War Day

by Whitley Streiber; John Kunetka

  Nevertheless, the scientists had been glad to leave when they could.

  Which, it seems, is the central reality of Los Alamos. It is a place of leavings and departures, empty houses and abandoned lives. Nuclear science is a disliked religion in this area. Los Alamos people never spend the night in Santa Fe, and prefer to go in with Japanese guards when they can.

  As we moved across the mesa, we saw that more buildings were gutted. I recognized these structures. On my last visit to Los Alamos, highly classified work on particle-beam weapons had been going on here. The labs have been moved in their entirety to Japan.

  And their scientists have gone with them. There is a new "Atomic City," it seems, being built near Osaka. Los Alamos is a place of caretakers.

  The plutonium fabrication plant was still standing, though hardly intact. It was aswarm with technicians who were disman-

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  tling it and crating its exotic innards as reverently as doctors might pack living hearts for transplant.

  I wanted to go up to one of those Japanese workmen in his white coveralls and shake him and tell him that he was infecting himself and his people. I thought, Japan, Japan, surely you have learned. Let this place be a museum, and let these people be its caretakers.

  We crossed the bridge that connected one mesa with the other and drove into what had been the main residential and commercial district of prewar Los Alamos. Most buildings were boarded up.

  But there was a lively open-air market and an astonishing atmosphere of prosperity. The families of the "Japanese friends," as they call themselves, live in many of the houses vacated by American scientists who have already gone to Atomic City.

  I asked whether they had any choice. Our guide smiled. "We're going, that's all I know. The scientist is part of the laboratory."

  Were they paid?

  "Listen. We're treated like gods. Paid? That isn't the word for it. You get cars, housing, schooling for your kids, all food and medical care free, and enough yen to buy the whole damn state of New Mexico. I don't know what would happen if anybody refused to go.

  Nobody does!"

  I found in myself a kind of desperate urgency. Skill and intelligence are such valuable resources, and America needs them so badly now. I wanted to say to him, please don't go. Then I saw a gleam down in the canyon—a car that had been pushed off in the night by angry locals.

  Can you blame them, though? This is the central station of the nuclear age.

  Our guide sensed our discomfiture at what was happening here, and explained that scientific study had come to a standstill in America. Science was to some extent blamed for the war. But even where this wasn't true, there was no money, as he put it, for contemplation.

  "That's what you need," he added. "Without contemplation there is no science." I felt the vast silence around me and heard the wind whispering in the pines and realized the depth of that truth.

  I thought about the friendships I had made in Los Alamos be-

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  fore the war, and the combination of awe and apprehension that I had felt when I first interviewed the scientists and first heard them tell of their work on weapons. I wondered then if it was possible to be divorced from the consequences of one's work. It seemed to me that no matter how subtle the problem a given weapon presented or how artful its contemplation might be, the ashes and the bones in the end would be the same.

  It wasn't until we were returning across the Rio Grande, on the same bridge that brought Oppenheimer and his men here in 1940, that my mood began to lift. Despite all the thoughts that have hung electric in this air, the cottonwoods are still full and green-Across the way, the pueblos of San Ildefonso and Santa Clara gleamed in the sun. There were Indians working the land there, as they had for centuries. Los Alamos, for all its modern history, is returning to ancient ways.

  P A R T TWO

  California Dangers

  You road I enter upon and look around, I believe

  you are not all that is here,

  I believe that much unseen is also here.

  —Walt Whitman,

  "Song of the Open Road"

  California P.O.E

  The old Super liner clicks along the tracks. Jim and I are sitting in the observation car, staring out the wide picture windows at the desert. I haven't been to Los Angeles since 1983. In those days I used to do a certain amount of business with the film companies, and I made occasional trips west. I never cared much for Los Angeles; people who are consciously trying to be relaxed make me nervous. Jim has been to L.A. more recently, but not since the war.

  So we have no real way of knowing what to expect of the 1990 immigration controls. We've heard hard rumors of meticulous police searches and detention pens and people-smuggling out of Kingman, Arizona. Passing through there, as a matter of fact, we saw the largest hobo camp we've encountered so far. It made the little encampment outside of La Mesa seem positively orderly. It was a vast jumble of tents, abandoned vehicles of all types, and human beings. Its residents, the people on the train were saying, were all California rejectees. If so, the border controls must be brutal.

  I know a few things about L.A. First, with nearly nine million residents, it is by far the most populous city in the United States.

  Despite the general population decline, it has grown by nearly a million since 1987. It is more than four times the size of the second largest city, San Francisco, and larger than New York was before the war.

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  The conductor comes through, calling, "Needles, next stop Needles." There is stirring in the car. Needles is one of the infamous California ports of entry. To get into the state, you've got to show twenty gold dollars or an equivalent amount in goods or paper currency, and a valid entry permit. The only way to get such a permit is to have business in the state or a job waiting for you there.

  We do not have any permits. And between us we have eight hundred paper dollars, the equivalent of only eight gold.

  None of our fellow passengers have talked about entry, but we sense that we are not alone. There are all kinds of stories about getting into California; few of them involve the possession of papers and astronomical sums of money.

