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Immediately preceding Nim was Lunch Break's own "House Doctor."

"He's on every day and has a tremendous following," the program assistant

confided in a whisper. "People tune in especially, which is why, when you

follow him, they'll be listening to you."

The doctor, in his fifties, graying and distinguished, was a solid per-

former who knew every trick in television's manual, including how to smile

disarmingly, when to act the fatherly physician, and at what point to use

a simplistic diagram of a stomach. "My subject today," be informed his

unseen audience, "is constipation."

Nim watched and listened, fascinated.

11. . . Many people worry needlessly. What not to do is take laxatives.

Millions of dollars' worth are sold each year-a waste; many are damaging to

your health . . . Most constipation is 'imagined.' A daily bowel movement

can be a needless fetish . . . Let your natural cycle have its way. For

some, five to seven days without is normal. Be patient, wait . . . A real

problem: Some folks don't beed the call of nature immediately. They're

busy, they postpone. That's bad. The bowel gets discouraged, tired of

trying . . . Eat high roughage food, drink lots of water to stay moist . .

."

Van Buren leaned across. "Oh God, Nim! I'm sorry."

He assured her softly, "Don't be. Wouldn't have missed it. I only hope I'm

not an anticlimax."

The doctor was faded out, a commercial in. The program assistant took

Nini's arm. "You're on, Mr. Goldman." She escorted him to the center of the

set, where he was seated.

While the commercial continued, Nim and the interviewers shook

hands. Jerry, frowning,- cautioned him 1- -'t

I vv c re running late. Don i

have

much time, so keep your answers short." He accepted a sheet of notes

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from a stagehand, then, as if a switch had been snapped, his smile went on

and he turned toward a camera.

"Our last guest today knows a great deal about electricity and oil. He is

.

After the introduction, jean asked Nim brightly, "Are we really going to

have electricity cuts, or is it just another scare, something which in the

end Nvon't happen?"

"It's no scare, and it will happen." (You want short answers, Nim thought;

so, okay.)

Jerry was consulting the sheet be bad been given. "About that alleged oil

shortage . . ."

Nim cut in quickly. "It is not alleged."

The interviewer's smile widened. "We'll let you get away with that one." He

went back to his notes. "Anyway, haven't we had a glut of oil recently in

California-oil coming in from Alaska, from the pipeline?"

"There have been some temporary local surpluses," Nim agreed. "But now,

with the rest of the country desperately in need of oil, any extra will

disappear fast."

"It seems selfish," jean said, "but can't we keep that Alaska oil in

California?"

"No." Nim shook his head. "The federal government controls it, and already

has an allocation program. Every state, every city in the country, is

pressuring Washington, demanding a share. There won't be much for anyone

when the available domestic oil is spread around."

"I understand," Jerry said, referring to his notes once more, "that Golden

State Power has a thirty-day supply of oil. That doesn't sound too bad."

"The figure is true in one sense," Nim acknowledged, "but misleading in

another. For one thing, it's impossible to use oil down to the bottoin of

every tank. For another, the oil isn't always where it's needed most; one

generating plant may be without oil, another have enough in storage for

several days, and the facilities to move big quantities of oil around are

limited. For both reasons, twenty-five days is more realistic."

"Well," Jerry said, "let's hope everything is back to normal before those

days run out."

Nim told him, "There's not the slightest chance of that. Even if agreement

is reached with the OPEC oil nations, it will take . . ."

"Excuse me," jean said, "but we're short of time and I have another

question, Mr. Goldman. Couldn't your company have foreseen what has

happened about oil and made other plans?"

The effrontery, the injustice, the incredible nalvety of the question

astounded Nim. Then anger rose. Subduing it, he answered, "Golden State

Power & Light has been attempting to do precisely that for at least ten

years. But everything our company proposed-nuclear plants,

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geothermal, pumped storage, coal burning-bas been opposed, delayed or

thwarted by - . ."

"I'm truly sorry," Jerry interrupted, "but we just ran out of time. Thank

you, Mr. Goldman, for being with us." He addressed a zooming lens. "Among

the interesting guests on Lunch Break tomorrow will be an Indian swami

and . . ."

On their way out of the TV station building, Teresa Van Buren said

dispiritedly to Nim, "Even now, no one believes us, do they?"

"They'll believe soon enough," Nim said. "When they all keep flipping

switches and nothing happens."

While preparations for widespread blackouts went ahead, and a sense of

crisis pervaded GSP & L, incongruities persisted.

One was the Energy Commission hearings on Tunipah which continued,

unchanged, at their original maddening pace.

"A stranger from Mars, using commonsense," Oscar O'Brien observed during

lunch with Nim and Eric Humphrey, "would assume, in view of our present

power emergency, that licensing procedures for projects like Tunipah,

Fincastle, and Devil's Gate would move faster. Well, Mr. Commonsense Mars

would be dead wrong."

