Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes Read online

  Benny composed and dictated a letter into a machine for his secretary. He said that the unexpected leakage at Love Canal must be due to upstream plants disobeying laws laid down by the NCC and the EWA when his committee headed by Mr. So-and-so on such and such a date had visited Love Canal and pronounced the waters free of dangerous pollution. Benny omitted saying that most of the NCC information had come from the owners of a nuclear plant in the area, whose own chemists had made the tests.

  Lies, lies, lies! Everyone lied. That was the way Benny justified his lies (which were often merely slantings of facts) to himself. What did trouble him was that he might not lie enough or in the right way to suit Washington, and that some eager beaver, or numbskull, or stooge might raise a stink that would cost Benny his job. Washington always thought it looked good, in case of a scandal or a balls-up somewhere, to replace the head of a regulatory committee. It cooled the public down for a while.

  Meanwhile the Three Mile Island cleanup program officially continued, though in truth nothing had moved since the entry of the four men in space suits several months ago. The man who had collapsed on that occasion had been called, by the owners of the plant, a “heat stress” victim, and they also said that the millirems he had received were about 75, or “the equivalent of 2½ chest X-rays.” The other three men had picked up just 190 rems each. The rem (short for millirem) number bearable to the human body was 5,000 per year, a figure set by the federal government. The expensively trained cleanup men in their expensive suits had already received 3,000 each. Now with the radiation level at 200 rems per hour (reduced from 350, said the plant owners), the chief of the cleanup operations had decided that the same cleanup crew could not complete the job without incurring more than the 8,ooo set as maximum for workers wearing protective suits.

  “That’s one of the reasons why the cleanup is so blasted expensive,” one company official had told the journalists. “All the protection and training and rehearsal that you need to reduce dose rates add very much to the cost of the cleanup which is already past three hundred and eighty million dollars.”

  In Benny’s opinion, Three Mile Island never would be cleaned up, never, and now it was rather on the back burner, simmering away, no doubt releasing something into the surrounding air, but what the hell? It was amazing how many sightseers and curious people drove up as close as they could to the three stacks on Three Mile Island day and night, as if the closer they got, the more excited they felt. It was perhaps like being able to zoom up to a car accident when the victim still lay on the street, or to a fire still burning in a big building. One newspaper said that GPU, the owners of the plant, were “promoting” Three Mile Island as a tourist mecca.

  Thanks to Gerald McWhirty, the university stadium project received a code name, Operation Balsam. The touch-me-not plant, so called because of its explosive fruit, was also the garden balsam, Gerry explained. Operation Balsam sounded innocuous, and Benny liked it.

  At the end of June a director of Well-Bilt sent Benny a letter saying that all was going very well and ahead of schedule, and that part of the basement was already in use.

  “I don’t know how all that concrete can be dry so soon,” Gerry McWhirty said to Benny when they met by accident at the coffee dispenser in the corridor.

  Benny glanced around him. Not every person in the building knew about Operation Balsam or was meant to. “Well-Bilt must be doing things right. They’re getting all the money they need.”

  “That’s something, at least. That was what was the matter with Three Mile Island, you know, builders doing everything on the cheap. Those container rooms for Balsam have to be airtight, with not a millimeter allowable for subsidence.”

  Benny knew. McWhirty’s remarks might have worried Benny a little, but he refused to be worried. Operation Balsam was the only cheerful thing in his life now.

  There was plenty uncheerful, and annoying. The same day that McWhirty had made his remark, Benny’s hotline telephone rang from Washington.

  “Hello, Benny. Man here. You know the cleanup crew at Three Mile Island?”

  “The four men who went in, you mean?” Benny imagined the sick one worse and in some hospital, launching a lawsuit against the plant owners.

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot more of them on the operation, fellows in the control room, women too. They all decided to go to California together on a junket. Whooping it up, you know? I warn you now, because you’ll maybe get some flak at your office about it. It’ll be on TV news tonight and I didn’t want it to shock you.”

  “Junket—why?” Benny asked.

  “Who knows? They’re all on a high, we heard. Either drunk or sniffing coke. Got to sign off now, Benny.”

  Benny did watch the 6 o’clock news. The anchorman of the program tried to put a happy face on it. “. . . tired workers on the Three Mile Island cleanup operations got together to take a well-earned break today, flying first-class from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and they look as happy as—ha-ha!—Legionnaires on a junket to Atlantic City in the old days! What is your name, please, sir?”

  A swimmy-faced man uttered an unintelligible name that sounded like Joe Olsen, but it could have been George O’Brien. “Live it down, live it up!” Olsen or O’Brien said, interrupting the anchorman merrily. “Tha’s our motto! Yip-pee-ee!”

  “We’re gonna contaminate ourselves a li’l more!” a woman with smeared lipstick contributed.

  “Just good clean fun!” said the laughing anchorman to his TV audience.

