Swindell swung. The glass shattered. "What is it?"
"You better come with me."
Swindell followed the man out of his penthouse office, cozily nestled in a great Plexiglas dome in the desert. Instead of leading him through the climate-controlled airlock and out into the desert heat, the chief engineer escorted him to the main Condome elevator.
As they rode the lift down, Swindell noticed for the first time that the engineer's boots were damp. He was about to ask how they got that way when the engineer suddenly hit the kill switch.
The elevator lurched to a stop, nearly upsetting both men.
"What's wrong?" Swindell demanded. "Generator go again?"
"This is as far as we can go."
"What do you mean? This ain't but the twenty-second floor. There's six more to go." He reached for the switch.
"I wouldn't if I were you," the engineer warned.
Swindell hesitated. That was when he heard the water. He looked down. His cowboy boots were swimming in brackish water. It was pouring in through the floor seams.
"Where's this water comin' from!" Swindell howled.
"We think it's an underground stream. Maybe the water table creeping up."
"Water!" Swindell burst out. "In the fucking desert?"
"It happens. Runoff from the mountains has to go somewhere. What doesn't evaporate seeps down into the sand. Sand's porous, you know. Looks like it accumulated down there. Now it's seeping into the Condome shell."
"Take us up! Take us up!" Swindell said, his eyes sick.
As the elevator toiled back to the surface, Connors Swindell felt as if he had left his stomach back in the bowels of the greatest advance in housing since the condominium.
Not to mention his entire future.
They tried everything. Pumping. Sealing up and abandoning the lower six floors. But still the water seeped in.
Swindell ordered a construction slowdown while he scrambled to find a way out of the literal sandtrap he had dug himself into.
"It can't get any worse," Swindell told his secretary after his return from La Plomo, Missouri.
"What is it, Con honey?" asked Constance Payne, whose willingness to get down on the rug and screw her boss remained her chief qualification for the job, even after ten years with Swindell Properties. She wore her hair too red and her sweater too tight.
Swindell looked out from his Palm Springs condo window. A field of stars spilled across the desert night sky.
"You should have seen that town, baby. As sweet a collection of garrisons and colonials as you ever saw in one spot. Just basking in the sun. Untenanted, fully applianced, with all the sewer, water, and electrical lines a growin' community could ask for. And no one wantin' any part of it because of a little spilt nerve gas."
"Nobody would sell?"
"Naw, I got a few nibbles. But it's soon soon for the grievin' families. I figure I can wait 'em out until they realize they gotta sell to me. But that ain't what I'm talking about. The fool Army came along and tried to decontaminate the whole shebang."
"Is that bad?"
"It is when the decontaminant makes carbolic acid look like Kool-Aid. They started hosing a place down-a sweet little fixer-upper-and the paint just bubbled up and started smoking. Next thing you know, it up and caught fire. Then it exploded. Three million dollars' worth of housing went up in a flash. I lit out right then, it turned my stomach so bad."
Constance Payne pulled her boss down onto her generous lap. "Oh, poor baby," she cooed, playing with his hair.
"Not only that, but I lost Horace."
Her red mouth made a surprised circle. "What happened to Horace?"
"Ingrate up and quit on me."
"That Horace! But you can get another chauffeur."
"Not like Horace. I could trust him. I tell you, baby if things don't turn around soon, the nineties are gonna be a misery."
"Oh, I was hoping you'd be in a good mood when you got back."
"Well, I'm not. So there."
" 'Cause we got another problem."
Swindell brightened. "More paternity suits?" he asked eagerly.
"No, those have kinda settled down."
Swindell's bright smile darkened. "What the hell you been doing all the livelong day, your nails? If we ever gonna get back on our feet, Connie, you gotta do your part."
"I have been. Will you settle down and listen? The Condome is being overrun, or something. The site crew just called it in."
"By who? The bankers?"
"They call themselves Dirt First!!"
"Them mangy curs!" Swindell exploded. "I saw a pack of them back in Missouri. You could smell 'em coming for miles around. What do they want with my Condome?"
"They say you're desecrating the natural habitat of the desert scorpion."
Swindell jumped up so fast his pockets disgorged business cards Velcroed to condom packets.
"Scorpions!" he shouted. "Don't they know scorpions are venomous varmints?"
"I don't think they do. They're painting graffiti on the dome and everything. Should I call your pilot?"
Swindell nodded angrily. "Damn. This is fixin' to be a terrible decade for real estate. I can feel it in my bones."
Chapter 13
Woody Robbins was in charge of security at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, an experimental research facility connected with the University of California, and located east of San Francisco.
Even after the cold war had been declared officially over, America's nuclear deterrent force required constant maintenance. East-West tensions may have been reduced to a lulling hum, but the world remained full of nuclear weapons, and where nuclear technology was concerned, Woody Robbins never let down his guard.
Unfortunately, he had just the night shift. The day shift security staff seemed to think that the rare isotopes and spent uranium fuel pellets were kept in secure lead storage containers for controlled access, not for theft protection.
Nuclear material-everything from hair-fine wiring to klystron triggers-was oozing from the brick pores of Lawrence Livermore like sweat from a rotisserie pig.
Tonight Woody Robbins sat at his desk flipping through duty reports and occasionally glancing at a wall-mounted bank of closed-circuit screens that were wired to strategically placed security cameras. But mostly to the portable set on his desk tuned to a Lakers game. Woody was a stickler for security, but the Lakers were important too. Besides, it was a slow night.
Had Woody Robbins happened to tune into the local news instead of a basketball game, he would not have made the mistake of admitting Sky Bluel-who was known to him as a trustworthy UCLA physics major-to the facility. Woody liked Sky, even if she did dress as if the calendar had froze at the Summer of Love.
The ten-o'clock news was showing a clip of Sky Bluel togged out in antique hippie clothes, showing off a tactical neutron bomb whose parts had, with the exception of the breadboard mount-which was an Ace Hardware Washington's Birthday special-come out of Lawrence Livermore, a piece here and a piece there.
But Woody was oblivious of that. The Lakers were down 13 to the Knicks' 61, and it coming on half-time. Woody was worried.
His worries shifted into high gear and an entirely different venue when a microwave-relay van slid up to the gate and the driver accosted the hapless gate guard.
A beeping light under monitor number one brought this unwelcome intrusion to Woody Bobbins' attention. He peered past his propped-up feet to the monitor. One look, and all thought of the Lakers fled his mind.
The gate guard was saying something about cameras not being allowed on the grounds except by prior application.
A cameraman responded by shoving a videocam into his face. Its harsh light forced him to turn away.
And a voice that Woody recognized but could not immediately place demanded to see the head of security.
"Tell him Twenty-four Hours is here to inspect his security," intoned the half-familiar baritone voice.