Power Play (6 page)

“You’ve run this rig before, haven’t you?” Jake asked Rogers, almost in a whisper.

“A couple dozen times.”

“He acts like it’s the first time they’ve tried it.”

With a wry little smile, Rogers said, “For Tim it’s always the first time.”

Younger came back into the control booth, faithfully trailed by the six lab-coated technicians. All of them male, Jake noted. The booth suddenly felt crowded with all of them jammed in, uncomfortably warm, despite the air-conditioning. Jake could smell the acrid tang of perspiration, and somebody had bathed himself in a heavy, musky aftershave.

“Power on the bus,” Younger said, his hat pushed far back on his head. His tone was flat, subdued, but four of the technicians began flicking switches as if their lives depended on it.

“Fuel feed ready,” said one of them.

“Oxygen feed ready.”

Younger said, “Magnet?”

“Up and running. Full strength.”

“Separator?”

“Ready.”

Younger scanned the control panel, left to right, then looked through the thick glass partition at the rig, sitting silently before them.

“Start fuel feed.”

Jake heard a slithering, grating sound: pulverized coal sliding down a chute.

“Fuel feed on.”

“Start oxygen feed.”

“Oxy on.”

“Igniting burner,” Younger said, pressing a stiffly extended finger onto a square red button.

The technician’s reply was lost in a roar like a rocket taking off. The building rattled. Jake’s hearing blanked out, the noise was so intense. Clapping his hands to his ears, he turned enough so that he could see the gauges on the wall behind them. Dials were ratcheting upward.

Rogers was grinning broadly, hands pressed to his ears. A couple of the technicians had donned earphones; the rest covered their ears against the immense, bone-jangling noise. Younger stood like a statue, though, staring at the rig as it roared with the throats of a million dragons. The seconds stretched. Jake saw that the technicians also stood frozen at their posts, gaping at the MHD generator through the quivering glass partition. He himself stood rooted, frozen, nailed to the floor by the sheer overwhelming
power
of the generator’s roar. The MHD generator was unchanged to his staring eyes; Jake could see no flame, no motion at all except the trembling insistent vibration that made the very air shake and rattled his eyes in their sockets. His breath caught in his throat.

Then Younger stabbed the same finger at the same red button. The noise shut off abruptly. The vibrations stopped. All the gauges ran down to zero. Jake cautiously took his hands off his ears. Everything sounded muffled; Jake felt like his head was underwater. He squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them. Nothing had changed, and yet …

Younger was beaming. He turned to Rogers and they slapped a high-five.

“Forty-eight megawatts!” Jake heard Younger’s delighted shout, but it was smothered, as if his ears were swaddled in cotton.

The technicians all looked happy, big grins as they flicked switches and pecked at buttons on the control board.

Rogers had pulled out a pocket calculator. He looked up and down the controls, tapping on its keypad.

Jake’s ears were ringing. He remembered going with Louise out to a pistol range, years ago. Even with earphones clapped to his head the noise of the guns firing kept his ears ringing for days afterward. Louise had been impressed that Jake hit the target nearly dead-center with most of his shots. She punched three holes through the tin roof of their shelter when she tried to fire an automatic.

“Seventy-two percent,” Rogers yelled, showing his calculator’s tiny screen to Younger. It sounded to Jake as if the man was speaking from the bottom of an echoing well.

Younger was all smiles. “We’re getting there,” he said. “We’re definitely getting there.”

The outer door swung open, sudden sunlight flooding into the test cell. Glynis Colwyn rushed in, obviously distressed about something.

“I heard the noise from a half mile up the road,” she shouted. “Don’t tell me you’ve run the test already!”

GLYNIS COLWYN

As Glynis hurried across the test cell toward the control booth, Younger shot a sly grin at Rogers. Once she entered the booth his expression grew stern and he said to her, “Hey, I
told
you we’d run at one o’clock.”

Looking upset, she said, “It’s only a quarter past one.”

Younger shrugged. “The checkout went smooth, so we fired her up.”

“I wanted to see the run!”

Another shrug. “Then you should have been here on time.”

Glynis frowned at him. She was dressed in a pair of deep blue slacks, with a white short-sleeved pullover that reached to her hips. Jake noticed she had a necklace of turquoise around her throat, and a turquoise bracelet on one wrist. Her long dark hair look disheveled, windblown.

