or disdainful. She was a smart girl and full of questions, many of which Alex had not been able to answer. He was just glad she felt such a passion for things.

But Erin would never grow up to join these demonstrators at the Oilstar gate, and he felt unexplainably annoyed at the protesters for that.

He drove past the crowd without incident, then worked his way across the refinery grounds, driving past a wasteland of pipes and tanks, fractionating towers and steam, with huge oil-storage tanks riding the surrounding hills. The place looked like an Escher industrial nightmare, amplified by hissing noises and foul smells.

Eventually, he found himself by his office on the second floor of Oilstar’s research annex. Fumbling with his keys, he opened the door and went inside, ignoring the yellow telephone messages taped to his door. His office looked too clean, too neat. He had never taken the time to be tidy when he was swallowed up in work; now he did little else but rearrange his papers into neat piles.

A picture of Alex’s family sat on the desk, all four of them smiling, a frozen moment from the past. His own image faced him, wire-rimmed glasses and graying hair above a neat peppery beard; beside him sat Marcia, strong and slender. Jay, 21 years old, reddish hair cropped short since entering the Army, his sparse mustache all but invisible against his skin; petite Erin with strawberry-blond hair, striking dark eyebrows and flawless skin, a beauty that was lost on the high-school boys. Erin would have shattered hearts had she lived to enter college.

“About time, Alex!” Mitch Stone leaned on the door frame. “I’ve already set up a meeting for us tomorrow morning with Emma Branson and the other mucky mucks. We’ve got to move on this right away.”

At 28 and rising fast, Mitch concerned himself with dressing impeccably. He got his hair razor cut every other week, wore stylish clothes, even sported a tie in the lab. In public, Mitch toed the Oilstar party line and talked fast. He didn’t try to annoy Alex, but his skewed priorities, office bullpen politics, and his constant “emergencies” had drained away all of Alex’s respect for him. Alex remembered when he had been filled with so much ambition.

Mitch ticked off points on his fingers. “The engineering folks are getting lightering operations underway to pump the rest of the oil out of the cargo holds. The tides are playing hell with the wreck. Boat teams are rigging booms around the spill, but there are pleasure boats and protesters up the wazoo, maritime rubber-neckers in everyone’s way. Best estimates are that a quarter of a million barrels have already dumped into the Bay and it’s still gushing out. Zoroaster—”

Alex held up a hand to stop the other man. He noticed his fingers trembling. “Mitch, I don’t know what on Earth you’re talking about. Tell me what a Zoroaster is before you go on.”

Mitch goggled at him. “You mean you don’t know? Oh, come on!” Tugging on Alex’s sleeve, Mitch marched him down the carpeted halls into the lunchroom.

A sour, burnt smell drifted up from a puddle of coffee in the bottom of the pot. Washed coffee cups—no two alike—sat upended in wet spots on brown paper towels between the sink and microwave oven. The television was turned on and loud. Four people straddled uncomfortable plastic chairs at the wood-grain tables, watching CNN. Alex had not seen such rapt expressions on viewers’ faces since the coverage of the first Gulf War.

“Could be the biggest spill ever,” Mitch said. “Far bigger than the Exxon Valdez. Only this time it’s not up in Alaska, it’s right here in San Francisco Bay!”

From a helicopter, the TV camera looked down at the wreck of the Oilstar Zoroaster, its side ripped open by the southern tower of the Golden Gate Bridge. A montage of shots, beginning with pictures at dawn, traced the growth of the spill during the day. Boats hovered on the edges of the slick.

Alex’s knees went weak, appalled at himself for belittling Mitch’s reaction, the protesters’ outrage. The sharp thorns of pain in his bones felt suddenly overwhelming.

The broadcast showed seagulls blanketed with tarry residue, floating corpses of sea otters. Crowds stood anxiously on Fisherman’s Wharf, staring out at the approaching oil. Alex’s breath quickened; his head ached, starting with a pressure in his temples that wouldn’t go away. The program played a long sequence of archival footage from the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.

Mitch clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “The bozos over at Admin Gardens are in a state of panic. They’re willing to try anything for some positive publicity. We can cash in on it if we get approval to release Prometheus to help the cleanup efforts!”

Mitch didn’t seem affected by the images on the television. He lowered his voice. “We’ll be heroes even if it doesn’t work!”

Alex shook off Mitch’s hand and stared at the oil spilling across the water, the thick liquid lapping against the shore. He remembered the times he and his son Jay had spent days hiking on the rocky headlands. Especially the time when Jay had told him he wanted to drop out of college and join the army….

“What’s the matter, Alex?” Mitch frowned. “Don’t you see what an opportunity this is?” He pressed closer.

“An opportunity?” Alex said in a voice that came out as a low growl. Time and again, since the death of his family, he had shielded his emotions behind a wall of weariness and apathy; at rare times, though, the wall cracked to expose a furnace blazing inside. He had never been a violent man, but he had been walking on the thin ice of intensely charged emotions for months.

Alex flexed his right hand; the pain inside made his breath like ice knives, and Mitch stood just too damned close. Suddenly lashing out, he shoved Mitch backwards—not hard, but enough to knock the other man over a chair, sprawling to the floor.

“You’re right, Mitch,” Alex said, “but you don’t have to be such an asshole about it.”

Chapter 3

Spencer Lockwood shielded his eyes from the glaring sun. The wasteland around White Sands, New Mexico, looked more like the surface of the Moon than a restricted national preserve. Bleak gypsum sand stretched to the horizon, broken only by scrub brush, yucca plants, and lava rock. The rugged peaks of the Organ Mountains shimmered like a mirage. The heat made the dusty air smell like gunpowder.

Numerous rocket and guided-missile systems had been tested at the White Sands missile range in its half century of existence. Mountains in the east stood over Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb had been detonated in 1945. To the north, the five-mile-long ramp of a prototype railgun launcher ran up Oscura Peak, where a month earlier it had accelerated its first test satellite to low Earth orbit. History, plenty of history.

Spencer was determined to add not just a footnote to the story of White Sands; he was after an entire chapter.

For now he devoted his attention to the small metal antennas that dotted the compound. Thousands of whiplike microwave receivers blanketed a circular patch of desert two kilometers in diameter, making it look like a huge pincushion. A barbed-wire fence surrounded the “antenna farm.”

Spencer knelt by one of the frail-looking antennas and fingered the flexible wire. Work for me today, baby! He had cobbled the whole project together on a shoestring budget, and he dreaded that his experiment might fail because of a stupid glitch. A preventable glitch. Then the bureaucrats would shut down the whole circus.

“Hey, Spence!”

He jerked his head up. Surrounded by the small wire constructions, he seemed to be standing in the center of a field of metallic cornstalks. Shading his eyes, he saw a gangly woman wearing an Australian hat walk toward him. Rita Fellenstein was a technical whiz herself, but she had taken it upon herself to be a combination den mother and butt-kicker for the solar satellite group—including Spencer himself.

“It’s gonna work,” Rita said. “Stop hovering over it.”

“Just checking the connections one last time.” Spencer wiped his hands against his pants.

Rita stepped around the wires. “Well, don’t get all anal retentive about it. You’re starting to act like Nedermyer.”

“He could get you fired for a remark like that,” Spencer said.

“Fire a national lab employee? Get real. Come on, let’s get back to the command trailers. The reporters want to talk to you.”

Spencer felt a tug at his gut. “Uh, I’ve got to check this stuff.” It seemed that every time they got the array hooked up they lost contact with one of the antennas, usually due to a kangaroo rat gnawing through the cables.

“No you don’t need to check it. You’ve already done it. I’ve already done it. And the technicians have already done it. Now go talk to the newsies before first light comes down.”

“I just hate it when they ask stupid questions.” He realized he was not much sounding like a history-making visionary.

Rita put her hands on her narrow hips. “Well, Nedermyer doesn’t mind talking to the press. He’ll come across as an important Department of Energy watchdog over us brash young scientists. And if you don’t get back there, they’ll be quoting him instead of you. Do you want them to get a Washington beancounter’s view of the project?”

Spencer detected a smile beneath the shadow of her hat. “Okay, okay. I give up. He always tries to rain on my parade.”

Of all the bureaucrats who had visited the solar antenna farm, Lance Nedermyer was the most difficult for Spencer to understand. Nedermyer had built a fast-burning reputation during his younger days, with a promising future ahead of him in research. But a White House Fellowship lured him to the Washington political scene, and the spark of his scientific curiosity had fizzled. “Potomac fever” they called it. Nedermyer had thrown away his chance at doing real research in favor of gaining political influence.

Spencer started toward the battered U.S. Government truck at the periphery of the antenna farm. He stepped over the spaghetti web of wires on the ground, connecting hundreds of whiplike antennas. The setup didn’t have to look pretty to work—nor did it have to cost an arm and a leg. That was the beauty of it.

Spencer had to trot to keep up with Rita’s long-legged pace. “I lost track of time,” he said. “When’s the next flyover?”

Rita answered without checking her watch, still striding along. “Alpha One is due in forty minutes. It’s got a dwell time of five minutes, with Alpha Two and the rest of them right on its heels. It’ll be another twenty-four hours before the Seven Dwarfs are in place again.”

The “Seven Dwarfs,” a cluster of small solar-collection satellites, circled Earth more than 300 miles up, equally spaced over a segment of orbit like cars on a freight train. Spencer marveled at the simple concept. He couldn’t claim total credit for coming up with the idea, but he had been instrumental in getting the project off the ground.

The satellites converted raw solar energy into microwaves. Once the first satellite popped over the horizon, it would beam focused energy down onto the field of antennas, not unlike the millions of telephone conversations comsats already beamed to Earth. The key was to use a lot of little, low-orbiting satellites instead of a single big one.

Spencer had spent years fighting for his project, trying to convince uninterested politicians or military types the best way to tap the power of the sun. Low-efficiency passive solar arrays on Earth could generate only minimal power, enough to run a few local farms. Only by deploying enormous solar panels in space, then beaming the power through the atmosphere, would solar energy pay off in a way big enough to make a difference.

But other technical experts hawked their own ideas to the same committees; since the decision makers knew little or nothing about the subject, they were swayed by razzle-dazzle presentations and good public speakers rather than solid technical content.

Spencer’s test had finally come down to the wire, and today was the day he would blow the other guys out of the water. He hoped his smallsat program would be as simple in practice as he made it sound in his sales pitches.

Rita slammed the door of the old gray pickup, then roared across the rutted temporary roads. The infrequent New Mexican rain fell two inches at a time, then dried the ground hard as cement. Spencer tried to keep his head from hitting the roof of the truck as they bounced toward the cluster of buildings. He tried to talk, but his teeth clicked together as the truck jounced. He kept quiet until they reached the command center.

He brushed aside his usual revulsion at the substandard quarters the government had allotted his project. Maybe the TV reporters wouldn’t shoot too much footage of the facility itself. The “blockhouse” was a bank of three revamped 1960s-vintage trailers that had been used for various experiments at White Sands. A mesh of chickenwire completely surrounded the trailers, making the blockhouse into a giant Faraday cage, safe from stray microwave beams if the satellites missed their mark.

The rattling hum of portable air conditioners buzzed outside the white aluminum-siding walls. A fist of twisted fiber-optic wires ran from the distant microwave farm to a switchboard inside.

“Get your badge on, Spence,” Rita said. “Look nice for the newsies.”

He pulled his laminated badge out of his pocket and clipped it to his collar. Awful I.D. photograph, on par with his driver’s license. Brown hair that wouldn’t stay combed, blue eyes open a little too wide, prominent sunburn, and a thin face wearing an expression like he had just swallowed a grape whole. Spencer wondered if it was a requirement that photo identification had to be embarrassing.

The cool, musty-smelling blockhouse felt good after baking out on the desert. The only light inside the trailer seeped through closed miniblinds or shone from computer screens. The overhead flourescents had been switched off. A jukebox purchased from an old cafe in nearby Alamogordo sat dormant in the corner.

The news crew from Albuquerque had their equipment set up in a small alcove walled off by portable room dividers. Spencer had hoped for a bit more media, but the big San Francisco oil spill monopolized most of the prime-time broadcasts.

Spencer’s people chattered in a staccato but precise drone, verifying readings from the antenna farm, calibrating the solar smallsat. “DOE’s on the line, Spence. They told us to call them when you got here.”

Spencer dismissed it with a wave. He had more important things to do than to chat with Department of Energy paper-pushers. “Tell them I’m tied up. What’s our time?”

Rita Fellenstein glanced up from a computer monitor. Colors from the CRT display reflected off the sheen on her thin face. “Twenty-three minutes until Alpha One comes into range. Go ahead and kiss up to DOE—they have a psychological need to give you a pep talk. That way they can take credit for our success.”

Spencer ignored the suggestion. “Any air traffic?”

“Sky’s clear, verified by El Paso control.”

“Data link?”

“Echo checks are error free.”

A decade ago the operation would have taken ten times the people and a thousand times the budget. Spencer looked around in quiet satisfaction, content that his project had succeeded against “conventional” DOE wisdom. The bureaucracy of Big Science added thousands of unnecessary corners that could be cut if you weren’t brainwashed into believing they were necessary.

He raised his voice over the murmur in the blockhouse. “Okay, you guys, all green on the diagnostics. Everyone knows the drill—any reason to call for a hold takes precedence. Problems?”

The trailer remained silent except for the background hum of equipment and air conditioners. The reporters stood around, shuffling their feet, adjusting their pin-mikes, not understanding the details but sensing something important about to happen.

“All right, signal DOE we’re going hot,” Spencer said.

Activity filled the dim trailer. Excitement raced through Spencer’s veins, anticipation to see his project come on-line at last. A voice interrupted him, sounding as if it had taken years to perfect its nasal resonance. Spencer’s stomach dropped.

“I don’t like your ‘negative response only’ policy, Dr. Lockwood. Statistics prove that a checklist methodology eliciting positive acknowledgments has an appreciably higher percentage of success. DOE would feel more comfortable if you adopted this procedure, as the rest of the civilized world does.”

Lance Nedermyer’s fleshy torso filled most of the walking space in the crowded trailer. Though the blockhouse was cool, beads of perspiration dotted Nedermyer’s flushed forehead. At the moment, he was probably the only man on the entire White Sands installation wearing a suit and a tie. Spencer wanted to say: My people know their jobs, Lance! Teamwork sometimes proves more effective than checklists. But, much as he wanted to, Spencer could not afford to embarrass or ignore the man. “Thanks for your input, Lance. I’ll be sure to include your suggestion in our post-test assessment comments.”

“I’d be more pleased if you’d make them part of your operating procedures, post-haste.”

“Thanks, Lance.” But Spencer had already hunched down in front of a communications workstation operated by Juan Romero. Romero, with his long black hair and drooping mustache, looked like a bandit from a cheap Western—and Romero intentionally played the part to the hilt.

Romero expanded a portion of his screen to show a televised view of the antenna farm, taken from the top of a hundred-foot tower outside the blockhouse. The image of the metallic receivers wavered in the heat, making them look like thousands of fingers reaching up to grasp the invisible radiation.

“Sixty seconds,” said Rita Fellenstein.

Spencer wet his lips; the desert dryness seemed particularly piercing now. “Jukebox plugged in?” he whispered.

“That was the first thing on the checklist,” Romero raised his voice loud enough for Nedermyer to hear, then he grinned broadly out of sight.

Spencer felt Nedermyer’s eyes on him. The news crew hushed. TV cameras pointed at the techs constantly updating the system status.

“Folks,” Spencer said, raising his voice, “we’re about to catch the first solar energy ever beamed directly from space. Keep your fingers crossed.”

At the top left corner of the workstation in front of him, numerals flashed the countdown. Spencer wondered if he should voice the numbers out loud for the benefit of the DOE bureaucrats in D.C. He joined the faint whispering as everyone counted down to first light. “Three… two… one… bingo!”

The televised view from the desert didn’t change. Romero and Spencer stared at the screen. They saw no indication that millions of joules of energy rained down from space into the waiting arms of a thousand microwave antennas.

The news crews probably wanted to see a dazzling green death beam streak down from orbit. The trailer fell silent as everyone held their breath. Nothing.

Click!

Bright light filled the trailer, then a whirring hum. The sound of the Beach Boys singing in harmony swept through the air. Spencer smiled as the strains of “The Warmth of the Sun” drifted from the jukebox. Everyone laughed and started clapping. Spencer broke into a wider grin; Romero slapped him on the back.

Nedermyer scowled at the jukebox. The music grew louder until it blared out of the speakers.

Spencer reached left and right to shake hands. His crew congratulated him, pounding him on the back. “Hey, somebody notify DOE!”

Rita waved an arm and held up a portable telephone. “Spence, the Assistant Secretary wants to talk with you.”

“Tell her I’m monitoring the test.” A champagne cork popped, and Spencer was doused. Breaking free of the revelry, he made his way toward the reporters. Now he didn’t mind talking to them. Over the din, he could hear voices shouting performance figures.

“We’re showing a thirty-five percent conversion efficiency! With this baseline, we’ve already exceeded the design specs!”

Nedermyer stood with his arms crossed, lips drawn into a tight line. Nedermyer’s foot tapped, but it didn’t seem to be moving to the beat of the song. The ruddy color that crept into the bureaucrat’s cheeks was far darker than a sunburn.

Spencer motioned with his head to the jukebox. “Well? Are you satisfied, Lance?”

“At what? This… stunt?”

“We could have used anything for a load. We thought this would be a bit more… memorable than an oscilloscope.”

“There’s a purpose for all the diagnostics equipment your group has purchased, Dr. Lockwood. They convey much more information for competent analysis than this boombox of yours.”

Spencer lowered his voice. “What is your problem, Lance? Can’t you see it worked? Give us a little credit.”

Nedermyer’s whisper had the edge of a bayonet. “I spend all year long trying to crowbar money out of the trenches for your pet projects, and you screwballs turn it into a comedy routine! We had to can a dozen other equally worthy proposals to get your funding, Dr. Lockwood, and look what kind of impression you’ve just made. Imagine the headlines: Government Wastes Millions of Dollars to Turn on Jukebox from Space! Are you too young to remember how the public howled when the Apollo astronauts were having too much fun on the Moon? You’re supposed to act respectable in situations like this. Can’t you grow up for a few minutes, golden boy?”

The jukebox song changed to “I Get Around.” Chuckles rippled through the trailer. Rita’s voice boomed over the background noise. “Quiet! Switchover in one minute. Alpha Two coming up.”

Spencer turned to Nedermyer, trying to back to neutral ground. “Ready for the next satellite. Care for a closer look?”

Nedermyer kept his arms folded. “I can see—and hear—from where I’m standing.”

Spencer kept a straight face as he went over to Rita’s area. Three telephones and two laptop computers lay jumbled next to her workstation. Even sitting, the gangly scientist was nearly as tall as the reporter hovering over her shoulder. Rita pointed to a graphic on the screen for the reporter’s benefit. “Alpha One is about to go over the horizon. We’ll lose contact soon.”

The reporter pulled his microphone back and spoke into it. “I thought these satellites stayed overhead the whole time.”

“To do that, we’d have to put the satellites up so high that their beam would spread out too much by the time it got down to Earth. Our beam from low-orbiting satellites stays tight enough for us to milk it. But the downside is that each satellite is overhead for only five minutes.”

“Does that mean your antenna farm will only generate electricity for a few minutes a day?”

Spencer rolled his eyes and wondered if the reporter hadn’t done his homework, or if he was just playing dumb to clarify things for his viewers.

“No, we’ve got seven satellites in four different planar orbits for broader coverage,” said Rita.

“The Seven Dwarfs,” the reporter said, grinning.

“Right. We were fairly certain we could lock the microwave beam from the first satellite. The real trick is to see if we can turn on the next satellite when it comes into view without interrupting the power. If there’s enough overlap between the beams, the electrical network won’t even notice the difference.”

A shout erupted from the front. “Two, one… transition! Alpha Two is locked on!”

Spencer noticed no dimming of the lights, no jitter in the jukebox. The party started all over again.

Rita kept talking, giving the canned speech every member of the project knew by heart. “At least one of the Seven Dwarfs is within view of White Sands 46 percent of the time. But they may be at too low an angle to do any good. Eventually we hope to get a continuous ring of satellites over the Earth so we never lose touch—at least in daylight. We also need to build more antenna farms along the path so that as soon as a satellite loses sight of one farm it can switch to another.”

The reporter recorded all the information, but Rita didn’t slow down. “Once we get them up there, all that energy is free. Since the cost of sending up smallsats is decreasing, it’ll become economical and a lot less polluting than any form of Earth-based power system. Twenty more satellites are sitting in sealed storage at the Jet Propulsion Lab right now. We’ll eventually need about 70 for a complete system, but the strategy is to first show they work. Solar satellites don’t wear out, you know, they just keep going and going and going—like that pink bunny.”

Another cheer went through the trailer a few moments later. “Alpha Three overlap and switch-on is successful. Three down and four to go.” The celebration was more subdued this time. After the first milestone, every other event seemed less significant.

“What about the Zoroaster spill?” the reporter asked.

Spencer interrupted the interview; he had hoped for a question like that. Rita looked relieved. Spencer stepped too close to the microphone, then awkwardly backed away as he talked. “The pictures speak for themselves. Until we develop alternative energy sources like this one, we’re going to keep having accidents like that one.” He felt warm inside as he said it. The words came out like a perfect sound bite, and he had no doubt the broadcast would use it.

Before long, the seventh satellite passed over the horizon. The lights dimmed and the jukebox stopped. Spencer was suddenly exhausted.

Like an addict craving another hit, he looked around to keep the thrill going just a little longer. He spotted Lance Nedermyer standing in the corner, alone, talking into a telephone. Nedermyer loosened his tie, then turned his back on the party.

Spencer set his mouth as he realized he had to do some damage control; he reached Nedermyer as the bureaucrat hung up the phone. “Looks like a total success, Lance,” he said. “We’re having a quick-look briefing in ten minutes to go over preliminary data.”

Nedermyer smiled tightly. “I’ve seen all I need to for now.”

“Too bad the Secretary couldn’t make it out.”

“No need to, that’s why I’m here.” He turned for the exit. “If your test is over, I’ll be heading back to Albuquerque. It’s a three-hour drive.”

Spencer followed the man out the door, growing angry as Nedermyer brushed off his accomplishment. Outside, the sunlight seemed to explode with brightness. With an effort, Spencer kept his voice friendly. “Albuquerque, already?”

Nedermyer pulled off his tie and strode toward his rental car. The ground crunched beneath his feet. “That’s what I said.”

“Well, is there anything else I can show you?”

“I said I’ve seen all I need to see—”

Spencer’s patience snapped and he reached out to grab Nedermyer by the elbow. The man’s arm felt as fleshy as it looked. “Lance, you can’t deny that what happened here today marks a new era. When all the satellites are up—”

Nedermyer shook off Spencer’s hand. Squinting in the harsh sunlight, he fumbled in his pocket for a pair of sunshades to clip onto his eyeglasses. Spencer saw himself reflected in the lenses. Nedermyer said, “You just don’t get it, do you, Lockwood?”

Spencer stopped. “Get what?”

Nedermyer waved a hand at the trailer, then toward the antenna farm. “All this is just a game to you. A stunt. You might have captured the public eye this afternoon, but I have to deal with the flack back inside the Beltway. What am I going to tell Congress when they ask why DOE is spending money playing surfin’ music?”

Spencer narrowed his eyes. “Why are you doing this, Lance? You can’t be that dense.”

“I was just on the phone to headquarters, Dr. Lockwood.” He started to walk toward his car, but he took off his sunglasses and pointed them at Spencer. “I’ve recommended that the National Academy of Sciences review your program before we spend any more money on your operation.”

“That will take half a year! We’ve got smallsats waiting at JPL. They’re already built—”

“I’ll be back in a month with the panel to see your full-scale test results. And there’d better be some good science out of it. Play by the rules, Spencer. Everybody else does.” He jammed his sunglasses back on his face and strode to the car.

Spencer watched the cloud of dust dissipate as Nedermyer drove away. He didn’t know how long he stood there before the door to the trailer opened and Rita Fellenstein called. “Hey, Spence! The reporters want to talk to you again.”

Still in shock, Spencer kept watching the road where Nedermyer’s car vanished into an unpleasant mirage.

Someone had plugged the jukebox into the main power. The strains of “Don’t Worry Baby” drifted out the door.

Chapter 4

Alex Kramer drove toward the ocean, following memories more detailed than any map. In the morning fog, he passed down narrow roads in the Marin headlands, where craggy rocks met the sea near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. At “vista point” turnouts showing postcard views of the bridge and the San Francisco skyline, rubberneckers stretched for a glimpse of the spreading blackness below. It made him sick.

All night long, Alex had been transfixed by news of the spill, sitting with one light on in the empty ranch house and watching the same footage over and over again. It seemed like a parallel to the disaster that had smothered his own life.

Out on the Bay, smaller tankers pulled beside the Zoroaster and tried to offload oil in desperate lightering operations; boats wrestled to deploy booms around the slick as it spread. Hundreds of people scurried about with equipment, but it seemed futile. Most of Oilstar’s effort seemed to be directed at telling people the spill wasn’t as bad as it looked, that they had everything under control.

Alex passed old Fort Baker and Fort Cronkhite with their crumbling batteries and gun emplacements high on the bluffs. The landscape was a drab but striking range of deep green from the stands of flattened cypress, dry yellow-brown of gasping grass, and brilliant orange of wild California poppies.

He and his son Jay had spent some of their best times hiking out in the headlands. He had thought never to come here again because of the ghosts he might find along the trails; even the water reminded him of the time he and Jay had sipped from the same canteen and splashed barefoot in the rocky surf. The Coast Trail had been their last decent outing together before Jay followed his unit to Saudi Arabia.

Now Alex drove downslope to the end of the road in Rodeo Cove, an isolated section of coastline just north of the Golden Gate, with rough surf suitable only for wet-suited divers and daredevils. He parked on the cracked asphalt and got out of his pickup, unable to tear his gaze from the shore. He held the truck’s open door for support. Foul hydrocarbons permeated the air, masking the salt and iodine smell of the ocean. His eyes and nose burned.

The current of the outgoing tide had sucked the Zoroaster’s crude oil back out to sea, where it had spread farther. Then, with the tide’s returning flow, the waves had splattered the dark stain against the coastline in an ever-widening bruise.

Alex wanted to turn from the horror. His stomach rippled with the leaden weight of brewing nausea. But his feet moved of their own accord, stumbling toward the beach. Five people, dressed warmly in jeans and flannel shirts, stared and said nothing to each other.

Hastily erected “Danger No Swimming” and “Contaminated Water” signs dotted the beach. Normally rich brown, pebbled with black and tan rocks, the sand was slathered with an opaque slime of crude. Viscous waves licked the shore.

Seagulls, smeared with oil, chased the waves, looking for something to eat; they circled in confusion at the strange new consistency of the ocean. Farther out to sea, buoys clanged. Normally, fishing boats would have bobbed with the swells—but not today, and not for a long time. At the tide line, algae clustered against the rocks among other shellfish, already dying.

A few years before, Alex and Jay had started a long backpacking trip here. The Coast Trail wound along the headlands for miles, and the two of them walked in the cool air all day, looking down at the crashing surf from the crumbling edges of horrendous cliffs.

Jay had labored for a year at the University of California, San Francisco, though he had little interest in school. During their three-day hike, Jay finally broke the news to Alex of his decision to join the Army. Jay had rubbed his short red hair, looked at Alex, then away, then back at him again. His pale skin had flushed a deeper red as if embarrassed to be changing his mind about what he wanted to do with his life.

“I know it’s not what you wanted me to do,” Jay had said. He took a nervous sip from the open canteen, offering it to Alex, who shook his head. Jay looked away again as he screwed the metal cap back on. “But college just isn’t what I want to do, at least not right now. I want to challenge myself in a different way, and I think the Army can do that for me.”

Alex had been surprised, but not unduly upset. He and Marcia tried to keep a light hand on the children. Both Erin and Jay were intelligent and sensible; they made their own decisions. “If that’s what you think will work best for you, Jay. It’s better to change your mind than to keep going along with what you know is a bad decision.”

Jay, who had not hugged his father since eighth grade, clapped an arm around Alex’s shoulder, gave a brief squeeze, then struck off down the trail at a greater speed, embarrassed….

