The Stallion (1996) (44 page)

Cindy nodded. “My husband is a great man. Being married to him is something like being married to a president of the United States. You can’t help but respect what he’s doing, but you have to tolerate his commitment, which keeps him away from home and keeps him on the telephone when he’s here.”

“I wish I had more understanding of the kind of thing he’s doing. Batteries—”

“A flywheel battery,” she said. “It works because it spins. The more he explains
why
it works, the less I understand it. But he’s confident of it.”

“Will you go to see the first test runs? I mean, you were yourself a test driver.”

“I’d love to drive it,” said Cindy. “Acceleration to match the best American highway cars. No brakes except as backup—“
“No brakes?”

“It will slow down and stop by reversing the polarity on the motors—something like the way a jet slows down by reversing the thrust of its engines. As the kinetic energy of the moving car is fed into the battery, it will convert kinetic energy into electric energy, so giving the battery a charge.” “My God! I—”

“I’m talking too much,” she said, picking up her snifter of brandy as if that suggested a justification.

Carpenter stood behind her and caressed her cheeks and neck. “I love you, Cindy,” he murmured.

It was the truth.

After midnight he plugged his portable fax into the hotel telephone jack and sent a message to the Hardeman home in Detroit—

The battery technology AP is investigating in Berlin involves a spinning battery called a “flywheel” battery. He is on the verge of securing a license to use it.

The 000 will have no brakes except as backup. It will decelerate and stop by reversing the polarity on the electric motors. In the process this will send energy back into the battery, giving it a recharge. Or so he says.

Loren and Roberta sat at breakfast. Peter Beacon was there, having been called to the house by a telephone call at dawn. With him were two other young engineers, neither employed by XB Motors.

Beacon pointed to one of the young men, whose name was Simpson. “Feasible?” he asked.

Simpson shrugged. “Not impossible. A number of companies, in the States and elsewhere, are working on this technology. None of them, to
my
knowledge, have got it to a point where it could power an automobile on the road in any satisfactory way.”

“There are two possibilities,” said Beacon. “Either Perino is relying on an extremely far-out new technology, which may or may not work, or he’s going to compromise and put a small gasoline engine in his car to supplement the flywheel battery.”

Loren turned to Simpson. “Feasible?”

“It’s been done that way,” said Simpson. “Twenty or thirty horsepower, plus the flywheel battery…”

“A
cockamamie hybrid
B” Loren snorted. “A bastardized—”

“Don’t any of you underestimate Angelo Perino,” said Roberta. “If he—”

“I went along again this year with the way we’ve got the company organized,” said Loren, “because he has us so deep in this thing it would be ruin to try to bail out. I wish I had that ninety-one stockholders meeting to do over again.”

Roberta looked at Simpson. “Can he really recapture some of the energy the car used to accelerate, taking it back from the wheels as the car decelerates?”

Simpson nodded. “It’s an ingenious concept. How well it will work, I don’t know. He can recapture some, for sure.”

“Angelo Perino is a bold man,” said Roberta.

“Yes, but there’s a difference between bold and reckless,” said Simpson.

The first test car with the lithium-polymer cell and the flywheel battery took to the test track in April. Angelo drove. The right front seat and the entire rear seat were filled with test instruments, so he went out on the track alone.

Cindy and Roberta watched from behind the fence. Loren and Beacon stayed inside the instrument shack and
watched the needles on the gauges. Keijo Shigeto and Alex McCullough followed Angelo in a conventional Stallion carrying a few instruments that Alex monitored while Keijo drove.

On the first circuit of the track, Angelo made no great demands on the car. He accelerated slowly and circled the track at thirty miles an hour. He was in radio contact with Alex.

“Normal,” she said at the end of the first lap.

“I’m going to give your computer something to think about,” said Angelo.

“It’s been thinking all along. Battery drain is within expected parameters.”

“Okay. Let’s see if it can accelerate.”

Because generations of drivers were accustomed to the throttle in a car being a long thin pedal located under the driver’s right foot, the 000 was configured that way. Angelo pressed down. The car surged forward. When he reached fifty miles per hour he eased up.

