The China Syndrome, page 7
Herman De Young sat at the head of the long table, flanked by plant engineers and lawyers. At the opposite end of the table sat Morton Robertson, a handsome and dapper nuclear engineer who headed up the inquiry team from NRC. He was accompanied by his aide, Kenneth Lever, an inscrutable young man who was reputed to have the speed and retention capability of a giant computer. Half a dozen other experts, some from Ventana, some from NRC, were grouped around the table.
It was Jack Godell’s turn to speak, and he handled himself coolly, reasonably, referring now and again to mock-ups of the nuclear reactor which sat on a long table, at one side of the room.
“Our analysis is,” Godell was saying, “that a faulty relay in the generator circuit tripped the generator breakers open. The resulting transient in water level and pressure caused the turbine to trip and consequently caused safety relief valve number eight to open automatically. This created a sudden shutdown of the reactor. In other words, a SCRAM situation.”
Robertson took advantage of a natural pause. “For the record, then, it was safety valve number eight. That, you say, is the valve that stuck open, thereupon releasing radiation into the containment. Am I tracking you?”
“Yes, sir, you are.” Godell permitted himself a faint acknowledging smile. “That was the cause of radiation on levels six and eight going off-scale.”
Robertson adjusted his glasses so that he could scan the event computer print-out sheet which he held in his hand “So except for the course of the second shock wave—”
“More like a shudder, sir. A heavy vibration. I realize we’re into a slightly subjective area here, but—”
Robertson gestured : no matter. “Except for the ’shudder’ you are clear in your mind. Up to this point.”
“That’s correct,” Godell said. He was about to add a “sir,” but bit it off at the last moment. This wasn’t a Naval court of enquiry, after all.
Robertson continued to read the print-out sheet. “Now the reactor water level begins to drop—”
“Yes,” Jack broke in, “but that’s because we thought the water level was high. And we traced that to the fact that the pen in the Water Level Recorder stuck.” He gestured.
“I see,” Robertson said evenly. “So you began cutting off the feedwater flow and releasing steam in the belief that the water was too high. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir, it is,” Godell said. He was beginning to feel a touch uncomfortable and was irritated at his own reaction, After all, he had prepared himself mentally for these very questions and had analyzed his own actions as meticulously as he was able. Why the discomfort then? He didn’t know.
“But in fact,” Robertson’s tone now became crisp, “the water level was becoming dangerously low. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Uh, if I may...” Kenneth Lever, Robertson’s young aide, touched his superior on the arm. He received a nod and proceeded with his question. “Why,” he asked tonelessly, “didn’t your operator query his other indicators?”
“I—” Godell paused and then spread his hands. “I don’t know. But—” He paused again. “I don’t think Ted Spindler should shoulder all the responsibility for this. It was a tense situation, things were happening fast. I was standing right beside Spindler and I didn’t look at the other indicators either. Our major concern was with water level at that moment”
There was a silence in the conference room, unbroken except for the muffled sounds of the steno-type machine. Soon that came to a stop as well.
Robertson cleared his throat. “I think that will do for the moment, Mr. Godell. We’ll excuse you for the time being and I think we’d like to hear from Mr. Spindler.”
Godell nodded and, without looking at his boss, Herman De Young, made his way out of the conference room. Spindler was sitting outside with one of the younger control room technicians. They both quickened when Godell emerged.
“How’d it go in there?” Spindler asked.
Godell managed a weak grin. He gestured with his hands, half-good, half-bad. “O.K., I guess.”
“What’d you tell them?”
Godell shrugged and grimaced. “You know the rules, Ted. They asked us not to discuss our testimony.”
Spindler nodded and stared at the floor. The conference room door was opened and an aide called out, “Ted Spindler? Can you come in now, please?”
As Spindler stood up, Godell raised his hand in a thumbs-up gesture and went down the corridor in search of the can.
