radiation.
Less than five years have passed since Warday. While the full long-term implications of radioactivity are not known with certainty, sufficient trends have emerged to provide a disturbing portrait of surviving American society. The Committee recognizes that while the full effects of nuclear war are many, it is clear that the United States will have as a major concern, for many decades to come, the treatment of radiation-related diseases.
Both the Executive and Legislative branches of government should place their highest priority on the care and treatment of those members of the population who have suffered, or will suffer, the lasting effects of this war. The evidence is sufficient to document the alarming rise in human systemic illnesses; the effects upon the newly born and upon generations to come are even more disturbing.
The
We were on a super deluxe train—or at least in the super deluxe part of it, in a beautifully refurbished Superliner observation car. It was decorated in tan, with luxurious club-style seating and a view of the California coast so spectacular that we almost missed the appetizer tray.
“Father,” the tan-uniformed waiter said, leaning forward to present me with an array of shrimp, oysters, crab claws, and raw vegetables to go with my Bloody Mary.
These wonders were part of the ticket price—a hefty eleven dollars. Lunch in the spacious and spotless dining car behind us was included as well. I suppose we could even have taken the roses on the table, had we wanted them.
Also included, as it turned out, was conversation with Mr. Tanaka, a Japanese rail official, who happened to be sitting beside us, watching the passing view of the ocean.
On our train trip to Needles, people had not been willing to talk much. But that was another world. Those were refugees; here in the first-class section of the
“This train’s barely doing sixty,” Mr. Tanaka scoffed, apparently his way of starting a conversation.
“How do you know that?” Jim asked. I saw him turn on his recorder.
“Simple. Each rail is thirty-three feet long. Each ‘click’ you hear means one rail. I count the number of clicks over sixty seconds and thus calculate the train’s speed.”
“Are you a trainman?”
Mr. Tanaka gave Jim a card that read
H. TANAKA, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR,
NIPPON-AMERICA INTERNATIONAL RAIL CORP.,
1130 SUNLAND BUILDING, LOS ANGELES.
“I’m Father William,” Jim said. “This is Father Brown.”
We exchanged handshakes. “What’s a Japanese railroad man doing here in California?” I asked.
“Ah, a great deal. This is the land of opportunity. Things need to be done here! We’re working with your government to create the most modern train system in North America. L.A. to Oakland in an hour and twenty minutes, and that includes a five-minute stop in Bakersfield. How do you like that?”
“Extraordinary.”
“It’s because of a revolutionary new transport system we call a magnetic-cushion tube train. Top cruising speed potential of five hundred miles an hour. Of course, this run is too short to reach that speed. But one day we’ll be going all the way to Seattle. Then you’ll see some speed.”
“What about air travel? Aren’t planes coming back?”
“Don’t talk to me about the competition! I’m telling you, we can move more people faster and with greater efficiency than the best airline in the world. Our energy costs are thirty percent less than the most efficient jet engines now under development back home. Planes can never compete.”
“But all those miles of track—”
“Prefabricated above ground tunnel segments with magnetic cushions inside. Built in Japan very cheaply and shipped here for easy installation. The roadbed is a circular magnetic field in the tunnel. The train floats in it. Our cost per mile is about three million gold, and if California can’t get the money directly, it can find a way to obtain it from the Feds.”
It seemed a lot to me.
“This thing is creeping,” Tanaka scoffed. “Bullet trains do better at home with dead birds on the windshields.”
“How long have you been in the United States?”
“Since 1990. I’ve got my whole family here now. We bought a house in Beverly Hills last year. Lovely house. Pola Negri used to live there. Or maybe Theda Bara, we’re not sure. We are redoing the gardens and installing a complete computerized home security system. It’s lots of fun, because such huge houses are unobtainable in Japan.”
“How do you find working here?”
“I love it! There’s so much to be done. A whole new world is being built in this country, and it’s starting with California.”
“Do you approve of California’s immigration policies?”
“Not my business. I’m a foreigner. My interest is in getting people from place to place fast. I don’t care why they make their journeys.”
“How about the rest of the country? Have you done any traveling?”
“Well, Japan Air lines operates an all-America tour, but we haven’t taken it I don’t want to fool around with radiation.” He lifted his left hand. Two of the fingers were grown together, a thick stump. “My mother was at Nagasaki.” There came silence between us. “The road can be very hard,” he said at last. “This we Japanese have learned.”
After a moment he settled back, contemplating the black cliffs and the slow blue sea.
Golden City
The
Quinn wrote historical novels back when such things were popular. I haven’t seen her name on anything in the Doubleday bookstore in Dallas in years, so I had no idea what had happened to her.
There seemed to me a risk in using long distance in California, so I had delayed trying to call her until we
