Triumph (20 page)

One afternoon-for the group still meticulously kept track of the outside time, although it would have been impossible, lacking clocks and chronometers, to tell one hour from another in the labyrinth--Vance Farr walked into the machine shop where Ben and George were hard at work, assisted by a very grease-blackened and very concentrated Lodi Li, operating an automatic drill press.

Seeing Vance, the three workers shut off power. For Vance obviously had something on his mind. He slumped tiredly against a workbench and looked from face to face, his usually expressive eyes now showing only worry, his square, mobile face set with new lines of stress, and his mop of red hair rumpled and streaked, Ben then noticed, with a few strands of white. "How's it coming?"

Ben shrugged. "We're still trying to figure out how to use one of the two aerials that came through in reasonable shape, for outside sending."

Farr nodded. "I had six antennas installed in 'hard' bases. It's a little sad to think we could only get two of 'em to rise above their silos after it was over."

"Two out of six is dandy," George said sturdily, "when you consider the forces and temperatures they survived. And besides, six out of twelve self-reading, automatic-signaling radiation monitors! That is a near miracle!"

Vance shook his head slightly. "I was the one who supposed he could foresee everything, and arrange to come through anything. Except, possibly, a direct hit." He turned to Ben. "I gather you offered to show anybody how to tune the TV in the Hall, on any of the relay stations using them?"

"I did. Why not? After all, not everything eventually to be broadcast from South America, Africa, Australia will necessarily be like that Costa Rican stuff."

"I know. But nobody accepted your offer?"

Ben's head shook. "Afraid they'll tune in some more pictures of what happened here. Or what's happening still, in Japan, in the northern Philippines. One night, alone, I did. Got some shots of firestorm refugees." He shuddered.

Vance stared. "You've heard anything new?"

"More of the same stuff. On the small TV in the communications room. They're all dead out there, pretty much. And the rest dying. They've had a dusting every time the weather took a circuit of the earth, and now everybody, pretty much, has had it. Japan--

Europe, too-what the Soviets didn't destroy in order to be sure nobody--England
or
France--had a nuclear weapon left. "

"Something," Vance then said, "has got to be done to stop this blue funk. Whole gang of us acting like pallbearers."

"We sort of are," Lotus Li said in her small, precise voice. "Pallbearers for half the earth. The last to weep--"

"Not quite!" Ben spoke sharply, perhaps unintentionally.

They stared at him, so he went ahead: "I haven't said anything, and I'm not sure I should now. But the seismographs have shown, for the last ten days, some individual missile hits, bomb bursts, here and there over the United States, and lots more in the U.S.S.R. Plus some very heavy strikes that I deduce to have been the hits of groups of missiles hitting the Reds--Russia
and
China."

Vance's eyes widened. He then scowled. His mouth made a flat line. He stared at the scientist as if angry. "How do you explain it, supposing it's not jus--oh--nuclear arms that blow up, when fire finally reaches them? That
sort
of thing?"

Ben answered quietly, "I picked up, on radio receivers, some of the starts of our own stuff.
Account
for it? Easy, isn't it? Here in the United States-and to some extent, over there-they must have had quite a few very hard missile bases that were under orders not to reply to any early strikes, and to wait for word later, in the event our retaliation, and the Reds' double assault, left any targets whatever.

"I'd suppose those bases held out, waiting for orders, until their margin of security ran out--then they just shot. Wasn't it always obvious--it was to me!--that if you ever started a war like this, any people surviving who could do it, by
any
means,
would
keep on shooting at the enemy? Even run H-bombs from England up the Baltic in motorboats and explode them by hand, to recremate or crop-dust Leningrad? Fly bombs over the enemy even in commercial planes, and nose-dive?
Anything?
The fury of any survivors, taken with the fact they know they are probably doomed by radiation anyhow, will lead men on both sides to pointless acts of vengeance. It's
been
that way in war before. So, I used to say, it would be if we got in this. Only
more so.
And no central government or command remains to order a halt to men in charge of isolated posts or civilians with a weapon and a soldier to show how to explode it plus a way to get it across the sea. I think
that's
what's happening."

