RAINMAKER

by JOHN REESE

The phone clanged at exactly 3:53 A.M. Bill Lawson groaned and took it groggily on his back, keeping his eyes shut and his bare arm under the covers. It would be blazing hot by noon, late June being what it is in southern California, but there was a sharp, mountainish chill abroad now.

"H'lo, Lawson speakin'," he mumbled, sure of a wrong number.

A girl operator said, "One minute, Bill. Mr. Beck is calling, but he's on another line." He found himself cut off. He sat up and groped for his slippers and a cigarette, wondering why he felt so depressed.

It came to him after a minute, as he clung to the dead line. He had danced at the Palladium with Patty Vernier until two o'clock. From Hollywood to Patty's home in Studio City was a fast thirty-minute drive. Studio City lay in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. Bill lived in Temple City, in the San Gabriel Valley, northeast of Los Angeles. From her home to his adequate but lonely bachelor residence was a fast hour's drive through Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, and San Gabriel.

In other words, he had been asleep at least twenty minutes, not enough to say he had "slept on" his problem. He knew his mind was not subtle—that he had made Patty mad, or hurt her, or something. "No girl likes to be taken for granted." That's what she said. He was only trying to say that he trusted her, believed her . . .

"Hiyah, Bill!" came the drowsy-cheery voice of Sid Beck, night operator at the California State Weather Service Station at Pomona, thirty miles up the San Gabriel Valley. "Want a big fat rain?"

"At this hour?" Bill moaned.

"Why not? I need it personally. Got some zinnias in bad shape, Bill. Hang on a minute—other phone—expecting the blimp to check in over Inglewood."

Again Bill was cut off. He stood up and switched on the ceiling light and studied the big meteorological map of southern California on the wall over his bed.

Things had changed a lot since scientists first seeded clouds with pellets of dry ice, making them discharge their moisture in the form of artificial rain, twenty-odd years ago. Bill was a kid of eight when he watched a little cub plane make three passes at a cirro-cumulus formation over a grass fire in the Santa Monica Mountains, just about the time the Japanese surrendered—some time in the middle forties, anyway.

It didn't work, and the fire burned itself out, but the kid of eight knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. A rainmaker. Now, at twenty-eight, William Lawson had held California Precipitation Permit No. 1 for six years, ever since the state started granting them under the Supreme Court decision.

The permit meant he was a skilled airplane pilot. It meant he had two years of college meteorology. It meant he could tell you at any given time what crops were in what growing stages, and where. It meant he could tell you, without looking at the charts, each of the two dozen two-day to five-day periods during the hot, dry southern California summer when a rain would do a lot of good for everyone and harm to no one. Charts? He had written most of them himself.

He was a pioneer, and now it was a business, same as any other. Who owned the clouds? Riparian law, governing streams and watersheds, had gone aloft, and Bill's name was on most of the litigation that took it there—generally as defendant. He had been sued for making it rain and sued for not making it rain. He had been the first man ever enjoined by a Federal District Court from making it rain, in "City of San Diego vs. Lawson, Coachella Date Growers Association, et al."

Won that one, too, when it rained anyway. "Respondent is not God," said the unanimous Supreme Court decision. "He does not create rain, on the evidence. Neither has he violated divine or natural law, since it rained anyway. It appears, rather, that he acts in strict accordance with such law, and that the injunction should have been directed against the Creator, rather than respondent. It is therefore vacated, since it is beyond the power of man to write or enforce any law which supersedes or attempts the illusion of superseding divine or natural law."

Sid Beck came back on the line as Bill scratched himself and studied his charts and maps. "Blimp, all right, confirming that the mass appears to be detached. Big black cold front, probably high density, moving in from the Pacific bank over White's Point on a six-mile southerly wind," Sid said.

"Put my name on it." Bill yawned. "I'll start calling clients."

He hung up and tried to focus his eyes on the bedside telephone directory and his mind on his business. He kept seeing Patty's angry pink face and angry brown eyes. Nikano, the aged Japanese who kept house for him, brought in black coffee without being told. Bill dialed the Rosemead Airport and told them to warm her up.

