Triumph (7 page)

was large enough for any military purpose.

The American war planners had not revised such ideas even after the U.S.S.R., in 1961, had exploded a bomb of one hundred megatons tamped to yield fifty-eight and, even so, three and more times the caliber of any weapon stockpiled by the United States and the free-world nuclear powers. The giant Soviet "device" had been simply dismissed as "fit for no military end," and so, a "useless, air-contaminating gesture," intended to arouse mere terror and to create, among less-advanced peoples, an "untrue sense of Soviet might." "Anybody," it was also noted scornfully at the time of the giant-H-bomb test, "could do as much"--if any other nation was that "foolish."

What, fundamentally, the free-world leaders--military and political--had never understood was that the Russian Communist leaders had always been willing to pay
any
price whatever to conquer the world, so long as
some
world remained to be ruled in slavery, and so long as some of the Soviet elite survived to be its rulers.

So, as that lethal Friday night fell over a Russia illumined everywhere by the miles-high towers of its city-flames, in certain long-planned and meticulously-selected areas thousands of Soviet men and women and children, hand-chosen, screened in a hundred ways, waited in safe shelters both amid and outside the holocaust. Top political echelons waited in safety. The most versatile, talented, and politically "reliable" scientists and technologists, along with metalworkers, agriculturists, and other essential cadres, waited. Even certain authors and artists, chosen to record in every medium what was to eventually happen and to propagandize the subdued survivors of that happening, waited.

They constituted the complete human material for restoring civilization and for ruling a planet, in whatever great part mere ruins. And they were occupied with myriad tasks, in their gigantic catacombs, built, in the main, under the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus, and the highlands around Lake Baikal. They knew where stores of nuclear bombs were safe-hidden against the day when all probable enemy bombs had been expended and when the men who could have employed any leftover weapons had been destroyed. And yet other Soviet groups with other storage facilities waited in two areas hundreds of feet beneath the sea, in myriad caissons, built for that purpose.

Some of the thousands of such refugees had inhabited their regions for months, some even for years. But no one in the free world--no one anywhere outside the U.S.S.R.-

-even knew of that program, or of its completion, or of the timing of the first strike, on that day of Armageddon, to match infinitely-complex arrangements for the survival of these selected "fittest," and for their subsequent overmastering of the undestroyed peoples.

To the personnel of the still-effective American redoubts and to those on ships and submarines (where sickened but valorous men steadfastly waited to learn if a second, massive, retaliatory strike would be ordered), the very fact that, when night came, all the United States was lighted by fire and nothing human that could find cover even moved in a nation that seemingly had turned to lava--even
such
devastation of their homeland was not a sufficient warrant to cause sickened but alert and waiting commanders to expend America's remaining weapons. No orders to do so had arrived by any of the many emergency means they still believed to be feasible.

They, far better than still-living, agonized tangles of panicked citizens, of remote families, of solitaries, knew what the American strike had done to the enemy.

So they waited--in most instances at long-ago-devised positions which would enable them, on land or at sea, to continue holding their fire--for the weeks they were capable of surviving. A very secret, few naval vessels, indeed, had intended no immediate attack. In one instance a vessel had speedily learned its potential for assault was plainly unneeded and, like the other few, that unit obeyed standing directions which sent them hurtling beyond probable enemy range.

By midnight, then, after the surge and countersurge of missiles, rockets, and planes, scattered commanders of deep, land-based rocket batteries and the captains of naval remnants were certain the enemy had been saturated. They knew that every important mile of the U.S.S.R. lay under a cloak of radiation at the level of three thousand roentgens or more, that the enemy's cities were in firestorm, and that the rest of Europe, like much of China, had been drowned in solar temperatures and coated with deadly isotopes. These military men assumed the war was finished and the victory, however Pyrrhic, America's.

To the Soviets, however, what had occurred was merely the completion of Phase One of a long-range plan.

CHAPTER 6

The mind of a mathematical physicist is not the same in every fashion as the mind of any other man. It is a mind that has come to understand the special language of mathematics well enough so that its possessor also understands certain logical concepts concerning time, space, and the nature and behavior of matter that cannot be intuitively comprehended even by the best brain that is ignorant of the special language.

