The Gold Coast

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  And the fact is, Houston puts in a better afternoon’s effort than he has in weeks and weeks. By God, McPherson thinks, looking over his list of Things To Do before he goes home—we might pull it off after all.

  68

  Jim sleeps on his living room couch through the day, curled on his side around a tensely knotted stomach. He wakes often, each time more exhausted than the last. Every time he gains enough autonomy to pull himself upright, he calls Hana. No answer, no answering machine. More uneasy, unrestful sleep. His dreams are sickening, the problems in them more outlandishly insoluble than ever before. In the last of them he dreams he and all his friends have been captured by the Russians and held in the Kremlin. He tries to escape through a pinball machine, but the glass top slides back too quickly and cuts off his head. He has to climb back out and go through the ordeal of finding his head without the help of his eyes, then place the head back on his neck and balance it there very carefully. No one will believe he is walking around with his head chopped off. Premier Kerens, in a uniform with lots of medals, is flanked by Debbie and Angela and Gabriela, all wearing nothing but underwear bottoms. “Okay,” the premier says, holding up a device like an artificial hand that will cut out hearts. “You choose which one goes first.”

  He wakes up sweating, his stomach clenched as if by cramp.

  About two P.M. he tries Hana again, and she answers.

  “Hello?”

  “Ah? Oh! Hana! It’s Jim. I’ve … been trying to get hold of you.”

  “Have you.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t home. Listen, ah, Hana—”

  “Jim, I don’t feel like talking to you right now.”

  “No, Hana, no—I’m sorry!”

  But she’s hung up.

  “Shit!” He slams down the phone so hard it almost cracks. After a moment he dials the number again. Busy signal, hateful sound. She’s left the phone off the cradle. No chance for contact. It’s so stupid! “Oh, man.”

  He wants to go up there, beg her forgiveness. Then he gets angry at the unfairness of it, he wants her to beg his forgiveness, for being so unreasonable. “Come on! I was just having dinner with a friend! After the funeral of another friend!” But that isn’t exactly true. He pulls his big Mexican cookbook from the shelf and furiously slams it to the floor, kicks it across the kitchen. Very satisfying, until the moment he stops.

  An hour later, angrier than ever, he calls up Arthur. “Arthur, have you got anything ready to go?”

  “Well—come on over and we’ll talk about it.”

  Jim tracks over to Arthur’s place in Fountain Valley. Arthur’s face is flushed, he is in a strong field of excitement, he takes Jim’s upper arm in a tight grip and grins. “Okay, Jim, we’re on for another strike, but this one’s a little different. The target is Laguna Space Research.” His straightforward blue gaze asks the obvious question.

  Jim says, “What about the night watchmen they made the announcement about?”

  “They’ve been taken out of the plants and are out on the perimeter.”

  “Why?” Jim doesn’t understand.

  Arthur shrugs. “We’re not sure. Someone bombed a computer company’s plant up in Silicon Valley, and a janitor inside was killed. Not our doing, but LSR doesn’t know that. So they’re going to automatic defenses and a perimeter watch. It’s going to be a little more dangerous. We’ve got them all running scared. But this time—well, I wasn’t going to call you, because it was LSR.”

  Jim nods. “I appreciate it. But it’s the ballistic missile defense system we’re going after, right?”

  “Right. LSR has the lion’s share of the boost-phase defense, Ball Lightning as they call it. A successful strike against it could be devastating.” Arthur’s excitement is evident in the tightness of his grip on Jim’s arm.

  “I want to do it,” Jim says.

  It’s the only avenue of action left to him, and he can’t stand not to act; the tension in him would drive him mad. “My father’s in another program, this won’t have anything to do with him. Besides, it has to be done. It has to be done if anything is ever going to change!”

  Arthur nods, still looking at him closely. “Good man. It’ll be easier with your help, I’ll admit that.”

