Triumph (32 page)

CHAPTER 14

Vance Farr came into the communications room and watched George and Ben, who were trying, on various frequencies, to send word of their situation to somebody, or anybody, who might reply.

Ben's now practiced hand worked at complicated controls after George set humming a new and far-more-powerful transmitter, one that hurled the human voice from a tall antenna above the air intake, with power enough to carry around the globe.

Idly, Farr leaned over Ben's shoulder to read the typed words being dispatched:

"This message is coming from fourteen persons, alive and well, in an air-raid shelter built before the war five hundred feet down in a limestone mountain in Connecticut, U.S.A."

Exact latitude and longitude followed. Then came details of the "shelter" and its equipment, a description of the outdoor radiation levels, and a listing of the people in the shelter with their ages, sexes, and where it was appropriate, "Japanese," "Chinese," or (twice) "Negro."

It continued: "We appeal to the people of the world for help. We cannot, with our on-hand resources, hopefully cross the contaminated land area around us and transport a vessel that, hopefully, might carry us to safety in or near your hemisphere. So far as we are aware, no other citizens of the United States of America survive on this continent. We are without significant arms, without nuclear weapons or resources to make them, so we are not to be feared. Our future survival time in this area is uncertain. Any person or group listening in--even if said person or group lacks the means or the intent for our rescue--please reply. Please reply. Reply, please. We hear you loud and clear, up here.

We hear Rio de Janeiro. Capetown. Colombo."

A long list of cities, nations, single sending stations, followed. Then:

"Hello, Australia and New Zealand! Hello! Why don't you transmit? Repeat. Why do you never transmit signals of any sort, Australia, New Zealand? Are you alive and okay? Please communicate, our station. Somebody. Anybody."

Farr's brow furrowed as his mind went back to a similar message from another, cut-off group: the men they'd heard in a weather satellite reporting the aspect of the Earth in the first stages of nuclear war. They, too, had begged for word from "anybody"--and, perhaps, received none, like themselves.

Vance wondered what had happened to them . . . and found himself slightly astounded by the fact that he had not, previously, ever wondered about their fate. Why not? The reason was simple.

In the hours, then the days and weeks, after that eerie plaint had come through the chaos of ions to Sachem's Watch and the people it sheltered, he--like all the rest there--

had been too concerned with the death of the entire North Temperate Zone and all its fringes, to give further thought to men stranded in a satellite with no orders about returning to America and, soon, no America worth returning to. That Vance had forgotten them was a measure of what he did remember.

Ben talked steadily. At the end of his message he gave some speculative information about the sea around the region: "It is our assumption, based on nearby monitoring, that the Atlantic could be cruised, with due caution and by shielded parties on ships, in safety. Anyone considering our rescue may communicate intent and we shall then endeavor, if possible, to make long-range measurements of radiation levels in long Island Sound or open sea so that said rescuers would have information on that matter prior to sailing, flying, or steaming to our area. A helicopter would be needed to transfer our people from here to sea, in whatever series of short trips were required by its passenger capacity, from Sachem's Watch to rescue craft. Seaplane landing may be feasible in Sound. Please reply. We will gladly transmit all requested and gatherable data to any respondent.

"Also please note. We realize the mission to rescue fourteen survivors out of a whole population would be hazardous and expensive. Also realize United States currency without value. However, we can amply repay any rescuer with certain stocks of rare and highly refined metals on hand here for that or other purposes. "

There followed a list of rare metals and their quantities that Vance had stocked in the shelter, partly for a post-war exchange medium and partly for just such a purpose as reward to any rescuers after an all-out war, since, as Vance had assumed, such rescue might entail some risk, much work, and so, considerable expense. Other stocked metals were on hand for use in electronic assemblies.

Ben ticked them off: germanium, titanium, molybdenum, tungsten. . . .

At last he ended the sending and, with a sigh, recommenced:

"Mayday. Mayday. SOS. SOS. Mayday. This message is coming from fourteen persons, alive and well, in an air-raid shelter. . . ."

He stopped. Put down the tensely held mike. Massaged weary fingers. Said, "The hell with it!" and looked up at Vance. "Every so often, George or I get a notion to try again. And do. But never a single reply! Never!"

