Whatever Lola Wants (34 page)

On first meeting, John Cochan said to the architect, “Do you believe, Mr. Clark, that unspoiled nature, a hundred or a thousand years ago, was kind? I don't. Plague, famine, drought ran rampant. Yes we've overcome some of it, but wherever we've created cities we've brought in filth and degradation, we've introduced new miseries. Now wouldn't it be fine to breathe city air and drink urban water without worry? A city without stink, grass without bugs crawling up your legs? No bugs, no poverty, no hooligans. Never too hot nor too cold. A cleansed space for human beings to live. Consider it, Harold. We'll make it happen.”

Harold Clark understood. He himself had once proposed a dome-enclosed golf course and been near to smirked out of the Association. He told this to John Cochan.

Cochan smiled. “Harold, design it. The domes, the playgrounds, parks, and condos. The utilities, the transportation, the lakes and streams, the shops, the viewpoints, the power. The golf course too. All part of a whole.”

A handshake. Followed by legions of lawyers and reams of contracts. Clark brought in three dozen of his people, the brightest of tomorrow's designers, for the city of marvels. A conscious choice not to go after Pei, Safdie, or Graves. Among many, Clark hired Bang Steele, New Zealand demolitions expert extraordinary.

First came satellite, aerial, and on-site ground inspection. From exhaustive research into and simulations of the past century's climatic conditions, they calculated weather projections up to 2050, including forty-seven
el niño/la niña
anomalies. With sketches, print-outs, designs, models, and multidimensional imaging, Clark rendered tactile the details of Cochan's surface vision, and his own. Simultaneously, following clandestine rock bores to reveal extensions and levels of the hollow space, he planned the entrenchment of Terramac's great secret: a third of a mile below, a man-made yet natural realm, resplendent caverns of light where wise and healthy human beings, Jane and Jim, could laugh, love, hope, plan, conceive, and build: Underland. A neo-ecological urban workplace and pleasure ground, insect-free, element-safe, fully connected to yet withdrawn from the upper world, its beauty greater even than that of Summerclime.

Clark and Cochan had consulted daily. Variant projects grew on inspiration, inspiration multiplied on discovery. John and Harry felt themselves, if not gods, certainly titans. Only occasionally did they disagree.

For Clark, a single nuclear generator, small, perfectly clean, could power all Terramac.

But John mistrusted the nuclear factor.

“If it's built right,” the architect claimed, “not cutting corners so public service councillors grow wealthy on tax-payer money, nuclear power's safe.”

About nuclear power Cochan had read a great deal and feared yet more. Still, Clark was the expert here. A team of thirty conducted the study, six weeks of undivided research digitally assimilated. All information received, assumed, even speculated, was given its value, fed in, chewed up, analyzed. How to ensure forever that the core wouldn't Three-Mile-Island Terramac into glowing radioactivity? They explored new systems, the about to be tried, the hypothetical. Vitrify the waste. Mix the garbage with molten glass, let it cool, bury it solid. Chill it with helium rather than water. Send it to Nunavut.

No, there'd always be waste, radioactive garbage already produced would take three ice ages to deactivate. Clark retreated: nuclear power and human safety, antagonists unto eternity.

They approached the premier of Quebec. Yes, sir, up north in the province a dam three times the height of Niagara Falls, producing five thousand megawatts of power, that's five billion watts produced, monsieur, every second. A hundred times the power your Terramac needs, a thousand times. And if you expand, then for your Terramac our Quebec will build another dam, we're projecting one this very minute, gargantuan, to power all New England, New York, it'll dwarf that Hercules the James Bay project, soon we'll have dams all over the place.

A shaking of hands. More lawyers, more contracts.

The world of potential buyers knew only this: that Terramac is Summerclime. Harry's domes rising high above the whole of Summerclime were projected onto the public imagination, a natural yet pristine environment for homes of perfection. A countryside community built from the foundation up. Vegetable gardens and flowering trees, fruit trees pollinated by hand. A lake for swimming and fishing, wave machines to produce perfect surf, and water slides. A stream with trout breeding in balanced pH. The golf course beneath twenty-three interconnected bubbles. Woods for strolling amidst a multitude of genera each a consummate specimen to delight the mind, the eye and the nose in a temperate climate free of acid rain and snow. All beneath giant domes, and human-scale domes.

