Suddenly all the yards on both ships bloomed white with sail, and the little bones of white water chewed by their sharp bows got larger. “Hey they’re racing!” Kevin said. “They’re racing!”
Ramona stood to watch. The onshore breeze was strengthening, and the two ships were on a reach across it, so their sails bulged toward shore. Stunsails bloomed to each side of the highest yards, and from a distance it seemed the ships flew over the water, gliding like pelicans. Working freighters only, so big they could never be really fast, but those stacks of white sail, full-bellied with the wind! Complex as jets, simple as kites, the two craft cut through the swells and converged on the harbor, on each other. It seemed possible the windward ship might try to steal the other’s wind, and sure enough the leeward ship began to luff off a bit, toward the beach. Perhaps the pilot would have to try swinging behind the windward ship, to trade places and reverse the tactic; a dangerous maneuver, however, as they might never catch up. “Isosceles is trying to push them into the beach,” Ramona observed.
“Yeah, they’re caught inside. I say Isosceles has them.”
“No, I say Leeward’s closer, they’ll slip right around the jetty here, we’ll probably be able to step aboard.”
“Bet.”
“Okay.”
On the end of the other jetty a group of kids were standing and shouting at the sight. The wind pushed at them, Kevin raised his arms to feel it. That something so free and wild should be harnessed to the wilclass="underline" the ancient elegance of it made him laugh.
“Go, Isosceles!” “Go, Leeward!” And they shouted and bumped shoulders like the kids on the other jetty. As the ships got closer they could see better how big they were. The channel couldn’t take any larger, it looked as if the mainyards would stretch from one jetty to the other, great silver condor wings of alloy. The crews of the two ships were standing on the windward rails as ballast, and someone on each ship hurled amplified insults across the ever-narrowing gap of water between them. It really did look as though they would reach the channel mouth in a dead heat, in which case Isosceles would be forced to luff off, according to race protocol. Ramona was gleefully pointing this out to Kevin when a long silver spar telescoped out from the windward side of Isosceles’ bow, and an immense rainbow-striped balloon spinnaker whooshed into existence like a parachute, dragging the whole great ship behind it. Swells exploded under the bow. “Coming through!” they heard the tinny loudspeaker from Isosceles cry, and with a faint Bronx cheer the Leeward sloughed off. Its stunsails rolled up into their spars, and the spars telescoped back in under the yards. Sail was taken in everywhere, without a single sailor aloft, and the ship settled down into the water like a motorboat with the throttle cut. When Isosceles turned into the channel entrance, to the cheers of spectators on both jetties, its sails too disappeared, rolling up with the faint hum of automated rigging and tackle blocks. Three of the five topsails and the isosceles top section served to propel it down the channel at a stately five miles an hour, and the bare spars stood high against the hills of Corona del Mar. Leeward followed it in, looking much the same. The crews waved back at them.
“They’re so beautiful,” Kevin said.
“I wonder if one of them is Nadezhda’s ship,” Ramona said. “It’s due soon.”
They sat down again, leaned back against the warm rock side by side, arms touching. A thick rain of light poured down on them, knitting tightly with the onshore wind. Photon by photon, striking and flaking off, filling the air so that everything—the sea, the tall ships, the stone of the jetties, the green light tower at the other jetty’s end, the buoys clanging on the groundswell, the long sand reach of the beach, the lifeguard stands and their streaming flags, the pastel wrack of apartments, the palm fronds swaying over it all—everything floated in a white light, an aura of salt mist, ethereal in the photon rain. In every particulate jot of being… Kevin settled back like a sleepy cat. “What a day.”
And Ramona leaned over, black hair blinding as a crow’s wing, and kissed him.
Over the next weeks matters progressed on the Rattlesnake Hill issue, but slowly and amorphously, so that it was hard to keep a sense of what was happening. A letter came back from LA’s Metropolitan Water District, outlining their offer of more water. What it came down to was a reduced rate if they purchased more. Mary and the town planner’s office immediately made inquiries with the OCWD concerning sell-through rates. Clearly they were hoping that El Modena could buy the extra water from LA, and then give what they didn’t use to OCWD by pouring it into the groundwater basin. This would get them credits from OCWD that they could use against pump taxes, and the net result might be a considerable savings, with a lot of water in reserve.
Oscar shook his head when he heard about it. “I believe I’d like to look into this one a little more,” he murmured. First of all, he told Kevin, town resolution 2022 would have to be overthrown or some sort of special dispensation made, which would take council action or a town vote. And then the whole maneuver would tend to put the town in the water business, buying it here and selling it there, and the State Water Resources Control Board was likely to have some thoughts about that, no matter what the district watermaster said. If it came to a town vote that superficially looked like it was only about saving money, Oscar wanted to talk to Sally Tallhawk about her suggestion concerning Inyo County’s water. Inyo now owned the water that used to belong to Los Angeles, and it was possible they could work out some kind of deal, and buy even cheaper water from Inyo than the MWD was offering, with some use stipulations included that would keep the water from fueling a big development. Certainly Inyo would appreciate the irony of altering the shape of development in southern California, after the years of manipulation they had suffered at the hands of LA.
So Oscar was busy. Kevin for his part dropped by to talk with Hiroko, Susan, and Jerry, to see what they were thinking about the matter. Jerry had let his law practice lapse so that he could help run a small computer firm located down on Santiago Creek where it crossed Tustin Avenue, and Kevin found him there one day, eating lunch by the creek. He was a burly man in his early sixties, who looked as calm and sensible as you could ever want, until you noticed a glint in his eye, the only indication of a secret sense of humor, a sort of anarchist’s playfulness that the town had come to know all too well.
He shrugged when Kevin asked him about the hill matter. “Depends what it is. I need to see Alfredo’s plans, what it would do for the town.”
“Jerry, that’s the last empty hill in the whole area! Why should he take that hill? I notice you’re content to have your business down here on the flats.”
Jerry swallowed a bit of sandwich. “Maybe I’m not content. Maybe I’d like to take some offices up there in Alfredo’s complex.”
“Ah, come on. Here you are down by the creek for lunch. I know you appreciate the way this town has been working, what it stands for. Why else would you be here?”
“I was born here.”
“Yah, well…” Kevin sighed. Talking to Jerry was hard. “All the more reason you should want to protect it. It’s a miracle the water district held onto that hill for so long, and now that we’ve got it, it would be a shame to make it look like all the rest of them. Think about it.”