"Now, let's see; McQueen, McQueen."

The phone rang again. It was Jerry Rudd this time, and no way to start a day. Jerry was a millionaire perishable-crop and citrus-farm operator who rubbed Bill the wrong way. He lived in a hundred-thousand dollar house in Toluca Lake, less than a mile from Patty Vernier and her mother, in the San Fernando Valley. Unfortunately, his intentions were honorable. He wanted to take Patty—and her mother—on a honeymoon cruise through Panama to Florida and Havana on his three-hundred-thousand-dollar yacht.

It started when Patty said, "Mama's all in favor of it." Bill howled at this treachery because he had always been fair to Mrs. Vernier. One word led to another, and pretty soon Patty's eyes were snapping as she said, "Well, you certainly take a lot for granted, including me! Maybe I'd better think the whole thing over." She did not hand him his diamond, but she came close to it.

"Now what do you want?" Bill growled at the cause of his troubles.

Jerry laughed his infectious laugh. Even at four in the morning he was the personality kid, a dangerous adversary with or without money and a yacht.

"Just had a call about a detached cold mass from my man down at Newport," Jerry said. "He tells me that—"

"Your what down at where?" Bill interrupted, making him say it.

"The skipper of my boat. He tells me they're fogged in, and Pomona says you're already on notice. Peas, spinach, and citrus can all use—"

"Nothing doing!" Bill cut in. "You got the last one over there, and it's our turn out here. Besides, the State Highway Department is detouring twenty-five thousand cars a day through an unpaved stubble field on the Sepulveda tunnel near you."

"I've already put in a call for the governor on that," Jerry said serenely.

"Put in your call to the people driving those twenty-five thousand cars, Jerry. I don't want to make everybody sore at me, even if the governor is your pal. Now don't argue. Irrigate and be damned to you! I won't do it."

He took pleasure in hanging up. He called the operator and got two numbers at once, to settle it in one three-way conversation. Roy McQueen, at Duarte, headed the San Gabriel Valley Early Tomato Crop Association; Ollie Niehouse, at Azusa, the San Gabriel Grape Growers. They promised to check their executive committees and call him back.

He got their calls on his auto telephone en route to the airport. Go to it, they said. Some of the tomato men had already started to irrigate, but thousands of feet of precious water could still be saved.

His plane was already ticking away on the apron of the runway. It was an old but serviceable two-engine job. He loaded his six discharge ports with pellets of dry ice from the freezing cabinet, and it was exactly 4:36 when he took off and spiraled upward in a bad temper.

Usually he got a kick out of going up at this hour of the day and watching it make or break below him. At forty-five hundred feet he could see hints of sun through the light high haze to the east. Below him was only a dense gray blanket. Good stuff, but it gave him no pleasure. "No girl likes to be taken for granted." Ye gods, he only wanted to tell her he knew she wasn't the mercenary type, to be swept off her feet by ...

His phone buzzed two longs, a short, two longs. He lifted the instrument, switched the automatic pilot on for a tight circle, and leaned back against the cushions to muffle the engine roar.

"Lawson."

"Sid again. Where are you, Bill? Can't get anything informative from the ground because everything's fogged in. Keep me posted."

"Over Alhambra." Bill looked out of his window. "Too broad a movement for me to catch local shifts yet, but she's black and big, and looks sopping wet. I think I'll go out to sea and come in with it. How's it out Pomona way?"

"Clear as a bell. That's what worries me—nothing seems to be moving this way yet. Got one call that shows a possible wind shift up Whittier Narrows, but that's all. Bill, herd it this way."

"W'y shore!" Bill said.

He hung up, took the controls away from the automatic, and gunned southward. The misty gray blanket began to slope downward. He knew when he passed over. Los Angeles Harbor, at San Pedro, by instruments only. To mariners, this was fog. To real-estate salesmen, it was a "nice morning haze." To meteorologists, it was a detached cold mass. To Bill, it was a big batch of sopping-wet stuff that meant up to thirty-five hundred dollars in his kitty if it went where he wanted it to go and he got there at the same time.

