The Orion Plan

by Mark Alpert

  While Dorothy wept, Naomi tactfully turned away and kept herself busy. She fitted a clear plastic lid over the cell culture plate, then carried it to a steel cabinet that looked a bit like a dishwasher. She opened the cabinet’s door and put the plate on a shelf that already held a stack of plates just like it. Then she closed the cabinet and returned to her chair. After another half minute she turned back to Dorothy and gently touched her shoulder. “You really should go to your appointment,” she whispered. “Even if it’s a waste of time. Otherwise, they’ll worry about you.”

  Dorothy’s crying subsided. She dabbed her cheeks again and took a couple of deep breaths. She felt better now, much better, because she’d just had a revelation. In the midst of her sorrow she’d heard the Lord’s voice. It was loving and soft, so soft only Dorothy could hear it. He didn’t speak to her in human words; no, he spoke in pictures and signs and thoughts and emotions, but she understood him just the same. He’d told her there was a way to redeem her life, to fix everything that was broken. And it was so simple, so easy. The Lord had told her exactly what to do.

  She raised her head and looked Naomi in the eye. “Yes, dear, you’re right. I’ll go get the scan. But could you do me a favor? I’m very thirsty.”

  Naomi stood up. “Would you like a cup of water?”

  “I know it’s unhealthy, but I’d actually prefer a cola.” Dorothy reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a handful of quarters and dimes. “I saw some vending machines on my way over here. Could you please get a can of Diet Coke for me? I’ll feel better after a few sips, and then I can go.”

  She extended her arm, offering the handful of change. Naomi stared at it for moment, clearly reluctant. The vending machines were pretty far down the corridor, in one of the neighboring buildings, at least a two-minute walk away. But after a couple of seconds she scooped the quarters and dimes out of Dorothy’s palm. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Just don’t touch anything, all right?”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Dorothy waited until Naomi left the laboratory. Then she rose from her chair and went to the steel cabinet that looked like a dishwasher. She opened the cabinet and felt a blast of warm air on her face. The air was drier than what you’d expect from a dishwasher, and after a moment she realized it was an incubator. A stack of nine cell culture plates sat on the shelf, warmed to human body temperature.

  She reached for her shoulder bag and made some room by dumping out her magazines and the box of Kleenex tissues. Then she removed the stack of cell culture plates from the incubator and carefully placed it in the bag. Luckily, she didn’t have to worry that the stem cells would die of cold. The temperature outside was pretty darn close to 98.6 degrees.

  Hoisting the bag to her shoulder, she went to the laboratory’s door and opened it. She looked up and down the corridor but didn’t see Naomi. So she turned right, away from the vending-machine room, and headed for the bank of elevators.

  As she left the cancer center and walked down the broiling street, Dorothy composed another prayer: Lord, please help me to understand your plan. I don’t know why you asked me to betray that young woman, but I’m sure you have your reasons. And even if I still can’t understand your reasoning, Lord, give me the faith and courage to accept it anyway. Give me the strength to carry out your will.

  Amen.

  ELEVEN

  Sarah met Con Edison inspector Gino Torelli at noon near the western end of Dyckman Street, within sight of the soldiers and police cars. He drove there in a specially modified vehicle, a pickup truck with video cameras on both sides of the truck bed. Extending from the back of the vehicle was a foot-wide pod-shaped device, encased in hard white plastic. Sarah recognized it because she’d seen similar devices on cruise ships and airliners. It was a directional antenna, one that could detect extremely faint radio waves.

  Colonel Gunter had set up the meeting, and fortunately he’d been discreet. He hadn’t asked Sarah why she was so interested in the power surges in Inwood. He’d simply warned her not to reveal any classified information. After contacting Torelli and scheduling the rendezvous, the colonel escorted Sarah to the checkpoint in front of the marina and ordered the soldiers to let her leave the restricted area. He also did her the favor of not mentioning the meeting to General Hanson. If Hanson had known about it, he probably would’ve asked Sarah a few questions she wasn’t ready to answer yet.

