He closed his eyes, thinking of news reports of events a thousand years in the future.
All reported as if it were up-to-the-minute, important life-and-death news.
A thousand years from now.
His eyes were heavy. His head fell to his chest, then jerked up abruptly as the intercom came on.
"Fasten your seat belts," the captain said. "We are landing in Van Nuys."
Chapter 58
VAN NUYS
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11
7:30 P.M.
All he wanted to do was sleep. But when he landed, he checked his cell phone messages and discovered that he had been missed, to put it mildly:
"Mr. Evans, this is Eleanor in Nicholas Drake's office. You left your cell phone. I have it for you. And Mr. Drake would like to speak to you."
"Peter, it's Jennifer Haynes at John Balder's office. We'd like you to come to the office no later than ten o'clock tomorrow please. It's quite important. Call me if for some reason you can't make it. See you then."
"Peter, call me. It's Margo. I'm out of the hospital."
"Mr. Evans, this is Ron Perry at the Beverly Hills police department. You've missed your four o'clock appointment to dictate a statement. I don't want to issue a warrant for your arrest. Call me. You have the number."
"This is Herb Lowenstein. Where the hell are you? We don't hire junior associates to have them disappear day after day. There is work to be done here. Balder's office has been calling. They want you at the Culver City office tomorrow morning by ten A.M. sharp. My advice is, be there, or start looking for another job."
"Mr. Evans, this is Ron Perry from Beverly Hills police. Please return my call ASAP."
"Peter, call me. Margo."
"Peter, want to get together tonight? It's Janis. Call me."
"Mr. Evans, I have Mr. Drake for you, at the NERF office."
"Peter, it's Lisa in Mr. Lowenstein's office. The police have been calling for you. I thought you would want to know."
"Peter, it's Margo. When I call my lawyer I expect to get a call back. Don't be an asshole. Call me."
"This is Ron Perry from the Beverly Hills police department. If I do not hear from you I will have to ask the judge to issue a warrant for your arrest."
"Evans, it's Herb Lowenstein. You really are a dumb shit. The police are going to issue a warrant for your arrest. Deal with it at once. Members of this firm do not get arrested."
Evans sighed, and hung up.
Sarah said, "Trouble?"
"No. But it doesn't look like I will be getting any sleep for a while."
He called the detective, Ron Perry, and was told that Perry was gone for the day, and would be in court in the morning. His cell phone would be off. Evans left a number for him to call back.
He called Drake, but he was gone for the day.
He called Lowenstein, but he was not in the office.
He called Margo, but she did not answer.
He called Jennifer Haynes and said that he would be there tomorrow, at ten o'clock.
"Dress professionally," she said.
"Why?"
"You're going to be on television."
Chapter 59
CULVER CITY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12
9:51 A.M.
There were two white camera trucks parked outside the offices of the Vanutu litigation team. Evans went inside and found workmen setting up lights and changing fluorescent light bulbs in the ceiling. Four different video crews were walking around, inspecting different angles. But nobody was shooting yet.
The offices themselves, he noticed, had been considerably transformed. The graphs and charts on the walls were now much more complicated and technical looking. There were huge, blowup photographs of the Pacific nation of Vanutu, as seen from the air and from the ground. Several featured the erosion of the beaches, and houses leaning at an angle, ready to slide into the water. There was a school picture from the Vanutu school, beautiful brown-skinned kids with smiling faces. In the center of the room, there was a three-dimensional model of the main island, specially lit for cameras.
Jennifer was wearing a skirt and blouse and heels. She looked startlingly beautiful in a dark, mysterious way. Evans noticed that everyone was better dressed than at his first visit; all the researchers were now in jackets and ties. The jeans and T-shirts were gone. And there seemed to be a lot more researchers.
"So," Evans said, "what is this about?"
"B-roll," Jennifer said. "We're shooting B-roll for the stations to use as background and cutaways. And of course we're making a video press kit as well."
