Triumph (11 page)

Farr rose like a man aged by some instant curse. "Incredible! Nevertheless, Ben, I'm going to lie down. I'm whipped. I may not sleep. I may never be able to sleep again!

But I've got to rest. And I advise you to do the same." He started to depart, raggedly.

"Yeah. I will."

On the comfortable bunk in the blank-walled room assigned to him, Ben lay quietly, trying to think. To think about what, he could not have said. So many things!

And one above all--the end of his world!--except this little pocket. Or maybe a few like it.

The end, actually, of half the world. His brain spun, blurred, and made pictures that tensed his muscles, but eventually that horrid process ceased and he dozed.

At four o'clock, which was not much after Ben drowsed off, Kit Barlow's alarm watch woke him. It took him seconds to remember where he was. Then, slowly and as if in pain, the tall, rugged, handsome playboy dressed, in the already-standard shelter outfit: coveralls, socks, shirt, and loafers. He went to the kitchen and turned on lights. Their gleam on so much stainless steel hurt his eyes for a moment. He blinked, moved, filled a kettle, turned a switch, and minutes later carried a thermos of coffee, a cup, a saucer, and a handful of lumps of sugar into the vast main chamber. There he smelled smoke and thought something was on fire, a thought that brought him close to panic. Then he realized it was tobacco smoke.

He rushed to the bridge table. One neat set of tipped-off cigar ashes. Numerous crushed-out cigarettes. He raced back to his room for his own package and returned with a cigarette already going, to sit and merely smoke, with immense satisfaction.

By-and-by he made such rounds as he was capable of at that time. All doors to private rooms were shut. Nobody was about. In the remote chambers where diesels throbbed, and in those where generators spun, the machinery seemed, to Kit's inexpert eye, purring smoothly, under rows of brilliant electric lights.

He went into the communications room and read the message George had typed out. It chilled him but he shrugged away the icy feeling. What the devil could he do about three guys stuck in some weather satellite, a thousand miles high, over--he looked at the nearby globe--over the southern edge of Colombia, in South America? His eyes moved around the walls and touched on the electronic devices, lining them. They meant nothing to Kit. He glanced into the seismological chamber, but merely glanced. The earth wasn't shaking or rocking now, and no deadly hunks of stone were falling from their ceilings, or likely to fall, so long as no more bombs made near hits.

He returned to the Hall and poured another cup of coffee. Soon he began to feel sheepish about accepting the suggestion that he take this early morning "watch." Kit grinned faintly as he realized that he'd been given that duty so he'd turn in, like a good little boy. Old man Farr, he mused, is sure a smart operator! Wanted people to go to bed, to sleep, and so steady up! And tricked 'em into it, in his case. He should have been brighter at the time, he thought. Bright enough to know there was nothing he could

"watch," simply because everything ran automatically and if there was a breakdown of any sort, he could only wake somebody--George Hyama, specifically--providing he had sense enough to notice the breakdown. Doubtless there were breakdown warning bells, or some such gadgets.

In fact, he now reasoned correctly, failure of any apparatus on which their survival depended would certainly set off alarms in George's room. Farr's, too.

He sat there, smoking and feeling a fool.

Once in a while pain coursed through him as the thought of his parents, and other people he cared for, came burning into his mind. Like everybody in his group during the first day--a half day and an evening, actually--he shoved away as best he could such miserable reflections. He took to mere sitting and smoking, almost vacant of mind.

Everybody had been--was--probably would be, for days--stunned as hell. Shock. And why not?

He had about decided to get a book or a magazine from the unopened room he'd been told was a library, to pass time till somebody else finally appeared, when he noticed, or thought he noticed, a change in the even, very faint humming that was the background sound of the Hall--and of the whole place, so far as he'd seen it. He listened, and decided his ears had tricked him.

Then it came again.

Three far-off, nearly-inaudible taps, a pause, three more, and so on, till a series ended. A considerable interval followed. Then the sounds were repeated. This time Kit went into one of the exits and listened. He heard nothing there. Though if the noise had been made by machinery, he'd have heard it better.

Something, or maybe somebody, apparently outside, was making that distant, repetitive noise. It could not be true, but there it was.

Kit Barlow then went into several more of the passageways that opened off the main chamber. In each he listened. In none could he hear the faint, tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap that was occasionally audible in the big room. He returned to it.

