Able One (12 page)

"It's easy to make a laser that's idiot-proof," the head of Anson's safety department told Harry. "Making it Ph.D.-proof is just about impossible. Those guys think they're brilliant, see. They poke into the lab and fiddle with this and twiddle with that until they either give themselves a ten-thousand-volt shock or burn the place down."

Harry knew he was not brilliant. But he worked hard and steadily for long hours and little recognition. Yet he loved it. He loved the technical challenges, the camaraderie that slowly developed among his fellow engineers, the bowling league he helped to organize, even the physicists who unconsciously lorded it over the engineers as if it was their right to look down on the guys who got their hands dirty. Indeed, Harry was not brilliant, but he was dependable. He got the job done, no matter how difficult it was, no matter how long or hard he had to work at it. Quiet and steady as he was, gradually he was recognized by his supervisors, and even by the scientists who ran the lab. To his own surprise, Harry got salary raises almost every year: small ones, but he didn't complain.

Sylvia did. They had two daughters now and a sizable mortgage on their home. She felt Harry wasn't aggressive enough about his salary.

"You should be getting more," she would say. "Gina Sobelski's husband hasn't been with the company half as long as you have and he makes twice as much."

"Sobelski's in the legal department," Harry would counter. "Different pay scale."

Logic did not move Sylvia.

"You're
dull,
Harry. Nobody pays any attention to you. You're a bore."

He didn't argue. He just let her vent and the next morning he went to work, where the only pressure on him was to do his job.

Anson Aerospace landed a juicy contract to build a megawatt-plus chemical laser for the Missile Defense Agency. The whole company was abuzz with the news. Victor Anson himself called a meeting of the entire staff in the company cafeteria to tell them that this program would be the most important contract the firm had ever received.

Harry was surprised when he was picked to be part of the small, select group of engineers who would build the device.

Dr. Jacob Levy was chosen to head the laser group, with Pete Quintana as the chief engineer under him. Monk Delany complained to Harry that Quintana only got the job because he was Hispanic and the company wanted to look good to the affirmative action busybodies.

A couple of the guys began calling Quintana
el jefe.
Harry and the others went along with it. What the hell? Harry thought. He had no problems with a Hispanic being his immediate supervisor. He liked Pete.

Sylvia took the news of Harry's new assignment strangely.

"I suppose that means you'll be working longer hours, doesn't it?" she asked that evening, after their daughters had gone to their rooms to do their homework. Harry could hear the thumping beat of the music they listened to while they were supposed to be studying.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said.

Sylvia grumbled and Harry wondered why she got sore at the fact that he was successful at his work.

"Look, Sylvie, I've got a big responsibility now," he tried to explain. "I know I'm not a genius. I've got to put in long hours and work as hard as I can. These scientists I'm working for are really brilliant; I've got to give it everything I've got just to keep up with them."

Sylvia stared at his earnest face and shook her head.

There were women in the lab, of course: a couple of Caltech grads among the scientific staff; several engineers and technicians. A few of them were even good-looking. The Christmas parties were fun, although Harry always drove straight home afterward. Sylvia would scowl at him the next day as Harry nursed his hangover and thanked whatever gods there be that the Pasadena traffic cops hadn't stopped him on the way home.

Sylvia had given up her teaching career, such as it was, once she became pregnant with Victoria. Then came Denise. Instead of a career in education, Sylvia pursued Causes. Women's rights. Neighborhood beautification. Abused children. Political campaigns. Harry thought of them as hobbyhorses. Sylvia always had some Cause or other to keep her busy, as if raising two daughters wasn't enough of a job. Through her Causes she met people, dragged Harry to meetings and cocktail parties, gave herself a sense of accomplishment.

Harry didn't mind Sylvia's hobbyhorses, as long as they didn't interfere with the increasingly long hours he had to put in at the lab. He settled into middle-class Americana, his wispy hair thinning even more, his kids growing up amazingly fast, his wife slowly becoming more distant. Harry could never understand why Sylvia was resentful that his job absorbed so much of his time and interest, and that he enjoyed it.

