Millennium

by John Varley

  The funny thing was, I didn't feel queasy until Tom got sick. I never could stand to see someone vomit. I had forgotten that about Tom. I'd been to some bad ones with him -- small planes, but with really awful corpses. Most of the time he'd been okay, but once or twice he'd lost it.

  What can I say? We had been walking through plowed-up ground with the main wreckage still ahead of us, but there had been many bodies, or parts of bodies. l honestly hadn't seen them. I'd gone around them. Thinking back, I recalled actually stepping over one.

  But at the time, it was as if they didn't exist. It was an ability I'd developed. We were here to look at wreckage, at wire and metal and so forth, so my mind simply ignored the human wreckage.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  "Sure," he said, straightening up. And I knew from past experience that he would be.

  Well, if a guy's got to throw up, so what? It didn't matter to me.

  I could tell Willis didn't think much of it, though. I derided that if he told us he'd seen worse on the California highways, I'd sock him.

  He didn't say anything. Pretty soon I could see why.

  The place was crawling with people in various uniforms. Most of them were firemen and police and paramedics from towns in the area, men who thought they were used to seeing violent death. They were finding out how wrong they were. Some of them would be going to psychiatrists for years because of the things they saw that night. There's a syndrome associated with working at the site of an airliner crash and seeing things your mind doesn't want to deal with. It can hit very hard at professional people who think they're ready for anything, who have an image of themselves as tough and experienced. They just aren't ready for the scale of the thing.

  I saw several firemen stumbling around like sleepwalkers. One guy in a CHP uniform was sitting down, crying like a child. He'd probably come out of it okay. It was the guys who held it in, who played it tough to the end, that would eventually need help.

  At least we didn't have any zombies around. I saw some at San Diego, where the plane came down in the middle of a neighborhood. There was no way to keep people away at first, and some really sick cases were drawn to the site before the police could get it cleared. Some of them picked up pieces of bodies for souvenirs, if you can believe that. I didn't want to, but a guy at PSA swore to me it was true. He said a cop came within an inch of shooting one of these guys who was making off with somebody's leg.

  And why should it be such a surprise? Nothing draws a crowd like a big disaster. If a freeway smash-up was fun, an airplane crash ought to be a hundred times as much fun.

  Crashes are like tornadoes. They play ugly tricks. I've seen severed heads, unmarked, hanging from tree branches at eye level. Sometimes there are hands clasping each other, a man's and a woman's, or a woman's and a child's. Just the hands, still hanging on when the rest of the bodies have been thrown elsewhere.

  I looked where Tom had been looking when he had finally turned green. There was a woman's arm, cut off pretty neatly. The trick the crash had played with this arm was to arrange it on the ground, palm up, fingers curling as if beckoning. There was a wedding ring on one finger. It would have been a sexy gesture in another context, and I guess that's what got Tom.

  It was going to get me in a minute if I didn't look away, so I did.

  Roger Keane's the perfect man to head the Los Angeles office of the NTSB. He looks a little like Cary Grant in his younger days, with just a touch of silver in his hair, and he buys his suits in Beverley Hills. He's not a guy to get his hands dirty, so I wasn't surprised to find him back by the spotlight, supervising the crew who had clambered up the precarious tail section with cutting torches to get at the flight recorders. He had his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trench coat, the collar turned up, and an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. I got the impression that the biggest annoyance he faced in that landscape of carnage was the fact that he didn't dare light his cigar with all the kerosene fumes still in the air.

  He greeted me and Tom, and a few moments were passed in polite pleasantries. You'd be surprised how much they can help. I suspect I could carry off a reasonable imitation of polite conversation in the middle of a battlefield.

  When that was done he took us off for a guided tour. There was a proprietary air about him. This had been his site, for better or worse, and until we were filled in on what he'd found out it still was, in a sense. This was not to say he was delighted with what he'd found. He was grimfaced, like the rest of us, probably taking it harder because he didn't see it as often.