Vance brooded on that, after saying, "Horrible! But I suppose human nature!"

Soon he added a fierce declaration: "By all that's holy! If
I
knew where to reach even
one
still--workable H-bomb, and if
I
could find a plane that would go the distance--so help me!
I'd
blast my way out of here, and go to that bomb--hot as the ground
still
is--and
take
it over to 'em!"

Ben's head bent in a sort of rueful agreement. Since Vance's eyes rested on him, still, hotly, and as if seeking blame, Ben said, "I'd be with you, because I could figure how to rig the fuse."

"Me, too," George said in an icy tone.

And pretty, soft-looking Lotus, giving a toss to her hair, now held with a silver hoop in a dark river that coursed down her back, said, so softly it was that much more shocking, "And I would also go, to see it hit them!"

For a moment the four people shared the blazing rage that, by inference, had been driving some fellow Americans and some Soviet people, soldiers or civilians, to acts of wanton wrath. Just seeing, in one another's eyes, and in drawn-back lips, the intensity of that mutual fury, seemed to act as an emotional catharsis.

It was as if they'd said, "All right, I admit I'm insane, with a wrath that is utterly pointless," and having said it, challengingly, having heard it echoed by all, they felt
relieved
in not being alone with an unendurable burden of tamped hate.

Vance finally grinned. "Good!" His eyes now shrewdly appraised the other three pairs of eyes. "I think, then, as a first step, we ought to conspire to get the whole gang admitting that not just shock, and not just anguish, not mere loss and grief, but
fury,
also, is eating us up. Because, after that, maybe we can start the thing I came to discuss."

Ben lighted a cigarette, Vance accepted a light for a cigar and hopped onto a draftsman's stool. George held a match for Lodi's cigarette and his fingers shook a little; but he laughed at her delicate first puff. Lodi had not smoked before the entombment of the group. She was learning-for something to do, she said.

Vance waited till they found places to sit or perch. "It is recreation, I was talking about."

Ben said, perplexedly, "But, don't we have plenty? George and Lodi and I are busy all the time we have to spare--here, or in communications. You, your wife, and her gang, are doing wonders with furniture-making. It was an inspiration to stock all that lumber, carpet, water-base paint--what-not--so we could get the joint looking like palace halls and jewel boxes
after
landing down here! Valerie is a near-genius with colors, fabrics, everything of the sort!"

"Sure," Vance grinned again. "Val has taste, and imagination." He sighed with quiet regret. "And everything else that makes a woman a real damn wonder of a woman!

By day." He shrugged. "But you guys are talking about
work. Hobbies,
or very valuable enterprises, all that is still
work.
We've got to start
playing.
Having fun."

Ben nodded. "See what you mean. Games--besides just bridge. Maybe--"

"Maybe what?"

"Well, Angelica is a dancer and Connie wanted to be one, and they've given some exhibitions. What about a
class?"

Vance chuckled. "Exactly! Moreover, I've got a real stack of junk we can start to break out. Though I think we should do it a caper at a time, to stretch the novelty as far as we're able. For instance. Did you notice the kind of synthetic floor tile I had put in the Hall?"

George spoke when the other two were silent. "It's Owensite. Practically indestructible. And smooth as glass, if you wax it. Perfect dance floor. Yet a tank couldn't scar it."

"Right!" Vance responded.

That talk explained why, after dinner--and after a strange sort of confessional in which everyone present was led, casually, to express the rage that went locked with their separate sorrows--the mood of the group was deflected and reshaped, deliberately, by the four who had conferred.

All the furniture in the main chamber was swept to its walls. The rugs were rolled up. A stereophonic recording began to boom from a loudspeaker--a waltz. And Vance, accompanied by Ben and George, produced the evening's awaited "surprise." When little Dorothy saw it, she gave her first whoop of delight in that long time.
"Roller
skates!" she shouted, and ran toward the men, followed by her equally-elated brother. People rushed away to change shoes, or tried on shoes bounteously dumped from boxes by Vance, till they found a pair that fitted.

The music became the "Missouri Waltz."

