The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  Against this kind of elder statesman talk Cary always felt defensive. “We have problems today,” he said. “You won’t deny it?”

  “Oh, hell, son, you know better than that. But the difference is that today we have the means to improve things. We have the knowledge, the wealth, the production, the distribution, the communication—above all, the communication—and what we had then was damn little more than hysteria and despair.”

  “The knowledge?” Cary said. “It seems to me—”

  “I used the word advisedly,” the senator said sharply. “Knowledge we have. The question is whether we have the wisdom to use it properly. That’s why I’d like to be your age again, just starting out, but in a world that could be a better world than it’s ever been since Eve gave Adam that apple. Only I doubt if it was an apple; I never heard of apples in Mesopotamia, where the Garden of Eden is supposed to have been. Ever think of that?”

  Cary had not. Thinking about it now, he was amused, not so much by the question as by the senator’s adroitness in bringing it up and thereby switching the conversation without even seeming to shift gears.

  Jake Peters was an anomaly: he spoke with a big-city working-class accent that was almost the “dese,” “dem,” and “dose” type, but his erudition in astonishing areas could rock you right back on your heels. If you argued with Jake Peters, as a long list of his Senate colleagues could testify, you did well to have your homework letter-perfect.

  The senator was already off on another subject. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I almost didn’t come today.” He smiled. “Ever get hunches, son?”

  Cary Wycoff did, but disliked admitting it. “Now, Senator,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m not clairvoyant,” the senator said. He was smiling. “And I’ve known Bent Armitage a long time and this means a lot to him.” He paused. The smile faded. “At least I think it does. I never asked him.”

  “I should think,” Cary Wycoff said, “that it means a lot to many people. A new building means new jobs, new businesses attracted into the city, more taxes—”

  “You see it black-and-white, don’t you?” the senator said.

  It was a sore point. Cary Wycoff regarded himself as liberal in view and political position, and yet to his dismay occasionally, as now, the charge of tunnel vision cropped up and he did not know how to refute it. “I don’t try to stifle dissent, Senator,” he said. And he added, “As some do.”

  “If you think you’re sticking your finger in my eye, son,” the senator said easily, “think again.” There was an air of circuit-rider righteousness in young Wycoff, as in other congressmen and even presidential candidates the senator could name, and he had long ago decided that argument with them was futile. A man totally convinced of his own rectitude saw only heresy in any other view.

  “If a man believes in what he says or does,” Cary Wycoff said, “I believe he should be allowed—”

  “To do what? Commit violence? Destroy records? Set bombs?” The senator watched Wycoff’s indecision.

  “Our own revolution,” Cary said at last, “was violent dissent, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” the senator said. “But if those who launched it and carried it out had lost instead of winning, they would have had to take the consequences, however noble a document the Declaration was and is. They were laying their heads on the block and they knew it.”

  “Then,” Cary said, “morality is decided by whether you win or lose? Is that it?” There was scorn in his voice.

  “That,” the senator said, “has been argued for a long time, and I don’t pretend to know the answer.” He smiled. “What I do know is that when somebody takes the law into his own hands and because of it somebody else is injured, I don’t hold with total amnesty.”

  “You don’t believe in turning the other cheek?” Cary was sure he had scored a debating point.

  “I’ve known times,” the senator said, “when all that got a man was two black eyes instead of one—and he still had to fight.” He leaned forward to poke a bill over the cab driver’s shoulder. “Hunch or not, here we are.”

  They stepped out of the taxi and walked between the barricades toward the platform. Signs waved. A few voices began an unintelligible chant.

  “Cops all over the place,” Cary Wycoff said. “You’d think there was a threat of some kind.”

  “I would have thought,” the senator said, “that you would call them fuzz.” And then, “Grover,” he said, “you picked a fine day for it.”

  “Welcome, Jake,” Frazee said. “And Cary. You’re in good time. We’re about to start the teethclicking.”

  All three men smiled.

  “Up you go on the platform,” Frazee said. “Sort yourselves out. I’ll be right up.”

  “I take it,” the senator said, “that you want brief mention of God, motherhood, and man’s future—without political overtones?”

  Frazee smiled again. “Precisely.”

  The building was equipped with a closed-circuit television net that could scan every floor, every subbasement. But on this day, the building not yet open to the public, the security desks were unmanned and the television systems were dead.

  The point had been argued, but economy had carried the weight. The World Tower, it was said, was no Fort Knox with untold wealth in gold piled high for the taking. Not yet.

  Later, when the building was occupied, fully tenanted (Grover Frazee had winced at the thought and at the use of the manufactured word), security would become a problem, as it is in all of the city’s large buildings, and the expense of that security would be accepted as a matter of routine.

  Later, all of the security desks would be manned day and night, and the closed-circuit television would maintain its ceaseless vigil. But not yet. Not today.

  But even today, as for many months since the building’s skeleton of structural steel had begun to be fleshed out and clothed, the computer center was manned. Consider the analogy of the heart beating in the fetus, well before birth supplying nutriment and life force to the developing organism.

