Neal Stephenson - Zodiac

IT WAS THREEO'CLOCK.Debbie called the front desk and told them we'd stay another day. Bigsurprise. We took a shower, then went down and hauled our CB out of theOmni and checked in with the mother ship. I told them that I had anidea for tomorrow that I'd like to bring up with them, and madearrangements to be picked up at the public dock at five.

Debbie and I hadfirst run into each other when I was doing a full media splatter numberon that toxic pond on the Sweetvale campus. It stirred up lot ofinterest among the student body, the idea that the green ivy of NewEngland academe was just like algae growing on a rusty drum ofindustrial waste. They asked me to show up on campus and I went,foolishly expecting to be treated like a hero.

In fact, most ofthem were incredibly pissed off. They had pulled some blame-reversalthing where they felt the existence of toxic metals in their soil andswimming hole was somehow my fault. That if I'd kept my mouth shut, itwould have been safe. This shouldn't have surprised me, because theability to think rationally is pretty rare, even in prestigiousuniversities. We're in the TV age now and people think by linkingimages in their brains. That's not always bad, but it led to somepretty ludicrous shit there at Sweetvale, and when some student leadersreally started getting on my case in the media, I regrettably had tostrip them naked, figuratively, before the toxic glare of the TVcameras. At some point during all that ugliness, Debbie found somethingdecent either in me or GEE International and got involved with one orboth of us, I'm not sure. We'd never been in the sack until now, butwe'd both been considering it.

One of the NewYork City remote crews drifted by in their van, reminding me: we've gota media apocalypse to run tomorrow, and these guys don't even know ityet.

For that matter,neither did the victims. They'd been waiting for us to arrive for amonth. Today we'd created a big noise and made them look like jerks.Now they were sitting back, holding meetings with their PR flacks,getting started on the damage control. That was awful, they werethinking, but now it's over, and we can stop the bleeding and pour somemore death into the oceans.

Hardey-har-har.Tomorrow they'd need both hands just to hold their intestines in place.But we had to prep the media.

SangamonTaylor? Quite a show. Were you involved?

This was one ofthe local media types, a classic horse's-ass TV reporter with apneumatic haircut. He was winking at me, assuming that I was the man inthe moon suit.

Wait untiltomorrow, I said. Then we'll have some great visuals for you.

You're doingsomething else tomorrow?

Yeah. Not oneof these media events, you understand. I mean, what we did today, I'msure you can see that it was intended just to look kind of flashy onTV. No real news value.

Shock flashedover his face like a blue beam from a cop car, then he managed a grin.I gathered that, he said, a few tones higher than his baselineanchortone. You did a good job of it.

Thanks, but I'msure a journalist like you can understand there's more to GEE than justa bunch of clowns waving at the camera. We do serious work, too. Stuffthat'll make for a real story - not just a piece of fluff.

What could Ilose? His piece of fluff was already cued up in a videotape machine atthe station.

Tomorrow?

Yeah. We'llstart real early in the morning, but this is going to be a longoperation. All day long.

Where?

I told him howto get to Blue Kills Beach and gave him a xeroxed handout we preparedfor the Fourth Estate - tips on how to protect and use your camera on arocking Zodiac and that sort of thing. I also tossed him a videotape,stock footage of GEE frogmen working off of Zodiacs, plugging pipes.

Thanks, hesaid, I'll copy this and get it back to you.

Keep it. We'vegot others.

Oh, thanks! Hehefted the videotape and did a doubletake on it. Jesus! This isthree-quarter inch! Then he gave me a sly wink and promised to see metomorrow.

In the Omni,Debbie was on the phone to a reporter who'd been sent here from one ofthe New York papers. He'd be more portable than a minicam crew,shrewder, harder to manipulate and a lot more fun to hang out with.

We and thereporter - a round grizzled type named Fisk - and the Blowfish and thetruck from the hardware store and a Lincoln with two rent-a-dicks allconverged on Blue Kills Beach. I considered trying to hide ourpurchases from the dicks, but even if they saw what we had, they'dnever anticipate our plan.