Alex still remembered the visit from the two Army officers, informing him that Jay had been killed in a nighttime skirmish on the Saudi border in one of their oil wars.

Now, the roar of the surf sounded like distant, booming gunfire in his ears.

Alex stood unmoving at the tide line. Dark blobs clumped on the beach. The waves had churned the crude and water into a frothy, gummy substance, “mousse,” that stuck to everything.

A seagull flew overhead with mouth wide open. The waves crashed in, bringing the oil closer, and Alex skittishly stepped back.

Cold wind blew in his eyes. The same oil slick would paint the Bay, wrap around Alcatraz Island, Angel Island, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Embarcadero. San Francisco had been called the most beautiful city in the world—and it had just been brutally raped by the Zoroaster. Seeing the effects up close, Alex felt the walls surrounding his anger and despair rattling, crumbling.

Right now, Oilstar officials were desperate for any public relations coup. They would leap at any hook Alex Kramer could offer, though the barbs were plainly visible. Panic removed all common sense.

Alex breathed deeply, trying to ignore the pain in his side. Mitch Stone was probably correct in thinking the Prometheus microbe could help clean up this spill. This was a scar that could not be ignored.

Trembling, Alex squatted and dipped his fingers in the blackish-brown ooze on the shoreline. His fingers came away soiled and greasy, covered with a stain that looked like blood.

Blood and oil. In his life, the two had so much in common.

Chapter 5

The wreck of the Oilstar Zoroaster lay like a corpse on the Golden Gate Bridge’s south tower, canting downward at a drunken angle. On the span above, cars crawled by as people craned their necks to gawk.

Coast Guard boats, Oilstar barges, and private fishing boats descended like vultures to begin massive lightering operations. Riding choppy waves beside the Zoroaster, a smaller tanker—the Tiberius—lashed up to the hulk. Straining pumps attempted to pull crude from Zoroaster faster than it could leak into the Bay.

As its cargo holds emptied, the wrecked supertanker rode higher in the water. Pumps replaced ballast with Bay water to keep the Zoroaster from floating up from its precarious balance.

Hung up on the Bridge’s south pier, the Zoroaster had been ripped by the same submerged ledge the steamer Rio de Janeiro had struck a century earlier; the Rio had dragged over half of its passengers and crew to the bottom, and now the Zoroaster rested against the same ledge, groaning against the six-knot ebb tide.

Standing on the deck of the Zoroaster, Todd Severyn jammed a broad, aching shoulder under one of the massive transfer hoses cast across from the smaller Tiberius. Other men from his lightering crew fought with the hoses, hoisting them over the deck rails and swinging the hose derrick to align them with cargo hatches. Todd tried to bellow orders, do at least as much work as his best man, and keep from puking all at the same time.

Todd planted his big feet on the slick deck, keeping a delicate balance with his heavy workboots. The stinging hydrocarbon fumes burned his eyes, his nose, as volatile petrochemicals roiled into the air. But the slant and rocking motion of the wreck in the choppy sea nauseated a Wyoming man like Todd more than the smell of crude.

He had worked oil for most of his life, getting his start in the oil-shale processing plants near Rock Springs, before Oilstar had sent him to Kuwait, Burma, Alaska, the North Sea. They had assigned him to an offshore rig off New Orleans for his first big job—but he had never before been in charge of a hellish job like offloading the Zoroaster.

“Come on, kids!” he shouted into the noise of the pumps, the wind, the gurgling oil far below. His throat was raw from yelling, and his crew staggered about in exhaustion mixed with panic. Overhead, helicopters bearing TV station logos circled to get dramatic footage. Spectators looked through the criss-crossed superstructure of the Golden Gate Bridge. It felt like a three-ring circus; Todd wished he was back in Wyoming. The last time he had taken off by himself with nothing more than a horse, mess kit, and bedroll on the plains seemed like a million years ago. Well, a few months at least. But it sure beat this crappy work.

Out on the water, absorbent booms along the greatest concentration of floating oil filled up and clogged. Skimmers tried to draw in the oil but lost ground quickly in the face of the gushing flow. Cleanup tugs struggled to deploy nylon containment booms, long draperies that hung under the water, lassoing the oil for pickup by recovery boats. A barge anchored near Alcatraz Island received the recovered oil from containment vessels. Privately owned fishing boats and small pleasure craft made an effort, scooping five-gallon buckets of foul-smelling crude directly from the surface.

At the stern of the Zoroaster, the wall of the four-story deckhouse admonished in large, mocking letters: NO SMOKING, PREVENT ACCIDENTS, and SAFETY FIRST.

Todd worked with three men to clamp the transfer hose into the hatch of cargo hold 7. He moved in a barely controlled frenzy, like the rest of his team, and they ended up getting in each other’s way. The clamorous racket, the foul fumes, and the treacherous deck made conditions worse.

Todd pulled a wrench from a deep pocket on his greasy slicker and tightened the seal. “Start the pumps!” he yelled, raising a gloved hand.

Farther up the deck, the Oilstar helicopter pilot waved an acknowledgement, then spoke into the chopper’s radio. A few moments later, the hose shuddered as Tiberius started another pump. More crude began to flow out of the Zoroaster’s hold.

Todd stumbled to the deck rail. The weather slicker hid much of his big-boned frame, but he had managed to smear oil over his craggy face and brown hair. He coughed and spat over the rail.

Below, brownish-black oil continued to bubble out of the torn hull like a vile potion in a cauldron. The oil lay two feet thick on top of the water. If it was up to him, he’d just as soon toss the tanker captain overboard into the mess; the idiot should have at least gone down with his ship, like a real captain, after causing a disaster like this.

With the outgoing tide and turbulent weather, there was a very good chance the Zoroaster would slip off and plunge into the deep channel. If that happened, the tanker would drag with it the 900,000 barrels of oil still on board. Its cargo holds would leak into the Bay for years.

But Todd had a job to do, and he would bust his back cheeks to accomplish it. He couldn’t turn back the clock and prevent the wreck from happening. He had to turn off his disgust at seeing the massive damage grow worse every second. The whole dang world was watching, but he had to focus on the job at hand. Keep cool. There would be time to get pissed later—get good and drunk, maybe even look up that captain and kick some butt. While other people spent all their time yakking and complaining, Todd Severyn waded in and started doing something about it.

He yanked off his thick gloves, stuffed them in his pocket, and reached inside his slicker. Hauling out his walkie talkie, he clicked the channel to his counterpart over on the Tiberius. “Glenn! Give me an update. How much have we offloaded so far?”

The radio crackled after only a moment’s pause. “Close to fifty thousand barrels. Pretty good for a day’s work—”

Todd scowled. “Darn it, that’s only a few percent of what’s still inside.”

He heard shouting in the background of the Tiberius. Glenn snapped back, “Then shut up and keep pumping! We’re doing everything we can.”

The transfer hoses had been pumping for less than fifteen minutes, throbbing as they sucked barrel after barrel out of the Zoroaster’s holds—when the wind picked up. Todd froze, wondering what else could go wrong. Lightering operations were tough under good conditions, but now the sea grew rougher. The fog had cleared, but the sky turned gray like a smoke pudding.

The deck began to creak, and the ship suddenly lurched to the side, increasing the slant.

Todd scrambled to grab the rail as panic welled up in him. He heard the other six men on the tanker shouting. He hated to leave a job unfinished, hated to run away when conditions got worse—but he wasn’t stupid. He knew when to make the call. He pressed the TALK button on his walkie talkie. “Getting unstable, Glenn. Start thinking about closing up shop.” He looked at his watch. It was getting close to high tide, the greatest danger, when the supertanker rode highest on its unsteady balance against the bridge pier.

The Tiberius responded. “They’re going to crucify us if we abandon this puppy, Severyn. She’s still gushing thousands of gallons a minute.”

Todd wanted to smash the walkie-talkie on the deck. “If the Zoroaster goes down, none of my people are gonna be on it. I’m ordering the chopper to start shuttling people back over to you.”

“We’d better check with Oilstar—”

“It’s my call, and I’m making it.” If Emma Branson didn’t like it, she could come out of her high-and-mighty Oilstar office and do the work herself.

He switched off the walkie talkie and raised a hand to get the attention of his crew. He pointed toward the helicopter, then held up four fingers. Seeing this, the first team of four broke away from their work and struggled up the sloping deck, slick toward the helicopter, which seemed about half a mile away. The pilot started the engine while waiting for them; two minutes later the blades began to rotate.

The walkie-talkie crackled . “Oilstar okays it, Severyn. But the minute the weather turns better, we come right back.”

Todd’s stomach twisted with the thought of how much oil still remained in the unbreached cargo holds. He shouted as the wind picked up again, “After the chopper takes the first load of my people over, we’ll unlash the two ships. Stop pumping from cargo hold 3. We’ll disconnect right now. Three of us will stay here to get the transfer hose ready when it’s time.”

He turned to see the four men clamber aboard the helicopter. The blades became a blur, and the craft lurched from the deck, heading toward the adjacent Tiberius.

As Todd watched the copter land on the other tanker, the Zoroaster groaned under his feet, listing and settling deeper. He fell back against a metal supply shack mounted to the deck. Keep cool, he reminded himself, but the thought of the tanker sliding off the submerged ledge and plunging to the bottom filled him with terror, which he attempted to smother in front of his men.

Jimmy Mack, a wide-eyed kid just days with the company, started yelling about stupid risks. Todd staggered over to help him disconnect the transfer hose from cargo hold 3. “I keep my word—no one’s going down with this ship!” He bent over and used his wrench on the transfer hose connection.

Two men detached the hose from the hold and hauled it toward the deck rail. Black oil gushed from the end, splattering the deck. Todd radioed for the Tiberius to shut off the pumps to cargo holds 7 and 8. “Start unlashing the ships,” he said. The words sounded like failure to him, and it made him angry. “Get ready to disengage these other hoses.”

On the deck of the smaller tanker, the helicopter lifted off and began its journey back. Working two men at a time, Todd and his companions threw off the heavy hooks securing the Zoroaster to the Tiberius. The thumping vibrations of the helicopter grew louder as it approached the supertanker’s landing pad.

“Disconnect those hoses,” Todd shouted. “Move it!”

With a large swell, the Zoroaster lurched, tumbling them backward into the water cannons. Todd smashed his elbow against a large red pipe, but managed to grab the rail of a foam-monitor station. Everything was going wrong. Todd felt as if he were standing in the path of an avalanche. One of the men smacked his helmet on a release valve, and water began to spray from a nozzle.

No longer lashed together, the two tankers drifted apart by a few more feet.

The transfer hose at cargo hold 7 sheared away, spraying oil in all directions. With a loud pop, the hose connected to cargo hold 8 tore off. The Zoroaster began to tilt sideways, away from Tiberius.

“She’s going down!” Todd shouted. For just a moment he wanted to run in blind panic to the empty chopper pad, but he had to get his crew off. He shoved Jimmy Mack toward the landing platform. “Go! Now!”

“Yes, sir!”

All three men began a scramble for the helicopter pad near the stern deck. They were covered with petroleum slime, the rough metal deck plates slick with crude. Jimmy Mack tumbled to his knees, disoriented with panic. Todd reached out a big hand and helped him up. “I told you I keep my word!”

The helicopter came in and tried to land, but the Zoroaster tilted fast. Todd grabbed a rail to keep his balance. Just as the second team of three made it to the landing circle, the copter rose up and circled back around, leaving Todd and the two others to scream for it to come back. The tanker lurched again.

Over the side of the ship, the black petroleum looked like a vile quagmire, bubbling like lava. Fumes burned Todd’s face and eyes like acid. He couldn’t imagine a death worse than drowning in several feet of crude oil.

The helicopter wheeled overhead and landed with a skid, bouncing across the deck. Without waiting for the rotors to slow, Todd and the others ducked their heads and scrambled to the open door. They tumbled into the back in an oil-stained pile of bodies. The last one on, Todd still hung halfway out of the hatch as the copter took off. “Yeeee-hah!”

The pilot flew without speaking, his jaw clenched, as they lifted up and away from the Zoroaster’s tilting superstructure. Todd struggled to a better position to watch through the scratched plexiglass cockpit window.

Below, the Tiberius pulled away from the sinking Zoroaster. Sliding down, rolling sideways as it lost its slippery grip on the Fort Point ledge, the Zoroaster toppled in a slow-motion avalanche. Todd’s stomach sank with it. Water and oil foamed gray in the churning violence of the plunge. The supertanker’s hull yawned open wider, geysering black crude into the waters.

Before his eyes, the disaster became a thousand times worse.

Despite the desperate lightering operations, nearly 50 million gallons of crude oil remained in the breached cargo holds. Cold, dark water swallowed the doomed supertanker in less than fifteen minutes.

Todd watched, sick with disgust. From inside the Zoroaster, oil would continue to gush upward for years… and now there was no way to stop it.

Chapter 6

The Zoroaster spill was a shit-storm in a small room, but Speaker of the House Jeffrey Mayeaux had to cover a smile as he faced the audience for the news conference. He took grim pleasure in knowing he had arrived on the scene a full three hours before the Vice President was due. The rooster-faced V.P. didn’t even know he had been upstaged yet.

A techie wearing jeans and a faded yellow T-shirt scurried stooped over like a hunchback, checking leads to the microphones on the podium. Mayeaux walked in, flanked by his Chief of Staff Franklin Weathersee and a Secret Service mastodon. He fixed his eyes on the reporters; they looked like crawfish in a bowl, and he was about to have them for dinner. He wore his gravest “I’m from the government, I’m here to help you” expression.

The Honorable Jeffrey Mayeaux would do his best to witness the concerns first-hand and say the necessary words to foster hope. He was good at that. Yes, the government would do everything possible to help the San Francisco area cope with this crisis. You betcha.

The Executive Branch would be pissing Tabasco sauce by this evening.

Mayeaux had skipped out on his Acapulco “conference” early for the sole purpose of stealing the V.P.’s thunder. Unannounced, Mayeaux was the first high-level government official to respond to this serious disaster—and the bozos at 1600 Pennsylvania would not get the credit this time. Mayeaux would shake the hands and kiss the babies; Vice President Wolani—Miss Congeniality—would get the tough questions a few hours from now. The whole escapade should add at least another ten grand onto Mayeaux’s lobbyist salary after he retired from Congress in a year.

A half dozen video cameras jockeyed for position as he turned to expose his best side. He eyed a cute brunette gripping a microphone bearing the letters KSFO. Watching the way she wrapped her fingers around the shaft of the microphone, holding its head close to her red lips, Mayeaux thought how deliciously erotic it looked. Admiring the swell of her bodacious breasts against her silk blouse, Mayeaux made a mental note to have Weathersee offer her an off-the-record interview, “inside sources,” before he had to jet back to the east coast. Often enough, promotion-hungry lady reporters were willing to go to extremes for a scoop. And you didn’t know unless you asked.

Like a few other Louisiana politicians, Mayeaux didn’t give a coonass’s damn about scandal. His constituents watched it with the fascination of spectators at a car accident—but as long as they knew some of Mayeaux’s obvious weaknesses, they didn’t dig too deep for hidden flaws. The old saying went that every person owned the same total allotment of vices… so the folks who looked squeaky clean usually had some very twisted skeletons in their closets. According to that theory, a holy roller like V.P. Wolani probably got off by pulling legs off live frogs.

Mayeaux straightened, pulling himself to his full height of five and a half feet. For his opening statement, he spoke slowly, careful to smother his leftover Cajun accent, as he always did in public speeches.

“Incredibly devastating,” he said. “This could set back the advances we’ve made in environmental management by decades. I have personally contacted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to encourage their best efforts here. I also advocate calling out the National Guard, but of course that’s up to the administration, whenever they get here. I understand the Vice President is on his way, so you can ask him yourselves. He’ll be along any time now.”

“Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker!”

He scanned the crowd until he caught the brunette’s eye. He raised his eyebrow a fraction before nodding to her. He didn’t give a rat’s ass for her question, but he kept his public face on autopilot. He wondered how much of a challenge she would be. “Go ahead.”

“How will this affect the proposed new gasoline tax? Will the administration back the House’s legislation calling for a majority of the tax to be used for cleaning up the environment?”

He pegged her: tough reporter type, arrogant and driven, looking for the big story. Willing to do just about anything for it—and he bet his Louisiana homegrown hot link would satisfy her. “I don’t see how the President could refuse to sign the bill, especially now, with this mess right in America’s lap.”

“But do you anticipate a fight? Could this be a big test of your abilities as Speaker?”

Mayeaux put on his “grave and understanding” expression to mask his utter scorn for testing his abilities. He was in this for the ride and the perks, and by next year he could say goodbye to all the bullshit.

“We all try to work within the system, Ma’am. I’ve been in close contact with Vice President Wolani, who is making time in his busy schedule to personally view this disaster.” Mayeaux squelched a smile before it could form on his face. “I’m sure when he returns to Washington, he’ll convince the President of the necessity for this legislation. If not, then I’ll have to twist a few more arms.” He flashed the brunette a warm smile and turned to answer other questions.

Before long, he glanced at the clock at the back of the press room. He had been talking for ten minutes. Good enough. Short and sweet. The reporters would remember the “zingers” more than the message; he’d have to personally thank that cute new speech writer who’d come up with the lines on the jet up from Acapulco.

Excusing himself, Mayeaux smiled one last time at the brunette, then answered a final question over his shoulder as he was led into the anteroom. Weathersee, a stable but joy-killing anchor through Mayeaux’s entire career, bent closer and spoke quietly. “Emma Branson is waiting upstairs in a private suite.”

“You make a good den mother, Franklin,” he said.

The Chief of Staff ignored the comment. “She needs to speak with you.”

Mayeaux glanced around and saw no one dangerous in view; the media was gone and with no one listening, let his annoyance show. “That old bitch? I can’t afford to be seen with her, especially now. Oilstar connections are going to be extremely bad for my reputation right now.”

“I thought you were planning to work for her,” Weathersee said calmly.

“That’s after I retire, and you know it, Franklin!”

“She came in through the back entrance. No one saw her. She says it’s urgent,” Weathersee said. “She’s in a hurry and is calling in a few favors.”

Mayeaux allowed himself to be guided toward the elevators. “Yeah, yeah.” He knew who had spearheaded the donations that bankrolled his campaign. Even though other big oil companies had stayed away from direct contributions, Emma Branson and Oilstar had played too important a role to ignore.

They emerged from the elevator. Weathersee waited outside the penthouse door as Mayeaux entered, somehow managing to stand without fidgeting for impossibly long periods.

Mayeaux smiled broadly at Branson as he padded across the beige-carpeted floor to kiss the lizard-faced woman on both cheeks. He thought he might get frostbite on his lips—God, he knew she had once been married, but Mayeaux couldn’t imagine anyone willingly fucking the old hag.

He flashed her his warmest grin. “This is like old home week, cher, defending the environment, running into old friends.” He stroked his hand up and down her arm. She looked so much like a mummy. “How’ve you been? Damn tragic about that tanker!”

Emma Branson smiled, but her eyes looked as hard as a diamond-tipped oildrill. She wore a necklace of small pearls over a throat that was wattled like an iguana’s. A television set in the back of the suite recapped Mayeaux’s live interview; she did not seem pleased about it. Branson picked up a decanter of scotch and poured two fingers’ worth into a pair of glasses; she thrust one at him.

“This is no time for bullshit—my corporate board is waiting for me. This spill will hurt the economy a great deal more than it will hurt the environment, Jeffrey. We’ll get this mess cleaned up well enough in a few months, but the oil business will be paying forever. We’re going to be in court over this one for the next half century.”

Branson placed her glass on the counter without sipping from it. Mayeaux didn’t say a word; whatever the old iron maiden wanted from him, it wouldn’t involve small talk. Branson came straight to the point. “I’d hoped to speak with you before the press conference. You sounded rather enthusiastic about this new tax of yours—how hard are you going to push it?”

Mayeaux took a measured sip of scotch. It had a smokey, peat-like flavor, and very pure. It had to be a single malt—everything about Emma Branson was first class. He paused long enough to make her think his answer wasn’t spring-loaded.

“It’s scary, Emma. This spill provides the catalyst for the new tax, and there’s nothing I, or the back-room boys, can do to prevent it. There’s too much momentum behind the bill. Every TV in the country is flooded with Zoroaster images, and people are demanding a scapegoat—they want to string somebody up by the balls, and they don’t care who. The tax will be a way to ensure ‘it doesn’t happen again.’ You know, like ‘the war to end all wars.’ Propaganda bullshit, but there you have it.”

“Do you really think you could use that money to buy more efficient equipment or make better tankers? Do you think even triple hulls would be safer? Smaller tankers means more tankers, more traffic means more accidents. Simple statistics. You don’t gain anything.” Branson shook her head.

Mayeaux swirled his drink and took a final sip. He might as well have been wrestling with an alligator. Emma Branson was personally responsible for bringing in over five million in contributions, and even at that, he had been lucky to get re-elected this time. If every other state besides Louisiana hadn’t had term limitations, Mayeaux would never have gained enough seniority to be elected Speaker this year. Pure unadulterated serendipity, a fait accompli before the new selection rules could grind their way through the system. With his track record he would never rise higher—but with Branson’s backing, he’d make a fine lobbyist for the oil industry. Damn fine, with his connections.

He sighed and placed his drink on the counter next to Branson’s still-untouched glass. A shame to waste good scotch. He looked her in the eye.

“Emma, as always you have a point. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in politicking that I forget my roots, not to mention my friends. Tell you what—when I get back to Washington, I’ll bury this legislation in subcommittee. I’ll throw my staff into patching together a compromise solution.” He reached out and squeezed her hands.

Branson pulled her hands away, but she did not argue with him. As he reached the door, Branson’s raspy voice said, “I’ll be paying close attention to the Congressional Record, Jeffrey. Just remember those future plans of yours. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” She paused, then smiled. “Or I’ll be the one to string you up by the balls.”

Mayeaux forced a chuckle, keeping a grin plastered to his face. “I’m heading back to D.C. right now to work on it.”

Outside the door, Weathersee steered him to the elevator. “The V.P.’s plane is due in another hour. Did you want to join the welcoming party?”

Mayeaux’s grin melted as soon as he was away from the penthouse door. “Hell, no! I’ve already upstaged the bastard. I don’t want to be seen fawning over him. It’s bad enough I promised Emma Branson I’d look for an alternative to the energy tax bill.” He raced through the options—there had to be a way to not piss off the oil industry.

Weathersee raised an eyebrow, then looked at his watch as they waited for the elevator. “I didn’t think you’d want to stay. I’ve booked you back on a direct flight that leaves in less than an hour—” He fell silent as the elevator door opened, glancing around; when no one came out, they stepped in. “Unless you have other plans? I did keep your suite at the hotel.”

Mayeaux sighed and smiled. “Offer that brunette KSFO reporter an exclusive deep-background interview with me tonight. Order room service. Champagne. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. And call my wife—tell her I’ve been held over.”

“Should I start the staff researching gas tax alternatives?”

Mayeaux shook his head, waving dismissively. “And have Huey Long roll over in his grave? There’s no way to stop it, no matter what I promised Branson. I’ll throw it back into negotiations and let it build up its own momentum—as long as I don’t go on record for it, that should keep Branson happy. I’ll call for a voice vote so she can’t pin me on anything.”

The elevator bumped to a stop. When the door opened, a crowd surged toward him. Speaker of the House Jeffrey Mayeaux put on his smile and started shaking hands, offering reassurance. He spotted two sweet young things straining to get a glimpse of him.

He hated the work itself, but God, he loved being a congressman.

Chapter 7

“But are we following our contingency plan?” Emma Branson said, glaring at her deputies in what had to be the most claustrophobic meeting room on the entire Oilstar site. “Can we at least say that much? We have to find some kind of positive spin for Oilstar.”

“Uh, we rescued the crew of the tanker—how about that?”

“What kind of positive spin is that?” Branson snorted. “We rescue a captain who blames the whole mess on some mysterious crewman who’s disappeared? The public wants to see every member of the Zoroaster crew shot.”

Charlene Epstein, a deputy with severe gray-blond hair, slapped a stack of thick books that no one had ever bothered to read before. “We think we adhered to all the legal requirements, but the plan is eight volumes long. Six thousand pages of convoluted sentences and flow charts that nobody ever thought about needing to follow!”

Branson shook her head, disgusted instead of surprised. The arguments had continued all morning. Arriving from her brief meeting with Mayeaux after his grandstanding news conference, now she was ready for some shouting. She counted off names on her fingers. “The Petroleum Industry Response Organization signed off on it, the Departments of Transportation, Interior, Energy, the EPA, the Coast Guard Pacific Area Strike Team, the American Petroleum Institute. Didn’t anybody read the damned plan?”

“Everybody’s passing the buck, Ms. Branson,” Henry Cochran said. “No one ever really believed a million-barrel spill would happen.”

“Lucky us, to witness it in our lifetimes!” Charlene snapped. All of Branson’s deputies began arguing at once.

She tolerated only a moment of the chaotic shouting, enough to let them blow off some steam, then she slammed her hand down like a schoolteacher. The deputies shut up.

“So,” Branson said, her voice rattling, “we wrote all this documentation to cover ourselves, but nobody even knows what we agreed to. We’ve got an army of demonstrators outside the gate. People are making death threats on me, and not one of you has a clue about what Oilstar is supposed to be doing.”

“It’s not that simple —” Cochran interrupted. Sweat covered his bald head and florid face, making his fashion-frame glasses slide down his nose.

“Cut the bullshit, please,” Branson said quietly. “What about the lightering operations? How much did we pull off before Zoroaster went under?”

Walter Pelcik squinted at his figures, running pudgy fingers through his beard. “75,000 barrels. That’s a damned good amount, I might add.” He grabbed another piece of paper. “The skimmers are recovering some of what’s floating on the surface, but for all intents and purposes we’ve got an inexhaustible supply down there inside the hulk, and it’s going to keep leaking for years.”

Charlene Epstein shuddered. “We already have a spill that’s four to five times greater than the maximum estimates of the Valdez—and it’s not way up in Nowheresville, Alaska. It’s in downtown San Francisco.”

Cochran shook his head, then yanked off his glasses. “They are going to string us up. We might as well all change our names and move to Argentina.”

“Enough of that, Mr. Cochran,” Branson said. “Oilstar will accept responsibility for this spill, and we will make our absolute best effort to clean it up. Is that clear? Have we requested all available skimmers worldwide? Do we need more booms? What else can we do to mitigate this disaster?”

Walter Pelcik folded his hands over his paunch. “We’ve ordered everything. The other oil companies are pitching in, mostly for the PR value.”

Charlene slid one of the heavy books off a stack. “What other options do we have? They won’t let us do controlled burning. The Bay Area Air Quality Management people would rather smell stinking petroleum fumes for a decade than have a few days of black smoke.”

Branson tried to recall everything she knew about their own preparations. “How about dispersants? We’ve got a whole stockpile—why don’t we use them?”

“No chance!” said Pelcik. “The environmentalists are singing the same song on that one, and you know how powerful those groups are when they actually agree on something!”

Cochran leaned over the conference table. “Dispersants break the oil up and suspend it in the water. Right now the crude is floating on top. Dispersants would mix it with the water, make it look great from above—but the suspended oil would still be killing fish and damaging the food chain.”

Branson sighed in exasperation. For the first time in her life, she felt like giving up. “You mean we’ve got nothing else? What do you suggest we do, roll over and die? I won’t believe there are no alternatives.”

“Well there is Argentina,” Cochran said, smiling weakly.

At the doorway, a tall young man cleared his throat. “Excuse me?” He wore a tie and expensive clothes. Beside him stood an older man in jeans and a flannel shirt. “I’m Mitchell Stone and this is Dr. Kramer. We have a meeting with Ms. Branson?” He looked at his watch and smiled before any of the startled deputies could answer. “Looks like our timing is pretty good, because we’re going to offer you something that might solve this crisis.”

For a strange instant, Branson recalled the story of Faust; she wondered if Stone would offer her a magical solution to the Zoroaster spill… for the mere price of her soul.

Cochran glanced at both of their badges, then turned to flip through an appointment book. “Oh. Bioremediation people.”

Branson heaved a weary sigh. Dr. Kramer hung behind Stone, who seemed too full of himself. She decided which one to trust on the basis of her first impression. Kramer looked tired and listless, with a simmering fire behind his eyes. She recalled a memo that had mentioned Kramer’s name, something about losing his family in an accident, an Oilstar fund to send flowers. She had even signed the form letter herself.

