He finished the list of calls and took a moment to review the other list he kept with him all the time, on paper or in his head. The political list. The bills to be interested in, the constituents to placate, the alliances his brother wanted to make. The performance of every member of their staff—every member of all their various staffs, really. They had half a dozen: personal-political; personal-domestic; Senate committee; Foundation; ad hoc groups. Because the holy tide of Christmas all other did deface today’s list was short. There was no sense worrying about political moves just now, because every other senator was making good-i fellowship Christmas moves, just like he, and his brother, and all their merry elves.
Time to report. He patted Myrna’s bottom as she bent over the paper shredder, whispered a reminder of their j date for that night and headed for his father’s office.
When he got to the corner suite his father did not acknowledge his presence at first. He was glowering at the newspaper spread out on his desk. The headline said:
PRIME RATE, QUAKE FEAR DEFLATE L A. HOME BOOM
“I already read it, Dad,” Tommy reported efficiently.
“I read it too, and then I called up the fellow who wrote it,” said his father, “and he got it backward. It isn’t the interest rate. It’s this Jupiter stuff. “
“Right, Dad! We’re on top of it. I’ve been kicking ass with those scientists, and we’re going to book one of them on the Sunland Saturday program to talk about it.”
“Which one? Sonderman? Some radio personality! He talks like a gravedigger.”
“He sounds like a scientist, and anyway I’m going to tell him what to say ahead of time.”
“Get Townsend on it too,” his father ordered, and spun his chair moodily to gaze out the window. It had begun to rain again, but nevertheless there were Jupes at the traffic lights, running out to solicit the drivers of stopped cars. “When I came in this morning,” he said, “I took one look at Dave, the elevator starter, and what do you think I saw? He had a streak of black on his forehead. Just like it was Ash Wednesday, for Christ’s sake.”
“Dave? He’s been working for us for twenty years!”
“And I told him if he wanted to stay to collect his pension he’d get his face cleaned up. And he’s not the only one. ” He turned to stare at his younger son. “Tommy, you want to lead the people, you’ve got to stay in front of them. Not much in front. But in front; and, the way it looks to me, on this one the voters are getting away from us.”
Thursday, December 24th. 4:15 PM.
Earthquakes can sometimes he predicted by measuring sight lines with surveying instruments. It doesn’t always work. On October 10, 1980, a geodetic survey team made a morning’s worth of measurements near El Asnam, Algeria, and went back to their hotel for a well earned lunch. While they were eating an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale shook the building down on them and killed them.
Dennis Siroca paid his Christmas call on his grandparents, and got what he expected. Two cups of mulled wine, a storebought cashmere scarf for his neck, all the storebought Christmas cookies he could eat, and no information. Meredith Bradison was sweet about it. “You take everything I tell you and use it for those hippies of yours, Dennis, and so I just don’t want to tell you anything more.”
“I don’t use it for anything bad, Grandmerry,” he said, nibbling another cookie.
“No, but you use it. No offense. We’re going to make a public statement sometime soon, and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Would you like some more wine?”
His grandfather reached encouragingly for his cup, but Dennis shook his head and got ready to leave. It was time to go—not only because Saunders Robinson was waiting in the car, but because his grandfather’s hand was more and more frequently pressing his grandmother’s knee. Dennis knew that what they really wanted was to be alone.
“Nothing,” he reported to Robinson as he put the car in gear. Robinson shrugged and passed over a joint.
“Long’s you’re the one that has to tell Danny-boy,” he said. It had been at least a week since their pipeline to the Pedigrue committee had produced any results. “You gonna be there for the Christmas party tonight?”
“Might as well. My old lady’s still in Florida. I got no other place to go.” He took a hit on a fresh cigarette and leaned back, resigning himself to the traffic. Santa Monica Boulevard was bumper to bumper, in spite of the fact that it was raining again. He peered into the cab of a pickup truck next to them at a light, and nudged Robinson. “Hey, see that guy?” The driver was a young man in jeans, and his forehead bore a black smudge. “We’re sure getting a lot of people scared, ” he said.