Vance eased into a chair. The look of weariness which he'd worn in the first months of their immolation had now left his square features. They'd softened, and seemed, in a way, younger. The reason for that, everyone knew: Valerie. The new Valerie had not only recovered the marital love of her husband but, at last, had decided to drink no more. Decided in an instant, and with the obliquity of so many female motives, to forgive and forget and to include Angelica in her always-broad affections.

Valerie, sober, had become a round-the-clock tower of strength and sustainer of morale where she had been that hitherto only until evening brought her habitual fuzziness, fatuity, false coquetries, maudlin repetitiveness, and in the end her staggering retreat to alcoholic oblivion.

Valerie had changed and that change had changed Vance.

Ben said, "Anything on your mind?"

"You psychic?" Farr smiled.

"Absolutely." Ben, after grinning, frowned at the telegraph key. "I can pick up all sorts of thoughts. It's just radio signals to us I never detect."

"Forget it. Keep at it. Someday, maybe, you'll be surprised."

"Maybe."

"What I wondered--" Vance carefully lighted a cigar and Ben realized by that the import of this visit to the communications chamber. Farr's cigar supplies were not low, precisely; but he had smoked more in the initial months than he'd anticipated, so he was rationing himself. A cigar lighted by him at such a time as this, a time not on his familiar schedule, meant self-indulgence which, in turn, meant tension. "What I wondered was, should we do anything about our anniversary."

Ben's gray-blue gaze was steady. He even smiled a little. Exhaled breath with some force, afterward. "Wondered if any of you realized." He turned. "Hey, George! Cut off the set, huh? Come on over. Conference."

"Just four more days to the date of that fatal Friday at the end of last July," Farr said above the hum. He waited till the glow died in a multitude of electronic tubes as George cut their signaling apparatus.

The Japanese dragged up a third chair. "About a birthday party?" He smiled.

Vance Farr looked at him and he, too, smiled, eventually. "Yeah."

"The question being:' George went on, "what form? A religious ceremony of Thanksgiving? With a feast? Like the Pilgrims? Who'd want it?"

Farr nodded. "Exactly. Paulus will do his praying by himself, of course. But who else? No--not religious." Ben suggested, "We could entertain everybody on TV with outside fireworks. I daresay George and I could whip some up, with the chemicals you've stocked. Still, fireworks seem sort of shabby. Been enough 'fireworks' for all eternity."

George started to make a suggestion, fell silent, and went on with it only when Farr said,

"What were you saying?"

"Just that, since the gang's more than normally low, with the outdoors really messed up by that cobalt dose, it would be dandy if we could break out some new . . .

diversion."

Farr nodded. "Thought of that. I've got some reserve games. Oh, croquet. Half a dozen others. Tennis. Badminton. Bikes."

His two listeners showed animation. Ben exclaimed, "Great! Be fun to bike around the passageways, instead of using those electric carts."

Then George said, "What about
swimming?"

Farr turned. "Swimming?"

"Thinking of it for weeks. Water supply's still adequate. Cold, as it comes in.

Warmer, when it's been cleaned. Plenty of hot water, besides."

"But . . . where?"

"Storeroom-'K' is almost empty. Lined, too. Suppose you blocked up the lower-level door. Then filled it. Used the second-floor gallery as a pool rim. We could put in a springboard. Wouldn't take long to clear out the room and move the stuff out. Wash it down with chlorine. Run the pipe. Fill it up, without explaining the idea. After all, somebody's always running pipe, laying cable, cementing up this or that. Then, come the anniversary, we could all
swim."

Vance grinned, when months earlier he would have expressed chagrin. "Never thought of a swimming pool down here. Lot of things I never thought of. Great idea!

Let's say, on our anniversary day, the ceremony consists in opening up a pool. It'll be, roughly, ten feet deep, fifty long, forty wide--the balconies, then, at water level, nearly.

Right? Great!"

The talk turned to other matters. How, for example, to make good on their promise to supply any potential rescuer with the radiation levels of the waters of Long Island Sound, and elsewhere. This was a subject they'd touched on before.