“What can we do for you, gentlemen? We’re in the middle of an important meeting.”

Stone flinched a smile. As he stepped into the room, the strong smell of his sweet cologne mingled with the haze of cigarette smoke thickening the air. “We need you to listen to us for a moment. What you decide after that is up to you.”

The deputies frowned at the interruption. “We’ll be brief,” Dr. Kramer interjected, looking very uncomfortable.

Mitch strode toward an overhead projector in the corner of the room. He pulled a set of viewgraphs from under his arm and slapped one on the projector, punching the button that turned on the lamp. The title stood out against the blue-and-gold Oilstar logo: THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT.

Branson sighed. “Is a canned presentation really necessary? I get enough plastic flipped at me that I don’t believe my people can think for themselves anymore. Just talk to me and get it over with.”

Stone faltered, then flicked off the projector. “Of course.” He drew a breath. “In the Bioremediation section, we’ve been searching for a way to use natural microbes to break down substances in the environment, toxic wastes and so forth. Dr. Alex Kramer, here, and myself head up a team studying ways to break down long-chain polymers in landfills. You know, plastic garbage bags, beverage containers, styrofoam cups, and packaging. Waste products of such polymers deteriorate very slowly. We’re trying to find ways to get rid of it.”

“Excuse me!” Walter Pelcik said, raising his voice. His bushy brown beard stuck out in all directions. “We’ve got an oil spill to deal with here.”

Stone raised his voice a notch higher and continued without acknowledging the interruption, speaking directly to Branson, as if she was the only one who counted. Smart guy. But he had better get to the point in the next few seconds.

“As the first step, we developed an organism we called Prometheus. This little microbe has an appetite for octane—the eight-carbon molecule in gasoline… and crude oil.

“At the time, we didn’t see any use for it, but we applied for an FDA license just in case. Why would anyone want to decompose crude oil? Well, now it seems you might have a use for our little miracle.” Stone looked at the others. Dr. Kramer hovered beside him, fidgeting but not interrupting Stone. The conference room became quiet as the information sank in.

“Let me get this straight,” said Branson. An unexpected sensation twisted inside of her. Hope. “You’ve come up with some kind of germ that eats crude oil?”

“Not all of it,” Dr. Kramer answered, stepping forward, moving in front of Stone, “only the octane component and some of the ring hydrocarbons.”

Branson got right to the point. “So what does it leave behind? What kind of toxic mess are we going to have to deal with? Will we be in worse trouble than we are now, like with dispersants?”

“No.” Dr. Kramer shook his head vigorously. “Octane is just carbon atoms and hydrogen. When the Prometheus organism metabolizes the octane, it leaves behind CO2 and H2O, carbon dioxide and water, with maybe a little hydrogen sulfide—like rotten eggs—from sulfur contaminants in the mix. Nothing toxic whatsoever. It’ll work.”

Stone picked up the thread. “From our studies, we know that 25 percent of the Zoroaster crude is lightweight hydrocarbons that will evaporate off in a few days all by themselves. The rest of it, though, will be broken down slowly by photo-oxidation and natural microorganisms in the water. That part will take years.”

His eyes gleamed. “What we’re offering is a way to get rid of all the octane in the spill. That, plus the evaporation effects, will decrease the amount of visible oil on the Bay by something like 65 percent in a few days—and it will leave no pollution behind.”

Dr. Kramer cleared his throat. “We need to make clear, though, that Prometheus does not attack longer-chain hydrocarbons. That’s been our problem in fighting styrofoam and plastic waste. You’ll still be left with the tarry residue they keep showing on the news.”

Branson’s heart pounded, and a flush rose in her face. “But from the public’s point of view, over half the spill will disappear? That’s a dramatic and obvious effect.”

“You said you applied for an FDA license—why don’t you have it? And what if this microbe spreads?” Cochran said. “How are we going to get rid of it when we’re done?”

Dr. Kramer shook his head. He spoke confidently, as if daring them to disbelieve him. “That’s not unusual. It takes years for the FDA to process those things. Anyway, we should be able to get a waiver in an emergency. The other problem will take care of itself. These microorganisms are not indigenous to the area. We got them out of the ocean, near volcanic vents deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico. We crossbred them with some of the other oil-eating strains from samples along the beaches in Prince William Sound in Alaska. They’ll flourish for a while, feasting on the spilled crude oil, but they’ll die out quickly. They can’t handle this climate, and their food source will disappear as soon as the spill goes away. They can never become airborne.”

“We’ve demonstrated that several times in laboratory tests,” Stone added. “We can show you the reports. Dr. Kramer has all his lab books.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Branson said, tapping her nails on the table. She looked around the smoky room. “And this could look very, very good for Oilstar.”

“It’s not a cure-all,” Dr. Kramer said.

“We’re only interested in a short-term solution for now,” she retorted. “I need something spectacular to confirm that Oilstar is doing all it can. Once the press is satisfied, they’ll turn to some other problem.” She tapped a pencil on the table. “How soon can you have it? When can we try it?”

Stone flipped through viewgraphs to double-check information he should have known perfectly well—unless he was just putting on an act to appear overly conscientious. “Prometheus has been successfully tested. We got piles of reports out of it. We’ve already started making a supply, and the strain reproduces quickly. That’s one of its advantages. Once we get the waiver from the FDA, we can start spraying the spill in a day or so.”

“I’m not sure about this microbe stuff,” Cochran said. “I can just imagine people complaining even louder about genetically engineered organisms than they are about the spill itself.”

“Excuse me,” Dr. Kramer said, as if he had anticipated the question. “Don’t let anyone raise those objections. These microorganisms are crossbred strains of naturally occurring microbes. No genetic engineering.”

Branson waved aside the words. That part didn’t matter, and she had heard what she needed to know. “If the people stonewall our every effort to clean up the spill, we can take the moral high ground because we offered a solution and they didn’t want it.”

She beamed at Stone and Dr. Kramer. “We’ll call a press conference for tomorrow morning, a regular town meeting. We can let the public decide—and Oilstar wins either way.”

Chapter 8

“Emergency override! Eagle One, this is Albuquerque tower. I say again, emergency override!” The squawk of the walkie-talkie jerked Brigadier General Ed Bayclock out of a tedious Friday interview in his base office. Time to leap into action.

David Reinski, the young-and-trim mayor of Albuquerque, somehow didn’t notice the emergency call and kept chatting. “General, this White Sands agreement could benefit Albuquerque as well as Kirtland. Could you point that out in your dinner speech?” Reinski to Bayclock as if they were equals.

“Quiet, please!” Bayclock said, holding up a hand as he strained to hear the radio voice.

“Guzzle 37 on approach,” the walkie-talkie said. The voice sounded tight and high-strung. “Five souls on board with an ETA of five minutes. An emergency has been declared.”

In an instant, Bayclock became a different person, shoving trivial business matters to the back of his mind: the agreement he had just signed with the White Sands Missile Range and the upcoming awards dinner, at which Mayor Reinski would introduce him. No time for that baloney right now. God had given different people different skills, and not everyone was as good at coping with emergencies as he was.

He lurched forward in his overstuffed chair. The warm leather creaked as he snatched the clunky old radio from its recharging stand. “Tower, this is Eagle One. Give me details.” From his window, Bayclock looked out over Albuquerque International’s 13,000-foot runway out in the desert, but saw no sign of the approaching aircraft.

“KC 10A unable to retract their boom, sir,” the tower voice answered. “Their controls were inadvertently scrambled by a high-power microwave test at Phillips Lab. Main pump has failed, and they are unable to dump fuel. They’re coming in from the east and are cleared to the desert where the crew will eject—”

“Belay that!” Bayclock said. The KC 10 was a wide-body jet outfitted as a flying fuel tank, and it would explode like a bomb if it crashed. “Foam up the runway and have them do a slow pass.”

Dammit, he’d hang those Phillips Lab scientists later.

“A flyby?” The tower voice sounded incredulous. “General, we are following the emergency checklist!”

“You heard me,” he said. He didn’t have time to explain to some snot-nosed airman. “Bring them low enough so I can spot the damage. I’ll watch them at the break-to-final point, three miles from the runway. Then you let me decide what to do. That’s what I’m paid for, son.”

Waiting for a response, Bayclock glanced at his office walls, at the framed photos of fighter aircraft, at the memos and reports stacked on his desk. He longed for the days when he had been in the cockpit himself, ‘kicking the tires, lighting the fires,’ and blasting off into the stratosphere. Not chained to a desk.

Desk job. The words soured his mouth. It was the one thing he had disdained throughout his 30-year Air Force career. Real men don’t fly a desk. Yet Bayclock had been offered a star, the chance to serve as a general officer with command over a large number of people, more responsibility. He was not power hungry, but he firmly believed a man should serve to the best of his ability. And few people had the ability to do the job Bayclock did every day. He could not shirk the tough assignment just because he would miss flying.

“What’s taking so long, dammit!” he said to the silent radio. He could feel the cold, exhilarating sweat prickle beneath his clean uniform.

“Uh, we’re getting flack from the crew, Eagle One. We told them your plan, and they insist—”

Bayclock strangled the transmit button. “Tell them to do the flyby, or they’re going to wish they crashed with their plane! They’re not qualified to make this kind of decision.” He took a deep cold breath. He didn’t question orders from above, and he didn’t like it when enlisted men did it to him.

“Rog,” came the stiff reply from the tower.

Keeping the old-model walkie talkie in one hand, Bayclock reached for his dark blue flightcap. He snapped at Reinski as he started for the door. “If you want to come along, Mr. Mayor, you’ll have to move it.”

Reinski jerked to his feet, but Bayclock left without waiting for an answer. The general clicked past officers and enlisted people who moved out of his way. He paid them no attention—he had his body set on autopilot, intent on getting to the staff car.

He burst out of the air-conditioned headquarters building, feeling the sudden dry heat slam him like a baseball bat. He trotted to his staff car parked in the reserved space, then turned to see Reinski tripping down the steps after him. “You coming?”

“Yeah.” Reinski wheezed, out of breath.

The general’s driver was nowhere to be seen, but Bayclock could damn well drive himself. “Hurry up, Reinski, but don’t get in my way.”

“Shut up and drive, General. There’s an emergency here,” Reinski said as he scrambled into the car. Then, with an uncertain grin, he added, “Sir.”

Bayclock snorted at the young mayor, then let out a guffaw. Flicking on his lights as he screeched from the parking lot, he barely missed an oncoming car. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Reinski frantically trying to fasten his seat belt.

Bayclock fumbled at the dashboard and brought up a microphone. “Tower, Eagle One. I’m heading to the break-for-final. What’s the status of Guzzle 37?”

The radio crackled. “We’re foaming the runway now.”

“Is that plane going to crash?” asked Reinski. His voice seemed to carry a mixture of dread and anticipation.

“Maybe.” Bayclock shot a glance at the scrawny mayor fidgeting in the front seat. “But not if I can help it.”

When they reached the runway, Bayclock jumped out of the car, leaving the door rocking on its hinges. He held a hand up to his eyes, searching for the incoming plane in the bright desert sky. The smell of hot asphalt rose up from the tarmac. The overtaxed staff car made ticking noises as it sat under the sun.

When Reinski joined him, Bayclock spoke without turning. “There’s a flying fuel tank up there with a gas hose they can’t pull in. The problem is the hose isn’t made out of rubber—it’s a twenty-foot-long hollow steel pole that juts down. The crew thinks it’ll be like lighting a fuse if it scrapes on the runway. They can’t dump their fuel, so they want to eject.”

“And you’re not allowing them?”

“Hell no!” said Bayclock. “Not without seeing for myself. People in situations like this tend to panic and overreact. It’s my call, and I’ll make it. What is this, twenty questions?”

Reinski’s eyes were wide as he stared into the sky. He was looking in the wrong place. “But if those men die because of—”

Bayclock glared. “I’m not going to let them do anything stupid, Mr. Mayor. Once they fly over our position, I’ll tell them what to do.” He didn’t want to be distracted right now. He had to concentrate, ready to change his mind in a flash. “My people trust me.”

Reinski kept scanning for the crippled tanker aircraft in the sky. Bayclock could hear stuttered transmissions over the radio as the tower communicated with the tanker. Three miles behind them, trucks crisscrossed the runway, spraying fire-retardant foam. Ambulances, emergency trucks, fire engines, and Kirtland AFB police vehicles waited at the edge of the runway.

Bayclock patted his pockets, looking for a cigarette, a pack of gum, anything to keep him busy. He picked up the microphone. “Tower, Eagle One. Give me an update.”

“No change, Eagle One.”

“Patch me directly into the cockpit.”

Tower sounded reluctant. “Ah… Rog.”

Bayclock fingered the microphone. “Guzzle 37, you there?”

The reply came back in irritation. “Rog, rog, Eagle One. You sure you know what the hell you’re doing, sir?”

“Affirmative,” said Bayclock. “Listen, I’m three miles east of the runway—you bring her down to 500 feet and I’ll give you a reading. That’s plenty of time to either land or keep going to the desert if I wave you off. You copy?”

The voice over the radio sounded clipped and tired. “That’s a rog, Eagle One.”

Bayclock spotted the plane coming low over the Manzano mountains east of Albuquerque. He felt a sudden rush as he focused his attention even more on the problem. He knew he could do this. Bayclock had never been wrong in an emergency before. Never. “Got you, Guzzle—looking good.” The enormous KC 10 moved so slowly it seemed like a zeppelin in the air.

The giant wide-body roared past, low to the ground. Bayclock would have to make a decision fast. His heart pounded. He knew the crew of the tanker would be white-knuckled up there, praying, counting on him. The import of the situation buoyed Bayclock. Beside the staff car, Reinski was saying something, but Bayclock shut the distraction out of his universe.

He squinted, taking a split second to spot the refueling boom. He glanced quickly away, then back again to confirm what he had really seen. He spoke rapidly into the microphone. “Guzzle 37, your boom is rigid and extended so low it will snap on landing. Bring her in—I say again, bring her on in.”

The shrill reply came immediately from the lumbering tanker, now less than two miles from runway. “If the boom doesn’t snap, it’ll skid and light us up!”

Good thing I’m making the decisions, Bayclock thought. “Bring her down!” he commanded.

The pilot gave no confirmation other than two rapid clicks over the radio. Bayclock watched as the tanker descended through the remaining 500 feet. The last few seconds seemed to take forever. “Come on, come on!”

The jet flared with its nose up in the air, wheels reaching out to grab the runway like a bird of prey. The long boom struck the foam-covered tarmac. A brief flash of light gave Bayclock the sudden sick feeling that he had made the wrong decision, and the fuel tank would go up in a Nagasaki-class fireball.

But the boom broke off and tumbled into the barren scrub. The aircraft wobbled from side to side, then finally touched down. It skidded, then the tires kicked up foam that enveloped the plane. All Bayclock could see was a huge ball of dust, foam, dirt and debris as ambulances and emergency vehicles raced down the runway.

Bayclock slammed his hand on the staff car, leaving a small dent. “Shit hot!” Jumping inside, he took off for the runway, barely giving Mayor Reinski time to climb in. He didn’t care if the mayor had to walk.

As they pulled up to the KC 10 hissing and cooling on the tarmac, Bayclock saw long streaks of water and dirt along its fuselage. The crew staggered out of the plane down a long aluminum ladder, and an ambulance whisked them away. He felt vindicated as emergency personnel stepped up to the tanker and sprayed fire retardant over the fuselage.

General Bayclock’s perfect track record had yet to be broken.

Chapter 9

In the middle of San Francisco Bay, the volunteers gathered on forested Angel Island to meet the oncoming black tide. Standing on the rocky shore, they looked like desperate defenders pitted against an overwhelming force.

On the pier in Ayala Cove, Jackson Harris fought to keep despair from crushing him. Three days, and the job still seemed immense, impossible—but if he let himself start believing it to be a hopeless task, he wouldn’t be able to go on. His stomach felt watery and knotted from his anger.

While corporate cleanup crews concentrated on the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, and other high-visibility areas, Harris was outraged to learn that they had written off one of his favorite spots in the Bay Area. He and his wife Daphne had worked the phones nonstop to bring a team together on the secluded island state park in the middle of the Bay. Together, they had plugged into their own activist network and mustered volunteers to protect Angel Island. The group received equipment from a handful of Oakland industries, which had donated dozens of dumpsters and tons of plastic garbage bags to hold the oil-stained rags and other debris from cleaning the shoreline.

Acrid chemical fumes mixed with the stench of decaying bodies of birds and fish. Staring across the foul water, Harris spoke into his radio to the boats out on the slick. “Keep to your search pattern. Pick up all the birds and sea otters you can get.” They would try to save the live ones, but even carcasses were important for the lawsuits to be filed against Oilstar.

Harris lifted his thumb from the TALK button. He scratched his scraggly beard, still frowning. He hadn’t showered in days, not that primitive and isolated Angel Island had such facilities; he hadn’t slept much in the past three days either.

Off Point Stuart, the edge of the island closest to the spill, Harris’s group had sunk 55-gallon drums filled with cement to anchor a long string of buoys in an inverted “V”. Between the buoys, they strung heavy plastic fabric as a diversion boom to split the flow of thick crude and deflect it around the island. Yesterday when the spill struck, the “V” bifurcated the oil… but not enough. Now the black flow curled around to slop against the shore.

Harris left the pier and crunched down the crumbling, poorly maintained road. At the charcoal picnic grills, groups of volunteer kids cooked an endless supply of hot dogs and hamburgers for the famished workers. Harris stretched his aching arms, but decided he could stand some more heavy work. No time for rest. Never any time for rest. The spill would keep moving, keep destroying, and only he and his volunteers stood in its path.

At the water’s edge, people in rubber wader boots stood in the oozing crude. They dunked five-gallon buckets to scoop thick oil from the surface, passing each bucket to the next person in line. Once again dredging deep inside himself for just a little more energy, Harris slipped into the brigade line, relieving one of the brothers who looked ready to drop. The man nodded his thanks, then staggered to the grassy picnic area and collapsed onto a weathered picnic table.

A loud radio boomed music from a San Francisco Top 40 station, but few of the volunteers seemed to hear the tunes. Harris loved music, but in the last few days it seemed like his capacity to love anything at all had been smothered by the spreading blanket of crude.

The fire-brigade line skimmed oil, one bucket at a time. It would take his people ten million buckets to remove all the oil spilled by Zoroaster. Harris refused to admit it was a hopeless task, because that would pop the fragile soap bubble of stamina that kept him going.

After dragging another heavy bucket partway up the beach, Harris handed it to the next person in line, who lugged it to the reservoir tanks. Harris looked down at his thigh-length rubber boots, yellow rain slicker, and canvas gloves, all smeared with sticky brown oil darker than his skin.

The walkie talkie at his side crackled again. “Jackson, this is Linda. We have to come back in. Boat’s overloaded.”

He handed off another bucket and stepped out of the brigade line, pulling off his gloves and grabbing the walkie talkie. “All right, man. We’ll get another crew to take over.”

A few minutes later, a fishing boat puttered toward the dock. Harris yelled for another group to help off-load the cargo of carcasses and surviving animals the rescue crew had scooped up. Among the other volunteers, his wife Daphne ran up to help.

Trim and wiry, with very dark skin, she looked beautiful even with oil smeared on her face and frayed overalls and sweat trickling down her neck. When Daphne had studied law at Berkeley under a scholarship, she probably never imagined herself in a place like this. But Daphne wanted to help needy people, help the environment, taking a job in a small firm in Oakland so she could work in the volunteer legal-aid clinics.

She gave Harris a weary smile, bent toward him for a kiss, then laughed, smudging him with oil. On his lips, the oil tasted like vile medicine. The humor lasted only a moment before they both helped to off-load the stricken animals onto the pier.

They carried the live ones first—sea otters, terns, and gulls soaked in oil. Three people stood together, straining to haul the first sea lion from the boat. It panted, squirming in a slow-motion effort to fight. Its wide brown eyes were encircled by the red of internal hemorrhaging.

Harris knew what the oil was doing to the internal organs of this struggling creature. Its kidneys would fail, unable to filter such massive amounts of waste products from the bloodstream; its intestines would be immobilized, preventing the absorption of nutrients. He felt bile rise in his throat. He remembered hundreds of sea lions sprawled on Fisherman’s Wharf, sunning themselves and bellowing.

Most animals, even the ones “rescued,” would probably die from the spill anyway. Oil-soaked pinfeathers or fur no longer insulated the animals from the cold waters of the Bay. Many could not float, and would drown in the sludge-covered water.

Daphne and the others took the animals to hand-pumped shower stations, where they squirted soapy water and used brushes to scrub off the oil. Daphne worked quickly, weaving her hands out of the way of an exhausted seagull, alarmed by the movement but too exhausted to struggle, as the panicked but stunned bird tried to peck any object that came near it.

The team worked in silence, unable to manage the usual banter of volunteers engaged in a large job. Even if the animals survived to be released again, they would simply return to the Bay, where they would get contaminated again. Seeing the animals’ plight tore at Jackson’s heart; he could not just leave the creatures to die a variety of slow, cruel deaths. The odds were against them, but that wouldn’t stop him from trying.

The boom-box radio announced a spill update, and gave a short human-interest story on the heroic volunteer efforts under way on Angel Island, which drew a scattered but lukewarm cheer. Then the reporter said, “Oilstar Public Relations Officer Henry Cochran claims their efforts to clean up the spill are being hindered by environmental restrictions that prevent them from mounting an all-out response.”

A man’s voice continued, speaking for the oil company in a slow, reedy voice that sounded like a prepared statement. “We have well-researched and innovative solutions for coping with this problem, but the government says we need weeks of study before taking this action. That’s ridiculous! Look out in the Bay—how can we just sit around, knowing we’ve got a possible cure? Tomorrow, Oilstar will hold a ‘town meeting’ to discuss a crucial plan to decrease the spill by 40 percent within a four-to-five day period, leaving no toxic residue. But we’ll probably be restrained—again—by bureaucracy and finger-pointing. We have a solution. If the State and Federal governments won’t let us use it, don’t blame Oilstar.”

Jackson Harris stared across the water to the northern part of the Bay. He could see where the Richmond-San Rafael bridge terminated near the Oilstar refinery. How could they make such preposterous claims? Forty percent of the spill gone in a few days? No toxic residue? Did they have some sort of magic wand?

He did not trust the big oil company, but they wouldn’t make such wild claims unless they had something. And after seeing the relatively minor success of his volunteers’ efforts, he was just about willing to give Oilstar a chance.

Chapter 10

Heather Dixon fixed her eyes on the set of plane tickets in her new boss’s hands, trying to control her frustration. Albert “You can call me Al” Sysco tapped the tickets against his palm as he sat on the corner of her desk in an attempt to make himself look taller.

“Sorry, Heather,” he said. “Boston changed their mind and wanted me to go at the last minute. They think people will be more receptive dealing with managers instead of the worker bees.”

Bullshit, she thought. Surety Insurance knew he’d take this trip as soon as he got the promotion instead of me.

Sysco tucked the tickets in the breast pocket of his polyester suit. Heather knew the itinerary: a small plane to Phoenix from the Surety Insurance western headquarters in Flagstaff, Arizona, then a jet into San Francisco International. Sysco would be traveling with four other Surety middle managers, all male, none more qualified than herself.

Ambulance-chasing lawyers were descending on the Zoroaster spill like locusts, sniffing for lawsuits. The insurance industry was orchestrating a defense, gearing up to fight the claims. The main Surety headquarters in Boston had already announced plans to argue that damage caused by the oil spill should be classed as the result of an Act of God or a terrorist action, neither of which would be covered by most policies. Sysco would fly to San Francisco and stay in fine hotels, leaving the “worker bees” back home in Flagstaff.

“What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Heather asked, knowing damned well what he was going to say.

“Take over my desk.”

For months Sysco had dropped unpleasant innuendoes about Heather Dixon’s incompetence, about her lack of dedication to Surety and her ability to be a team player. If it hadn’t been for Sysco’s self-serving maneuvers, she would have gotten the job of auto claims section manager herself.

Heather decided not just to hope, but to actually pray that his plane crashed en route. Not a big fiery crash—just one so that Sysco would never be found, where he could survive for awhile in the Arizona desert and spend a long, slow time dying of thirst. Maybe the other middle managers would have to eat him for sustenance… but then they’d probably die of food poisoning.

“Gee, I’ll do my best, Mr. Sysco.” She batted her eyes like the brain-dead bimbo he seemed to think she was.

She had never learned how to wear a dress with feline grace; she was tall and well-built, yet not graceful enough to be a model. Her mother called her “clunky.” Her reddish-brown hair hung perfectly straight. In her thirty years, Heather had tried dozens of different styles, long and short, even once with a punkish scarlet streak. No one seemed to notice.

Albert Sysco didn’t catch the sarcasm in her answer. “I’ll be back in three days. Try not to screw up too much.” He turned, a medium-sized man on the outside, remarkably small on the inside.

Heather gave him the finger under her desk. She heard a quiet snicker and whirled to see Stacie, the other claims-resolution assistant, watching from her desk. As Sysco slipped into his cubicle, Stacie flipped him off too.

Heather smiled. She had worked at Surety for seven years, but she couldn’t say she enjoyed it.

The phone rang, but Stacie ignored it. “At least he’ll be out of our face for a few days,” she said.

Heather nodded. “I guess that’s a better vacation than going with him.”

Chapter 11

Everybody screwed up. Everybody insisted it would never happen again. No one learned the lesson.

Alex Kramer felt numb, standing in the eye of a storm of shouting and accusations at Oilstar’s “town meeting.” He wanted to shout back, to wring a few necks at the insanity of the entire situation: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. More than anything, he wanted to be at home, alone, searching for peace.

He had known Oilstar’s public meeting would be a circus, but he hadn’t thought he himself would be thrust at the center of it. The bedlam in the room drowned his words. Standing at the podium, he closed his eyes and took a breath, trying to ignore the pain from the cancer chewing at his body.

Mitch Stone, at first disappointed at not being Branson’s chosen spokesman, now sat in the front row—in a new suit and tie, of course—grinning support for Alex.

The audience murmured like a torch-bearing mob ready to storm the scientist’s castle. Alex gripped the sturdy podium with stiff hands, using it as an anchor. Just get it over with, he thought.

Out in the room, the spectators fidgeted on folding metal chairs that creaked as people sat down. Tripods with cameras stood in the corners. In the back of the room a silver coffee urn crouched above flickering blue sterno flames, flanked by stacks of styrofoam cups. Alex could smell the fear, feel palpable anger rising in waves from the audience. It strengthened his resolve.

It’ll never happen again. I promise.

Alex saw two factions in the audience: “Luddites” and “Techno-Nazis.” The Luddites feared change, arguing that industry had caused the disaster in the first place. They would tear up experimental pest-resistant crops because they had been “tampered with,” only to complain later about the use of pesticides; or they would “liberate” animals from medical labs, and later complain about the lack of progress in AIDS and cancer research.

On the other side, the Techno-Nazis believed that science could solve every problem, that researchers could scribble on a blackboard and whip up a miracle cure given a few sleepless nights and a lovely lab assistant. They would wave aside checks and balances, safety regulations and argue that “natural” solutions were too slow, too late, and too ineffective.

Alex flinched but stood like a statue against the public outcry. Once he dropped the first pebble to start the cleansing avalanche, Alex could collapse and let the events bury him. But not until he succeeded in setting it all in motion.

The ear-splitting squeal of an air horn shocked everyone into silence. Alex jerked around.

Sitting in a chair toward the edge of the stage, Oilstar CEO Emma Branson held up the air horn. Her wrinkled, powdered skin was pale with controlled anger. She raised her voice beyond any need for a microphone. “Stop this nonsense!”

Near the stage, two security guards shifted, readying themselves. Their presence made Alex uneasy. Someone had taken potshots at Branson’s house the night before, blasting out her downstairs windows. The Oilstar refinery had received two separate bomb threats in less than twelve hours, and demonstrators blocked the refinery gates. Before entering the packed meeting room, everyone in the audience stepped through a metal detector.

The night before, Mitch had helped Alex put his presentation together. Branson had insisted that Alex be the one to speak at the press conference, implying that Mitch looked too young, that an older researcher like Alex had more credibility. “These people have seen too many slick fast-talkers,” Branson had said. “So we’re going to give them Pa—Lorne Greene—instead.”

