Triumph (29 page)

"But what then?" he asked rhetorically. And answered:

"Downslope, in all valleys and on all lower-level lands, the count will be very high still even in ten years, and even with phenomenal rains and snows of a less-contaminated sort than we can reasonably expect.

"It may well be
twenty
years before a man could sensibly plow and plant out there--even much longer.

"When spring comes, we can see whether or not the heat, radiation, and fallout around here have literally killed every living thing, vegetation and seeds included. Till then, I believe--even if the U.S.S.R. has no further missiles to launch, assuming there are people in the U.S.S.R. to launch them, which we now think, as you know, there
are
--

some two decades must pass by, while all, or all but a random and tiny fraction, of the United States remains useless, uninhabitable, not crossable, even for a
few miles
by an unprotected person. And that, from what we now know and infer, about says it. Any questions?"

Hands went up. Ben said, "Angelica?"

She stood, like a schoolgirl. "Then
we
can't survive?"

Ben smiled. "As Vance has hinted, and it's now time to say clearly, we can survive all right, since we can get usable air."

"Then
what?" she asked, and sat down as if her knees had buckled.

"Then--
before
then; in a year, eighteen months, I'd
hope
--we'd have made contact with people below the equator who could, and might well, come up north in a ship with, say, a helicopter on board, and take us away. To some place below the equator, where it is still safe, and will be. Of course, it would be tricky for them. Their ship would move in waters probably quite 'hot.' They might have to stay mostly inside the ship, shielded. And their helicopter--supposing all this happens--might possibly have to be shielded too, and using its own air system. Probably not that bad, though. But that's all conceivable, and, really, it's not too difficult a situation to lick technically. "

A groan came from Kit. "Lord! A
year! Eighteen
months!" He was staring hungrily at Faith. She stretched her long legs and pretended to yawn. "But a chance! that's all that matters!"

Ben nodded. "In a pinch maybe we could rig some sort of lead-shielded conveyance and build a boat in, say, a specially erected, decontaminated, outdoor structure, air-supplied from here. Tow the boat to sea. Sail it south to safety."

"Some job!" Alberto muttered.

Ben acknowledged that and looked at Vance. "Possible?"

Farr shrugged. "Maybe. Have to consider." He shook his head pensively. "Be very hard to do. Best hope is
rescue."

Pete had a hand up, and was acknowledged. "We still can't figure, can we, why the devil
nobody,
though we receive them, ever
answers
us? Right?"

Ben said, "You field that, Vance."

Farr took Ben's place, standing before the others. Ben dropped into a straight-backed chair near an ash stand and lighted a cigarette.

Vance then began, uncertain about the right tone. "Well, our three communications specialists have been pretty nearly constantly working on that 'package'

out there." He nodded at the TV screen, pictureless, as it was now dark outdoors. "But such radio listening and monitoring as they've had time to manage makes it sure there are people alive, and sending plenty of chatter to each other. The whole Southern Hemisphere. And a little sending in the Soviet Union. What
that
means, we can't say.

"Connie, here, who has been studying Russian since before we arrived last July, is going to try, with Lodi's help, to see if they can translate the Soviet messages, which they already know are in code. Be hard to decode, even if somebody knew Russian like a native. I'm adding my wits to that project. Volunteers are welcome.

"But even uncoded, Russian's a tough language. As for the meaning of some evidently safe people in the U.S.S.R., your guess is as good as mine. I'd say some had managed, before they touched off their attack, to hide away safely, much like us. But the messages are few, the sets weak, and, I suspect from that, such Reds as still live are worse off than we."

Kit spoke without rising. "But they may have stashed away enough H-weapons to be sure nobody left could or would even
argue
with 'em, whatever they plan to do?"

Vance's nod was a single, grim head-jerk. "Could be."

"Wherefore," Kit's voice throbbed with frustration and anger, "even rescued, we'd probably ultimately become slaves of the Reds!"