"But you haven't announced the lawsuit yet."
"That happens this afternoon, here outside the warehouse. Press conference at one P.M. You'll be there, of course?"
"Well, I didn't"
"I know John Balder wants you there. Representing George Morton."
Evans felt uneasy. This could create a political problem for him at the firm. "There are several attorneys more senior than I who handled George's"
"Drake specifically asked for you."
"He did?"
"Something about your involvement in getting the papers signed to finance this suit."
So that was it, Evans thought. They were putting him on television so he would not be able later to say anything about the gift of ten million dollars to NERF. No doubt they would stick him in the background for the announcement ceremony, maybe make a brief acknowledgment of his presence. Then Drake would say that the ten million was coming, and unless Evans stood up and contradicted him, his silence would be taken as acquiescence. Later, if he developed any qualms, they could say, But you were there, Evans. Why didn't you speak up then?
"I see," Evans said.
"You look worried."
"I am amp;"
"Let me tell you something," she said. "Don't worry about it."
"But you don't even know"
"Just listen to me. Don't worry about it." She was looking directly into his eyes.
"Okay amp;"
Of course she meant well, but despite her words, Evans was experiencing an unpleasant, sinking feeling. The police were threatening to issue a warrant for his arrest. The firm was complaining about his absences. Now this effort to force him into silenceby putting him on television.
He said, "Why did you want me here so early?"
"We need you to sit in the hot seat again, as part of our test for jury selection."
"I'm sorry, I can't"
"Yes. You have to. Same thing as before. Want some coffee?"
"Sure."
"You look tired. Let's get you to hair and makeup."
Half an hour later he was back in the deposition room, at the end of the long table. There was again a crew of eager young scientific types looking down at him.
"Today," Jennifer said, "we would like to consider issues of global warming and land use. Are you familiar with this?"
"Only slightly," Evans said.
Jennifer nodded to one of the researchers at the far end. "Raimundo? Will you give him the background?"
The researcher had a heavy accent, but Evans could follow him. "It is well known," he said, "that changes in land use will cause changes in average ground temperature. Cities are hotter than the surrounding countrysidewhat is called the urban heat island' effect. Croplands are warmer than forested lands, and so on."
"Uh-huh," Evans said. Nodding. He hadn't heard about these land use concepts, but it certainly stood to reason.
Raimundo continued, "A high percentage of weather stations that were out in the countryside forty years ago are now surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers and asphalt and so on. Which makes them register warmer."
"I understand," Evans said. He glanced away, through the glass wall. He saw film crews moving around the warehouse, shooting various things. He hoped the crews wouldn't come in. He didn't want to sound stupid in front of them.
"These facts," Raimundo said, "are well known within the field. So researchers take the raw temperature data from stations near cities and reduce them by some amount to compensate for the urban heat island effect."
Evans said, "And how is this reduction calculated?"
"Different ways, depending on who does it. But most algorithms are based on population size. The larger the population, the greater the reduction."
Evans shrugged. "That sounds like the right way to do it."
"Unfortunately," he said, "it probably isn't. Do you know about Vienna? It was studied by Bohm a few years back. Vienna has had no increase in population since 1950, but it has more than doubled its energy use and increased living space substantially. The urban heat island effect has increased, but the calculated reduction is unchanged, because it only looks at population change."* "So the heating from cities is being underestimated?" Evans said.
"It's worse than that," Jennifer said. "It used to be assumed that urban heating was unimportant because the urban heat island effect was only a fraction of total warming. The planet warmed about.3 degrees Celsius in the last thirty years. Cities are typically assumed to have heated by around.1 degree Celsius."
"Yes? So?"
"So those assumptions are wrong. The Chinese report that Shanghai warmed 1 degree Celsius in the last twenty years alone. That's more than the total global warming of the planet in the last hundred years. And Shanghai is not unique. Houston increased.8 degrees Celsius in the last twelve years.! Cities in South Korea are heating rapidly.* Manchester, England, is now 8 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. Even small towns are much hotter than the surrounding areas."