Now Branson stepped to the edge of the stage, smoothing her dress and looking down at the quieted audience like a sour high-school teacher announcing detention for the entire class. “If you let Dr. Kramer finish speaking, you’ll hear how Oilstar wants to solve this problem! Why argue before you have any information?”

Alex tried to remember what he meant to say next. Glancing down at his notes, he pushed the ADVANCE button and turned to look at the slide on the screen.

The picture showed an Alaskan shore, gray sky, steel-colored water. Rocks studded the beach, and thick oil covered everything. This had been the start of it all. “Here you see part of the shoreline in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez spill. Looks familiar to all of us.”

He realized he was mumbling his words, and cleared his throat before clicking to the next slide. A rectangle of the shore, 30 meters by 12 meters, had been cordoned off. Men and women in yellow rain slickers stood outside the ropes.

“As part of the cleanup, Exxon spent ten million dollars to test bioremediation work similar to what Oilstar is proposing. They sprayed a fertilizer called Inipol to encourage natural bacteria in the environment to break down the slowly volatilizing alkanes and simple ring hydrocarbons in the spilled crude.”

He clicked to the next slide, showing the same test plot. This time the rocks inside the ropes showed little of the black stain. He let some of the pent-up anger and defensiveness leak into his voice. “Within ten days, the concentration of natural bacteria in shore soil samples had increased a hundred-fold, and you can already see the benefits. It’s obvious that this sort of treatment has a substantial effect.”

Alex took a sip of tepid water, then continued through slides showing the progress of the oil-eating bacteria. “Neither Exxon nor the EPA investigated which bacteria were doing the most work, but Oilstar has had an aggressive bioremediation program under way for years. We’ve researched Alaskan bacteria and samples from deep under the ocean near natural oil seeps. We think we have something that can radically reduce the effects of this spill.”

“But what if it gets loose!” said Jake Torgens, a well-known ‘eco-terrorist’ who had organized rallies and vocal protests. The police already had him under investigation about the bomb threats to the refinery.

Branson stood to answer. “The only way to let Prometheus work is to let it loose—but only on the oil spill. We can’t put an airtight dome over San Francisco Bay, can we? The Food and Drug Administration has followed the development of this microbe from Day One, and they’ve expedited their licensing process to grant us a waiver. Besides, the microbe cannot become airborne, isn’t that correct, Dr. Kramer?”

“Our tests show it’s perfectly safe—” Alex began.

Someone said, “That’s what Oilstar said about supertankers!”

At a long table to the left of the podium, one of the government representatives pulled a microphone toward himself. In front of each representative lay a stack of reports Alex and Mitch had coauthored, internal memos, and copies of peer-reviewed journal articles. Alex doubted many of the reps understood even the titles, like “Expression of Transposed Plasmid DNA Segments in Natural Microorganisms to Specify Hydrocarbon Degradation.”

“I appreciate Oilstar’s innovation,” the government rep said, “and I think we should strongly encourage thorough testing and perform a detailed study.”

A short-haired woman in the front row of the Techno-Nazis leaped to her feet. “They’ve already done the tests! Read the reports—what more do you want? do you want? The damned FDA even says it’s safe! The damage is getting worse and worse every second while you all just sit around arguing!”

Branson smiled with exaggerated patience. Her look seemed to say, ‘See who the reasonable people are?’ “You don’t throw a cup of water at a burning house to test if it’ll stop a fire.”

Alex thumped the microphone to draw attention back to himself. “I should point out that a test application on a cordoned section of the spill, as was done with the fertilizer in Prince William Sound, won’t work here. Prometheus is not intended to stay behind barrier tape, but it is a self-limiting organism. Our laboratory tests were successful. The woman from the audience is absolutely correct—every second we delay increases the ecological cost of the spill. We have to make our best attempt and see if it works.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” a woman from EPA asked.

Alex shrugged. “Then we try something else.” He turned at the sound of a scuffle outside the auditorium entrance.

A bearded black man wearing an oil-smeared raincoat pushed his way past two security guards, slapping their hands away. “I passed through your metal detector and I’m not carrying any weapons!” he shouted, as if intending to make the audience hear every word. “Let me in!”

On stage, Branson stiffened. The guards tightened near her.

Alex thought he recognized the intruder from one of the news clips he had been watching obsessively since the day after the spill. Harris. Jackson Harris, the man leading the volunteers on Angel Island. In one hand Harris carried a large plastic garbage bag; stains of crude oil covered his boots and pants. His nostrils flared as he marched to the stage. One of Branson’s guards unsnapped his holster.

Harris stepped to the bureaucrats’ table, casting his gaze across city council members, designees from the Coast Guard, the Petroleum Industry Response Organization, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Food and Drug Administration, and the EPA. Then he reached inside his garbage sack.

The representatives shrank back, as if Harris was going to pull out an Uzi. Instead, he lifted a dripping black mass that might once have had feathers. As he held it in his hand, the shape sprawled out, letting long wings loll down. Thick oil spattered the table, staining the stacked reports.

Harris let the bird drop on the wooden table. A pelican. Its long, rapier beak gaped, as the bird slowly drew its dangling wing back toward its body. It was still alive, but not for long.

“What is this!” An outraged councilman from Sausolito slid his chair back.

“This is what’s really going down out there, man. This bird is one of thousands,” Harris said. “If you’d get off your fat political asses and get your hands dirty, you might understand why we’re so worked up!” He raised his voice to a shout directed at all of them. “Stop fucking around and do something!”

He turned toward Alex hiding behind the podium. “You’re not talking any germ warfare or genetic-engineering shit are you, Mr. Big Oil Company?”

Alex barely shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “These are natural bacteria.” Though not exactly naturally occurring bacteria, he left unfinished.

Harris turned to the audience. “Oilstar got us into this mess, and we can sue their asses later—but right now, if they got a solution, how can you not try it?” He crossed his arms over his slicker. “I’ll do it myself, right now, if Oilstar gives me some of their magic oil-eating shit. You red-tape lovers can arrest me, but at least something’ll get done!”

Branson returned to the podium. Alex stepped aside to yield the microphone. The Oilstar CEO seemed determined to show some progress, as if that would be enough to quench the outrage directed against her.

“Thank you, sir, but it’s our responsibility,” Branson said. “I appreciate the urgency of your concern—we have been forgetting the real effects of this disaster.” She took a deep breath. “Oilstar will take the risk… and accept the legal consequences. On my authority, Oilstar will deploy the Prometheus option, using our helicopters, our pilots, our equipment. And we will do it at the earliest possible moment.”

Branson frowned at the dying pelican on the table and at the representatives. “If we encounter any interference from the government in trying to clean up this mess, I personally guarantee you will find the biggest lawsuit in California history right in your lap.” Accompanied by her guards, Emma Branson walked with self-assured dignity off the stage and out the rear exit.

Before attention could return to him, Alex climbed down from the stage. Mitch clapped him on the back. “We got it!”

Alex felt the world growing fuzzy. Branson had set the wheels in motion, but he had fooled her as thoroughly as everyone else. He closed his eyes to shut out the hubbub in the room— but he was left with only the emptiness inside him.

It’ll never happen again. That was certain.

Chapter 12

Oilman Todd Severyn crushed a blob of dried seagull-dropping under his work boot, then paced up and down the Oilstar pier that extended into the deep channel in the north Bay. Tankers such as the Zoroaster would hook up to transfer pipes and offload cargo into storage tanks that dotted the hills around the refinery.

The early morning was calm, perfect flying weather. The fog seemed to dissolve in front of Todd’s eyes, but he could smell the sour stench of oil on the water long before he could see it.

The Oilstar corporate helicopter, specially outfitted for spraying a fertilizer solution swarming with the Prometheus microbe, waited on the weathered dock. The copter pilot sat in her seat with legs dangling out of the cockpit. She looked bored behind mirrored sunglasses; she was getting paid by the hour, even on the ground.

Todd had orders to spray the oil-eating microbe this morning—but if the darned state inspector didn’t arrive before the court injunction did, they’d all be hung out to dry. Probably attending a seance or checking the stars to see if the karma is right, Todd thought. Prissy California sprout-eaters!

The “suits” were locked in a push-and-shove legal battle over the Prometheus bug. Oilstar insisted on using an observer from the state office of Environmental Policy and Inspection; the EPI in turn had retained a microbiology expert from Stanford University. Getting EPI approval for the fiasco seemed like covering their butt with a postage stamp, but Todd wasn’t paid to make Oilstar’s decisions—just to implement them.

At the land end of the long pier, Dr. Alex Kramer sat inside a metal control shack, which now served as a field command post for the spraying operation. The scientist didn’t talk much; with his glasses, neat gray beard, and thinning gray hair, Alex reminded Todd of his father back at the ranch.

Todd looked at his wristwatch again and ambled back to the helicopter. His down vest and new jeans felt hot and stiff and uncomfortable. “Jeez, I wish we could get this show on the road!”

Oilstar had leaked false locations for the spraying operations, which would temporarily fool the reporters, environmental nuts, and regulatory agencies—but they would soon figure it out. Todd wanted to be long gone before then. Never ask permission, as his dad always said; easier to apologize later.

Sometimes he wished he had never left Wyoming, where he could see snow-capped mountains in the distance, blue sky overhead; where he could drive a pickup down endless dirt roads and not see another person for days. He could have made a decent living running his parents’ ranch, but he had chosen to go into petroleum engineering instead.

His work for Oilstar took him places no sane person wanted to go: the wasteland of Kuwait, its featureless sand broken only by smoking fires and war wreckage; the cold North Sea, with biting winds and battleship-gray clouds, the ocean whipped into a rabid froth; or the jungles of Indonesia, with bugs the size of rats and humidity thicker than the oil pumped out of the ground.

For some reason the skewed oddness of California bothered him more than any of those places. At first Todd thought his leg was being pulled when somebody told him to wait until the “phase of the Moon” was right for spraying Kramer’s microbes. Todd talked around in circles until he finally discovered the official simply meant that the tide needed to be in. What a bunch of wackos.

It made no sense that Branson would thumb her nose at the law by going ahead with the Prometheus spraying… and then force Todd to wait for a single inspector and some Stanford observer. Why couldn’t they just spray Kramer’s little buggies and be done with it? Why make things worse by further delay? People had no common sense in the granola land of “fruits, nuts, and flakes.”

At least Todd saw the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing his Oilstar contract would end soon. That was the nice thing about being a consultant. You came in, did the job, raked in the bucks, and got the heck out of Dodge. There might be a lot of crap to put up with in the meantime, but he could always go back to Wyoming to clear his head.

In the crisp morning air, the crunching sound of wheels on gravel made him turn to see an old mid-sized sedan toiling up the narrow patchwork road along the water’s edge. He saw with relief the poop-brown color of all State cars, then spotted a round, intricate seal on the side door. Environmental Policy and Inspection. Shock absorbers creaked as the sedan jounced in potholes, pulled up to the open gate in the chain-link fence, then edged slowly over the bump onto the Oilstar pier. The driver seemed overly cautious. Todd strode out to meet the car.

The passenger door popped open, and a petite young woman stepped out. With long jet-black hair and soft, strikingly attractive Asian features, the inspector was not at all what Todd had expected. He had been prepared for a dumpy business-suited bureaucrat; instead, the woman wore white tennis shoes, jeans, and a comfortable sweatshirt. At least she hadn’t arrived in a dress-for-success dark skirt and blouse.

He had the state inspector pegged before she even noticed him: recent liberal arts graduate from some eastern college—Mary Washington, Amherst, Bryn Mawr…. She probably wanted to make her mark by uncovering some toxic waste scandal, then she’d move to Washington, D.C. Being Asian, and a woman, this one would keep the Equal Opportunity clowns in ecstasy for years.

She probably hated country & western music, too.

But Todd forced a neutral expression onto his face, ready to do the necessary duty dance, and determined to get the helicopter off the ground. He tipped his cowboy hat. “Excuse me, Ma’am. I’m Todd Severyn, test director for Dr. Kramer. We’ve got everything prepped here, and we’ve been waiting for you. As soon as the State inspects the equipment, we can get going.” He tried to sound gruff, no nonsense.

Her back to him, the young woman pulled a briefcase out of the car. She straightened and took one long appraising look at his cotton shirt, down vest, his cowboy boots and hat. She seemed to form an assessment of Todd as quickly as he had made up his mind about her. “You’ve got the wrong person, Tex.”

Tex? Todd frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You’re looking for Mr. Plerry.”

The driver emerged, straightened his suit, and stepped forward. “Ah, Mr. Severyn?” he said with a faint lisp, extending his hand. The man was paper-thin, mustached, and had immaculately slicked-back hair. “Glad to meet you. I’m Francis Plerry, director for environmental policy. Emma Branson asked me to come here personally—she’s an old acquaintance of mine.” Plerry cleared his throat and turned to the helicopter for the first time. Todd wanted to wring his neck—this wasn’t a tea party.

“Sorry we’re late, but I had to swing by Stanford to pick up Dr. Shikozu. She has graciously volunteered to accompany you when the microbes are released. Iris, have you introduced yourself?”

Shikozu cut off more conversation with a quick, impatient gesture. “We don’t have time, Mr. Plerry. Judge Steinberg already signed a restraining order, and we need to get up in the air before somebody can get here to deliver it. Let’s go, Tex.”

Todd narrowed his eyes at the sharp-tongued woman. It wasn’t his fault they were still sitting on the ground. “Well, we’ve been waiting for you, Ma’am.” He drew out the “ma’am,” knowing it would annoy her.

“Pleased to meet you, too, Tex,” she said, taking him aback. The glint in her eye made him wonder if she was intentionally jerking his chain… and enjoying it.

Plerry smiled thinly and continued. “Dr. Shikozu is an assistant professor at Stanford, specializing in microbiology and polymer chemistry. Her expertise will be invaluable in reassuring the public that this is a safe and well-considered action.” Shikozu and Todd both looked at him, wondering who Plerry thought he was kidding.

“But getting down to business—?” Shikozu said, crossing her arms over her sweatshirt. Plerry looked flustered at being rushed.

Todd had a difficult time hiding his reflexive grin. “My feelings exactly,” he said. “The microbes are in a canister under the cockpit. We’ll start spraying once you give the word. We estimate it’ll take a few hours to cover the entire spill.” He directed them to the helicopter. The pilot sat up and climbed back into her cockpit.

Shikozu looked Todd in the eye as they stood by the helicopter. “I’ve tested a frozen sample of Alex Kramer’s original microbes as a control back at Stanford. Not having second thoughts, are you?”

Todd felt suddenly warm. “No second thoughts, Ma’am. I just work here, and it’s my job to get the spraying done.”

“All right.” Shikozu bent under the helicopter. “Let’s check out the dispersion equipment. Then we can start our work.” They squatted under the helicopter’s belly as Shikozu studied the apparatus. Todd had no idea what she was looking for.

He glanced up quickly when he heard a pandemonium of cars approaching. A convoy of vehicles honked their horns, winding along the narrow shoreline road. A gravel truck from the nearby quarry rumbled to a halt, momentarily blocking the stream of cars.

“Start the rotors!” Todd yelled to the copter pilot. She scrambled with the controls, but he saw nothing happening. Todd threw a glance behind him. The gravel truck ground its gears, but the cars wouldn’t stay stopped for long. “What’s the problem?”

The pilot kept her head down, running through a checklist. “Give me two minutes and I’ll have you in the air.”

“Can’t you get us up any quicker?”

She reached up and to her left, flicking a switch. “I’ll burn out the units if I go faster.” A low whine came from the engines.

Todd turned back to Iris. “You’ll have to make a decision mighty quick, Ma’am.”

“I think all the dispersal systems look adequate.” Shikozu straightened. Todd grudgingly gave her credit for sensing the emergency. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Plerry?” Her almond eyes widened, and she looked back to the road as the cars drove across the loose gravel outside the chain-link gate. Car doors slammed.

“Uh, yes,” Plerry said, stepping back from the helicopter. “It looks fine.” He nodded again as if to reassure himself. The helicopter blades began to rotate slowly.

The vehicles in the convoy were old and battered, Volkswagen beetles, Chevy Novas, Ford vans, many covered with bumper stickers: EARTH FIRST! and SPLIT WOOD, NOT ATOMS!

Iris pulled herself into the helicopter from the passenger side, scrambling to the back seat. The rotors made a whirring sound like the world’s loudest fan. She stuck her head out of the cockpit. “Hey, Tex! They’re not here to sell you Avon products! Get your butt inside—you can gawk all you want from the air.”

Todd’s cheeks burned that someone else was telling him to hurry! He clambered in.

On the pier, Alex Kramer stepped out of the corrugated metal control shack, looking with blank, astonished eyes at the approaching group of people. He seemed startled at the interruption, then raised his hands as if to surrender.

“Go!” Todd shouted at the helicopter pilot. His pulse raced, as if this were as big a threat as the last time he had leaped into a chopper to escape the sinking Zoroaster.

The pilot popped her gum, eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses. “Okay, you’re paying for it if I burn anything out. Buckle up.”

One man ran ahead of the others on the pier, weaving his way around the debris and equipment piled there. In one hand he gripped a folded piece of paper like a weapon. It was that wacko Jake Torgens, known for pounding spikes into trees to stop lumberjacks. Torgens’s words vanished in the increasing roar of the helicopter’s rotor. Todd leaned over the side and mouthed, ‘I can’t hear you!’ and pointed first at his ears, then at the helicopter blades.

The pilot pulled back on the control stick, and the copter wobbled as it lifted off the pier. It hung for a moment like a bumblebee before darting higher.

Torgens, clutching the folded paper, put on a burst of speed; for a moment Todd thought he was going to make a leap for the landing strut, like a scene from a James Bond movie. But he pulled up short, shaking a fist at them.

The copter soared away from the Oilstar pier, turning south to fly under the span of the Richmond/San Rafael bridge.

Todd turned to Iris. “I just don’t get these guys. They scream at Oilstar to clean up the spill, then they scream when we try to do it.” He shook his head. “If we listened to people like that, we’d still be in caves arguing about the dangers of fire.”

Iris looked at him with one uplifted eyebrow. He had never seen eyes as dark as hers. “Interesting you should use that analogy when we’re about to disperse a microbe called Prometheus.”

“Right.” Todd tried not to show that he didn’t know what she meant. “Well, I wish those people would disperse too.”

The helicopter headed toward the heart of the spill, where they would begin spraying.

Chapter 13

As Spencer Lockwood’s plane descended toward San Francisco International, he watched the tiny, glimmering traffic crawl along the freeways below. Sunlight skated across iridescent rainbows on the oil slick sprawled across the Bay.

He didn’t want to be here. He felt like a politician with all the smiling, handshaking, and logrolling he would be required to do with his colleagues at Sandia National Lab in Livermore. “Networking,” Nedermyer called it, but it didn’t have much to do with actual working. Spencer wished he was back in New Mexico, refining the solar satellite experiment—they had so much analysis and refinements left to do! He was wasting his time.

He mentally slapped his hand for maintaining such a bad attitude. Chin up! It’ll all pay off in the end. Right…

The other passengers craned their heads to see through the scratched double glass of the jet’s windows. Spencer grimaced at how far the oil had spread across the green-blue water. With a satisfied smile, he wished he could go up and down the aisle, whispering the words “Think solar!” into everyone’s ears.

He rubbed his eyes and wished the flight attendants would bring another cup of coffee. Spencer hated flying in early, but otherwise he had to give up an extra day for traveling. And whenever Spencer was gone, Rita Fellenstein tinkered with the equipment at the antenna farm. Even though her modifications worked like a charm—most of the time—Spencer didn’t like to discover them after the fact.

He heard a whirring thunk beneath the fuselage as the landing gear locked into place. Flight attendants strolled by, snatching napkins and plastic cups. Spencer tucked his briefcase under the seat, holding it with his ankles. Inside were viewgraphs detailing the resounding success of his smallsats over the antenna farm. He couldn’t wait to show them off, win a few more supporters, and get back to White Sands.

Sandia, one of the nation’s Big Three national laboratories, had a huge primary facility in Albuquerque on Kirtland Air Force Base; but much of Sandia’s alternative energy work took place in their smaller facility in Livermore, California, about an hour’s drive east from San Francisco. With discretionary funds, Sandia had paid for part of Spencer’s smallsat testbed, as well as the miles-long electromagnetic launcher that ran up Oscura Peak in White Sands.

Spencer’s request to speak before the energy gurus at Sandia Livermore seemed an inspired idea. After working as a grad student at Caltech under a Nobel laureate, then successfully filing several money-making patents of his own, Spencer considered himself a whiz kid, flaunting his success in the face of stodgy committees. But after Lance Nedermyer’s unreasonable skepticism, Spencer decided to become more visible among his colleagues. Working on his own, on a shoestring budget with a bunch of young Turks, he needed validation more than anything else.

Spencer sat back in his seat and went over the canned talk in his head. The wreck of the Zoroaster had provided the world’s biggest visual aid against dependence on oil.

Car horns blared, tires screeched—

Spencer jammed on the brakes, nearly standing up in the rental Mazda. A sudden flash of cold sweat burst over his body. The woman in a blue Mercedes behind Spencer gave him a one-finger salute after she too squealed to a halt.

He took a moment to compose himself, then looked up and down the line of stopped cars. Traffic wasn’t moving on the San Mateo Bridge. Cars, camper trucks, flatbeds, vans, and motorcycles had come to a halt in both directions.

Spencer had driven from the airport over the second longest of the five bridges spanning the Bay. While the western end of the San Mateo Bridge rose high to allow large ships passage, the rest of the span lay only a few feet above the shallow water, like a road floating on the Bay.

Spencer rolled down his window, but the breeze smelled like a mixture of rotten eggs and burning tires, foul odors from the volatile components of crude oil. Crinkling his nose, he quickly rolled the window back up. He turned up the radio and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He couldn’t find any music. News announcers kept talking about the “Zoroaster Disaster,” using the rhyming phrase like a slogan; no doubt it would show up on the next cover of Newsweek.

Spencer hated traffic, idiot drivers, honking horns, exhaust fumes. At times like this, he appreciated the long, straight highways in New Mexico, where you could rip open the engine and fly by at a hundred miles an hour, never seeing another soul.

He got out and climbed on top of his white Mazda Protege to see if he could tell where the traffic was held up, but he saw only stopped vehicles. He looked at his watch, wondering if he would ever make his noon meeting at Sandia National Lab. Dammit, he had cut his schedule close, but he should have had enough time—if only he had remembered to allow for traffic snarls.

Other people stepped out of their cars, giving up on waiting. Children ran to the edge of the guard rail, looking down in the oily water; parents shouted for them to come back. Spencer stared with a mixture of awe and disgust at the thick stain like gangrene on the bay. By contrast, White Sands and the array of gleaming microwave antennas seemed so pristine, so silent, so clean….

Thousands of people had driven to get a glimpse of the largest oil spill in history. Some shimmied down to the water and bottled a souvenir, like Mount St. Helens ash. He drew in a deep breath of air, then choked on the stink.

A low sound of chopping filled the air. Probably a police helicopter checking out the traffic jam. He imagined a voice blaring from a loudspeaker, “All right down there! Everybody into their cars and start moving at the count of three!”

As the whirring grew louder, a low-flying copter bore down on them from the north. Painted bright green, the machine obviously belonged to no police service. The helicopter flew quite low, spraying something onto the water surface. Spencer frowned. Some kind of dispersant?

He looked up as the helicopter doubled back, making an overlapping pattern on the water. Spencer shaded his eyes as it swooped low over the bridge. He ducked into the car as a fine mist drifted down onto the stopped traffic. Although he couldn’t smell anything over the petroleum fumes, he hoped the spray contained nothing toxic. As the craft passed overhead, he could see an enormous drum slung under the fuselage.

Several of the spectators standing on the bridge were sprayed; they jumped for cover, but the helicopter continued southward. Spencer used the windshield wipers to smear the droplets on his windshield, spreading it like translucent fingerpaint across the glass. Before long, the moisture evaporated, leaving only a faint residue, a thin gummy film. He waited for the cars to start moving again.

Finally, long after the helicopter had disappeared from sight, the tops of trucks far ahead of him crept forward. With a sigh of relief, Spencer started the engine, glanced at his watch one more time, then began the crawl toward Sandia lab.

Chapter 14

Two hundred feet above the water, Todd Severyn couldn’t decide which was worse: the jolting, ear-splitting throb of the helicopter… or the pilot’s radio blasting out “We Built This City on Rock and Roll.” At least the ride was a bit more comfortable than the crazy takeoff from the deck of the sinking Zoroaster a few days earlier.

He had long since stopped trying to carry on a conversation with Iris Shikozu, who sat behind him in the cramped passenger compartment. Between the pilot’s radio and the streams of cold air blasting through the open window next to him, he couldn’t hear much anyway. He thought wistfully about riding across the Wyoming grasslands, and concentrated instead on waiting out the test. Sitting here, he felt as useful as a middle manager.

The pilot nudged her mirrored sunglasses against the bridge of her nose, then prepared for another run. Momentum pulled Todd against the cold, hard metal cabin wall as she wheeled the helicopter around like an old-time barnstormer. She gripped the spray lever that released a fine mist of the nutrient solution swarming with Prometheus microbes. Their first pass had cut straight down the middle of the slick; overlapping flights followed in a classic mosaic coverage pattern.

Todd turned to stare out the window. He could make out the discolored mud flats of the South Bay. Black film from the oil slick outlined sandbars in the shallow water.

He watched Iris as she looked past him to the water below. It was obvious she didn’t share the same enthusiasm for Kramer’s little buggies, but she didn’t voice any direct skepticism when he asked her directly. Maybe she was one of those folks who always looked on the bad side. A glass was half empty instead of half full. But Iris had to believe some good would come of the spraying, or she wouldn’t be here in the first place.

She leaned forward to yell in his ear, startling him. “You’re certain of the initial canister temperature?”

What does that have to do with anything? “Absolutely. I made sure we followed Doc Kramer’s checklist to the letter. The buggies were kept near freezing. Now they’re awake, and it’s time for breakfast.”

Iris said, “If this works.”

Todd frowned at her attitude. “It will.” He’d done his part of the job, and so had everyone else. As far as he was concerned, it was all over but the waiting.

Todd sat back in his vibrating naugahyde seat, glancing at Iris. The hint of a smile tugged at her lips. It flustered him not to know whether she was intentionally pushing his buttons. He turned away to cover his confusion.

On the next pass they came upon the oil suddenly as they sped across the water, not more than ten feet above the surface. The helicopter bounced in turbulence. Strangely enough, Todd felt more at ease flying low—it reminded him of roundup time, when he had ridden in his dad’s chopper to herd some of the cattle from the open range in Wyoming.

The pilot clenched her grip on the spray control lever. Behind them they left a trail of fine mist drifting down to the water. The helicopter soared low over the San Mateo Bridge where thousands of cars jammed the narrow strip of concrete. Todd looked down at the people staring up at them. The spectators probably didn’t have any idea what was going on.

The radio crackled. The pilot grabbed the handset without easing up on the controls. She acknowledged the speaker. “Yo! For you, Mr. Severyn,” she said. “Mr. Plerry, back at the pier.”

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.”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said. Though his return flight did not leave until noon the next day, Spencer had no intention of staying a minute longer.

Chapter 16

The pile of papers from the “To Be Signed” stack fell off the conference table and scattered over the plush carpeting in the Speaker’s office. Jeffrey Mayeaux was too preoccupied with getting his hands up the young speech writer’s dress to notice.

She slid back on the polished wood grain of the table, spreading her legs and finding purchase for her feet on the heavy padded chairs. The fabric of her skirt hissed across the surface. Mayeaux’s fingers stroked her waist—she was firm and muscular, no flab. Probably worked out at The Hill health club, running around in Spandex, sweating, jiggling her bodacious gazonkas. He closed his eyes and grinned at the thought. Time for some different aerobic exercise.

She remained silent, without the usual cooing, gasping sounds he expected. Rather than letting it deter him, Mayeaux took it as a challenge. What was her name? Tina… Tanya. Great name. It made him as horny as a fallen priest just thinking of it.

He hooked his fingers around the waistband of her pantyhose and slid them over her hips, her buttocks, lingering on the warm skin with his fingertips. He felt sweat tracing a damp line up his spine, in his crotch. She arched herself, giving him room to work with his hands.

