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Chapter 50
Eight years, Heather thought as she warmed water for instant coffee in her grubby little apartment. Eight years, and what have I got to show for it? A few crummy sticks of furniture that's not worth hauling out for the garbage. Let the super do it, after she left.
It wasn't going to take her any five or six days to pack up and close the apartment, she realized; she could do it today, if she wanted to. She'd done some good in that time, but it seemed like the good that she'd done didn't come very often. All too often, when
something good happened, she didn't feel very good about it.
It had been with such a flush of victory that she'd come to Los Angeles to work for the Defenders. They'd actually stopped construction on Old Brook, and it had never opened! Now, that had been worth what she'd had to do to those police officers! McMullen had
been right, after all, they'd been spies, but she'd converted them long enought that it had counted. In fact, there hadn't been a new nuclear plant opened since Old Brook was stopped, and that was a victory to feel good about on the nights that it seemed dark and lonely.
But that had been a long time ago. There'd been a lot of pants to unzip since then, and never had there been anything quite close to it.
What really hurt was the way Harper and McMullen had brushed off her suggestion about doing something about the Japanese whaling fleet. She realized now that she'd started out all wrong, talking about torpedos and kamikazes. It would work, sure, but nothing that
extreme was needed. She'd thought it all out carefully. It was clear that whaling was economically nothing more than a pimple on the backside of the Japanese economy, but all the cars they imported were a heck of a lot more important. All it would have taken would have been a
few demonstrations against importing Japanese cars, here in on the coast where a lot of people both cared about whales and drove Japanese cars, and the whaling fleet would get sunk quicker than the U.S. Navy could manage. Why the hell hadn't Greenpeace ever seen that?
Bunch of babies.
She'd had it all worked out in her head, a good program, one that would help out a lot and would really make the Defenders look good, and not even cost much. But, they'd brushed her off again, and sent her off into the wilds of goddamn somewhere in the frozen north,
over some snake that no one was sure existed or not. Here's a big program for you to run, it's real important, make a name for yourself, and no, we're not going to give you any help.
Big goddamn deal.
It wasn't the first time that McMullen and Harper had brushed her off, sent her off on some pipsqueak thing, instead. At least this time, they didn't tell her to go down on somebody in the process. It was too bad that job with that conservancy in Pennsylvania hadn't
come through. It was nothing spectacular; probably no bigger deal than those snakes, but she'd have been her own operator, not a mouth-whore for McMullen and Harper.
At worst, it would only be a few months in that godforsaken town, wherever it was. They expected her to accomplish the impossible? Well, she'd do that. She'd done it before, but maybe this time it wouldn't be McMullen taking all the credit. Do it right, and maybe she
could get a staff job some place where what she did would count. She had resumes out all over the place; a success on her own, where McMullen would have a hard time stealing the credit, couldn't hurt. And, by God, she'd do it without unzipping one single pair of pants, if
nothing else but to prove to herself that she could do it.
The water was boiling in the pan on the stove by now, but she realized she didn't care. The bottle she'd killed last night was laying in the sink, and her head didn't feel very good, but then, neither did she.
"Where did I go wrong?" she said aloud. Everything had seemed so wonderful after Old Brook; it seemed like she could have moved the earth. She'd wanted to save the earth for her children, and now, here she was, pushing thirty, with the old biological clock ticking
away, and she'd never gotten near to even thinking about having children. "Maybe I'd better just give it up, find some man that works in a factory somewhere, and sit at home and stay pregnant," she thought. "Sit at home, and watch soap operas all day, and not give a damn any
more. I've given enough damn for a lifetime."
She laughed bitterly at the thought. That would be suicide, just as sure as if she took a razor blade to her wrists. Everything that she'd stood for, everything that she'd worked for, wasted.
Some good man, then. Some committed man. Someone she could share her life with, her vision of a better world. God, there had to be somebody out there, but all the good men were taken, or gay. There'd been two or three, over the years, that something could have
been done with, but she'd always been too busy, too preoccupied with doing something for the Defenders. For McMullen and Harper.
What I really ought to do is to go home, go back to Walden Pond, and have a talk with Henry's ghost, she thought. God knows, it's been long enough since I've been back home.
The thought brightened her; it was the first good idea she'd had since she'd woke up with her head aching. She got up, turned off the water, and poured hot water into a cup. It wouldn't be any big trick to do it, she realized. She wouldn't have to be up to that damn
stupid little town until the end of next week, or maybe even later. McMullen and Harper wouldn't know, and if they did, probably wouldn't care, and if they did, the hell with them. A drive across the country, and halfway back, might be a good way to clear her head. Her Honda
probably wouldn't make the trip, but she didn't want to drive a Japanese car anyway, not with those Japanese killing those whales.
That was a thought. People in the midwest didn't care for people that drove Japanese cars, anyway. She'd get a lot of people mad, anyway, but there was no sense in starting off on the wrong foot.
The coffee ate through her agony a little bit, a fresh, good idea coming on. Trade the Honda in on a decent American car, load it up, and get out of here, today.
She smiled with the rightness of it all. There wouldn't be a lot to take, even if she took everything she owned. A few clothes, a few momentos, a few files, the laptop, so she could communicate with the L.A. computer over the phone if she had to. It wouldn't be much
of a carload, even for a little car.
She drained her coffee, hot though it was, and got up. It was so much easier to do something when she had something to do. She went in, and turned on the hot water, to run a tub for herself. While it was drawing, she went to the phone, and called the Defenders, and
asked Mollie to put her through to Harper.
He was on the phone in seconds. "What's up, Heather?" he asked.
"I got to thinking about it," she said. "There's no sense in my flying out to this little town, then having to pay rent on a car for months. That'll cost us a lot that could be done for other things. I'm going to drive out there, even if it takes another couple days. I still ought to
be there by the middle of next week, so there's really no time lost."
"Sounds like a good trip," Harper purred. "Everybody should drive across this country once in a while. It sort of makes you realize how big a job we've got."
"I knew you'd see it my way, Harris," she replied.