"We never go anywhere," she would complain.

"We took the kids to Disney World, didn't we?"

"Last year."

"So?"

"I was thinking about an ocean cruise. Maybe to Hawaii."

Harry scratched his head. "The four of us? Do you know what that would cost?"

"We could leave the girls with the Sobelskis. Just you and me, Harry. On a beautiful ocean liner."

He thought about how much time that would take but knew better than to mention that out loud. Besides, she knew he had amassed lots of unused vacation days.

"We'll see," he said.

Nearly a year later he finally gave in to her drumbeat of hints and accusations. They took a cruise to Hawaii. It wasn't really romantic, just a different setting for the same pair of them. Hawaii actually depressed Harry with its obviously phony facade of tropical splendor and the locals debasing their native culture for tourist dollars.

As their cruise liner left Honolulu for the trip home, Harry stood at the rail and watched the pier gradually slipping away, more and more distant, the gulf of oily, trash-laden water separating the ship from the land slowly, slowly widening. Turning to Sylvia, standing beside him with tears in her eyes, he thought that the same thing was happening to them-- they had already drifted apart, and the gulf between them was getting wider every day, every year.

Once they got back to Pasadena, Sylvia threw herself even deeper into neighborhood politics, circulating petitions and phoning city hall over this Cause or that. Harry worked longer and longer hours at the lab. The high-power laser project was moving along smartly. They called it the COIL: chemical oxygen iodine laser. Powerful stuff.

He knew he and Sylvia were becoming strangers to each other, but he didn't know what to do about it. At her insistence they went to a marriage counselor, who recommended they both see a psychologist. Reluctantly, Harry agreed to it, secretly terrified that somebody at the lab might find out.

"You're boringly normal," the psychologist told him.

The marriage counselor recommended they take a romantic ocean cruise. Harry stopped going to her, although Sylvia continued weekly sessions for more than a year. Harry wondered what she found to talk about every week.

The years slid past relentlessly. Jacob Levy was one of the more supercilious physicists on the lab's staff, but he got along pretty well with Harry. Levy knew how to keep his nose out of places where it shouldn't be.

"I'll do the thinking," he often told Harry's team of engineers. "All you have to do is make it work."

They made a good team. With Jake's brains and our hands, Harry thought, we'll make this laser actually work.

Inevitably the COIL program moved into the testing stage, and they had to transport all the hardware out to the Mohave Desert.

Pasadena, California: Hartunian Residence

Harry sensed Sylvia's eyes boring into his back as he packed his soft-sided travel bag. He turned and, sure enough, his wife was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking distinctly displeased.

"So you'll be gone for a week?" Sylvia asked. She had that accusing stare on her face; her district attorney look, Harry secretly called it. In school she'd been on the student council, combining earnestness and winning smiles to gather votes and move molehills. It had been a long time since he'd seen her smile--except when they were out with other couples. Then Sylvia could be the life of the party. At home, though, she was the district attorney.

"Maybe a little more than a week," he said, feeling almost guilty about it. He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. Maybe I ought to get a crew cut, he thought idly. Save a lot of time trying to keep it looking neat.

"Vickie's birthday is a week from Wednesday," Sylvia said. "You'll be home by then, won't you?"

"Should be."

"Should be? What do you mean, 'should be'? It's your daughter's birthday, for god's sake. Don't you have any feelings for your own daughter? I know you'd rather play around with your buddies than be with me, but you'd better come back in time for her birthday!"

Harry fought down an impulse to throw something at her. Zipping the travel bag, he said tightly, "I'm not playing around out there. It's strictly business, and it's important."

"Important. Sure. More important than me. More important than your daughters. They hardly ever see you! You're out of here at the crack of dawn and you don't come home until after dark. Now you're traipsing out to the desert."

"It's my job, for Chrissakes!" he said, trying to keep his voice down.

"Your job," Sylvia said, dripping acid.

"It's important."

"So important you can't tell me anything about it."

"That's right. The program is classified, military secret."

"Out in the desert."