  Gently Jim shifts his arm out of Arthur’s grip. Arthur looks at his hand, surprised. “I’m wired,” he confesses. “It’s tomorrow night, see. Tomorrow night, and I thought I was doing it on my own.”

  “Same procedure?”

  “Yeah, everything’ll go just the same. Should be simple, as long as we keep a good distance away and under cover, and…”

  Jim listens to Arthur absently, distracted by his own anger, by everything else. He thought the commitment to action would release some of the tension in him; instead he is more tense than ever, he almost needs to bend over, give in to the contraction of the stomach muscles. Laguna Space Research … Well, do it! None of these companies should be exempt! Something has to be done!

  It’s time to act, at last.

  69

  Sandy hears about the planned attack on LSR from Bob Tompkins, who gives him a call that afternoon. “Good news, Sandy. Raymond is going to give us a hand in the matter of the lost laundry. Our guardian angel is going to have some trouble tomorrow night, at about midnight. One of those accidents that have been happening lately, you know.”

  “One of Arthur’s ventures?” Sandy asks.

  Brief silence at the other end. “Yeah, but let’s not talk about it in too much detail now. The point is, when the accident happens our guardian angels will have their hands full, and it’ll be on the side opposite our little aquatic problem, so we think surveillance there will be temporarily abandoned. If you’re ready out there, you’ll be able to rescue the laundry you had to put on hold.”

  “I don’t know, Bob.” Sandy is frowning to himself. “I don’t like the sound of it, to tell you the truth.”

  “We need that laundry, Sandy. And since you put it there, you’ll have the easiest time finding it again.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “Come on, Sandy. We didn’t make the mess. In fact, we’re the ones making you the opportunity to get out of it gracefully. Solvently. Just go for a little night boating, cruise in to your beach, collect the laundry, and return. There won’t be a problem tomorrow night, and all will be well.”

  Sandy recognizes the threat behind the pleasantry, and in some ways it does sound like a very easy out of a sticky dilemma, which up to this point has only offered him the choice of either big debt, or the permanent loss of his Blacks Cliffs friends (at best). And it does sound like it will go.…

  “Okay,” he says unwillingly. “I’ll do it. I’ll need some help, though. My assistant from last time probably won’t be interested.”

  “We’ll send someone, along with the keys to a motorboat based in Dana Point. In fact I may come myself.”

  “That would be good. What time does this happen?”

  “Tomorrow, midnight.”

  “All right. And you’ll show when?”

  “I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning. Me or a friend will meet you in Dana Point in the evening.”

  “All right.”

  “Tubular, man. See you then.”

  Sandy calls Tash and asks for his help, but as he expected, Tash refuses to have anything to do with it. “It’s stupid, Sandy. You should pass on the whole thing.”

  “Can’t afford to.”

  This gives Tashi pause, but in the end he still refuses.

  Sandy hangs up, sighs, checks his watch. He’s already late for half a dozen appointments, and he’s still got twenty calls to make. In fact he’s going to have to pinball around all day and tomorrow morning to get ready for this rescue operation. No rest for the weary. He lids some Buzz and Pattern Perception, starts tapping out a phone number.

  As the line rings he thinks about it.

  Now he knows that Jim is working with Arthur, and Arthur is working for Raymond, and that Raymo
nd is pursuing a private vendetta for private purposes—and perhaps making a profit on the side, or so it appears. The shape of the whole setup is clear to him.

  But now—now he’s in a situation where he can’t do anything with what he knows. All his detective work was done with the idea that he could tell Jim something Jim didn’t know, help him out, perhaps warn him away from trouble. Tell him what was really going on, so that he wouldn’t continue thinking he was part of some idealistic resistance to the war machine, or whatever he is thinking—so he could get out of it before something went wrong.

  Now Sandy can’t do anything of the kind. In fact he has to hope that Jim does a good job of it. “Come through for me, Jimbo.…”

  70

  Lemon gets a call from Donald Hereford in New York. It looks like a sunny evening in Manhattan.

