“Oh, Congressman,” Reed stammered, “I never meant to suggest, uh, suggest...”
“Don’t worry about it, Reed, you were right,” Schlurn told him, and grinned in a friendly reassuring way, and slowly shook his head. “I don’t know what got into me,” he said.
X
How do I get in there? How?
With all the temporal and heavenly powers both blocking my way, with them all united against me, guards and angels and fences and force fields all opposed to my will, how do I get my hands on that miserable quintet, those hopeless pawns? How?
HOW? HOOOOOOWWWW!!!
And how much time have I left, to get there?
41
Frank didn’t want any chummy relationships developing between his group and the hostages, the eight staff members kept here to run the plant under the eye of Grigor, but what could he do? Human beings interact. It’s easier to be friendly, or at least courteous, than impersonal and aloof.
So it wasn’t long before Grigor was saying, “Rosie, would you bring me that printout, please?” or “Mark, it’s time to check the pressure gauges,” or even, “Fran, I’m thirsty, could you get me a glass of water? Thank you.”
Frank wasted a little breath arguing against this fraternization at first, but gave up when he saw he wasn’t getting anywhere. And in any case it was easier for him, too, to address the hostages by name, to say “please” and “thank you,” to act as though this was just some kind of stupid boat ride they were all taking together, instead of what it was.
So they knew the hostages’ first names, and after a while even some of their backgrounds and personal lives. And the hostages knew Grigor’s and Kwan’s names, because the whole world knew their names. Early in the negotiations with the people outside, Grigor had announced both of their names and histories, to demonstrate the seriousness and capability of the people who’d taken over, and to start to get their stories out. And to show, as well, that they believed they had nothing to lose.
The hostages — and the world — didn’t know Frank’s name, or Maria Elena’s, because on that he insisted, firmly believing they were going to pull this caper off somehow And they didn’t know Pami’s name because they didn’t need to know it. Pami had gone all boneless and weak the minute they’d established control of this place, as though that’s all she’d been holding herself together for, and she spent most of her time now either asleep in the dayroom or slumped in a chair, glowering at the world around her with sunken eyes. There was no making human contact with Pami, not by the hostages and not even by her companions.
Frank had expected Grigor also to have collapsed by now, to be of little more than symbolic use once they’d got themselves inside the plant, but that emaciated body seemed to find sustenance and fresh vigor here in the control section. Dealing with the plant and the hostages, negotiating with the thickheaded officials outside, it all gave him a wiry energy that made him move as though he were plugged into his own electric source.
Kwan was the one losing vigor, particularly after the television announced he was simply a common crook after all, and not a revolutionary, not a hero of Tiananmen Square. This was two days after Grigor had given the names to the media. Apparently there was no way for them to smear the hero fireman of Chernobyl, but the Chinese government was happy to announce that Li Kwan was no more than a garden-variety criminal, lying about his past in an effort to gain political sanctuary. And the American State Department, for reasons of its own — no doubt solid hardheaded realistic mature reasons — was happy to announce it had studied the documents the Chinese government had provided as “proof” and to pronounce them genuine.
“That’s all right, Kwan,” Frank said, trying to cheer him up, “the lie comes apart, don’t worry about it. You already had a lotta ink, right? A lotta stuff in the newspapers about who you really are.”
Kwan shrugged, silent little face bitter, not caring.
“You’ll get your story out,” Frank told him, and then made a mistake. “You’ll have plenty of time after this is all over,” he said.
Kwan looked at him, with painted-on eyes. Frank cleared his throat, and blinked, and patted Kwan on the shoulder, and left him there.
Despite the weirdness of the situation, despite its unprecedented craziness, life soon settled into a kind of routine, which was something else Frank didn’t want or need. What he wanted and needed was steady forward movement, negotiation and then planning out the final details of the endgame and then doing it and home free. Stasis was his enemy. Being stuck here in stalemate could only help the people outside, who didn’t have this fragile cat’s cradle to hold together.
Meanwhile, nothing was getting accomplished. Their grip on the plant was secure, but somehow that didn’t mean as much as it should. The propaganda effect, for Grigor and Kwan, was just about nonexistent, buried within the media’s overriding interest in the caper. Maria Elena’s more general ecologic point couldn’t seem to get made at all. And Frank wasn’t getting his money.
The way that part was supposed to work, at the final moment Frank was to split off from the rest of them. The others all had their propaganda objectives, so were willing to let themselves be captured to accomplish their agenda. So, assuming the goddamn stumble-minded officials finally did come around to agree on the five-mil ransom, Grigor would tell them to put it in suitcases in a car just outside the gate, and that a member of the group would go out and drive the car away.
The story was, if the driver wasn’t arrested or followed, and if he was permitted to get clear away, he would telephone the plant six hours later and tell his partners still inside that everything was okay. No phone call, the partners would destroy the plant. (In reality, Frank would just clear out, and then the others would surrender. He’d like to take Maria along, if she’d go, but that didn’t seem likely.)
First, though, the morons outside had to get the idea into their thick heads that they had to come up with the five mil. Had to come up with it, or they could kiss their goddamn nuclear power plant goodbye.
And time was getting short.
Pami did the most sleeping, and even when she was awake she was listless and cranky, like a colicky child. Frank slept the least, driven by nervous energy, but they all, invaders and hostages alike, took their turns on the sofas in the dayroom, covered by the thin cotton blankets normally kept in a supply closet in case an emergency ever arose in which staffers would have to remain at the plant for an extended period of time. (Societal breakdown outside the perimeter had been the emergency the planners had been thinking of, not the standoff that now existed.)
The only television set was also in the dayroom. They kept it on all the time, to see how the world was perceiving their situation, but turned the volume low, since there were always sleepers in the room. It was the afternoon of the fifth day of the siege that Dr. Philpott was first mentioned on that set.
Frank and two female staffers were watching at the moment, sitting close to the set in order to hear it, with Maria Elena and Pami and two other staffers asleep across the room, and Grigor and Kwan and the remaining four staff members out in the main control room. “To this point, nothing has been heard of the situation of Dr. Marlon Philpott, the eminent scientist whose controversial experiments with anti-gravity led to the strike at Green Meadow, which in turn—”
Frank looked away from the set. The two women watching the program with him looked scared. You could see them praying he wouldn’t ask any questions. But their prayers were not to be answered.