"Right." Harry glanced at his wristwatch. Monk should be driving up soon.

"Where will you be staying out in the Mohave?"

"The Air Force is putting us up in a motel."

"A motel?"

"That's right." He lifted his bag off the bed and started for the door. Sylvia stood in the doorway like an armed guard.

"What's the name of this motel? The phone number?"

"I don't know yet. I'll keep my cell phone on. You can call me on it if you need to."

Sylvia looked up into his eyes. He saw resentment smoldering in hers, and anger, and plenty of suspicion.

"So you're walking out on me."

"Sylvia, it's only for a goddamned week! Ten days at most."

"Leaving me and the girls to fend for ourselves."

He grasped her shoulder and pushed her back from the doorway, out into the hall. As he reached the stairs he heard the toot of Monk Delany's car horn.

"I've got to go now," Harry said, starting down the carpeted stairs.

Sylvia stayed in the upper hallway, glowering at him. Harry felt enormously relieved to be getting out of the house and away from her.

Over his shoulder he called, "Kiss the girls for me when they get back from school."

"How many girls are you going to kiss out there in that damned motel?" Sylvia yelled after him.

Harry was startled by that. She's worried that I'll shack up with somebody else? The thought had never entered his mind. Actually, it had, now and then. But he'd never acted on it.

He was surprised again when he saw that Monk was driving a mint-new Mustang convertible, fire-engine red.

"Where's the Chrysler?" Harry asked as he tossed his travel bag onto the narrow bench behind the bucket seats.

Monk gave an unhappy snort. "The old gray ghost's transmission crapped out. I've got to use the wife's new car and she's plenty steamed up about it."

Harry slid into the seat and slammed the door shut. As Monk gunned the convertible down the street Harry thought again about Sylvia accusing him of shacking up with some other woman. As if I'd ever do that, he said to himself with some indignation.

Mohave Desert: Anson Corporation Test Facility

“Ten
-hut!"
The seven engineers and test technicians turned from their control boards and, grinning, arranged themselves in a ragged line. Several of them gave sloppy salutes.

As he stepped through the steel hatch into the blockhouse, Brigadier General Brad Scheib smiled tightly at them. "I can see none of you geniuses was ever in the military."

Harry felt disappointed. "You're not wearing your star, General."

Scheib wasn't even in uniform. He wore a checkered short-sleeved shirt, open at the neck, and comfortable chino slacks.

"I don't want to look overdressed," he said. The civilians were all in faded denims and company-issued white T-shirts that read ANSON AEROSPACE across their backs, with the stylized
A
of the corporation's logo on their chests. Pete Quintana's shirt was emblazoned with EL JEFE sewn just above the logo.

Scheib was accompanied by Jacob Levy, the chief scientist on the laser project. Like General Scheib, Levy wore a sport shirt and slacks, although his shirt was sparkling white and crisply starched, distinctly out of place in the baking desert heat. Levy was the man in charge, working directly with the newly promoted General Scheib and responsible only to Victor Anson, who owned the company.

"Are you ready to run?" Levy asked Quintana.

Nodding, the engineer replied, "We're going through the final checkout. Be ready to fire up the beast in ten minutes or so."

The control center had been a blockhouse years ago, when the Air Force was testing rocket engines for missiles at this remote desert site. It was unglamorous, strictly utilitarian: bare concrete walls, half a dozen desk-sized consoles with their display screens and keyboards, strip lamps across the steel beams supporting the ceiling, a panel of monitoring gauges fastened to the concrete of the rear wall. The air-conditioning was pitiful: several of the men's shirts were already sweat-stained, and Taki Nakamura's shirt clung to her slim bosom.

"Very well, then," Levy said stiffly as he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow, "let's get down to business and show the general what our COIL can do."

One wall of the concrete building had been punched through and a long window of thick safety glass looked out on the laser itself.

The COIL sat in its own open shed beneath a flimsy roof of corrugated metal supported by four steel beams. Pete Quintana picked up a cordless screwdriver and stepped through the blockhouse's steel door, out into the shed.