At two hundred and ten miles an hour he went twenty miles to sea and suddenly saw the ocean below him. He called Sid.

"Completely detached from the Pacific bank and clear as a bell here. I'm coming in with it now and try to catch the local currents."

"Fine, fine!" said Sid, drawing new lines on his map.

It was three minutes after five when he crossed White's Point again. The blanket below him was more black than gray now, and Bill had seen enough like it to recognize its definite northward movement. The big mass of cold, moisture-laden marine air—a cloud on the ground—was pushing up against the mountains which ringed the coastal plain, seeking an outlet eastward to the desert.

Bill cut his engines and headed straight north toward downtown Los Angeles. His mind kept struggling with personal problems—Patty and her mother, Jerry Rudd and his yacht—but his eyes saw everything below him. The cold mass was more like a herd of sheep than anything else.

To his right, although he couldn't see it, lay Whittier Narrows, a defile through low hills, leading to Orange County. The contour of the surface had set up a slight draft through the Narrows, exactly like a chimney. Some of the cold mass was already splitting off, moving eastward. But not enough of it to worry him; he notified Sid, so Sid could notify precipitation fliers in Anaheim and Fullerton. He flew on.

Down under that gray blanket lay the most heavily populated districts of Los Angeles County, and ahead lay the mountains. It was like flying toward a tall, arc-shaped fence with three gates in it. The left one was Cahuenga Pass, connecting Hollywood with the San Fernando Valley. Straight ahead was Arroyo Seco, leading to Pasadena and the foothill communities. To the right was Coyote Pass, opening into the San Gabriel Valley.

If the sheep didn't take the right-hand gate, all this precious, black, sopping-wet stuff—millions of gallons of water—would be wasted. The cold mass would be warmed by the sun and lose its density. It would pour out over the desert beyond the mountains and, diluted by hot, dry, desert air, lose its identity as a rain mass altogether.

Let's see what she looks like over Cahuenga, he murmured to himself. Cahuenga was the deepest pass in the highest part of the mountain barrier. He swung left.

His plane pitched as he crossed Cahuenga at low level. It stopped pitching and he knew he was over Studio City and Toluca Lake, the first of the San Fernando Valley communities. Down there, Patty was sleeping peacefully. Down there, Jerry Rudd was sitting at his telephone, calling his yacht skipper for news, his farm managers to give them orders, the governor for permission to soak a high-priced State Highway Department job.

Why did he keep thinking of Patty? "Of course a girl is flattered to be asked to honeymoon on a yacht. You just don't understand, Bill." Had he been too brusque? He was sure in his own mind that Jerry was crazy about Pat chiefly because she was the one thing his money couldn't buy—so far. Maybe he hadn't been very tactful . . .

Thinking of her, so close down there, made him miserable. He grabbed for the phone before he could change his mind, and asked for her number. Mrs. Vernier answered, a little shortly. He didn't exactly blame her for preferring a millionaire as a son-in-law. He just wished she would keep her nose out of his business.

"She's asleep and I don't like to call her—not after you kept her out so late," Mrs. Vernier said firmly. "This is my wash day and Heaven knows I've got plenty to do, but if you insist—

He insisted, and in a few minutes he heard Patty's sleepy voice. "Bill! What's the matter? Where in the world are you?"

Her voice faded as he went away from one telephone relay station. It came in clearly as he approached another.

"Right now," he said, "I'm making a portside swing over Northridge." She didn't say anything, and he felt ashamed for having wakened her at this hour. "I just called to apologize."

"For what?" she said coolly, after a slight hesitation.

"For whatever I did that was wrong. For thinking one way and talking another, baby. I'm a slob, but I thought I'd feel better if I told you I was sorry. Now go back to sleep."

"Bill! Is that all you called me for?"

