And yet they would.
“I don’t know how the news leaked so soon,” Gar Chambers said.
“Not through me, obviously, not through the spokesman here,” Joshua said, not bothering to hide his irritation.
They sat together in Gar’s office, he being chief operating officer of the facility and Joshua’s immediate boss, and the reason Joshua didn’t bother to hide his irritation was that they both knew he could walk out of here and into a job at least as good as this one by the end of the working day. As a spokesman, for anything at all, Joshua was one of the naturals.
Four years ago, when Green Meadow III first opened and the spokesman job here became available, Joshua and his wife, Jennifer, had just completed their first year in their weekend country house, had come to the realization that they no longer liked the commute to New York or the work in New York or even the life in New York, and Joshua had upped roots and converted himself from a harried account executive in a thankless enterprise to a country gentleman who did some chatting for the nuclear industry from time to time. Personally, he had no opinion about nuclear power one way or the other, any more than he’d held strong opinions about the cat food, lipstick, or adult diapers he’d once sold. So if the job was going to become unpleasant, with demonstrators outside the gates and secrets held back from him within, he’d be just as happy being spokesperson for the New York State Tourist Council.
All of which Gar knew as well as Joshua. Sounding apologetic, he said, “We were hoping to get the situation in place before any public announcement was made. A fait accompli is much easier to deal with, as you know.”
“So I was kept outside the loop.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Gar said. “I really thought we could keep it quiet.”
“An experimental physicist,” Joshua said, “world-renowned, is going to move over here from Grayling University to conduct experiments in new kinds of energy. And you thought you could keep that secret. Half the secretaries here must know it by now, but I didn’t know it.”
“It’s probably the construction that gave it away,” Gar said.
“Construction. Oh, yes, I saw something on my way in. What’s that all about?”
“A new laboratory for our distinguished guest,” Gar said. “Well away from the reactor, well away from waste storage. Absolutely guaranteed safe, no possible problem to anybody ever.”
“Doesn’t he have a lab over at Grayling?”
“Well, yes,” Gar admitted.
Joshua smelled the reek of old fish. “Then why isn’t he staying there?”
Gar looked depressed, even a little sick. “He blows things up sometimes,” he said. “They seemed to feel, a college campus wasn’t the right place for that.”
“But a nuclear power plant is.”
Gar spread his hands. “Joshua, the decision was made far above thee and me. Far above.”
“Okay,” Joshua said, “so there’s something in it for our masters. What’s in it for us?”
Gar tried to look hopeful. “Prestige? The inside track on new advances in energy research?”
“Those are pretty thin bones,” Joshua said, “but I’ll do my best to make soup of it. For a while, anyway.”
Gar lifted his head, alert and worried, as though he’d just heard a shot down the hall. “For a while?”
“I don’t know, Gar,” Joshua said, “this is kind of discouraging. To have secrets kept from me, things I really need to know.”
“It won’t happen again, I promise.”
“It happened once.”
Gar said, “Joshua, I need you now. It wasn’t my idea to have that goddamn genius move in on us, but he’s here, or he’s going to be here very soon, and we’ve got to sell him to the public. We can’t let Dr. Marlon Philpott become the excuse for a new round of anti-nuclear demonstrations.”
“He already has.”
“I need you,” Gar repeated. “Stay with the team, Joshua.”
“Did the team stay with me?”
“It will, it will. Don’t abandon the ship now, not when we’re in crisis. Get our story out, Joshua. Please.”
Joshua, somewhat mollified, and aware that the Tourist Council would provide only a little bit more money with a much longer commute, got to his feet and said, “Gar, for you. Only for you. I’ll see what I can do.”
Gar also stood. “Thank you, Joshua,” he said.
For the next few weeks, and particularly after Dr. Philpott moved into his new laboratory on-site, the demonstrations outside the main gate of Green Meadow III grew larger and more unruly every day.
15
In warm weather, in the darkness of a new moon, Kwan climbed over the rail in the soft air and swiftly descended the ladder rungs to the kitchen staff’s deck. It was nearly three in the morning, and everyone on this deck was presumably asleep, exhausted by the day’s labors. Li Kwan, after labor of a much more pleasant sort, and a nice nap in the arms of an Italian college girl named Stefania, felt no sleepiness at all, and paused on the lower deck, forearms on the thrumming rail, to look out at their phosphorescent wake, not even minding that hint of engine oil in the salty air.
Tuesdays made it possible. Kwan could survive his exile now, his flight, his forced anonymity, but only because of Tuesday. Rarely would the same woman be aboard two Tuesdays in a row, but if so he was delighted with the opportunity for a reunion. He had learned to stay away from alcohol, and to sleep for a while on Tuesday afternoons in preparation for the night. His life had become, at least one day a week, more than bearable; it was comfortable, even luxurious.
Perhaps too luxurious! It was too easy to forget in these circumstances who he really was. Not merely a kitchen scamp who crept up the equivalent of a drainpipe to bed his betters on the upper floors, he was a part of a massive human movement against tyranny and oppression, a small but inspired element in a drive to free one-quarter of humanity from the slavery of the ancient murderers.
I must not let this luxury soften me, Kwan told himself. I must not let my love of women distract me from my love of freedom.
Faint lights were visible from time to time, far away to starboard. Some city of Africa; they were steaming up the African coast of the Atlantic now, with Barcelona the next stop and then Rotterdam, and then Southampton, and on and on. Eventually, some part of the North American continent would be reached, and when it was, he would have to find a way off the ship.
Some American girl? Could he persuade an American girl to smuggle him off with her? Could he insert himself among the visitors who crowded aboard at every stop to see off their friends?
A way will present itself, Kwan was sure of that. As though he had at his side a guardian angel — in the shape of the Statue of Liberty, perhaps, like the one in Tiananmen Square — he was confident he would not give in to ease, not lose heart, not be defeated. The road would open before him.
Smiling, pleased with his adventure of the night, with his accommodation to this temporary world, with the fact of his own confidence and youth, Kwan gazed out at the glittering wake of Star Voyager, as it disappeared into the utter blackness of the vast ocean. Such a confident wake.
16
What affected Susan most of all was Grigor’s matter-of-factness. He behaved as though his courage were the most natural thing in the world, as though being brave were something like being blue-eyed or left-handed. It wasn’t an English kind of stiff-upper-lip thing, nor an American’s self-conscious imitation of Humphrey Bogart or Indiana Jones. It probably wasn’t even anything generically Russian, but simply Grigor’s own personality: laconic, aware but unafraid, viewing his own history as it passed by with interest but dispassion. He must have been a wonderful fireman, Susan thought, before they killed him.