Chapter 3
Brian and Carl left the bicycles where they’d rented them and started back on foot to the Research East building. The crowds in the doorways watched them in blank or speculative silence, and once they were stopped by men anxious for news—any news—who listened avidly as Brian and Carl told of cars stalled far up the highway.
At the Research East entrance, the gate was shut, with an ominous black cable looped and coiled inside, and a sign, “Danger—High Voltage,” warning off people who might drift in and cause trouble later on.
Smitty, his black hair combed straight back as usual, opened the gate for them and grinned. “Maybe we can’t do anything else with electricity, but it’ll still scare people. Go right up, the chief’s waiting for you.”
Wearily they climbed the four flights of steps to the top floor, and the last flight of steps seemed as long as the other three put together.
“All it used to take,” said Carl wonderingly, “was to push a button.”
“That was just this morning.”
“It seems like years ago—in another world.”
Brian said, “Maybe Maclane and Donovan have figured something out.”
“Maybe. But taking electricity away from civilization is like taking the framework out of a building. You have to find a substitute awful fast or the whole thing will collapse on top of you, and that’s the end of that.”
They shoved open the doors at the head of the stairs, walked into the corridor, and a few moments later were staggered to see the piles of rifles, shotguns, ammunition in boxes and bandoliers, hunting knives, knapsacks, pack baskets, skis, snowshoes, heavy blankets, axes, canteens, ponchos, coils of rope, gasoline lanterns, kerosene lanterns, cans of meat, heavy paper sacks of flour and sugar, a stack of cigar boxes and cigarette cartons, gasoline and kerosene cans in a long row against the wall, a box two feet deep and about three feet long containing nothing but gloves and mittens in assorted sizes, another containing heavy socks.
Brian and Carl looked at the supplies and whistled.
“Looks like the chief plans on clearing out.”
The sound of many voices came, slightly muffled, from the office ahead.
They knocked and Cardan’s voice called, “Come in.”
They pushed open the door of the office. Cardan sat at his desk, a smoldering cigar jutting from one corner of his mouth, a .45 Colt automatic flat on the desk beside him. Maclane was standing in front of the desk, and Donovan was at a table to one side, using a hydrometer to test several six-volt and twelve-volt batteries sitting on the table. Donovan looked up as Carl and Brian came in, Maclane kept talking, and Cardan nodded abstractedly.
Maclane was saying, “Batteries, magnetos and generators just don’t work, that’s all. The only kind of electricity left, so far as I can see, is static electricity. You can still take a glass rod, rub it with a cloth, touch two pith balls hung close by on threads, and they’ll spring apart. But try to pass a current through a wire, and you get nowhere.”
“Take a look at this,” suggested Donovan. He was using the hydrometer on one of the cells of a six-volt battery. The fluid from this battery tested out as “fully charged.”
“Almost thirteen hundred,” said Donovan. “But now look.”
He took a flat metal bar, laid it across the clean shiny terminals of the battery—and nothing happened.
“It’s not a question of the charge leaking away, after all. If it were, that battery would be dead,” mused Brian.
Carl agreed, staring at the battery, then looking at the hydrometer. “Mind if I try that?”
“Go ahead.”
Carl repeated Donovan’s procedure and got the same result.
Maclane was saying, “. . . no conduction. The trouble seems to be that, for some reason, the electrons are more firmly bound to the metal atoms, so the ‘electron gas’ that ordinarily carries an electric current in a wire just doesn’t exist any more. Or, perhaps, it exists but it’s nowhere near as free-moving as it used to be. It’s as if that damned Helmand lab sent out a signal that threw a switch inside the atoms—made a minute rearrangement of some kind.”
There was a knock at the door. Cardan called “Come in,” and Anne Cermak, wearing a light-gray lab coat, stepped into the room. Brian crossed to her immediately and she welcomed him with a smile.
Carl looked up from the battery, saw Brian and Anne talking, and he studied Brian intently for a moment, his eyes lit with a pale glow. Abruptly, he blanked his face and looked back at the battery.
