113

 

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 9:50 A.M.

Riley walked up to Hendrix’s office, knocked on his door and opened it simultaneously. He was keying instructions, his fingers flying over his keyboard, his face turned to the satellite images on his screen. He glanced at Riley, continued typing. Riley waited, impatience simmering. She counted to ten. On eleven, at boil point, she opened her mouth just as Hendrix turned to her.

“Bridget. Ten minutes on. What’s changed?”

Riley blew out a breath. “Everything. Listen up. Don’t interrupt.” Verbatim, she told him everything Gwen had told her.

Hendrix listened in silence. Halfway through he picked up a pen and twirled it like a baton. His face went from displeasure to disbelief to fury. He pointed the pen at Riley.

“You just don’t quit, do you, Bridget? You don’t get anywhere with the science so you bring me this fantasy scenario, some whacko science I’ve never heard of. You have target fixation. You’re seeing what you want to see. You’re in your manic phase and everything’s magnified.”

Riley slammed her palms on Hendrix’s desk. She angled toward him, voice quivering with rage.

“Don’t you dare use that against me you bastard! I’m a damn good scientist and you know it!”

“We all know it,” Hendrix retorted. “It’s why you’re here. The bipolar’s why I’m here. To keep you grounded.”

A scientific straightjacket, thought Riley. She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw the images of her nightmares. The rain falling in torrents, the people and homes washed away, the waves crashing into coastal homes, the landslides drowning everyone and everything in their path in a river of mud. She opened her eyes, blew out a breath. She would not give up.

“You think I made this up?”

“No, I think you consort with whack jobs.”

“Yeah, a meteorologist. Just as well qualified as you. And because you’ve never heard of this science it cannot be real, is that it? Not invented here? Christ, this is all about your ego, not my target fixation. You think I want to see a monster come and eat up California? You’re out of your mind.”

Hendrix exhaled slowly. His face was several shades redder. His control on his own legendary temper was tenuous.

“No, I do not think you consciously want to see ARk 1000 hit us. But maybe subconsciously, from scientific curiosity, you do. Like the pyromaniac firemen who start fires so they get to fight them. You seem to me to be suffering from a kind of scientific Munchausen by proxy syndrome. That and your condition have put you on a hair trigger. We cannot jump at every bump in the night. The state of California is close to bankrupt. You know that. The cost and the disruption of declaring this ARk 1000, both in terms of dollars and potentially of lives, is too big to undertake on your obsession and some lunatic’s tale.”

Riley found the urge to step forward and strike the man almost unendurable. She knew the only chance she had to convince him was to maintain an icy calm.

“It’s not a lunatic’s tale,” she said, forcing her voice down the register, slowing her words. “I only wish it were. And it’s not an obsession, Jon. It’s called dedication. Stop hurling my condition, as you so squeamishly call it, at me. Everyone’s got something! Haven’t you learned that by now? There is no normal. And stop playing the politician here.”

“Someone has to!”

“There are lives at stake, thousands of lives! You know what’s at stake if this is ARk 1000.”

“Of course I fuckin’ know what’s at stake!” thundered Hendrix. “We’re scientists, or we’re supposed to be! We analyze the data, we make the call! We don’t have this data! Just the word of someone who thinks another someone is gonna ramp this storm, send up an army of drones, God help us. For fuck’s sake!” The genie was out of the bottle; Hendrix’s temper was running free.

Still Riley did not give up. Art had sauntered up casually and now stood outside the office, rolling his shoulders, as if waiting for a word.

“Jon, listen. Please,” urged Riley. “Knowing what I know, I think we have no choice but to push the button, call this an ARk 1000, get FEMA and CalEMA to issue the evac orders. Jeez, if this thing is ramped up either by these people or by nature itself what’re we gonna do? Wait until the rain’s so heavy that FEMA orders people to stay in their homes saying driving’s a hazard? Just how do you think you are gonna organize the evac of one and half million people?”

Hendrix got to his feet, came round his desk toward Riley. He looked as if he were about to physically eject her. He stopped a foot from her. In her space. His face jutted toward her and his voice was artificially low.

“We cry wolf on this then when the real ARk 1000 comes rocking through no one’ll believe us. No one’ll go.”

“That’s what compulsory orders are designed to cover,” said Riley, holding her ground despite the urge to step back. “Are you really ready to bet that this one isn’t the Biggie? Shouldn’t we involve FEMA and CalEMA in those calls?”

“Not on this evidence, Riley. I will not put my name to it,” said Hendrix. “Therefore Hazards will not put our name to it. Now go. I have a storm to monitor.”

Mechanically placing one foot ahead of the other, moving like a marionette, Riley returned to her office. In her own sanctuary, she gazed out of her window into the gray world beyond, waiting for her breathing to slow. Trees stood. Buildings stood. The odd brave soul ran hunched through the rain, the wind grabbing at their clothes. If the storm hit, she and the Hazards team had a safe underground bunker from which to operate. Windproof, flood proof, earthquake proof. But the rest of California just had normal buildings. The storm would come with deadly intent and it would huff and it would puff and it would blow their homes down, or rather wash them away, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.