That night Kimberly stood on a terrace alongside a swimming pool, looking down on what she concluded was damn near the rest of L.A. The house, belonging to Don Jacovich, was set atop the highest of the many hills flanking the Los Angeles basin, and the whole gaudy, light-spangled megalopolis lay before her. This was the promise, she realized, the dream. The house on the hill, the commanding view, the swimming pool and the white-coated waiters in the background moving efficiently and with highly paid cordiality through tufts of beautiful people. Kimberly, herself, looked beautiful in something soft and white, her long red hair piled nonchalantly on her head, tendrils whispering around her elegant white neck. The new hairstyle was a real conversation piece, a fact that both delighted and disturbed Kimberly.
She had chatted with half a dozen people, three of whom had made routine passes, and the evening was still young, She hadn’t yet found anyone terribly attractive but people usually drifted in and out of this kind of party and if she felt adventurous later on, she might just let herself get taken home. Feeling confident and aware that ’she’d reached that crucial metabolic state where more gin would make her woozy, she allowed herself to be guided to the elegant buffet.
Moments later, perched at an occasional table with a plateful of food, she became aware of a presence looming three points to starboard. She looked up and saw Don Jacovich holding a plate.
“May I?” he asked.
“Oh, Mr. Jacovich, certainly. It’s a wonderful party.”
He grunted, sitting down beside her so that their knees touched. “How can you keep your weight down when the company expects you to entertain on the grand scale? So tell me, what’s with you? You shoot any more stuff on that energy special you’re doing?”
“No.” Kimberly decided to avoid every trace of irony. This was a party, after all, and it was bad manners to bring the office, the grubby politics of office life, up to this social oasis. “We’re done shooting, except for an opening and a closing. But we’ll get that done in the next couple of days. I think you’re going to be pleased. Richard—I know, he’s difficult—but he’s by far the best cameraman I’ve ever worked with.”
“I didn’t know you’d worked with so many,” Jacovich said, with no trace of bitchiness.
“Actually, I have, Don. Quite a few.”
A butler refilled their wine glasses and removed Kimberly’s plate.
“Where’d you find him? Whatsisname, Adams? I thought he was under contract to us. Until this afternoon when I called down to fire him. That’s right, fire him. I don’t like being called a chicken-shit asshole. In fact, I hate it. So that’s personal. And in addition, I don’t think it’s good for the company to have people on staff who feel they can abuse executives in this way. It makes for lousy discipline and sloppy work.”
Kimberly composed her reply carefully, keeping her voice modulated. “Well, there was no one in the camera pool when the features were assigned to me. So I had to scramble around for crew. Richard is someone I’ve known ever since my commercial days. He’s as good as they come. He’s won just about every top award—”
“I believe the awards,” Jacovich said acidly. “The hot-head award, the foul-mouth award, the can-of-worms award. Bill Gibson, the PR guy over at Ventana, told me that Adams was making antinuclear statements and jokes all the time you people were shooting at the plant. That’s bad manners, Kimberly. Is it true?”
“Yes, unfortunately, it is.”
Jacovich sighed. He looked at her now without bitterness and his tone softened. “I hate to repeat myself, kid, but when you first came
to work here, I did give you my balanced reporting speech, did I not? If not, I’ll do it now.”
“I remember it very well.”
“Good,” Jacovich said. “I’ll recap it anyway. A reporter must learn to keep his—her opinion out of a story. I hope these features that you two are doing are not visually biased, if you know what I mean. A cameraman can put a lot of English on the ball. Not only by what he shoots, but how he lights it, what the sequence of shots is, the rhythm, all of those things. And what we’re after is coverage in the first instance, not controversy. Not that we’re trying to duck controversy, but our first responsibility...”
“What are you planning to do with that film?” Kimberly asked.
Jacovich took advantage of her question to spear food and shovel it furiously into his mouth. He looked, Kimberly thought, like some wide-mouthed fish working through a school of minnows.
“It’s up to the legal people right now. They’re sweating it. So don’t you worry your pretty head about that end of it, we’ll protect you if it comes to that.”
A maid interrupted. “Coffee, ma’am?” she asked.
Kimberly nodded, “Yes, please.”
