“Color? In there?” Los Angles Times had said skeptically, peering forward into the blackness which was punctuated only by a few dim light bulbs. The tunnel was approximately circular, hewn out of solid rock, with the walls left rough and unfinished as at the time of excavation. The light bulbs were near the roof. Suspended halfway between them and the turbulent water was a narrow catwalk on which the visitors would walk. Ropes on either side of the catwalk could be grabbed as handholds.
Earlier, following breakfast, Nim Goldman had explained what they would be seeing—“a hydroelectric plant that’s completely underground, inside a mountain. Later well talk about the proposed Devil’s Gate pumped storage plant which will also be underground—entirely out of sight.”
He continued, “The tailrace, where we’re going, is actually the end of the generating process. But it will give you an idea of the kind of forces we’re dealing with. The water you’ll see has passed through the turbine blades after having been used to spin the turbines, and comes out in tremendous quantities.”
The massive flow had been evident outside the tunnel to some who had leaned over a metal guardrail above the river, watching the awesome torrent join the already angry maelstrom below.
“By God! I’d hate to fall in,” KFSO Radio observed. He asked Van Buren, “Has anyone ever?”
“Once that we know of. A workman slipped from here. He was a strong swimmer, even had some medals we found out after, but the flow in the tailrace pulled him under. It was three weeks before the body came up.”
Instinctively, those nearest the guardrail took a step backward.
Something else Nim had told them in advance was that this particular tailrace was unique. “The tunnel is a third of a mile long and was cut horizontally into the side of a mountain. While the tunnel was being built, and before any water was let in, there were points where two construction trucks could pass side by side.”
Nancy Molineaux had pointedly stifled a yawn. “Shit! So you got a long, fat, wet cave. Is that news?”
“It doesn’t have to be news. This entire two-day deal is for background,” Van Buren pointed out. “That was explained to everyone beforehand, including your editors.”
“Did you say ‘background’ or ‘craparound?’” Ms. Molineaux asked.
The others laughed.
“Never mind,” Nim said. “I’d finished anyway.”
Some twenty minutes later, after a short bus ride, he had led the way into the tailrace tunnel.
The cool dampness was in contrast to the warm, sunny day outside. As the group moved forward in single file, only a few feet above the foam-flecked water rushing beneath them, the circle of daylight behind receded to a pinpoint. Ahead, the few dim light bulbs seemed to stretch into limitless distance. Now and then someone would pause to look down, all the while clinging tightly to the guide ropes.
At length, the end of the tunnel and a vertical steel ladder came in sight. At the same time a new sound intruded—a hum of generators, growing to a mighty roar as the ladder was reached. Nim motioned upward and ascended first, the others following.
They passed through an open trapdoor into a lower generating chamber, then, by way of a circular staircase, to a brightly lighted control room two floors above. Here, to general relief, the noise level was diminished, only a faint hum penetrating the insulated walls.
A wide, plate glass window provided a view of two huge generators, both in operation, immediately below.
In the control room a solitary technician was writing in a logbook as he studied an array of dials, colored lights and graphic pen recorders which occupied one wall. Hearing the group enter, he turned. Even before that, Nim recognized him from his shock of red hair.
“Hullo, Fred Wilkins.”
“Hi, Mr. Goldman!” The technician offered a brief “good morning” to the visitors, then continued writing.
“Where we are standing,” Nim announced, “is five hundred feet underground. This plant was built by sinking a shaft from above, the way you would for a mine. There’s an elevator goes from here to the surface and, in another shaft, high voltage transmission lines.”
“Not many people working here,” Sacramento Bee commented. He was looking through the window at the generator floor where no one was in sight.
The technician closed his logbook and grinned. “In a couple of minutes you won’t see any.”
“This is an automated generating plant,” Nim explained. “Mr. Wilkins here comes in to make a routine check”—he queried the technician—“how often?”
“Just once a day, sir.”