Brian was conscious only of Anne, whose smile faded as she asked, “Is it bad out there?”
“Not yet,” said Brian. “But it’s getting bad.” He realized why she was worried, and said, “Anne, I’ll try to get out to see your father after we’re through here.”
She started to speak but was interrupted by Cardan. “How did things turn out? Notice any changes in chemical tests or reactions?”
“No,” said Anne, “everything seemed the same. Except—sometimes the color of a reagent seemed slightly different. But it could have been the lack of electric light in the lab.”
“But the reactions themselves seemed the same?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you hadn’t been particularly watching for differences, would you have noticed any?”
Anne thought a moment. “No, I don’t think I would have.”
Cardan turned to Brian. “What’s it like out there?”
“Getting bad,” said Brian. He described much of what they’d seen. He told of the silent, waiting groups, the ominous quiet of the city, and the growing tension. “It looks like a powder keg waiting for a match.”
“That’s the same impression we’ve had,” Cardan said, “even though we’ve stayed fairly close. Any sign of electricity?”
“None that we could see.” Brian described the firemen headed for the fire, on foot. “And as far as we could see from North Hill, no cars were moving.”
Carl cut in. “There was a diesel truck moving.”
Cardan looked at the smoking tip of his cigar, and there was a moment’s silence which contained a distinct suggestion of a rebuff. Carl drew his breath in as if to speak, then hesitated.
“Where was this?” Cardan wanted to know.
“On the highway.” Carl described it in careful and accurate detail.
Brian, listening closely, remembered that he, Brian, had seen this truck after Carl had insisted that they might as well go back, and that there was nothing more to be seen. Brian now listened to Carl describe it very much as if he, Carl, had been the only one to see the truck.
Cardan and the others were listening intently. Maclane looked interested, and Donovan seemed a little excited. Cardan’s face remained expressionless.
“So,” Carl concluded, “it seems clear that diesel engines are all right while they’re running, but I imagine if once they stop, then the electric starting motor won’t work.”
Maclane straightened up and glanced at Donovan with a faint grin.
Donovan said, “That could be the answer. Rig the engine to start on compressed air.”
Cardan’s face was still expressionless. Carl cleared his throat, but didn’t speak. Cardan looked at Carl, a thin wisp of smoke drifting from the cigar he held in one hand.
“Did you see anything else that moved?” There was a faint emphasis on the word “you.”
Carl stammered a little as he said, “N-no. We did see a diesel locomotive, but it was stopped.”
“What,” said Cardan, “did you decide was the reason for that?” Again there was the faintest emphasis on the word “you.”
Carl said, “I—we thought it was because the generators and electric driving motors wouldn’t work.”
Brian suppressed a grin. Carl had taken credit that belonged to Brian, and now, to avoid looking egotistical, Carl was forced to give up credit that really was his own. Brian had forgotten the quickness with which Cardan detected any false note in a man’s report.
Cardan had turned to Maclane and Donovan. “Can we fix diesel trucks to start on air?”
“Be a problem,” said Donovan. “For one thing, because of the lack of electric power tools. But we’ve got that portable steam turbine Hooper dreamed up, along with fourteen different sizes of the same thing. Some of them run on LP gas. You remember, Chief, we were trying to sell them as self-powered tools for use away from power lines, up on roofs and so on? And when we had a manufacturer lined up, the mechanic demonstrating the thing got it set up wrong, almost burned his arm off, and before we could get that mess straightened out, self-contained battery-operated tools were on the market.”
“The main trouble,” said Cardan, “was that the things were bulky.”
“That doesn’t matter now. And then there’s that shuttle-hammer gimmick he worked out, with the little self-contained, reciprocating steam-engine and all the attachments.”
Maclane grinned. “That one will really keep your hands warm in cold weather. If it doesn’t shake your arm off first.”
“Who cares?” said Donovan. “They work.”
