Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [10]
She winked. "Illegitimi non carborundum," she said.
Barry winked back. "It ain't easy. Dinner?"
"Sure."
He felt the anticipation from the bright promise in her quick smile. Barry Price sleeps with his secretary! I suppose, he thought, I suppose the Department would get upset if they knew. And to hell with them.
He felt the quiet: The building should be humming with the faint vibrations of turbines, the feel and sound of megawatts pouring into the grid, feeding Los Angeles and its industries; but there was nothing. Below him was the rectangular building that contained the turbines, beautiful machines, a paean to man's ingenuity, weighing hundreds of tons and balanced to micrograms, able to spin at fantastic speeds and not vibrate at all … Why couldn't people understand? Why didn't everyone appreciate the beauty of fine machinery, the magnificence?
"Cheer up," Dolores said, reading his thoughts. "The crews are working. Maybe this time they'll let us finish."
"Wouldn't that make the news?" Barry asked. "Actually, I'd rather it didn't. The less publicity we have, the better off we are. And that's crazy."
Dolores nodded and went to the windows. She stared across the San Joaquin Valley toward the Temblor Range thirty miles away. "Haze out there," she said. "One of these days … "
"Yes." That was a cheerful thought. Southern California had to have power, and with natural-gas shortages the only ways were coal and nuclear—and there was no way at all to burn coal and not get some haze and smog. "We've got the only clean way to go," Barry said. "And we've won every time the public got to vote. You'd think even lawyers and politicians would get the message." He knew he was preaching to the converted, but it helped to talk to someone, anyone, who would be sympathetic, who understood.
A light went on at his desk and Dolores flashed a parting smile before hastening out to greet the visiting delegation from the State Assembly. Barry prepared for another long day.
Morning rush hour in Los Angeles: streams of cars, all moving, thin smell of smog and exhaust fumes despite last night's Santa Ana wind; patches of morning mist from the coast dying as warmer winds from inland swept them away. There was this about the morning rush hour: The freeways were jammed, but not necessarily with idiots. Most drove the same route at the same time every morning. They knew the ropes. You could see it at the off ramps, where nobody had to swerve across lanes; and at the on ramps, where the cars seemed to take turns.
Eileen had noticed it more than once. Despite the stand-up comics who had made California drivers the joke of the world, they were much better on freeways than any people she had seen anywhere else—which meant that she could drive with half her attention. She knew the ropes, too.
Her routine seldom varied now. Five minutes to finish a last cup of coffee before she got to the freeway. Stow the cup in the little rack she'd got from J. C. Whitney, and use the hairbrush for another five minutes. By then she was awake enough to do some real work. It would take another half-hour to get to Corrigan's Plumbing Supplies in Burbank, and she could get a lot done with the dictaphone in that time. It improved her driving, too. Without the dictaphone she would be tense and nervous, pounding the dash in helpless frustration at every minor trafiic jam.
"Tuesday. Get on Corrigan's back about the water filters," her voice said back to her. "We've had two customers install the damned things without knowing there were parts missing." Eileen nodded. She'd taken care of that already, and smoothed out the rage of a guy who'd looked like a barge tender and turned out to be related to one of the biggest developers in the valley. It just went to show, you could never kiss off a deal just because it looked like a one-item sale. She hit the rewind,