Ecstasy (13 page)

So the solution that Shardik came up with was this: If the campus is hot and the bottom of the lake is practically freezing,
why not put them together and—like the TV commercial where the chocolate gets jammed into the peanut butter—create the perfect
combination? Suck up some cold water, run it alongside the water from the university’s cooling system at a so-called “heat-exchange
facility” on the shore, and presto: free air-conditioning.

It wasn’t a completely original idea; the city of Stockholm was already doing something like it, and Toronto was thinking
about it. But such a thing had never been tried in the United States; now all Shardik had to do was get the university to
invest millions, talk the city into letting Benson dig a massive trench from campus to lake, and convince local environmentalists
that the whole thing wasn’t going to make the water turn purple.

On the first two counts, he succeeded handily. That last one, however, proved to be not so easy.

Now, if you ask me, the Gabriel tree-hugging set would’ve been foursquare in favor of Deep Lake—if it’d been proposed anywhere
but here. Sure enough, Shardik was constantly flogging the project’s environmental value, how it’d mean a significant reduction
in the university’s production of greenhouse gases. But local activists decided early on that if Benson was in favor of it,
it had to be fundamentally evil.

They argued that it would raise the lake temperature and cause some hideous algae bloom; Shardik hired a team of independent
consultants, who found that the overall increase would be roughly equal to one extra sunny day a year.

They worried about the effect on tiny misis shrimp, who could get sucked into the intake pipe; the experts countered that
they were so photophobic, all you had to do was put a ten-watt lightbulb down there to scare them away.

And so on, and so on. If you think it sounds tiresome, well… you’re right. Try covering it for three straight years.

To be honest, when I first heard about the project, I thought there was no way it’d ever go through. But every time the local
government or its citizenry put up a hurdle, Shardik and his team jumped over it. Construction straddled two summers, ripping
up umpteen streets and making Benson commuters curse his name. The same Tuesday that I took Lauren to Café Whatever, a state
judge had refused to grant an injunction barring the system from being turned on; the following afternoon, Deep Lake Cooling
was finally being unveiled.

The occasion was an open house at the heat-exchange facility, located behind a high fence on a knoll at the edge of the lake.
Space being tight, reporters and local dignitaries were bused there from downtown—a trip that ended abruptly when we got to
the protesters blocking the gate.

There were maybe twenty of them, a scraggly bunch carrying signs like
DEEP LAKE
=
DEEP TROUBLE
and the far less original
IT’S OUR LAKE
,
NOT BENSON’S
. The bus driver honked, but it was no go; the news service flack who’d handed out fact sheets on the project’s environmental
bells and whistles looked like she wanted to fall under the wheels.

Finally, we all got out and tried to hoof it—whereupon the protesters put down their signs and linked arms to form a human
chain. I shook my head and wondered what it’d be like to be a reporter in a town where civil disobedience wasn’t considered
a goddamn art form; more work, maybe, but a lot less annoying.

I surveyed the members of the impromptu kick line, most of whom I knew. A few months back, several of them had been all fired
up about genetically engineered food. Before that, it was… Hell, I couldn’t remember. I was just about to try to talk one
of the usual suspects into letting me by when I realized that the oddly dressed blonde at the end of the line was Guinevere,
the air-reading weirdo from Melting Rock. I went over to talk to her, but it was no use; her eyes were shut tight and some
vague chanting sound was emanating from her throat. I shook my head and moved on, and two seconds later, I recognized someone
else: Axel Robinette, Dorrie’s scab-kneed sweetie.

He was wearing cutoff shorts and a black T-shirt with a drawing of a sturgeon on it; on his head was a red bandanna tied Aunt
Jemima style. His knee was healing, but it looked like he was going to have a nasty scar. There was already a vintage one
around his hairline, and under his lower lip was a little square of fuzz the Gen Yers call a “soul patch.” Yuck.

To his left was someone else I recognized, but whom I hadn’t actually met: Axel’s slightly scary-looking buddy with the shaved
head and the surfeit of earrings. The guy was wearing an identical sturgeon T-shirt, though he’d cut off the sleeves to better
display a pair of beefy biceps.

