Storm

by George R. Stewart

  Like a father whose child has suddenly become a powerful and famous person, the J. M. began to feel his affection mingled with awe. From Sitka to San Diego was now Maria’s domain. She was a gigantic creature of the atmosphere, drawing moisture from the great Pacific and expending it as rain and snow upon a thousand miles of coast.

  The Chief, that morning, moved about with a smile on his face. His forecast could have been no better if he had made the weather himself. And there was plenty of rain still to come.

  5

  The weakened wire on the transmission line was becoming so heavily loaded with ice that it could no longer withstand the strain. At eighteen seconds after 9:02 A.M., it broke. In the next fraction of a second the following results took place.

  The wire began to fall toward the ground. Thirty-six thousand horse-power ceased to flow into the general P-L system. The immediate region (an unimportant foothill district) suffered a complete failure of electric energy. In towns within a radius of thirty miles the few lights still burning grew dim. In the operation-room at French Bar Power-House a bell rang loudly, the automatic oil switches broke the circuit, the ammeters hit the bumper, and the dynamos changed tone sharply. At Ringgold Sub-station, a hundred miles to the south, voltmeters and ammeters reacted and a bell rang. The frequency of the whole P-L system fell from 60.02 to 59.88. In the L. D.’s office, still another hundred miles away, a vibrating red line upon a recording-drum indicated this fall. At Elk Power-House, which was controlling the system, the same change was indicated on a dial. In the reserve steam power-house at Holladay the large turbine valves opened. Every electric clock from Shasta to Tehachapi was threatened with losing time, and many delicate automatic processes were endangered.

  During the next fraction of a second the wire continued to fall. The operator at French Bar Power-House reacted to the signals and began to reach for a switch. The operator at Ringgold Sub-station moved his hand toward the desk-telephone. The controlling operator at Elk Power-House turned clockwise the valve upon which his hand was resting. In the Holladay steam power-house the steam pressure released by the opening of the automatic valve set a dynamo in motion.

  Since the ice-laden wire had been at its lowest point about twenty-five feet above the surface of the snow-covered ground, the time of its fall was somewhat more than one second. Almost as the wire struck the snow, the Holladay operator was closing his hand around the telephone, and the French Bar operator was just touching the switch control. Because the Elk operator had already opened his valve, more water was flowing against his turbines and the frequency of the whole system was rising toward sixty; the Elk operator was watching the record of this rise upon the dial. The same rise was indicated by the red line in the L. D.’s office. In the near-by towns lights were growing brighter after a lapse so brief that to human eyes it had been merely a flicker. The functioning of electric clocks and automatic processes was no longer threatened.

  By the time the Ringgold operator had drawn the telephone toward him and removed the receiver, the P-L system had adjusted itself to the loss of the French Bar line and had supplied the 36,000 horse-power from other sources.

  The Ringgold operator got the telephone receiver to his ear, and heard a man’s voice in the middle of a vigorous conversation. The Ringgold operator spoke into the transmitter: “I need the line for operation,” and the voice stopped talking between two syllables as if someone had suddenly closed fingers around the speaker’s throat.

  The L. D. was reading a letter when the telephone rang.

  “Ringgold operator speaking,” said the voice. “The French Bar sixty k-v line just went out.”

  “Don’t say ‘just,’” said the L. D. “When did it go?”

  “Nine-two,” said the operator, abashed.

  The L. D. saw that the minute hand of his electric clock was a little past nine-three. “O.K.,” he said, and called French Bar.

  Meanwhile the broken wire had continued to sway and vibrate; it had set the other wires into motion; great chunks of ice were cracking off and falling. The operator at French Bar had reached the switch-control, and thrown in the switch, which had immediately tripped out again. At this indication that the break was permanent, he had telephoned Johnny Martley, the power-house superintendent, at his house a hundred yards away. Since Martley was in another room and had to be called to the phone, he got the news of the break later than the L. D. had. He had scarcely hung up when the bell rang again, and the L. D. was on the line.