  So we trudged through the devastation like solemn tourists, stopping every once in a while to puzzle out what some of the larger chunks were all about.

  The only really important things for me here were the CVR and the FDR. The famous black boxes. Eventually we got back to the tail section. We were just in time to see the Cockpit Voice Recorder lifted free and handed carefully down to someone on the ground.

  Roger looked happy.

  I was, too, but the other one is more important.

  The Flight Data Recorder, in the newer aircraft, is one hell of a piece of equipment. The old ones recorded just six variables, things like airspeed, compass heading, and altitude. The readings were inscribed by needles on rolls of metal foil. This 747 had one of the newer FDR's that recorded forty different things on magnetic tape. It would tell us everything from flap settings to engine rpm's and temperatures. The new FDR's were a big improvement except for one thing. They were not quite as tough as the old metal-foil machines.

  Tom and I stuck around until the workers came up with the second flight recorder, and we lugged them out ourselves. Roger didn't offer to help, but I didn't expect him to. The chopper came back and returned us to the other crash site.

  The sun was coming up by the time we got back to the airport.

  This time we went in the back door and airport security managed to keep the press away from us. We were shown to the rooms the Oakland Airport had made available to us. There was a small one for the top brass -- me and my people -- a medium-sized one for the nightly meetings when all the people we'd gathered to investigate the crash got together to exchange findings and compare notes, and a big one, for press conferences. I didn't give a damn about the latter. Presumably C. Gordon Petcher would be here before long and that was his job. It was his photogenic mug everybody would see on their television sets at six o'clock, not my bleary and unshaven one.

  I checked out the facilities, got introduced to liaison people from United, Pan Am, and the airport management, and once again met Kevin Briley. He seemed a lot happier than the last time I ran into him. He dropped a couple of keys into my hand.

  "This is your car, and this is to your hotel room," he said. "The car is at the Hertz lot, and the room is at the Holiday Inn about a mile from here. You go out the airport access road -- "

  "Hell, I can find a Holiday Inn, Briley," I said. "They don't exactly hide them. You did good. Sorry I jumped on you so hard."

  He looked at his watch.

  "It's 7:15. I told the reporters you'd be talking to them at noon."

  "Me? Hell that's not my job. Where's Gordy?"

  He obviously didn't know who I was talking about.

  "C. Gordon Petcher." Still a blank. "Member of the Board. You know, the National Transportation Safety -- "

  "Oh, of course. Of course." He rubbed his forehead and I thought he swayed slightly. I realized the guy was at least as tired as I was. Probably more tired; I'd had a few hours sleep at home, and a few on the plane. The crash had happened at 9:11 P.M., his time, so he'd certainly been awake all night.

  "He called," Briley said. "He won't be in until later this evening. He said you should handle the noon press briefing."

  "He said ... the hell I will. I've got a fucking job to do, Briley. I don't have time to smile pretty for the fucking cameras." I realized I was yelling at the poor stooge again, when I ought to be yelling at Petcher. "Sorry. Listen, you get him on the phone and tell
him he'd better get out here. When we start the hearing phase, he's the big cheese. Technically, he's in charge of the whole damn thing, but he doesn't know shit about airplanes and he's aware of his ignorance and he knows damn well that without me and my boys to feed him the stuff we find out he's going to look like a fool ... so for all practical purposes I'm in charge here for the next couple of weeks. And that means he will do his job, which is to suffer the gentlemen of the goddam press gracefully. It's all he's good for anyway."

  Briley watched me for awhile, wondering, I guess, if I'd get violent.

  "Are you sure you wouldn't rather tell him yourself?"

  I grinned at him. "I'd love to," I said, "but I'll have to pass it up. I've got to deal with him day-to-day in Washington, and you're safe out here on the coast. Now where are they stacking the scrap iron?"