Jacovich continued, his tone becoming unmistakably patronizing. “You just keep doing a good job. And you are, you know. A hell of a job. Research confirms that our ratings have gone up—just because of you. The truth, I kid you not.”
Kimberly smiled appreciatively. “That’s good, but I’d really like to work in harder news. I’d like to do some real reporting and not just—you knoW—fluff.”
“You call your energy series fluff?”
“No, of course not. But you know what I mean, Don. I’m talking about fast breaking hard news, not just features. The energy series is service copy, not exactly news copy. I’m getting to be a big girl now and I’d like to join the A-team.”
“I can understand that,” Jacovich said, nodding equably, and reaching in his breast pocket for what Kimberly recognized as an atrociously expensive cigar.
He continued between puffs. “You see how these specials work out. I personally feel that you’re better doing the softer stuff—no offense now. But let’s face reality. You’re the pretty one, Kimberly, the frosting on our cake. We may not like it but we’re forced to give the public this kind of a mix.”
“Are you sure? Has anyone ever gone out and asked the public?”
“Damn right we have. The ratings tell no lies, kid. Like it says in Chorus Line, tits and ass, tits and ass. You say you’re a big girl now? O.K., face up to reality. You didn’t get hired here just because of your investigative abilities. Oh, we didn’t want a dummy, that’s true. But we didn’t want a dog either. So don’t try to force yourself out of character. If it happens, it happens. But right now, I like you doing exactly what you’re doing.”
If Kimberly felt disappointment, and she did, massive disappointment, she did not permit herself to show it. She stared at him dispassionately for a moment, then smiled, took his cigar from his fingers and gave it a long puff. He grinned, relieved. She was cute, by God.
A couple came by, a young actress and a middle-aged director. Jacovich introduced them to Kimberly and took advantage of a lull to make his exit. She did not find herself close enough to speak to him for the rest of the evening. And on the whole, she concluded, that was probably a good thing.
Having collected her wrap and her purse, she was threading her way through the late-stayers near the pool, making her goodbyes, when Pete Martin clamped her arm. From the pressure alone, she knew that he was drunk.
He drew her close, breathing gin blasts into her hair. “Mac Churchill just told me,” he panted, “that your cameraman, whatsisname, called Jacovich a chicken-shit asshole. And I just want to say: bully for him! Terrific. What’s Jacovich been laying on you? I saw you two at dinner. He was defining your role at the station, right? That’s his number one trip, role defining. Fuck ’em, kid. Don’t pay any attention to him. I’ve got something to say about defining and you’d better believe it. I’ve got ’em by the short hairs on a five-year play or pay contract. So I can run some pretty heavy interference when I want to. You dig where I’m coming from?”
“Hey, that’s real nice of you, Pete. I mean, really,” Kimberly said idiotically, wondering how she was going to get away from his sodden embrace.
“Tell you what,” Pete went on expansively, “how about you and me we get together for some role defining, okay? Hey, you wanna play cars?” He put both hands on her breasts and squeezed. “Honk, honk!”
Instinctively, Kimberly shoved him, a bit harder than she’d realized. Pete Martin, staggered backward into the swimming pool, the deep end.
It was to cheers and laughter that Kimberly made her exit.
Half an hour later she stood in the kitchen of her house in Laurel Canyon. She’d kicked off her shoes and put a zip-up sweat shirt over her dress. The house was cold and damp. Staring vacantly down at an ugly desert tortoise which she’d found in the Mojave Desert, she impulsively plucked him up and began to feed him alfalfa sprouts. What am I doing here, Kimberly asked herself, standing around in bare feet at one o’clock in the morning, feeding a dumb turtle I don’t really want and which is beginning to stink and which may die in a week or two?
Putting down the tortoise, she crossed her arms to bring a bit more warmth to her body and looked around the house. There was almost no furniture in the place except for an expensive brass bedstead. Her clothes, books, other things were still in the same cardboard cartons they were delivered in. It looked, she thought, like a way station, not a home. More like a bus terminal. For transients, she told herself. For people on the move? Ho, ho, ho!