Tanya wore a slick peach-colored dress that slipped up nicely. Mayeaux pushed it out of the way and rubbed his fingers on the mound between her legs, rapidly growing impatient with the fabric of her pink cotton panties. He slipped a finger under the panties, tickled the crisp pubic hair for a moment, teasing her. The strong musk of her arousal drifted to his nostrils, bringing back a memory of that first time he’d ventured into the French Quarter. His pulse felt all watery with excitement. He slipped his middle finger inside.

“Oh!” she said. Finally. The young speech writer glanced at him, then looked away.

This was a lot different from when Mayeaux had been much younger in New Orleans, cruising down Bourbon Street alone at night, gawking at the whores and the transvestites. He remembered screwing a dozen different women in humid and musky upper-level apartments, with the drapes open and the sounds of competing jazz bands drifting in from the street. Back then, he had to do a lot of work to get laid, but now the women came to him. One of the little bonuses of being the senior member of the House. He had to be grateful to a system that could do this for him, simply because he came from a state with no term limitations. And the best part was, his own wife let him get away with it. It was part of their agreement.

Tanya arched back on the table, closing her eyes and tilting her chin in ecstasy. Stretching her arms above her head, she ran a tonguetip in a slow circle around her lips. She had fawn-colored hair, long with subtle curls held back by barrettes. Her crotch hair was full and tan.

“Hold on for a Louisiana hot link with the works,” Mayeaux said, chuckling. Tanya didn’t seem to notice, and he didn’t give a coon’s ass. He had powerful constituents; he had already set himself up for life with enough pork-barrel projects in Louisiana that he could ease into a lobbying job at the end of his term. He did not intend to get reelected; he just meant to get his well-deserved reward before he left office.

Unbuckling his belt, he pushed his pants and underwear down to his knees. He grabbed Tanya’s hips, positioned himself, and pushed inside her without further foreplay. He had a meeting in ten minutes.

Mayeaux began pumping, and Tanya raised her legs further, opening herself wider for him. They both breathed harder. Her bare skin squeaked on the polished wood surface of the table. He grinned to himself, knowing that the Joint Chiefs would sit down at the same table in another hour. If they asked, he could convince them that the damp stains on the table were doughnut frosting. He wondered if they’d be able to smell the sex.

Mayeaux kept himself in shape, and he did a good job in bed—or on the floor, or on the conference table…. But none of these sweet young things would look twice at him if he was an insurance salesman, a grocery store manager. The women in the Beltway knew how to advance their careers.

Power was such an aphrodisiac.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mayeaux noticed a brief, odd expression on Tanya’s face, a hint of boredom. She knew how to play the game—he had explained it to her in perfectly clear terms; it was part of the post-Anita Hill era. He just hoped Tanya didn’t give him some disease. At least after his vasectomy he had no worries about being slapped with a paternity suit.

His escapades were becoming legendary, like JFK’s. He kept trying to push the limit, but somehow the boundary moved one step farther away for each indiscretion he committed. The media liked him, too; they seemed amused rather than outraged.

Thrusting over and over again, Mayeaux ground his hips against Tanya’s, holding tight to her waist to keep her from sliding across the table.

The door to the Speaker’s office popped open. His chief of staff Franklin Weathersee stepped inside. Mayeaux cursed himself for forgetting to lock the door. Weathersee glanced at the spectacle on the conference table, then calmly stepped back out of the room.

Tanya gasped in shock and scrambled away, rolling off the table. Mayeaux fought back the urge to laugh. She snatched her pantyhose, pulling them up and yanked the smooth peach fabric of her dress back into place. As she brushed back her hair, Mayeaux thought he saw a look of relief on her face.

Mayeaux buckled his pants and turned to call through the door. “Dammit, Weathersee, couldn’t you knock?” But he could never be angry at Weathersee—the man had saved Mayeaux’s butt too many times in the past.

The door inched open. “Sorry, sir.” Weathersee dropped a stack of papers on the floor. “These are the briefing materials you wanted in preparation for the trip to Kirtland Air Force Base. It’s for the Tech Transfer Act.” Poking his head into the room, he glanced at the speech writer, then back at Mayeaux. “And whenever you’re finished here, sir, Vice President Wolani is on the phone for you.”

Without a word, Tanya fled past him. Mayeaux scowled, but looked admiringly at her ass as she went out. He wondered when they would be able to finish what they had started. Or, if not with her, he’d get somebody else.

For now, he’d just as soon have kept the Vice President waiting.

Chapter 17

After spending the morning in jail, Todd didn’t mind the long drive to Alex Kramer’s house, as long as he could keep the window rolled down and the fresh air blowing in his face.

A load of crap had come down since that morning, and the rolling Marin foothills calmed him. He turned up the radio, tapped on the wheel, and sang along with an old Willie Nelson song. He was ready to unwind at the Oilstar “victory party” at Alex’s home. By spraying Prometheus, Todd had turned on the light at the end of the tunnel.

As expected, Oilstar bailed Todd and Alex out after only a few hours in the Contra Costa County jail. Oilstar lawyers had been prepared and waiting. By early afternoon, Emma Branson had gone on TV, railing at the interference from do-nothing government agencies.

Todd had never been in trouble with the law before, and having an arrest on his record really ticked him off; but once the charges were dropped, his sheet darn well better be clean. He’d placed an awful lot of confidence in Kramer’s microbes.

Unexpectedly, he came upon Alex’s ranch house, half-hidden in the tall trees; he braked quickly in his Ford pickup, coming to a dead stop in the road before turning right into the long gravel driveway. Among the cars parked on the lawn and in the drive, no vehicle looked more than three years old, and there were more foreign cars than American ones. He shook his head. These same mineral-water-drinking lamebrains complained about America’s economy and then handed their buying dollars to some German or Japanese car company.

Getting out of the truck, he jammed his cowboy hat down on his head. As he crunched up the driveway, he glanced at the split-rail fence extending along the one-story ranch house; a small barn stood just around the corner. He took a deep breath. The familiar damp, musty smell of manure told him Alex kept horses. Not what he expected from the quiet scientist.

One of the secretaries from the bioremediation offices answered the doorbell. Not a secretary, he corrected himself; in California, the women called themselves ‘administrative assistants.’ She wore lots of makeup and was dressed to kill. He wondered what she would look like in jeans.

Todd didn’t have time to say anything before she waved him inside. “Hey, everybody, our other convict is here!”

Pianos and violins played snooty classical music on the stereo. People milled around the main living room near a small wet bar where they served themselves. Prepackaged hors d’ouvres sat out on a table: crackers, cut vegetables, cheese. A sliding glass door stood half-open, leading to a patio and the back yard. Other people chatted and laughed in the kitchen, leaning against the tile counters. From their dress, Todd supposed the guests had stopped by on their way home from work.

He hadn’t yet seen the host. He wondered if Alex lived alone in such a big place. Somehow, this did not strike him as a bachelor pad. Even with all the gathered people, the sound of the music, the conversations, the house felt… unused, as if it had been closed up for a long time.

Todd got himself a bottle of Coors from the small wet bar and stood nursing it, sloshing the foamy taste around in his mouth. He stood by himself in between other conversations, looking at all the people he didn’t know. He tried to smile as he shook hands, accepting congratulations for getting the work done and for bucking the system. Trying to escape further conversation, he wandered down a narrow hall.

Someone squeezed past him to the bathroom. Poking around, he opened the door to a closed room. Medals, newspaper clippings, and a battle streamer hung on the wall, just above the photo of a young man in a starched Army uniform. Other pictures surrounded the memorial—Alex himself standing by the boy in hiking gear, the boy crouched by the ocean holding an abalone shell.

An adjacent wall featured a young girl. Photos of her at various ages were arranged in a circle: a ballerina, a Pioneer girl, a high-school cheerleader next to her mother—everything a proud and loving father would put together…

Todd’s musings were interrupted by a loud voice and a slap on the back. “Cowboy Todd! Come on, loosen up, celebrate!”

Todd turned to see Alex’s big-mouthed deputy, Mitchell Stone. “Mitch, how are ya?” He wondered if Mitch had gone to some expensive college to learn to be such a horse’s rear-end.

“Just friggin’ great.” Mitch hung an arm around Todd’s neck. A fruity wine-cooler smell surrounded the man, mixed with the aroma of cheese dip. Mitch took a sip from the glass he held in one hand. “You know, the way things are going, we’re going to owe you a lot more than that consulting fee.”

“How’s that?”

“You made us heroes!” Mitch roared. Todd couldn’t figure out what was so funny. “It’s a great day for the future!”

Todd squirmed out from under Mitch’s arm and steered him into the hall, closing the door behind them. He wondered about the pictures—who were those people? The displays of Alex’s… children?… made him uncomfortable. He wanted to protect Kramer’s privacy.

“Give the bug time to work, Mitch, before you—”

“Hell, I saw it with my own eyes. It can’t fail.” He raised his glass to Todd; it held a peachy drink with tiny bubbles rising to the top.

Todd held up his half-full bottle of beer. “I think I’ll get a refill. See ya!” He escaped before Mitch could articulate a reply. He hurried down the hall back to the crowded room, hoping to lose himself among the fifteen or so people. Todd wished for some Outlaws, or Charlie Daniels, or any country music, but the foot-stompin’ beat might stir things up too much.

He thought about going to the patio, maybe take a look at the horses, when he spotted Alex Kramer standing alone outside, leaning on a porch rail and holding a drink. Alex had a bemused look, holding his folded eyeglasses in his hand as if pondering a secret joke. Squinting into the distance, he studied the rolling hills behind the house. He barely seemed aware of his own party.

Todd started toward the sliding glass door when he bumped into someone backing away from the bar. A plate fell to the floor. “Gosh, I’m sorry!” Todd said, looking at the petite woman stooping down to pick up spilled munchies. She wore a bright red blouse and black pants.

“I didn’t expect you to be a ballerina wearing those cowboy boots,” Iris Shikozu said, then snatched her glass from the floor. “But I would hope for a little bit of coordination.”

Todd glanced down at his large boots with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “Who backed into who?” he asked, bending to help her.

Iris brushed a hand across her face to move the strands of jet black hair that had fallen across her eyes. “I think I can handle the massive task of picking up these crackers by myself.” Then, as if reconsidering, she gave a slight smile. “You could go get me another plate of food.”

Relieved to do something, and also to be away from further sarcasm, Todd made his way to the food table. He set down his half-empty bottle of Coors, picked up a paper plate, and started to grab potato chips, salami, dill pickles, olives. He suddenly stopped. Iris did not strike him as a potato-chip-and-salami type of person. In consternation, he looked at the food, trying to think of what she might prefer—he didn’t have a clue as to what Tofu looked like. Well, how about olives? No, probably too much salt. He settled for fresh carrots, celery, cauliflower, and broccoli; looking at the other selections, he picked a few crackers—those must be safe, they looked like whole wheat—a deviled egg, and an artichoke heart.

He took the plate back, but Iris was nowhere to be found. The thought crossed his mind that she might have ducked out, just to make a fool of him. Then the plate was snatched from his hand.

“I’d better take that before you spill it,” Iris said.

Before he could stop himself, Todd growled, “What did I do to put a chip on your shoulder? And where where you hiding?”

Iris recovered from her surprise with remarkable speed; a grin spread across her face. “Well, well. The cowboy can think for himself. But I believe you’re jumping to conclusions.” She held up a damp dishrag in her free hand. “I was just getting something to wipe up the mess on the carpet.”

As she bent down, Iris knocked over the white wine she had set on the gray-blue rug. “Oh, crap.” She picked up the clear plastic cup and dabbed at the seeping damp spot. Todd grabbed a handful of paper napkins and knelt to help her blot up the stain.

“You wouldn’t make much of a ballerina yourself,” he said.

She gave a low laugh. “Touché.”

When they had mopped up as much as they could, Todd straightened. Iris brushed back her hair and was silent for a moment before she finally said, “I’m going to get another glass of wine. Want a beer?” It seemed to take an effort. “Then you can help me eat some of these carrot sticks.”

Todd blinked. “Sure.”

They went to stand by the sliding glass doors to the patio. A panoramic view of the Marin hills spread out in the late afternoon. The horse corral took up most of Kramer’s back yard. A thicket of Ponderosa pine started fifty yards from the house and spread up the hills.

Iris spoke first. “You know, before this oil spill people would have lynched you for even suggesting the idea of spraying Prometheus microbes in a populated area.”

He shrugged. “You do what you have to do. In an emergency, you can’t just sit around and wait for committees to sort everything out.” He nodded toward her. “I appreciate your help.”

“I wasn’t there to help you. I was representing the state’s interests.”

“Right.” He sipped his beer and looked around. After a moment he said, “Know anybody else here?”

Iris shrugged. “I recognize a few of the scientists, but I don’t really pal around with oil company employees.”

The silence was awkward for some seconds before Todd spoke again. “So what do you people see in California? You don’t really like it here, do you?”

She seemed to think over her answer. “I enjoy my work.”

“I didn’t ask about that.”

She glanced up. “In my line of work, you go where the jobs are. We can’t all live in Texas, you know.”

“I’m from Wyoming, not Texas. But we wouldn’t want the crowds, anyway.”

They spent the rest of the hour talking. Although she attempted to come across as tough as nails, Iris opened up once Todd steered her away from talking about academia and her Stanford connections.

By the time he finished his third beer, many people began drifting away from the party to get home for dinner, as if at some secret signal. Todd didn’t want to leave, but he began to grow more self-conscious as he saw others departing, calling goodbyes to Alex until he and Iris were the only two left. Outside, the sunset flashed diffusing colors across the sky.

Alex stepped back through the glass patio doors, looking around as if checking to see whether it was safe. Todd and Iris both looked up at him. “Excuse me.” Kramer smiled sheepishly. “I’m not usually fond of cocktail parties, but my wife hosted them sometimes. She must have been better at it than I am—people never used to leave before midnight.”

Iris drew herself up. “Well, I’ve got quite a drive back to Stanford. Thank you for inviting me, Dr. Kramer. Glad we had a chance to talk, Todd.”

“Me too.” He was quiet for a moment. “Uh, look. How about grabbing some supper? All I’ve eaten is rabbit food tonight: celery, carrots—”

“I’ve really got to get back to the lab before heading home.” She hesitated. “Some other time?”

“Right.” Todd tried not to let his disappointment show, but at least she hadn’t blown him completely off. He didn’t know any of the restaurants out here anyway—and if he found one, they probably served only California cuisine, where a plate of diced eggplant and bean curd next to a boiled new potato and a sprig of steamed broccoli passed as a meal. He’d like to show Iris a good steak house, but then she probably didn’t eat meat.

Todd wasn’t sure why he felt drawn to her. She was at least fifteen years younger than he, shorter by over a foot, and had a sharp tongue—nothing like the women he was used to dating, who were impressed by rough-and-tumble oilmen. He stared at her as she gathered a black sweater and waved briefly at him. Todd watched her open the door, and debated following her. He knew he was bad at picking up on signals. Maybe if he asked again—no, she would probably just turn him down. She closed the door behind her, leaving Todd feeling awkwardly alone.

Alex looked at him, then glanced away. He struck Todd as a lonely old man. “Come on outside, Todd,” Alex said, “and I’ll show you the stable.” He drained his wine glass and struggled to his feet from the sofa. The sound of horses came through the open patio doors. Everything seemed serene and peaceful out here. It reminded him of his parents’ ranch.

Todd thought about the horses, but not wanting to invite himself, he controlled the eagerness in his voice. “Well, haven’t I overstayed my welcome? I ought to get back to my condo—”

“Nonsense,” said Alex. “It’s not like there’s anybody around here for you to bother.” He brushed his hand over his neat iron-gray beard and gave a weak smile. “You helped me a lot today, so stay a while. Let’s go check the horses.”

“Are you going to ride?”

Alex thought for a long moment. “Why not? It’ll be dark before long, but they know their way around here. It’ll only take a minute to saddle them up.”

Todd followed him out of the house to the corral. Dry grass crunched beneath their feet. Alex held open the gate, but as he tried to yank it shut, he hung his head as if he had just felt a wave of sadness. Todd pulled the gate shut himself. “You okay, Alex? You don’t look so hot.”

“I’m fine.” Alex shuffled to the stable, as if embarrassed that Todd had noticed his momentary lapse.

Wiping his hands on his jeans, Todd approached the two horses. Who would have thought the scholarly introvert kept horses? “How long have you had them?”

It took a moment for Alex to answer. “My daughter Erin was wild about horses. Got her a pony on her eighth birthday, and when she was fourteen I gave her that chocolate quarter-horse over there, Stimpy. I guess it’s been four years, now. We used to take them out a couple times a week.”

“I didn’t think of you as the riding type.”

Alex fumbled in his pocket for a sugar cube and approached the nearest horse, the palomino; he held a bit and bridle in his other hand. “This used to be a large part of my life, but I haven’t had much time lately. The horses probably need the exercise as much as I do.” The palomino nuzzled Alex’s hand, and the sugar cube disappeared. Alex quickly bridled the horse and held the reins out to Todd. “This is Ren, my horse. Go ahead.”

“Do your kids still ride much? I think I saw their pictures in one of the rooms.”

Alex froze, then answered in a hollow, curt voice. “Both Erin and Jay are dead.”

Todd squirmed, feeling as if he had shoved his cowboy boot into his mouth all the way up to the heel. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s all right. I’m over it now,” Alex said in a controlled tone that contradicted his words. “I’m just glad you’re here to help exercise the horses.”

They saddled the two mounts in an awkward silence, then Todd swung up onto the palomino. Alex seemed protective of his daughter’s mount.

Ren felt poised beneath Todd’s legs, ready to respond. The feel of the horse beneath him awakened memories. He had spent much of his younger years riding, comfortable with his own horse, working hard on the ranch. He had forgotten how much he missed it, how little time he had to do what he liked while he ran around the world fixing Oilstar’s emergencies.

He let Alex take the lead. The two rode across the sprawling back fields and along a path into the trees. With the approaching dusk, everything shone with a soft glow. The air carried a heady, damp smell of grass and pine. The horse made soothing noises as it breathed, rustling through the grass.

“This is nice, Todd,” Alex said. “I haven’t gone out for a ride since this Zoroaster mess started.”

The horses were familiar with the terrain, slowing as the grade got steeper. It took twenty minutes to reach the top of the hill behind Alex’s ranch; from the crest Todd could see lights dotting the valley, houses separated by acres of land instead of the endless crowding of San Francisco.

Todd broke the silence. “I could almost settle down here. You can’t tell we’re so close to the city.”

Alex’s expression was unreadable in the failing light. “If you’d like, Todd, you can come up and ride the horses whenever you want. You’d take better care of them than I do.”

Todd sat upright in the saddle, and for a moment the words clogged in his throat before he finally said, “Really? That would be great!” His voice sounded high-pitched with excitement. He felt a big grin spreading across his face.

“Only if you promise to treat the horses right, though. I’m no good at it anymore.”

“That’s an easy promise to keep!”

Alex’s shadowy face wore a lost smile. “Erin and I spent afternoons riding after I got home from work, then we used to race back to the house, even at night. She loved playing the daredevil.” His words faltered.

Todd waited for Alex to continue, but when Alex spoke again, he changed the subject. “I was in grad school in the sixties before I ever got close to a horse. Marcia, my wife, talked me into taking her on a riding picnic.” He laughed for the first time all night. “I was a real greenhorn, and the horses knew it. As soon as we were out of sight of the stable, my horse halted and started eating grass. Wouldn’t move no matter what I did.”

Todd let Alex talk, beginning to see the man in another light. He wondered how much time Alex spent moping around the house feeling sorry for himself and what had happened to his family.

Todd remembered times in his life when he had dwelled on things he couldn’t change. When his high-school sweetheart Kelly had dumped him for some guy joining the Navy, he had spent months frustrated and hurt, constantly reminded of happier days, the emotional landmines found in scrapbooks and old junk drawers. But Todd also knew bad times could be wrapped up and put away, for a little while at least. He had let loose, riding off and doing stunts on his horse at his parents’ ranch, until his dad had threatened to ground him. Alex needed to let loose too.

Shaking the reins and kicking his mount with his heels, Todd caused Ren to rear up suddenly. A stupid idea with a strange horse, he knew, but just being on horseback again exhilarated him. He felt the power in the horse’s muscles, and a flash of delight surged through him. He held on and felt the joy of life tingle from his head down to the heels of his boots.

Alex looked over his shoulder, startled at the commotion, and his horse backed away.

Todd pulled back on the reins. “Come on, Alex. Race you back!” He didn’t wait for an answer. Todd slapped Ren’s side with an encouraging yell. “Yeeee-hah!” The palomino took off, as if remembering an old game.

Todd could hear only the sound of his horse crashing through the brush, galloping through the tall dry grass. His eyes had grown used to the evening light. Todd clucked at Ren, but he had left Alex behind. The older man must be in no mood to be reminded of the past.

The grade leveled, and Todd slowed his horse. Immediately, the sound of another horse galloping came from behind him.

Todd urged Ren into motion again, but Stimpy bore down to overtake Todd’s horse. Alex crouched low over the saddle, urging the quarter-horse to greater speed. Todd saw a focused expression on the man’s face.

The two of them rode faster through the clearing, charging toward the stables in the home stretch. Both horses ran full out, filled with exuberance. By the time they crossed the clearing and reached the corral, Alex was three lengths ahead of Todd.

Acknowledging his defeat with a laugh, Todd reined the horse to a halt, swung down, and patted Ren on the neck. He laughed again, feeling warm inside. He panted. “What a ride!”

Alex brought Stimpy around, chuckling for a moment. “That was dangerous, you know.”

“Ren knew the way.” Todd reached out to grab Stimpy’s bridle for Alex to dismount. “Like you said, this wasn’t the first time these guys have raced in the evening.” He patted Stimpy. “You’re pretty good in the saddle, Alex. I took you for a gentleman rancher—the type to keep a couple of horses, maybe ride them once in a while without really knowing what he’s doing. I guess was wrong.”

Alex shook his head and stiffly swung down from the chocolate-brown horse. His face looked stormy with sudden doubt, as if something had collapsed inside of him. His shoulders drooped, and he held onto the saddle horn as if to steady himself.

Todd scrambled down from Ren. “Hey, Alex! You sure you’re all right? You look like something’s really bothering you. Worried about whether your Prometheus bug is gonna work?”

Alex shook his head as he turned to lead Stimpy back toward the stable. “No, that’s not it at all. I… I was just enjoying myself, and I didn’t know what to do with the feeling. It’s been a long time.” He fidgeted, keeping himself turned away from Todd. “I think you’d better go. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do and… and I’ve got a lot of things to think about.”

Todd scuffed his boot in the dirt. “Sure, Alex. Thanks for letting me stay a while.”

“No, Todd. Thank you.” Alex turned back to him, gripping the bridle of the chocolate horse. “You come up here again soon to ride these horses. Promise.” Behind his glasses, Alex’s pale eyes fixed on him. “I mean it. That’s important to me.”

“Sure,” said Todd. “I promise. I always keep my promises.”

Chapter 18

Spencer Lockwood fumbled through the glove compartment and pulled out the map of California from the rental car packet. It didn’t show many details, but he needed only the major highways to find his way back home.

His return flight to Albuquerque did not take off until the next day, but Spencer had no intention of waiting in Livermore. He would only sit in a stuffy hotel room and read a few of the journals he had brought with him, go to bed early, fight traffic back to the San Francisco airport, then fly on to New Mexico.

Or he could drive most of the way back in the same time. It looked like a straightforward trip, a long, peaceful drive.

At Caltech in his grad-student days, Spencer and his buddies would hop into the car and take a road trip for the weekend, heading for the San Gabriel Mountains, Palm Springs, or Tijuana. It had been years since he’d done that.

Spencer relished the prospect of having no distractions, being able to think things out. Driving refreshed him, and the hum of the wheels on the highway gave him a sense of freedom.

He’d cancel his flight, then return the car at the Albuquerque airport. Grinning, Spencer checked the gas gauge—still three-quarters full. He cycled the radio through its “seek” mode twice, searching for surfin’ music, and finally settled for an Oldies station. He turned the car east onto Interstate 580.

The broad landscape seemed to open its arms to welcome him. The five-lane highway wound upward into line of grassy hills that rose like battlements on Livermore’s eastern flank. The Altamont range held something special, one of his favorite sights each time he came to Sandia in Livermore. Stretching for miles across the mountains stood thousands of wind turbines, row upon row. The world’s largest wind farm captured gusts whipping over the range, spinning white aluminum blades and generating power.

As he cruised along, he craned his head to stare at several different types of windmill, the standard sunflower shape, three-bladed wind turbines, whiplike two-bladed propellers that spun around in a blur. Vertical-axis Darrieus wind turbines stood near the freeway like giant eggbeaters stirred by the breeze.

Tax incentives for alternative energy development had made most of the Altamont windmills feasible during the Reagan administration; when the tax credits ended, many investors sold their windmills, and some of the turbines had fallen into disrepair. The sprawling wind farm still generated a great deal of power, though, which was sold to the state electrical grid.

The windmills were set up much the way Spencer’s microwave antenna farm would work in White Sands. Windmills in the east; solar-power satellites in the southwest. Oil spill to the west. Spencer smiled: the future would have its way, sooner or later.

The car raced onward, leaving the windmills behind.

The Central Valley lay like a swath of the Great Plains down the middle of California.

Without a panicky chaos of cars around him, Spencer liked to drive and let his mind wander. He enjoyed daydreaming while racing down a desert highway, surrounded by the sprawling horizon, wide-open spaces. It was how he brainstormed, throwing out crazy ideas to himself until he found something that made sense.

And he wasn’t going to let this road trip go to waste.

He thought of his smallsats orbiting over the antenna farm. The technology of the collectors was nothing new. Silicon photovoltaic cells had been around since 1954, when the prototypes achieved only a 6% energy conversion from direct sunlight. The energy crisis in the 1970s turned an enormous research effort toward developing “clean and inexhaustible” solar power, pushing photovoltaic cells up to 20% efficiencies. In 1989 a concentrator solar cell used lenses to focus sunlight onto the cell surface, yielding even higher efficiencies. Gallium-arsenide and other types of photovoltaic materials also showed promise. Unlike electric generators, solar cells had no moving parts and could operate indefinitely if they were protected from damage. And they produced no pollution.

But widespread application of ground-based solar energy had always been hindered by its cost—up to a thousand times more than electricity generated by oil, coal, or hydroelectric plants.

Now that he had successfully demonstrated the technique of staggering focused microwave beams from low orbit, though, Spencer’s team had solved that problem. But there were practical considerations as to how many smallsats they could loft, and how many antenna farms could be scattered across the landscape.

The only way to convince people was to complete the experiments, get the facility providing real power for real people. It wouldn’t be difficult to hook up to New Mexico’s main power grid.

Spencer’s team had operated on shoestring budgets before. Life in grad school, even with Professor Mansfield’s generous help, had taught him how to make do. Thanks to the lukewarm review from Lance Nedermyer, Spencer’s gang back at White Sands retained only the minimum amount of money to keep going—”maintenance budget” the Department of Energy called it. Just enough to keep the lights on and the custodians employed. But ingenious use of resources could always counterbalance budget cutbacks. They could even sell electricity to the Public Service Company of New Mexico.

Spencer intended to keep calling his own shots, performing the research he could afford. It was the type of challenge he enjoyed.

He pushed down on the Mazda’s accelerator, listening to the engine hum louder, but the landscape was so vast it crawled by. He couldn’t wait to get back to White Sands.

Chapter 19

Pretending to study from a stolen calculus textbook, Connor Brooks sat at an open-air table at the Stanford student union and looked for his next mark. Campus was easy pickings.

He shook his shaggy head. Serves the rich bastards right! Teach them a lesson they won’t learn in their snooty classes.

In the first few hours after the Zoroaster wreck, Connor had thought himself doomed. His original plan had been to hide on the gigantic tanker and then sneak off when it reached the Oilstar terminal; but that lunatic Uma had rammed the ship into the bridge. Then the Butthead had tried to blame everything on him!

But the Coast Guard and the news media saw right through that flimsy excuse. A captain was responsible for his ship. Uma never should have left the bridge, fire alarms or no fire alarms, and he never should have been such a fascist in the first place—it was only a matter of time before his crew rebelled. Besides, tankers like the Zoroaster should carry better safety mechanisms, collision-avoidance systems so that some Captain Butthead couldn’t ram into a bridge. Some people just never learn.

