Triumph (37 page)

And no one spoke of it. That day was spent, like its recent predecessors and many following days, in a careful inventory of remaining stocks. There was fuel oil enough to run the diesels for six more months.

The water would last about that long, in a drinkable state.

But the air-cleaning plant, the filters and gaseous-diffusion elements, had been under the unexpected strain of handling, for a long period, an atmosphere contaminated by cobalt at a high level of radiation; it was now showing signs of unreliability. No

"backwash" or purgative equipment had been included to refit the system for service after a cleansing. Ben had been trying all summer to figure how such a process might be contrived and equipment to perform it built. He had not been successful. The myriad

"screens," through the minute pores of which air passed, molecule by molecule, were clogging up with hot material. In some ten weeks the efficiency of the plant would dwindle. Air let into the labyrinth would then begin to contain fractions of a roentgen of radioactive substance, minute at first, but constantly increasing.

Balloon-carried monitors with telemetric devices had shown, in the past months, that the new lake formed on the Connecticut River was, spottily, too "hot" for an outside refuge. Similar measurements had disclosed that the sea beyond Long Island could safely be entered and occupied, if constant caution were observed against long contact with masses of dead, floating plankton or "rafts" of radioactive seaweed.

But they had not yet built the tractor and boat that, presumably, might transport them over the rubble landscape and the tangled, new (and sometimes new-to-botany) vegetation lying between their refuge and the Sound. Such a trip, with the most shielding they had devised, would at best leave them sick from radiation poisoning. And there was no way to go on, safely, through the radioactive masses in the Sound and out to sea.

Food, also, was short. Some of it had spoiled and some had been mysteriously reached and ruined by what seemed to be a new species of beetle that was itself somewhat radioactive. Up above, then, certain life forms, animal and vegetable, were adapting, through a series of violent mutations, to the new conditions; these forms moreover, plant or insect, were exhibiting tendencies to overswarm such vines, bushes, annuals, and insects as still survived unchanged.

Water, air, and food. Those three necessities approached three different "terminal"

points, none susceptible of absolute prediction, but all near at hand.

They might survive to about the thirtieth month beyond the commencement of troglodyte existence.
Might.
Not longer. And it seemed certain they could not get away from their continent by any means.

Those facts, kept secret from no one, had led to a steady lowering of morale, to zombie-like behavior, to silences and to fits of tears, and to desires for solitude which, often, led one or another of the group to seek out, and stay for hours in, some remote part of the galleries. Persons who did that were no longer hunted for, found, and cheered up.

For though they could be found by search, they could not be made cheerful.

One September afternoon a desultory game of table tennis was being played by Ben and Faith.

It had been her suggestion, after she'd found him laboring, pale and drawn, over diagrams of a tractor-trailer. "You've been up all night, again," Faith had said.

"Sure. Why sleep? If I could only figure how to get us
out!"

"You never will, if you work this way. Beat. Feeble. Tired to exhaustion. Come on and play table tennis. The exercise'll be good for you. Then supper, such as it will be.

And some genuine, all-night shut-eye, afterward. You need it!"

They'd played two sets. And started a third. It was Faith's serve, but suddenly she didn't serve. Instead, she removed the engagement ring Kit Barlow had given her and tossed it on a chair as if it were a marble, not one of the vanished Tiffany's most spectacular and costly stones. "Hurts my finger," she explained.

Ben nodded and again prepared to return her serve.

It never came. Faith crossed to a divan made in the wood-working and upholstery shops long ago, and set in the Ping-pong room for spectators when it had become frayed.

She dropped into it and beckoned to Ben.

For a time they sat side by side, silent, panting a little, Faith flushed, her hair disarrayed and shimmering . . . Ben pale, gaunt, tired.

"Mess," she said.

He nodded. "Shame, too. After all your father's effort. Ingenuity. Outlay." A queer thought struck Ben. He expressed it, the way people did nowadays, giving utterance to many things they'd have kept to themselves earlier. "Wonder how much this marvel cost him? Never asked."

Faith smiled slightly. "I did. Dad doesn't know exactly. But somewhere between a hundred and fifty million and two hundred."