Axel didn’t seem to recognize me, but I guess that wasn’t surprising; I’d only interviewed him briefly, and he’d likely been
under the influence of chemistry. At the moment, though, he seemed generally sober.

“Axel, right?” He blinked at me. “I’m Alex Bernier from the
Monitor,
remember? I talked to you when you won the Hacky Sack thing at Melting Rock.”

“What? Oh, yeah, I guess.…”

I turned toward Jesse Ventura Junior. “And your friend would be…?”

The guy smiled, which didn’t manage to make him look much less intimidating. “Robert Adam Sturdivant,” he said, aiming his
gaze directly at my cleavage. “But you can call me ‘Sturdy.’ ”

I flipped open my notebook. “So you guys want to tell me why you’re here?”

Silence, until Axel finally spoke up. “Um…We’re protesting Deep Lake.”

“Yeah, I got that. But why? I mean, how come you’re willing to get yourself arrested over it?”

Axel’s eyebrows went up. “Arrested? You think, like, the cops are gonna show?”

“You’re blocking the entrance to the big party. Of course they’re gonna show.” The twenty-something woman on his right made
noises that said she agreed with me.

Sturdivant raised his eyebrows, which made his forehead go all crinkly. “No shit?”

“I bet you a buck they’re here inside of five minutes.”

“Whoa,” Axel said. He looked deeply contemplative all of a sudden, and I thought he was going to bolt. But then his scruffy
face exploded into a wide grin. “Guess if they’re gonna come, they’re gonna come.”

“You’re willing to get busted over this?”

He shrugged, pretty comical considering the linked arms. “Doesn’t hurt a bit.”

“You mean you’ve been arrested before?”

“Nah… but I mean, what are they gonna do? Kick our ass?”

“Not too likely.”

“Gotta stand up for what you believe in,” he said, then turned to his friend. “Right, man?”

Sturdivant stuck out his chin. “Fuck yeah.”

“So come on,” I said, “answer the question. How come you feel so strongly about this?”

“About Deep Lake?”

“Of course about Deep Lake.”

“Oh…I mean, it’s just totally wrong.”

“How come?”

“For, you know… for a lot of reasons.”

This was less than quotable. “Could you be more specific?”

His back straightened, like he was about to give a speech. But all he said was, “It’s goddamn imperialism.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Benson thinks it’s like some royal kingdom.” He looked to his pal, whose head nodded on his thick neck. “They think they
can come down here and fuck up our lake and nobody’s gonna stop them.”

“Why do you think it’s going to fuck up the lake? I mean, to play devil’s advocate, didn’t all those ecologists sign off on
it?”

His expression indicated that he was starting to think I was very stupid. Hopefully, I was managing to conceal the fact that
the feeling was mutual.

“That doesn’t mean shit,” he said. “Benson’s got deep pockets. They can get anybody to say whatever they want.”

More agreement from his companions, right and left. Farther down the line, Gabriel’s own Mayor Marty was trying to talk the
protesters into packing it in, with no visible success.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s assume for a second the environmental reports are flawed. What do you think it’s going to do to
the lake specifically?”

“Jesus,” he said in a tone I generally reserve for three-year-olds. “What do you
think
it’s gonna do? You dump a whole shitload of hot water into a lake, it’s not gonna do it any good, now is it?”

“But according to the Environmental Impact Statement, it’s only going to be a couple of degrees warmer than when they pull
it out.”

“Fuck the Environmental Impact Statement, okay? And besides, what we’re talking about here is the
process.
”

“What about it?”

“Come on, the process was a joke from the beginning. You think the state isn’t gonna do whatever the hell Benson wants? I
mean, Christ, they’re the biggest employer in the county. You really think the state wants to piss them off?”

I never got a chance to answer, because the Gabriel cops showed up then and hauled the protesters off in recyclable plastic
handcuffs in record time. Within minutes we were inside the building, where we were greeted by big tables laden with apple
cider, yummy-looking cookies, and chunks of cheese from the university dairy store. The Benson news service definitely knows
its way to a reporter’s heart.