He kept his gaze moving, scoping the various groups of pimply-faced kids. The meaningless equations in the math book blurred under his eyes. People really made sense out of this stuff? The students relaxed under red-and-white striped umbrellas, drinking beer and eating pizza. Some sat alone. He kept an eye on one kid with long, limp brown hair and a sorry attempt at a moustache. The kid shot down one imported beer after another as he read a fat classic-looking novel. Sooner or later the kid would have to get up and head for the bathroom.

About one time in five, the idiots left their backpacks unattended. Connor enjoyed giving somebody else a few hard knocks for a change.

After another fifteen minutes, the kid spread his paperback novel out on the table, squashed the spine with the palm of his hand to make sure it lay flat, then stood up. He rubbed the small of his back, scratched his shoulderblades, then shuffled toward the glass doors leading inside to the restrooms.

He left the backpack sitting at his place.

Connor shook his head at the kid’s stupidity. Feigning a yawn, he stood up, leaving the calculus book on the table. Someone would eventually pick it up. Looking as natural as could be, Connor strolled inside one door of the union, then out another door, circling back to the abandoned table as if it was his own. Don’t look at me. I just forgot this stuff.

The fat book face-down on the table said Anthem by Ayn Rand. Gee, just the type of light fluff everybody wanted to read while sitting out on the Union patio on a sunny late-spring afternoon. With a glance around, Connor shouldered the kid’s pack, then as an afterthought, he lifted up the book, flipped a few pages to lose the kid’s place, then set it back down again, smiling.

Moving quickly, but not hurriedly, he walked away. As he moved, Connor fondled the backpack; the slick nylon fabric slid across his fingertips. Mom and Dad probably bought it for the kid just before the semester started.

He sauntered around the side of the building, past a stained concrete loading ramp by the cafeteria and two dark green dumpsters surrounded by the cloying sweet-sour smell of old garbage. Sometimes it was fun to sit and watch the expressions of loss and confusion when the suckers came out to find their belongings gone, but Connor didn’t feel like it today. He’d been hanging out at Stanford for days, and the campus cops would catch onto his game sooner or later. He wanted to get out of the Bay Area as soon as possible.

He sat down on the tile lip of the dry fountain and unshouldered the pack. From this vantage point, Connor glanced up at the wandering students going in and out of the Union to use the photocopy machines and the pay phones. Still no sign of the kid. Maybe he had to take a crap.

Connor unzipped the pack and found three new spiral notebooks with white covers and a red Stanford Bookstore logo. Inside, the kid had taken crisp, meticulous notes about Melville’s use of metaphors. Connor dropped the notebooks on the ground.

In the front pocket Connor found a chocolate-chip granola bar, which he stuffed into his shirt pocket. He rummaged among a handful of pens and pencils, two pizza coupons, and just at the point of giving up, he found a twenty dollar bill taped to the fabric in back. It wasn’t the kid’s wallet, probably “emergency cash” that worried parents insisted their son keep “in case something happens.” Well, Connor needed it more than the kid did. Twenty bucks was twenty bucks.

Abandoning the pack, he got up and wandered down the mall, past poster vendors, jewelry makers with their wares displayed on rickety tables, someone selling cassettes from the Stanford Men’s Choir. He smelled new-mown grass in the air.

People milled about, but none of the college babes returned his looks. Although he kept himself reasonably clean, Connor was starting to look homeless. He had found a few dorms with open showers, and—like everything else—if he looked as if he knew what he was doing, nobody thought to stop him.

Connor had set his sights on going back to northern Arizona. His parents lived in Flagstaff, but he hadn’t spoken a word to his mother and father in twelve years. But he could walk in with a toothsome Prodigal Son grin on his face. What was the old saying? Home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in. He wanted to settle down for a while, figure out where to go next.

Connor found a kiosk with bulletins advertising student films playing in auditoriums, religious campus crusades, roommates wanted, tutoring services. He scrutinized the displays when something caught his eye. A flyer stood out, on vibrant pink paper with a handwritten message photocopied onto it:

DRIVE MY CAR TO ATLANTA FOR $500

Connor drew in a deep breath. Finally, something he could use! Glancing at the address, he yanked off the flyer.

The dorm was called Roble Hall—pronounced “Row-BLEE” by the person who answered the phone—and Connor Brooks found it by wandering around campus for an hour.

The three-story dorm rose, a towering sandstone edifice covered with ivy, like something straight out of the movies. The doors were painted white; the inside smelled like a damp old attic; the olive-green carpet was worn and threadbare. He went up the wrong staircase, came back down to a lounge filled with beat-up sofas that looked like they had been stolen from the Salvation Army, then backtracked until he found the room he was looking for.

“Yo!” the student said, opening the door. “You the guy who wants to drive my car? I’m Dave Hensch.”

What a prick. Hensch looked like a cut-out from the Mystery Date Game: V-neck sweater over a spotless white shirt, tan slacks, loafers. His mouse-brown hair was cut short, and his face had a baby-pink flush that suggested he still scrubbed behind his ears.

Connor offered Hensch his best smile, stroked back his lank blond hair, and extended his hand. He tried not to show his scorn for this preppie idiot. “Hi, I’m Connor. Nice to meet you.”

Hensch led him into the small room with rickety wooden furniture painted a sticky brown, a single bed with a red ribbed bedspread. “I’ll be flying back to Atlanta at the end of the summer, and I need to have my car waiting for me. It’s a long drive—you sure you’re up to it? No classes this semester?”

Connor sat down on the hard wooden chair by the narrow desk, looking comfortable because that always put the suckers at ease. In the metal trash can, an old banana peel masked the nursing-home smell in the room. “I’m taking a break this semester. And I’ve got relatives in Atlanta I haven’t seen in years. Besides, seeing the country is the best education.”

Hensch nodded. “Yeah, I know. My parents made me spend a summer in Europe for the same reason.”

Connor stifled a snort. He started to feel impatient. “So, Dave, what kind of car is it?”

“An old AMC Gremlin.” Hensch looked embarrassed. “Don’t laugh. It’s probably the crummiest car on campus, but it was my first set of wheels. I’ve spent more on repairs than the car ever cost me but, hey, I’m attached to it. Can you drive a stick?”

“Sure thing. I’m ready to leave at any time.” He put a concerned tone in his voice. “You sure you can get by without your car for the next few weeks?”

Hensch dismissed the thought. “I can always just rent one if I need it, right?”

“I suppose.” Rich bastard. Serves you right.

Hensch turned to the window. “Yesterday a few buddies and I took the car up to look at the oil spill, sort of as a going away bash. We wanted to be able to say we saw it firsthand, you know? Have you been there?”

“Yeah, I saw it up close.” Connor rubbed his hands together. “Now, you’ll pay the money up front, right? That’s the way these things usually work. I keep receipts and get reimbursed for my actual expenses of gas and lodging and stuff when I get to Atlanta?” He was making this up, but it sounded reasonable.

“That doesn’t give me much security,” Hensch said, looking doubtful. Bright points of red appeared on his skin, as if it embarrassed him to be negotiating money. “I understood that it’s usually done half and half. You get the rest of the cash when you deliver the car.”

Connor shrugged, then decided to press his luck. “That’s okay by me, if it makes you feel more comfortable. But could you at least loan me a hundred against the expenses? You know how much I’m going to spend just on gas to drive across the country, and it would be a hardship to do it all out of pocket.”

Hensch paused, then pulled out his wallet, sliding several bills out, flipping through as if he was used to counting fifty-dollar bills. “How about three hundred? That’s half plus an extra fifty. Good enough?”

“You got a deal, my friend.” Connor reached out to take the cash and shake Hensch’s hand.

“Oh, and I’ll need to see your driver’s license for ID. Got any accidents on your driving record?”

Connor froze for just a moment. This would be the test. He had a driver’s license, of course, but his name had been plastered around the papers ever since he had skipped out on the Zoroaster wreck. What if Hensch recognized him?

But to hesitate now would ruin everything. He flipped out his wallet and removed his license. “No accidents since I was in high school. I got a speeding ticket last year, but I went to traffic school and had it taken off my record. I think I’m a pretty safe driver.”

Hensch barely glanced at it, noting the credit cards in Connor’s wallet but certainly not guessing they had been stolen. “That’s all. Just wanted to make sure you had one.”

Connor was too shocked to feel immediate relief.

Hensch fiddled with the keys on the ring and pulled off two. “I’ll take you down to the car. I’ve got my folks’ Atlanta address, with detailed directions, plus some phone numbers for emergencies. I really appreciate this.”

Connor squeezed Hensch’s outstretched hand. “No, Dave. Thank you.”

Connor had been driving for more than an hour and a half, escaping the South Bay and cutting across to Interstate 5, the main traffic artery down California’s monotonous Central Valley.

The battered old AMC Gremlin looked like a scrunched artillery shell that had failed to detonate on impact. The body was bright lavender with a wide, curving white racing stripe. The old vehicle was probably worth little more than the five hundred dollars its owner was paying to have it driven across country.

It was a gas-guzzler, too.

As the engine whirred and rattled, bringing the car up to a maximum speed of 53 mph, Connor watched the gas gauge drop. Other cars passed by him like spawning fish swimming upstream, but he struggled along. When he reached the crossroads town of Santa Nella, he pulled off at one of the gas stations.

Santa Nella had a clot of fast-food restaurants, a giant motorized windmill advertising pea soup, and a few motels—though why anyone would want to stay in the middle of the empty Central Valley, Connor could not fathom. Cars pulled in and out in a confused tangle of too many drivers who had been behind the wheel for too long in one sitting.

A vehicle sat beside every pump at the gas station, as the owners jammed gas nozzles into their tanks. Connor waited in line behind a bronze Chevy pickup. He thumped his fingers on the dashboard. Ahead of him, an old man wearing a dark blue cap sporting a fertilizer logo moved with the speed of growing grass. “Just squeeze the handle and the gas’ll squirt out, grandpa!” he muttered to himself. “That’s the way it works.”

When it was finally his turn, Connor pulled up and got out, leaving the creaking door to hang half open. He opened the Gremlin’s gas tank and grabbed the fuel pump nozzle. A sour, rotten-egg smell drifted up to him from his car. He wrinkled his nose. “Smells like someone farted in there!”

He inserted the gas nozzle and began pumping, keeping his face down so as not to attract attention. The black rubber vapor sheath wrapped around the nozzle like a condom. Gasoline rushed into the Gremlin’s tank, and sharp gas fumes swirled all around.

He went to the outside cashier window, paid the attendant in cash, then drove off again.

Another car pulled up as he left. The driver took the pump nozzle, and slid it into his own gas tank, sniffing at the residual sulfur odor.

Connor intended to drive all night to reach Los Angeles, then hook east toward Las Vegas, and from there head to Arizona. He’d never driven the distance before, though he guessed it could be done in a straight day or two on the road.

But fat with the cash the Stanford clown had given him, Connor decided to spend the night in a nice motel, get a good shower, shave, make himself look presentable.

The Gremlin started acting up an hour or so before he expected to reach LA. He had just passed the crest of the Grapevine, the line of mountains blocking the Central Valley from the outer fringes of the southern California metropolis. Around him, rugged shoulders of mountains rose high above, spattered with bright freckles of orange, purple, and white wildflowers, now turning into dark shadows against the deepening indigo of the sky.

The engine stuttered as he climbed the pass, winding along as even loaded semi trucks crawled past him uphill. The car chugged as if in great pain, then caught again. At the crest, when the grade shifted downhill, Connor eased off on the accelerator.

The gauge showed his tank to be at least half full. He tapped on the dash board, but the needle hovered in the middle. Dammit! That crummy service station in Santa Nella must have watered their gas. The Gremlin sounded as if it had indigestion.

He kept wrestling with the steering wheel, fluttering his foot on the gas pedal. Angrily, he snapped the emergency flashers on and crawled along. Full night had fallen. If the car died now, he would be stranded in more ways than one, because he sure as hell couldn’t call Triple A, and he couldn’t wait for a CHP officer to pull up and help. The moment they found out Connor’s name, they’d snap on the cuffs.

He had just passed the exits for a middle-of-nowhere clot of gas stations and fast-food restaurants when the car died for good. It wheezed and gave a death rattle, allowing Connor just enough freedom to wrestle it to the side of the road.

In disgust, he climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Traffic soared past him on the freeway. A truck blatted past, rumbling downhill. He saw the stream of headlights and wondered why, of all those cars, he had to get one that didn’t last more than a few hours.

He lifted the hood, and the rotten-egg smell rose in a cloud all around him. He wished he had some effective way of venting his anger, like maybe throttling Dave Hensch. How had Hensch expected him to get all the way to Georgia in a junk heap like this? No wonder the preppie hadn’t wanted to drive it! Connor began to wonder if the kid and his snotty Stanford buddies were laughing it up, wondering where their patsy would be stranded. He walked around the Gremlin and kicked the tire as hard as he could.

Grumbling, Connor abandoned the dead car and hiked along the side of the road. One car honked at him, and he flipped a finger in response. He headed back toward the last exit, trying to figure out how to find some other form of transportation.

Chapter 20

Iris Shikozu’s lab at Stanford was like any other research lab, set up to fit the eccentricities of the lead scientist, without regard to how bewildering it might be to anyone else. Iris felt right at home; she knew where everything was, and didn’t care whether anyone else could find it.

Like a rat making its way through a high-tech maze, she moved past PCR systems, sequencers, film readers, an electrophoresis setup, log books, and image analyzers. The air seemed flat as she breathed it, the dulling metallic and plastic smells of new equipment mixed with old.

The lab’s stereo system played a live comeback album from the rock group Kansas. Her colleagues couldn’t figure out how she could concentrate with the stereo blaring, but the cheering audience and the music charged her with energy. She loved concerts. Competing with the music, a diffusion pump chugged as it kept the microbe containment vessels at low pressure; cryogenic pumps at the far end of the room added to the background noise.

Holding a styrofoam cup of potent black coffee, Iris stood in front of a whiteboard that ran the length of one wall. Chemical reaction equations were scribbled in blue, green, and black dry-erase marker. Some of the reactions were circled in red; some had exclamation points. A Polaroid camera sat on top of a filing cabinet; several instant photos balanced on the marker tray, recording important equations that had once been scribbled on the board. Iris rarely took the time to copy her work into a lab notebook; the Polaroids were faster.

Pacing, she studied the symbols, tapping her fingers against the desktop with the music. She needed to understand why her predictions based on the control sample of Kramer’s Prometheus organism were so different from actual measurements out on the spill. The rate-of-reaction equations circled in red were orders of magnitude too small. The tiny organisms were supercharged somehow, like the coffee that kick-started her brain. But Iris couldn’t find the catalyst driving the little buggers. It worried her when she didn’t understand something.

The Prometheus problem had sunk its claws into her, grabbing her focus so that she noticed little else. She took another sip of coffee, not caring that it was lukewarm. Iris had long since lost count of how many cups she had downed that morning.

She leaned back against a black laboratory table and tried to make sense of what she knew. She thought she understood how Prometheus worked. Prometheus had an appetite for octane—eight carbons and ten hydrogens in a straight chain—metabolizing it into water and carbon dioxide. But no organism would eat only one food, and with the myriad components of crude oil, the microbes should be munching shorter-chain hydrocarbons and some of the aromatic ring molecules.

Since the spraying, multi-spectral imagery from high-flying NASA planes showed a marked decrease in oil density around the spill. Prometheus was metabolizing the spilled crude more than a hundred times faster than expected. TV and print journalists had begun running feature stories about Kramer’s “miracle.”

It pleased Oilstar to no end—but Prometheus wasn’t supposed to be behaving that way.

Iris had taken samples from the surface of the spill where it had been treated with Prometheus. She detected plenty of carbon dioxide as waste product, as expected, but she also found substantial traces of sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid.

Alex Kramer and Mitchell Stone had delivered the original control sample of microbes only last week. Kramer claimed the sample had remained in a cryogenic container for over a year. “The microbes we’ll be spraying are identical, but one generation removed,” Stone had assured her.

After running simple tests on the control, Iris established microbe reaction rates, temporal densities, and localized activity, everything neatly pigeonholed in its own statistical universe. Routine stuff, but she took pride in her work. All of her predictions for Prometheus had been grounded on this baseline.

Were these latest anomalies happening because she had somehow goofed up her initial test run? A screwup causing this much variance could cause a genetic laboratory to lose its license, and Iris knew she wasn’t that sloppy. Her parents had imposed a rigorous work ethic and study regimen on her; Iris had hated it while growing up, but it had proved very useful once she got into Stanford. Now she was damned good at what she did, and she knew it. She had reviewed her work and found no errors—and so, logically, the problem must come from somewhere else.

The microbes Todd Severyn had sprayed on the oil spill just didn’t match the baseline. Nowhere close. The rates were all wrong. And that, in her opinion, was impossible.

Unless she had been given a fake control sample.

Her insides twisted with a rush of cold uneasiness, disbelief, and anger at being jerked around. Kramer did not seem the type to play practical jokes, nor did he seem so careless. She had read and admired some of his published papers on the Oilstar bioremediation work.

But a difference of this magnitude couldn’t possibly be a mistake.

The only way she could tell the two organisms apart was through a genetic check. It was tough enough tracking down minuscule differences in genetic structure without a devoted team and dedicated equipment. She had tried to use Schaeffer’s Autotrans 700 down the hall, but he had just upgraded his GeneWorks software and had not yet reconfigured the system. And she couldn’t pay for an outside service, either, since the state Environmental Policy and Inspection department had frozen its support of her work with Oilstar and a dozen regulatory agencies in the middle of their legal battles.

Besides, if Prometheus cleaned up the Zoroaster spill much faster than expected—that was terrific, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

Iris drained the rest of her coffee and turned from the whiteboard to pour herself another cup. On the stereo, the lead singer for Kansas urged her to “Carry on.”

She’d been in her teens when the Exxon Valdez had slathered the Alaskan coast with crude oil. Since then, certain microbial strains had been researched for various bioremediation applications, from plastic in landfills to toxic waste. Wall Street had seen enormous potential in startup bioremediation firms; even the White House had established a major initiative in biotechnology.

As she reached the bottom of her next cup of coffee, Iris started to feel a tingling buzz as her system became saturated with caffeine. Good. It helped her think.

Todd Severyn would have told her not to worry about the reaction rates. It doesn’t matter if everything fits with predictions, as long as it works! She didn’t know whether to scowl in annoyance or be amused at his ridiculous posturing. She couldn’t decide what she disliked most, his defensive reaction to her or his straightforward naivete.

But Todd had surprised her by bulldogging his way to get the spraying job done, and by sticking to his word even to the point of being arrested. It was a far cry from the whitewashing and polite lies that permeated faculty politics here at Stanford.

Iris found herself staring at the whiteboard. Turning, she poured the remainder of her coffee down a chemical disposal. Time to make a new pot.

The expected anomalies—the so-called “known unknowns” such as bacterial infection—were a cinch to account for because they had some kind of logical explanation.

But Prometheus had too many “unknown unknowns.”

Chapter 21

For the first time since the spill, Jackson Harris woke from a sound sleep in his own bed, instead of a sleeping bag on Angel Island. He blinked bleary eyes at the glowing green numbers on his digital clock on the nightstand next to his glass of water.

Daphne shook him awake again. “You’re gonna miss your interview, Jackson!” She was already up and dressed. He never understood how he could have been crazy enough to marry a genuine morning person.

Jackson and Daphne Harris had returned from Angel Island to their house in Oakland to prepare for several media interviews about their volunteer work. His stunt with the oil-covered pelican at Oilstar’s town meeting had been melodramatic, calculatedly so, but man did it make for great television! And there had been plenty of cameras to record it. No way did he mind media attention, not if it served the cause.

In an hour, he was scheduled to be interviewed in the San Francisco National Public Radio studio for their morning “Forum” show; then he would go to the KRON TV studio to tape a human-interest spot for the evening news on Channel 4. TV stations liked Harris because he was actually doing something about his convictions, getting volunteers to work, putting his money where his mouth was. And these interviews worked like magic, stirring up donations to keep the brothers and sisters going.

As he crawled out of bed, Harris smelled coffee brewing, a rich aroma that smelled good enough to waft off a commercial. He listened to the morning city sounds of Oakland: the traffic, the neighbors, the radio sounded too loud after days isolated on the island. He flinched with guilt, knowing his volunteers had to make do with the primitive facilities available on the state park.

Harris was convinced that the Prometheus microbe had made progress. The oil had a rotten smell now, and the globs of crude were thicker, as if the lighter hydrocarbons had dissolved away. But the volunteers had not lessened their efforts. As a warm shower pounded his body, Harris stood in a daze. His body had never ached like this in his life.

In his years working with the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, or fighting for city funding dollars, Harris had become outspoken. He had learned how to talk in front of an audience, how to drop sound bites so the reporters would quote exactly what he wanted them to, how to get them to ask the right follow-up questions.

Daphne handed him a cup of coffee and turned up the stereo as Harris dressed in his interview clothes, one of the rare times he dragged the suit and the tie out of the back corner of the closet. He loved good music, but being at the mercy of the too-much-talk Top 40 radio stations on the boom box out on Angel Island had made him grumpy. Humming to a classic Jackson Browne song, he tried three times to knot the tie evenly; Daphne finally had to straighten it for him.

He took a sip of coffee, then glanced at his watch; he had to split. He considered taking the cup in the car, but he would probably spill it all over his shirt during the commute. He gulped the rest instead, kissed Daphne, then headed for the door. She raised her eyebrows and gave him a thumbs-up as she stood on the porch. As soon as he left, she would start making phone calls, hunting down additional supplies or volunteers.

Outside, the morning was brisk, clear. A faint tracing of dew highlighted dusty streaks on his windshield. He felt refreshed, ready to take on any interviewer. At another time he might have felt nervous, with the beginnings of stage fright in his gut, but the Zoroaster spill had made him so angry that he couldn’t keep quiet.

Their home had a small yard and low property value, located too close to the BART mass-transit tracks—but it was home. He and Daphne had chosen to live there in the thick of things, among the people they wanted to help. The lawn was losing its battle against the thistles and weeds, which looked greener than the drying grass. A faint, sour odor of pesticide drifted over from his neighbor’s lawn, but the other grass didn’t look any better off. Gang graffiti was scrawled on some of the brick fences nearby, but street kids left him alone, especially since he had taken some of them on day trips out to state parks.

Normally, he would have taken BART into San Francisco, jostling and standing among all the other commuters, but neither the TV nor the radio station was close to the BART line; it would take him all morning if he worked his way through the labyrinth of MUNI bus service. Instead, he’d drive his own green Pinto station wagon, which had served him faithfully for 200,000 miles now.

When Harris sat behind the wheel, the springs creaked under him. He put the key into the ignition and tried to start the engine, but the Pinto groaned and coughed like a cat trying to spit up a furball. Something smelled rotten, worse than the burnt-rubber smell of the old vinyl seats. He frowned and twisted the key again. He hadn’t been having any trouble with the car. The engine struggled, but would not turn over.

Harris slammed his palm on the steering wheel, eliciting a thin peep from the horn. He couldn’t miss his interview. “Why today, of all days?” The car didn’t answer. Daphne peeked out at him from the small kitchen window and duck away. He tried the key once more, with no better luck. He looked at his watch again.

Harris ran inside the house. Daphne was already on the phone, trying to call emergency road service. The line was busy. She hung up and dialed again. Frustrated, Harris grabbed the thick Oakland telephone book and flipped to the yellow pages.

“I don’t have time for this, baby,” he told her.

“I know you don’t.”

She called one emergency service listing after another; most of the lines were busy. She mimicked one recording with a sarcastic, old-biddy voice, “sorry, but all of our personnel are currently out on calls assisting other customers.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Harris asked. “This is the dumbest excuse I ever heard of for missing a big interview! When was the last time we drove the car?”

“Yesterday. It sounded kind of ragged then.”

“It always sounds ragged.”

Daphne finally got through to the last place listed, but after she cocked her head and listened for a moment, she slammed the receiver down. “Fifteen names ahead of us,” she said, “at least a two-hour wait.”

“Why on Earth are all the emergency vehicles already out on calls? What the hell is going on?” Harris muttered.

Daphne waggled her finger at him. “Bitch about it later, Jackson. Right now you get your ass down to the BART station, then get a cab inside San Francisco.”

“A cab! We can’t afford that!”

“You can’t afford to miss this interview either. This is important. Now go!” She swatted him on the butt as he sprinted out the door.

In his best clothes, Jackson Harris began to run toward the BART station.

Chapter 22

In the early morning rush hour, Todd Severyn joined three million other people trying to stampede into the city, bumper to bumper. By now he hated downtown San Francisco and wanted desperately to be back in Wyoming.

His arraignment hearing was set for 10:00 AM.

Crawling across the Bay Bridge, expensive foreign cars surrounded him, BMWs and Mercedes with conservative paint jobs, Porsches in blazing tasteless colors. They all kept a car length from Todd’s heavy Ford pickup that could squash them in a second. He rolled up the windows after choking down some of the noxious fumes. Toward the horizon, even the air had a gray-brown tinge.

Wearing new polyester slacks—bought for the impending arraignment—instead of his usual jeans, Todd was hot and uncomfortable. He hoped he would make a good impression; he had even polished his boots. He seemed to squeak when he moved, and he had nicked himself shaving.

He wasn’t supposed to do anything but stand and look innocent—and get there on time. Oilstar’s lawyers would handle the rest, but that didn’t put him at ease. He’d never even met them.

Through gaps in the bridge guard rails, he caught glimpses of the glittering water underneath. Oil still shone on the surface, but it seemed sparse now, clumpier. Dozens of recovery boats dotted the black lake, nibbling at the perimeter. Alex’s little Prometheus bugs seemed to be working.

The traffic inched ahead. Todd had the urge to pound his fist on the loud horn of his truck, but that would make him look as bad as the other city jerks. A charcoal-gray Mercedes in front of him belched bluish smoke from its diesel engine; in the car beside him he could see a woman squinting in her rear-view mirror, applying makeup; behind him, a man read the newspaper while driving, casting an occasional glance at the road.

Todd leaned forward and turned up the radio. The country & western DJ spent more time jabbering than playing music. He wished the guy would just shut up and get on with the tunes.

“—unusually high number of breakdowns, making traffic on all Bay Area freeways a real mess. Two cars stalled or out of gas on the Golden Gate Bridge, one on the Bayshore freeway, three on the San Mateo Bridge. Dumbarton’s clear—so far. You cowhands must have had one rough weekend to forget to fill up your cars! The rest of you all, be prepared for a long ride into the City.”

Finally, the DJ played a new Weird Al single, “The Wreck of the Oilstar Zoroaster” to the tune of an old Gordon Lightfoot song. Todd slapped the steering wheel and guffawed.

He glanced at his watch; in Wyoming it would have taken him less than twenty minutes to cover twice the distance. He tried not to let it get to him. Short of ramming the car up front, there was little he could do about it.

Another ten minutes passed before he moved far enough ahead to see the amber, blue, and red lights of a CHP cruiser. Three new vehicles cluttered the right-hand lane: a wine-colored Lexus, a Honda Accord, and a Mistubishi something-or-other. What the heck was going on here—nails in the road? A pileup? New cars didn’t just break down by themselves, all at the same time. Smiling to himself, he muttered, “Next time, buy American!”

Traffic muscled its way past, like an arm-wrestling match between aggressive drivers. Todd moved his big truck into the gap and gritted his teeth. Other cars moved out of his way, and eventually traffic accelerated to its normal hectic pace.

The confusing maze of exits off the bridge came up soon, shooting streams of traffic in every direction like silver balls in a pinball game. Todd got the panicky sensation of not knowing where he was going, with too many cars around him to forgive mistakes. He finally spotted a green-and-white sign directing him to the Civic Center turnoff, and he sighed in relief. He craned his neck and noticed two other cars—a van and a VW Beetle stalled on the exit ramp. Must be a good day for towing services.

Once off the freeway, he began fighting stoplights, crazy intersections, and idiots double-parked right in the lanes of traffic. He kept glancing down at the folded map on the passenger seat, trying to find his next turn, but he could barely keep track of all the streets he passed. At each forced stop, he rechecked his route. He looked at his watch, a solid Timex he had owned for ten years, helplessly watching the minutes tick away. Jeez, he thought he had left himself plenty of time.

