Ill Wind Part 10

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. 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 sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed by him like sp.a.w.ning 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 gra.s.s. "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 cas.h.i.+er 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sed 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 he had to get one that didn't last more than a few hours. 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 s.h.i.+kozu'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 electroph.o.r.esis setup, log books, and image a.n.a.lyzers. 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 alb.u.m 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 b.u.g.g.e.rs. 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 appet.i.te for octane-eight carbons and ten hydrogens in a straight chain-metabolizing it into water and carbon dioxide. But no organism would eat only 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. 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 a.s.sured 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 d.a.m.ned 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 Zoroaster spill much faster than expected-that was terrific, wasn't it? 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 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. 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! 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. 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 bulld.o.g.g.i.ng 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 whitewas.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sic 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 winds.h.i.+eld. 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 Zoroaster spill had made him so angry that he couldn't keep quiet. 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 ma.s.s-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 gra.s.s. A faint, sour odor of pesticide drifted over from his neighbor's lawn, but the other gra.s.s 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 a.s.sisting 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 c.o.c.ked 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 h.e.l.l is going on?" Harris muttered.

Daphne waggled her finger at him. "b.i.t.c.h about it later, Jackson. Right now you get your a.s.s 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 b.u.t.t 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, b.u.mper to b.u.mper. By now he hated downtown San Francisco and wanted desperately to be back in Wyoming.

His arraignment hearing was set for 10:00 AM.