“So”—he looks up at Jim, looks him right in the eye—“so as far as I’m concerned, I’m doing the work that is most likely to free people from the threat of nuclear war. Now what”—voice straining—“what better work could there be?”
He looks away.
“It was a good program.”
Jim doesn’t know what to say to that. He can see the logic of the argument. And that fearful strain in his father’s voice … His anger drains out of him, and he’s amazed, even frightened, at what he has been saying. They’ve gone so far beyond the boundaries of their ordinary discourse, there doesn’t seem any way back.
And suddenly he recalls his plans for the night: rendezvous with Arthur, assault on Laguna Space Research. He can’t stand across from Dennis with that in his mind, it makes him sick with trembling.
Dennis leans against the car, face down, the averted expression as still as stone. He’s lost in his own thoughts. His hands are methodically working with the wrench, loosening a nut on the next point casing. Jim tries to say something, and the words catch in his throat. What was it? He can’t remember. The silence stretches out, and really there’s nothing he can say. Nothing he can say.
“I—I’ll go in and tell Mom you’re about ready to eat?”
Dennis nods.
Unsteadily Jim walks inside. Lucy is chopping vegetables for the salad, over by the sink, in front of the kitchen window that has the view of the carport. Jim walks over and stands next to her. Through the window he can see Dennis’s side and back.
Lucy sniffs, and Jim sees she is red-eyed. “So did he tell you what happened down at work?” she asks, chopping hard and erratically.
“No! What happened?”
“I saw you talking out there. You shouldn’t argue with him on a day like today!” She goes to blow her nose.
“Why, what happened?”
“You know they lost that big proposal Dad was working on.”
“Sort of, I guess. Weren’t they appealing it?”
“Yes. And they were doing pretty well with that, too, until today.” And Lucy tells him as much as she knows of it all, pieced together from Dennis’s curt, bitter remarks.
“No!” Jim says more than once during the story. “No!”
“Yes. That’s what he said.” She puts a fist to her mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him as down as this in my whole life.”
“But—but he just stood out there … he just stood out there and defended the whole thing! All of it!”
Lucy nods, sniffs, starts chopping vegetables.
Stunned, Jim stares out the window at his father, who is meticulously tightening a nut, as if tamping down the last pieces of a puzzle.
“Mom, I’ve gotta go.”
“What?”
He’s already to the front door. Got to get away.
“Jim!”
But he’s gone, out the door, almost running. For a moment he can’t find his car key. Then he’s found it, he’s off and away. Tracking away at full speed.
Dennis will think he’s left because of their argument. “No!” Jim can barely see the streets, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he just tracks for home. Halfway there he goes to manual and tracks to the Newport Freeway. Southbound, under the great concrete ramp of the northbound lanes, in the murky light of the groundlevel world, in the thickets of halogen light.… He punches the dashboard, gets off at Edinger to turn back north, then returns to the southbound lanes. Where to go? Where can he go? What can he do? Can he go back up there to dinner with his parents? Eat a meal and then go blow up his father’s company? For God’s sake!—how could he have gotten to this point?
On he drives. He knows the defense industry is a malignancy making money in the service of death, in the face of suffering, he knows it has to be opposed in every way possible, he knows he is right. And yet still, still, still, still, still. That look on Dennis’s face, as he stared down at the immaculate motor of his car. Lucy, looking out the window about to cut her thumb off. “It was a good program.” His voice.
Mindlessly Jim tracks north on the San Diego Freeway. But what in the world is there for him in L.A.? He could drive all night, escape.… No. He turns east on the Garden Grove Freeway, south on the Newport. Back in the loop, going in circles. Triangles, actually. Furious at that he tracks south into Newport Beach, past the Hungry Crab which makes him feel sick, physically sick. He has fucked up every single aspect of his life, and he’s still at it. Going for an utterly clean sweep.