George, among the first on the floor, swung expertly in reversing circles. Dot and Dick went tearing after each other with the sidewalk competence of kids.

"Haven't skated," Angelica yelled, "since I was sixteen! But here I come!" She immediately tried so difficult an evolution she fell down, hard. Laughing. Kit rescued her, set her back on her feet, and began experimentally to see if he remembered how to skate backward.

Vance and Valerie, who was not yet rubbery from drink, crossed hands and were soon skate-waltzing so expertly that Ben, arms pinwheeling to maintain balance, shouted,

"You've done this before!
Cheats!"

"Only on ice," Valerie called back. "When we were first married." And she said, so only her partner could hear, "Vance, darling, I'm beginning to be almost glad, in a hideously selfish way, that this happened. I mean, glad for me.
Us."

"I know what you mean," he replied, and spun her into a twisting turn which he led with his finger tips.

She laughed. Her eyes shone now with something of actual luminosity. And her long, curly, dark hair streamed. It had been cut expertly. For the women in the group had soon learned, with delight, that Heliconia Davey had worked in a beauty parlor, to earn part of the cost of her college years--a beauty parlor that stayed open evenings, for students. And Valerie had decided--though Lotus Li had not--that long hair, in style at the time, was too much trouble under the existing circumstances.

Looking at her, feeling the rhythm of their singing skates, hearing the fond, familiar music, Vance thought, then said, "Honestly, Val, there was never a lovelier female, anywhere, than you!"

She pulled close to him. "That brings up another matter."

"So?"

"We are, after all, married, Vance."

"Thank the Lord!"

"So, do we
have
to go on living in two bedrooms?"

The red-haired tycoon almost fell, in his surprise. "I have longed to suggest, dear, without having the nerve--too ashamed of myself--the very same idea I think you've just been
brazen
enough to--?"

She turned a skate sideways, stopped them both, kissed him. "I never cared a damn for another man.
Why
--who can say? Maybe it's your red hair. Shape of ears. That square, ugly-cute face. You're sure it won't give
others
ideas? Maybe we better just
sneak
together." She paled. "I'll--I'll
try,
Vance, to drink less, if you and I--"

Vance grinned. "Do that! But
sneak?
Didn't you mention we are married? Why be ashamed of its natural consequences and act like scared kids? As for giving people ideas, they already have 'em.
Look."

She looked, and chuckled.

George, the expert, was skating with Lodi Li, the beginner. He was giving her rather closer, stronger, and more constant support than the lesson required. And the Chinese girl's face was radiant. Her hair flew as George turned her. And she not only accepted his unnecessarily--close hold, but, while the Farr's watched, actually cuddled closer to the good-looking young nisei.

The skating went on for an hour. At its end Vance cut off the music.

"Everybody!" he called gaily. "Tomorrow evening, from nine to ten, and every evening people want, we'll continue!" There were cheers, which he waved to silence.

"Furthermore, for persons who wish to practice, I'll have a storeroom on the 'A' Passage cleared entirely, and you'll find it's paved like this room. It'll be open to anybody, all day."

Dorothy shouted, "Even us
kids?"

"Sure. Everybody. Now, it's bedtime for you and Dick. Some of you put back the rugs and furniture. It's my night to tell the youngsters their story."

A little later, with the bronze-headed children in pajamas (made, like all their now-handsome garments, from stocks of material, on sewing machines stored against such putative need), Vance Farr sat on the lower of the two bunks in the children's room.

They had been far less miserable after they'd been given one room with a new-made, double bunk. The man said to his expectant audience:

"Once upon a time, in a faraway island called Tasmania--"

"It's south of Australia!" Dick said proudly.

Dot said, "Shut up! Geography, fui!"

"--n Tasmania," Vance repeated, "there lived, in the rainy, cold forests, common there, a bear with a sad affliction. He was stone deaf. So, when he was little, he was often attacked, and sometimes quite badly hurt, by other animals, just because he couldn't hear them coming up, stalking. By the time he was—oh--half grown, his handicap had led him to develop other faculties, far more than is common in bears."

"What are 'faculties'?"