In the name of research, I availed myself of all of the above. Then I wandered around the rapidly filling building, whose
mammoth pipes and flashing indicator lights looked like a combination of the
Enterprise
bridge and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. A Benson student group was singing a cappella, and it took me a minute to recognize
“Cool” from
West Side Story.
Clever.

“What do you think?” said a voice from behind me. “Pretty neat, huh?”

I turned around, and there was Lenny Peterson from the news service. Lenny is a nice guy, but he’s not what you’d call a heartbreaker.
He’s nearly as short as I am and he has a serious overbite, so the overall picture is of a socially inept bunny rabbit. He’s
had a crush on me for a while, and though it’s definitely unrequited, I haven’t been above exploiting it if the situation
requires. It’s not nice, but there it is.

“Hey, Lenny,” I said. “What’re you doing here? Deep Lake’s not in your beat.”

“Whole office is here. Putting on the big shebang.”

“I’ll say. Cookies are good, huh?”

He eyed my plate longingly. “We only get to have some if there’s leftovers.”

I aimed a double-chocolate chunk his way. “Go ahead, knock yourself out.” He looked over at the news service director, who
was introducing Glenn Shardik to a reporter from the Syracuse public TV station. “Come on, go ahead. The coast is clear.”
His hand darted out like a cobra and snatched the cookie, which he folded in half and jammed into his mouth. “Some crowd out
there, huh?” His mouth was too full to answer; he just chewed and made rapturous noises. “You guys expecting any protesters?”

He grunted a “no” through the remains of the cookie, and I waited while he finished chewing. “Who’da thought they’d try and
block the buses?” he said. “But I guess we shoulda known, huh?”

“It’s not exactly unprecedented around here. Those guys been giving you a lot of trouble?”

He shook his head. “Not up at the news service or anything. I mean, nobody but you reporters even know we exist, right?” He
sounded vaguely melancholy. “But, you know, security’s been pretty tight down here at the site. Didn’t want to let anybody
throw a wrench in the works.”

“Tell me something, Lenny. You’re a science guy—”

He started to blush about the gills. “I just cover science for the news service. I write press releases and stuff. I’m no
scientist.”

“Yeah, but…you have your ear to the ground a lot. Tell me the truth. You think all the environmental stuff about Deep Lake
was on the up-and-up?”

“Huh?”

I leaned in closer, in case my cleavage might help loosen his lips. “Come on, you know….All the scientific review about how
the project isn’t going to hurt the lake or the environment or anything; you think it’s for real?”

Now he looked vaguely scandalized. “You mean do I think the university doped it?”

“More or less.”

“Why? Did somebody say that?”

“One of the guys blocking the gate.”

He rolled his bulgy eyes. “Yeah, like
they’d
know.”

“Nah, I don’t think they probably would know. They’re not as smart as you.”

It was shameless, but luckily Lenny didn’t seem to notice. For a second I thought it was my bodacious bod that was doing the
trick, but as it turned out, he was staring down at my other cookie. It was damned attractive, laden with walnuts and M&M’s.
It broke my heart, but I gave it to him.

I stood there while he chewed, and when he had finally swallowed enough to make his loaded mouth merely indecent, he answered.
“Definitely,” he said.

“Definitely what?”

“The environmental reports were definitely straight up.”

“How do you know?”

“Jeepers, Alex. You’re a reporter. Look at the sources. Glenn made sure they got guys who’re pro-environment to begin with,
so nobody’d say they’re biased. Even Charlie Brewster signed off on it.”

“Who?”

“He’s that emeritus prof they call ‘Mr. Mohawk Lake.’ I mean, come on. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

The singers had moved on to “Cool Change,” which has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. I listened to it for a minute
before I answered. “So that’s it? You think the results are solid because you trust the people who did the research?”

“You’re making it sound like that’s, I don’t know,
sordid
or something. All I’m saying is, these guys live by their scientific reputations. If they signed off on the project and then
the lake got screwed up somehow, it’d be the kiss of death. So yeah, I trust them.”

“Fair enough.”

“Where’d you get this crap, anyway?”

“I told you, from the protesters.”

“Which one? Or are you gonna give me some junk about protecting your sources?”