  “The switch went out again; so she looks bad,” he informed the L. D.

  “That’s the same line that went out temporarily three days ago. Whatever it was, the storm made it worse.”

  “We patrolled every inch of that line the next day—couldn’t find a thing.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” snapped the L. D. “But get your men out now, while we sectionalize the line. Wait a minute though—how’s the storm up there?”

  “Plenty bad. She started at sundown, and she’s been blowin’ and rainin’ and snowin’ and sleetin’ ever since—ain’t even stopped long enough to spit on her hands. You can’t see a hundred feet.”

  “O.K. Get your men ready.”

  The L. D. slapped down the receiver, and looked up to see his assistant standing in the doorway, telephone on chest.

  “What power-house do you want to take over for French Bar?”

  The L. D. was piqued that he had given a chance for the question to be asked, for at a time like this when water would be going to waste it was sheer extravagance to use an emergency steam-plant for a minute longer than was necessary. The L. D. considered a moment; in his brain he saw clearly a diagram of the company’s fifty-one hydro-electric plants scattered over a territory as large as Great Britain. Some of them were already carrying a full load; others were more or less out for overhauling; others had reservoirs depleted by the drought. But there was still plenty of reserve. Two Rivers Power-House, three hundred miles north, had plenty of water and had been operating at half-load that morning.

  “Tell Two Rivers to take over,” he said. With these words, the L. D. had made the last adjustment necessary until (as was likely enough) the storm developed some new emergency elsewhere. He estimated an hour at least before Martley would report, but the time might be more, depending upon snow conditions and other difficulties. The L. D. then began to devote himself to his regular routine—bizarre enough at best, since it involved electricity, a product which cannot be stored but must be manufactured, transported, and consumed, all in the same instant.

  Two hundred miles away Johnny Martley got busy on the telephone, but since even maintenance-men are human beings, their mustering consumed minutes in place of the fractions of seconds which had been all that was needed for the automatic electrical devices. One man off duty except for emergency, was still in his slippers and had to climb into his boots and “tin pants.” Another had just retired to privacy with the current issue of Ranch Tales. Nevertheless, within ten minutes they were fighting their way through the storm and assembling around the truck in the garage.

  In the interval the French Bar operator under Martley’s direction and in co-operation with Ringgold had ordered switches closed at various points along the line, and by a series of tests had established that the break must be within five miles of the power-house. Ringgold informed the L. D., and the L. D. called French Bar again.

  “Is your gang started?” said the L. D.

  “Ready to roll. I’m talkin’ from the garage now.”

  “O.K. Roll! In a storm like this we’ve got to get French Bar going before something goes out somewhere else.” The L. D. hung up, and noted the time as 9:21.

  •

  In the garage Martley turned to the four men of the gang. Three of them were making jokes at the last comer about his late arrival and (imagined) bleary-eyed appearance—jokes about marital acti
vities which must have been current before Agamemnon. Muffled and gauntleted, the men were almost as well sealed against the weather as if they had been deep-sea divers. They were heavy and burly, for on transmission lines the work demanded more than a mere pole-monkey.

  At Martley’s word two of them mounted to the truck-seat, and the two others crawled in at the rear among the tools, coils of wire, grounds, insulators, jugs of drinking water, and skis.

  “Why don’t lines ever fall in nice weather?” said one of them, joking by ancient formula.

  The engine roared. The windshield-wipers started. Martley rolled up the door, and a blast of snow-laden wind whirled blindingly into the garage. With chains slapping on the concrete floor, the truck moved out.

  The truck had heavy going to get away from the power-house. Twice it stalled in drifts, and had to be backed up for another try. But on the highway the snow-plows had already cleared the way. For a mile the transmission line was close to the road; then the gang had to leave the truck and take to the snow. They parked by one of the U.S. 40 signs. They were close to the three-thousand foot level, and the snow was much too wet for webs; it would be bad going even for skis. In the lee of the truck, still joking, they got their skis on and loaded themselves.

