The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  “You see that homer in the Red Sox game?” Jameel called up from his post on the refueling machine.

  “Oh yeah,” Larry said. “A thing of beauty.”

  In Larry Hallock’s estimation, the problems involved in managing nuclear power were not dissimilar to those involved in training a horse. The universe operated by certain principles, and these principles could be applied anywhere, by anyone of sufficient skill and intelligence. The statement of a problem contained within itself the elements of its own solution. You needed to break the problem into its parts, to work on each in its turn. You needed patience and a sense of perspective. Humor didn’t hurt, either. Sometimes you found yourself turning circles, as Larry had when he was training Low Die, but you needed to realize that even when you were turning in circles, you were still getting somewhere. Poinsett Landing was a complex system, and its complexities were increased by its massive scale. The statistics themselves were vast enough to strain the imagination. The power station required a dozen years to build, 1,800 miles of electrical wire, 100 miles of pipe, 125 miles of conduit, 16,000 tons of steel, 29,000 tons of rebar, and nearly 150,000 cubic yards of concrete. The reactor vessel, the steel pressure cooker in which nuclear fission took place, stood eighty feet high, its sides were over eight inches thick, and it weighed two million pounds. It sat in a steel-and-concrete containment structure twice as high as the reactor vessel, three and a half feet thick and sheathed with stainless steel, built so strongly that it could withstand the 300-mile-per-hour winds of a tornado, or even the impact of a Boeing 747 being deliberately crashed, by suicidal terrorists, into the building from above. But when you got right down to it, a nuclear power station, with all its vastness, was a very simple system compared to a biological organism such as a horse. Its size was a measure of its relative inefficiency—it was enormous because people hadn’t worked out how to generate power with the compact efficiency of a biological organism. Animals, with their complex organization and chemistry, their mobility and intelligence, were marvels of concentrated efficiency. They were brilliant engineering. By comparison, Poinsett Landing Power Station, complex as it was in certain ways, was simplicity itself. Which was good, as far as Larry Hallock was concerned. An animal, be it a human being or a horse, was intricate enough so that when something went wrong with it—a broken leg, cancer, mental illness—it was difficult to fix. The problems at Poinsett Landing were, by comparison, simple. Take the problem of Poinsett Landing’s site, for example.

  The massive containment building, with its huge steel nuclear reactor, its three-foot-thick concrete walls sheathed with steel, had presented a particular problem to the plant’s designers. A large, heavy building requires a large, stable foundation. The best foundation of all is solid bedrock. But bedrock is at a premium in the Mississippi Delta. The land consists of layers on endless layers of mud laid down by repeated floodings of the great river. The mud can extend thousands of feet below the level of the land. There is no bedrock on which to safely build large structures and anchor them against the dangers of their own weight.

  But the Delta land was cheap, much cheaper than elsewhere. With the plant requiring two thousand acres of land, the price of the land was a prime consideration in the plant’s cost. The plant’s designers were asked to solve the problem of building the huge, heavy structure on land that would not support it. The engineers simply built their own bedrock beneath the containment structure, a huge mat of concrete laced with a webwork of steel. This pad was twelve feet thick and sat in the rich Delta land like a paving stone, and it supported the vast two-million-pound weight of the reactor vessel, the steel-and-concrete containment structure, and the control facility, which leaned against the featureless containment building like a child clinging to his mother’s hip.

  It was a tried and true technique, Larry knew, often used in areas like Miami Beach, where large buildings had to be constructed on shifting sand. It had the advantage of simplicity. The huge pad would be there forever: after it had been set in the Delta soil, no one would ever have to think about it again.

  “Waaal,” Larry Hallock said, “let’s get this sucker warmed up.” He stood behind his metal desk, perched on its platform above the rest of the control room. The lights and indicators, which were on panels above the operators’ heads, were at eye level for Larry. He scanned them, noted the orderly rows of green and red lights, nothing amiss.

  The room looked like the headquarters of a James Bond villain. Metal surfaces, control panels, thousands of buttons, displays with blinking lights. All painted in avocado green and harvest gold, the signature colors of the 1970s, the decade in which the room was designed and built. Larry wondered if a more recent control room would be painted different colors. Would a nineties control room be Hunter Green?

  A box from Dunkin’ Donuts on one of the computer monitors near the door spoiled the illusion of a supervillain’s retreat. Larry helped himself to a chocolate doughnut.

  “We’re set,” Wilbur said, having, from his lower perspective, just scanned the displays himself.

  “Let’s give ’er the spur,” Larry said.

  You didn’t want to start up a nuclear reactor with a bang. It would take almost a full day to get the reactor on line, to first increase temperature within the reactor, then start pushing steam through the turbine to generate enough power to put on the grid.

  It was like handling a big horse, one that could stomp you flat just by accident, just because you weren’t paying attention. You just wanted to give it a little kick with your heels, get it moving without startling anyone, least of all yourself.

  It was tricky enough so that Larry wanted to be in the control room for the procedure, just in case Wilbur, who was the control room operator and would be giving the orders, needed some backup. Larry was the shift supervisor, in charge of everything going on at the plant during his shift. Wilbur was in charge of the reactor under Larry’s supervision.