For perhaps two minutes he simply stood in the center of the lofty, oblong place.

His forehead was wrinkled. He thrust a hand now and again through his short, tight-curled, dust-hued hair. His broad shoulders boxed up. He tried hard to think what non-human circumstance might cause the seeming signals. In that effort he clamped his big fists and his eyes grayed; the tenseness produced no idea. He scowled, though the normal furrows on his brow were not etched by hard study or meditation; they were the lines carved into the foreheads of men who, since prep-school days, have strained in athletic effort--becoming taut, in Kit's case, every time signals were called on a gridiron and he had knelt, usually at tackle, gazing up balefully at his opponent and preparing to charge, his forehead corrugated with the intent.

Now, he felt fear. Thoughts of the long-disputed problem of how people sheltered in nuclear war ought to react, if outsiders tried to force their way in, raced through his brain. Was it possible that anyone had survived up above? That they were, even now, signaling an entreaty for rescue? Or--and it startled him!--pounding drill holes with the intention of dynamiting down to this luxury and security?

He said to himself, aloud, but not aware of that detail: "Take it easy, Kitsie-boy!"

He had an idea and rushed across the chamber, pressing an ear to its naked, stone wall. When the chinking came again, it seemed nearer. It had the ring of metal hitting stone. And now the rhythm of the signaling changed. He heard one tap, then two, then three:

Tink,
it went.
Tink-tink. Tink-tink-tink. Tink-tink-tink-tink.
And it ran on, up to six

"tinks." Then a pause. Then the count began again.

He stepped back, afraid. Again unknowingly, he spoke aloud: "Christopher! Don't let the little mushroom clouds get you down!" Another sound made him whirl, almost as if to attack.

A tall man was shuffling into the room. He had on pajamas, much-wrinkled but clean and new. Shoes-brown, low, laced. His face was greenish-gray. His pale-gray eyes squinted. His mousy hair was mussed. One thin hand kept patting his smudge of mustache.

Peter Williams--the meter reader.

Kit made ready to grab the man and hold him again.

But the twirp was no longer batty. Seeing Kit, he stopped, smiled--or tried to--and said, in an uneven but not unpleasant voice, "Then it's all true! I didn't dream it?"

"Dream what?"

"That somebody started an atom-bomb war? That some people dragged me into a mine shaft? That they were Red Chinese, and going to torture me? Then--that they were insane. Telling me I was safe in a deep shelter.
I
felt sane. But believed I was a prisoner of screwballs. It's not so--is it?"

Kit said, "No." He added, "Just wake up?"

The other man shook his head, his eyes slowly taking in the immense and bare stone walls, the scattered chairs, the bridge table. "No, sir! I've been awake for some time now. Thinking about it all. When I got up and found a light switch, then a door that wasn't locked, I decided I'd gone nuts myself, for a while. I'm sorry."

Kit nodded. "Whole world's gone nuts. My name's Barlow. Kit." He held out his hand.

"Williams. Pete." The tall, thin man's eyes were on the wall again. "Limestone,"

he said. "Noticed that when I came through the corridor back there--same formation.

How long--?"

Kit gave the fellow a relieved grin. "It started just before noon, yesterday. Now, it's about 6 A.M., day after. Can you cook?"

Peter Williams gulped. "Matter of fact, yes. But why?"

"You must be hungry."

"Guess I am. But--?"

The distant tinking was again noticeable to Kit. Peter Williams did not hear it. Kit pointed. "First door down that passage, on your left-our kitchen. Freezers. Refrigerators.

Stoves. The works.

Make yourself something to eat. Others'll be getting up, in time. I gotta go on an errand-if--?"

Pete understood. He seemed, in fact, pretty sharp, now that he had recovered. "Go ahead!" Pete started toward the kitchen. "I'll be okay, now."

At Vance Farr's door Kit hesitated. From beyond it he could hear a loud and rhythmic sound. "Old boy," Kit told himself, "snores like a ram-jet." He started to knock anyway, and changed his mind. "Maybe the Brain would do as well. Pop needs his shut-eye." He proceeded down the lighted corridor to Ben's door, where he did knock lightly.

Ben had been asleep for some while. Myriads of horrible imaginings of the world above had raced through his dreaming head. And he had also puzzled, intermittently and as he briefly wakened, over Vance Farr's picture of anticipated trouble.