  "Needles," the conductor shouts. "Everybody stay in the train, stay in the train!"

  We slow to a crawl and draw up to the platform. I'm shocked.

  There are soldiers armed with submachine guns every fifteen feet.

  Behind them are huge signs: illegal aliens liable to be SHOT.

  stay in the train. An amplified voice can be heard: "Do not leave the train. Have your entry permits ready. Do not leave the train."

  We decide to obey. Around us a few people are pulling the precious green forms out of purses and wallets. But most are sitting passively, waiting. This is only the first step in their journey. They have timed their arrival carefully. There isn't an outgoing train for another six hours. For that much time they will be in the holding pen. They have staked their lives and their money on the possibility that they will be able to escape and somehow cross mountains and desert to the Los Angeles basin, there to disappear into the golden horde.

  California State Police officers in white crash helmets, face masks, black leather boots, and khaki uniforms come across the platform in formation. They carry pistols in holsters. At a barked order, half of them draw their weapons. The other half have clipboards. These are some of California's notorious Processing Officers. When they catch people trying to escape the holding pens, they mark them with indelible green dye.

  Suddenly a man in full radiation gear comes into the car from the side opposite the platform. He is carrying a small black device with a digital readout. It has a long, thin probe attached. He waves CALIFORNIA DANGERS 115

  it back and forth as he moves down the aisle, touching some of the passengers with it, inserting it down the collars of others. He squirts a bright red aerosol on the back of one man's hand, and tells him that he's got to go
take a detox shower and get an issue of paper clothing before he can even get port-of-entry processing.

  Jim and I are examined without comment. Apparently this device only measures present radiation. My high lifedose is still my own business, unless I try to enter a hospital without a health card.

  At the far end of the car he blows a whistle. Immediately, Processing Officers appear at both doors. Behind the man at the front is one of the clipboard carriers. "California registered citizens," he shouts, "show your colors." Four people pull out red plastic cards.

  Captain Clipboard runs them through a device like a credit-card verifier and reads something in the screen of a portable computer.

  One after another, the citizens are given the precious right to stay on the train.

  One man is not as lucky as the others. "You aren't computing,"

  Captain Clipboard says affably. "You'll have to step over to the customs shack for manual verification."

  "What's the problem, officer?"

  "You don't come up on the computer. Maybe your card's defective. Go over to customs—it's the yellow door."

  Uncertain, nervous, the young man rises from his seat. He goes to the rear of the car. As he is leaving, Captain Clipboard calls out,

  "Arrest him, he's a jumper."

  The young man leaps down and dashes across the platform, heading for the chainlink fence that separates it from the parking lot. A voice calls in a blaring monotone, "Stop, or we'll have to shoot." Then, more gently: "Come on, kid, take it easy."

  When he is three-quarters of the way up the fence, two of the U.S. Army types raise their machine guns.

  "Look, kid, you're going to die in ten seconds if you don't climb back down."

  The young man stops. He sags against the fence. Slowly he climbs down, into the arms of two other soldiers, who handcuff him, then connect the handcuffs to leg irons and lead him clanking away.

  "Okay," Captain Clipboard calls out, "everybody hold up their 110 WARDAY

  entry permits." Hands thrust up full of green paper. "Hey, good car! This is gonna be a nice day." He casts a frown at Jim and me.

  From another car there rises the sound of female screaming. It goes on and on, trembling into the heat.

  Captain Clipboard works his way along the aisle. One after another, he puts the green forms on his clipboard and goes over them with a lightpen. Two people are sent to the yellow door. They walk quickly across the platform, pointedly ignoring the chainlink fence, carrying their green forms and all of their belongings in their hands. Others, from other cars, straggle along as well. Finally there is nobody left in the car but us illegals.

  "All right, now it's joker time! All of you displaced persons off the train, line up along the white line on the platform, and don't make sudden moves. You'd be surprised how nervous those dumb army boys get, standing out there in the sun. Let's go!"

  Sixteen of us shuffle off the train, mostly threadbare, eyes hollow, about us all the furtive look of the new American wanderers.

  We are facing the toughest port-of-entry system in the United States. The odds are that all sixteen of us will be on the outbound train later this afternoon.

  "Hey, Sally," Captain Clipboard calls, "you recycle fast, sweet-heart."

  "I'm working on a tunnel," one woman mutters in reply, her head down.

  I wonder how many of us are repeaters. But, watching the soldiers across the platform watching us, I decide not to strike up any conversations. At a barked command, the soldiers move forward until they are facing us. "All right, folks," the giant voice says,

  "single file to the pen, please. Move out. Double time!"

  As we shamble away, the train gives a long blast on its horn and starts to roll. Not a few heads turn back, watching it pass the open track barrier. The lucky few inside are already reopening their newspapers and settling back for the run to L.A.

  We are herded into a fenced-off area about three acres square.

  There is a cyclone fence twenty feet high, topped by razor wire. At all four corners of the enclosure there are guard houses. Fifty feet beyond the fence there is another barrier: a run occupied by six huge hounds. I see light towers stretching off into the distance. I C A L I F O R N I A D A N G E R S 117

  wonder if the whole California border could be lit. As we won't be here past 4:00 P . M . , when the outbound train arrives, I'll never know.

