Chapter 17

“So what’s the plan for today?” Peggy Lee asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“First, we will stop at a boiler unit,” Graham replied.  “Fortunately, one of the western-most boilers is inactive today for maintenance.  Then we’ll swing by the solar panel fields, followed by a tour at the Farallon Platform, our regional command post.  We will be spending the night there.  We prefer to make the trips to and from the Farallons in the morning when the seas are calmest.  With visibility around three to four feet in spots, we take every precaution.”

Graham noticed that Ian had already wolfed down most of his bacon and pancakes.  What’s the big rush?  Graham cut a small triangle of pancake from his stack, sopped up some syrup, and raised it to his mouth.  He glanced at Peggy Lee.  He noticed a drop of syrup on her chin.  He wondered what it would feel like to lick syrup off her chin on a Sunday morning in the privacy of their own apartment.  Would she draw him close and kiss him, warm and wet, on his syrupy mouth?  Would they slide down on to the floor?

Peggy Lee looked up suddenly, catching Graham, who immediately blushed.  She laughed sweetly under her breath, and then felt the syrup on her chin.  Now she blushed, quickly dipped her napkin into her water glass, wiped her chin, and asked, “Couldn’t you just shut the boilers down for a few hours to increase visibility and make the trips out to the facilities less dangerous?”

“They used to do that,” Graham said, regaining his composure.  “To be effective though, they had to shut down a majority of units in the area.  It took too long to get the boilers back up and running.  The current regulation requires near-constant operation.  There are no more stoppages for navigation or any other purpose, just maintenance.  And that is usually limited to one or two boiler units at a time.”

“What if someone, without all the fancy navigation you guys have on your boats, happened to get off course and become stranded in the fog?”  Ian asked, shoving the last few bites of pancake into his mouth and pushing his empty tray into the center of the table.  “Would you turn off the boilers to save innocent people in trouble?”

“That would never happen,” Graham answered.  “We have what we call the ‘Coordinated West Coast Perimeter’ set up around the water production facilities.  Every foot of the perimeter is watched 24 hours-a-day by boat and satellite.  We have sensor buoys and aquatic trip lines.  We have never had an unwanted craft of any kind penetrate the West Coast Perimeter without our immediate knowledge.”

“Why does the Army need such high security?”  Peggy Lee asked.  “Are the water production facilities under that big of a threat?  When I was doing some preliminary research for this story, I saw some odd sites on the Internet, radical groups that want to get rid of the facilities, but aren’t there always some wackos who talk about blowing stuff up?  Do you take any of those threats seriously?”

“You can never tell.  There are still a lot of people – some verifiable ‘wackos’ as you say and some sophisticated organizations – who feel like what we do here is immoral.  Or maybe that’s not quite right.  Unholy, unnatural . . . .  They say that the silver slayer was a sign from some higher power – Jesus, Allah, Mother Nature, who knows – that we humans should stop manipulating the environment.  There are even some ‘scientists’ out there who theorize that if we cease operation of all of the water production and other geo-engineering facilities around the world, then the weather would eventually return to normal.  They claim that what we are doing here is hindering the earth’s return to a healthy climate.  Extreme times invite extreme reactions.  One of the most organized, anti-geo-engineering groups is called the ‘Movement for Earth’s Rebalance,’ or ‘MER’ for short.  Perhaps, you saw MER’s website on the Internet?”

Peggy Lee had finished her breakfast.  She poured herself a second cup of black coffee from the carafe on the table.  It steamed in front of her face as she blew gently onto the dark surface.  Ignoring Graham’s question, she asked, “So, do you receive regular threats against the facilities?  Has anyone ever really gotten close to damaging anything or disturbing operations?”

“We had a soldier once who tried to knock out the main operations unit on the Farallon Platform – what we call the Brain Room,” Graham said taking one final bite.  “He was a young guy, a bit on the quiet side, but nice enough.  He was a good worker, did what he was told and all that.  We assigned him to communications on the Farallon Platform.  About three weeks into his tour, one of my senior officers, who was conducting a routine inventory check, happened to walk in on him assembling an explosive device in a storage closet.  It was sheer luck that we discovered his plot.  Otherwise, he might have been able to take the facilities out of commission for quite some time.  The Brain Room, which you will see on our tour, is a critical coordination unit for all of the operations.  If he had succeeded, the water shortages would have been pretty drastic, possibly even cataclysmic.