“Otherwise,” Nim continued, “the place stays tightly locked and unattended, except for occasional maintenance or if something goes wrong.”
Los Angeles Times asked, “How about starting up and shutting down?”
“It’s done from the control center a hundred and fifty miles away. Most new hydroelectric plants are designed this way. They’re efficient, and there’s a big saving in labor costs.”
“When something is wrong, and there’s a panic,” New West inquired, “what then?”
“Whichever generator is affected—or even both—will send a warning to control, then shut down automatically until a service crew gets here.”
“It’s this kind of generating plant,” Teresa Van Buren interjected, “that Devil’s Gate 2, the proposed pumped storage plant, will be—removed from view so it won’t mar the landscape, also non-polluting and economic.”
Nancy Molineaux spoke for the first time since coming in. “There’s one teensy item you left out of that snow job, Tess. The goddam great reservoir that would have to be built and the natural land which would be flooded.”
“A lake in these mountains, which is what it will be, is every bit as natural as dry wilderness,” the p.r. director retorted. “What’s more, it will provide fishing …”
Nim said gently, “Let me, Tess.” He was determined, today, not to let Nancy Molineaux or anyone else ruffle him.
“Miss Molineaux is right,” he told the group, “to the extent that a reservoir is needed. It will be a mile from here, high above us and visible only from airplanes or to nature lovers willing to make a long, hard climb. In building it well observe every environmental safeguard …”
“The Sequoia Club doesn’t think so,” a male TV reporter interrupted. “Why?”
Nim shrugged. “I have no idea. I gues we’ll find out at the public hearing.”
“Okay,” the TV man said. “Carry on with your propaganda spiel.”
Remembering his resolve, Nim curbed a sharp reply. With media people, he thought, it was so often an uphill battle, a fight against disbelief no matter how straightforward anyone involved with industry and business tried to be. Only radical crusaders, and never mind how misinformed, seemed to have their viewpoints quoted verbatim, without question.
Patiently, he explained pumped storage—“the only known method of hoarding large quantities of electricity for use later at times of peak demand. In a way, you could think of Devil’s Gate 2 as an enormous storage battery.”
There would be two levels of water, Nim continued—the new reservoir and Pineridge River, far below. Connecting the two levels would be massive underground pipes—or penstocks and tailrace tunnels.
The generating plant would be between the reservoir and river, the penstocks ending at the plant, where the tail-race tunnels start.
“When the plant is producing electricity,” Nim said, “water from the reservoir will flow downward, drive the turbines, then discharge into the river beneath the river surface.”
But at other times the system would operate the opposite way around. When electrical demands everywhere were light—mostly during the night—no electricity would be produced by Devil’s Gate 2. Instead, water would be pumped upward from the river—some three hundred million gallons an hour—to replenish the reservoir, ready for next day.
“At night we have great quantities of spare electric power elsewhere in
the GSP & L system. We’d simply use some of it to operate the pumps.”
New West said, “Con Edison in New York has been trying to build a plant like that for twenty years. Storm King, they call it. But ecologists and lots of others are against it.”
“There are also responsible people who are for it,” Nim said. “Unfortunately nobody is listening.”
He described one demand of the Federal Power Commission—proof that Storm King would not disturb fish life in the Hudson River. After several years of study the answer was: There would be a reduction of only four to six percent in the adult fish population.
“Despite that,” Nim concluded, “Con Edison still doesn’t have approval, and someday the people of New York will wake up to regret it.”
“That’s your opinion,” Nancy Molineaux said.
“Naturally it’s an opinion. Don’t you have opinions, Miss Molineaux?”
Los Angeles Times said, “Of course she doesn’t. You know how totally unprejudiced we servants of the truth are.”
Nim grinned. “I’d noticed.”
The black woman’s features tightened, but she made no comment.
