"And for some hundreds of homes in this area, perhaps for quite a few thousands, such calculations can be made and this is the result. To own such a house is to play Russian roulette.
"Similar calculations, of course, can be made for other risks, and for loss of life or health as well as of property; I have not attempted to do this, since I have no expertise in these last areas.
"I believe that is all I have to say," he finished.
The governor's secretary looked nervously at the governor, seeking to learn whether he should laugh, swear or applaud, but the governor took his time giving him an indication. He too had been hitting Afeefah's party foods, and he finished chewing before he said seriously, "I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm not sure just what action government can take."
"You have understood me exactly," Tib said, nodding. "I, too, am not sure that there is any."
The governor sat back. He was a man who had made his reputation on understanding what the general run of politicos did not, counter-culture people, artists, scientists, doomsayers, idealists, and the like. "Thank you, Dr. Sonderman. Now. Before we go, Sam, would it be possible to see your grandson and this young lady's father for a moment?"
Tib got up and came over to Rainy's chair. "I think they have no further need for us. May we go home now?"
He seemed sunk in gloom in the car. The downpour was now only a sort of greasy drizzle, and Rainy felt secure enough to watch him out of the corner of her eye as she drove. "I think you confused them quite a lot," she offered.
He sat up. "Yes. " He looked out the window for a while before adding, "I must work this out for myself."
"Shall I take you to your house?"
"No—not unless you wish to be alone," he said. "My car is, after all, still at yours. Oh," he added, "I forgot your paper. Let me see, can I turn on this little light in the glove compartment?" He leaned forward, peering at the first page. "It appears to be a scientific paper by a T. T. Khrembullin from, how would you say this, from the Institute for Theoretical Astronomy in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. I do not know his name, but he is an academician, therefore important. The title you would call 'Second Order Gravitational Focusing Involving Major Planets'. There are a number of equations which I imagine you will be able to read as well as I, since they are not in Russian but in mathematics."
Rainy started to smile, to show appreciation for another pleasantry—the second attempt at humor in only a couple of hours!—and then what he said struck her.
"Major planets!" she cried. Tib turned to look at her inquiringly. "Yes, major planets! The planet Jupiter, for instance! Fasten your seat belt, Tib, I want to get home and read that!"
A wind gust of twenty-five miles an hour can turn your umbrella inside out. The highest velocity ever recorded in a hurricane in the United States was 183 miles an hour; there were higher velocities, but not recorded, since the wind blew the instruments away. Since the force exerted by a wind, and therefore the destruction it can cause, increases as the cube of the velocity, peak hurricane winds are not merely seven or eight times stronger than a stiff breeze, they are nearly four hundred times as damaging.
Monday; December 28th. 7; 10 PM.
The best thing that happened in a bad, bad day was when they were stopped on the freeway and shunted off to city roads. Good things come in disguise. It looked at first like just one more disaster, and Danny Deere met it as he met i them all. "Oh, shit, Joel, now what? Can't you for God's sake just get me home?"
"Sure thing, Danny," Joel said over his shoulder, "but the road's blocked. Looks like that whole condo development's down the tube."
"Down the tube," Danny repeated in sudden delight.
Well! You always get a little something for a consolation prize, and this wasn't a bad one. Anything that saved his view and bitched that bastard Boyma at the same time couldn't be all bad. He chewed the news over, tasting every crumb, because it was a hell of a lot better than thinking about the rest of his day.
Which had been a bummer from the minute he woke up. He drummed his fingers on his attache case, which still contained exactly the $87,950 he had put into it when he awoke and emptied his living-room safe. No business was done that day. By the time the fucking phone company got the fucking phones working, the first call he got was from his fucking lawyer, and it was all bad news. He had made a bad mistake talking to the Keating woman the way he did.
"We got to go clear around up the hill, Danny," Joel called. "See, a lot of the freeway cut got flooded, and I have to—"
"So do it, for Christ's sake!"
"Sure thing, Danny. Danny?"
"What?"
"Are they going to pull your license, Danny?"
"Just drive! Drive! Let me worry about that!"
But there wasn't any point in worrying about it, because either they would or they wouldn't, and the fucking lawyer just spread his hands and said there was a lot of heat, oh, yes, a lot of heat. The whole Pedigrue family was out to get him personally, and even old man Bradison had been making phone calls all over the state.
Danny sighed, and stared out at the unfamiliar side roads. He opened the dispatch case just a crack to feel the neatly banded bills, thinking it might soothe him. And actually it did. When you had money, what did you care? He had plenty! The worst they could do would be to put him out of business maybe, maybe eat him up with a few hundred thousand in fines and lawyers, maybe make him look bad—so what?
"Now what, for Christ's sakes?"
Joel was slowing. "It's Manuel and his boys, Danny, they're waving to us."
A supernova explosion of a star close enough to greatly damage or even wipe out life on Earth occurs about once every seven hundred and fifty million years, according to Carl Sagan. About six have occurred in the time since the formation of the Earth. About nine more will occur before our own Sun makes life on Earth impossible.
Monday, December 28th. 8:10 PM.
As soon as they were inside her apartment Rainy flung her coat at a chair, spread the Russian-language typescript on the kitchen table and took her calculator out of its case.
Although Tib was convinced he had made a fool of himself in front of the governor, he felt peaceful.
"Forget Manuel! Just keep going! I want to get home!" They were at the top of the little crest above his property now, on the old access road that the trucks had carried I avocados along before the freeway was built. Danny glanced at the woebegone wet Mexicans contemptuously. Whatever they wanted, they were no problem. Or no problem except to themselves, because likely enough he'd have to fire all their asses right off the land—so what again? Let the goddam trees go. Joel could handle everything else around the house. Of course, they'd have to recalculate Joel's salary—