“Anyway, after extensive interrogations, he admitted to being a member of MER.  The Movement’s leaders denied any responsibility, but the soldier was pretty convincing.  He knew a lot about MER’s organization.  He said that his orders came from the top.  After a thorough governmental inquiry, however, the Army concluded that there was not enough hard evidence linking MER to the attempted bombing.  The young soldier has been in the brig ever since.  You probably read something about all this.  It was a widely-reported incident – happened about five or six years ago.”

“Yes, yes, now I recall reading an article about that guy, Strom Miller, I think was his name.”  Peggy Lee sipped from her steamy cup of coffee.  “After he was caught, he started calling himself ‘Black Oak’ or something, right?”

“That’s right,” Graham said.  “All of the members of the Movement take on secret earth names, and his was Black Oak.  Wow, I am surprised you remembered his name – both his names.”

“If you knew her well, you would not be surprised,” Ian interrupted.  “Her mind is like a steel trap.”

“Some things stick and some things don’t,” Peggy Lee responded.  “I just remember that boy’s innocent-looking face in the newspapers.  They gave him a very long sentence, right?  I thought at the time that it was a bit harsh.”

“Well,” Graham said, “he could have caused millions of people in Southern California to go without water for a very long time.  If he had managed to completely destroy the Brain Room, he probably would have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.  I for one am glad that he is behind bars.” 

“Hmm . . . I just always thought of him as a misguided crackpot, not a serious threat,” Peggy Lee said.  “But enough about MER and Black Oak or whatever his name was, can we get going?  I’m very excited.”

Chapter 16

            Graham ushered Peggy Lee and Ian over to the food line.  The small cafeteria was full and loud – in a pleasant, lively way.  About thirty soldiers sat at the two long tables in the middle of the room.  Multiple, animated conversations bounced around the tables and filled the room with a congenial buzz.  The overhead sunlamps had been turned on high throughout the cafeteria to give the soldiers the sense of a clear and sunny morning.  Large and hearty potted plants added to the illusion that the room was connected to outside world.  

Graham looked at Peggy Lee out of the corner of his eye as they stood next to each other in line.  He could feel Ian’s eyes on him from behind.  He didn’t know what to say to her, and he wished that Ian would disappear again.  He wanted to go back to the planetarium with Peggy Lee and keep talking, or just sit there in the dark, heavenly silence, soaking up her scent.  This morning, she smelled like cinnamon – or maybe it was clove.  Their conversation had been so easy last night.  Now, his friendliness felt forced.  He felt like they were right back at the beginning, standing and waiting for the elevator in that terrible awkward silence.  Graham was worried that the rest of the day would be similarly strained.  His palms were sweating, and he swallowed hard against a rising tide of anxiety.  He felt on the verge of saying something stupid or foolish again. 

But then, Peggy Lee playfully prodded Graham with her elbow and asked, “Hey soldier, what are you thinking about?  You’re quiet compared to last night.”

“I guess I was unusually talkative last night.  Must have been the beers.  Or do you reporters have a way of extracting information from even the shiest of interviewees?”  Graham quickly wiped his brow with the back of his hand.  It was only slightly wet.  A bead of sweat dripped down his spine. 

“They say I can squeeze information from a turnip,” Peggy Lee answered.  “And I must say, I have extracted some pretty juicy tidbits from the toughest of Alaskan warlords.  But last night I was just being my normal, friendly self – no hidden tactics, just sincere interest.”

“Glad to hear it,” Graham said as he took three trays from the top of the pile.  He handed Peggy Lee one and stepped aside.  “After you,” he said gallantly. 

Graham held out a tray to Ian.  The big hologramographer thanked Graham brusquely and stepped forward, knocking up against Graham with his large camera bag.

Graham did not know what to make of Ian.  Everything Ian said had an undertone to it.  It was as if he had something more to say, but always stopped short.  Perhaps, it had just been so long since Graham had been in a position of vying, however innocently, for a young woman’s attention.  Perhaps, he had forgotten how men challenge each other for a chosen female – the archetypical two rams butting heads.  But it felt more complicated than that.  Graham could not quite put his finger on it.  He felt like he was trying to remember a dream – a dream about Ian – that had faded quickly in the morning light, leaving a vague, lingering undercurrent of unease.