An econovum, 99.9999 percent insect-free. Cochan knew bugs were his phobia. He lived with and accepted this. So for Terramac, no mosquitoes, blackflies, ants at picnics, no slugs or beetles. No gnats, dragonflies, caddis-flies, blackflies. Bug-free fruit and vegetables. No drones, hornets, bumblebees, yellow-jackets. No springtails, no cockroaches. The occasional blue or yellow butterfly, imported, rendered sterile, no way to reproduce crawling things. No night moths. No locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, cicadas, termites, earwigs, spiders, maggots, mites, fleas, lice, or nits. No wasps.

But condominiums, shops, schools, a hospital. Airy work places, wired and Wi-Fied, cabled, digitally sustained. A small, well-paid, friendly police force. And soon, soon, within four years, the world would learn more: Terramac's most closely guarded secret would be, literally, unearthed: Underland. For Jim and Jane of Summerclime, ease of transport to Underland, the urban miracle beneath the shelf, both a pleasure ground and a self-sufficient dwelling place, there to meet up with Homer and Helen, together delighting in their lives and controlling their destinies amidst the finest of eateries, the best in entertainment, the fascination of one another's company.

Cochan knew too that Harry, Yak, and the others sometimes found his bug mania a bit extreme. But that's how Terramac would be.

2.

Carney slept badly. Before sunrise
he set out to catch a couple of breakfast trout. His elbow ached mightily. Humidity gummed his brain. And last night's explosion? No warning, not from Sarah Magnussen-Yeager, not from his friend Mot. Road construction, blasting through granite, produced a fraction of yesterday's force; demolition was a series of simultaneous much smaller bursts. Carney had razed enough buildings damaged by fire or quake to know how those detonations felt. “Well, what was it?” he'd asked Sarah.

“I don't know,” she'd said. “An explosion.”

“How'd you know it was coming?”

“Most nights this last week. About this time.” Her head shook. “Way the biggest so far.” She got up. “I'll drive you to your car.”

That was all she could tell him. When he arrived back the house was asleep, no one to talk to about the blast. Surely they'd felt it? Now, early morning, once more only he was awake.

The water of Gambade Brook had gone a range of ruddy yellows, from bile to brick. The level had risen four or five inches. Not even the hungriest rainbow could see beyond its snout. He'd met with roiling water often, this kind of surge usually following a flash mountain rainfall. But there'd been no rain nearby for over a week. And the flow smelled murkily chemical.

Last night's mosquitoes were back. Ten more minutes and he gave up. He'd have kept casting if his elbow hurt less. A damn slingshot pebble.

He returned to the Grange and showered. From the window he saw, in the yard below, a tall skinny man in jeans and red T-shirt, splitting wood. Carney dressed, went down and out. The curving upswing of the tall man's axe was smooth as a breeze, the slash a clean flow of steel from shoulder to blade. When the axe pulled him straight he stood an easy six-six.

He stopped his work, noted Carney, nodded. “You're Carney.”

“Right. You're Feodora's husband?”

The tall man nodded. “Ti-Jean.” He went back to splitting. After a couple of minutes he stopped to wipe his forehead.

Carney said, “I tried for some trout this morning but the water's gone muddy.”

Ti-Jean nodded again.

“It stank, too.”

Ti-Jean went back to splitting. After two logs he glanced Carney's way. “Sulphur.”

“Where's it come from?”

“Hell.”

Carney laughed.

“Terramac.” Ti-Jean's lips tightened. “The blast.”

“Last night? That brought on the sulphur?”

“Maybe.” Ti-Jean's measured way of speaking should have left Carney time to think, but it didn't. He met Carney's eye without blinking. “Or our demons.”

“Demons?”

His glance had gone elsewhere. With the axe-head he rolled a log close to.

Carney said, “I met your sister-in-law. While fishing.”

“Yep. She's out there.”

“She made me wait for the blast.”

“She would.” Stooped, early forties, gangling till he swung the axe, Ti-Jean seemed to guard thoughts Carney might never fathom.

Or maybe Ti-Jean just wasn't very bright. Except Theresa had praised him. “Why?”

Ti-Jean glanced toward the house. “Feodora's about. She'll get you breakfast.”