In the case of scientists with Ben's special attainments, men who have had experience in the observation and measurement of explosions (an inadequate term!) of some of the mightier examples of nuclear weapons, another, uncommon dimension may have been added. And that mental increment had occurred in Ben. He was able to conceive of magnitudes of ruin, annihilation, super-light, and all violence with a clarity that common unfamiliarity (and its constant companion, fear) neither blurred nor disturbed. And he was capable of making lucid observations under conditions which would prevent most men from all willed thought.

As the elevator slowed, Ben held tightly to Faith's hand but remained almost unaware of that, for he was thinking of the enormous mountain of tailing, the "slide" of huge, blast-riven boulders outside the cliff-face on Sachem's Watch. Their significance was now plain: they had been removed to make this rectangular shaft . . . and whatever lay beyond. In a swift but very rough calculation he appreciated that, whatever the depth and size of the shaft, "what lay beyond" must still be of awesome extent.

Before their conveyance stood still Vance Farr confirmed that conjecture by addressing the other seven and, especially, two people: Ben, and the stranger with the open blue shirt who stood in a sagging way that suggested he might soon faint. "We're only eight," the red-haired magnate said in a quiet, deep voice. "Nine, if George is on the job--"

The beautiful colored girl, Connie, interrupted: "He went down . . .
came
down . .

. a little while ago. We were playing tennis. Then he said he had to check something, and quit."

"Great!" There was relief in the deliberately-assumed tone of command and confidence.
"Fine!
All right. In seconds a door will let us into the main chamber of an air-raid shelter that I've had crews working on for years. The one tragedy of the moment is simply that we're so
few.
I have accommodations for fifteen people--for ample time."

Ben looked at Farr with surprise and unaware that he was licking his lips nervously. He finally ventured a question: "Air?"

"Plenty! Of all we need. You'll see. And I'm glad you're one of our number, Ben.

This is a mighty complex establishment. We can use your skills, here." He hesitated. The elevator bumped to an almost imperceptible stop. Farr said,
"Now."

A wall opened.

As the women stepped through the sliding doorway and the men, unthinkingly obeying custom, followed them, Ben found himself standing on one side of a prodigious, man-made cavern. Seventy-five feet long, he thought, about fifty feet in width and almost that high. A cavern carved from naked limestone, lighted by a half-dozen hanging fixtures of the sort used to throw a strong but not glaring radiance on department-store counters, and furnished with a long, bare table and a dozen plain chairs. Five dim-lit tunnels led from the chamber, like the passages connecting buildings with subways.

It held a single occupant beside themselves, a muscular, young Japanese who stood nearby, frozen-faced save for black eyes that attached themselves to the arrivals in swift recognition, or, once, with surprise that was brief as the blink of a flash bulb.

"I think," Farr said, and in saying it, for the first time showed signs of his measureless perturbation, "everybody knows George Hyama except you, Ben." Farr had overlooked the stranger in the blue shirt.

George Hyama came forward lithely. He was wearing tennis shoes, gray slacks, a collarless shirt. He shook Ben's hand and said, "I've read your papers, Dr. Bernman. This is an honor."

Ben felt baffled.

Farr laughed, shortly but pleasantly. "George Hyama," he explained to Ben, "is the son of a very fine gardener who's been with us for many years. George was a math whizz at Fenwich High and went on to graduate from M.I.T. At the moment--and for some three years, as a matter of fact--he's been my full-time, stand-by technical man.

Ready, I mean, to be here if the balloon ever went up, and run the place."

Ben said, "I see." He looked interestedly at George Hyama and felt he could not say any more than "I see" at the moment.

Farr went on, rather mechanically and as if he had rehearsed the lines many times until he had them letter perfect--which was almost correct, as he had endlessly gone over this scene in his mind. "Valerie, Faith--you and Connie can show Miss Li a room--let her pick from those you haven't already chosen. I'll take Ben. I suppose that when it starts we'll more or less want to be here. Together, anyhow. That could be any moment now.