They headed over to Graham’s table.  Almost all the soldiers in the room gawked at Peggy Lee as she crossed the room.  She did not seem to notice.  Or perhaps she was so used to such attention that she was not affected by it.  Graham felt goddamn lucky.  He was the guy talking to, walking with, and hanging out with the beautiful girl.  He knew that the feeling would not last, that it wasn’t even a reflection of his character or prowess, but simply a temporary benefit of his position.  But he relished the envious looks.  No one was ever jealous of Saint Snow.  Today, however, was a different kind of day. 

Most mornings, Graham ate at his table by himself, often continuing his review of the daily reports.  It was nice to have company for a change.  He sat directly across from Peggy Lee, and Ian sat next to her. 

“Let me open that for you,” Graham said, reaching across the table and taking a syrup package out of Peggy Lee’s hands.  “They can be tricky, and if you don’t do it right, syrup will get all over your fingers.”  Graham was surprised and pleased by his assertiveness.  She smiled at him.  He felt like they might be sliding back to that comfortable place.  Why he had been so worried? 

Ian tossed three syrup packages onto Graham’s tray and said, “Hey, Graham, since you are such a pro, will you open mine too?” 

Graham bristled.  “Sure thing, Ian.  We wouldn’t want you to get all of that expensive equipment covered in syrup before the big trip, right?”

“Exactly,” smiled Ian.

Chapter 15

When Graham reached Peggy Lee’s door, he heard voices inside.  She was talking with Ian.  He could not make out what they saying, but it sounded serious.  He knocked and the door immediately flew open.  There was Peggy Lee standing in the doorway, looking radiant in jeans and a white polo shirt.  Graham's stomach dropped.  Adrenaline, pure and powerful, surged through his veins.

“There you are,” Peggy Lee said.

“I promised to be here at seven.  I’m sorry if I am a few minutes late.”

“Late?  Not at all, Graham, not at all,” Peggy Lee replied.  She was definitely a morning person, Graham thought.  Her eyes positively glowed – despite the institutional lighting.  “Shall we bring our stuff now or will we have a chance to come back to our rooms?”  

“If your bags are ready, leave them by the door.”

“Ah Graham, if it’s all the same to you,” Ian said, “I’ll keep the holographic equipment by my side.  I’m sure your boys are careful and all, but I have some very expensive lenses in here and it’s my ass if I return them broken or damaged.”

“Fine by me,” Graham said.

##

            As they approached the mess hall, Graham smelled bacon and pancakes – Wednesday morning’s usual fare.  The bacon was soy, but smelled and tasted real enough.  The aroma of syrup and salty grease always comforted him.

Yet this morning, he felt something else.  He wondered what it would be like to eat something other than pancakes on a Wednesday morning.  What would it be like to walk through a buffet line at an outdoor café, to pick up a slice of melon, a bowl of real strawberries, and a bagel with lox and cream cheese?  Many people still enjoyed such delicacies in parts of the world.  What would it be like to linger over a gently rustling newspaper while sipping coffee?  He imagined green, canvas umbrellas overhead and brightly colored, triangular flags fluttering in a light, warm breeze.  He thought of pinwheels and the smell of baking bread.

            His mind wandered to childhood breakfasts at the farmhouse.  His father had been a firm believer in big breakfasts, which usually included bacon, eggs, toast, and grapefruit sprinkled with hot sauce.  Pancakes were reserved for the weekends.  At the head of the breakfast table, his father pored over the newspaper.  “Corn futures are down again today,” he would remark.  “Damn government’s threatening to raise our taxes.  We’ll be eating Chinese bacon before too long.”  Then he would peek over the paper and wink at Graham, a secret message just for him.  Don’t worry.  We’ll be okay. 

            Graham remembered one particular April morning when he was eleven years old.  He came down to the kitchen early and hugged his mother, who was busy at the stove.  The morning promised a hot, glorious day.  The crabapple trees and lilacs had bloomed nearly a month prior.  All along the Missouri River, all of the snow drifts – even the stubborn ones hidden in the shade of the river’s steepest banks – had long since disappeared.  Summer was coming and that meant long hours of fishing, homemade plum pies, and afternoons spent helping his father around the farm.  Graham set the kitchen table for breakfast and threw open the nearby window.

            During breakfast, Graham noticed a rooster’s head bopping up and down just above the windowsill.  The rooster had hopped onto an old barrel under the window and was attentively observing breakfast.  Graham’s parents did not notice.  When his mother got up to get more coffee, the rooster jumped up onto the sill.  It stood resolutely as it surveyed the kitchen table.