“Yeah.”
Robinson’s tone caused Dennis to look at him. “What’s the matter, Robby? This is all for real, you know.”
“I guess.”
“No, really! Never mind this scientific crap. It’s in the Zend Avesta and all, and even old Immanuel Velikovsky says the old Greeks knew about it. Like Heraclitus. He told us the earth gets destroyed every ten thousand eight hundred years.”
“Not like ten thousand nine hundred?”
“What’s the matter with you, Robby? I didn’t make all this up. In the Patagonian peat bogs there’s all this volcanic debris that comes from 9,000 B.C. If you add nine thousand to 1981, what do you get? Close enough, right?”
Robinson didn’t answer. After a moment he peered out at the Pedigrue Center Mall, where the great Christmas tree was standing. “Hey, they didn’t light it yet. Step on it, will you? Maybe I can take Feef over to see them light the tree.”
Dennis swung over to Wilshire, which was almost as bad, then down to the crummier, more dilapidated avenues to the south. Even so, it was slow going. He parked in front of the ashram. Robinson jumped out, collected Afeefah from her chore of stringing popcorn for the tree in the anteroom, and was gone.
There were only a couple of people in the ashram. Most of the troops were ordered to stay out in the malls and shopping centers until the stores closed in the last-minute rush. Two of the shyer, and fatter, girls were in the back room cutting out cardboard models for the parade on New Year’s Day, and Buck was dispiritedly hanging ornaments on the tree, getting ready for the children’s party that night. The plump little man had been scared out of his mind by the encounter with Boyma’s hoods. The next day he turned up with a bulge in his waistband that Robinson diagnosed at once as a .32 automatic. To protect himself if it ever happened again, he insisted; but they had banished him from the ashram for three days, until he promised to leave it at home. “Danny Deere’s guy called,” he reported. “They’ll be here any minute. Didn’t say what they wanted.”
“Fine,” said Dennis heartily, reaching for ornaments. Probably Buck’s main trouble was that nobody paid enough attention to him, he thought. Basically he was a good man. “It’s going to be a nice party,” he predicted. That had been Robinson’s idea, to have a party foi the kids of the ashram’s workers, and it was surprising how many of those youths and young women had a kid, or a niece or nephew, somewhere around. There would be at least a dozen children there. Buck nodded without answering, so Dennis tried a different tack. “Going to be a great parade, too. You got the hearses lined up?”
“I rented six, Dennis. All I could get this far ahead. But they all have those glass sides, like you wanted.” The plan was to fill each of the hearses with a model of some celebrated Los Angeles landmark—the Century Plaza, the space ride at Disneyland, the Arco Tower—and drive them through Pasadena on New Year’s Day. The mobs for the Tournament of Roses parade would be the best audience they could have, although of course the cops wouldn’t give them a permit. Didn’t matter. They’d go up the hill to Jet Propulsion Lab or somewhere, and then they’d get into the traffic on the way home.
Buck twisted the wire from the ruby-red glass sphere to the end of a branch and stood back. “You been to see that grandmother of yours?” he asked.
Dennis looked at him more closely.
The little man was in a surly mood tonight. He’d been running three days scared and three days angry ever since Boyma’s people shook him up, and he seemed to be starting an angry phase again. “You got something against my grandmother?” he asked.
“I’m not talking against your family, but she’s a scientist, isn’t she? She don’t believe in the pralaya.”
It was Christmas Eve, after all; might as well be placatory. Especially to Buck, who had been part of the ashram group, not only before it became the property of Jupiter Fulgaris, not only when it was a semi-Zen temple, but when it had been a martial-arts school with overtones of Tai Chi. He came with the lease. “See,” Dennis said reasonably, “scientists aren’t the enemy. They just try to find out things. What do they know? The Pedigrue family hire her to dig up all the stuff they can on Jupiter and stuff, and she does it.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I guess that’s up to the Pedigrues, you know?” The little man looked sullen and unconvinced. Dennis changed the subject. “Did you get soda and candy and all for the party?”