"That's all," he said bleakly.

"You'd better go home and get some more sleep yourself. You sound lightheaded."

"You can say that again, honey. Good-by."

He hung up. Well, he hadn't done any good, apparently, but he did feel better. It was up to her now.

The phone rang again. It was Roy McQueen, at Duarte, in a bad mood.

"What's the matter with you, Bill? The sun came up bright as a dollar here this morning. Gonna be hot as blazes. I had three calls already, should they turn water into the ditches. I thought you said you had a cold mass over us."

"Not over you yet, Roy. Hold on a minute and let's look." He turned southward again, running up a phone bill while McQueen, down there in Duarte, breathed impatiently into his ear. Halfway to the harbor, he turned and came back again. Now he could see a strong, definite movement through Cahuenga, light stirrings up the Arroyo Seco and Coyote Pass. Arroyo Seco didn't worry him, but Cahuenga did. "Don't be in too big a hurry about irrigating, Roy," he said. "Give me another hour."

"If we burn up," McQueen threatened, "I'll levy on your bond, so help me!"

"You won't burn up," Bill comforted him, against his own dismal better judgment. "She's all over Alhambra, Monterey Park, Temple City, part of Arcadia. It'll get to you pretty quick."

But after Roy hung up, he turned back over Hollywood and shook his head. The shift was definitely through Cahuenga now. Should he try to stop it or should he peddle it to Rudd and his peas and spinach and citrus people? The San Gabriel folks had this one coming, and Bill wanted them to have it. But maybe it wasn't going to move out through Coyote Pass at all. Maybe it would be a lot better to let the San Fernando Valley have it, rather than take a chance on losing the whole mass.

He decided to settle it on a personal basis, rather than on its merits. Nuts to Jerry Rudd! He felt better than ever, now that he had ignobly given in to his own worst nature.

"I'm going to try to set up local precipitation in Cahuenga and establish an inert cold front there that will stop the flow through the pass," he told Sid Beck. "Get hold of your ground contacts there and let me know what I'm doing. Coming in now."

He went out over the San Fernando Valley and came back in over Cahuenga Pass, tripping the trigger on his No. 1 magazine as he felt the air over the pass go bumpy under him. Carbon dioxide exhausted by the pellets themselves had built up a heavy pressure in the magazine. Two shots did it. He heard them hissing through the discharge ports and peeled off just as Mount Hollywood's ugly crown loomed in his face. He went over Hollywood on his side, straightened out and spiraled upward to watch. There was a turbulence down there now, where the pass was supposed to be, instead of a smooth, swift flow.

Sid Beck called him. "Got symptoms of a good job. Raining like the dickens over Hollywood Bowl and a nice shower as far as Lockheed Airport," Sid reported. "How's she look from up there?"

"Well," Bill said dubiously, "she slowed down through Cahuenga and I think it's moving a little stronger up Arroyo Seco, but nothing doing in Coyote Pass yet. Still clear in Pomona?"

"Still clear."

"All I can do is wait and watch now."

The mass was exactly like a herd of sheep. He had clubbed a few of them in the head as they tried to stream through Cahuenga. They were milling around down there now, wishing they could get out, but lacking sense enough to head for the other gates. A small hole in the mass appeared just beyond Cahuenga. He could see parts of Griffith Park clearly.

This was the gate he had closed, the barrier he had set up. His dry-ice pellets had condensed the moisture there, exactly as cold sweat collects on a water jug on a hot day. Rain had fallen in an area not more than a mile square. The cold mass not only wasn't cold in that spot any more, it wasn't even a mass. The even flow, the draft of the Cahuenga flue, the pell-mell sheep surge through the gate had been disrupted.

Sometimes a man could do it and sometimes he couldn't. Bill circled over downtown Los Angeles. That was good stuff down there, sopping wet, blacker than ever, now that it was being jammed up against the mountain barrier. Wind seemed to have shifted from the south, perhaps a point or two to the southwest.