  Hereford gets right to the point: “Have you gotten all of the night watchmen out of the plant out there?”

  “Yes, we did that right after you visited. But listen, the Ball Lightning team reports some significant breakthroughs, and I thought I should tell you about them—”

  Hereford is shaking his head. “Just keep the situation in the plant stable, especially in the next few days.”

  Lemon nods stiffly, frustration tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Do you know…”

  Hereford frowns. “We’ve found the source of the difficulty. He’s doing it for hire.”

  “And he’s been hired by?”

  But that’s going too far. Hereford looks out at New York’s big harbor, says, “Let’s not talk about this anymore now. Later we might be able to discuss it more fully.”

  “Okay.”

  He’ll never find out anything more about this, Lemon realizes; it’s happening on a level he isn’t on, it’s above him. Part of him is galled by the realization; part of him is happy not to know, not to be involved. Leave this sort of thing to others!

  Hereford is about to switch off when Lemon remembers something else. “Oh, listen, we’ve gotten a request from our legal representative in Washington, to file an appeal in the Stormbee decision.” He describes the situation in detail. “So, it sounds like another appeal and we’ll really have a good chance of success.”

  Hereford frowns. “Let me get back to you on that,” he says, and the screen goes blank.

  71

  The next day, after a productive morning and a busy lunch conferring with Dan Houston, Dennis gets a call from Lemon’s secretary Ramona, instructing him to come up for a conference with the boss. McPherson needs to talk to him anyway, so he ignores his usual irritation at the peremptory summons and goes on up.

  Lemon is standing in front of his window as usual, looking out at the sea. He seems on edge, ill at ease—at least to a certain minute extent. It’s hard to tell, but McPherson has had to become an expert in reading the tiny signals that mark his boss’s mercurial mood swings, and now, as he sits down on the hot seat and watches Lemon pacing, he senses something unusual, a tension beyond the usual manic energy.

  At first he speaks only of the Ball Lightning program. He really grills McPherson about it, a cross-examination as intense as any Lemon has ever subjected him to, something reminiscent of an SSEB questioning back in Dayton. Lemon hasn’t discussed technical matters in such detail as this in years; he’s really done his homework.

  But why? McPherson can’t figure it out.

  “What it comes down to,” Lemon says heavily when he is done, “is that you’ve got a great idea for a phased array attack, which takes us far into the post–boost phase. But we can’t meet the specs that we supposedly proved we could meet, in the initial proposal that won us the program.”

  “That’s right,” McPherson says. “It isn’t physically possible.”

  “Not for you, you mean.”

  McPherson shrugs. He’s so tired of Lemon he doesn’t even care about hiding it anymore. “Not for me, right. I can’t change the laws of physics. Maybe you can. But if you fake tests to try to bend the laws of physics, you always get caught at this point, don’t you.”

  Lemon’s eyes are just barely narrowed, a dangerous sign. “You’re saying Houston faked the tests on the proposal?”

  “We’ve just gone over all the data, right? We’ve known this ever since you put me on the program. What’s the point of all this? Someone either concocted a good-looking test, with real but irrelevant results—and if that’s faking the Air Force has been doing it for years—or else someone made a stupid mistake, and assumed the test proved the system would work in the real world, when it didn’t.”

  Lemon nods slowly, as if satisfied with something. For a long time he stands staring out the window.

  McPherson watches him; he’s lost the drift of the meeting, he still doesn’t know what Lemon wanted him here for. Confirmation that the Ball Lightning program is really and truly sunk? It isn’t, if you stretch the definition of the boost phase, give the defense more time; but Lemon doesn’t seem interested in that, he seems to think that the Air Force will reject the system if any spec is unfulfilled. And he may be right about that, but they have to try.

  McPherson brings up the matter of Goldman’s phone call and the Stormbee appeal.

  Lemon nods. “I got your memo yesterday.”

  “We only need to give them an okay to initiate the appeal, and we’re in business. It looks really promising, from Goldman’s account.”