A moment earlier, when speaking about Hudson River fish, Nim had been tempted to quote Charles Luce, Con Edison’s chairman, who once declared in a public moment of exasperation, “There comes a point where human environment must prevail over fish habitat. I think in New York we’ve reached it.” But caution prevailed. The remark had got Chuck Luce into trouble and produced a storm of abuse from ecologists and others. Why join him?
Besides, Nim thought, he already had public image problems himself over that damned helicopter. It was coming this afternoon to Devil’s Gate to return him to the city where urgent work was piled up on his desk. He had made sure, though, that the chopper would not arrive until after the press contingent had departed by bus.
Meanwhile, disliking this chore and relieved that it would end soon, he continued fielding questions.
At 2 P.M. at Devil’s Gate Camp the last few stragglers were climbing aboard the press bus, which had its motor running and was ready to leave. The group had lunched; their journey back to the city would take four hours. Fifty yards away, Teresa Van Buren, who was also going on the bus, told Nim, “Thanks for all you did, even though you hated some of it.”
He said with a smile, “I get paid to do a few things, now and then, that I’d rather not. Was anything accomplished, do you …?”
Nim stopped, not certain why, except for a sudden chilling instinct that something was wrong in the scene around him, something out of place. They were standing roughly where he had been this morning when he paused en route to breakfast; the weather was still beautiful—clear sunshine highlighting a profusion of trees and wild flowers, with a breeze stirring the fragrant mountain air. Both bunkhouses were visible, the bus in front of one, a couple of off-duty employees sunning themselves on a balcony of the other. In the opposite direction, over by the staff houses, a group of children was playing; a few minutes earlier Nim had noticed among them the redheaded boy Danny, whom he had spoken to this morning. The boy was flying a kite, perhaps a birthday present, though at the moment both boy and kite had disappeared from view. Nim’s gaze moved on to a GSP & L heavy-duty service truck and a cluster of men in work gear. Among them he caught a glimpse of the trim, bearded figure of Wally Talbot Jr. Presumably Wally was with the transmission line crew he had mentioned earlier. On the road leading into camp a small blue tradesman’s van appeared.
Someone at the bus called over impatiently, “Tess, let’s go!”
Van Buren said curiously, “Nim, what is it?”
“I’m not sure. I …”
An urgent, frantic shout cut across the camp clearing and all other sounds.
“Danny! Danny! Don’t move! Stay where you are!”
Heads turned—Nim’s and Van Buren’s simultaneously—seeking the source of the voice.
Another shout, this time close to a scream. “Danny! Do you hear me?”
“Over there.” Van Buren pointed to a steep path, partially hidden by trees, on the camp’s far side. A red-haired man—the technician, Fred Wilkins—was racing down it, shouting as he ran.
“Danny! Do what I tell you! Stop! Don’t move!”
Now the children had stopped playing. Bewildered, they turned together in the direction where the shouting was aimed. Nim did the same.
“Danny! Don’t go any further! I’m coming for you! Keep still!”
“Oh Christ!” Nim breathed.
Now he could see.
High overhead, on one of the towers carrying high voltage lines across the camp, the small boy, Danny Wilkins, was ascending. Clinging tightly to a steel support member more than halfway from the tower base, he was clambering upward, slowly, steadily. His objective was visible above him—the kite he had been flying, now entangled in a transmission line atop the tower. A flash of sunlight showed Nim what moments earlier he had seen, so swiftly and briefly that it barely registered—the reflection from a slim aluminum pole the boy was clutching, a pole with a hook at one end. Clearly, Danny planned to use it to retrieve the kite. His small face was set determinedly as his sturdy body moved higher, and either he failed to hear his father’s shouts or was ignoring them.
Nim and others began running hard toward the tower, but with a sense of helplessness as the small boy continued climbing steadily toward the high voltage lines. Five hundred thousand volts.
Fred Wilkins, still some distance away, was forcing himself to even greater speed, his face despairing.