The best method suggested that night was to construct balloons which could be inflated beyond the airway. On a favorable wind they would carry radiation monitors with radio-telemetric gear over any ocean waters to be measured. Arrived there, they would, on command, vent their hydrogen and so lower the monitors into the sea. There, floating, they would signal levels of radioactivity. Ben's idea. It was tentatively accepted even though it involved a good deal of work on balloons and new instrumentation.

The trio was about to break up when footsteps approached. Halted. Came on, determinedly. A woman's footsteps.

Connie stood in the doorway. She was wearing a nightdress of gauzy, crimson stuff. The outline of her body could be seen as she entered-a feline, dark body, a black panther body. Her face was intense and her dark hair disarrayed, as if she'd been asleep.

Her lips were without lipstick. She looked at Vance, then the other two, shrugged, and said, "May I come in a minute?"

The three men had risen. Vance said, "Sure." George brought another chair. The nubile woman sat down, languidly, looked from face to face, cleared her throat but not of all its huskiness, and said, "What are the chances of our ever getting out of here?"

Vance said, "Good." He always did.

Ben looked at Connie and then, over a shoulder, at the vast assembly of communicating devices that had sent out so much and received nothing whatever that was intended for them. He said,
"Why,
Connie?"

She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she regarded the men one by one, weighing an answer. Finally she asked a question. "You think I've been useful to Pete Williams?"

Vance took it. "If it hadn't been for you, daughter, he probably wouldn't have made it. As it is, he's a man. Grade A."

"He's white," she said. That seemed cryptic to Vance.

But Ben understood. "You gave up white men long ago."

She nodded. "It was too easy. And too wrong. And too tempting."

Farr blushed, Ben noticed. Just . . . blushed. Decent of him. Not that he'd ever been a lover of this calm, intelligent, highly-educated, yet feral woman. Merely that he'd seen and desired.

Ben said, "So? You're thinking of changing your vow?"

Connie shrugged. "Not yet. I mean. If I knew we'd be here for good. Die here.

Even if that was the likely thing, I would. Pete wants me. I want him. Only human. But I know more than Pete about things. Down here we could be fine. I think--" she looked at Vance-"he may even ask you, if I go on saying 'no,' to marry us. Or, as near as can be done. And I'd be for that, too, if I was even pretty sure the end would come here."

"But if you felt we had a decent chance of rescue, or escape?"

She smiled at Farr, wistfully. "Down here with all of you, I can be Pete's friend. I could also be his girl friend. It wouldn't matter. Being the people you are, you'd probably even be pleased. And I could even become his wife, or as near to that as you might agree on. After a marriage service of some sort and papers signed. But I also know Pete. And myself. And what that tells me is, if we ever get back to humanity, it wouldn't go on working--for Pete.
Or
me. I'd feel the way I got feeling before the world blew up. I mean: I'm colored and I'll always be; and a white man too close always feels he's too close--to a colored girl. I hate that. And that would smash up Pete, outside among strangers, worse than he was broken before I helped put him together here with you. If that's lucid."

"It's lucid," Farr said. "But is it necessary?"

"I came to ask."

Farr shook his head in quandary.

Ben said, "Can't Pete accept that situation as stated?"

"No."

"Why?" Ben was perplexed.

"Because Pete's an everything--forever or nothing--ever kind of man, Ben. And so are you. And so is George. And so
you've
become, Vance, lately!" She rose, smiling.

"Then
that's
my answer, isn't it? So I'll have to start weaning Pete of wanting me." Her smile vanished. "And vice versa. I'll need help, right?" She started out. Stopped as a thought struck her. "I might get some . . . from Angelica."

"Angelica?" Farr repeated, not comprehending.

"She's mighty bored with Kit," Connie answered. "Haven't you noticed?" His head shook and she said, "What girl wouldn't be?" Her "Good night, all" came from the passageway.

Reluctantly, Farr put the butt of his cigar, a minimal stump that threatened to bum his lips, in an ash tray. "Some woman, Connie!"

Both men nodded. Ben yawned. "Bed?" he suggested.

Time continued to pass and apprehension to grow. The swimming pool changed August into a month of new interest, fun, and partial forgetfulness.