Ben wasn't startled. Farr had a fortune large enough to permit that immense outlay

. . . for a refuge that had now been proven inadequate, owing to conditions no man, however imaginative, could have predicted. No sane man, at least. Vance Farr had outguessed every one of his countrymen, experts included. Only the Reds had guessed beyond him.

Another thought, a whimsy almost, made Ben grin, or stretch his lips in something like a grin. "In other words, if the Pentagon, White House, Rand Corporation, civil-defense people and the rest ever
had
taken a realistic view of a third war, they'd have foreseen, at most, what your father did. With the result that they'd have realized it would cost about ten million bucks a person to shelter any part or all of the U.S.

population for the at-least-conceivable period of two years. And then
that
would have proven far too short a time.
Man!
Wouldn't such a situation have put our so-called and long-deceased leaders in a tizzie!"

Faith smiled. Then in a low, odd tone, she said, "Ben."

He turned abruptly. He'd never seen that expression on Faith's face. It electrified him, which in turn disconcerted him. He tried to shunt aside whatever emotion had kindled the look. "Right here, Faith. On Hand. What ho?"

"You always loved me."

His eyes shut. His head turned away. He said nothing, but Faith saw his nod. She spoke again. "And I always loved you."

"Don't be absurd." He kept his head turned.

"I'm not. I always have. From the first time you visited me at the hospital."

"Kit?"

She meditated and he dared look at her. "Kit," she repeated. "Why get engaged?

Because mother wanted it? Long habit and ancient expectation? No. Because, Ben, I was afraid you
didn't
love me, then. Or maybe afraid that the society I'd lived in wouldn't take kindly and unanimously to a Faith Farr becoming a Mrs. Dr. Benjamin Benvenuto Cellini Bernman. Which you'd have hated." She laughed. "You thought we didn't know your middle names? You never used them, but they're noted in some book here in the library.

What's wrong with them?"

Ben answered meekly, "It was Mother's idea. Very chi-chi, she felt.
Too
fancy, I felt. Cellini? Hell! I'm merely a sort of super-engineer! "

"What you are, is a darling."

"--is a scarecrow."

"With a grin on that ugly face, you're
pure
darling! The rest of you is
more
man than most any man. And that's the thing we have to talk about."

"What!"

"I didn't throw Kit's ring away just now because it cut into my finger. I threw it aside because I realized you weren't ever going to take it off. That I'd have to do the telling. That you'd never acknowledge your own real feelings--"

Ben interrupted. "Quit it, Faith. I admit the feelings, wholly, and as of that first night when I brushed snow from the face of a lovely young woman. But we might still get out somehow."

"Might. Yes. And what?"

"Connie and Pete--"

She laughed. "Sure. It was wise and brave of Connie to stop everything between herself and Peter. He's hurt, but not wrecked by it. He's come to realize that outside, if we ever got outside, it perhaps wouldn't work. Not yet. Not for another generation or two.

So, it better not be continued here. But there's nothing like that about us. You're Jewish--

so what? Does it really mean
anything?
No. It never did, except to idiots who felt so inferior themselves they thought a whipping boy made them bigger. That's
all.
You're the bravest, brighest, ablest, kindest, most
attractive
man I ever met--or ever would have, even in a lifetime, and even if there never had been a war. I love you, Ben. Damn near worship you! And I want you to quit being noble and admit you feel the same."

He answered, dully, "All right. Admission made."

"Then kiss me." As he hesitated, but with a changing look, an upwelling of inward radiance she'd never seen before, she said, "Kiss me now, here,
immediately!

Then we'll go to my room." He hesitated at that, the kiss not quite commenced. So she went on. "Maybe you think it would be ghoully to begin our love-life in what may become our graves.
I don't.
And neither will you, after even one kiss."

That was how George Hyama found them.

George, in socks, unaware he'd kicked off his loafers during a just-interrupted vigil in the communications room. George, sweating, trembling, almost unable to speak, his face the pale, lemony hue Ben had noticed before under conditions of stress and terror.