At the very end of the Newport peninsula he gets out of his car, walks out to the jetty. The Wedge isn’t breaking tonight, the waves slosh up and down the sand as if the Pacific were a lake.
Someone’s got a fire going in a barbecue pit, and yellow light and shadows dance over the dark figures standing around it as the wind whips the flames here and there. It’s too dark to walk very far over the giant boulders of the jetty. A part of him wonders why he would want to, anyway. The jetty ends, he would have to return to the world eventually, face up to it.
He returns to his car. For a long time he just sits in it, head on the steering switch. Familiar smell, familiar sight of the dusty cracked dash … sometimes it feels like this car is his only home. He’s moved a dozen times in the last six years, trying to get more room, better sun, less rent, whatever. Only the car remains constant, and the hours spent in it each day. The real home, in autopia; so true. Too true.
Except for his parents’ home. Helplessly Jim thinks of it. They moved into the little duplex when Jim was seven. He and his dad played catch in the driveway. One time Jim missed an easy throw and caught it in the eye. They threw balls onto the carport roof and Jim caught them as they rolled off. Dad set up a backboard. He painted an old bike he bought for Jim, painted it red and white. They all went for a trip together, to see the historical museum and the last acres of real orange grove (part of Fairview Cemetery, yes).
The junk of the past, the memory’s strange detritus. Why should he remember what he does? And does any of it matter? In a world where the majority of all the people born will starve or be killed in wars, after living degraded lives in cardboard shacks, like animals, like rats struggling hour to hour, meal to meal—do his middle-class suburban Orange County memories matter at all? Should they matter?
It’s ten P.M.; Jim has an appointment soon. He clicks the car on, puts it on the track to Arthur Bastanchury’s ap.
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So Jim turns around and tracks back up the freeway. Somewhere over Costa Mesa he decides what to do. “Oh, man.” He picks up his car’s phone, calls Arthur. His heart stutters at the same frequency as the ringing phone: Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring! Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring!
“Hello?”
“Arthur. It’s Jim. I can’t make it to your house in time to leave for the rendezvous. I’ll meet you there at the parking lot where we get the boxes.”
Silence. Curtly Arthur says, “Okay. You know the time.”
“Yeah. I’ll be there then.”
Back onto Newport Freeway, north to Garden Grove Freeway (typing instructions into his carbrain), out west and off at Haster, under the City Mall’s upper level.
Dim world of old streets, gutters matted with trash.
Dead trees. Garbage Grove.
Old suburban houses, boarding a family per room.
The streetlights not broken are old halogen: orange gloom,
An orange glaze on it all.
A roofed world. The basement of California.
You’ve never lived here, have you.
Hyperventilating, Jim looks around him for once. Parking lots, laundromats, thrift shops: “You had to go to Cairo to see this!” he shouts, and for a moment his resolve is confused; he feels like invisible giants are aiming invisible giant firehoses at him, battering him this way and that in a game he knows nothing of; he can only hold to his plan, try not to think anymore. Stop thinking, stop thinking! It’s time to act! Still his stomach twists, his heart stutters as he is buffeted about by co
ntrary ideas, contrary certainties about what is right.…
Lewis Street is the same as always, a kind of tunnel alley behind the west side of the City Mall, both sides floor to ceiling with warehouses, truck-sized metal doors shut and padlocked for the night.
He reaches Greentree, which dead-ends into Lewis like one sewer pouring into another. The concrete roof overhead holds a few halogen bulbs, a few mercury vapor bulbs. No plan to it. Jim tracks forward slowly, enters the small parking lot set between warehouses, twenty slots set around two massive concrete pylons that support the upper levels of the mall. There’s the same car as always, a blue station wagon, on a parking track at the back of the lot.
Jim turns into the lot, flicks his headlights on and off three times. He stops his car beside the station wagon, gets out.
Four men surround him, pinning him against his car. He’s seen all of the faces before, and they recognize him too. “Where’s Arthur?” the tallest black guy says.