  As she walked toward the truck, Torelli leaned over to the passenger side and opened the door for her. Although the guy was Con Edison’s top inspector for Manhattan, in charge of investigating any misuse of the city’s electric lines, he dressed like an ordinary repairman. He wore a blue Con Ed hard hat and a gray jumpsuit with his last name stitched on the chest. He was in his fifties and seemed irritable and suspicious.

  He frowned as he looked at Sarah, who still hadn’t changed out of her Grateful Dead T-shirt. “Seriously? You’re with the Air Force?”

  “Only temporarily. I’m an adviser on loan from another government agency.” She climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door behind her. The truck’s cab was air-conditioned, and it felt wonderful to get out of the heat. She smiled at Torelli and held out her right hand. “My name’s Sarah.”

  He shook her hand but kept frowning. “You have a last name, Sarah?”

  She shook her head. If she mentioned her last name, Torelli might Google her and discover she worked for NASA. Then he might guess why the Air Force was here. “Sorry, I can’t say. The military folks have me on a tight leash. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “Oh yeah, I get it.” His voice was full of exasperation. “You guys are conducting a training exercise. Perfectly routine.”

  “I want to ask you about the surges in power usage in this area. Where exactly—”

  “First let me ask you a question. How can you expect cooperation if you lie to us?” He pointed at the soldiers massed at the end of the street. “I don’t know what your secret mission is, and I don’t really care. But I do know you’re using a shitload of power. You must be running some heavy-duty motors off our electric lines, or you’re using the power for desalination or something like that. Either way, we’re talking at least thirty megawatts, and that extra load is way too much for the local grid to handle.”

  Sarah shook her head again. “There aren’t any motors. Or desalination. I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Then why did all the overload problems start when the soldiers got here? You’re telling me it’s just a coincidence?”

  “What about all this hot weather? Doesn’t that also cause power surges, when everyone comes home from work and turns on their air conditioners?”

  Torelli’s frown deepened, turning into a grimace. He raised his hand and pointed at the Con Edison logo on his hard hat. “Lady, who do you think you’re talking to? We know how to handle summertime demand. The weather was even hotter last week and we had no problems then.” He leaned closer to her. “And the only dangerous surges are in this neighborhood, this local power grid. It isn’t happening anywhere else in the city.”

  Sarah felt a tingling in her chest. There was a genuine mystery here, an unexplained phenomenon. And mysteries have always been the keys to scientific discovery. She already had a hypothesis in mind, a possible explanation for the phenomenon. Now she just needed a way to test her hypothesis.

  Thinking it over, she turned away from Torelli and glanced at the video cameras and the pod-shaped antenna at the back of the truck. She pointed at them. “What’s the special equipment for? It looks like you got a directional radio receiver back there.”

  Torelli’s expression softened a bit. He seemed impressed that Sarah knew what the thing was. “That’s an SVD system.”

  “SVD?”

  “Stray voltage detector. Con Ed drives these trucks down every street in the city, looking for electrified objects.”

  “And how do they get electrified? Because of your power lines?”

  “When our
underground lines get damaged or corroded, the current flows up to the metal structures on the street—the lampposts and fire hydrants and manhole covers.” He waved his hand, gesturing at all the metal structures on Dyckman Street. “If there’s enough stray voltage on the object, you can get a shock if you touch it.”

  Sarah looked over her shoulder at the antenna. She was figuring out how it worked. This was college stuff, Physics 101, the basics of electromagnetism. “And because it’s AC power, the current in the electrified object is oscillating, right? So it gives off radio waves, which the antenna will detect if it’s tuned to the correct frequency?”

  Torelli raised his eyebrows. Now he seemed even more impressed. He reached under the driver’s seat and pulled out a customized tablet computer with an unusually large screen, almost eighteen inches across. He attached the computer to a mount on the truck’s dashboard and plugged a cable into the computer’s USB port. “Here, let me show you. The system combines the readings from the antenna with the video from the two cameras in the truck bed.”