  "United has a hangar at the north side of the field They're bringing everything out there."

  "And the Pan Am?"

  "They're renting space from United. Both planes will be brought there."

  "Good. That'll be handy. What about the bodies?"

  "Pardon me?"

  "The corpses. Where are they putting the corpses?"

  I think I'd upset him again. He looked nervous, anyway.

  "Uh, I presume they're taking them somewhere ... but I -- "

  "It's okay. You can't do everything. I'll find out where they are." I patted him on the back and advised him to get some sleep, then looked around for Tom. He was talking to somebody I thought I recognized. I went over there.

  Tom was about to introduce us, when I remembered the guy's name.

  "Ian Carpenter, right? Air Traffic Controllers' Union?"

  He looked pained at the word "union" -- they're a new group, and still pretty sensitive and quite aware that they rated just below Senators and Congress-critters in public esteem.

  That was a damn shame, in my book, where Air Traffic Controllers rate a bit higher than pilots -- who are almost as clannish and self-protective as cops and doctors -- and a damn sight higher than union-busting Presidents.

  "Association, please," he said, trying to make a joke out of it. "And you're Bill Smith. I've heard of you."

  "Yeah? Who was handling those two planes when they hit?"

  He grimaced. "You want to know what I heard about you? I heard you get right to the point. Okay. His name is Donald Janz. And before you ask, he isn't a trainee, but he's not what I'd call a veteran, either."

  We looked each other over. Maybe he knew what I was thinking; I had a pretty good idea what was going through his head. He didn't want this crash pinned on the ATC's, and he was afraid td see them as an easy target. It's no secret that the Board has been unhappy about the state of Air Traffic Control for some time now. It's been years since the mass firings, and the country's network of air routes still wasn't back to normal. No matter what you may have heard, we're still training people to fill the spots left vacant by the PATCO strike, and there ain't no ATC University. They learn on the job, and these days they get shoved into the hotseat a lot quicker than they used to.

  "Where's Janz?"

  "He's at home, and he's under sedation. Naturally, he's very upset. I think I heard him talking about finding a lawyer."

  "Naturally. Can you have him here in two hours?"

  "Is that an order?"

  "I can't give you orders, Carpenter. I'm asking you. He can bring his lawyer if he wants to.

  But you know I'll have to talk to him sooner or later. And you know how rumors get started.

  If your boy isn't at fault -- and somehow, looking at you, I get the feeling you don't think he is -- isn't it better to let me hear his story now?"

  Tom had been trying to catch my eye, so I glanced over at him and ht picked up the spiel without a pause.

  "Ian, we're ninety-nine percent sure the problem wasn't with the planes. Weather seems unlikely. You been listening to the talk around here. You know what's been said. It's pilot error, controller error ... or computer error. If you get your man in here, it mind go a long way toward getting us off on the right foot."

  Carpenter had glanced up at the mention of computer error; something was smouldering inside the man, but I didn't know what it was. He looked back at his shoes, still undecided.

  "The press is going to want some answers, Carpenter. If they don't get at least a hint soon, they'll start to speculate. You know where that's going to lead."

  He glared at me, but I don't think I was really the target of his anger.

  "All right. I'll have him here in two hours."

  He turned on his heel and marched away. I looked at Tom.

  "What was that all about?"

  "He told me the air traffic computer was out when the planes hit. It was the third overload that day."

  "No shit."

  It was too early to tell if it was a break, but it was the first thing I'd heard so far that interested me.

  "What the hell time is it, anyway?" I asked Tom.

  "I've got oh-seven-hundred."

  "Is that East Coast, or West Coast? You want to go out to the hangar, see what they've got going out there?"

  Tom knew me, I guess. Maybe I'm obvious.

  "How about finding a bar first?"

  Bars are never hard to find around big airports, and California isn't a state that's too stuffy about the hours. There was no trouble finding a drink at seven in the morning.