For a long moment, George merely stared at the pair on the divan. For another, his tautness lessened and his eyes shown with an empathy and tenderness that Lotus Li had been first to discern. Then he made words come. "We need you, please!"

Ben moved away from Faith. Stood. "Trouble?"

The cropped, black head shook. "It's--!" His voice broke and he tried again.

"Australia! At last."

Faith and Ben raced behind him. All the others were gathered in or just outside the communications room. Farr sat beside a glittering, many-colored instrument panel.

On the table before him, a mike. As the three approached they heard Farr's voice, shaken yet resolute, complete a question:

". . . and we wonder if there's any hope of rescuing us, here?"

Back through a loud-tuned speaker came the response, clipped, cheery, suspenseful without meaning to be. "We'll get to that matter in a sec. A few things to tell you first. Such as why we haven't responded to your signals sooner. Our apologies. I'm duty-bound to explain. We knew, from the beginning of--of it all--that the Russkis were denned up like snakes, ready to emerge eventually and take charge of the world. The residue of the world. So we blanked out all radio and television sending, down under.

New Zealand joined in. The next thing to do, quite understandably, was to pick up where we'd left off. We'd stripped ourselves of rockets and H-weapons, you know."

Vance's hoarse voice filled a pause. "Yes. We know."

Ben muttered incredulously, "When did this--?"

George almost smiled. "Been talking with them for the last few minutes. Just out of the blue they came in, loud and clear."

Ben felt Faith's shoulder touch his and, unconsciously, put his arm around her.

The Australian went on explaining:

"For all we knew, the other peoples in the Southern Hemisphere might attack us also. Overcrowded, this hemisphere, excepting Australia. Others might want to move in on us. Anyhow, our engineers, scientists, technical chaps, soon had us rearming. Then, almost a year ago, the Russkis did come out, and your people blasted them to bits.

Nuclear submarines. Along, we thought, with a carrier we'd refused to allow to approach us. Evidently they were all blitzed in their effort. At least none returned to this area. None ever signaled again. But it took us most of the past year to be certain we dared show our hand. We had to be sure beyond all doubt that the Reds didn't have some alternative scheme for conquest set up--nuclear weapons and all, in South America, Africa, where-not. Once we were positive--and we are, now---once Australia and New Zealand knew that all the H-bombs in being belonged to us, which was a very recently determined fact, we could plan something for you people."

The man paused. Vance said, unevenly, "Thanks! We are--"

A chuckle answered him and the Australian continued his summary. "Took a bit of reconnaissance to be certain that we even could do anything about your group! Your North Temperate Zone's a tomb, from upper Canada to southern Mexico and, unevenly, around the globe, with Europe, the Mother Islands, Siberia, North Africa, the Near East, most of China, and so on, exterminated. Except for your people, of course, there's not a sign of human existence in the whole, ruddy belt!

"Our parliaments--Australia and New Zealand, too, incidentally--are creating a world outfit, as rapidly as we can. Everybody's coming in--the Latins, the African nations, Indonesia. International government, of course. In partial being, already. Has to happen. The H-weapons we made will be kept in our deserts till the world government's strong enough to take charge of them, and to keep them as a perpetual guarantee that nobody, ever, hereafter, will try to set up any new orders, soviet system, or tyranny of whatever sort. Meaning--men are to become free and equal, from now on in. Without race differences. Took the extermination of half a world to bring it about. Worth it, though, perhaps, eh?"

Vance was supposed to answer. He said, wryly, into the mike before him, "Some price!"

The voice agreed. "Righto. Northern part of the white race
in toto,
save for us cousins down under. Slavs. Japanese--gone. Most Chinese.
Quite
a high fee for perpetual liberty and individual equality.
Paid,
though. Your people ought to enjoy the world that's coming up. After all, you're thirteen United States citizens. But you're a rather mixed bunch yourselves."

Vance said, so softly Ben felt it might not be heard, "We're as near to being one as if we were all brothers and sisters."

"Don't we know! You Yanks aren't aware of it, but your broadcasts, the past two years, have been front-page headlines down under, from the first."