“It doesn’t like that as well,” said Alex. “Battery drain is outside acceptable parameters. Not by much, but more than we can accept.”

“You’re making notes, I suppose,” said Angelo. “We know what we have to work on.”

“Try decelerating,” she said.

Again, in order to avoid building a car that would radically change the driving habits of millions, Angelo had had the Triple Zero’s brake designed so that it was applied by pressing down a pedal. The test car had no backup conventional brakes. It would slow down as the polarity on the motors reversed, or it wouldn’t slow down at all.

It didn’t slow down at all.

“Shit!” yelled Alex. “I know why, too. The fuckin’ computer isn’t reading the command. Just keep your foot off the accelerator and let it run out of steam.”

The test car eventually coasted to a stop, and Angelo nursed it back to the ramp at five miles an hour.

When he got out, Cindy was the only spectator who remained. Loren and Roberta and their engineers had left.

“A good first test,” said Keijo.

Angelo slapped the test car’s fender. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got a week to make it work.”

One week because…

Wilma Worth, the
Wall Street Journal
reporter who had called Angelo a playboy executive, was a plump and solemn little woman, probably about thirty-five.

“I know journalistic ethics don’t allow you to ride around the country in corporate jets,” Angelo said to her, “but I’m going to Detroit, and you’re going to Detroit the same day, so what the hell? Anyway, why not have a look at that jet you wrote about?”

They boarded the Lear at eight in the morning. To Angelo’s surprise, she accepted a Bloody Mary, then a second one.

“The conventional wisdom on you, Mr. Perino, is that the world has yet to see a woman who can resist you.”

“The world may not see them, but I do,” he said. “Anyway, in the Middle Ages there was something called the Truce of God, meaning that for a certain period of time all wars were called off so people could take care of other business. How about the Truce of God, today and tomorrow? After that…” He grinned and shrugged.

She smiled. “Truce of God,” she agreed.

“Which means you can call me Angelo.”

“And you can call me Wilma. So tell me, is your car going to run for this drive I’m supposed to take?”

“It had better,” he said. “The Truce of God doesn’t include your concealing any flaws you see.”

“Deal,” she said.

“So you asked me a question and now I ask you one. You’ve been fed a story that the car doesn’t run, right?”

“Well … let’s change the terminology,” she said. “You can’t feed my paper stories. On the other hand, we’ve had reports to the effect that the car failed miserably on its first test drive.”

Angelo nodded. “That is about half right,” he said. “In some respects it met expectations. In important respects it didn’t. But that was the
first test.
It’s been driven in second
and third tests during the past week, and it’s doing much better. It hasn’t been perfected yet. It doesn’t meet all expectations.”

“I’m still surprised that you asked
me
to come out to see it.”

“From my point of view, you’re the perfect reporter to be given an advance look at the Zero-Zero-Zero. You wrote an article about me. I viewed it as critical, not hostile. But whatever … you’re surely not my pet reporter. So you get the first official reporter’s look. Deal?”

XB’s Zero-Zero-Zero Really Does Run

REPORTS OF FAILURE CLEARLY PREMATURE

A Cruise Around the Test Track

By Wilma Worth

A test car is a funny-looking vehicle. You wouldn’t want one for your family car. The backseat is full of steel boxes containing mysterious electronic instruments. The whole car has an air of impermanence about it—because as a test car it is constantly being changed and refined.

The XB engineers opened all the nooks and crannies for me. It’s like they said; there’s no gasoline engine hidden in there somewhere. The 000 is powered by four electric motors, one on each wheel. The current comes out of a combination of batteries, all quite mysterious to this reporter. The whole thing is controlled by a sophisticated computer that uses electrical energy so efficiently that supposedly the car can run for hours without recharging the batteries.

Apart from sitting in the midst of all those instrument boxes, riding in the 000 is very much like riding in any American passenger car. Mr. Angelo Perino, XB president, drove. The car accelerated smoothly to 60 mph and briskly circled the test track. We went around five or six times. The track is five miles around, so we went 25 or 30 miles without draining the batteries.