In one intersection, two business-suited men pushed a car out of the street toward a gas station. Todd wondered if everyone had gone wacko… or crazier than usual. Maybe the fumes from the oil spill were causing brain damage.

When he reached the courthouse, an imposing white structure that looked exactly like a movie-lot version of a hall of justice, Todd found a place to park with surprisingly little difficulty. He wondered if part of the workforce had stayed home; was today one of those weird government holidays celebrated only by banks, post offices, and nobody else? He checked his Timex again; his hearing was scheduled to start in six minutes.

Todd and Alex had separate hearings, separate lawyers, all paid for by Oilstar. The Oilstar lawyers were probably pissing their pants right now waiting for him. Todd had no desire to show up late and be slapped with contempt charges. He slammed the door of his Ford and began jogging along the sidewalk to the large judicial building. His cowboy boots clomped on the concrete.

Inside, striding down an echoing courthouse hallway that had dozens of doors on each side, he turned the wrong way before he managed to locate the hearing chamber. People were lined up in the halls, arguing with various officials and guards. Some seemed incensed about sudden cancellations. Todd self-consciously combed his sweaty hair, swallowed, and hurried through the swinging door. When he stepped into the room, he paused, breathless and puzzled.

Bare beige walls, theater-like seats, and pale wood accented the chamber. The judge’s desk was empty, though, and even the lights were not fully turned up. Two security guards spoke in low tones at the front of the room; one wore a blue turban. An old man slouched in the back of the chamber, wearing a tan trenchcoat and working on a crossword puzzle.

“Where the heck is everybody?” Todd said. He remembered the ominous words in his arrest warrant: “Reckless endangerment of human life and property; illegal dispersal of a possible toxic substance; disregard for public safety.” Had his hearing been canceled, or rescheduled? Why hadn’t anybody let him know? Where were the Oilstar lawyers?

The guards looked up as he approached. “Can I help you?” The blue turbaned towel-head was dressed in a crisp brown uniform, a gold badge, and a nametag that read ORENIO.

“I’m here for the hearing. What’s going on?”

Orenio shrugged. “A lot of cancellations this morning, sir. Didn’t you see what’s happening on the streets?”

“I thought you all would be used to traffic by now.”

“Never been this bad, no,” Orenio said. He looked Todd up and down, taking in the cowboy boots, polyester slacks, and bolo tie. “It is a mess out there.”

Todd frowned. “What about my arraignment?”

“It will certainly be rescheduled. No judge. Where is your own lawyer, sir?”

Todd shook his head in bewilderment. “What a circus!”

Orenio nodded quickly, as if his chin were having a spasm. “Judge called from her car phone to cancel this morning’s hearings—we have had a bulletin out for the past half hour on all stations. Something is very strange out there. Very strange.”

The other guard rolled his eyes as if it were an old argument between them.

Todd wondered if he should fill out a form, leave some sort of record that he had come to the hearing, but the clerks at the windows were swamped, and he had no intention of waiting in line. He hated lines. He just wanted to leave….

Back in his truck, Todd tried to navigate his way to the Bay Bridge as he drove, counting seconds until he could escape from the noise and the smell and the chaos. He had a splitting headache, and he wanted an ice-cold Coors. He passed a young dark-haired man parked in a loading zone, hunched over the steering wheel as he tried and tried to get the engine of his delivery truck to turn over.

Flicking on the radio, Todd caught a fragment of a sentence. The DJ was still talking! Someone had accused Oilstar—oh, brother!—of releasing a bad batch of gasoline that was causing all the cars to stall at once. He supposed that made a certain amount of paranoid sense, since people always wanted a handy, simplistic explanation for all the world’s ills. Maybe ghosts or space aliens had contaminated the gas. Ever since the Zoroaster spill, Oilstar bashing had been a popular pastime for the media.

When the DJ kept talking, Todd switched off the radio and drove in silence toward the Oilstar refinery to check in.

Chapter 23

The Manzano mountains at the northeastern end of the Kirtland Air Force Base did little to block the desert wind. Behind the scrubby foothills on a conical volcanic rise, the 11.5-foot diameter telescope was just a blob in the dust storm. Brigadier General Bayclock thought how ironic it was that they were trying to show off a far-seeing observatory, when they could barely see a hundred feet themselves. But the weather didn’t see fit to cooperate with the general’s orders.

On the mountaintop, Bayclock stood stiffly for the cameras, hating every second of the bullshit. No marching band, no sunshine—it was turning out to be a crummy ceremony. Albuquerque Mayor David Reinski and a Department of Energy rep, Lance Nedermyer, hovered behind him.

The star of the show was Speaker of the House Jeffrey Mayeaux, who had flown from Washington, D.C., to observe the ceremony, since technology transfer was one of the Speaker’s pet projects. Mayeaux seemed to be in his element, not bothered by the weather and making the best of the cameras; his attitude impressed Bayclock.

The piss-poor visibility disappointed Bayclock. He had overhauled the base, working all personnel double-time to pick up every scrap of litter, straighten every bush, repaint every building, wax every floor for Mayeaux’s visit—and this damned dust storm had ruined everything.

Mayeaux’s comments for the cameras had sounded as if they were scripted. Bayclock had seen plenty of that rah-rah bullshit in print before. The Speaker somehow managed to shake hands with anyone who passed within striking distance. He smiled so much his teeth were probably getting sand-blasted.

The tech-transfer ceremony at the Air Force telescope facility was over, and the dozen official participants, wearing dust-spattered uniforms and suits, shielded their faces. Nedermyer fiddled with a pair of clip-on sunglasses. Local reporters hung around like overgrown puppies.

“This way, Mr. Speaker,” Bayclock said, gesturing toward the minivans that would shuttle them back to the headquarters building. Mayeaux was the highest-level government official Bayclock had ever hosted at the base. The Speaker of the House wasn’t directly responsible for Bayclock’s orders, but reporters fell over themselves to follow the Louisiana politician like circus spectators. He let scandals wash over him as if they were silly challenges.

Lance Nedermyer stood between Bayclock and Mayeaux, looking out of place in his dark suit and wing-tipped shoes. His tie flapped in the wind. He raised his voice much louder than necessary. “The new-technology telescope will be an indispensable part of our research down at White Sands, Mr. Speaker, tracking the smallsats. I apologize that the project director, Dr. Lockwood, couldn’t make the ceremony. Apparently he had other priorities.”

The tracking and logistical support for the solar-power receiving station down at White Sands fell under Nedermyer’s purview. Scientists and jerkoffs, Bayclock thought, all talk and big ideas and never anything tangible to show for it. “The Air Force is also cooperating fully in this venture,” Bayclock added.

“Yes,” Mayeaux said, turning a shrewd glance toward Bayclock. “I was very interested to read about that in the briefing materials, along with some of the top-notch defense work you’re doing here at the base. Your people are concentrating on directed-energy technology now, General? I was most impressed to read about that drone plane you shot down in the 1970s.”

Bayclock tried to hide his embarrassment. Mayeaux must have flipped through the briefing materials and memorized an item or two just so he could drop appropriate comments in conversation. Bayclock wished he had picked a different example, though. Long before Kirtland had been put under his command, propeller-heads at the base’s research arm had tested a laser to shoot down aircraft—and decades later he still didn’t have a working laser-weapon in any of his planes.

“Uh, yes sir,” Bayclock said. “We’re developing another laser to fit in an aircraft that can fly above most of the atmosphere and destroy ballistic missiles. We’re also researching high-power microwaves. They held an interesting test the other day.” And damn near shot down a fuel-tanker airplane. “We’ve even got a bunch of doomettes working on Star Trek-style plasma weapons—compact toroids, they call them.”

Nedermyer bent closer as he pushed into the conversation. “Uh, bear in mind, though, Mr. Speaker, that the R&D phase of new concepts is sometimes rather prolonged.”

Bayclock himself held no hope that the Buck Rogers weapons would work within the next fifty years, but he didn’t say that. He couldn’t get excited about anything he wasn’t able to strap onto an F 22 today.

Mayeaux nodded. “Even though results sometimes seem a long time forthcoming, we must continue to invest in basic research for our own survival as a nation.” He smiled and shook Bayclock’s hand with a grip that was as firm and dry as an adobe brick. Impressive. Bayclock’s previous experience with career politicians had been that their handshakes were sweaty and slimy, and the lack of pressure was equalled only by their lack of trustworthiness. Mayeaux wasn’t afraid to meet his gaze.

“Without fundamental weapons research, we wouldn’t have even a breech-loaded rifle, not to mention the latest high-tech weapons. Our jet fighters are the best in the world, thanks to scientists like yours pushing the envelope. Let them know we appreciate it.”

Bayclock narrowed his eyes as he grudgingly considered the point. Without the techno-nerds, Bayclock himself would never have been able to pull a fighter into a nine-gee turn, to keep a bandit in his sights with a night infra-red tracker/pointer, and pull off a supersonic air-to-air kill. That was worth something, wasn’t it? Every man had his job to do; as much as he hated to admit it, Bayclock had no problem with that.

Mayor David Reinski accompanied them to the waiting shuttle van. He had come ostensibly to represent the University of New Mexico, but he seemed cowed by the Speaker’s presence. Nedermyer, on the other hand, couldn’t stop talking. As they climbed into the back of the minivan, Nedermyer took off his glasses and brushed his florid face. His lacquered hair stuck out in stiff chunks from the whipping wind. His midriff had started to go to fat, probably from babysitting too many desks. The driver, a young Hispanic lieutenant, slid the van’s heavy door shut with a thump. The sudden silence sounded loud in Bayclock’s ears.

“Glad that’s over,” Mayeaux said with a smile. “I’ve enjoyed visiting your facility, General, but you can keep your desert wind. I’m getting on a plane to San Diego instead. I’ve requested the Naval base commander there to arrange for pleasant weather, along with a little New Orleans-style hospitality.”

They all chuckled. The armed forces often provided free flights to high-level government types for on-site “research,” if they agreed to stop by the bases for a bit of PR. Bayclock said, “Too bad your family couldn’t come with you, Mr. Speaker.”

Mayeaux shrugged. “Damn shame, isn’t it? They’re spending some time back home. My wife keeps herself so busy with social causes she rarely gets a chance to accompany me.” They buckled their seatbelts as the lieutenant swung up into the driver’s seat. The wind rattled the windows.

Mayeaux turned to Nedermyer. “From what I’ve heard, that solar-power experiment at White Sands could have a big impact. My staff tells me this Lockwood fellow is quite the miracle worker.”

Nedermyer smiled tightly. “Don’t believe everything your staff tells you, Mr. Speaker. Between the microwave farm and the railgun satellite launcher at White Sands, DOE has some hard funding decisions to make. You of all people know we can’t throw money at everything.”

Bayclock raised an eyebrow. A DOE person who was not afraid to speak his mind? He nodded to himself, making a mental note. “I’ve received orders from high up to logistically support the White Sands operation. It seems to have top priority.”

Now Nedermyer turned to him. “People and priorities change, General.” Bayclock wondered what Nedermyer’s private agenda might be.

“We all have our own priorities, gentlemen,” Mayeaux said in a voice as smooth and hard and cold as polished granite. “And now that we’ve met, I think we’ll be able to work well together in the future… whatever might come up.”

Chapter 24

After driving for hours in the rental Mazda, Spencer Lockwood passed the bleak, low hills rimming the Central Valley and headed east into oil country. The arrow-straight roads across the flatlands reminded him of rural farm lanes, with crops on either side and clods of mud on the pavement left behind by lumbering farm machinery. He kept the air conditioning turned up high, rolling up the windows to seal out the thick farm smells.

Spencer grabbed a fast-food hamburger in Bakersfield for a late dinner, then checked into the least expensive room he could find. He didn’t care about TV or telephones or adult movies. Without much interest, he flipped through the yellowed Gideon material in the nightstand drawer and went to bed early, stretching out on the lumpy mattress, listening to the rise and fall of traffic noises outside, and feeling tension drain from him as he let his mind wander. He had wanted the road trip to think, and so he concentrated on what next to do with his project, now that his Sandia excursion had failed miserably.

Twenty more completed solar-power smallsats sat in storage at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. Scheduling their launch aboard one of the shuttle flights had always been problematic, as was using a Delta Clipper or even one of the Pegasus rockets.

Sandia’s prototype railgun on Oscura Peak seemed a viable alternative for launching smallsats, but the rails needed to be extended so the satellite could reach a proper orbit. Unlike delicate space probes or megachannel communications satellites, the smallsats were simple energy collectors with microwave transmitters. They could withstand the huge acceleration of an electromagneti catapult. Perhaps the railgun people would be interested in teaming up for a test case, once they upgraded their equipment; but that might take years.

He finally drifted off to sleep without coming up with any new ideas.

Spencer woke up refreshed, though a bit stiff. Unfolding the road map of California, he saw that it wouldn’t take him much out of his way to cut through Death Valley National Monument—a place he had always wanted to see. He would never make the trip otherwise, and he’d always resent never taking the time if he skipped it now. “What the heck,” he said, “I’m doing the rest of this road trip on impulse.”

He made a quick call to Rita Fellenstein to inform her he was going to be a little later than he thought; she knew better than to bring up any business and just left him alone.

The previous night had been chilly, and the white Mazda chugged and grunted as he tried to start it. When the engine finally caught, Spencer sniffed a sulfurous odor, muttered to himself about the “Bakersfield stench,” then drove off.

He wound past grassy hummocks studded with an arsenal of oil pumps toiling away. The road plunged through Kern Canyon, sheer cliffs covered with wildflowers rising on either side. The river boiling with spring thaw and the rugged rocks made for spectacular scenery, but horrific driving conditions. Other trucks and cars took the curves wide, usually not bothering to check if someone might be in the oncoming lane. He hugged the cliff wall as he drove, sitting bolt upright.

Despite the challenging road, Spencer found his thoughts returning to his high school days when a girl named Sandy—an odd name, considering that her hair was coal black—had taken the bright nerdy kid under her wing as a social welfare project.

Sandy was the older sister of one of Spencer’s equally nerdy buddies. She talked Spencer into trading his black-rimmed glasses for hard contact lenses. She convinced him to go to a hair stylist to get his hair cut, rather than having his mother do it. She ruthlessly went through his closet like a guard weeding out prisoners; she paid no attention to his protests as she tossed out threadbare plaid shirts he had worn since junior high, corduroy pants that rode too high above his ankles, shirts with pen-stained pockets—and then she took him shopping.

Spencer rapidly developed a crush on Sandy, but she had no romantic interest in her “project”; she just wanted to see if she could turn an ugly duckling into a swan. He was content to wait, knowing that someday that special girl would come into his life. Newly charged with self-confidence, he entered college as a different person. From that point on, he had Sandy to thank for his success in life as much as his mentor Dr. Seth Mansfield. Now if he could just find the girl with the sunburned nose….

After about an hour of mountain driving Spencer approached a gas station with a house trailer behind it. A sign at the side of the road announced “Dick Morgret’s LAST CHANCE Gas Station.” He glanced at his fuel gauge, surprised to see he had only about a quarter of a tank left. He had filled up in Bakersfield the night before, and he had been traveling only a few hours. “Stupid rental car!” he muttered. Or had someone siphoned his tank?

He decelerated swiftly and pulled into the station’s gravel drive. A breeze kicked up dust, obscuring a Marlboro sign rocking back and forth on metal feet. The place looked abandoned, but as soon as Spencer stopped the car, the plywood door of the house trailer creaked open, and an old man in coveralls clomped down the metal steps. The man—Morgret himself?—raised a hand in greeting, then picked up a bucket and squeegee next to the cigarette sign.

Spencer glanced at the pumps, saw no Self-Serve sign, and waited for the old man to come over. He popped the gas tank.

“Morning,” Morgret said. “Fill her up? Or are you just one of those piss-heads wanting directions?”

Spencer couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “No, give me all the gas you can fit in the tank.”

Morgret grinned again, exposing brown teeth. “For that, you get your windshield washed. You’re going to have plenty of bugs splattered across it once you get down to the desert. It’s butterfly season, and the air is full of them.”

Morgret yanked the hose from the pump and slid the metal nozzle into Spencer’s gas tank. His weathered face puckered up at the rotten smell. “What you got in there, son?”

Spencer shrugged, distracted by the surrounding mountains and the isolation. “It’s a rental car.” Horses ambled across a scrubby clearing in the distance, and he wondered if it was a wild herd. He hadn’t had a chance to look at the scenery without risking driving off a cliff. “Is this really the last gas station before you get out of the mountains?”

Morgret chuckled. “Nah, there’s another one twenty miles down the road, before you hit Highway 395. The sign makes for good business, though.”

“I bet.”

Morgret left the pump while he grabbed the dripping squeegee and slathered the windshield. “Nobody reads close enough. Sign says Dick Morgret’s Last Chance. This station is my last chance—I got nothing but this house trailer, squatter’s rights on this land, and a pretty damn shaky line of credit with the oil company. If this place goes belly up, I might as well do the same.” He finished the windshield, then went back to squirt a few more cents into the tank to round out the dollar. “Twenty one bucks.”

As Spencer paid him, Morgret said, “You get that car checked, you hear? Don’t like that funny smell. Something’s wrong with your catalytic converter, I bet.”

Spencer nodded. “I’ll report it when I turn in the car.”

As he drove off, Spencer saw the old man sniff the nozzle on his pump, then shuffle back toward his house trailer.

Only a few hours later, Spencer stared at the gas gauge in disbelief, then managed to wrestle the dying Mazda Protege off the road to the gravelly shoulder. For the last ten miles the rental car sounded like it was gargling gasoline. He wondered if it had a slow leak in the gas tank.

Feeling as desolate as the landscape around him, Spencer opened the car door and stepped out onto the road, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun.

It was the worst place in the world for a car to break down.

He had driven out of the Sierra Nevadas into the expanse of the Mojave Desert, past forests of gnarly Joshua trees. Some of the towns on his map were no more than rusty signs, boarded-up houses, and abandoned motels.

The car expired as he reached the intersection of Highway 136, coming from the Lone Pine Indian Reservation. The two roads met at a stop sign, but Spencer could not imagine two vehicles being on the road at the same time. He was totally alone.

He stood beside the open car door and peered into the distance. Nothing. The surrounding stillness swallowed all other background noise. He saw the volcanic Inyo Mountains in front of him, swirls of caustic white powder whipped up like dust devils from breezes over the dry lake bed to his left. He saw no blade of grass, no living thing other than a few mesquite bushes and cactus.

And he was stranded there. Spencer hoped someone would come by sooner or later. He listened to the wind. He popped the hood, listening to the faint sounds of gurgling and wheezing in the engine. The Mazda was a rental car, after all, but he could see nothing obviously wrong, no snapped belts, no loose hoses. The radiator had not overheated. The rotten-egg smell clung to everything, but he could not imagine where it came from. He sighed, feeling his stomach churn. This was supposed to be a relaxing trip, a way to get away from it all. Perhaps he had gotten too far away from it all….

Ten minutes later, he was decidedly uneasy. Still no cars. Could people die out here because their cars broke down? Chances of a highway patrol cruising this section of road seemed slim. He realized with a sinking feeling that Rita Fellenstein had only a vague idea where he was. How long would it be before anybody started searching for him? Or would they?

He suddenly felt thirsty. There was no place for shade, and he did not want to leave his car. He had to stay there, just in case somebody came.

Just in case.

Fifteen minutes more. His shirt clung to him. How long would he wait? The desert silence was maddening.

Finally Spencer heard a throbbing in the air, a distant hum, and he snapped to alertness. He wondered if it might just be a plane flying overhead. He squinted down the road, watching the liquid heat make the air ripple over the blacktop like gasoline fumes rising from a tank. In the clear, empty air, Spencer heard the engine much sooner than he made out the shape of the approaching vehicle. As soon as he could discern a jeep clipping toward him at 90 miles an hour, Spencer stood in the middle of the road waving his hands.

What if the driver passed him by? Spencer didn’t usually stop to help people with car trouble. He redoubled his efforts and shouted, “Hey!”

The pitch of the oncoming engine changed as the driver downshifted. Spencer stepped back to his car, trying to figure out what to say.

His rescuer drove a black jeep jacked up for high clearance and off-road driving. The jeep slewed in a partial doughnut, spraying sand and gravel from the road shoulder as it stopped. The canvas top flapped from a loose snap, showing tools, a cooler, and rumpled clothes tossed in the back. Spencer walked toward the jeep as the driver’s door popped open.

The young man’s face was sunburned. The size of a football player, he looked clean-cut and friendly. He wore tattered jeans, a t-shirt with NAVY emblazoned on the front, and a broad grin. “Boy, lousy place for a car to break down.”

“You’re telling me!” Spencer said. “Could you lend me a hand? I think I’ve got a leak in the gas tank—I just filled up a couple hours ago, but I’m on empty already. You don’t happen to have a spare can with you, do you? A gallon or two would get me to another town where I can dump this hunk of junk.”

“Take more than a gallon to get to a town where you can trade in a rental car.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Bobby Carron. I don’t have a spare gas can, but I do have a hose. We could siphon some of my gas into your tank. That should get you to Lone Pine, about twenty miles back on 136.”

“All I need is a phone.”

“Then that’ll do ya. Ridgecrest is where I’m heading, China Lake Naval Weapons Center. A lot bigger city, but that’ll take you an hour. If you got a leaky gas tank, I wouldn’t chance it.”

Bobby Carron rummaged around in the back of his jeep, finally pulling out a length of narrow hose. “I do a lot of off-roading in this puppy. Need to be prepared for most anything.”

From the dust and caked mud on the sides of the jeep, Spencer could imagine some of the places Bobby Carron might have taken his vehicle. “Anything I can do to help?” asked Spencer.

“Yeah, pop your gas tank,” Bobby said, sliding one end of the hose into his own tank. He got down on his knees, put the end of the tube in his mouth and sucked, puckering his cheeks as he drew gasoline out of his tank.

When fuel finally gushed out, Bobby grimaced and spat, then jammed the other end of the hose into Spencer’s tank. The spoiled reek drifted out of the rental car’s gas tank. “Problems with the catalytic converter, I think,” Spencer repeated Dick Morgret’s diagnosis.

Bobby sniffed. “I smell like that myself when I’ve had too much Mexican food.”

Bobby let a few gallons flow into Spencer’s car, then pulled out the hose, letting the gas trickle back into his jeep’s tank. “That should take you far enough to get some decent help. Sorry I couldn’t do more, but I gotta get back to the base.”

“You’re a life saver, Bobby. Thanks a million!”

Bobby made a dismissive gesture. “No problem. Glad to be of service.” He rolled up the hose and tossed it in back of his jeep. “Let’s prime your carburetor so you can get going.”

Spencer let Bobby tinker under the hood for a few moments. “All right, try it!” Bobby said.

Spencer started the car, heaving a sigh of relief to hear the engine rumbling. If his tank did indeed have a leak, he would lead-foot it to the next town. He’d had enough of this supposedly relaxing side trip. It was time to call an end to this vacation, and just get himself back to White Sands.

Bobby Carron honked the jeep’s horn as he spun around, then peeled off on the desert highway toward the China Lake Naval Base.

Chapter 25

The coffee at Stanford’s Tressider Union wasn’t any better than the stuff from Iris Shikozu’s own pot—but sometimes she just had to get out of the lab, smell the morning air, and watch the other students going about their business.

When she had only light teaching duties to muddle her post-doc work, she took a break each morning to sit under one of the red-and-white umbrellas at Tressider, sipping coffee as she read the student paper. But today she took a large cup to go and tucked a copy of the paper under her arm.

A shocking picture of a scrawny, grime-smeared black man holding an oil-smothered pelican dominated the front. An old photo of herself, oversized glasses and all, appeared in the lower right-hand corner. The article said that Stanford researcher Iris Shikozu had overseen the Prometheus spraying. The reporter made Iris out to be a patsy for the big oil company, while Todd Severyn and Alex Kramer, not to mention Oilstar management, were the bad guys. Some students, irate at her involvement, had made crank phone calls to her lab, but Iris just snapped back at them.

On the kiosks she had seen flyers announcing a rally against Oilstar that morning, but the turnout of protesters was much lighter than Iris expected—only a few people waving banners and attempting to pass out leaflets to other students who had no interest. Their noise seemed insignificant in the laid-back flow of students in the mall.

Stanford hadn’t experienced a real protest in years, but she thought that frustration over the Zoroaster spill would have brought the demonstrators out screaming. Maybe everyone wanted to see if Prometheus worked before they complained—and although thick crude continued to gurgle from the sunken tanker, the spreading slick was shrinking measurably.

A few people claimed a connection between Prometheus and the rash of car breakdowns supposedly caused by a “bad batch” of gasoline from the Oilstar refinery. To disprove those rumors, Iris herself agreed to perform a quickie analysis for one of the TV stations looking for a scoop, just to prove that the two couldn’t be linked. She had even shipped blind samples via overnight mail to a few of her colleagues.

Now, as she took her styrofoam cup of coffee and made her way across campus, dodging bicyclists and skateboarders, Iris barely noticed the groups of students playing tag-football, frisbee, or just lazing in the sun. By the time she returned to her lab, the combustion-product spectrograph analysis of the bad gasoline would be complete.

The door to her lab was unlocked. Refilling her cup from the coffee pot at the table, Iris listened to the answering machine. After a message from the TV station querying about her analysis, Todd Severyn’s twangy voice came on, stuttering in an attempt to ask her to return the call. She smiled. It must have been hard for the old cowboy to ask her to do that. I wonder what he’d be like in bed….

Sipping the coffee, Iris strode around the gas chromatograph hooked up to the experimental chamber, then slid into the chair and tapped on the keyboard. This would prove once and for all there was no connection between the breakdowns and Prometheus.

A long string of numbers appeared, highlighting an array of expected parameters. Frowning, Iris clicked on an additional data file and compared the two in silence. It didn’t make any sense.

She put down her cup, intently watching the screen. The jagged trace of a spectrograph jittered across the monitor, exactly matching the first.

She ran back her analysis of the Prometheus microbe eating the spilled oil and a sample she had obtained of the supposedly bad gasoline.

No difference.

The Prometheus microbe had infected the gas tanks in the cars that had broken down.

They can’t be the same! she thought. There was no vector. How did the microbe find its way into the gas tanks?

Her hands shook as she ran through her computerized rolodex to find Kramer’s number at Oilstar. First the Prometheus reaction rates were drastically different from what she had observed with her control specimen. Now, the organism seemed to have gotten into automobile gas tanks. Had it found a way to go airborne? Before giving her unofficial OK to the spraying operations, Iris had run numerous tests on the control sample—none of this should have been possible.

Unless Kramer had used two different microbes: one for her initial tests, and a more voracious one to be sprayed onto the Bay… where it would cause all sorts of havoc.

After six rings, a computerized voice instructed her to leave a voicemail message for Dr. Kramer. She hung up and tried again. Who could she call if Alex wasn’t around? She tried to remember—there was that jerk at the party… what was his name, Mitchell Stone? She dialed again, asking the Oilstar operator to connect her. Iris waited impatiently for him to answer, then finally slammed the phone down.

Damn! She brushed her black hair with a quick swipe and reached for her coffee. Draining the dregs, she paced, thinking of Mitch Stone, then Kramer’s party… then Todd Severyn.

It would be an excuse to call him. Otherwise, that Wyoming cowboy would keep bugging her until she went out with him, saying “ma’am” and “aww, shucks” every chance he got. Normally, she wouldn’t allow herself to be distracted by personal affairs, but there was something about him… was it his honesty that attracted her to him, or his naiveté?

She decided to wait before calling Todd to see if he knew how to reach Alex Kramer. She would recheck her work. First order of business. Drawing in a breath, she turned back to the spectrometer. She vowed to watch over every incubation period, recheck every procedure until things turned out right.

Things didn’t turn out right.

Iris watched the screen, at a loss for words. Being overly meticulous, she had taken three hours to go through the two-hour checklist. In the meantime she placed cautious calls to the labs where she had Fed-Expressed blind samples the day before. Her colleagues confirmed her analysis, but she gave them no details.

Kramer’s microbes were breaking down the oil spill, and now they were in the gas tanks. Eating gasoline.

Another quick call to Oilstar confirmed that Kramer was still out. Frustrated, she hung up the phone just in time to have it ring again, startling her. She grabbed the receiver, but it was only the TV news crew bugging her about the analysis. She put them off by using multisyllable technical jargon and saying she needed to recalibrate her results. If she talked now, she would send them into a panic!