  Larry and Wilbur watched the displays as boron carbide control rods were partially withdrawn from the reactor, as neutrons began to multiply and the chain reaction began. The scent of roses floated through the control room: Larry had bought a massive vase of yellow roses for his wife, who had a birthday today. He moved the roses out of his line of sight, sat in his wheeled metal chair, and thought about putting his boots up on his desk, but decided not to.

  Larry put a hand on the scarred metal surface of his desk and felt a little tremor through his fingertips. Pumps, distant but powerful, steam moving through massive pipe. Valves tripped open as pressure built. Words floated to Larry as he watched the displays. Something about Ole Miss and the Rose Bowl. No day was complete without talk of football. Not in Mississippi.

  One of the operators interrupted the talk of the gridiron in order to make a report. “Holding at ten percent.”

  Ten percent was one of the check points, where all concerned would be checking their instruments, making certain that everything was operating normally.

  Larry scanned the displays over the operators’ heads. Everything looked fine.

  “You going to do anything special for your wife’s birthday, Mr. Hallock?” Wilbur asked.

  “Tonight we’ve got reservations at the Garden Court in Vicksburg.”

  “Getting some of that Creole food, huh? It’s too hot for me.”

  Larry grinned. “You best not try any New Mexico chile, then.”

  “I don’t even put pepper on my grits in the morning.”

  Larry looked at the displays, at the lights shifting, red and green.

  “Bland is boring,” he said. “Me, I like a little spice in my life.”

  “Everything checks, Larry,” Wilbur said. “Still holding at ten percent.”

  “Waaal,” Larry said, “let’s goose her a little.”

  Boron carbide rods slid smoothly out of the reactor. Neutrons turned water to steam. Steam shot under unimaginable pressure through massive thirty-six-inch pipes.

  Larry put his boots on
the desk and thought about horses.

  Four shocks of an Earthquake have been sustained by our town, and its neighborhood, within the last two days. The first commenced yesterday morning between two and three, preceded by a meteoric flash of light and accompanied with a rattling noise, resembling that of a carriage passing over a paved pathway, and lasted almost a minute. A second succeeded, almost immediately after, but its continuance was of much shorter duration. A third shock was experienced about eight o’clock in the morning, and another today about one.

  Savannah, Dec. 17

  Perfume floated into the Oval Office from the Rose Garden. The economics briefing book, with its tasteful white plastic cover and presidential seal, had migrated from the President’s footstool to the top of his desk in the West Wing. The London meeting of the G8 countries was only a week away. The President was now immersing himself in figures concerning gross domestic product, financial markets, foreign direct investment, prices and wages, output, demand, jobs, commodities, exchanges, and reserves.

  Fortunately the President liked this kind of detail work. Facts and statistics were easy compared to trying to manage Congress, foreign leaders, or for that matter the arrogant turf warriors of his own party. He had a number of proposals he wanted to make at the G8 conference. Proposals having to do with the removal of trade barriers, pollution control, expansion of the information infrastructure, practical assistance to Third World countries. Proposals that only the leader of the world’s primary superpower could make.

  If only, he thought, goddam Wall Street didn’t stab him in the back while he was off in London trying to get things done.

  The President’s phone buzzed, and he reached for it while trying to absorb a graph on current-account balances. Oil-producing states, he saw, were benefiting from a slight rise in the cost of fossil fuels.

  “Judge Chivington for you, sir,” said his secretary.

  “Thank you. Put him on, please.”

  “Mr. President! Rosalie told me you called!” the judge bellowed. He was not the sort to moderate his voice merely for the telephone.

  The President switched to the speaker phone and put the handset in its cradle. “I’m cramming for the G8 conference,” he said.

  “That will relieve the voters, sir,” the judge said. “People worrying about employment and meetin’ the mortgage are going to be encouraged as all hell when they turn on their televisions and see the President talking to the French economic minister about the price of brie.”

  The President smiled, leaned back in his chair, and was about to put one foot up on the corner of his desk when he remembered that this massive and colossally ugly item was made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, God alone knew why, and had been a gift of Queen Victoria, the reasons for which seemed pretty damned obscure, too, but that this meant the desk was therefore a valuable antique that did not deserve to have his heel marks on it. He reluctantly put his shoe back on the floor. I am a prisoner of history, he thought. Damn Jackie Kennedy anyway. He spun his chair about to face the tall windows and the Rose Garden.

  “My views on the price of brie,” he said, “are going to be taken more seriously if they come from the representative of the strongest economy in the world.”

  “Ah,” the judge said. “So you reckon this is an inconvenient time for Wall Street to have the jitters.”

  “That is correct.”

  “And your economic advisors tell you that they can’t be absolutely positive about it, but it looks as if the market has entered an uncertain period.”

  “Correct…”

  “And that while they can’t be definite about it, because the indicators are as yet unclear, it may be possible that the bull market is due for a correction.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And that the last thing you want, hoss, is for Dow Jones to drop four or five hundred points when you are talking to the French economic minister about the price of brie, because that would blow your credibility to hell and gone.”