Vance smiled at the powerful younger man with sympathy but spoke firmly. "The first step, Kit, would be to get rescued, or find a way to rescue ourselves. Once that was done, Red danger to us
could
be real. However, the southern half of the world is pretty big. It would take time--years and years--for small bunches of Red survivors to search it, let alone subdue all its people. In those years possibly enough skills and materials and energy sources could be gotten together--say, in South America, or Africa, or Australia,
somewhere
--to enable the anti-Commies to give the Reds an argument. Even a nuclear one, if they want that." He turned to Ben. "Given the technical resources, could you make H-bombs?"

Ben was startled. He became silent and thoughtful for a time. Then answered in a cautious tone, "Given the technical resources that would enable me, with a lot of helpers, to separate the radioactive isotope of uranium and build the gadgetry to make heavy and heavy-heavy hydrogen, I guess I could! I know
how,
so to speak--as most physicists did, everywhere in the world, pretty clearly, by--oh--1957, say.
Yes."

Valerie entered this bizarre discussion. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Vance had--down here--that uranium, and heavy water, and
all!"

Ben stared at the tycoon. He was grinning. "I do have a good many things you'd be amazed at!" Vance broke off. Frowned. "But not
that.
Lord! Never considered any such necessity. All I had in mind was getting
away
from the consequences of the worst the enemy could do with those damnable weapons!" His frown deepened. "I'm sorry. My disastrous lack of
foresight,
again!"

Ben said, "Nuts! How'd you have gotten such materials? And even if you had 'em, would you want anybody experimenting with making an A-bomb, let alone an H-bomb, down here?
My
guess is, we've had the works--the general rocket assault, the hot sodium clouds from the seas, and a long-delayed plastering with radiocobalt! That,
I'd
think, has used up the Soviet and world arsenal, in attack and retaliation."

He stopped, feeling sure, yet not wholly. His eyes caught Kit's stare at Faith. Kit was gazing at her with a kind of repressed amusement, as if her capture by Reds would have a funny aspect. Then he looked at Angelica, and paled. Swung around:

"Why encourage us to kid ourselves, Vance?" Kit stood angrily. "You know perfectly well that if the Reds
planned
on
surviving
--and some plainly
did
--they'll have the nuclear stuff to get an absolute surrender from each and every nation, or continent, or jungle tribe still existing. Why not admit it? We're
through! Whatever
we do or try!"

Vance said, quietly, "
Maybe
we are."

"No maybe about it!" Kit yelled.

Vance spoke sharply. "Easy, there, son! Have it your way, for you. For me, while I'm alive and free, I'm not finished." There was, at that, some scattered applause and murmurs of a loud, unintelligible sort. Ben joined the hand-clapping.

Kit sat down, flushed and silent for a moment. Then he whispered something to Faith, at his side on a divan. Her head shook. Kit's face became more stony and enraged.

The talk around them was now general.

But Ben saw, before returning to his computations, what the rest missed, saw it because he was worried by Kit's unexpected defeatism and rage.

He had been about to speak to Kit, before leaving, when he noticed that Kit was staring at Angelica; she was gazing back with bold, excited eyes and a strange, small smile that showed her even teeth. Ben then glanced back at Kit and saw him nod slightly and grin covertly at Angelica.

Faith, though she was pretending to be listening to the talk of others, also had noticed the exchange. She was embarrassed. Ben had wanted to help, to interrupt, to try to jolly Kit out of his rage and out of his apparent, and to Ben intolerable, responsiveness to Angelica.

But at that moment, and before Ben could think of a suitable way of breaking up the tableau, Faith leaned back and whispered something to Kit. He then looked at Faith with astonishment. Looked away. Looked back, still dazed. Shrugged. Smiled oddly, at last.

"Who's for skating?" he loudly asked.

Some were for skating, and said so.

Furniture was being moved when Ben departed, somberly.

He did not see that Faith went to her room soon after that. . . .

From his desk in the communications chamber he could hear the waltz music, every recording very familiar by now.

With all his will Ben tried to resume the endless calculations that were necessary to keep up with the flow of new information from the "package" outdoors. There could be, he kept thinking, violently and against all wish, only one way for a woman--even as composed and fine a woman as Faith--to stop such flagrant efforts by Angelica to flirt with the men, and, especially, with Kit.