  Here at the semicircular desk facing the blinking lights, the rotating spools, and the rows of instrument dials, one man watched over the health of the great structure.

  Floor 65, northwest corridor, required additional cooling air—was there a leak of some kind allowing outside heat to enter? A question to examine tomorrow; in the meantime, more washed, cooled air to the northwest corridor.

  Floor 125, the Tower Room, in anticipation of the flood of reception guests with their concomitant BTUs, each human a walking heat machine, was already cooled two degrees below normal.

  The pressure of the electric current into the building from the Con Edison substation held steady. The flow would fluctuate as automated systems turned on and off.

  From the step-down transformers, all voltages were steady within their normal limits.

  Elevator No. 35, local floors 44-54, was still shut down for repair; it showed dead on the panel.

  In the subbasements automated systems-functioned, motors hummed softly, standby generators waited with their massive built-in patience.

  All systems normal. All systems go. The man in the padded swivel chair facing the great panel could relax and almost doze.

  His name was Henry Barber and he lived in Washington Heights with a wife, Helen, three children, Ann, 10, Jody, 7, and Petey, 3, and Helen’s mother, 64. Barber had a degree in electrical engineering from Columbia. His hobbies were chess, pro football, and the old movies shown at the Museum of Modern Art. He was thirty-six years old. He never became any older.

  Mercifully, he never knew what hit him: the blow from the eighteen-inch wrecking bar shattered his skull, he was almost instantly dead and therefore totally insensitive to what happened later.

  John Connors stood for a few moments, studying the blinking lights of the control panel. Then he left the quiet room and went on down the stairs to the subbasement where the electrical cables entered the building fr
om the nearby substation. There, door closed, secure from interruption, he sat quietly, from time to time glancing at his watch.

  The question he had asked himself earlier was still in his mind, answered satisfactorily now. He repeated it over and over again with pleasure as he studied the massive electrical cables and the brooding transformers: Why bunt, when a triple would clear the bases?

  “Swing away,” he whispered. “Swing for the fences.”

  In the plaza the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and protest signs waved to the rhythm.

  Rabbi Stein prayed that the building with its communications potential be an instrument of peace for all mankind.

  In a corner of the plaza, subtly contained by a few uniformed police, a mixed group, Arabs and non-Arabs, chanted for justice in Palestine.

  Monsignor O’Toole blessed the building.

  Signs calling for birth control and nationwide legalized abortion sprouted like crocuses in early spring.

  The Reverend Arthur William Williams called for celestial blessing, peace, and prosperity.

  Signs appeared demanding taxation of church-owned property.

  The Reverend Joe Willie Thomas attempted to climb the steps to the platform microphones and was restrained. From the foot of the steps he denounced idolatry.

  Grover Frazee acted as master of ceremonies.

  The governor spoke. He praised the building’s purpose.

  The mayor spoke in favor of brotherhood of man.

  Senator Jake Peters praised progress.

  Congressman Cary Wycoff spoke of the benefits the building would bring to the city.

  A ribbon across one of the concourse doors was cut in full view of television and still cameras. It was hastily replaced and cut a second time when it was learned that NBC-TV had missed the shot.

  The invited guests flowed through the door and into two automated express elevators for the less-than-two-minute trip to the highest room in the tallest building in the world where the bar tables were already set up, candles lighted, canapés set out, champagne was chilled and ready, and waiters and waitresses stood by.

  Part II

  “The important thing to remember is that with high enough temperatures, anything will burn, anything!”

  —ASSISTANT FIRE COMMISSIONER

  TIMOTHY O’REILLY BROWN,

  speaking to the press

  10

  4:10P.M.-4:23P.M.

  In the Tower Room, drink in hand, “I have absolutely nothing against holy men per se,” the governor was saying to Grover Frazee, “but some of them do take the bit in their teeth and go on and on and on.”

  “Would you care to have that quoted to the state electorate?” Frazee said. He felt better, easier, more relaxed than he had all day. Will Giddings had depressed him; there was no denying it. But with congratulations coming in now from all sides, the sense of depression had faded and then disappeared altogether. Looking contentedly around the room, “Might cost you some votes,” he said.

  “You know,” the governor said, “I’m not sure I’d give a damn. I have a ranch out in the mountains in northern New Mexico. The ranch house sits at eight thousand feet on a green meadow. There’s a trout stream, and from the ranch house porch a view of thirteen-thousand-foot mountains that never lose their snow.” He too looked around the crowded room. “The ranch looks better and better all the time.” He caught the eye of a passing waiter. “Bring me another bourbon and water, son, if you please.” And then again to Grover Frazee. “I’ve even switched from Scotch.” He smiled as the mayor walked up. “Ah, Bob,” he said.

  “I thought it went quite well,” the mayor said. “Congratulations, Grover.”

  “Your remarks on the brotherhood of man laid them in the aisles, Bob,” the governor said. “As I pointed out earlier, it is those carefully prepared impromptu comments that do the trick.” There were times when the governor felt almost ashamed baiting Bob Ramsay; it was, as they said in his adopted West, as easy as shooting fish in a rain barrel, too easy. “Where’s your good lady?”

