The graders and dozers went to work. Dump trucks were quickly backed into position. With speed and precision the top fifteen feet of lethally contaminated soil was excavated and loaded into waiting trucks. Thick plastic was used to cover the dirt and seal the loads from sight. Dumpers followed tankers and semis out toward the desert.
Now a perverse parody of the process by which the little valley had been poisoned was played out. Trucks rumbled down into the vale and fresh chemicals in benign combination were worked into the exposed soil. When this was finished it was the landscapers’ turn. They came in with their pickups and flatbeds and proceeded to replace the flora which had once thrived here. As they did so they were careful not to come in contact with the recently treated earth.
Water trucks and men with tanks strapped to their backs moved among the gardeners. Each bush and shrub and patch of carefully manicured weeds was given a healthy dousing of clean, fresh water mixed with concentrated nutrients. Circulating among them all were men and women of different mien. They moved more slowly, more thoughtfully. The jeans and flannel shirts they wore hung unnaturally on them.
They avoided the gardeners and waterers as they stuck things into the ground as seriously as any doctor taking a patient’s temperature. They extracted fragments of soil and crumpled roots, put them in test tubes and added liquids from ready droppers. They whispered the results to one another through their protective masks.
Here and there a few mop-up squads of laborers attacked isolated pockets of still unhealthy soil. The excision had to be total or the cancer might spread enough to ruin the whole night’s work. Nothing could be left for the inspectors, not the slightest hint that fifty years of industrial sewage had been poured into this valley untouched and untreated.
The earth here had been horribly, callously injured. The repair work was thorough and expensive. But the repair was more cosmetic than absolute. The valley could never be the same again. The backhoe operators and landscapers and engineers were morticians, not resurrectors. When they were done the valley would look natural enough. Good embalming always does. But underneath, the substance of the valley, the thing that had made it a healthy, normal piece of the Earth, would still be just as dead.
Benjamin Huddy checked the sky, then his watch. The watch was very expensive and very accurate. Close to four. They’d have to wrap this up soon. The Board of CCM’s western operations would be awaiting his report, back in the tall clean tower the company owned in West L. A.
It would be a pleasure to give that report, he mused. Nothing serious had materialized to challenge the work. There had been no unexpectedly deep pockets of sludge to excavate, no indications of subsurface volatility to avoid, no sign of a shallow aquifer to divert. Judging from the speed with which the landscapers were doing their job, within ninety minutes the valley would once again resemble its undisturbed neighbors which marched off in chaparral-covered anonymity to the east and south.
Nearby the twin bulks of Mounts San Gorgonio and San Jacinto rose nearly twelve thousand feet into the still dark sky. Huddy wished he were atop the latter instead of standing above the valley rubbing sleep from his eyes. It would be nice to take the tram down to Palm Springs. Check into the Lakes or some other resort, take a shower, maybe get in a little tennis. He deserved the rest after this job. Palm Springs and rest would have to wait a while longer though, he knew. The report to the Board and post-operative processing would have to come first.
When the first notification had crossed the desk of some CCM supervisor that the Riverside County inspectors had routinely included the valley on their list of suspected unauthorized chemical dumps, there had been panic stretching all the way back to corporate headquarters in New York. Someone had slipped up. All company dumping was supposed to have been contracted out to subcontractors who couldn’t be tied solely to CCM. But the dump had been in use by CCM local operations for half a century and in all that time, no one had thought to discontinue its use.
Then the report showed up and some employee noted the potential danger to the corporation. Frantic outcries within the hierarchy of CCM’s chemical division had been met by calm responses from those few who’d kept their heads. It was only a problem, albeit a serious one. It required only a solution.
Having risen just high enough within the company to be privy to such dangerous information, Huddy had been the one to come up with an answer. Sensing one of those rare opportunities which occasionally present themselves on the corporate battlefield, he’d worked all night and had appeared at the hastily convened board meeting with charts and statistics detailing his plan. He didn’t mention that Ruth Somerset had helped him put it together.
The board had been impressed. Even Webster, the nephew of CCM’s Chairman’s son-in-law, had found himself shut out. With some reluctance but more relief, the board had agreed to turn the project over to him and an associate. That’s when he’d mentioned Somerset’s name.
Actually, as far as Huddy was concerned, the actual cleanup work was anticlimatic. The hard part had been the intricate maneuvering necessary to set everything up and to delay the inspection team. Persuasion and threat, argument and bribery had done their work, however. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, the county inspectors would arrive to find a simple, uncluttered little valley much like its neighbors instead of an ancient and ill-used dumping site laced with enough toxic chemicals to kill several thousand elephants.
Perhaps it wouldn’t appear quite as lush as the valley next to it, but it would still look healthier than the homesites which ringed it. Not even mesquite grew up there. Only old tires, broken-down fifties cars, beer bottles and cans in ripe and rusted profusion.