Ben thought that Faith had been forced, just to save part of her pride, into telling Kit he need not continue the obviously chaste form of engagement. If Faith had done that, it seemed to Ben she had sacrificed something he'd believed to be innate and untouchable in her--a sincerity and an authentic self-regard. For he had believed she would have acted under duress, not from choice-defeated, by another woman.

Maybe he, Ben thought wildly, could become the male upon whom Angelica's wayward, incessant yearning finally fixed. She'd always been nice to him; and he was, actually, quite fond of Angelica. He pondered.

In her own fashion Angelica, too, had "authenticity." During many monotonous days and nights she and Ben had had long conversations. Monologues by Angelica, mostly, to which Ben had listened gravely, or amusedly, and at first with shock. For Angelica had talked about a way of life he knew only vaguely and mainly by reading--

about Broadway, the theater, motion pictures, TV, and night clubs; and about actresses, actors, directors, chorus girls; and boys; and many other people in the so-called entertainment world.

Ben had grown used to Angelica's habit of coming out with names and facts that had initially embarrassed him. She would say, hearing a "tut-tut" note in his response, or seeing him flush with embarrassment, "But, Ben! Why
shouldn't
I tell you John Bakerly was my lover when he won his first Oscar? After all, it was in every gossip column!"

And it was not just the invitational shape of Angelica's body, the even-more-inviting way she moved, her taunting eyes and voluptuous lips, her pert nose, or the witchy way she flicked her inky hair that summed up Angelica's charm. There was more.

Born and brought up in an age where any woman had been enabled by science to love as lightly and as often and with as little physical consequence as she chose, Angelica, in her sordid childhood, had been given no basis for restraining what she, in consequence, felt was natural. Women reared with "all the advantages," Ben realized, were, nowadays
(had been, till they perished!),
often as confused as Angelica concerning what was right and wrong in "love," lacking even an aesthetic standard for choosing whom to love and whom not. Angelica was generous, bright, cheerful--and no worse than numberless women her age who, like her, had lost old values and replaced them with no new standard.

That, he had long ago learned, was a sign of the age. People had shed their sex morals in millions, as fast as science had enabled them to escape consequences . . . just as people, in tens of millions, in hundreds of millions, had lost all sense of international morality when science had handed to various nations what appeared to be atomic means to world dominion.

He was fond, then, of Angelica. And she liked him.

He was fond, he now thought, of every single person in the group. Very fond.

Each, in his or her own way, had shown great bravery, persistence, patience, and love for another, in that best and greatest sense of love, which involves a sacrifice of selfish ends for the needs of others. He had even become fond of Alberto Rizzo! Amazing. A thing Ben would once have thought impossible.

But the stuff that sleek young man was made of had finally appeared when, turn by turn, the mining crew drilled and blasted, heaved and bored the long way up, beyond the slanted crawl-hole. It was Alberto who toiled double and triple the time of the rest, though equally afraid of cave-in or of a head mashed by some down-shooting, dynamite-loosened boulder, and suffering, in the tight stone tube, the identical agony of heat and thick-flying dust, the intolerable jackhammer sound, and the ache of muscles under unnatural stress. Alberto had taken his extra-long shifts with a pretense of cold insolence toward the risks. In consequence there was no man in the group who did not feel the original, velvety "gigolo" they had known Al to be, now measured up to all the rest, and surpassed them, in certain fashions.

Alberto was no longer merely accepted but his acceptance had led to a change in everybody: a certain new relaxation, new amity, and the discovery of Alberto as a wit, a man full of fun, a great entertainer of the children, and of the adults too, merry and clever. He'd won his stripes, and thereby the worth of everybody had been augmented.

Still--Ben went back to his problem--there was no chance that Alberto would prevent an always avid Kit from courting Angelica. For Angelica treated Al as she had Vance Farr, with casual friendliness and absolute disinterest in his sex. That, perhaps, showed Angelica, in her way, did have a kind of morality, or code, though it was different from any Ben had encountered.