“All I could. Robinson said to wait till the collection cans come in and take the money out of that.”
“No, we can’t do that; anyway we need it before that.”
“Then you’ll have to give me some plastic. “
Dennis hesitated. He carried as many credit cards as the average jet-setter; they were his lifeline, wherever he might be, because he kept the charges paid. The trouble was, his droogs did not share his responsible attitudes toward credit. To them the cards were wishing lamps, or a painless substitute for shoplifting. He shrugged and took one out of his wallet—one that had a $300 credit limit.
“Okay, be right back,” said Buck, and then hesitated at the door. “Dennis? I didn’t mean anything against your family.”
“That’s all right, Buck.”
“The fucking politicians like the Pedigrues, they’re the real enemy, right?”
“Right, Buck. Buck? You better get along before the stores close.”
“Right, Dennis.” He moved aside to let Joel de Lawrence in, then scurried off to the deli at the corner.
“Merry Chirstmas, Dennis! Danny’s around the corner in the car, and he’d like to see you.”
“I don’t like to leave the ashram alone—”
“That’s all right. I’ll keep an eye on things till you get back. He’s not in a good mood, Dennis, I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”
The fact was that, actually, Danny Deere was in as good a mood as he ever got. To start off it was Christmas, and Danny dreaded every Christmas with its bonuses and presents and Christmas parties, all of which he had to pay for; but this year was no worse than any other, and the rest of his life was going nicely. The year-end figures on his real-estate business looked like they were going to be better than ever, even without the Jupiter coup, and that was going fine. True, no one had yet signed one of the yellow-dog sales agreements at fire-sale prices that his lawyer had drawn up. But a couple were coming close, and the scare was growing. He could feel it. He didn’t need the occasional hints in newspaper stories to tell him, he could see the signs, in the people wearing smudges of black on their foreheads and the jokes the night-club comics made. It was peaking faster than he had expected. Maybe the time had come to turn the heat up a little? A little more pressure? He had plans made—Inside he was smiling; but of course it didn’t pay to let the people who worked for you know it. So when Dennis came slouching around the corner to the darkened limo (why attract attention in this crummy neighborhood by having the lights on?) Danny snapped, “So where’re the fucking collection cans?”
Dennis let himself in before he answered. “They’re not back yet, Danny. Big night. I’m keeping them out as long as I can.”
“Oh, shit, you expect me to make an extra trip? Never mind. I’ll send Joel back for them. So what’s the score?”
“Well, Danny,” Dennis said, settling himself comfortably, “things are going pretty good. We’ve got hearses for that parade, and the models are almost done. The Christmas party’s all set up—”
“I don’t give duck shit for your Christmas party! Jesus! I got a Christmas party of my own to go to, everybody’s hand out! I can’t wait for the whole fucking thing to be over.”
“Yeah, well, that’s about it. One little problem. Two of the sisters got busted for possession of a controlled substance, and they’re in Sybil Brand.”
“Tough shit. Merry Christmas to them both.”
“Yeah, well, it’s only a hundred dollars bail each. That’s only ten bucks if we send somebody up there to spring them, so if you don’t mind—”
“Hold it, Dennis. Maybe I do mind.” Danny sat drumming his fingers, staring off into space, then nodded. “Yeah. They’re more good to us in than out, don’t you see that? Besides, I wouldn’t want them to miss those good jailhouse Christmas dinners.”
“I don’t actually see why, Danny.”
“You don’t use your head, that’s why. Look. We’ll get a protest march going! Let’s see.” He paused, visualizing the East Los Angeles area where the Sybil Brand Institute for Women stood. “Yeah. We’ll start from the freeway exit at Eastern Avenue and march right up the hill. Tomorrow.