Then Mr. Perino offered to let me drive. I did. It was
like driving any American car—until I put my foot on the brakes. Only then did he tell me there weren’t any brakes! The car slowed down from the drag on the electric motors, polarity reversed. The car will have conventional brakes for backup, but this test car has none. I wouldn’t have known the difference. The car slowed down and stopped just as if it had brakes.

I drove five or six laps. At the end I still had lively acceleration, and Mr. Perino said the instruments indicated we could go around a dozen or more times before we’d begin to exhaust the batteries. We wouldn’t need a recharge until we’d driven 150 miles, he said. The company expects to double that before the car is put on the market.

Whatever the XB 000 turns out to be, it is far too early to call it a failure—or perhaps, at this point, to call it a success.

Henry Morris came to New York. He and Cindy left the gallery and went to the Bull & Bear in the Waldorf.

“I had our personnel department run a check on your Professor Carpenter,” Henry told her. “Essentially, he is what he told you: a professor of art history at California State University, Long Beach. He is on sabbatical leave right now. He lives in a modest apartment and drives a four-year-old Chevrolet.”

“Where does he get the money to buy art?” Cindy asked, puzzled. “That’s the mystery.”

“He didn’t inherit it, that’s for sure. His father was a barber.”

“Then he lied to me. He said his father was a yacht broker.”

“How much money has he spent?” “He bought a DeCombe sculpture for fifteen thousand dollars. And he’s spent fifty-three thousand dollars on Amanda Finch nudes—including one of himself. Besides that, he flies back and forth to California; and when he’s here he stays in expensive hotels.” “His checks are good?”

“Absolutely.”

Henry Morris raised his eyebrows. “I guess we’re going to have to go a little further. Let me talk to the security company we keep on retainer for Morris Mining.”

“What have I gotten myself into?” she asked. “What’s going on? Why has this man insinuated himself into my life?”

“Be careful. Don’t let him see that you suspect him. Incidentally, what bank does he write checks on?”

“United California.”

“Did you ever see him use a credit card?”

Cindy smiled. “I hope you didn’t suppose your sister was without smarts.” She opened her purse and pulled out a credit-card receipt. “A man should never leave his chit on the table when he goes to the men’s room.”

Henry Morris may have been incapable of laughing, but he smiled faintly and put the receipt in his jacket pocket.

George, Viscount Neville, broke his breakfast egg with the bowl of his spoon. He had been glancing through the
Times
but had put it aside when Betsy had come in a few moments ago. This was his habit. He tried to reach the breakfast room a few minutes before Betsy, so he could have a quick look at his newspaper and then be free for conversation. His wife was a fascinating conversationalist, always with something interesting to say, and he had broken the habit of a lifetime of always reading his
Times
thoroughly at breakfast.

A tall, slender, white-haired man, the Viscount Neville had heavy-lidded eyes that suggested hauteur, but he was in fact a most democratic man, whose sincere greetings to dustmen and cabbies sometimes amazed his neighbors and friends. He was nobody’s fool, either. He knew perfectly well that his beautiful American wife had a long-standing relationship with Angelo Perino and temporary affairs with others. He cared, but he did not want to make such a fuss as to damage their marriage. He was distinctly proud of their marriage for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that it had endured far longer than his once-scandalized
family and chums had predicted. Betsy did her conjugal duty for him, and he did his for her. Neither of them had any complaint on that score.

“I have something I want to discuss with you this morning,” Betsy said.

“Nothing ominous in that opening, I hope.”

“Something
ominous. Van will be here tomorrow. This is the second time he’s flown back here since his Christmas break, and I know why. It’s a girl.”

“Is that ominous, really?”

“He’s an innocent, George. He went from a public school in England to a boarding school in France, then to the States, where he immediately fell in love with Anna Perino. He met this new young woman during an interval at a theater. He’s absolutely
crazy
about her! She wants to go to the States. If she does, she’ll break up his relationship with Anna. And
that
would be a tragedy.”