Jennifer reached for her charts. "Anyway," she said, "the point is that the graphs you see are not raw data. They have already been adjusted with fudge factors to compensate for urban heating. But probably not enough."
At that moment, the door opened and one of the four video crews came in, their camera light shining. Without hesitation, Jennifer reached for some charts, and brought them up. She whispered, "B-roll is silent, so we need to be active and provide visuals."
She turned toward the camera and said, "Let me show you some examples of weather station data. Here, for instance, is a record of the average temperature for Pasadena since 1930."!
Pasadena, CA 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "a dramatic rise in temperature. And here is Berkeley since 1930."
Berkeley, CA 19302000 "A surprisingly incomplete record. But we are using raw data, so you can see missing years. And you see a clear warming trend. Indisputable, wouldn't you agree?"
"I would," Evans said, thinking that it wasn't much of a trendless than a degree.
"Now, here is Death Valley, one of the hottest, driest places on Earth. No urbanization has occurred here. Again, missing years."
Death Valley, CA 19332000 Evans said nothing. It must be an anomaly, he thought. Jennifer put up more graphs:
McGill, NV 19302000
Guthrie, OK 19302000 "These are stations from the Nevada desert and the Oklahoma plains," she said. "They show temperatures that are flat, or declining. And not only rural areas. Here is Boulder, Colorado. It's only of interest because NCAR is located therethe National Center for Atmospheric Research, where so much global warming research is done."
Boulder, CO 19301997 "Here are some more small cities. Truman, Missouri, where the buck stops amp;"
Truman, MO 19312000
Greenville, SC 19302000
Ann Arbor, MI 19302000 Evans said, "Well, you have to admit, it's not very dramatic."
"I'm not sure what you consider dramatic. Truman has gotten colder by 2.5 degrees, Greenville by 1.5 degrees, Ann Arbor by one degree since1930. If the globe is warming, these places have been left out."
"Let's look at some bigger places," Evans said, "like Charleston."
"I happen to have Charleston." She thumbed through her graphs.
Charleston, SC 19302000 Evans said, "So, a bigger city gets warmer. What about New York?" "I have several records from New York, city and state."
New York, NY 19302000
Syracuse, NY 19302000
Albany, NY 19302000
Oswego, NY 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "New York City is warmer, but many other parts of the state, from Oswego to Albany, have become colder since 1930."
Evans was acutely aware of the cameras on him. He nodded in what he hoped was a judicious, thoughtful manner and said, "And where does this data come from?"
"From the Historical Climatology Network data set," she said. "It's a government dataset, maintained at Oak Ridge National Laboratories."
"Well," Evans said. "It's quite interesting. However, I'd like to see the data from Europe and Asia. This is, after all, a global phenomenon."
"Certainly," Jennifer said. She, too, was playing to the cameras. "But before we do that, I'd like your reaction to the data so far. As you can see, many places in the United States do not seem to have become warmer since 1930."
"I'm sure you cherry-picked your data," Evans said.
"To some degree. As we can be sure the defense will do."
"But the results do not surprise me," Evans said. "Weather varies locally. It always has and always will." A thought occurred to him. "By the way, why are all these graphs since 1930? Temperature records go much further back than that."
"Your point is well taken," Jennifer said, nodding. "It definitely makes a difference how far back you go. For example amp;"
West Point, NY 19312000 "Here is West Point, New York, from 1931 to 2000. Trending down. And amp;"
West Point, NY 19002000 "Here is West Point from 1900 to 2000. This time the trend is up, not down."
"Ah-ha," Evans said. "So you were massaging the data. You picked the interval of years that made you look good!"
"Absolutely," Jennifer said, nodding. "But the trick only works because temperatures in many parts of the US were warmer in the 1930s than they are today."