  “Over by the windows.” The mayor’s voice was fond. “Admiring the view. Do you know that on a clear day—”

  “Do we have clear days any more?” the governor said. And then, “Strike that. I’m thinking of something else.” Of limitless blue skies and mountains clearly visible a hundred miles away, turning purple in the dusk; of vast quiet and a sense of peace. The governor felt suddenly sentimental. “You’ve been married how long, Bob?”

  “Thirty-five years.”

  “You’re a lucky man.”

  The mayor examined the statement for barbs. There appeared to be none. “I am.” He glanced in his wife’s direction.

  “And who is that with her?” the governor said.

  “One of your boosters, a cousin of mine. Her name is Beth Shirley.” The mayor was smiling now. “Interested?”

  “Lead me to her,” the governor said.

  She was tall, this Beth Shirley, with calm blue eyes and auburn hair. She nodded acknowledgment of the introduction and then waited for the governor to set the conversational pace.

  “All I know about you,” the governor said, “is that you are Bob Ramsay’s cousin and you vote the right ticket. What else should I know?”

  Her smile was slow, matching the calm of her eyes. “That depends, Governor, on what you have in mind.”

  “At my age—” the governor began. He shook his head.

  “I don’t think your life has stopped yet,” Beth said. The smile spread. “At least that is not the picture I’ve always had of you. Don’t disappoint me, please.”

  The governor thought about it. He said at last, his smile matching her own, “You know, I think the last thing I want in this world is to disappoint you.” Strangely enough it was true. It was, he decided, the old goat in him coming out. “And,” he added, “if that sounds ridiculous, why, let it. I’ve been ridiculous before. Many times.”

  Talk swirled around them, but for the moment they were alone. “Your ability to laugh at yourself,” Beth said, “is one of the things I’ve always admired in you.”

  Man’s capacity to absorb flattery, the governor had always thought, is without limit. “Tell me more.”

  “Bob Ramsay cannot laugh at himself.”

  “Then he ought not to be in politics. The President of the United States can’t laugh at himself either, and we’re all the losers for it.”

  “You might have been President. You came close.”

  “We used to say,” the governor said, “that close only counts in horseshoes, and then you have to be damn close. The presidency is a spin of the wheel. Few men ever get a first chance and almost none a second. I had my shot at it. There won’t be another, and that’s that.” Why was he thinking so often today of that trout stream winding through the foot of the meadow, and the scent of evergreens in the high clear air? “Do you know the West?”

  “I went to the University of Colorado.”

  “Did you, by God!” Whoever arranged these chance meetings, the governor thought, probably knocked themselves out laughing at man’s conceit that he controlled his own destiny. “Do you know northern New Mexico?”

  “I’ve skied and ridden in the mountains.”

  The governor took a deep breath. “Do you fish?”

  “Only trout fishing. In streams.”

  It was then that Senator Peters walked up, champagne glass in hand. “Always you’ve been against monopolies, Bent,” the senator said, “but here you are monopolizing.”

  “Go away, Jake.” The intimate spell was broken. The governor sighed. “You won’t, of course. You never go away. You’re a bad conscience in the middle of the night. Miss Shirley, Senator Peters. Now tell me what you want, and then go away.”

  “You’ve been picking on Bob Ramsay.” There was a twinkle in the senator’s eye.

  “Only to the extent,” the governor said, “of putting him in the presence of a new idea. It had to do with dinosaurs.”

/>   “Bob is uncomfortable in the presence of new ideas.”

  “Miss Shirley is his cousin,” the governor said.

  The senator smiled and nodded acknowledgment. “I apologize.” He paused, and then, in partial explanation, “Bent and I,” he said, “have known each other for a long time. We speak the same language, except that we don’t always agree, and his accent is better than mine. We worked our way through the same college and law school, Bent a little later than I. I waited on tables and drove a crew launch. Bent was more imaginative: he set up a laundry business and lived like a prince.”

  “And,” Beth said, “Bob’s way through prep school and Yale was paid by his family.” She nodded her understanding of the implications.

  “Bob loves this city,” the senator said. “I honor him for that. He’s as proud of this building as if he’d put it up himself.”

  “And you are not, Senator?”

  “My dear,” the senator said, “I’m an old-fashioned practical idealist. And if that sounds contradictory—”

  “It isn’t,” the governor said. “In the trade union movement they call what Jake wants for his constituency pork chops—higher wages, benefits.” He paused. “Not fancy buildings, am I right, Jake?”

  The senator nodded. “Bob said you mentioned dinosaur stables.”

  The governor nodded in his turn, wary now. “Does that offend you, Jake? It’s your city too.”

  “No offense. You fought this building, but you own a piece of it too.”

  “If you can’t whip them,” the governor said, “it is a good idea to sign on with them.” He showed his fangs. “And Grover can be a persuasive fellow.”

  “How are rentals going?”

  “As far as I know, very well.” Only a slight untruth; the governor said it with ease.

  “I hear different.”

  “You can hear what you want to hear, Jake. Nobody knows that better than you.”