  “My God! The goddam media trying to get at us again! Washington ought to put ’em out of business!” Benny scowled at his shocked wife for an instant before heading for the Scotch bottle in the kitchen.

  The rest of what the thirty or so men and women had to say about their junket was not printed in the New York Times or the Washington Post, who did mention their holiday, but it was in the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, and that was that they considered themselves “hopelessly contaminated by radioactivity.” They had been carrying home rems in their clothing, their hair, on their skin for weeks, all for higher pay and danger money; they felt that their homes and families had been contaminated too, that they themselves might live a few more years, but who knew for how long or what might happen? So, before their hair started falling out and nausea kept them from enjoying their food, they were going to live it up. Their motto was repeated.

  My God, why wouldn’t it all just go away, Benny thought. His ulcer was back in full force. He couldn’t tell his wife about the one bright spot, Operation Balsam, but he had to tell her about his ulcer, because he could not eat some of the dishes that she prepared.

  Presumably the junketeers straggled back home after a time in quieter fashion than they had departed. But the word spread. Some of them were interviewed again, and rated a column in Time and Newsweek. They stuck to their story. The owners of the Three Mile Island plant had sacked the lot of them, but the mutinous thirty-odd to a man and woman said they were glad to have been fired. They denounced the “filthy coverup” by the owners and the NCC and even the EPA, which ought to be concerned now with the radioactivity leaking out and damaging trees, livestock and any people dumb enough to be within twenty miles of the place.

  Benny Jackson’s office laboriously composed another form letter, using all the favorable facts they could find, and Benny was not even sure they were facts, but at least they had been printed in the Post of September 1983 in the same item that had reported less favorable information which Benny was not using. He quoted:

  The spokesman for the owners of the Three Mile Island plant report that their “dose reduction program,” designed to reduce radiation doses to cleanup workers, had cut radiation dose rates on the ground floor of the container building from 350 millirems per hour to about 200 at present.

  Benny did wonder, as he dictated the statement, how the owners or anybody could reduce radiation except by letting it escape, say by just opening a window a little.

  Gerald McWhirty l
ooked over the letter at Benny’s request, rubbed his reddish moustache, and nodded without comment.

  “I think it’s not bad,” Benny said.

  “A mess,” McWhirty said. “That’s my comment on Three Mile Island. Built on the cheap, everyone knows that.”

  A vague patriotism stirred shame in Benny. America doing something on the cheap! England, France and Germany seldom if ever had trouble with their nuclear power plants, certainly no catastrophic troubles, because they did things the expensive and correct way. Benny was glad that McWhirty didn’t say this now, because McWhirty had in the past.

  Operation Balsam was completed in late July. The NCC received an invitation from Well-Bilt. “Our installations are now in place. We welcome you at any time to a private and informal preview and inspection.”

  Benny at first did not want to go, because his name and face were known to the media, and suppose some of them were there? Even on the ground’s surface? “This isn’t an official opening of the football field too, is it?” he asked McWhirty, who had been on the telephone with Well-Bilt.

  “Certainly not. I wouldn’t be caught dead there at the stadium opening. It’s just Operation Balsam.”

  At the last moment, Benny did go, because Douglas Ferguson, an NCC director and a good friend of McWhirty’s, said, “Grab an old raincoat and come with us, Benny. Just about fifteen of us. Take-off at ten tomorrow morning, and we’ll be home before midnight.”

  So Benny did grab an old raincoat, because it was a bit of a disguise. He looked not the least important in it.

  The NCC men were met at the Indianapolis airport by four limousines laid on by Well-Bilt.

  Little pennants flew around the rim of the stadium roof, which resembled a huge half-eggshell. In the brilliant sunshine, the surrounding turf shone like emerald.

  “Beautiful!” Benny exclaimed, bowled over by the changes since he had seen the place such a short time ago.

  A huge truck painted plain white had turned off the road just behind them, and Benny watched it approach a clump of trees on the lawn, tilt downward, and roll out of sight. That was one of them, Benny knew, loaded with radioactive junk. His heart leapt with a rare sense of success. Since the sub-basement was purported to be a fallout shelter, hospital and so on, the trucks could presumably be carrying dried foodstuffs, blankets, and medical supplies.

  “Service entrance,” McWhirty murmured with a smile at Benny, having seen the direction of Benny’s glance.

  Uniformed and armed guards met them at a gate and waved their cars through. A neatly dressed middle-aged man introduced himself as Frank Marlucci, a supervisor for Well-Bilt. They all walked into one of the broad entrances for spectators. There were ticket booths, benches, elevators.

  “I suppose you’d like to see the basements first?” asked Mr. Marlucci.

  They would. The elevator went down and down, past CHANGING ROOMS and CARPARK, and they all got out into a concrete corridor whose ceiling was some fifteen feet high. Off this corridor led broader passages, wide enough for trucks. Arrows on the walls indicated vehicle movement direction.

  “This way, please, gentlemen,” said Mr. Marlucci.