CCM would then be able to point out with considerable corporate pride and not a little righteous outrage that the valley in which they were accused of dumping illegal chemicals was a far healthier place than the inhabited dirt road which ran along the surrounding ridges.
Huddy watched contentedly as the landscapers concluded their assignments and the monitoring/test crew moved efficiently among the newly planted trees and bushes. In less than six hours his crews had sanitized both in content and appearance over fifty years of unregulated dumping from Consolidated Chemical and Mining’s Riverside, Barstow and Perris operations. None of the employees involved elected to protest the secrecy. Most of them were full-time CCM personnel who’d do exactly as they were told. For those who were not, large bonuses bought both silence and loyalty.
Besides, even if the operation was somewhat irregular, the end result, the cleaning up of the dump, was beneficial. Wasn’t that all that mattered? No need to penalize the company for the mistakes of the past. If somebody spoke out, workers from the thirties and forties weren’t the ones who’d pay with their jobs. The logic employed varied, but the result was the same. Each employee managed to rationalize the operation to his or her own satisfaction.
Why bring trouble down on themselves? If the dump was all that dangerous it would have been noticed by now, wouldn’t it? Better just to keep one’s mouth shut and do the job. Especially when a negative comment could result not only in losing that job, but in being blackballed by every large company in America.
It’s tough to be outraged when your colleagues don’t feel the same, or when you’ve a family to feed. No, better just to do your work and try not to dream about it later. The work crews operated with a unity of purpose, fueled by fear and greed.
Huddy could have checked on such matters himself but preferred to leave that phase of the operation to subordinates. He disliked talking to manual laborers. Beer and football were limiting topics for an intelligent conversationalist like himself.
He looked younger than his forty years, though the greying at his temples (carefully maintained by his barber to give him that distinguished young-executive look) hinted at his real age. He was tall and limber, an elegant scarecrow brandishing a pleasantly boyish grin which had gained him admittance to as many feminine chambers as corporate ones.
Ten years he’d been with CCM now. If everything went as planned and the county inspectors didn’t find enough left in the valley to raise a stink about (he smiled to himself at the pun) there should be at least a senior vice-presidency waiting for him. When word was sent to New York, he might even get the call to move to Headquarters.
His gaze shifted toward the road slightly below. A blue-jeaned figure was climbing toward him. In shape it differed considerably and deliciously from most of the workers cleaning up beyond. In addition to the success the operation promised him, there was also Ruth.
She was ten years younger than he was, wiser in some ways, much less so in others. She was not his assistant. But as assistant chief programmer for CCM’s Western States computer operations in West Los Angeles she had access to information outside his own department. Information to which he would ordinarily be denied access. She was his mole, his eyes and ears on the rest of the corporation’s activities. On more than one occasion he’d used her information to outmaneuver his colleagues and competitors at the meetings and board room warfare where corporate chiefs were made or broken.
It wasn’t unnatural that she be out on such a field expedition. Her own department would be busily altering dates and records and bills of lading to confuse inspectors and bureaucratic watchdogs.
Huddy planned to be present when the county inspectors finally got around to checking out the valley. He wanted to enjoy the looks that would doubtless come over their faces. They couldn’t completely obliterate the history of the dumpsite, of course, any more than they could do so to the chemicals which had leached into the ground. But it would be enough. When the sun finally rose here there wouldn’t be enough poison left in the valley to threaten anything bigger than a butterfly.
“Almost finished, Benjy,” she told him.
“Almost.” No one was watching them, so he allowed himself the luxury of a long embrace, a lingering kiss, and a delightful grip with both hands on her derriere.
“That was nice,” she murmured as she pulled away and smiled saucily up at him. “Have to do it again one of these days.” They’d been lovers for as long as they’d been intercorporate conspirators. “How about right now?” She reached for him again.
He put up his hands in mock defense. “Too many eyes around. Too many of the supervisors know me.”
“It’s dark.” Her hand traveled up and down his thigh. He backed off. Slowly, smiling to show her that he wasn’t irritated.
“Not here, anyway.”
“Listen, everyone knows we’ve been working together on this project.” She could be downright coquettish when she wished to, he thought.
“Yes,” he admitted, “but not how closely we’ve been working together.”
“Or exactly how we’ve merged our positions.” She turned serious for a moment as she glanced back down into the valley. “Be done inside an hour and out of here before sunrise.”
Huddy nodded. “It’s gone well. Look, in addition to the triple over, I want both of the foremen on the heavy machinery crews … what were their names?”
It didn’t surprise him that she recalled them instantly. Ruth was a lot like her computers. “Larson and Kilcallen?”
“Yeah. I want extra bonuses for them, on top of the promised.”
“I’ll mention it to payroll.” She frowned slightly. “I don’t know that they’ll buy it, on top of everything else. This is costing the company a hell of a lot.”