“We’ll probably run it again, around three, four o’clock,” Younger said.

She looked from his face to Rogers and back again. “I’ve got to be back at Professor Sinclair’s office at three thirty.”

“Too bad,” said Younger.

“Damn! I nearly broke my butt getting here. My blasted car’s having ignition troubles again and I had to get it checked out this morning before I left.”

Younger said nothing; he simply turned away from her and started fiddling with some of the knobs on the control board. Rogers looked embarrassed.

Clearly unhappy, Glynis said, “I might as well go back, then.”

Rogers made an apologetic, “It’s a shame you had to come all the way out here and miss the run.”

“Yes,” she replied, eying Younger. “Isn’t it?”

Jake could feel the high-voltage tension between Younger and Colwyn. Rogers seemed to be in the middle of it.

Colwyn glared at Younger’s back, then turned and headed out toward the door.

Once she’d left, Jake half whispered to Rogers, “What was that all about?”

With an uneasy smile, the physicist replied, “Tim thinks she’s a spy.”

“A spy?”

“From Sinclair.”

“But this is Sinclair’s program, isn’t it?”

“It’s
my
program,” Younger snapped, looking up from the control board. “I run this fucking show. It’s my responsibility. When something goes wrong I get the blame. Okay. But I won’t have his fucking snoops sticking their tits into my work!”

Jake involuntarily backed away from Younger’s blazing anger.

The engineer muttered darkly, “She sleeps her way into the fucking program and now she’s coming up here snooping around.”

Rogers gripped Younger’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Tim. After all, Sinclair
is
the head of this program.”

“So he gets to bed her, big fucking deal,” Younger grumbled. “He wants me to produce test results so he can write papers about them and get his name in the journals. Well, if that’s what he’s after, he’d damned well better leave me alone so I can get the fucking results he wants.”

Rogers raised both hands, palms outward, showing his agreement. “I’ll talk to the prof about it.”

“You do that,” Younger growled.

Jake heard himself say, “Uh … I’d better get back to town. Thanks for letting me see the run. It’s damned impressive.”

Younger nodded curtly at him.

“Come on,” Rogers said, gripping Jake by the arm, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

They walked across the now-silent test cell, footsteps clicking against the concrete floor.

“Like I told you, Tim’s very proprietary about the test runs,” Rogers explained, his voice low. “He still feels bad about the explosion last year. Some people blamed him for that technician’s death and Sinclair didn’t do much to protect him.”

Jake nodded, but replied quietly, “He doesn’t do much to make friends for himself, though, does he?”

Rogers chuckled. “No, not Tim. Making friends is not his style. Most definitely not.”

They shook hands at the door, then Rogers turned back toward the control booth and Jake stepped outside. It was glaring hot under the bright, high sun. Jake saw Glynis Colwyn sitting disconsolately in her car, a sleek classic Jaguar XJ-S, forest green. Probably more than twenty years old, Jake estimated, but it still looked as if it was in mint condition, beneath its coating of road dust.

“It won’t start,” she said through the open driver’s window. She looked close to tears.

Walking over to her, Jake saw that she was seething with anger and helpless frustration.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked. Before she could reply he added, “With the car, I mean.”

“The damned electrical system. Every time I turn off the engine the battery dies.”

The older Jags have a reputation for electrical troubles, Jake knew. He remembered an old line to the effect that the only people who can afford a Jaguar are those rich enough to have a mechanic ride with them.

“I’ve got jumper cables in my trunk,” Jake said.

“You do?”

With a weak grin, he admitted, “I’ve had my problems with my old Mustang.”

Within minutes he had jumped the Jaguar’s battery and Glynis had gunned its engine into a throaty purr.

“Better keep it running,” Jake shouted as he disconnected the cables.

“Don’t worry. I won’t turn off the engine until I reach the dealer. The head of their service department knows my American Express number by heart.”

“I’ll follow you, just in case. Okay?”

“Terrific.”

So Jake drove behind the sleek Jaguar all the way back to the city. Glynis pushed the speed limits and he worried that a highway patrol officer or city policeman might pull them both over. They wouldn’t look twice at his old Mustang, he thought, but they love to give tickets to expensive cars.