Meantime, Ben--?"

He got no further.

"It" started. . . .

The day just past, Ben Bernman reflected, had surely been the most catastrophic any human being had ever endured, and, for himself and those with him, probably the most bizarre of any in human experience.

At midnight and as a new morning was to be born on the boiling world above, Ben sat in the communications chamber of Vance Farr's magnificent stronghold.

Headphones were clamped to his ears. Off and on, that afternoon and evening, he had tried with his consummate skill to reach through the ionized air above, and, from the chaos of static, catch some signal. Now, Ben gently turned one of the scores of dials on the "black boxes" that lined walls around him, and after listening a bit, disgustedly threw down his headphones. Wearily, he slumped in a chair long-occupied and often, in that time span.

Somebody opened the door. Ben didn't notice. His eyes were fixed on the high walls above the batteries of electronic equipment--stone walls, naked, gray, showing clearly the marks of jackhammer drills, used to make holes for dynamite. Identical gray limestone walls formed the four sides of every chamber and corridor in the complex he inhabited, including the lofty central room, and the small, individual rooms for sleeping, as well as vast chambers that contained diesels, generators, fuel, endless ranks of storage cabinets, stand-by apparatus, prodigious "tanks" of oxygen, lakes of water and of other liquid supplies, the vast air-regeneration and air-filtration systems, a complete machine shop, and other unknown devices for life maintenance five hundred feet below the earth in the hewn-out midst of a limestone mountain.

The person at the door spoke. "Hi! Coffee?"

It was George Hyama, grinning. Ben grunted, "Sure," and added, "What's going on?"

"Not much." George put down two coffee cups, offered sugar and powdered cream. "Lemme see. There's a bridge game still, in the main hall. Miss Farr and Miss Li against the boss and his wife. Mrs. Farr is--well--she'll soon be going to bed."

"I see. How about Pete?"

The name of the stranger who had been taken into the shelter along with his heavy satchel was by then known to be Peter Williams. An examination of his wallet had disclosed that much. It had also revealed he was an electric company's meter reader and that (again, by inference) the young man (his driver's license had put his age at twenty-eight) had a hobby: collecting rocks and minerals. His satchel, at any rate, contained many pounds of rock samples, of some rarity but no real value. Presumably he had been on the point of knocking on the door of the Davey's cottage, when Paulus' daughter,

"Connie," bursting out with the siren sound, encountered him.

No one after that had had an opportunity to question him. He had been
there.
The whistle had blown. There was ample room in Farr's shelter for more than the available people. So the young man had been summarily rushed underground.

When the elevator's passengers lingered in the central room, the naked rock walls began intermittently to shake, as did the surrounding mountain. Stone chips spattered about. They'd stood in silent panic, merely looking. The persons who at least knew the identity of one another remained too preoccupied with inner upheaval, with spoken prayers, tears, terror, and crushing thoughts of others dear to them, to pay attention to Mr.

Williams.

After a few shocked moments-perhaps five minutes-when a near hit, possibly on Bridgeport, brought a quite large chunk of rock crashing from the ceiling, narrowly missing Kit and Faith, Mr. Williams fainted. Ben, having noticed a kitchen only rods down the nearest corridor, at once went for water. When he returned, Vance Farr already had procured smelling salts from a first-aid cabinet and Mr. Williams was choking.

After that, with the rest watching, he recovered his sensibilities briefly. At least, he asked, "Where's this? What happened?"

A relatively close explosion brought down an even larger fragment of the roof.

Vance said, "Get into the passageways, everybody! They'll be safer!"

People started toward various corridors leading from the main chamber. Ben assisted Farr in trying to lift the stranger to his feet. And Lodi Li attempted to explain:

"The
atomic war happened,"
she said, stepping in front of the rising, wobbling man. "But you're all right. This is a very deep shelter."

"Atomic war!" the man bellowed that, then screamed, "I've got to get to Hartford at once! My mom's there—
alone!"