Dismissed. “Thanks.” He found Feodora in the kitchen.

“Morning, Carney. Ham and eggs to give you strength to take on Cochan.”

“Great.”

“Since you're not seeing Cochan till this afternoon you better stay till tomorrow, have supper with us. My father enjoyed talking to you, hopes you'll stay another day.”

Yes, Carney could do that. “I liked talking with him too.”

“It's Milton mainly that holds us all together. He's there, he's quiet. Our glue.”

“I guess families need a little glue.” Very little from Carney. Just enough for Bobbie.

Feodora nodded. “It's not simple for him.” She smiled. “Theresa's not an easy woman.” She cracked an egg into a frying pan. “She wants you to kill this Terramac thing.”

Carney sat. “Milton wants that too?”

“In his way.” Feodora glanced at him, and cracked another egg. “They're different. Always have been, I guess. Milton was going to Europe to study when they met. A shipboard romance. They were twenty-three. She'd come for a fencing tournament. She was from Barre. You know, just fifty miles from here. Needed a boat to Europe for them to meet.” She shook her head, looking pleased with her explanation. “They been together ever since. They married young, and they've spent their conscious lives together. Nearly two-thirds of their lives.”

Carney saw Theresa, self-certain, provocative. “She calls herself an anarchist. Is she like that, dealing with your father?”

“Ha!” In another pan Feodora melted some butter. “Drives Milton crazy. It isn't anarchy, she just makes up her life as she goes along. Ooop—now here's her defender.”

Ti-Jean had come in. His head shook back and forth, determined as a pendulum. “Sure she's an anarchist.”

“Yeah?” Carney turned his way.

“Keeps trying to find out. Don't care for how she does it, myself. But it's like Feasie says and not the other way.”

“What?”

“She makes her life.”

“Instead of?”

“Taking on other people's failures.”

“Sorry?”

“Ti-Jean means she tries to make things anew, instead of trying to fix the old stuff.”

“Ah.” Carney glanced about. “She's still asleep, and Milton?”

“Takes them a while to get started, these days,” said Feodora. She turned a ham steak in the second pan. “You see, Theresa thinks all of us are pretty much failures. Sarah started it. She disappointed Theresa hard so she came to expect disappointment from us. Except I'm not completely a failure.” She laughed, and flipped the eggs. “'Cause I married Ti-Jean and brought him into the family. There's a special rapport between him and Theresa. Who'd have guessed it?”

Ti-Jean shook his head and poured them all coffee.

“My sister Leasie's a failure. Her being a lawyer, for Theresa that's near as low as it gets, lawyers grow rich out of trash law only a charlatan tries to interpret. And law's almost as bad as selling life insurance or psychotherapy, and since my brother, Karl, did the first and now does the second, he's the biggest failure.” She slid eggs, then ham, onto a plate and handed it to Carney. “And he near to destroyed Theresa by converting to Catholicism, they didn't talk for a year. Theresa wasn't that speechless again till her stroke. Oh, and Sarah's a failure because she married the Skull, he's dead but she's still a failure.”

“And your father, does he think of any of you as failures?”

Feodora looked Carney full in the face, measuring his curiosity. Okay, she told herself, feed him some details, see how he does, see if Theresa's right. “That's not Milton's test. He has a happiness quotient. Leasie's medium happy, she's got good work but no husband.” She poured three cups of coffee. “I'm mostly happy. Sarah's deep-down glum. Karl, he doesn't understand.”

“Why not?”

“Well I sort of agree, how can he be happy, how can any intelligent man become a psychotherapist these days?”

Ti-Jean nodded. “Dumb.”

Feodora asked, “Eggs?” Ti-Jean nodded some more. “For Milton, worse than dumb.” She broke a couple of eggs into the pan, put the ham on. “See, for years before he converted, Karl had his affairs. He was plain randy, taking on most anything in a skirt. Then he turned Catholic, my guess being he wanted to shock Theresa. But mainly he ended up hurting Milton.”

“Why?”

“The Catholicism, for Milton that's the worst. Absolute belief. The Pope knows all.”

“Shits.” Disgust in Ti-Jean's voice.

“We don't know how they got to Karl. Even angels fear to tread before they leap.” Feodora laughed.