  After a few seconds the tablet’s screen came to life and displayed a pair of video feeds, one above the other. Torelli pointed to the upper part of the screen. “This is the video from the camera on the right side of the truck. See, it’s showing the sidewalk and those pigeons and that woman walking her dog.” Then he pointed to the lower part of the screen. “And this is the video from the camera on the left side, showing the traffic on Dyckman Street. If you look real close, you’ll see a red line at the bottom of the video.”

  Sarah saw it. The line was almost flat. “Those are the readings from the antenna, right? And it’s flat because there are no electrified objects nearby?”

  Torelli grinned. “Bingo. If there was any stray voltage in the area, you’d see the red line spike upward into the video, showing which object on the street is electrified. Then we’d rope off the thing and keep anyone from touching it until we made repairs.”

  “But why are you driving this vehicle now?”

  “I have to find the source of those power surges. You say it’s not the Air Force, and maybe you’re telling the truth. Maybe someone else is illegally tapping power from one of our lines. But it’s hard to pinpoint the location of the tap because all the underground lines are interconnected. It could be happening anywhere in the local grid.” Torelli’s face grew animated. His attitude toward Sarah had clearly improved. He seemed comfortable talking to her now. “I might have a chance, though, if the thief did a bad job of connecting the wires. If the splicing or insulation is poor, I’ll see stray voltage leaking up to the street. So that’s why I took the SVD truck out for a spin.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Not yet. But it’s a big neighborhood. I’ll need a few more hours to do a complete search.”

  Sarah reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I think I can narrow your search area. If you’re interested.”

  Torelli narrowed his eyes. All at once he became suspicious again. “What’s that?”

  She unfolded the paper. It was a map of Upper Manhattan with an ellipse drawn in red pencil. That was the impact zone Sarah had estimated for Object 2016X using her own analysis, which she trusted more than the Air Force’s. Sarah’s zone stretched across the West Side Highway and deep into Inwood Hill Park. She pointed at the eastern end of the ellipse, which was less than a hundred yards from the neighborhood’s streets and apartment buildings. “You should focus on the streets next to the park. Payson Avenue and Seaman Avenue and Indian Road.”

  Torelli stared at the map, obviously struggling to make a sense out of it. Then he looked her in the eye. “Can you give me a little help here? Maybe explain what the hell this thing is?”

  She shook her head. Her hypothesis—that there was a connection between 2016X and the power surges in the neighborhood—was too absurd. But that didn’t mean it was impossible. “I’m sorry, I can’t. This is all classified information. I’ve told you too much already.”

  She expected Torelli to get angry, but instead he laughed. It sounded more like a bark, actually. “And if you told me more, you’d have to shoot me? What government agency do you work for, the CIA?”

  “Look, I’m not—”

  “Don’t mind me, I’m just kidding around.” He winked at her, then looked again at the map in her hands. “So you want to come along for the ride, Secret Agent Woman?”

  She felt a jolt in her stomach. Now she was scared. She was afraid they wouldn’t find any evidence for her hypothesis. And she was even more afraid they would. But she hid her fear by smiling at Torelli and winking back at him. “Of course.”

  He put the truck in gear and headed for Payson Avenue.

  * * *

  The search went more slowly than Sarah had expected. The SVD system couldn’t do its job if the truck went faster than ten miles per hour, so they crawled along the streets next to Inwood Hill Park. They drove so slowly they had to stop at the curb every few minutes to let the speedier traffic zoom past.

  Sarah kept her eyes on the tablet computer. The upper half of the screen showed the apartment buildings on the east side of Payson Avenue and the lower half showed the wooded park on the west side. She focused in particular on the red line running beneath the video images. It jiggled slightly at the bottom of the screen as the antenna monitored the electromagnetic fields in the area, but the fluctuations were minuscule. The underground grid seemed to be in normal working order. This was disappointing to Sarah but also a relief.