Nim joined the shouting. “Danny! The wires are dangerous! Don’t move! Stay there!”
This time the boy paused and glanced down. Then he looked up again at the kite and continued climbing, though more slowly, the aluminum pole extended out in front. He was now only a few feet from the nearest power line.
Then Nim saw that a new figure, nearer to the tower than anyone else, had sprung into action. Wally Talbot. Shooting forward, his stride long, feet barely seeming to touch the ground, Wally was racing like an Olympic sprinter.
The press reporters were scrambling from the bus.
The tower, like others in the camp area, was surrounded by a protective chain link fence. Later it would be learned that Danny had surmounted the fence by climbing a tree and dropping from a low branch. Now Wally Talbot reached the fence and leaped. With what seemed a superhuman effort he grabbed the top and scrambled over. As he landed inside it could be seen that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. Then he was on the tower and climbing fast.
Breathlessly, tensely, the hastily assembled group of spectators, reporters and others watched from below. While they did, a trio of workmen from Wally’s transmission line crew arrived and, after trying several keys, unlocked a gate in the chain link fence. Once inside the enclosure they, too, began climbing the tower. But Wally was far ahead, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the small redheaded boy.
Fred Wilkins had reached the base of the tower; he was winded and trembling. Briefly he moved as if to climb also, but someone restrained him.
All eyes were focused on the two figures nearest the top—Danny Wilkins, only a foot or two from the transmission lines, and Wally Talbot, now close behind.
Then it happened—so swiftly that those watching could not agree afterward on the succession of events or even precisely what they were.
In what seemed a single moment, Danny—perched, it seemed, within inches of an insulator which separated the tower from a transmission line conductor—reached out with the aluminum pole in an attempt to snare the kite. Simultaneously, from just below and slightly to one side, Wally Talbot grabbed at the boy and pulled and held him. A pulsebeat later both appeared to slip, the boy sliding downward, clinging to a girder, and Wally losing his grasp. At the same time, Wally, perhaps instinctively to maintain a precarious balance, seized the metal pole as Danny released it. The pole swung in an arc. Instantly a great ball of crackling orange light erupted,
the pole disappeared, and Wally Talbot was enveloped in a corona of transparent flame. Then, with equal suddenness, the flame was gone and Wally’s body sagged limply, motionless, across a tower support.
Miraculously, neither fell. Seconds later two of Wally Talbot’s crew reached his body and began easing it down. The third man pinned Danny Wilkins to a girder and held him there while the others descended. The boy was apparently unhurt; he was sobbing and the sound could be heard below.
Then, somewhere on the other side of the camp, a siren began sounding short, sharp blasts.
17
The cocktail bar pianist switched nostalgically from Hello, Young Lovers! to Whatever Will Be, Will Be.
“If he plays many more of those oldies,” Harry London said, “I’m gonna start crying in my beer. Another vodka, pal?”
“Why the hell not? Make it a double.” Nim, who had been hearing the music too, now listened to himself objectively. His speech was slurring at the edges, he observed, which figured. He had already had too much to drink, and knew it, but found himself not caring. Groping in a pocket, he took out his car keys and pushed them across the small, black-topped table. “Take care of these. See that I get a taxi home.”
London pocketed the keys. “Sure thing. You can stay at my place overnight, if you want.”
“No thanks, Harry.” Soon, when the liquor had dulled his perceptions further, Nim intended to go home, in fact wanted to. He wasn’t worried about appearing there drunk—at least, not tonight. Leah and Benjy would be asleep and wouldn’t see him. And Ruth, with her compassion and sympathy, would be forgiving.
“Testing, testing,” Nim said. He had wanted to hear his voice again before using it. Now, satisfied with his coherence, he told Harry, “Y’know what I think? I think Wally’d be better off dead.”
London took a swig of beer before answering. “Maybe Wally won’t see it that way. Okay, so he got burned bad and lost his pecker. But there’s other …”