  “I think that is about the gist.” The President nodded. “Judge, you have a remarkable ability for summing up.”

  “And therefore, sir, you want me to talk to Sam.”

  “If you could. He is your friend.”

  “Lots of people are my friends, Mr. President,” the judge said.

  The President smiled his brilliant telegenic smile—even though there was no one to see it, the smile was still an essential part of his repertoire—and put the tiniest trace of syrup into his voice. “If the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board could be said to have a friend,” he said, “that friend is you.” There was a moment’s hesitation, and then the judge spoke. “Have you talked to him yourself, Mr. President?”

  “I have.”

  “And what has he told you?”

  “He said that the bull market might be due for a correction, and that he was monitoring the situation and would act, if necessary, at the appropriate time. But that a mere downturn in stock prices was not a case, strictly speaking, for intervention.”

  “I take it, sir, that you pointed out the importance of the economic summit?”

  “I did my best. He suggested, first, that this unsettled period in the markets might end before the conference begins, and might in fact end in a big upswing. Also, he said that it would be better for the conference if plans were made on a basis of actual conditions and not, as he put it, false optimism.”

  “Damn,” the judge said. “Sam’s really being a hardass, isn’t he?” The problem was, the President knew, that there was little for a president to shine at anymore. The Cold War was over and foreign policy had come down to mediating agreements between various competing ethnic groups that the electorate hadn’t heard of and didn’t care about. The arrogant blown-dry busybodies in Congress had ignored, watered down, or eviscerated every domestic policy initiative undertaken by the Executive Branch. For over twenty years, in every administration, every budget sent by the President to Congress had been declared dead on arrival. They couldn’t decide on their own what to do, jerked this way and that by lobbyists and opinion polls, but they were certain they didn’t want the President doing anything, either.

  So like it or not, the President’s job now came down to two things: he had to be seen to make money for people, and he had to be seen to be caring. He had to go to meetings like the G8 summit and return with promises of jobs and increased prosperity. And he had to be able to listen to people who were in the midst of hard times, and he had to look concerned. The people wanted a president who Cared, and so the President spent a lot of time, in day care centers or drug rehabilitation clinics or veterans’ hospitals, doing his job of Caring. There were no more issues, there were no more real conflicts in politics, it had all become soap opera. The President had to pretend to everyone that the soap opera mattered. And, as his press secretary Stan Burdett always remarked, it was no good Caring if he weren’t seen to be Caring, and no good making money for people if he weren’t making money for everyone, and furthermore seen to be doing it.

  The President just wished he could appoint a Cabinet Secretary for Caring and have done with it.

  “I’m not asking for much,” the President said. “What’s wrong with boosting investor confidence?” The judge thought silently for a long moment. “Mr. President,” he said, “I’ll talk to Sam about it.”

  “He’s always been a loyal Party man,” the President said. Until, he did not need to add, Sam had been made the nation’s chief banker, at which point he had given up politics for a Higher Calling, rolling the bones and gazing at chicken entrails in the name of the High God of Interest Rates.

  “True,” the judge said. “Very true.” His voice boomed out. “Sir, I’ll do as you ask.”

  “Thank you, Judge.”

  “You’re very welcome, Mr. President.”

  “How about some golf next week?”

  “You’re very kind, sir. I would like that very much.”

  The President smiled. �
�I’ll have my flunky call your flunky.”

  The President snapped off the speaker phone, picked up the briefing book, and leaned back in his chair. He had been raised on the history of presidential greatness. Franklin Roosevelt fighting the Depression and Hitler, Lincoln freeing the slaves and seeing the country through its greatest crisis, Jack Kennedy staring down the Soviets over Cuba, Lyndon Johnson creating programs to eradicate poverty and establish civil rights.

  And now the President couldn’t even ask the chairman of the Federal for a favor, but had to get a friend to ask it for him.

  A prisoner of history, he thought again.

  He considered putting his feet up on the desk, but refrained.

  Once the slide began, the market fell faster than even Charlie had anticipated. Charlie and TPS, even with all their money committed to Charlie’s positions, weren’t big enough to shift market prices very far, but once big traders like Salomon and Morgan Stanley started moving into short positions, the balance changed. Once the smart money moved, the stupid money trotted after—too late, as usual—and the really smart money tried to make profit out of both.

  Charlie began to wonder how many beta-test versions of Carpe Diem were out there. He stayed at his desk for the entire trading day, fueled by pots of coffee and takeout food brought in by his secretary. He traded constantly, making hedges, shoring up his position. He was afraid to take a pee break for fear that he’d miss something and lose money.

  After each trading day was over he went to the back room to help Megan with the long task of reconciliation. The TPS back room wasn’t really set up for trading at this volume, and Charlie’s trades were so many, and so frantic, that toting up the figures sometimes took them late into the night. And Dearborne was on Charlie’s neck every minute. Charlie hadn’t thought that Dearborne was going to be this involved, but apparently the banker had figured out that it was his future at stake as well as Charlie’s, and every night he waited in his office for the reconciliation figures to be transmitted to him. If they were late, he called Megan’s office to ask when they could be expected.