Cardan blew out a cloud of smoke, smiled, and said, “Steam engines and diesels started by compressed air. Will that do it?”
“Ought to,” said Donovan.
“And,” said Cardan, “oil and gasoline mantle-lanterns for light?”
Maclane said, “They give a light that can compete for brightness with electricity. But those mantles are fragile. We’d better be sure we’ve got plenty of spares.”
Cardan nodded in agreement, studied the glowing tip of his cigar for a moment, blew out a cloud of smoke, and said, “Good. Now the question is, what do we do? Do we stick around here or do we clear out now?”
“Wait maybe three days,” Donovan said, “and this town is going to blow wide-open. Transportation, power and light are gone. To a large extent, heat is knocked out. All of a sudden we’ve got less capability for actual work and haulage than they had in seventeen-sixty, because then, at least, they had horses and oxen. With this new setup, all of a sudden we just aren’t in any shape to care for anywhere near the number of people that are going to have to be cared for. It’s going to be every man for himself. And there are a lot of people in this part of the country.”
“Don’s right,” Maclane agreed. “If we could do any good by staying here, we should stay. But this thing is too big. This isn’t a question of a man putting his finger in a hole in the dike and keeping out the flood. It’s a question of the whole dike collapsing at once. Anything we might do wouldn’t have time to have any effect. We’d just be drowned.”
Donovan said, “Let’s head for Montana, Chief. That’s less-settled country; they’re used to rough conditions there, and we’ve got our test site there—plenty of buildings and equipment.”
Cardan glanced questioningly at Brian and Carl. Brian said, “It’s a long trip, but that diesel truck we saw did get through. The only thing is, what if, at some section of the road, there was a traffic jam at the time the cars’ ignition systems were knocked out?”
“So that,” said Cardan, “there is, for instance, one solid mass of cars half a mile long?”
“Yes,” said Brian. “Then what do we do?”
Donovan said, “We’ll either have to drag them out of the way, or shove them off the road. If we can’t get by on the mall or shoulder. We’ll want to travel on superhighways, away from the cities, as far as possible.”
Maclane said, “It’s better than staying here and winding up in a siege.”
There was a knock at the door and one of the men from a lab downstairs, his face cut and bleeding, was in the doorway with half a dozen others setting down cartons outside.
“I thought you’d want to know, Chief. They’re getting into an ugly mood out there. The idea got around that the electric company is behind all this. It seems they put in an atomic reactor, and it shorted out all the electricity somehow. Everybody went to his car, because the reactor was going to be fixed, and then the cars would start. When it didn’t happen, the frustration was too much for some of those guys. They’re out there smashing windows and threatening to beat in the brains of anybody in reach. Meanwhile, there’s a kind of migration going on—people trying to get home on foot in different directions. Naturally, after they get shoved around a few times by these soreheads, they’re in no mood to be even so much as sneezed at the next time. You can still get through out there, but you’ve got to keep your eyes open.”
“There’s another thing to think of,” Cardan said. “Did you ever read that story about the lady and the tiger?”
“What do you mean, Chief?”
“A man is taken prisoner and put in an arena that has two doors. If he opens one door, a beautiful woman will be waiting inside. If he opens the other, a hungry tiger will rip him to shreds. He doesn’t know which door has the tiger behind it, but he’s got to open one of the doors.”
“How does that apply to us?”
“For all we know,” said Cardan, “the electricity may come back on again.”
“In which case,” said Maclane, “if we’ve done anything really effective to take care of ourselves—”
Donovan finished it for him. “We’ll appear to be selfish criminals.”
Cardan said, “How are we going to get these diesel trucks? If the phones worked, we could try making arrangements that way. But they don’t work. To find someone who can sell them to us is going to take time.”
“Sure,” said Maclane, “and if we pussyfoot around trying to do everything strictly according to the rules, we’ll never get done. And if the current doesn’t come back on, we’ll get swallowed up in the chaos that follows. That isn’t going to help anybody.”
