McPherson nods impatiently. “But if we could do it on the ground?”
Dan polishes off another glass in one swallow. “You want another pitcher?”
“No.”
He pours foam and ice into his glass. “The problem,” he says carefully, “is that the test wasn’t real. It was a strapped chicken.”
“What?” McPherson sits up so fast his knee knocks the table and almost tips his glass over. “What’s this?”
But it’s clear what Dan means. The test results didn’t mean what LSR said they did.
“Why?”
Dan shrugs. “We were out of time. And we thought we had the problem licked. We thought we could send a beam so bright that it would create a shock wave in even the hardened skins, the calculations made it look like all we needed was a little more power and the brightness would be there. So we simulated what would happen when we did solve the problems, and figured we could validate the tests retroactively, after we had the contract. But we’ve never been able to.” He stares at the table, unable to meet McPherson’s gaze.
“For God’s sake,” Dennis says. He can’t get over it.
“It’s not like no one has ever done it before,” Dan says defensively.
“Uhn.”
In fact, as they both know, the strategic defense program has a long history of such meaningless tests, beginning under its first R&D PM. They blew up Sidewinder missiles with lasers, when Sidewinders were designed to seek out energy sources and therefore were targets that would latch on to the beams destroying them. They sent electron beams through rarefied gases, and claimed that the beams would work in the very different environments of vacuum or atmosphere. They bounced lasers off space targets and claimed progress, when astronomy rangers had done the same for decades. And they set target missiles on the ground, and strained them with guy wires so that they would burst apart when heated by lasers, in the famous “strapped chicken” tests. Yes, there’s a history of PR tests that goes right back to the beginning of the whole concept. You could say the ballistic missile defense system was founded on them.
But now—now the system is being produced and deployed. It’s the real thing now, sold to the nation and in the sky, and with a strapped chicken in their part of the system, they’re in serious trouble. The Pentagon is not as lenient with private contractors as they were with their own research program, needless to say. The company could even be liable to prosecution, though it seldom comes to that. It doesn’t have to to ruin the company, though.
And here Lemon has put him into this program! McPherson already knew that Lemon gave him the task out of malice; it complicated his primary work quite a bit; but this! This! It goes beyond malice.
“Does Lemon know?”
“… No.”
But McPherson can see in Dan’s face that he’s lying, trying to cover for his boss, his friend. Amazing. And there’s no way Dennis can call Dan on it, not now. “My God.” He stops a waitress and orders another pitcher of margaritas.
They sit in silence until the new pitcher arrives. They fill up. “So what do you think we should do?” Dan says hesitantly. There’s a certain desperation in his voice; and he’s drinking the margaritas as fast as he can.
“How the hell should I know?” Dennis snaps. The question makes him suddenly furious. “You’ve got Art and Jerry’s people working on the pulse problem?”
“Yeah. No go so far, though.”
McPherson takes a deep breath. “Would more power help?”
“Sure, but where will we get it?”
“I don’t know. I suppose…” He is thinking to himself now. “I suppose the best thing to do is try jamming all the power we do have into as short a burst as we can manage. And focus it to as small a space.” He sighs, picks up the pen and starts scribbling formulas. The two of them bend their heads over the table.
24
—RRKK!—“Slightly radioactive still. On the foreign front the score is still in our favor in Burma—as for Belgium, I don’t want to talk about it, all right? Now let’s put an ear to the new hit by our favorite group The Pudknockers, ‘Why My Java Is Red White and Green’—”
Sandy Chapman turns off the radio. Groan, moan. Stiffness in the joints, he feels like an old man. Sunlight streams into the plant-filled, glass-walled bedroom; it’s warm, humid, smells like a greenhouse. Sandy manages to lever himself into a seated position. Angela is long gone, off to work in the physical therapy rooms at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
All the glossy green leaves blur. Bit of fuzz vision, too much eyedropping yesterday as usual, leads to a sort of eyeball hangover, as if he’d been teargassed or had his corneas sandblasted or something. He’s used to it. He gets up, pads off to the bathroom. The face in the mirror looks wasted. Dark circles under bright red eyes, stubble, mouth caked white, long red hair broken out of ponytail, looking electrocuted. Yes, it’s morning time. Ick.
In the kitchen he starts the coffee machine, sits staring out at the San Diego Freeway until it’s ready. Back to the bedroom, where he sits on the floor among the plants. Eyedrop a little Apprehension of Beauty… ah. That’s better. Just the lubrication feels good. He sips coffee, relaxes, thinking nothing: no worries, no plans. Odors of coffee, hot plants, wet soil. “Hey this is why my Java is red white and green,” he sings, “the blood in the jungle, the smoke white machine.…” This is the sole moment of peace in his day, waxy leaves around him glowing translucent green in the mote-filled sunny air, everything visible, a world of light and color.…
Need another cup of coffee. Fifteen minutes later the thought occurs to him again, and he stands. Oops got up too fast. Through warm patches to the kitchen. Ah, feeling much better now. Sensuousness of feet on warm tile, taste of coffee cutting through fuzz in mouth, video of Angela getting undressed last night, running on the kitchen screens. Ready to get a start on the day’s business. A day in the life, sure enough.
But first he stops to call his father, down at the experimental clinic in Miami Beach. They talk on the video link for twenty minutes or so: George seems good today, hearty and cheerful despite the pallor and the IV lines. Sandy finds it reassuring, sort of.
Then he’s dressed, alert, out the door to work like any other businessman.
Sandy begins his day on time. And while he’s only depending on himself, he stays on schedule. He tracks to a rundown area of the underlevel of Santa Ana, a mile or so north of South Coast Plaza, and unlocks the door to the warehouse he rents, after turning off all the alarms. Inside is his laboratory.
Today he starts with cytotoxicity assays, one of the most crucial parts of his work. Anyone can make drugs, after all; the trick is finding out if they’ll kill you or not without testing them personally. Or giving them to rats. Sandy doesn’t like killing rats. So he likes these assays.
Since the cornea’s epithelium will be the first place the drugs hit, epithelial cells get the first tests. A couple of days ago Sandy joined the crowd of biochem techs at the slaughterhouse and bought a package of cow eyeballs; now he takes them from the fridge and uses a device called a rubber policeman to scrape the epithelial cells off the basement membrane. Tapped into a petri dish with some growth medium, and a carefully measured dose of the drug in question—a new one, a variant of 3,4,5 trimethoxyamphetamine that he’s calling the Visionary—these cells will either proliferate or die or struggle somewhere in between, and staining them at the end of a week will tell the tale.