David Dun - At The Edge

"Well, yes." She smiled. "What were you expecting?"

"People come in here and stay for hours?"

"Oh, they're probably back there, watching movies in the private rooms."

"I see. Well, my friend came in here. She is blond."

"Corey?"

"Yes."

"She's right back there, waiting for the library to open."

"Ah." Shohei nodded. But it still didn't seem right. Walking back in the corner where the woman had pointed, he opened the door. A movie was running, but no one was inside.

"Did you find her?"

"Yes. Thank you." He stepped outside quickly. Like everyone else who listened to the radio, Shohei knew about today's duel at the courthouse. With all the demonstrators expected to attend, maybe she went there. But why so secretly? Unless…

Whipping his car around, he headed for the courthouse, the largest building in Palmer. He drove around the backside of the building, where he saw a dark van like the one Corey had recently parked in her garage. The lettering could easily have been added. Beside him sat his laptop. Quickly he scrolled through to Corey Schneider. The license plates on this van were not hers, so it was probably unrelated. But he had nothing else to go on.

Parking the car, he decided to inquire after the Johnson Electric man-or woman.

When Corey returned to the door to the roof, she put on an air of unconcern in case anyone was looking. Trying to control the tension, she peered through the window. Shit. They were there, coiling an electrical extension cord and putting away tools and a portable light. She looked up and down the hall, realizing that now a second turnaround would raise a question in the mind of anyone who had seen the first. But there didn't seem to be anyone. A woman came walking from the cafeteria with a cup of something, probably her midmorning coffee. Corey kept the bill of her hat low and went back down the hall toward storage, hoping the workmen would not also go there.

She was running out of time. They needed to be packed into the courtroom for the best chance at a kill. It had been thirty-four minutes since she entered the building and twenty-three minutes since the hearing started, assuming it started on time. As she stood against the wall, each minute carved its worry mark in her mind. Failure was not acceptable.

Two women walked by and both looked longer and harder than any of the others. Then one of them made some comment. A minute later, a deputy sheriff came by, a burly man with thin sandy hair and badly receding hairline. On his face was a large mole and he had a funny habit of running his tongue across his teeth. He was the officious type, manifestly concerned about everything.

"What are you waiting on?" From his tone Corey figured the women must have said something.

"My crew chief is coming to tell me. We're laying wire on the roof for something."

"Roof's down there."

"I know, but I was told to wait here by storage. I guess some of the wire is going in here until we need it."

"Hell, that's just a little janitorial supply room."

"I just follow orders. I ain't got a contractor's license."

"It just seems strange, them sending you here."

"Well, Your Honor," Dan explained, "I've asked the state officials to go into the harvest area today because I knew the court might want a full report."

"So you thought about this in advance."

"No, Your Honor. I was dealing with a situation."

"That's fine, but it's not what I asked. I want to know if these ancient redwoods were being cut at an unusually fast rate because Anderson and Otran Enterprises knew or suspected a court order was coming. I also want to know if unfelled trees were deliberately killed."

Dan was cornered. Obfuscation would anger the judge. Denial would be lying to the court, which was out of the question. He glanced at Maria Fischer and received an ugly glare in return.

"I believe Anderson, without the knowledge and against the wishes of Otran, cut on the weekend with more than the usual number of fallers. Anderson knew a court order was a possibility and wanted to keep his men working. But that's not against the law. And when Otran found out, they got them stopped by noon on Sunday. Only three trees were girdled, and the fallers who did it were thrown off the job."

"Mr. Young, tell us what time fallers normally stop dropping trees."

"It varies." The judge stiffened. "But often it's three or four p.m., sometimes earlier because the wind comes up in the afternoon."

Dan knew he had to turn things around if he was going to make a settlement. Right now, he was sure the judge was convinced justice lay with Maria Fischer.

"Your Honor, I'd like to offer the rest of the story. The pure unvarnished truth."

"I let Ms. Fischer have her say," Traxler said. "I'll listen to your clients' views as well."

''Your Honor, I want everybody here to get the big picture. She's coming into this court with mental images of clear-cuts and people naturally tend to think they are ugly and therefore bad. The implication is that clear-cutting is destruction and we should stop it. Well, I'm here to tell you that this kind of thinking is pure ignorance.

"We are saving the world by growing forests."

There was outright laughter in the courtroom. A prominent member of the local press was smiling and shaking his head.

"Hear me out." The courtroom quieted. "Humankind is making more carbon dioxide today than at any time in our history. We burn fossil fuels and spew the stuff out. Because we don't manage government forests and thin them, they burn up. We make more CO 2 by allowing our federal forests to burn. Hopefully, we all understand you can't breathe CO 2. hi addition to choking babies, the stuff warms the planet and we get global warming. Growing trees helps solve in a major way each of those problems. When you see a clear-cut and all those little hand-planted trees, you know somebody is trying to save you. This isn't the Amazon, where they chop them down and make a plowed field. In the temperate northwest we're cutting trees for the sake of growing trees.

"People of the future are going to realize that growing forests is the best way to counteract the effects of burning fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel. They will learn that by managing them, we can better control wildfire. It's one of the best ways to convert the sun's energy into something we can use at the same time we are cleaning the atmosphere. We can make ethanol from trees. We already make 1.8 billion gallons of the stuff as a fuel additive, and we need more. It will run a fuel cell or an engine and it emits far less CO 2 than gasoline and is the best smog-control available. So we clean the air, make fuel, and reduce CO2 emissions all at the same time. I'm telling you if we had invented trees we couldn't have done it any better.

''Growing forests, people, is what we need. Not stagnant forests full of rotting old trees like Ms. Fischer advocates, but young vibrant forests that suck up the CO 2 and produce oxygen. These growing trees are the best scrubbers of our atmosphere. It's that simple, Your Honor. Old-growth forests were for the days when the only pollution to speak of came from plankton, forest fires, farting buffalo, and the few Native Americans who ate them. Clear-cuts grow trees because redwoods and most conifers won't grow in the shade. People are going to figure that out when the government gets off its ass and teaches them."

"Mr. Young," the judge called out.

"I apologize for using a term like 'ass' in the courtroom, Your Honor. In no way would I want to imply that somebody who doesn't agree with me is an ass. We never refer to ignorant people that way in a civilized society."

There was a lot of laughter and clapping from the mill workers.

"Mr. Young."

"So my first point, Your Honor, is that a little ugly for a little while does a lot of good. Our replanting programs create young forests that will save the planet for future generations. Smart management controls fire.