The general counsel moodily ate some of his lunch, then continued, "When

you're in there at those hearings, listening to testimony and the same

old rehashed arguments about procedure, you'd think no one knows or cares

what's going on in the real world outside. Oh, by the way, we have a new

group fighting us on Tunipah. They call themselves CANED, which, if I

remember it right, means Crusaders Against Needless Energy Development.

And compared with CANED's accusations about Golden State Power & Light,

Davey Birdsong was a friend and ally."

"Opposition is a hydra-headed monster," Eric Humphrey mused, then added,

"The Governor's support of Tunipah seems to have made little, if any,

difference."

"That's because bureaucracy is stronger than governors, presidents, or

any of us," O'Brien said. "Fighting bureaucracy nowadays is like wres-

tling a sea of mud while you're in it up to your armpits. I'll make a

prediction: When the blackouts hit the Energy Commission building, the

hearings on Tunipah will continue by candlelight-with nothing else

changed."

As to the Fincastle geothermal, and Devil's Gate pumped storage plant

proposals, the general counsel reported that dates to begin public

hearings had still bad not been set by the responsible state agencies.

Oscar O'Brien's general disenchantment, as well as Nim's, extended to the

bogus Consumer Survey distributed in the city's North Castle district.

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It was almost three weeks since the carefully planned questionnaire had

gone out and it now appeared as if the attempt to entrap the terrorist

leader, Georgos Archambault, had been abortive, a waste of time and

money.

Within a few days after the bulk mailing, hundreds of replies poured in,

and continued to do so through the following weeks. A large basement room

at GSP & L headquarters was set aside to deal with the influx and a staff

of eight clerks installed there. Six were borrowed from various

departments, the other two recruited from the District Attorney's office.

Between them, they painstakingly examined every completed questionnaire.

Ile D.A.'s office also sent photographic blowups of handwriting samples

from Georgos Archambault's journal, and the clerks worked with these in

view. To guard against error, each questionnaire was examined separately

by three people. The result was definite: Nothing bad come in which

matched the handwriting samples.

Now, the special staff was down to two, the remainder having returned to

their regular duties. A few replies were still trickling in and being

routinely examined. But it seemed unlikely, at this stage, that Georgos

Archambault would be heard from.

To Nim, in any case, the project bad become a lot less important than the

critical oil supply problem which occupied his working days and nights.

It was during a late evening work session about oil-a meeting in Nim's

office with the company's Director of Fuel Supply, the Chief of Load

Forecasting and two other department beads-that be received a telephone

call having nothing to do with the subject under discussion, but which

disturbed him greatly.

Victoria Davis, Nim's secretary, was also working late and buzzed from

outside while the meeting was in progress.

Annoyed at the interruption, Nim picked up the telephone and answered

curtly, "Yes?"

"Miss Karen Sloan is calling on line one," Vicki informed him. "I

wouldn't have disturbed you, but she insisted it was important."

"Tell her . . ." Nim was about to say he would return the call later, or

in the morning, then changed his mind. "Okay, I'll take it."

With an "Excuse me" to the others, he depressed a lighted button on the

telephone. "Hello, Karen."

"Nimrod," Karen said without preliminaries, her voice sounding strained,

"my father is in serious trouble. I'm calling to see if you can help."

"What kind of trouble?" Nim remembered that the night be and Karen went

to the symphony she had said much the same thing, but without being

specific.

"I made my mother tell me. Daddy wouldn't." Karen stopped; he

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sensed she was making an effort to regain composure, Then she went on, "You

know that my father has a small plumbing business."

"Yes." Nim recalled that Luther Sloan had talked about his business the day

they all met in Karen's apartment. It was the day on which both parents

later confided in Nim their burden of guilt about their quadriplegic

daughter.

"AA1*ell," Karen said, "Daddy has been questioned several times by people

from your company, Nimrod, and now by police detectives."

"Questioned about what?"

Again Karen hesitated before answering. "According to Mother, Daddy has

been doing quite a lot of subcontracting for a company called Quayle

Electrical and Gas. The work was on gas lines, something to do with lines

going to meters."

Nim told her, "Tell me that company's name again."

"It's I Quayle.' Does that mean something to you?"

"Yes, it means something," Nim said slowly as he thought: It looked, almost

certainly, as if Luther Sloan was into theft of gas. Though Karen didn't

know it, her phrase "lines going to meters" was a giveaway. That and the

reference to Quayle Electrical and Gas CoDtracting, the big-scale power

thieves already exposed and still being iDvestigated by Harry London. What

was it Harry reported only recently? "There's a bunch of new cases, as well