He called Sid again. "Anything from ground contacts?"

"Windsock at Lockheed turned the circle, but all they got was a shower. How's it look up there? I had a call from McQueen, Bill. They're getting a little haze at Duarte, but he's anxious."

"I'll try it again, Sid," Bill decided, watching the hole over Griffith Park close up again. "She's starting to flow through Cahuenga again, dammit."

"Put a string on it and lead it this way."

He went out over the San Fernando Valley and came in over the pass again, tripping his No. 2 magazine, higher in the pass this time. The vents were still hissing pellets as he roared over Hollywood. He took his finger off the button and went up and laughed to watch it boil down there.

Men had been using Cahuenga Pass for more than a hundred years. Not more than five or six times had it rained hard there in the arid month of June. In less than twenty minutes he had made it rain hard twice. Hollywood was getting a good soaking; he didn't need Sid's call to tell him that.

For a minute or two he forgot all about Patty. Sometimes a man could set up his own local cold front, and sometimes he couldn't. A man could, this morning. Cahuenga was closed, for all practical purposes.

"Sid! Got a good, strong movement through Coyote now," he said jubilantly. "For gosh sakes, keep me posted. Sun's up and the glare makes everything look alike. Heading out your way and may make my pass coming in."

He couldn't see Duarte and Puente as he roared up the San Gabriel Valley, but Pomona had only a light veil and Fontana and Claremont were fairly clear. He went up to six thousand feet and lurked there twenty minutes, with the automatic pilot taking him in a wide circle, with the telephone clamped to his ear.

Sid gave him the ground-contact reports as they came in, as fast as his telephone operator could handle them, "Solid over Arcadia, got that high-density look. San Dimas solid. Covina solid. Not so hot at Spadra—sun can make a shadow there. Coyote Pass, seven-and-three-tenths-mile wind. Still blocked in Cahuenga, but Lockheed windsock shifted again and maybe flow is about to resume. Solid over Spadra now—guess it was a pocket. Solid where Base Line Avenue branches off Foothill Boulevard. Bill, she's good all the way out here. You know as much about it as I do now."

"I'm going in," Bill said. "Check me." He started down the north side of the valley, along the San Gabriel and Sierra Madre mountains, at exactly 6:34, tripping his No. 1 and 2 magazines to clean them out, hitting No. 3 when he ran out.

The air went bumpy and he knew he was over San Marino. He went up, circling Pasadena without seeding the black mass there, because they didn't want rain. He could still see a turbulence over Cahuenga, but the flow had resumed again.

It didn't matter now, though. The rest of it could go out over San Fernando Valley, and welcome to it! He turned back and tripped his No. 4 trigger over Alhambra. The magazine emptied as he crossed Pomona. He turned toward Los Angeles again and swept the south side of the valley with No. 5, and as his pellets ran out over Coyote Pass, he began to get ground-contact effect reports from Sid.

"Santa Fe dam, nice shower and still coming. Stiff, cold wind. At-a-boy, Bill! Them's symptoms what are symptoms! El Monte airport, soaked. Pomona College, three sixteenths of an inch already, no anemometer reading, but it looks like about six miles an hour out of my window. Puddingstone reservoir, soaked. Arrow Highway at Sierra Way, good shower still going. Fontana, Federal rabbit-husbandry experiment station, nice soaking. Alhambra, corner Garfield and Mission and corner Atlantic and Main, soaked. The west end of the valley got most of it, but us hicks seem to be getting plenty too."

Bill was suddenly tired. Herding the wind, milking the clouds, gave him as much of a kick as it had when he was eight years old and watched a little cub try the fantastic trick over a grass fire. But when it was over, it was over. He had had twenty minutes sleep after a quarrel with his girl.

"Why did I bother to apologize?" he grumbled to himself. "A man only makes a fool of himself when he does that."

He was over Rosemead Airport, but his own rain was still raining there and it was an excuse for not going in. He crossed Los Angeles and Hollywood and Cahuenga Pass, and gave Sid his last observations. Not that he had to, but he liked to do his share in filling out Sid's maps. The fact that his sweep brought him over Patty Vernier's house was strictly coincidence.

