"Yes, Arnie, I know the rules, and I will live by the rules," she confirmed at last.
"Good. I want you to prepare a statement this afternoon for release next week. I want to see it today. The usual stuff, the science of it, the safety of the engineering measures, that sort of thing. Thanks for coming over, Carol," he said in dismissal.
Dr. Brightling stood and moved to the door. She hesitated there, wanting to turn and tell Arnie what he could do with his statement… but she kept moving into the corridor in the West Wing, turned north, and went down the stairs for the street level. Two Secret Service agents noted the look on her face and wondered what had rained on her parade that morning - or maybe had turned a hailstorm loose on it. She walked across the street with an unusually stiff gait, then up the steps into the OEOB. In her office, she turned on her Gateway computer and called up her word-processing program, wanting to put her fist through the glass screen rather than type on the keyboard. To be ordered around by that man! Who didn't know anything about science, and didn't care about environmental policy. All Arnie cared about was politics, and politics was the most artificial damned thing in the world!
But then, finally, she calmed down, took a deep breath, and began drafting her defense of something that, after all, would never happen, would it?
No, she told herself. It would never happen.
The theme park had learned well from its more famous model. It had taken care to hire away a dozen senior executives, their lavish salary increases paid for by the park's Persian Gulf financial backers, who had already exceeded their fiscal expectations and looked forward to recouping their total investment in less than six years instead of the programmed eight and a half.
Those investments had been considerable, since they determined not merely to emulate the American corporation, but to exceed it in every respect. The castle in their park was made of stone, not mere fiberglass. The main street was actually three thoroughfares, each adapted to three separate national themes. The circular railroad was of standard gauge and used two real steam locomotives, and there was talk of extending the line to the international airport, which the Spanish authorities had been so kind as to modernize in order to support the theme park-as well they might: the park provided twenty-eight thousand fulltime and ten thousand more part-time or seasonal jobs. The ride attractions were spectacular, most of them custom designed and built in Switzerland, and some of them adventurous enough to make a fighter pilot go pale. In addition, it had a Science World section, with a moonwalk attraction that had impressed NASA, an underwater walk-through mega-aquarium, and pavilions from every major industry in Europe-the one from Airbus Industrie was particularly impressive, allowing children (and adults) to pilot simulated versions of its aircraft.
There were characters in costumes-gnomes, trolls, and all manner of mythical creatures from European history, plus Roman legionnaires to fight barbarians-and the usual marketing areas where guests could buy replicas of everything the park had to offer.
One of the smartest things the investors had done was to build their theme park in Spain rather than France. The climate here, while hotter, was also sunny and dry most of the year, which made for full-year-round operations. Guests flew in from all over Europe, or took the trains, or came down on bus tours to stay at the large, comfortable hotels, which were designed for three different levels of expense and grandeur, from one that might have been decorated by Cesar Ritz down to several with more basic amenities. Guests at all of them shared the same physical environment, warm and dry, and could take time off to bathe in the many pools surrounded by white-sand beaches, or to play on one of the two existing golf courses-three more were under construction, and one of them would soon be part of the European Professional Tour. There was also a busy casino, something no other theme park had tried. All in all, Worldpark, as it was called, had been an instant and sensational success, and it rarely had fewer than ten thousand guests, and frequently more than fifty thousand.
A thoroughly modern facility, it was controlled by six regional and one master command center, and every attraction, ride, and food outlet was monitored by computers and TV cameras.