  They worked along the hillside in single file. Although each of them used skis constantly all winter, they plodded heavily and awkwardly. A man weighted down with fifty or sixty pounds of miscellaneous, hastily packed material cannot dash down hills and execute perfect Christianas. Already snow coated them; it clung to their eye-brows; it built up weight upon the tools and coils of wire which they carried. Each man bent himself to meet the wind’s force, and plugged steadily on. They followed the pole line, and each pole—as they won up even and then passed it—marked a definite progress. Once they stopped to breathe themselves. They shook off some of the weight of snow, and puffed luxuriously. In the sweep of the storm no one tried to light a cigarette.

  “Let’s go, boys,” said the foreman. “The L. D. will be callin’ in a few minutes, wantin’ to know where the hell we are.”

  They went on. Each man could see for himself that the wires above them were weighted with accumulated snow and ice. They had no doubt what they would find the trouble to be. When they came to the fallen wire, they gratefully threw off the weight which they were carrying, and rested a minute.

  Then one man went on a half mile to the nearest telephone to report, and the rest set about repairing the break. First they grounded the line on both sides, for there must be no chance that a fool somewhere could throw the wrong switch, and kill a man while he worked. Then one man climbed the ice-coated pole; every time he struck his spikes in, the ice scaled off in chunks.

  It was heavy work, and dangerous too, in the storm. But the men, shut in by the flying snow, had no chance for either sympathy or applause. A wrench slipped, and blood spurted from where the skin was stripped from three knuckles; the man flexed his fingers to see whether they still would work, and picked up the wrench again. The man on the pole reached too far; something gave way, and only the lucky grip of two finger-tips saved him from a fifty-foot fall. He did not even stop to curse.

  They restrung the wire, but for all their heaving it still hung a foot lower than the others.

  “Let ’er rest, boys,” said the foreman. “She don’t look so pretty, but if she lasts out the winter, we’ll fix ’er up next summer.”

  They took the grounds off, and telephoned in that the line was ready. They stood by while the operators at French Bar and Ringgold tested the line. Then they loaded up, and plugged back. The truck was plastered all over with snow, and they had to scrape snow and ice from the windshield before the wipers would work.

  They stopped in at a highway lunch-counter for some coffee. The waitress bawled them out for coming in that way, looking like a bunch of gorillas and making the place look like a tough joint. She was a local girl, and they told her to go to hell. But they had to admit they looked pretty bad, and Larry’s hand with the blood on it was messy. So they hurried with their coffee. The foreman called up the power-house. When he came back from the phone-booth, he was already buttoning his jacket. “Come on, you,” he said. “There’s a lady up to Gold Creek, and her electric iron won’t work.” So they went on there to see if any of the local lines needed fixing.

  •

  “O.K.,” said the L. D., “French Bar is patched up. Cut Two Rivers out, and put French Bar back in again. Anything else?”

  “Just a lot of little stuff on distribution lines. Nothing important.”

  The assistant faded into the outer office, and the L. D. sat back for a moment relaxing. That had been a nice little skirmish with the storm that morning, but now it was eleven-five, and everything fixed up and back to work. Tough spruce, copper, steel—they were hard even for a great storm to beat. And the men too. Finally it came back to the men. For a moment he thought of calling up, and telling Martley to thank the boys for the good job they did in the storm. He shaped the words. But he never made the call.

  After all, he decided, that was only routine for the boys. Granted, they gave more than the company paid for. But still, thanking them, you made them soft. Amateurs should be patted on the back, but it cheapened professionals. A man shouldn’t be congratulated for his daily work, even though that work was hard and dangerous.

  6

  As yet only a trickle of water ran in the gullies. The river still showed its sand-bars; it had scarcely deepened half a foot by the gauges; its surface was dark, not brown, beneath the ruffling of the south wind and the rain-drops. In these first hours of the storm, the shrunken, long-dry earth drew to itself all the moisture.

