He paused at a traffic light to look again at the map, and confirmed his belief that he was going the best way. The Ventura Freeway. Straight over to the San Diego, then down Century Boulevard to the airport. In decent weather, no more than forty minutes. Today— One could not say, but surely before his plane was due to take off. If any planes were taking off. Even if they did not, it had been irregular for him to leave the airport at all between planes, and it was best not to keep his "companion" waiting at the check-in counter.
Of course, Lev Mihailovitch had much less fear of "companions" than any ordinary Soviet citizen. He was not ordinary. He was a cosmonaut, and cosmonauts were next to God. Cosmonauts were allowed to order special little sports cars and drive them at eighty kilometers an hour all over the city, with the traffic militiamen waving them on. Cosmonauts got five-room apartments on Gorky Street; cosmonauts got to buy at the best of the special stores. It was not a bad life, being a cosmonaut. It was even permitted for a cosmonaut to disappear from his party for a little while, now and then. Even if some attractive young capitalist woman was involved—cosmonauts, after all, were men!
For someone whose mother had been a Jew, Lev Mihailovitch had done well. Even his internal passport had "Russian" stamped on it, not "Jew", and he was welcomed at the best "clubs in Moscow. A cosmonaut had all sorts of privileges . . . but not, Mihailovitch thought with some concern, the privilege of failing to show up when he was supposed to. It could lead to unpleasant consequences. It would surely lead to the asking of questions he did not want to answer.
Perhaps, after all, he would regret the impulse toward chivalry that had brought him here. Mihailovitch craned to see his watch, failed, muttered to himself and turned on the radio to see just how late he was.
Of course, now none of the stations chose to give a time hack. He divided his attention between the radio and the road, not quite able to deal with either. How fast the radio announcers spoke, in this shorthand idiom that was so hard to understand! He made out that two house trailers had been swept away, and several cars, but could not make out where. (Along the ocean, surely? Surely not here!) Flood control channels were filling with silt; yes, fine, what did he care? And then he made out that something bad had happened, or was about to happen, to the Pacific Missile Test Range. Dikes had broken, but whether that meant that the range was washed out he could not tell. That touched him more nearly. At least it might put his companion in a good mood! Mihailovitch himself, not so good. After all, the astronauts were comrades in the space experience. He wished them no harm. He had had many a good drink with the moonwalkers and the veterans of EVA experiences so like his own. Although the Pacific Range was not at all like the Cape, was a part of the space program with which he had no more to do than his astronaut buddies—spy satellites and even worse!—still the people in California, too, were in some sense his family. They would understand his chivalry.
He reached irritably to switch off" the radio, could not find the unfamiliar knob, took his eyes off the roadway for a moment.
Mihailovitch did not see the van that skeetered across the freeway in front of him until it was broadside to his lane. His reflexes were instant. He swerved the wheel and missed the van.
At the last minute he knew that he could not, however, miss the divider that kept southbound traffic from north. He struck it and caromed off, winding up clear back across all four lanes, with two wheels up against the retaining embankment and the steering wheel in his lap.
When he realized that, though the car would not move again, he was hardly even bruised he was extremely grateful; on second thought, grateful twice. Grateful that he had formed the habit of fastening seat belts whenever he drove. Ten times more grateful that now there was a clear and unarguable reason to be as late as he liked. No questions would be asked of a simple car accident in a storm!
At a hearing on offshore oil leases an environmental scientist testified that carbon dioxide in the air trapped heat, and that the more fossil fuel was burned the more carbon dioxide would be in the air. He cited studies showing that in the century from 1850 to 1950, atmospheric CO2 increased from 268 to 312 parts per million, an increase of 16%; and he quoted from a study by Siegenthaler and Oeschger to show that burning as much as ten per cent of known fossil fuel reserves, even if spread out over several centuries, would raise the C02 by 50% or more, a highly probable danger level. The commission listened patiently, and then,voted to approve the leases anyhow. All those empty gas tanks wanted filling.
Monday, December 28th. 6:20 AM.
When Joel de Lawrence was a contract producer he owned a stucco California ranch house, a sports car, a mistress, and a drug habit. The habit was sleeping pills. The reason he needed them was the insomnia of fear, the fear everybody on the studio lots always had that the front office would rise up one morning and pass a whim, and all that would melt away. As indeed it had.
That time in his life was decades past. Now he slept like an angel. There was no nagging late-night fear of loss to keep him thrashing about. He had very little to lose. Each night he drank two mild Scotch-and-waters while he watched the late news, and as soon as the last map of the weather report was off the screen he went to sleep, and dreamed better than he ever had in his life. The dreams alone were almost worth the loss of the hacienda and the starlet. It was Norman Mailer in the dream this time, scuttling into de Lawrence's elegant office with a cigarette hanging from his lip and a thick bundle of manuscript under his arm. "It's yours, Mr. de Lawrence," he said. "I've already talked to Redford, and he'll do the male lead. Bo Derek's eager to do Cynthia. And I won't let anyone but you produce it."
"Why me?" asked the dreaming Joel—not out of modesty, simply to understand the facts before deciding whether to grant the petition. "Well, Mr. de Lawrence, you won't remember me, but I've always admired your work. When I was here back in 1946, writingThe Deer Park, you let me come on the set one day. My mind's made up. If you won't take it I'll withdraw the script. . . ."
There was the faintest hint of muddy light at the window. De Lawrence squeezed his eyes tighter and turned over. "I like your style, Mailer," he told his pillow, "but I'll have to think about it. ..."
But the dream was over. Mailer disappeared, and Joel de Lawrence opened his eyes to peer at the orange digits on his bedside clock. It was time to get up.
By the time he had finished showering and shaving the dream had vanished completely; he did not remember Mailer or the studio or any of the conversation. But his body remembered. He felt pleasantly relaxed, as though he had been making love. The coffee had brewed itself, and he had a cup while he dressed, peering out of his window. The pleasant lassitude began to slip away. The weather was really bad, the worst of the year anyway. From his window there was little to see except for the gardening shed and a corner of the four-car garage, but what he could see was wet and worrying. The earth could not absorb the rain as it fell. Rivulets were streaking the expensively laid turf. He worried about the driveway, which needed grading every month anyway, and was particularly vulnerable to rainstorms; the shock absorbers on the limo were his responsibility. He wondered if the Mexicans' repairs had fixed those annoying little roof leaks; should he take a look before Danny got up?