Graham got up and threw out his arms to scare the rooster back outside.  The rooster, however, fluttered into the room instead, coming to rest on the back of his mother’s empty chair.  Graham’s father calmly put the paper down.  Then, like lightning, he stood and took a quick swipe at the rooster’s legs.  The rooster jumped just in time and landed in the middle of the table.  Graham reached for him, knocking the milk jug off of the table, but again the rooster was too fast. 

Graham’s mother grabbed a broom, backed into the corner by the stove, and held it defensively in front of her.  “Get that damn thing out of my house,” she yelled.

Graham’s father laughed.  “You’re a silly old hen, my dear, but I love you anyway.”

As the rooster proceeded toward the living room, Graham and his father closed in.  “One, two, three,” Graham’s father whispered, and then they pounced.  Graham could smell his father’s deodorant as they kneeled next to each other, holding the warm bird against the floorboards. 

            They got the rooster back outside and closed the window.  Then they tried to convince Graham’s mother to let them clean up the mess, but she had none of it.  So they grabbed their plates and sat down on the front porch steps.  Three goats looked up and then went back to chomping on the long grass next to their pen.  

Graham’s father put his arm around Graham’s shoulders.  “It’s a good thing the Queen of England ain’t coming for breakfast ‘til next week, right son?”

            “Yeah, dad.  Good thing.”

The early morning sun glistened off of three metal silos in the distance, and for a moment the farm was completely silent.

##

            Graham opened the door to the mess hall for his guests and found himself, quite by surprise, acutely missing his father and the life they had once shared on the farm.

Chapter 14

Graham awoke at 5:15 a.m., as was his custom.  He flipped his light panels to “dawn” and stretched for about twenty minutes in front of a decades-old sunrise from the Canadian Rockies on his video wall.  He had seen that particular sunrise hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, but he liked the sound of the running water in the small creek in the foreground and the gradually glowing cirrus clouds above the mountaintops. 

A gaggle of geese flew high overhead through streaking sunrays as the first infinitesimal curve of the sun rose between two towering peaks.  Graham waited for that moment every time he dialed up “Sunrise CR-98.”  He knew exactly when the geese would appear.  He would stop stretching just to watch them pass – a perfect V, high overhead.  By all reports, every goose on the planet had perished soon after the Collapse.  Graham still hoped that maybe, just maybe, some of the strongest from the video had offspring that had offspring that were flying somewhere – unknown to any human being – past a beautiful sunrise at that very moment.  That would be so cool, he thought as the last geese disappeared from the immense screen.

While drawing a bath, Graham made his bed.  He took the top sheet and blanket completely off.  Then, he pulled the bottom sheet tight, straightening each corner so that the sheet was perfectly centered on his narrow mattress.  He replaced the top sheet and the blanket, centered and straight on the bed, and meticulously tucked in the sides and the corners.  He deftly fluffed his pillow and put it carefully at the top.  He knew that his subordinates did not make their beds very well (or sometimes not at all, he had heard), but he did not run this outpost like a continuation of boot camp.  He knew that most of the kids out there were just trying to make it through to their next assignment.  He had bigger problems to worry about than whether every soldier had mastered a proper, hospital-corner fold.  He felt like one of the perks, few as they may be, of being stationed at the water production facility was the fact that the soldiers didn’t have some middle-aged, testosterone-driven superior officer breathing down their necks.  It might be dark and dreary, but at least the atmosphere was mellow.

Graham followed the same routine every morning.  He was up before anyone else at the post.  After stretching and making his bed, he shaved his minimal stubble, made a cup of sweetened instant coffee in his microwave, printed out the daily reports from the facilities and any important messages from his superiors, and sank into a long and deep bathtub, filled to the top with steaming water.  He read his reports and drank his coffee while soaking in the clear, hot water.  He liked the lasting feeling of cleanliness of his diurnal baths and the way that it warmed him to his bones, deeply warm, penetrated and soothed.  Early morning was, by far, the best part of his day.

That day, Graham felt especially good.  He caught himself humming and smiling as he shaved.  He put a sprinkle of bath salts into his bath as it was filling up.  He momentarily laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of his putting salt into the water.  Here they were working year-in and year-out to desalinate the ocean’s vast resources, and then the leader of the program turns it back to brine.  He did not know where the bath salts had come from.  His quarters had been stocked with a case of them when he moved in.  That meant that they were at least fifteen years old.  He held the canister up to his nose.  It still smelled like roses.  Graham threw a few more crystals into the tub for good measure as it continued to fill.