“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” Jim says. “Meanwhile let’s get the equipment into my car. We can’t use Arthur’s tonight, and as soon as he shows up he wants us out of here.”
The man nods, and Jim swallows. No turning back.
He follows the four men to the back of the station wagon, and the hatchback is pulled up with an airy hiss. In the dark orange shadows Jim can just make out the six plastic boxes. He picks up one in his turn; it’s heavier than he remembered. Steps awkwardly to his car. “Backseat,” he says, and onto the shabby cracking vinyl they go, five in the backseat, one on the passenger seat.
Jim shuts the door of his car, checks his watch. It’s ten till eleven. Arthur will be here soon. He leans in the driver’s window and pushes the button that activates the program he typed in on the way up the freeway. The four men don’t notice. Jim returns to the station wagon.
“Big load tonight,” says the man who spoke before.
“Big job to do.”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll see it in the papers.”
“I’m sure.”
Jim paces around the two cars nervously. Twice he walks out to Lewis and looks up and down the long tunnel street. Several warehouses down, in a gap between buildings, there is an infrequently used entrance to the mall; Jim noticed it on one of their earlier runs. It looks almost like a service entrance, but it’s not.
The four men are standing around the station wagon, watching him with boredom, amusement, whatever. Jim is thankful it makes sense to act nervously, because he’s not sure he could stop it. In fact he feels like throwing up, his whole body is hammering with his pulse, he can’t even breathe without a great effort. Still time to—
Headlights, approaching. Jim looks at his watch. It’s time, it’s time, adrenaline spikes up through him: “Hey!” he calls to the men. “Police coming!”
And his car jerks forward on its own, out of the parking lot and down Lewis to the south, accelerating as fast as it can. Jim takes off running north, toward the little back entrance to the mall.
Up the entrance steps, almost tripping; he’s scared out of his mind! Into the mall maze, up to concourse level, then up a broad, gentle staircase to mezzanine; once there there are ten directions he can run in, and he takes off with only a single glance back.
Two of the men are chasing him.
Jim runs full speed through the crowd of shoppers, skipping and dodging desperately to avoid knots of people, open airshafts, planters, fountains, hall displays and food stands. Up a short escalator three steps at a time, around the big open space filled by the laser fountain. Looking down and across he can see his pursuers, already lost. Then one spots him and they’re off running again. They’re in a tough position, trying to chase someone in a mall; if Jim had more mall experience he’d lose them in a second. As it is he’s lost himself. Floors and half floors, escalators and staircases extending everywhere in the broken, refracted space … shops are going out of business every day because shoppers can’t ever find the same place twice; what chance for two men pursuing a panic-stricken, very mobile individual? It’s a three-D maze, and Jim has only to run a random pattern, trending westward, and he’s lost them.
Or so Jim thinks, fearfully, as he runs. But when he reaches the east side of the mall and flies through the entryway doors, damned if the two men aren’t coming up an escalator back there, at full speed!
Outside, however, on the street bordering the parking lot, he sees his car, which has made it there on its own. Good programming. He runs out to where it sits by the curb, noticing only at the last second the three policemen approaching to inspect it.
Panic on top of panic; Jim’s systems almost blow out at the sight, but his pursuers are in the parking lot now and there’s no time to lose. Without thinking he runs up to the car and shouts at the policemen, “It’s mine! They’re robbing me, they dragged me out of the car and now they’re chasing me!”
The three policemen regard him carefully, then look as he points at the two men, running across the parking lot. “That’s them!”
The two men see what’s happening, and quickly turn and run back inside. Perfect.
But there’s Arthur and the other two suppliers, tracking up in Arthur’s car, stuck in the traffic on the street. Jim says quickly, “There’s the rest of them in that car there! Quick, right there! Yeah!”
And he points. And Arthur sees him pointing.
Arthur ignores the policemen flagging him down and shifts to the fast track. This gets the cops’ attention, and two of them hustle off to their truck, parked behind Jim’s car. The third appears to be staying behind, and he’s looking into Jim’s car curiously.