  Benny could hear a truck grinding in low gear somewhere. In a central room from which passageways radiated, they now saw the big lead containers being fork-lifted from the back of a white truck. Another fork-lift was depositing containers gently on to a conveyor belt. The containers disappeared in the distance like suitcases at an airport after a passenger had checked in. Benny’s face spread in a smile. It all looked so wonderfully solid, so buried, so impregnable!

  Even Gerry McWhirty seemed impressed. “And the rooms? The storerooms?” he asked Mr. Marlucci, shouting over the din.

  Mr. Marlucci beckoned, and they all began to walk. “This one, for example.” He stopped at a steel door some ten feet square, unlocked a metal cover to the right of it, and worked a combination lock by pressing numbers. The door slid to the right into the concrete wall. “This room’s nearly full. Not quite.”

  Benny couldn’t judge the room’s size, because the big rectangular containers lined the walls in triple or quadruple layers, and reached to the ceiling at the back. He saw McWhirty hesitate a moment, then step into the room.

  McWhirty looked around at the containers, at the concrete floor and stamped on it, as if his flyweight compared to the containers’ could make a difference or a shudder in the construction. “May I see it closed again?” McWhirty asked as he walked out.

  Mr. Marlucci pressed a button and the door slid shut.

  McWhirty ran his finger or his fingernail along the side of the door at the bottom. “A little space here.”

  Mr. Marlucci shook his head emphatically. “The door’s grooved, sir, touching at the bottom—countersunk, airtight in steel housing.”

  Benny wanted to ask how long the lead containers were supposed to last, but he was supposed to know. Benny knew the containers were more than a foot thick—fantastic—and that seemed made for eternity.

  Farther along in the corridor, McWhirty noticed a crack in a concrete wall, and ran his finger along it.

  “That’s going to be fixed,” said Mr. Marlucci. “That’s normal for now.”

  The rooms were twenty meters square, Mr. Marlucci replied to a question from one of the NCC men. He led them to the Facilities Room, another square concrete-walled room with a blue floor, a counter with stools, cooking facilities, refrigerators, tables and chairs, restrooms, a cigarette vending machine—a scene now eerily barren of a human figure.

  “They’re going to stick a few posters up,” said Mr. Marlucci with a smile, “so it won’t look so bleak. It’s really just the Balsam workers’ canteen, so it doesn’t have to look like a happy-hour bar.”

  McWhirty wanted to see another container room. “Maybe on the other side of the basement?”

  The group began a walk equal to the breadth of the football field above them, Benny supposed, and possibly more. They had to flatten themselves against a wall to let a fork-lift roll by with six containers on it. Benny imagined that he felt the floor shake under him. Was there another basement below this? Small red tanks were fixed at intervals along these walls, and Benny thought they were fire extinguishers until on closer inspection he saw that they were labeled oxygen. A headgear like an old-fashioned gas mask topped each red tank, and the apparatus was sealed in a transparent plastic bubble. At another steel door in a row of doors, Mr. Marlucci stopped, and again worked a digital lock.

  “How full is the basement now?” McWhirty asked. “A quarter? A third?”

  “More than half, sir,” Mr. Marlucci replied as the steel door rolled into the wall. “Amazing how fast it’s filling up. But then the trucks’re coming in day and night since—oh, nearly a month.”

  Now Benny’s spirits sank a little. At this rate, they wouldn’t be able to use Balsam for two or three urgent jobs that were on Benny’s mind. “Where’s it all coming from—mainly?” Benny asked, feeling suddenly like a landlord whose apartment had been taken over by a family larger than had been agreed upon.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised, sir. We have orders—top-secret, of course —from Washington to admit this and that from Texas, California, Ohio, anywhere at all they’re having trouble. They’re not labeled when they get here, but if they’re in the right containers, we’re obliged to take ’em in.”

  Benny fumed in silence. Washington had higher authority, of course, but why hadn’t Washington or the EWA told the NCC that they were cramming the place?

  McWhirty had entered the half-full room whose door had opened, and was looking around at the walls he could see, at the corners of the lead containers. “You’ve got a flashlight, haven’t you, Doug? Check the back wall for cracks and moisture as far as you can.”

  Douglas Ferguson pulled a flashlight from his pocket and walked in.

  “At this rate,” McWhirty said to Mr. Marlucci, “this basement will be full in another month?”

  “This sub-basement,�
�� said Mr. Marlucci, smiling. “Well—I’d say another three to four weeks. We’ll have it full and sealed before the football season.”

  Awful, Benny thought. Washington would simply have to donate a stadium to another university somewhere, and as soon as possible.

  They were drifting on toward the exit on the side of the basement they had not seen, where Mr. Marlucci said they could take an elevator up to the ground level and see the stadium interior.

  On the earth’s surface, on the sunlit grass, Mr. Marlucci shook his head as he spoke to a man in shirtsleeves and blue jeans who had asked him something. Benny was close enough to hear Mr. Marlucci say: