The Glass Factory (25 page)

Late that day the U.S. EPA shows up at the gates of Kim Tungsten, but they’re not allowed in. I call Gina and she says the obstruction’s legal, they’ll have to get a search warrant, which means a couple of days’ wait. Meanwhile, she’ll send a letter to confirm that the EPA was denied access so that penalties will begin accruing at a rate of $25,000 per day.

Wai-Wai comes by and says she’s ready. Colomba insists on feeding her, and Billy sits down next to her and says, “So you know all that chemistry stuff, huh?”

“Why? What’s in the food?” she asks.

“So, like, you can synthesize anything you want, right?”

“Billy—”

“It’s okay, Filomena. I get this all the time,” says Wai-Wai. “Yeah, I can.”

Billy’s eyes widen.

“But I can’t legally order most of the essential precursor chemicals without significant justification. I’d have to misrepresent my research objectives.”

“Ethics don’t get you bucks, dude,” says Billy.

“But they do tend to keep you out of jail,” I say.

“And it’s dude-ette,” says Wai-Wai.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“Can I go?” asks Billy. “Well, can I?”

Wai-Wai looks at him: “Another couple of years on the vine,
dude.”

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks.

Antonia says, “Watch this.”

I watch, and tell her, “Antonia, there’s not a big future in being able to stick cereal to your forehead.”

“Why not?” says Wai-Wai. “It’s more than the vice president can do.”

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Wai-Wai parked the car a few blocks away like I told her to. We walk to her car, me checking our backs every two seconds. I’m pretty sure nobody’s reporting us back to headquarters.

It’s an interesting car ride. Wai-Wai asks me about being a parent, and if I’m interested in more children. I say that another would be nice, but it would have to be with the right guy.

“Watching your biological clock, huh?” she says.

“Uh-huh. And my biological TV, my biological radio, my biological blender and my biological desk lamp.”

And how many people get to discuss earthly geology on their way to an illegal break-in? Wai-Wai tells me she’s flown over the Andes (her father has some relatives in Peru), and that they look just like waves of the sea from high up. And why not? She tells me that it’s the same forces at work, as if the earth’s crust were not solid at all but a somewhat slower moving fluid.

“So the earth is liquid, always in flux,” I observe.

“You got the makings of a scientist.”

“Ha! Me?”

“Why not? We’re all just searchers.”

Darkness. Emptiness.

The void. The all-encompassing way.

God
it’s tough to get your bearings on campus. It would help if we weren’t in the woods on a rainy night. Wai-Wai says she knows the way. It is tempting to hope this is true, because right now it’s like a scene from a grade-C horror-slasher movie: “Ooh, we’re lost.” “Look, there’s a house.” Yes. Even the dialogue is trite. So I’ll skip it and get to the good part.

It’s a long, low flat building with all plate glass siding—no working windows—and three entrances. Main: Impossible, without alerting security. Side: Pain in the ass. Two steel doors and some serious deadbolt locks. Rear: A possibility. Because it doesn’t lead into Morse’s space, but to the other one sharing the building, the hospital’s Burn Unit Research Center.

Guess what? They’re all med students. They’re all in there, lights on, working.
They let us in.
Jesus. That was easy. One of them knows Wai-Wai. They say “Hi” to each other and Wai-Wai introduces me and turns it into a twenty-minute social session. By far the best way of getting into the building. And great cover.

My map shows a back door leading to a corridor shared by the building’s occupants. Wai-Wai gets us shown to this isolated door, the entrance to a neutral, dusty storage space. There should be a back door to the Morse space about fifteen feet down the hall on the left.

Wai-Wai asks, “Uh, can we get out this way?”

“Uh, sure,” says the woman. “Just go right, then keep going ’til you get to the stairs. It’s half a flight down.”

“Thanks,” says Wai-Wai. And we’re out.

The woman says, “It’s dark.”

And Wai-Wai says, “That’s okay, we brought a flashlight.” She shines it in her eyes. “Bye.”

And we’re in.

“That’s a novel approach,” I say. “I would have lied.”

“Eyes open, Filomena: They’ve been working on the same experiment for thirty-three hours straight with the help of
mucho
java. I could have walked out with the ultracentrifuge and they wouldn’t have cared.”

“Damn
you’re good. You know, I could really use a partner in this. Are there anymore like you at home?”

“Not like me, sister.”

Morse’s door is
really
solid, but there’s no light coming from the crack under it, so I’m happy. I’m beginning to like this. The ceiling’s been dropped with that awful Celotex institutional interior ceiling tile.

“This is some really cheap shit,” I say. “I bet we can go over the wall up there and get in.”

“Good thing this is a state building. Lowest bidder gets the contract, which means some mighty cheap shit.”

“And the contractors fix all the bids anyway—so you pay more and get less for the cheap shit.”

“What is this: A contest to see how many times we can say ‘cheap shit’? Let’s see, one more—cheap shit—I win!” She preens. Then she says, “So who goes?”