  Lemon turns his head to look at him. Face blank. No expression at all. Sunlight makes his left eye look like crystal.

  Slowly he shakes his head. “We’ve gotten other instructions from Hereford. No appeal.”

  “What?”

  “No appeal.”

  Even through his shock, McPherson can see that Lemon is not rubbing this one in in his usual style, taunting McPherson with it. In fact, he looks uncomfortable, depressed. But all this is just his continuous Lemon-watch, going on automatically under the shock of the news.

  McPherson stands. “Just what the hell is going on? We’ve worked on this for a year now, and put some twenty million dollars into it, and we’re right on the edge of winning the contract!”

  Lemon puts a hand up. “I know,” he says wearily. “Sit down, Mac.”

  When McPherson remains standing, Lemon sits himself, on the edge of his desk.

  “It’s a victory we can’t afford to win.”

  “What?”

  “That’s Hereford’s decision. And I suppose he’s right, though I don’t like it. Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is, Mac?”

  “Yes.”

  Lemon sighs heavily. “Sometimes it seems like all the victories are Pyrrhic, these days.”

  He gathers himself, looks at McPherson sharply. “It’s like this. If we win this one—force the Air Force to take back their award, and win the contract ourselves—then we’ve got the Stormbee system, sure. But we’ve also embarrassed the Air Force in front of the whole industry, the whole country. And if we do that, then Stormbee is the last program we can ever expect to get from the Air Force again. Because they’ll remember. They’ll do their best to bankrupt us. Already they’ve got our balls in a vise with this Ball Lightning program going bad on us. That’s bad enough, but beyond that—no more black programs, no more superblack programs, no more early warnings on RFPs, no more awards in close bidding competitions, consistent screwings on the MPCs—my God, they can do it to us! It’s a buyer’s market! There’s only one buyer for space defense systems, and that’s the United States Air Force. They’ve got the power.”

  Lemon’s face twists bitterly as he acknowledges this. “I hate it, but that’s the case. We’ve got to be agreeable, and stand up for our rights when we have to, but without really beating them, see. So Hereford is right, even though I hate to say it. We can’t afford to win this one. So we’re giving up. The law firm will be called off.”

  McPherson can barely think. But he remembers something: “What about the investigation in Congress?”

  “That’s their doing. We
won’t cooperate any further. It’s belly-up time—bare the throat to the top dog, goddamn it.” Lemon gets up, goes to the window. “I’m sorry, Mac. Go home, why don’t you. Take the rest of the day off.”

  McPherson finds he is already standing. When did that happen? He’s at the door when Lemon says, perhaps to himself, “That’s the way the system works.”

  And then he’s out in the hall. In the elevator. In his mouth is a coppery taste, as if he had thrown up, though he feels no nausea. The body’s reaction to defeat is a bitterness at the back of the throat. The idea of being “bitter” is another concept taken directly from sensory experience. He knows he is bitter because his throat gags on a coppery taste roiling at the back of his mouth. He’s in his office. The whole operation, so neat, so efficient, so real looking, is all a sham, a fake. The work done in this office might as well be replaced by the scripts of a video screenplay; it would all come to the same in the end. Engineering, he thinks, isn’t real at all. Only the power struggles of certain people in Washington are real, and those battles are based on whims, personal ambitions, personal jealousies. And those battles make the rest of the world unreal. The walls around him might as well be cardboard (thwack! thwack!), the computers empty plastic shells—all parts of a video set, a backdrop to the great battles of the stars in the foreground. He’s an extra in those battles, his little scene has been filmed—then the script rewritten, the scene tossed out. His work, tossed out.

  He goes home.

  72

  About the time Dennis is called into Lemon’s office to hear the bad news, Jim gets a call from Lucy. “Are you coming up to dinner tonight like you said?”

  Oh, man— “Did I say tonight?”

  “I’ve made enough for three already. You said you would, and we haven’t seen you in weeks.”