  Meanwhile, Torelli was in an excellent mood. He tapped a jazzy rhythm on the steering wheel as they crept down the street. Sarah got the impression that the man usually worked alone and was glad to have some company for a change.

  “You see that?” He pointed at a manhole cover just ahead on Payson Avenue. “I almost got killed in that manhole twenty-six years ago. That was right after I started at Con Ed, working as a cable splicer.” He shook his head. “Boy, I was stupid back then.”

  “Is that how you access the power lines? In the manholes?”

  “Yeah, there’s at least one at every intersection. Basically, they’re concrete boxes with cables running along the walls.” He kept pointing at the steel cover, which had the Con Ed logo etched in its center. “The primary line in there is a thirteen-thousand-volt cable that carries the current to the transformers under the street. The transformers step it down to a hundred and twenty volts, and then the secondary cables deliver it to the apartments and stores.”

  “So what happened twenty-six years ago? Did you touch a live wire?”

  “No, it was even stupider than that. I fell off the ladder. Landed on my back and broke three vertebrae. But it could’ve been worse.” He let out another barking laugh. “The floor of the manhole was covered with muck, and that cushioned my fall.”

  “Muck?”

  “Yeah, most manholes are full of it. Water and mud come in through the ventilation holes in the manhole cover, and more gunk seeps through the cracks in the concrete walls. Which turned out to be a damn lucky thing for me.”

  “But aren’t power lines and water usually a bad combination?”

  Torelli shrugged. “Can’t be helped. But the lines themselves are insulated, and there’s usually a sump pump at the bottom of the—”

  A blaring alarm drowned him out. It sounded like a police siren, but after a second Sarah realized it was coming from the tablet computer on the dashboard. On the computer’s screen, the red line leaped upward into the video feed showing the west side of the street. Specifically, the line spiked over an image of a traffic light pole.

  Torelli hit the brakes. He squinted at the screen, then glanced at the actual pole, about ten feet to their left. “That thing is electrified.” He pulled over to the curb and shut off the truck’s engine. “Look behind the seat, will you? There are some extra pairs of rubber boots back there, all sizes. The smallest ones might fit you.”

  Sarah looked over her sho
ulder and saw a pile of boots on the floor of the truck’s cab. She pawed through it until she found a suitable pair, then slipped them on. Torelli also gave her a pair of rubber gloves. Then he reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out a handheld device that looked like a fat, oversized wand. At the tip of the wand was a slender antenna and at the thicker end were several switches and an LED screen.

  He held it up for her to see. “This is also a voltage detector, a smaller version of the SVD on the truck. I can get a more accurate reading from close up.” He opened the driver’s side door. “Just stay a couple of yards behind me, all right? The last thing I want to do is get a CIA agent electrocuted.”

  Torelli stepped out of the truck and approached the traffic light. Sarah followed at a cautious distance, navigating around a puddle by the curb. She watched Torelli crouch beside the pole and wave the voltage detector around it.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he called out. “It’s less than ten volts. Not so dangerous.” He stretched a gloved hand toward the pedestal at the base of the pole and rapped the steel lid that covered one of the pedestal’s four sides. The loose lid clattered to the sidewalk, exposing a nest of wires inside. “And here’s the cause of the problem. Someone spliced the wires so they could tap the power.”

  Sarah stepped closer. Within the pedestal she saw a tangle of wires connected by thimblelike wire nuts. The connections looked sloppy, as if they were made by a fifteen-year-old in his high-school electrical shop. An exposed wire rested against the steel housing of the pedestal, which explained how the voltage strayed outside. She pointed at the tangle. “That’s a real mess. How much electricity did they take?”

  “Not much. This is just a secondary one-twenty-volt line.” He glanced up and down Payson Avenue. “You know those street-cart vendors, the ones who sell hot dogs in the park? I bet it was one of those guys. Most of them use propane for heating, but some of the fancier carts have electric outlets and batteries. They probably power up here when their batteries run low.”