She moved to the telephone recording device to check the residue of messages accumulated during her absence. The machine began to play and she made herself a liverwurst sandwich from a refrigerator that looked enormous for just a quarter pound of butter, half a loaf of bread, a quarter bottle of fermenting wine and the stub of browning liverwurst.
“Hello, darling...” She recognized the voice, of course. Mother. “I hate talking into these things. Will you call me when you can?”
“Hi, Kim—it’s Karen, I just called to chat. Nothing special. Later, okay?”
“Kimberly,” a self-assured masculine voice boomed, “it’s old uncle Buck Brewer. Surprised? I’m here from the Big Apple, love to see you. Call me at the Hillcrest, 233-3330, room 567. Call before eight. Caught you on the tube tonight and almost attacked the set. Catch you later.”
“Hello, Kimberly, Tom Downing. Some women’s group phoned the station, wants to know if you’ll do a talk about women in TV. They’ll pay, modestly, of course. Wanted to know if you were the same Kimberly Wells who used to be on Channel Eleven in Sacramento. Talk to you in the morning. Hope you had a nice time at Jacovich’s party. The son of a bitch didn’t invite me.”
“Your father is going to kill me for phoning again.” Mother once more. Kimberly groaned. “But he’s asleep and won’t know until the bill comes. Your ex-husband—would you believe that—came by this afternoon wanting your new phone number. Which I didn’t give him, of course. Although I must say, he seemed so sad. Anyway, don’t forget your father’s birthday is next Monday. Honestly, Kimberly, I hate talking into this thing...”
One last message. “Kimberly, you really are an asshole.” It was Richard’s voice on the tape.
Kimberly switched off the electronic device. Tired now and feeling tearful, she flopped onto her bed. It had been a long and daunting night and she was not yet sleepy, nor did she want to stay awake, accompanied only by her thoughts. Try as she did to stop thinking about what Jacovich had to say, acid fumes filled all the passages of her mind.
As a youngster, a young girl, a young woman, her beauty had been elicited, fostered, praised, cultivated. If only she sprayed Arrid Extra Dry on her armpits, used Revlon on her lips, Clairol on her hair, Lysol in her toilet, Estee Lauder on her skin—if only she did all these things, she would be lovely and beloved and have the perfect life.
And she’d done all these things and what had it got her? A job displaying—Jacovich’s harsh words came back—tits and ass.
And that’s all they wanted from Kimberly Wells. If there was more to Kimberly Wells, let her keep it to herself. They were paying her for tits and ass. Period.
Christ! She wanted to cry. But wouldn’t. Because that’s what they expected her to do. They expected her to break down and be pitiful and she refused. You will not, she told herself in a hoarse stage whisper, cry, goddamnit. You will not!
There were times when she hated men, Not as individuals, but the system, the web of men.
Was this the end of the line, she wondered. Did she go on playing the cutie-pie news reader until the new cutie-pie waltzed into the station, as inevitably she would? Would she then be retired to some office job or simply canned as excess? Did she have any choice in the matter? Was there, for God’s sake, anything that she could do?
Yes, she told herself, for a start, she could get rid of that stupid goddamn turtle, the stink of which reached her even where she lay. Ridiculous, she thought, to pay all this money for a pad smelling of turtle shit.
As for the rest, she thought wearily, there was nothing she could do but keep on trying. Hang in there, she told herself. It isn’t too likely but it is possible that you’ll get your chance to be something other than a popsicle.
With that, she pulled the quilt up over her shoulders, thought the hell with the lights, the hell with brushing her teeth. It sure would be nice to have a man to hold and a man to hold her, someone to keep her warm. The thought trailed off and mercifully, she fell asleep.
For Jack Godell, in his own apartment, many miles away on the arid outer reaches of the vast Los Angeles basin, there was no sleep, merciful or otherwise. Godell, shoeless, tousled, in a T-shirt and undershorts, sat holding an empty beer can, staring at a dark TV set in a silent apartment. He’d been sitting that way for an hour or more, ever since the late, late show had ended and he had arrived at a stage of weariness far beyond sleep.