“And aren’t we pretty damn certain the current isn’t coming back on?” Cardan inquired.
“It certainly looks that way to me,” Carl said.
“Okay,” Cardan said, “here’s what we do. On the other end of this block there’s a parking lot that belongs to a large trucking company. They use quite a few diesels. If we knock out the fences between here and there, we can bring those diesels in here without going into the street. First, we must get something that will supply the power to start the engines. Second, we have got to do everything possible to make this legal, and to give the trucking company a fair deal. Third, we’ve got to be sure we keep a good grip on this building till we’ve got the trucks equipped, loaded and ready to leave. Fourth, then we can start out, taking a route that will let us pick up the families of our own people. That means they’re going to have to be notified in advance, and told where to be when we pick them up. Don, ask Miss Bowen if there isn’t a map of the city in the files.”
Donovan was back in a few minutes, the two men spread the map on the desk, and Cardan said, “Railroad Avenue is wide, and there’s not too much traffic on it. Fourteenth Street runs out here through the southwest part of town. Suppose we have our people from that part of town at the intersection of Fourteenth and Railroad Ave?” The two men discussed details.
“Are you prepared to risk your necks again this afternoon?” Cardan asked.
“Yes,” said Brian.
“Sure,” said Carl.
“We’ll have Miss Bowen make a list of the addresses of the families that live in the southwest part of town. While she’s doing that, we’ll canvass the men to make sure they go along with the idea. You go out and tell the people to be at the intersection of Fourteenth and Railroad Avenue at three in the morning.”
“Three in the morning,” Brian repeated.
“Right,” said Cardan, getting up. “By that time we should be ready, and I hope the mobs will have worn themselves out and be sleeping it off. Now Miss Bowen will get you that list.”
***
Half an hour later, Brian and Carl found themselves on bicycles, riding through a part of town that had been filled with people earlier, but was deserted now. The windows of the cars in the streets were smashed, and a man was lying against the base of a fence, either dead or unconscious. Carl and Brian were both quiet, thinking of the bicycle shop, where they’d found the windows smashed, the bicycles gone, and the owner on a cot in a back room, blood seeping from under a bandage on his head, a .32 revolver in his hand as he lay facing the door.
“Ah,” he’d murmured, smiling faintly as Carl came in. “For you, I have a bicycle.” He felt in his pockets and pulled out a key. “Here, open up that closet. They cleaned me out, but already I had put away those bikes.” He’d explained to the dumbfounded Carl how the mob had burst in, shoving and fighting, and flattened him when he’d tried to stop them. But, having thought there might be a heavy demand for bicycles, new or used, when people realized there was no other reasonably quick way to get around, he had already put the battered bicycles Carl and Brian had rented out of sight.
“Big civilized men we are,” he’d said sarcastically. “The first time the juice goes off, we have a riot. You give us a week like this and we’ll be eating rats and mice and smashing each other’s heads in for a can of soup.”
“Listen,” said Carl, “are you hurt bad?”
“I’ll be all right. It’s just a smack on the head. But it makes me mad. This civilization we got is like a set of stilts. We think we’re high up, big men, but it’s only the stilts, not us. As soon as one of them catches in a hole, over we go, and when we get up, we’re just little men. It’s only the stilts that were big . . .”
They had left the old man, still grumbling his disappointment in people, and pedaled briskly toward Anne’s father’s place, but when they got there he was nowhere to be seen. They called, but the house was empty. Brian finally turned to go, then suggested leaving a note.
“Wait,” said Carl, as they stood in the kitchen, where the only sound was the tick of a kitchen clock. “Listen, I thought I heard somebody moving downstairs.”
Brian opened the cellar door, looked down into the darkness, and felt a chill premonition.
He called. “Mr. Cermak?”
Behind him, there was the soft scuff of Carl’s foot on the kitchen floor.
The back of Brian’s head seemed to explode in a burst of lights.