A lot of good stuff had collected over the San Fernando Valley—not heavily, but in patches, thanks to those two disturbing cold barriers he had precipitated. Studio City, where Patty lived, was obscured. On impulse, he slanted down and crossed her house at three hundred feet, both engines roaring.

At this level, he could see clearly. There was Jerry Rudd's big red convertible, parked familiarly in the driveway. There was Mrs. Vernier, hanging out her washing, and Jerry was helping her. Jerry was very democratic at all times, of course. What fun a millionaire had, helping his inferiors with their chores! Bill gritted his teeth.

"Me," he said, "up here working my head off, and him down there in white flannels, hanging up the old lady's lace tablecloth. Any time I ever tell a girl I'm sorry again, I hope I—"

His phone buzzed his signal. He jerked it off the hook and yelled, "Hello!" He expected Roy McQueen, but it was Patty.

"Bill, you fool! Is that you buzzing the house? My gosh, if Jerry reports you and you lose your license—"

"This is a precipitation plane," he cut in, "and I've got a right to take observations where I please, honey. Quite a clubby little scene in the back yard! I see you're wide awake enough now with that jerk out there helping with the laundry."

"Why, Bill!" she caroled. "I believe you're jealous!"

"You're cockeyed right I am. I always treated your old lady square and I always gave Jerry a break, and this is what I get."

"Bill," she said firmly, "I'd like to tease you some more, but you said you were sorry and I'm just as good a man as you are, any day. I already told Jerry he could jump in the lake. The reason I'm awake is that I couldn't go back to sleep after you called. That was nice of you, Bill. Little things like that are what mean so much to a woman. If you—Where are you, Bill?"

"Right here. Got too far away from relay. You mean that, honey?"

"I sure do mean that, honey!"

"Mama can't influence you?"

"Well," Patty said, "she never could, very much."

He was at twenty-four hundred feet now, looking down at a medium-to-thick concentration that reached from Studio City to Van Nuys.

"Look, honey," he said, "I've got to start getting along with your mother again sometime, but she can use a little lesson. Do me a favor. Tell Jerry I'm going to take care of his peas and spinach and citrus, will you?"

He heard her call Jerry, but he hung up before Jerry could get to the phone. The deal was made. Jerry had already told him he wanted moisture, and he'd have to pay for what he got. The courts had said so.

He went back to Van Nuys, turned, and tripped the trigger of his last magazine as he crossed the valley toward Cahuenga Pass, slowly. He went up and stayed there awhile, chuckling and ignoring the frantic buzzing of his phone. Patty had a sense of humor. Patty would see the joke. Patty was on his side again! He felt good. He'd get some sleep and call her later in the day, and they'd laugh together over how it looked from down there.

From up here, it looked good. He had hit it hard, and what moisture there was in the formation came down hard and sudden. It cleared up enough, in ten minutes, for him to see plainly through his binoculars.

That was Mrs. Vernier, in person, galloping toward the house with the last of her starched white linens, getting them in, of course, just as the rain stopped. She'd have to starch them again—perhaps even wash them again. He hoped.

That was Jerry Rudd, in sodden white flannels, letting Mrs. Vernier rescue her own wash, while he set a new record getting the top up on his convertible. He was quite a boy at hanging out laundry, but not so good at getting it in. Bill might have some explaining to do to Mrs. Vernier, but so would Jerry. After all, he ordered the precipitation!

He saw someone come to the front porch, where Mrs. Vernier and Jerry couldn't see. It was a smallish figure in a pinkish chenille robe, and its hands were locked over its head in the prize-fighter's victory gesture.

Bill rocked his wings to show her he saw her. Then, yawning and smiling, he headed back to Rosemead Airport and put her down. It was just 7:42 when he cut the engines and climbed out in front of his own hangar. He had a feeling it had been a nice day's work.