Ten miles east of the airport, as the captain had predicted, visibility diminished to a mile, so that at 11:30 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, the ground was barely visible.
After landing, in the United Terminal a brisk young man named Barclay from the company's regional office was awaiting Brett.
'I have a car for you, Mr. DeLosanto. We can drive directly to your hotel, or the college if you wish.'
'Hotel first.' Brett's official purpose in being here was to visit the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, but he would go there later.
Though the aerial view of his beloved California under its despoiling, filthy blanket had depressed him, Brett's spirits revived at the sight and sound of the airport's surging ground traffic at closer quarters. Cars, either singly or en masse, always excited him, especially in California where mobility was a way of life, with more than eleven percent of the nation's automobiles crammed within the state.
Yet the same source had helped create an air pollution which was inescapable; already, Brett felt an irritation of the eyes, his nostrils prickled; without doubt the unclean brume was deeply in his lungs. He asked Barclay, 'Has it been as bad as this for long?'
'About a week. Seems now, a partly clear day is an exception, a real clear one about as rare as Christmas.' The young man wrinkled his nose. 'We tell people it isn't all made by cars, that a lot is industrial haze.'
'But do we believe it?'
'Hard to know what to believe, Mr. DeLosanto. Our own people tell us we have engine emission problems licked. Do you believe that?'
'In Detroit I believe it. When I get here I'm not so sure.'
What it came down to, Brett knew, was the balance between economics and numbers. It was possible, now, to build a totally emission-free auto engine, but only at high cost which would make the cars employing it as remote from everyday use as a nobleman's carriage once was from the foot-slogging peasantry. To keep costs reasonable engineering compromises had to be made, though even with compromises, present emission control was excellent, and better by far than envisioned only a lustrum ago. Yet sheer numbers - the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly proliferation of cars - undid the end effect, as was smoggily evident in California.
They were at the car Brett would use during his stay.
'I'll drive,' Brett said. He took the keys from Barclay.
Later, having checked in at the Beverly Hilton, and shed Barclay, Brett drove alone to the Art Center College of Design on West Third Street. CBS Television City towered nearby, with Farmers' Market huddled behind. Brett was expected, and was received with dual enthusiasm as a representative of a company which hired many of each year's graduates, and as a distinguished alumnus himself.
The relatively small college buildings were, as usual, busily crowded, with all usable space occupied and nothing wasted on frills. The entrance lobby, though small, was an extension of classrooms and perpetually in use for informal conferences, interviews, and individual study.
The head of Industrial Design, who welcomed Brett amid a buzz of other conversations, told him, 'Maybe someday we'll take time out to plan a quieter cloister.'
'If I thought there was a chance,' Brett rejoined, 'I'd warn you not to. But you won't. This place should stay the pressure cooker it is.'
It was an atmosphere he knew well - perpetually work-oriented, with emphasis on professional discipline. 'This is not for amateurs,' the college catalogue declared, 'this is for real.' Unlike many schools, assignments were arduously demanding, requiring students to produce, produce . . . over days, nights, weekends, holidays . . . leaving little time for extra interests, sometimes none. Occasionally, students protested at the unrelenting stress, and a few dropped out, but most adjusted and, as the catalogue put it too:
'Why pretend that the life they are preparing for is easy? It is not and never will be.'
The emphasis on work and unyielding standards were reasons why auto makers respected the college and kept in touch with faculty and students.
Frequently, companies competed for the services of top-line students in advance of graduation. Other design colleges existed elsewhere, but Los Angeles Art Center was the only one with a specific course in auto design, and nowadays at least half of Detroit's annual crop of new designers traveled the L.A. route.
Soon after arrival, surrounded by a group of students, Brett broke off to survey the tree-shaded inner courtyard where they had gathered, and were sipping coffee or soft drinks, and chewing doughnuts.
'Nothing's changed,' he observed. 'It's like coming home.'
'Pretty packed living room,' one of the students said.
Brett laughed. Like everything else here, the courtyard was too small, the students elbowing for space too many. Yet for all the congestion, only the truly talented were admitted to the school, and only the best survived the grueling three-year course.
The exchange of talk - a reason why Brett had come - went on.
Inevitably, air pollution was on the minds of students; even in this courtyard there was no escaping it. The sun, which should have been shining brightly from an azure sky, instead filtered dully through the thick gray haze extending from the ground to high above. Here, too, eye and nose irritation were constant and Brett remembered a recent U. S. Public Health warning that breathing New York's polluted air was equal to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; thus nonsmokers innocently shared a smoker's probability of death from cancer. He presumed the same was true of Los Angeles, perhaps even more so.
On the subject of pollution, Brett urged, 'Tell me what you characters think.' A decade from now students like these would be helping shape industry policy.
'One thing you figure when you live here,' a voice from the rear injected, 'is something has to give. If we go on the way things are, one day everybody in this town will choke to death.'
Brett pointed out, 'Los Angeles is special. Smog is worse because of geography, temperature inversion, and a lot of sunlight.'
'Not so special,' someone else put in. 'Have you been in San Francisco lately?'
'Or New York?'
'Or Chicago?'
'Or Toronto?'
'Or even little country towns on market days?'
Brett called across the chorus, 'Hey! If you feel that way, maybe some of you are headed for the wrong business. Why design cars at all?'
'Because we're nutty about cars. Love 'em! Doesn't stop us thinking, though. Or knowing what's going on, and caring.' The speaker was a gangling young man with untidy blond hair, at the forefront of the group. He put a hand through his hair, revealing the long slender fingers of an artist.
'To hear a lot of people out. West, and other places' - Brett was playing devil's advocate - 'you'd think the only future is in mass transportation.'
'That old chestnut!'
'No one really wants to use mass transport,' one of the few girls in the group declared. 'Not if a car's practical and they can afford it.
Besides, mass transport's a delusion. With subsidies, taxes, and fares, public transport delivers a lot less than automobiles for more money. So everybody gets taken. Ask New Yorkers! Soon - ask San Franciscans.'
Brett smiled. 'They'll love you in Detroit.'
The girl shook her head impatiently. 'I'm not saying it because of that.'
'Okay,' Brett told the others, 'let's agree that cars will be the main form of transportation for another half century, probably a lot longer. What kind of cars?'
'Better,' a quiet voice said. 'A lot better than now. And fewer.'
'Not much argument about being better, though the question's always: Which way? I'm interested, though, in how you figure fewer.'
'Because we ought to think that way, Mr. DeLosanto. That's if we take the long view, which is for our own good in the end.'
Brett looked curiously at the latest speaker who now stepped forward, others near the front easing aside to make room. He, too, was young, but short, swarthy, with the beginning of a pot belly and, on the surface,