“You know, I think I’m going to let you do it.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m getting too frail for this shit.”

“Nonsense. You just need a few weeks back in the Andes. Tell you what, I’ll go and I’ll describe it for you so you can be there with me.”

I make my hands into a stirrup, support it with my knee. Wai-Wai climbs onto me and I straighten up, raising her about three feet. It’s enough. She pushes up the ceiling tile and shoves it aside. I give her a few more inches, all I can manage. She makes a spring for it and grabs some piping and hauls herself up into the darkness like she was born doing this.

She reports back to me: “Gee, it’s dark, it’s cramped, it’s—
filthy.
The real ceiling’s only about a foot and a half above me. I’m shining my flashlight around. I see a solid cement wall, Fil.”

“What about over the door?”

I can hear her crawling over.

“Ouch!”

“Careful,” I say.

“Damn conduit! They hang it like shit ’cause they know nobody’ll see it.
No
sense of the aesthetic whatsoever.”

“Wai-Wai?”

“Guess what, Fil?”

“I don’t like guessing games.”

“There used to be a window over the full-height door. Now there’s just a piece of sheet metal. Got a screwdriver?”

Wai-Wai opens the ceiling panel right over the door and I have to jump three times before I pass her my specially modified Swiss Army knife.

“Nice work,” says Wai-Wai. “Who did this?”

“A guy named Waxman. I did him a major legal favor one time. He owed me big, and offered to share some of the tricks of his troublesome trade.”

“Nice trade. I mean, it’s nice to get out of the lab once in a while but what kind of guys can I meet doing this? There’s no future in it. Though
you
seem to keep doing it, Fil. Why?”

“Because the dental plan is so attractive.”

“Hmm.” The sheet metal falls loose and noisy. Wai-Wai slides past it and drops down inside. She tries the door.

She says, “It’s locked.” Big surprise.

“Describe the lock.”

“It’s a big box in the middle of the door with steel bars coming out of it in all four directions, three into the door frame, one into the floor.”

“Through form-fitting steel guides? Square-shaped?”

“Yes.”

“I know this one.”

“Say, you
did
go to night school, didn’t you?”

“Let me think.” Oh God, I’ve had so much else on my mind. Where is it? Where has it gone in this muddle of images? “Okay, okay—got my knife? Take the
third
spiral shaped screw in from the white cross—the thinnest one.”

“Got it.”

“Okay. How many holes in the box?”

“Just one.”

“Uh-oh …”

“Sound unfamiliar?”

“Hmm. I think
it’s
been modified, too. Okay: Hold the knife horizontal with the cross up and the screw facing the hole.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Now insert the tip of the spiral so it enters at nine o’clock—your left.”

“Ooh.”

“Do you feel resistance?”

“Some, I guess.”

“Don’t force it.”

“Never.”

“Okay. That should be the guide thread. Try to keep a light pressure on it, and slowly turn it in counterclockwise. Is it going in?”

“Oh baby, you know it.”

And I just burst out laughing.

“Just got to you, huh?” says Wai-Wai. And I can’t believe I get a case of the F-ing
giggles,
for God’s sake.

When I finally recover, I say, “Okay, let’s get serious. And the simplest way to say this is: Is it in?”

“There’s some more … There.”

“You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay—pull it towards you.”

Wai-Wai grunts. “I can’t.”

“Try.”

Wai-Wai grunts again. “I can’t.”

“Okay, try turning it more.”

“It won’t go.”

“Try harder.”

Wai-Wai grunts.
Snap!
“Oh shit. It broke off!”

“Okay, okay. You know, maybe it would be easier if you just climbed back up in there and hauled me up.”

“No, no, no, I’m going to get it. You stay right there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So what do I do now?”

“Try the thickest one. Maybe you can guide it over the first one.”

“No way José.”

“Okay, the middle one.”

“You know this is really hard to do while holding a flashlight?”

“So turn on a light. I’ll give a hundred to one the windows are blocked off.”

Pause.

“Goddamn, you’re right Fil.”

“Good, I’m glad. Now see if you can find some oil or other lubricant.”

“Ooh.”

“Stop it.”

I hear her searching around. “Now you’re talking
chemicals,
girlfriend,” she says. “I don’t need instructions for that!”

She finds some kind of viscous oil and guides the middle screw over the first one. She has to do a lot of teasing and jiggling, but the oil makes it go in pretty far before it jams.

“Now, unjam it,” I tell her. “Turn it back the other way—just a bit.”

“So
that
was our mistake.”

“I think so.”

“Okay.”

“Ready?”

“You got it.”

“Pull.”

“Ungh! Ungh! Okay, I am plunking both feet on the door and pulling with both hands while—rrrgh!—pushing with my legs—arrrgh!”

It pops.

“Now turn it to the right,” I say.

“Wait. My hands are all sweaty. I’m wiping them off.” More sounds of exertion.
Clink!
It opens. Wai-Wai leans on the doorframe, smiling. “They ought to have
that
one in the Kama Sutra.”