The driver fromthe hardware store was severely rattled. He was just asixteen-year-old, probably doing his part-time on his way to being anartillery loader at Fort Dix. His dad probably worked at the plant.He'd never seen men with hair before.

You knowanything about outboards? I asked him by way of male bonding. We gotinto a long rap about whether I needed to check the carburetor on oneof our Mercs. Artemis got involved and soon the kid relaxed completely.He allowed as how he'd never seen such big motors on such small boatsand she took him for a ride while we unloaded the truck. When he cameback, half drenched with salt water, phthalates and hydrazines, hethought we were pretty cool. And that's fine, because we were prettycool - Artemis is, anyway - and it wouldn't be fair for him to go awaywith the wrong impression. We take people for rides while the chemicalcompanies lay off their cancerous dads, and sooner or later they decideon their own who the good guys are.

Several of theBlowfish crew wanted to do laundry and bathe in real tubs, so Debbieand I handed over the keys to the Omni and the honeymoon suite, after Italked to them briefly about dipsticks and redlines. Then we headed outto sea on the Blowfish.

I sat down onthe foredeck with Fisk, who accepted one of my illegal cigars. Wesmoked and drank beer and traded environmental stories for a bit, thenI showed him the pictures of the theta-holes, sketched the diffuser,laid out the whole gig.

He wasinterested, but not overly. I figured you had something big planned,he said, but my main reason for coming was this. What?

This, he said,and swept his arms out wide. Then I noticed that we were sprawling onthe deck of one very fine handmade wooden ketch, on the open ocean,under a golden afternoon sky, cooled by the breeze and warmed by thesun, sailing along strongly and quietly, smoking fine Cuban cigars.Oh, yeah, I said. Fringe benefit. Over dinner it came out that thiswas Captain Jim's birthday. Tanya had brought out some kind ofpolitically incorrect cake, buried an inch deep in frosting, with acrude picture of a ketch on top. Debbie took the opportunity to givehim something she'd been meaning to give him anyway.

She'd put in alot of time on banner duty. More time than anyone should. She had aknack for visual thinking, Debbie did, and we knew it. These days shejust sketched them out and canvassers - our student gnomes - did thesewing. One of her better efforts was a big square banner that weshackled to the top of a Fotex water tower one fragrant spring evening.It was simple: a skull and crossbones with the internationalcircle/slash drawn over it in red.

Given the sameassignment, I would have written a twenty-five-word manifesto with alittle picture down in the corner. Debbie said the same thing with apicture. I was impressed. When drunk, I referred to it as the ToxicJolly Roger. The next time I went down to my Zodiac, someone had beenthere and attached a little fiberglass pole to the transom, a segmentof a fishing rod. A little hand-sewn nylon flag was flying from it:black, with the skull and crossbones in white and the circle/slash inred. That was when I knew this woman liked me.

Then she came upwith the idea of making a big one for the Blowfish. For some reason, Ihad to help, so we went to fabric stores and I loitered among theheavy, manly fabrics in the canvas section and scared off businesswhile she charged up yards of ripstop nylon on a credit card thatturned out to be mine. Then we laid it all out on the floor of herliving room and drew the patterns. She had to educate me in basic clothfacts: if you draw the pattern on a chunk of cloth that is stretchedout of shape, the pattern will be messed up. Then we had to seal theedges against fraying by running them through a candle flame, fillingthe apartment with every toxic fume known to man; I could feel thedissolved brain cells dribbling out my ears. Debbie insisted that nooperation connected with sewing could really be toxic. And finally weran it through her fucking Singer. I just went to the other room andwatched the static from the sewing machine tear across the screen ofher television. I don't like sewing machines. I don't understand how aneedle with a thread going through the tip of it can interlock thethread by jamming itself into a little goddamn spool. It's contrary tonature and it irritates me.