Her mind started to reel with the implications of what she had discovered.

No use putting it off anymore; Todd might know how to reach Kramer. Plus, he probably had more common sense than most Oilstar people. Or anyone else, for that matter. She tapped the black lab table for a moment, then returned to the phone.

Rewinding her answering machine, she listened to the message again and dialed Todd’s number.

Chapter 26

Just off the exit ramp Connor Brooks could see the colored lights of BP, Union 76, Shell, Chevron, Texaco, and Oilstar gas stations. If Connor was going to rip anybody off, he decided it should be Oilstar. No question about it. They had already done enough to him.

He had hiked in the breakdown lane from the dead hulk of the lavender Gremlin as traffic whooshed past. Though it was ten o’clock at night, cars pulled in and out of the gas stations clustered in the exit-ramp oasis in a steady stream.

He glanced at the cars at the pumps, but did not see what he was looking for, nothing he could use. The tile-roofed station looked too quaint to be real. He went inside the Star-Shoppe convenience store and, using some of the money Dave Hensch had given him, bought one of the three-foot-long ropes of jalapeno beef jerky. The overweight clod running the cash register looked about as interested in his job as an Army doctor checking a thousand new recruits for hernias. All the better, Connor thought. Then he went out to stand at the pay phone.

Connor chewed on his beef jerky, picked up the phone and pretended to talk into it as he watched the cars come and go.

A mustard-yellow Volkswagen bus, a silver Honda, a red Nissan pickup, a Chevy, another Honda, a Toyota, a big black Caddy, a rusty pickup piled high with old furniture and cardboard boxes, a low-rider El Camino, three Winnebago campers in a convoy. He saw college students in the cars, families with kids, grandma and grandpa with a poodle barking behind a rolled-up window, a group of college girls coming back from a skiing trip.

But Connor saw no opportunities. Still, shit would happen, if he waited long enough.

He hung up the phone, walked around the building, then went back to his vigil. He had eaten all but four inches of his beef jerky by the time he made his move.

An old station wagon with fake wood sidewalls pulled up; it had only one man inside. The driver opened the door and clambered out, dressed in old jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, needing a shave, and stumbling as if he had been driving for the last four years without a break. Like a horse with blinders on, the gangly man headed for the rest room. He left the station wagon’s lights on, the engine running. Perfect.

Connor strode toward the car. Hesitation only wasted time.

By the time the driver had slipped through the battered gray door of the men’s room, Connor reached the station wagon. Not the type of vehicle he would have preferred, but he wasn’t picky.

He opened the driver’s door and slid inside. Connor’s heart pounded. No one had seen anything yet. Maybe this would teach the jerk to be more careful next time.

The seats were worn, and the interior smelled like burned garbage. The ash tray overflowed with crushed-out cigarillo tips. Connor scowled. Slob! But he didn’t care, as long as the car could take him to Flagstaff, Arizona. He adjusted the seat, gunned the engine, then put the station wagon into gear. “Ready or not, here I come!”

Just as the station wagon started moving, the gangly driver suddenly walked out of the rest room. He stopped for a moment, as if astonished to see someone stealing his car. Then he jumped in front of the station wagon, waving his hands for Connor to stop.

What? Does he think I’m stupid?

Connor jammed the gear shift into reverse and lurched away from the driver. The man had stringy black hair, dripping wet, as if he had just gone in to splash cold water on his face. His flannel shirt hung unbuttoned over a grimy t-shirt, flapping like wings as he flailed his arms.

Before Connor could put the car into gear again and drive the other direction, the driver snatched at the door handle. “Asshole! Get outta my car!”

Connor used his elbow to shove down the door lock, then reached behind him to lock the back and the passenger side doors. The driver shouted, pounding on the windows, yelling for help.

Connor gunned the engine again and began to move. People turned and stared at the scene. For God’s sake, Connor thought, did the whole world get extra points for causing him trouble?

The driver threw himself in front of the car, hammering his fists on the hood. Connor tried to swerve, but in a split instant he realized that even if he did get away, the driver would call the police, give the license number of his car, a description of the thief—and the highway patrol would be crawling all over the interstate looking for him in no time. Christ, what a mess!

It would be better if this guy couldn’t say anything coherent for a little while, Connor thought. Just a little while.

Without spending a lot of time checking it out with his conscience, Connor yanked the steering wheel to the side and brought the station wagon around into the shouting driver. Beside the gas pumps stood a black oil drum with a plastic liner. Connor swerved to knock the man into the trash barrel.

He didn’t notice the concrete support pillars holding the barrel in place. The station wagon crushed the driver into the barrel and then the reinforced concrete pillar. Instead of toppling the trash can out of the way, the car smashed the man with a loud, sickening crunch. The front bumper of the station wagon struck him at the hips, ramming into the unyielding cement. The oil drum buckled.

A flower of blood burst out of the driver’s mouth, accompanied by a scream that Connor barely heard. He pulled the shift into reverse, backing the car away.

The man fell to the pavement. The crumpled oil drum rolled on top of him. Other gas station customers began shouting, running toward him.

“Oh, shit!” Connor said. “Why didn’t you get out of the way?” If he stopped to help the crazy bastard, he’d be caught red-handed stealing the car. When the cops ran his ID check, they would find the outstanding Zoroaster charges. All because this jerk felt his crappy old station wagon was worth dying for? Of all the stupid things! No thanks.

The car’s owner lay bunched against the gas pumps as two people bent over him. Blood streamed from his mouth and nose. The fat kid swaggered out of the Star-Shoppe to see what the fuss was about, then turned so pale his pimples faded.

“Forget this!” Connor said, then stomped on the accelerator pedal, spinning tires and squealing out of the parking lot.

He could get back on the Interstate, hook east on the 210, then north on I-5 to I-40, which would take him to Flagstaff. If he didn’t stop, he could make it in six or seven hours.

It would take the cops an hour to figure out what had gone down at the gas station, even longer if the driver wasn’t in any condition to talk. Connor could sail right past them. And the highway patrol would expect him to try to vanish into the sprawl of Los Angeles, not head east to the state line.

Besides, it wasn’t his fault.

Connor roared up the entrance ramp, flowing into the relentless stream of traffic. Behind him, the lights of the gas station oasis dwindled in the distance.

Now he was home free.

Chapter 27

In her small cubicle, surrounded by identical cubicles in the offices of Surety Insurance, Heather Dixon wondered why the receptionist kept forwarding calls to her. She stared at the pile of insurance claims on her desk. Even though she had worked one claim after another without taking a break all day, the stack of papers waiting to be processed grew two inches every hour.

She was working harder than an administrator. Funny they weren’t willing to pay her for it.

She punched a button on the phone to pick up the call, then held the receiver between her shoulder and ear as she filed proof-of-loss forms. “Surety Insurance Company, may I help you?”

“I hope so,” said the thin male voice on the line, “you’re the eighth person I’ve been transferred to.”

“Sorry, sir. We’ve been unusually busy, and—”

“I understand,” the man said at the ragged end of patience, “and I’m normally a laid-back person. But if you will just take my information and promise it’ll be straightened out, we can both be done in a flash. Deal?” He had a no-nonsense voice that might have been pleasant if he hadn’t been pushed to the edge.

“Yes, sir. Let’s see what we can do.”

“I’ve given my name a dozen times. Could you please punch it up on your computer? I’m Spencer Lockwood, spelled just like it sounds. I was driving my rental car, a Mazda Protege, and it broke down near Death Valley, California.” He rattled off the words as if he had memorized them. “I couldn’t get a replacement from the rental car company, so I was forced to rent another one on my own. Now that I’m back in New Mexico, I’m calling to ask if the emergency road service on my own policy will cover the new rental, because the rental company refuses to pay.”

“How can they turn down a request like that?” she asked, scowling. “Did they give you any reason?”

Lockwood said, “They told me I should have just waited a day or so—by the side of the road, presumably—and they would have had a new car delivered to me. Since I refused to wait for them, they claim they’re not obligated.”

Heather sighed, then yanked reddish-brown hair back behind her ears. It was one of her most unflattering ways of wearing it, but she was too harried to notice. The young college students manning the receptionist desks refused to deal with anything out of the ordinary, especially on a horrendously busy day like this. They input only the routine claims and let the computers bump the questionable ones higher in the system.

“You really should discuss this with your own agent,” said Heather.

“My agent’s been gone for a week, and I’d just as soon get this taken care of. I don’t have time to chase down errors once they get lodged in your computer’s brain.”

Heather took down the pertinent data on a form. Lockwood was trying admirably to be nice, so she made an effort on his behalf. “All right, Mr. Lockwood. I’ll do what I can. It’ll take a week or so before you get confirmation of our discussion and Surety’s decision, but I won’t let it get lost in the shuffle. Promise.”

“Thank you,” Spencer said. “You deserve a promotion for this!” He laughed.

“Yes I do,” she agreed, but she wasn’t laughing.

She held onto Lockwood’s form for a few moments, pondering where in the pile it should go. Suddenly, Albert “You can call me Al!” Sysco was there, rapping his palms on her desktop.

“So this is where the holdup is! Paperwork’s piled on your desk, and you’re sitting around daydreaming. Shake it, Heather!”

She wanted to take a baseball bat and “shake it” on his head. But she went back to work without voicing any of the retorts that popped into her head.

She sorted through the stack of papers. They would all need to be keyed into the computers before the claims could be processed, and Lockwood’s form would have to be vetted by someone in authority, someone like Al Sysco. Heather glared at him as he stormed away, then she stamped APPROVED on Lockwood’s claim.

Smiling, she filed it in the box of completed forms.

Chapter 28

When Todd reached Alex Kramer’s office in Oilstar’s bioremediation facility, he found the door locked. Yellow phone-message slips were taped to his door, one on top of another until they made a stack. Todd flipped through them. A note from Iris was on top; the bottom one was dated three days earlier. Two days after the victory party. He frowned.

Most of the other offices seemed empty as well, as if Oilstar had declared an employee holiday. Mitch Stone’s office also stood closed; a handwritten note was stuck with a red push-pin into the wall above his name plaque. “WORKING AT HOME. CAR TROUBLE.”

Around the Bay Area, cars were breaking down right and left—the “bad gasoline” from the Oilstar refinery had hit far too many vehicles, and now fingers were pointing at other area refineries, as well. A few people suspected deliberate sabotage of the gasoline output.

Frustrated, Todd got the division secretary to waddle down the hall and open Alex’s office for him. Todd followed her, as if he could herd her into greater speed. “He called in sick a few days ago,” she said. “Haven’t seen him since.”

Todd stared into a dark empty room. Concern gnawed at him. What if some radical protester like that Torgens guy decided to go after the scientist responsible for the Prometheus microbe?

Inside, the desk was neat, all the papers filed, as if Alex knew he wasn’t coming back. A part of him expected to see sheets draped over the furniture. “You haven’t heard from him since, when, Tuesday?”

The secretary shrugged. “I don’t know, Mr. Severyn—we’ve got so many people out with the traffic snarls and breakdowns that I can’t keep track. I’m not their mother, you know.”

“Never mind.” He opened his wallet and dug out Alex’s unlisted phone number as he walked into the office. Picking up the desk phone, he asked out of the corner of his mouth, “What number do I use to dial out? Seven?”

“Eight.”

He punched the number while the secretary watched him suspiciously.

Alex’s phone rang, but no one answered; even the answering machine was disconnected. That was odd. Alex had not looked well after their wild horse ride. What if he was alone at home, too sick to answer the phone?

“You’re sure he didn’t call? Wouldn’t somebody call in sick if they weren’t going to come in for work?”

She sighed, poking her lower lip out at him. A thin smear of lipstick had deposited itself on her teeth. “Usually, but a lot of these scientists live in a different universe. We had one guy who never managed to button his shirts right, and another one who had to be reminded to take lunch every day. They’re on flex time. They work late into the night sometimes, and other times they don’t come in at all. Especially with Dr. Kramer’s… uh, personal problems, we don’t see a lot of him.”

Todd listened to ten hollow rings before hanging up. Remembering the victory celebration, he recalled the closed room filled with treasured pictures of lost family members. Alex Kramer lived alone. No one else would worry about him if Todd didn’t check. Besides, he’d promised Iris to see what he could find out. “I think I’m going to drive over there.”

Grabbing his cowboy hat, he clomped out of the office, leaving the secretary to lock up behind him.

Out in the parking lot, his own truck started right up. He breathed a sigh of relief, then wound his way out of the cluttered, narrow roads inside the refinery, out the gates past the usual batch of yelling protesters, then headed for the San Rafael bridge that would take him to Marin county.

Todd had no problem until he got on the freeway. Weaving past stalled vehicles—more than he had ever seen before—he found that the far left lane was open. Traffic crawled along, but at least it moved. He felt his stomach rumble with anxiety and impatience, worried about Alex but also growing more dismayed as he passed a van hauling a motorboat stalled off to the side of the road, then a motorcycle, then a Toyota, finally a tow-truck itself abandoned in the breakdown lane. He turned his head, suddenly filled with confused fear.

When Todd finally made his way through the hilly backroads, he was relieved to see Alex’s four-wheel drive pickup in the gravel drive. The brown Chevy sat parked next to Alex’s ranch house, which looked closed-up and abandoned. Alex must be home—but why hadn’t he answered the phone? Could he be out riding one of the horses?

Todd’s truck bounced in the driveway as he pulled up. Swinging down from the cab, he ambled to the door, trying to look calm but growing more uneasy with each step. He rang the doorbell. Nothing. He rang again and shouted, “Hey, Alex, you in there?” Impatient, he tried the doorknob, then pounded on the door—still no answer. The grassy hills and nearby forest smothered all sound.

Muttering, he walked around back, his boots crunching in the dry grass. He heard neighing as he approached and smelled the bright, fresh odor of the stables. The two horses trotted to the fence as he approached. Todd held out a hand as the palomino, Ren, nuzzled him, looking for a sugar cube or a carrot. He noticed that the back corral gate was wide open, but the horses had remained next to the stable.

Todd scanned the back yard, then went to close the gate. The horses followed him like lonely puppies. “Hey, Alex!”

When no one answered, he ran a hand along Ren’s neck. The crisp animal smell made him long for Wyoming. “Sorry, buddy. I’ll get you some sugar later.” He swung over the wooden fence and walked across the corral. The horses followed, even to the point of nudging Todd with wet noses. He half expected to see Alex come out of the stable, but the place was vacant. Worse yet, the feeding trough was empty. Ren whinnied.

“Hold on,” said Todd. He slipped into the barn and returned with a rustling armload of hay, which he dumped into the trough. The dry, weedy scent clung to his shirt. Todd found the smell pleasant. The horses pushed toward the food and ignored him. As they munched, Todd rubbed the sweaty back of his neck.

Obviously the horses had not been fed for a day or two. No one had seen Alex since the party. Something terrible must have happened to make him neglect his horses. From what Todd had noticed on their ride, Alex doted on the animals.

Something must have happened to him.

Despite their empty smiles and bubbly “Have a nice day!” comments, Todd thought Californians were particularly callous to their neighbors. They never checked on each other or watched each other’s homes, barely managing to wave when they went to get the mail. If some tragedy had happened to Alex, the other residents would turn a blind eye until somebody else took care of the problem.

Well, Todd wasn’t from California, and in Wyoming people watched out for each other.

Todd strode to the rear of the house, around flower beds gone to weeds. A picnic table out back sat streaked with caked dust, and the blue-and-white overhead umbrella had been rolled down for some time. At the back door, he pulled open the screen and rattled the knob on the white-painted door, but the back door was locked solid with a deadbolt.

He didn’t give much thought to calling for help. Who was Todd to file a missing persons report anyway? He had spoken to Alex after the celebration, gone on a brief horse ride with him, but he could not claim to be a long-time friend. Did Alex have any long-time friends? The police would tell Todd to wait a few days, check back, maybe something would turn up.

But Todd kept imagining Alex unconscious or dead on the floor inside his house. He would rather pay for some broken glass than leave the microbiologist inside.

Besides, he could always apologize later.

Todd spotted the smallest window he could crawl through, the laundry room by the mud room in the rear hall. He jiggled the window frame. It was locked, but loose.

He jogged back to his truck for the tool kit, rummaging and clanking around until he found a large wooden-handled screwdriver. Returning to the back window, working quickly but carefully, he jimmied the frame open without breaking the pane. He supposed that living in the country gave Alex a sense of security, enough that he wouldn’t have sophisticated locks. On their ranch in Wyoming, Todd’s parents rarely bothered to lock their doors.

Crawling through the window, he found himself in the clean hall back by a washer and dryer; he smelled the old perfume of laundry detergent, but saw no clothes in the plastic baskets piled on top of the dryer.

“Alex?” He hurried through the house, looking from side to side. All the lights were off, the curtains drawn, leaving the place in gloom. He kept expecting to find Alex crumpled on the floor, perhaps bleeding. Moving from room to room, he hastened his search. Nothing.

Alex’s truck was here, the doors were locked, the horses had been left unfed for days, but they were both here…. Alex did not seem the type just to wander off.

Todd stood in the large living room next to the wet bar and looked out the bay windows in back. He debated saddling up one of the horses to go search the riding paths. What if Alex had gone out after dark, after Todd left, troubled by the horse ride and the conversation, the resurrected memories? In the dimness, Alex could have stumbled and broken his neck, or fallen into a ravine, or had a heart attack.

But the house seemed to be holding secrets, shadows hiding around corners. The air felt cool and sluggish around him, as if it had not been disturbed for some time.

A faint, gritty odor made him look at the fireplace, to see a rumpled pile of papers and ashes, a solid stack of lab notebooks with burned edges. The crisped, bubbled outline of a blue-and-gold Oilstar logo adorned one of the cardboard covers. He brushed aside the black metal mesh screen. Black flakes of ash curled up from the consumed papers.

A gnawing sensation grew at the pit of his stomach. On the phone Iris had told him she suspected something terribly wrong with the spread of Prometheus, but she wanted to talk to Alex before she raised any alarm. Why would Alex burn a pile of old notebooks, when he could just throw them away?

Unless he didn’t want anybody to find them.

“Alex?” Todd called again, then swallowed a lump in his throat. His stomach fluttered, then sank as he grew more certain he would not find the microbiologist. At least not alive.

He walked down the narrow hall to the bedrooms, past the bathroom which smelled mildewy from old soap and clean guest towels. The floorboards creaked under his cowboy boots as he continued to the back rooms. The bed in the master bedroom was made, but the bedspread rumpled and the pillow cocked sideways, as if Alex had lain on it for a while before getting up and going somewhere else.

On the nightstand, next to a clear glass half full of water, lay a bulky old Smith & Wesson double-action revolver. Todd recognized it as one of the older models, 1930 or 1940, but it had been recently cleaned. He could smell the cold, hard metallic aroma of the firearm.

Todd went cautiously to the bedside and picked up the weapon, wrapping his palm around the handle-grip. The Smith & Wesson felt slick, but Todd realized it was his own sweat. He sniffed the barrel, but smelled no acrid gunpowder that would tell him it had been fired recently. He couldn’t understand why Alex had taken the gun out, then left it lying around the house. Had he lost his nerve over something? Todd wet his lips.

When he turned back to the hall, Todd saw that the door to the other bedroom stood shut, as if closed against prying eyes. Todd gripped the cold doorknob and hesitated.

“Alex? Are you in there?” he said, then knocked lightly.

After a moment of silence, Todd took a deep breath, then pushed the door open slowly, expecting it to creak, afraid something might jump out at him.

The miniblinds had been drawn, leaving the muffled room awash in watery gray light. Before Todd’s eyes could adjust, he smelled a dry, sour smell of wrongness, the lingering pit-of-the-stomach twist of death, the stench of dried flesh.

Alex sat on a padded kitchen chair in the middle of the room, slumped and motionless, as if gravity had slowly sagged him.

“Alex!” Todd said, then snapped out of his sluggish shock. He slapped the wall twice before he found the light switch. Sharp yellow illumination sent the shadows and murkiness fleeing. “Awww, jeez, Alex!”

Todd took two steps forward and stopped. Alex Kramer rested in a rubbery position, as if his joints had turned liquid for a moment, then frozen into place with rigor mortis. His skin had the grayish, mottled appearance of someone who had been dead for a day or so.

His head had cocked forward on his neck, resting his chin and his neat peppery-gray beard against the base of his throat. His eyes were squeezed shut, surrounded with the cobwebs of wrinkles.

He wore comfortable clothes, faded jeans, a work shirt, no shoes and grayish-white socks. In his lap he clutched his eyeglasses folded in one hand. The other hand gripped a picture frame, turned face down against his jeans.

Todd stepped forward, clumsy like an intruder, but driven. He reached out for the picture frame, but then the pointed toe of his boot kicked something that rattled hollowly on the floor under the chair.

He bent over and picked up three dark-orange prescription pill bottles. Todd didn’t recognize the names of the drugs, but they sounded like high-strength pain killers. Under a strip of bright cellophane tape, the date on one prescription label had expired five years before.

The pieces fell into place, rattling like bones in an empty cup. Todd pictured Alex taking out the revolver in the master bedroom, lying restless on the bed, agonizing over his decision to kill himself, and then eventually choosing another way, a method that was not so violent. But ultimately just as effective.

Todd stood on creaking knees, blinked his stinging eyes several times, and touched the picture frame in Alex’s lap. He lifted, then pried the photograph free of the dead man’s grip. It showed a handsome woman, classy-looking, with short hair and subtle, careful makeup. She wore a secret smile that seemed to slide right past Todd, as if she had directed it at someone else.

“Why the heck did you have to do this, Alex?” Todd whispered, squeezing the brim of his cowboy hat in his left hand. “Nothing could have been that bad.”

On the walls in the memorial bedroom, the other photographs, certificates, documents, seemed to hum with background noise, ghosts and memories, frozen moments that Alex had trapped in this room and had refused to set free. And now he had burned all his notes on Prometheus, then gone to join his family.

Todd stood up, his head spinning but his body unable to move. Finally, with one last glance at Alex, he went to find a phone so he could call the police, Oilstar, and Iris Shikozu.

Chapter 29

Iris Shikozu felt like she was stuck on the Titanic, knowing it was doomed to sink but unable to do anything.

Aside from the muted chugging of the vacuum pumps and the air conditioner in her lab, she heard no students out in the hall, no clicking of shoes as people walked by, not even the distant sound of a professor droning on in a lecture room. She hadn’t even bothered to turn on the stereo not since Todd had told her that he was going to Alex Kramer’s house. She wished he would call, if for no other reason than to confirm what she had uncovered about Prometheus and the transportation breakdowns.

Genetic assays had proved that Prometheus was destroying gasoline as well as devouring the Zoroaster spill. And the actual microbe Alex Kramer had provided for the spraying operations was very different from the innocuous control sample he had given Iris for initial testing and verification.

Through Francis Plerry at Environmental Policy and Inspection, Iris had urged a drastic crackdown on gasoline sales and transportation beyond the Bay Area, at least until they could determine the spread of the Prometheus organism. But the governor had refused to take an action that might cause a panic.

Iris spread the word anyway, hoping someone would refute her results; but every one of her colleagues came up with the same answer. Several of the other researchers immediately saw the implications, and everyone started making phone calls.

Random samples of gasoline were infected with Prometheus hybrids. Unexplained breakdowns were reported across the state, and the contamination was spreading exponentially from gas tank to gas tank, filling station to filling station. On the news last night, Iris had seen a story about rashes of mechanical failures popping up in Chicago, Denver, and Dallas. It was a plague, plain and simple. A petroleum plague.

In a fit of panic, she went to the small lab sink next to the coffee pot and scrubbed her hands three times with a bar of harsh pumice soap. If this microbe metabolized octane so voraciously, it might eat the shorter-chain hydrocarbons in her own body. She looked over the instruments she had touched. The organism might start breaking down other polymers.

She grabbed her old styrofoam cup and poured herself more steaming coffee, sipping it black as she fought to keep her hands from trembling.

The phone shrilled at her. Nearly spilling her coffee, she wove her way around the cluttered equipment and grabbed the phone on the third ring, breathless. “Hello?”

“Iris, this is Todd.” He sounded too serious.

“Can I talk to Dr. Kramer? This is really important!”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?” She stopped, unsure of what to say. “How can he just drop dead and leave us with this mess?” Iris set her small mouth, then sat down in a creaking old office chair behind her desk. She knocked papers aside to clear a spot to rest her elbow. “Todd, you have no idea how serious this is! Kramer did something to his Prometheus—”

“I know. Alex burned his notes at home, then he killed himself. You should see all the cars breaking down on the roads. Whatever he did, it’s spreading like crazy! I thought he promised it couldn’t become airborne.”

“Right now,” Iris said, a thick lump of panic rising in her throat, “I don’t believe much of anything Dr. Kramer promised.” Trying to remain calm, Iris picked up a pen and tapped it nervously on the surface of her government-surplus desk. “I’m pretty sure Prometheus is being spread from gas station to gas station. As a contaminated car fills up, it leaves some of the microbes on the nozzle. Everyone else who gets gas there picks up the infection.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“Right now we need to quarantine the area, the whole state of California if necessary. And the faster we act, the sooner we can stop it from spreading. Cars can’t run very long if their gas is infected, so that puts an upper limit on how far they can transport it. If we can get the police to close down the state borders—”

“What about airplanes, or ships?”

“Prometheus is fairly specific in attacking octane only,” said Iris. “I’ve got to go, there’s too much to do, too many people to contact. This is going to be rough.”

Todd was silent for a moment. “I’m at Alex’s place, and I’ve got to wait for the police and the coroner. I think… I think he’s been planning this. He asked me to take care of his horses a few days ago.” He hesitated. “How else do you need me to help?”

Her mind raced ahead, prioritizing which agencies to contact. She found her hands shaking—with excitement, or fear? She had too many things to do. “Uh, I have to get through to Oilstar management. There’s really no one I can depend on….”

“Do you need me down in Stanford?”

“Yeah, sure.” Her answer came too fast, and she realized that she did want him there, if nothing more than to provide comfort while she was trying to sort through this emergency. If only she had more time!

Then she focused on what he was saying and interrupted him. “No, wait, no telling how long any of our vehicles is going to last. You might have a hard time getting all the way down here.”

“You just start coordinating how we can go after this thing. I’ll worry about me,” Todd said. “And hey, if you need a contact at Oilstar, I’ll march right into Emma Branson’s office even if I have to knock over the receptionist. Don’t you take any grief from anyone either.”

“Do I usually?”

A pause, then a chuckle. “No, I don’t think so.”

As she hung up Iris was already going over the details of what had to be done. If this was truly a plague, there had to be contingency plans at the Centers for Disease Control, the National Military Command Center, the Federal Emergency Management Agency—dozens of places that should be able to offer her guidance.

Francis Plerry. She had to go through him again. He wouldn’t be much help, but he could set a few wheels in motion. At the very least he should have access to the governor in Sacramento. Iris looked for her rolodex, found it behind her mammoth-sized CRC Handbook of chemical data, and fumbled though the white cards until she pulled out Plerry’s number. The first time she dialed she got a busy signal. Damn!

Picking up her cup of coffee, she took a big gulp that stung her tongue and dialed again. The ringing seemed to go on forever before a brusque female voice answered and put her on hold.

She reached for her coffee again. Seconds ticked away. How long would it take for the governor to impose a vehicle quarantine that would make the Med-fly incident look like a joke?

“Hello?”

“Mr. Plerry? This is Iris Shikozu, from Stanford—”

As she started to speak, the white styrofoam of her coffee cup turned spongy, as if melting. Then it sloughed over her fingers. Warm liquid splashed down her blouse. Iris jumped back, shaking her hand and staring at the cup.

The coffee wasn’t that hot. What could make the cup break down like that? Something that broke down styrofoam… hydrocarbon polymers….

She felt her knees turn watery.

Plerry’s voice came from the phone, now on the floor. “Hello, Dr. Shikozu? Are you all right?”

Iris stood transfixed, staring as the cup turned into a frothy white foam with a faint, muffled crackling sound in the puddle of coffee on the floor. She slid off the chair and fell to her knees. “Oh, no.”

“Dr. Shikozu?”

Iris dipped her fingers in the gooey remains of the cup and plucked at the white, fizzing strands. The Prometheus vector was no longer confined to direct physical contact.

The microbe now attacked petroleum plastics as well as gasoline.

And it was airborne.