  He would have been a brave mathematician to calculate how many billions of dry clods had lain in the fields of California. The clods must first grow dark and heavy and soft; they must swell, and then losing their identity sink back into the earth itself. Only then could the water flow freely. Every crack in the parched soil was a canyon into which poured thousands of rain-drops.

  By deep affinity, every grain of dust drew water to itself. The punky dryness of rotting logs grew slowly sodden. In the thickets of blackberry, and toyon, and poison oak, the dead leaves lay deep; beneath these rested the half rotted leaves and twigs of older years, and still deeper the mould of generations. This porous mass sucked moisture like a stiff sponge, and paradoxically the life-giving water even woke to new vigor the very processes of decay.

  Still more, the living vegetation sucked in and held the rain. How many bucketfuls to change from black to green all the moss upon all the rocks? How many tank-cars to wet all the pine-needles and all the oak-leaves? How many trains of tank-cars to uncurl all the blades of grass upon all the hills? Leaves shrunken to conserve moisture expanded and grew heavy; drooping shoots stood up stiff and vigorous. The very cells expanded, and the protoplasm for its subtle chemistry absorbed to itself countless tons of water.

  Even animal life drew in the water. Cattle and horses grew dark beneath the downpour. The fleeces of the sheep were heavy. Deer in the forest glades changed from dun to brown. Through the tunnels of ants and beetles the moisture seeped downward. The channels of earthworms were as millions of conduits. The myriad far-ranging burrows of gophers and ground-squirrels took the trickles deeper still. Then at last following the fissures of the earth itself the seeping moisture from the surface reached ground which was no longer dry, and began to join that great fluctuating reservoir of the waters which are beneath the earth.

  Until all this should be fully achieved, the river was low. As well expect water to stand in a sieve as streams to run high before the land itself was satisfied.

  7

  In the Valley the rain slacked off sometimes; now and then even a scrap of blue sky showed through. But the long, canyon-gouged slope of the foothills forced the moist winds upward, and there the downpour never ceased. From three thousand feet up to four
thousand was the shifting zone of rain and snow. But where the long crest of the Sierra thrust its peaks skyward like a great wave upon the continent, the wind-driven snow flew so steadily and thickly that a man might remember that ancient tale of a northern land where the air was full of feathers.

  At noon the Superintendent looked out from the Maintenance Station at the top of the Pass. He had never read the story, but the thought came to him that the air looked much as if someone had emptied a pillowcase in front of an electric fan. He could still see the snow-crusted tamarack tree which was his gauge, and so he knew that the storm was as yet only of average power for the Sierra crest, although in most places it would have been a blizzard of unparalleled intensity.

  So far he had held the road with the push-plows. But now as one of them drew near, he saw that much of the snow which it pushed aside tumbled back from the high bank already built up. “Time for the rotaries,” he said to himself.

  Peters took out the first rotary; big Swede Swenson was his swamper. The Superintendent crawled in beside Swenson to ride for a few minutes; he remembered that the two had been fighting a few days before, and he wanted to step on any trouble. Peters steered the great machine, and angled it into the snow-bank until the right-hand cutter-bar bit deeply. Then they stood still for a minute while Swenson worked the controls to set the level of the augers.

  “A little lower,” ordered Peters.

  “O.K., Chief,” said Swenson the swamper.

  The Superintendent smiled comfortably; now with work to be done they were good-natured as fat puppies.

  With a sudden whir which rose at once to an all-enveloping roar, the big machine was off. It vibrated and shook and pounded. The heavy windshield wipers seemed to labor frantically. Driver and swamper leaned anxiously forward.

  Crowded into one corner the Superintendent could see only snow-encrusted glass and the inside of the cab. For a moment in spite of long experience he felt panic; the ponderous plow seemed with all its shaking and bouncing to be tearing down the highway at death-dealing speed although its driver could obviously not see more than a few feet ahead. But the Superintendent knew that this was mere illusion, that the working of the plow itself caused the vibration, and that its actual speed forward was much slower than a man could walk.