She made it to the Imperial Jaguar service department’s parking lot without being stopped. Jake parked near the street under a shady tree and watched her in earnest, hand-waving conversation with an older, bald, potbellied man. Jake glanced at his wristwatch: two forty-three. He’d get her to her meeting with Sinclair in plenty of time.

Glynis looked surprised once she spotted his drab gray Mustang still in the parking lot. She hurried over to him.

“You waited for me?”

“Sure. Get in. I’m going back to the campus anyway.”

She climbed in and clicked on her seat belt. “What’s the sense of having a convertible if you don’t put the top down?” she asked as he started the engine.

He looked at her. “It’s kind of hot, don’t you think?”

“No. It’s a pretty day.”

Together they reached up and disconnected the latches holding the roof to the windshield, then Jake pressed the button and the fabric roof folded neatly back.

“There!” Glynis said. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

He nodded. She was smiling at him and those almond-shaped eyes of hers looked very enticing. Younger said she’s sleeping with Sinclair, he thought. Sinclair had a reputation, despite being married. Can’t say I blame him, Jake said to himself. She’s a real looker.

He pulled his sunglasses out of the console between the seats as he eased the Mustang toward the driveway that exited onto the street.

“So where are you from?” he asked as they pulled out into traffic.

“West Virginia,” she said over the wind and traffic noise. “Morgantown.”

“Coal miner’s daughter,” said Jake, picturing another kid struggling to make her way up from poverty, just as he was doing.

Glynis was silent for a moment, then said, “Not exactly a coal miner’s daughter. My father owns the mine.”

“Owns it?” Jake’s voice went high with surprise.

“I happen to be the grandniece of the Earl of Cardigan. That’s back in Wales. He’s impoverished nobility, of course, but the American branch of the family has done quite nicely for itself, thank you.”

“Wow.”

“How do you think I can afford a Jaguar?”

She was not quite laughing at him, but Jake felt embarrassed anyway.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” he lied. The truth was that he’d figured the Jaguar had been a gift, maybe from Professor Sinclair, who was rumored to give expensive gifts to beautiful young women.

“I ought to trade it in for a VW,” she said. “More reliable.”

“But you look so good in the Jag.”

“Thank you!”

“So what are you doing with Sinclair? I mean … what are you doing with the MHD program?”

Her smile faded. “I’m working for my MBA, using the MHD program as the subject for a business analysis.” Suddenly she burst into laughter. “Maybe I should switch to electrical engineering and figure out what’s wrong with my damned car!”

JACOB ROSS’S OFFICE

Jake spent the afternoon in his office, listening to students’ problems and complaints. This must be what it’s like for a priest when he hears confession, he thought. My mother was sick and I couldn’t get to class all week. My computer crashed. I just can’t seem to get the hang of the math, Dr. Ross; calculus is like a foreign language to me.

Jake had heard the same sad stories, the same excuses, time and again. He half expected one of the students to claim that his dog ate his homework.

Finally he closed his office door and leaned his back against it, as if afraid another distressed student would try to break in. Visiting hours are finished, he said to himself. The doctor is out.

The phone on his desk rang. Wearily he went over to it and picked it up as he sank into his wheeled chair.

Dr. Cardwell’s voice said cheerfully, “Just reminding you that Alice and I are expecting you for dinner at seven tonight.”

Relieved, Jake said, “I’ll be there.”

It was almost ten minutes before seven when Jake pressed the doorbell at Cardwell’s snug little cottage. Lev and his wife had lived there for ages; the place always looked spanking new, as if it’d just been repainted. Colorful flower beds along the edges of the neatly trimmed lawn. Graceful shady linden tree leaning protectively over the gray slate roof.

Mrs. Cardwell opened the door and beamed at Jake. She was a tiny woman, with a charming smile and sparkling blue eyes. She had been a clothing model in her youth, and still looked strikingly lovely even though her hair had gone gray. She refused to color it, saying laughingly that she was too vain to try to hide her age. Her first name was Alice, and Lev often hummed the refrain of some old song about an Alice blue gown. Strange, Jake thought, that he could easily call Dr. Cardwell Lev, but he could never address Mrs. Cardwell by her first name.