Chapter 13
Traffic
As Spencer Lockwood’s plane descended toward San Francisco International, he watched the tiny, glimmering traffic crawl along the freeways below. Sunlight skated across iridescent rainbows on the oil slick sprawled across the Bay.
He didn’t want to be here. He felt like a politician with all the smiling, handshaking, and logrolling he would be required to do with his colleagues at Sandia National Lab in Livermore. “Networking,” Nedermyer called it, but it didn’t have much to do with actual working. Spencer wished he was back in New Mexico, refining the solar satellite experiment—they had so much analysis and so many refinements left to do! He was wasting his time.
He mentally slapped his hand for maintaining such a bad attitude. Chin up! It’ll all pay off in the end. Right …
The other passengers craned their heads to see through the scratched double glass of the jet’s windows. Spencer grimaced at how far the oil had spread across the green-blue water. With a satisfied smile, he wished he could go up and down the aisle, whispering the words “Think solar!” into everyone’s ears.
He rubbed his eyes and wished the flight attendants would bring another cup of coffee. Spencer hated flying in early, but otherwise he had to give up an extra day for traveling. And whenever Spencer was gone, Rita Fellenstein tinkered with the equipment at the antenna farm. Even though her modifications worked like a charm—most of the time—Spencer didn’t like to discover them after the fact.
He heard a whirring thunk beneath the fuselage as the landing gear locked into place. Flight attendants strolled by, snatching napkins and plastic cups. Spencer tucked his briefcase under the seat, holding it with his ankles. Inside were viewgraphs detailing the resounding success of his smallsats over the antenna farm. He couldn’t wait to show them off, win a few more supporters, and get back to White Sands.
Sandia, one of the nation’s Big Three national laboratories, had a huge primary facility in Albuquerque on Kirtland Air Force Base; but much of Sandia’s alternative energy work took place in their smaller facility in Livermore, California, about an hour’s drive east from San Francisco. With discretionary funds, Sandia had paid for part of Spencer’s smallsat test bed, as well as the miles-long electromagnetic launcher that ran up Oscura Peak in White Sands.
Spencer’s request to speak before the energy gurus at Sandia Livermore seemed an inspired idea. After working as a grad student at Caltech under a Nobel laureate, then successfully filing several money-making patents of his own, Spencer considered himself a whiz kid, flaunting his success in the face of stodgy committees. But after Lance Nedermyer’s unreasonable skepticism, Spencer decided to become more visible among his colleagues. Working on his own, on a shoestring budget with a bunch of Young Turks, he needed validation more than anything else.
Spencer sat back in his seat and went over the canned talk in his head. The wreck of the Zoroaster had provided the world’s biggest visual aid against dependence on oil.
O O O
Car horns blared, tires screeched—
Spencer jammed on the brakes, nearly standing up in the rental Mazda. A sudden flash of cold sweat burst over his body. The woman in a blue Mercedes behind Spencer gave him a one-finger salute after she too squealed to a halt.
He took a moment to compose himself, then looked up and down the line of stopped cars. Traffic wasn’t moving on the San Mateo Bridge. Cars, camper trucks, flatbeds, vans, and motorcycles had come to a halt in both directions.
Spencer had driven from the airport over the second longest of the five bridges spanning the Bay. While the western end of the San Mateo Bridge rose high to allow large ships passage, the rest of the span lay only a few feet above the shallow water, like a road floating on the Bay.
Spencer rolled down his window, but the breeze smelled like a mixture of rotten eggs and burning tires, foul odors from the volatile components of crude oil. Crinkling his nose, he quickly rolled the window back up. He turned up the radio and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He couldn’t find any music. News announcers kept talking about the “Zoroaster Disaster,” using the rhyming phrase like a slogan; no doubt it would show up on the next cover of Newsweek.
Spencer hated traffic, idiot drivers, honking horns, exhaust fumes. At times like this, he appreciated the long, straight highways in New Mexico, where you could rip open the engine and fly by at a hundred miles an hour, never seeing another soul.
He got out and climbed on top of his white Mazda Protege to see if he could tell where the traffic was held up, but he saw only stopped vehicles. He looked at his watch, wondering if he would ever make his noon meeting at Sandia National Lab. Dammit, he had cut his schedule close, but he should have had enough time—if only he had remembered to allow for traffic snarls.
Other people stepped out of their cars, giving up on waiting. Children ran to the edge of the guard rail, looking down in the oily water; parents shouted for them to come back. Spencer stared with a mixture of awe and disgust at the thick stain like gangrene on the bay. By contrast, White Sands and the array of gleaming microwave antennas seemed so pristine, so silent, so clean.…
Thousands of people had driven to get a glimpse of the largest oil spill in history. Some shimmied down to the water and bottled a souvenir, like Mount St. Helens ash. He drew in a deep breath of air, then choked on the stink.
A low sound of chopping filled the air. Probably a police helicopter checking out the traffic jam. He imagined a voice blaring from a loudspeaker, “All right down there! Everybody into their cars and start moving at the count of three!”
As the whirring grew louder, a low-flying copter bore down on them from the north. Painted bright green, the machine obviously belonged to no police service. The helicopter flew quite low, spraying something onto the water surface. Spencer frowned. Some kind of dispersant?
He looked up as the helicopter doubled back, making an overlapping pattern on the water. Spencer shaded his eyes as it swooped low over the bridge. He ducked into the car as a fine mist drifted down onto the stopped traffic. Although he couldn’t smell anything over the petroleum fumes, he hoped the spray contained nothing toxic. As the craft passed overhead, he could see an enormous drum slung under the fuselage.
Several of the spectators standing on the bridge were sprayed; they jumped for cover, but the helicopter continued southward. Spencer used the windshield wipers to smear the droplets on his windshield, spreading it like translucent fingerpaint across the glass. Before long, the moisture evaporated, leaving only a faint residue, a thin gummy film. He waited for the cars to start moving again.
Finally, long after the helicopter had disappeared from sight, the tops of trucks far ahead of him crept forward. With a sigh of relief, Spencer started the engine, glanced at his watch one more time, then began the crawl toward Sandia lab.
***