  "Bomb-out," I say to Jim.

  "Maybe. I think we ought to try to talk our way in."

  I assume that as a newsman, he's more practiced at this sort of thing than I am. "What do you suggest?"

  "We can try the reporter gambit. I've got my News Herald

  ID." We walk over to the gate.

  A soldier, smoking a cigarette, closes his eyes for an instant and then regards us with a blank expression.

  "I'm a reporter for—"

  "No talking."

  "—the Dallas News Herald." Jim holds up his press card.

  The soldier stares, his eyes glazed with boredom.

  "This man is also a writer. We're on our way to interview the Governor of California."

  There is a flicker of interest. "You have any verifying documentation?"

  "I'd have to make a call."

  The flicker dies. "Then take the afternoon train to Kingman, which is the first place you can get off, and make your call from there. They'll mail you letters of entry and give you an access code for the border police."

  He starts to walk away. I decide to try another approach. "How long have you been doing this?"

  I can see him sigh. "I was drafted in '91. Six weeks of basic and a month of crowd-control training and here I am."

  "You're with a U.S. Army unit?"

  "That's right. Regular Army, 144th Military Police, to be exact.

  And I ain't supposed to be talking to you." Again, he starts to walk away.

  "Look, is there any way out of here?"

  "Sure. People get out all the time." He laughs. "Two, maybe three in the eighteen months I been here. And they were caught within the hour. I got to tell you, all those signs you see warning you about gettin' shot? They're for real. I've seen it happen. I'll tell you another thing. Captain says, soon as he sees you two, 'We 118 WARDAY

  oughta just go ahead and paint those assholes. They're gonna be trouble.'"

  This time he does walk away, smartly. An officer is approaching, a tall, gray man with sparkling, sad eyes. On his chest is a nameplate that reads O'MALLEY. He wears the oak leaves of a major. "Keep this area clear, Private," he says. His voice is dry and quick.

  "Yessir!" The private snaps to attention and salutes his superior officer. There is a spit-and-polish about these men that I don't remember from the prewar army. But under the surface, they're still American. I suspect that I could get a good laugh out of both of them if I could remember a decent joke.

  "You know what I think?" Jim says.

  "What?"

  "It's a pain in the neck to travel in this country. Frankly, I can't see how we're going to get through this without illegal assistance.

  For which I guess we'll have to go back to Kingman."

  When the afternoon train comes in, we go along with the rest of the thirsty, sweating mob that has been kept standing for hours in the sun. For those who can't pay the price of a ticket, there are two

  "state cars" at the end of the train, ancient and filthy. These people will be able to get to Kingman by train, but then they're on their own. It's a tragedy for them. There is no more romance to being a hobo in America. It means starvation, sometimes slow and sometimes fast.

  We reach the outskirts of Kingman at eight o'clock at night.

  The hobo city seems even larger, transformed as it is into an ocean of flickering cookfires.

  As the train stops, dirty children run up with cups of water, shouting, "Penny, penny, penny," at the thirsty travelers. Their shrill voices mingle with the barking of skeletal dogs.

  It doesn't take long to find the people-sm
ugglers. The moment we jump down off the train to the dirt siding, we see a man in a cap and dark glasses, far better dressed than most. We catch his eye and he strolls up to us.

  "Get you all the way, three golds apiece."

  Another man trots over, lean and quick, wearing a clean white CALIFORNIA DANGERS 119

  T-shirt, jeans, and hand-tooled boots. "Five for both. And watch out for that turkey, he flew right into an ambush last week."

  "Oh yeah? 'd be in prison camp if I'd done that. Why don't you tell 'em the way you piled up that Tri-Pacer in June, asshole."

  Suddenly a woman's voice interrupts from behind us. "One gold each. And I'll take folding at a hundred to one."

  "Shit, Maggie, you can't even cover your gas!"

  "Maggie—look, you guys, she's got a rotten plane and a worse copilot. I don't wanna influence you, but as a professional pilot—"

  "I'm better'n no copilot at all, which is what you got, George,"

  snarls a nine-year-old boy. He and the woman come closer. She is pretty in the gloom, her eyes flashing, her lips edged with a smile.

  "We fly a Cessna 182, gentlemen. It's clean and safe." The smile develops. She nods toward a decrepit pickup parked just down the track. We bring out our money, then follow her and the boy.

  "That's the last time you undercut us, Maggie," one of the other smugglers says. "Your prices ain't worth the risk."

  The truck is rusty and the engine sounds like it's only firing on about three cylinders, but it runs. "You're lucky you didn't go with those two. Likely as not, they're California agents." The airport is unlighted, just a dirt strip in the desert and a single ramshackle shed. The only sound, as we get out of the pickup, is the humming of a lighted Coke machine. "How d'you like our runway light?"

  Maggie says as we pass it on the way to the flight line. I don't know about Jim, but I don't like it very much at all. For a nervous flyer like me, things are beginning to look kind of grim.