  I ordered a double scotch on the rocks and Tom had Perrier or sarsaparilla, or whatever it is non-drinkers drink. Whatever it was, it bubbled like the dickens and gave me a headache just to watch it.

  "What else did you learn while I was stuck with Mister Briley?"

  "Not a lot. Mostly that Carpenter's going to make a case that his men are working too many hours, and the computers are too old, and they can't be expected to make the switchover when the computer goes out."

  "We've heard that before."

  "And the Board said the hours weren't too long."

  "I wasn't on that particular investigation. I read the report."

  Tom didn't say anything. He knew my opinion about that report. I think he shared it, though it's not something I'd ever ask him. I've got enough seniority to shoot off my mouth every once in a while if I think somebody's pulling a fast one. I don't expect him to join my subversive opinions, at least not publicly.

  "Okay. When did the computer go down?"

  "About the worst possible moment, according to Carpenter. Janz was handling something like nineteen planes. The computer shuts down, he's faced with a soft display and he's got about ten seconds to match blip A with blip A prime. Two of those blips were jets he was about ready to hand over to Oakland approach control. He couldn't figure out which was which, and he told each of them exactly the wrong thing. He thought he was steering them away from a collision. What he was doing was guiding them toward each other."

  I could see it in my head. Trouble is, it's a hard thing to explain unless you've actually been in an Air Region Traffic Control Center when the computer goes down. ("m sorry to say that I've seen it happen many times.

  One minute you're looking at a sharp, clear circular screen with a lot of lines and a lot of dots on it. Each dot is labeled with several rows of numbers. It may baffle you if you've never seen it before, but to a trained ATC those numbers identify each aircraft and tell a lot about them. Things like altitude, air speed, transponder I.D. number. The picture is generated by a computer, which updates the screen once every couple of seconds. You can play with it, adjust it so each plane leaves a little trail of successively dimmer blips, so you know where the plane has been and have some idea of where it's going, just by looking. You can tell the computer to erase extraneous stuff and just let you deal with a problem situation. You've got a little cursor you can move across the screen to touch a particular aircraft, and talk to the pilot. If two planes get into a situation, the computer will see it before you do and ring a bell to let you know you'd better turn them away from each oth
er.

  Then the computer overloads. It shuts down.

  You know what happens then? The screen falls from a vertical to a horizontal position. There's a good reason for that: the blips you see are no longer labeled. You have to get out little plastic chips called shrimp boats, which you label with a grease pencil and lay beside each blip. When the blip moves, you move the shrimp boat. The screen resolution goes to hell. It's like you're not even looking at the same scene. It's as if you'd dropped out of the computer age back to the infancy of radar, like they had to work with in World War Two.

  As if that weren't enough, the blips you see on the new, longwave display may not be in the same positions as they were before. The uncorrected radar-reflection imaging is nothing like the computer-corrected display. Where you had tasteful little hatch marks to indicate clouds -- all carefully labeled for altitude -- now you've got a horrendous splotch of white noise that isn't anywhere near where you thought it would be.

  If it happens during an off-hour, the controllers simply groan and break out the shrimp boats. If it happens during a rush -- and in an ARTCC like Oakland-San Francisco, with three commercial and three military and God-knows-how-many private airfields it's usually a rush -- there are two or three minutes of desperate silence as the ATC's figure out who's who and try to remember where everybody was and if anybody was approaching what they call a "situation."

  I'm not a big fan of euphemisms, but situation was a good one. What we have here, folks, is a situation where six hundred people are about to be spread all over a mountain like a family-sized can of tomato paste.

  "What do you think?" I asked Tom.

  "It's too early. You know that." Still, he kept looking at me, and he knew I was asking for an off-the-record call. He gave it to me.

  "I think it's going to be tough. We've got a guy who's almost a trainee, and a computer built in 1968. That's practically the stone age, these days. But some folks are going to say Janz should have been able to cope. Everybody else does."