He did not feel guilty about taking a bath every day.  While such an excessive use of water was illegal in the L.A. Climate Shelter Zone, headquarters had more water than it could ever use.  The Army had constructed large condensation tanks on many of the rooftops surrounding the Transamerica Building.  The constant, thick fog filled the tanks with water, which was then filtered for use by the staff.  Even if Graham and the other soldiers bathed and flushed the toilets all day every day, they still would never run out – as long, of course, as the water production facilities were operating.  The post even had a medium-sized swimming pool on one of the subterranean floors near the planetarium.  Graham encouraged his soldiers to swim and bathe as frequently as they wanted, for they would never again experience such luxury once they left.  Even in Alaska and other countries relatively rich in water, only the excessively rich and powerful could afford daily baths or a swimming pool.

Graham stepped into the tub.  The hot water stung the skin on his shins.  Perfect.  He stood still for approximately thirty seconds, waiting for his feet to adjust to the heat.  Then, he gently lowered his body into the tub’s warm embrace.  After a few moments, he closed his eyes and shifted farther down into the water, submerging the back of his head and his ears.  He lay there listening to his breath.  Other soldiers were starting to rise now.  He could hear taps turning on and off.  He could hear toilets flushing and water running as it reverberated through the pipes.  Perhaps Peggy Lee had gotten up.  He imagined her washing the sleep from her eyes and looking at herself up close in the military-issue mirror inside her quarters.  He wondered what it would be like to have her living with him, to have her come into the bathroom, tired and groggy, to wish him a good morning as he lay in his hot bath.

Quickly, he pulled his head up from underwater.  Where was he going with this?  She was worldly, gorgeous, smart, and successful.  She would never choose to leave her career and her life of travel and adventure to live on this island of solitude with some stranger known as the water hermit – a man with no life whatsoever beyond the water production facilities and watching old movies. 

And despite his drunken thinking last night, he knew that he could never leave.  No, it wasn’t even worth thinking about.  He had to stop fantasizing about making a life with Peggy Lee or he was going to drive himself crazy.  He shook his head and said under his breath, “What are you thinking?  You’ve known her for less than twenty four hours.”

He then slowly shifted into a sitting position, careful not to spill water over the edge, and dried his hands on a neatly-folded towel.  He reached over and picked up his daily reports and his coffee from the nearby toilet seat cover.  The rain reports looked normal, even a bit above average.  The winds looked relatively calm for their tour of the facilities and the Farallon Platform. 

As he flipped though pages, his mind wandered back to Peggy Lee.  It seemed likely that her report would cast the water production facilities in a good light.  He had done a good job last night discussing the Deep Six Cover-up and the facilities’ unhappy history.  And she did not seem interested in asking him any really tough questions.  Everything seemed to be going smoothly, he thought.  He was doing what the Minster’s memo required – and he was doing it without having to compromise his integrity . . . at least not too much.  No out-and-out lies yet, at any rate. 

Peggy Lee had been so sweet to him last night.  Could she have been simply building rapport, buttering him up so that he would reveal unflattering details about the project?  Or about himself?  He certainly had shared a lot of personal information.  But his gut told him that he could trust her. 

He quickly finished his coffee and ducked back under to wash his hair.  He flipped the drain and stood up slowly, careful not to make himself dizzy.  He turned the shower on for a quick rinse as the water level below him fell steadily to his ankles, then stepped out of the deep tub and dried off. 

As he donned his uniform and laced up his shoes, he continued to think about the night before.  Had he actually shoved Peggy Lee out of his way on his frantic exit from the walk-in fridge?  He could not quite remember.  She hadn’t made fun of him or gone up to her room.  She hadn’t rejoined Ian.  In fact, she had warmed up to him even more after his claustrophobic freak-out.  Did she feel sorry for him?  Maybe she was just being nice to the foolish old soldier who spent the whole night stumbling over himself just for a tiny bit of attention from the gorgeous journalist.  She was just a good person, he concluded, and certainly not interested in Graham in any kind of romantic way.  He needed to maintain composure and reapply himself to his initial tactic of being professional and informative above all.

Dressed, Graham ran a comb through his hair and plucked three stray nose hairs from his nostrils with a pair of tweezers.  His eyes watered with the prickly sting, but he had to admit, he was looking good.  He had slept well.  Slouch gone, eyes bright.  It was almost 0700 hours.  He crossed his bedroom and went out into the hall, securing the door behind him.  Well, he said to himself, here we go.