To Ben, even on such spotty reflection, it seemed that Farr was overly concerned about the likelihood of romantic liaisons and subsequent jealousies, even if their immuration did last for months. The people here were young, mostly. The three young women were very attractive--in three different ways. And this was an age in which all remnants of Victorianism had finally vanished.

But those in the group were intelligent, and all shared a terrible uncertainty about their common future. Certainly, Ben thought, relative trifles like lust or jealousy could not prevail here. Farr must be one of those oversexed middle-agers. The idea relieved Ben, and irritated him, also. Besides, he somewhat resented Farr's inclusion of him as one of the stable, hence elder, members of the shelter group. The whole affair had an off-key sound, a
motivated
seeming.

CHAPTER 8

Ben heard a faint rapping on his door some while after his broken sleep. "Yes?"

he called softly, though the stone walls between the personal rooms would drown anything but a shout.

"Kit! Got a problem!" The knocking went on, more loudly.

Ben's light snapped on. He leaped into coveralls and went, barefooted, to the door.

Opened it. Listened to Kit. His eyes widened over the information and his brows leaped at the final question. "Dunno," he said. "We should probably wake Vance. Wait up! Let's try George Hyama, first. He'll know if that tapping is a drippy drain, or a gadget, or something."

With sleepy-eyed George they rushed to the Hall. A faint scent of frying bacon pervaded it and lights threw a harsh rectangle into the passageway outside the kitchen.

Ben noticed that and Kit explained. George by then had his ear to a wall. He stepped back presently, and eyed them with an expression Ben found as unfathomable as oriental expressions were supposed to be . . . and never, he'd thought till then, really were.

"Somebody,"
the Japanese youth stated. "Up, maybe, in the long side passage." A different light shone in his brown stare, and vanished. "This is a passage I am not supposed to know even exists."

"Where
to?"
Ben asked sharply.

"We better get Mr. Farr," George answered.

It took a minute to stop his snoring, arouse Farr to complete sensibility, and get him into the Hall. He, in turn, listened to the "tinking" wall. Kit, also listening, said,

"Sounds
fainter
than it was."

Farr had grown white; his hands shook. He looked numbly from Kit to George to Ben. He said, in a semi-whisper and as if to himself, "I suppose it's
possible!"
He seemed, as they waited, to be weighing very desperate alternatives. At last he spoke. "When we started cutting the main shaft to this place, we ran into another, old, horizontal tunnel, running north. Entered, we found later, from a hidden, vertical hole cut into the floor of the wine cellar. The tunnel, which we explored immediately, led clear under the summit of Sachem's Watch. It was pretty old—decades--and full of dust, cobwebs, fallen rubble.

It emerged at a place across the gravel road that then led through to our estate. There's a big ledge, at one point, where a very cleverly concealed door led out into daylight."

Ben asked, "The slaves?"

Farr shook his head. "It was more recent. But I realized, almost at once, what it meant." His eyes met the scientist's with evanescent amusement. "I told you my old man was a strict conservative. So was Mother. Dad, though, had loved travel--been everywhere, for pleasure as much as because of the business. His lifelong hobby was wines. He'd spend days--and whole nights--in his wine cellars. Even had a room in them furnished, so he could read, sleep, eat snacks, keep accounts, work. Mother beefed about that 'wasted time' to her dying day. On finding the tunnel I realized that Dad--probably even before I was born, when the old house, not Uxmal, stood above us--had cut the tunnel so, when he felt like it, he could get out. I mean, away from home. On what errands, I couldn't say. But I can guess."

He looked at their faces. They did not smile. Just waited.

When Farr continued, he spoke unevenly, but more rapidly. "I--well, a time came when I felt I, too, might want some private--well--call it, sanctuary. We were mining galleries down here then, and Valerie's house was just blueprints. So I reconditioned the tunnel. When I sold off half our land to the developers of Candlewood Manor Apartments, I blocked the remote exit of the tunnel. Made another, after those big buildings were completed. In time I contrived a secret connection with one of the apartment houses." His voice dropped almost to a whisper and, though another man might have blushed, Vance Farr remained pale. "Well, frankly, only one person in the buildings--I believe--ever knew about that entry. Her name is Angelica Rosa and she has lived in a Candlewood cooperative--the one the tunnel reaches--since we moved into Uxmal. It is possible--!" He pondered. "We've got to try!"