Jim says, “There’s the others again, Officer!” and points at the east doors of the mall. While the policeman peers in that direction Jim yanks open his car’s door, leaps in and jams the accelerator to the floor. The car jerks away over the right track, leaving the policeman shouting behind him.
Jim makes a sharp right on Chapman, because ahead of him on the City Avenue, the police truck is in hot pursuit of Arthur and his two companions. Arthur.…
Jim tracks onto the Santa Ana Freeway south. He’s free of all pursuit, as far as he can tell. His reaction is to feel acutely sick to his stomach. He might even throw up in his car. And that look on Arthur’s face, as he saw Jim pointing him out to the police … “No, no! That isn’t what I meant!…”
Nothing for it now. Arthur will very likely be picked up, with the two suppliers. But will the police have any reason for holding them? Jim has no idea. He only knows he’s in a car with six boxes of felony-level weaponry, and the police likely have his license plate number. And he’s just betrayed a friend to the police, for no reason. No reason? My God, he can’t tell! He has the feeling that he has, in fact, betrayed everyone he knows, in one way or another.
He checks the rearview mirror nervously, looking for CHP, local police, sheriffs, state troopers—who knows what they’ll send after industrial saboteurs? He catches sight of his unshaven face, the expression of sick fear on it. And suddenly he’s furious, he slams his fist against the dash, filled with disgust for himself. “Coward. Traitor. Fucking idiot!” Unleashed at last, all the directionless angers pour out at once, in fists flailing the dash, in incoherent, sobbing curses. “You know—you know—what should—be done—and you—can’t—do it!”
All control gone, he remembers the cargo he has and tracks like a madman to South Coast Plaza. He jams to a halt in an open-air parking lot across from SCP’s administrative tower, jumps out of his car, tears open the box on the passenger seat, pulls out a Harris Mosquito missile with its Styx-90 payload. There among scattered parked cars he glues the little missile base to the concrete and aims it at the dark windows of the tower. He sets the firing mechanism, clicks it on. The missile suddenly gives out a loud whoosh of flame and disappears. Up in the administrative tower a window breaks, and there’s a tinkle of glass, a tinny little alarm sounding. Jim hoots, drives away.
Up into Sa
nta Ana, to the office of First American Title Insurance and Real Estate. It’s dark, no one is there. Another missile set in the parking lot, aimed at the main doors; it’ll melt every computer in there, every file. He’ll be out of a job! He laughs hysterically as he sets the mechanism and turns it on. This time the missile breaks a big plate-glass window, and the alarms are howlers.
In the distance there are sirens. What else can he knock out? The Orange County Board of Supervisors, yeah, the crowd that has systematically helped real estate developers to cut OC up, in over a hundred years of mismanagement and graft. Down under the Triangle to the old Santa Ana Civic Center. It’s dark there too, he can set up his Mosquito without any danger. Click the firing mechanism over and the little skyrocketlike thing will fly in there and knock the whole corrupt administration of the county apart. So he does it and laughs like mad.
Who else? He can’t think. Something has snapped in him, and he can’t seem to think at all.
There’s a closed Fluffy Donuts; why not?
Another real estate office; why not?
One of the Irvine military microchip factories; why not?
In fact, he’s close to Laguna Space Research. And he’s crazy enough with anger now to want to punish them for his betrayals, made for their sake. They deserve a warning shot, they should know how close they came to destruction. Give them a scare.
And then they’ll know to look out, to be on guard.
As confused in his action as in his thinking, Jim gets lost in a Muddy Canyon condomundo, but when he comes out of it he’s at an elementary school on the edge of a canyon, and across the canyon is LSR. He unboxes two Mosquitos and carries them out to a soccer field overlooking the canyon. Sets them up, aims them both for the big LAGUNA SPACE RESEARCH signs at the entrance to the plant. He clicks over the firing mechanism and hustles back to the car.
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