-Right at dark, with candles!”
“I don’t know if I can get the people out on Christmas day, Danny.”
“You can if you kick ass.”
“Yeah, but that’s sheriffs country up there. It’ll be our asses that get busted.”
“So then it’s a civil rights thing, all the better! That’s county property and us taxpayers own it.”
“But the rain’ll put the candles out—”
“So light them again. Jesus! Quit making objections, you hear? Now listen, two things. First, I’ve got you booked on a radio show Saturday afternoon, so you want to get all the people out then, too. My PR woman’ll tell you what to do.”
“Television? I don’t know if I want to be on television. “
“You got no choice if you want to stay with me, ” Danny said reasonably, “so quit bitching. Second thing. You know that big new condo that’s going up, Pacific Overview Estates? I want you to keep that on the list every day. At least a couple people there in front of the sales office, handing out leaflets and all that, you got it?”
“Well, sure. If you want. But why there, Danny? It’s way out at the end of nowhere—”
“Because I said so. Now,” said Danny, “get Joel’s ass back here so I can get home. I got another bunch of loafers to hand out Christmas presents to. “
Friday, December 25th. Christmas Day. 4:00 PM.
Some volcanos erupt with violence. Some merely squeeze out a flow of lava, ash, mud, or gas. Each activity has its own perils. Curiously, the flows of lava are the least likely to kill human beings, although they can cause immense property loss. A lava flow is generally quite slow. It can be diverted by bombing, even by chilling parts of it with firehoses if there is plenty of water. It was possible to walk without harm on the congealed surface of a still-moving lava flow. Ash and mud flows can smother or drown. Gas flows sometimes kill by collecting in caves or cellars.
The eruptions, too, come in several varieties. A pyro-clastic fall of ash or tephra is only dangerous to life if there is so much of it that the victims are buried alive. A Plinian eruption is a heavier and much more dangerous pyroclastic fall, sometimes with large boulders hurtling through the air. The most spectacular sort of eruption is the nuee ardente, in which an avalanche of glowing gases and ash rolls down the mountains at hurricane speed. Anyone in the way dies instantly of cadaveric spasm. Even the bodies are boiled away.
Going to her parents’ home for Christmas was good, leaving again was even better. Rainy drove up the freeway feeling as though she had just completed a recurring, weighty task, like cleaning an oven. Christmas was a glitch. The world stopped spinning for a moment—well, for twenty-four hours. But it was a time outside of time, and Rainy was glad the steady roll of the cl
ock had resumed.
She had salvaged something from the long morning. First was the tradition of opening of the Christmas presents. Then the tradition of helping her mother get the turkey into the roaster. Then the tradition of everyone going back to bed for another hour’s nap—but that tradition she had skipped in order to work on her report for the Pedigrues; and that had been her excuse for leaving almost as soon as the leftovers were put away and the dishes were in the washer. So she was ready to turn her paper over to Meredith Bradison, and as she turned into the hardstand by the Bradison house she was singing carols to herself. For everybody else Christmas was over. Rainy was just beginning to enjoy it.
Sam Houston Bradison let her in, wished her Merry Christmas and offered her a drink. He was pink and moist, as though he had just shaved. “Merry’ll be out in a minute,” he said. “Did you have a good Christmas?”
“Yes, fine.” He was wearing what Rainy had often heard of but never seen on a live human being: a velvet smoking jacket. Obviously new. Obviously a present. It suited him. He smelled of shaving cologne and toothpaste, a sanitary old gentleman in a good mood. When she refused the drink he made her coffee and brought it to her in Meredith’s tiny office, overlooking the beautiful garden and the Christmas tree with its white lights already blinking. He entertained her with scurrilous anecdotes about the Pedigrues until Meredith showed up, apologizing. “You caught me in the shower. Is that your preliminary report? All right, let’s trade.”
Syzygy Page 17
