The Tower

by Richard Martin Stern

  Grover Frazee, drink in hand, watched as if hypnotized, and when the line dipped sharply and disappeared beneath the windows his lips began to move without sound and the look in his eyes was not quite sane.

  Someone in the big room had turned on a transistor radio. Rock music blared to a heavy beat.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Mayor Ramsay said, “this is not time for that kind of thing!” He too had watched the reaching line until it plummeted out of sight beneath the windows. “I’ll put a stop to it.”

  “Leave it, Bob,” the governor said, “unless you think psalms and prayer are more appropriate.”

  “I fail to see the connection.”

  “It’s there.” The governor’s voice was weary. “The band played on the deck of the Titanic while it was sinking. Some people prayed.” His voice sharpened but did not rise in volume. “Goddammit, man, some of these people are scared to death, and I don’t blame them. Let them do their own things.” His arm tightened around Beth’s waist. “I’ll get back to the phone.” He hesitated. “You?”

  “Wherever you go, I go,” Beth said. “I—don’t want to be alone.”

  On the phone, “Sorry, Governor,” Nat’s voice said. “It was a long shot. The chief is giving it another try, but—” He left the sentence hanging.

  “Understood,” the governor said. “The best you can—” He smiled suddenly at his own words. He shook his head. “Never mind.” Pause. “The elevators are out of the question?”

  “Too much heat,” Nat said. “Distortion of the rails. Sorry about that too.”

  To Beth, the office seemed small, crowded, claustrophobic. Howard and Storr, the two firemen, had come in, along with Ben Caldwell and Grover Frazee and the fire commissioner. Beth had the insane feeling that she could smell fear and she looked around to try to identify its source.

  The governor had turned from the telephone. He said to Howard, “You’re sure the stairs are out of the question?”

  “For a fact,” Howard said. He looked at Storr, who nodded. “We’re better off here,” Howard said, “which isn’t saying much, to be sure. Look—” He opened his hands in a mounting gesture. “You’ve seen a forest fire? Or maybe you have not. It starts small, usually. Somebody is careless with a campfire, a lighted cigarette, like that. Grass catches, then brush, then the lower branches of the big trees.” He paused, with vivid gestures demonstrating how it was. “Up in the wee top of one of the big trees, say, there is a nest of little birds. Down on the ground and even in the lower branches of their big tree there is fire, smoke and heat are rising, the flames are climbing branch by branch.” He paused again. “But for a long time the nest is still safe.” He shook his head. “Not forever, mind you, but for a time. Until the flames reach the topmost branches the little birds are best off where they are.” One final pause. “Particularly,” Howard said, “if they cannot fly.”

  The fire commissioner said, “This is a hell of a big tree. That gives us a little more time.”

  “For what?” Grover Frazee said. “Just to wait, knowing what’s going to happen?” He stood up suddenly. “Well, I’m not!” His voice was rising.

  In the doorway Mayor Ramsay said, “Sit down, man! Start behaving like a responsible adult.”

  In the silence, “You ought to have been a Boy Scout leader,” Frazee said. “Probably you were. For God, for Mother, and for Yale? The old school tie and noblesse oblige?” He shook his head as he started for the doorway. “Don’t try to stop me.” He spoke directly to the governor.

  “We won’t,” the governor said, and watched Frazee disappear around the corner.

  The office was still. Beth opened her mouth, closed it again without a sound. The fire commissioner stirred uneasily. The mayor said, “We should have stopped him, Bent.”

  “A judgment call,” the governor said. “I’ll take the responsibility.”

  Fireman Howard said, “He’ll never in this world get down those stairs, Governor.”

  “I am aware of it.” The governor’s face showed strain.

  Senator Peters appeared in the doorway. He leaned against the doorjamb.

  “A judgment call,” the governor said again. “Maybe it was right, maybe wrong. I don’t know. We’ll never know. Decisions like that can be argued indefinitely.”

  “You are talking,” the mayor said, “about a man’s life, Bent.”

  “I am aware of that too,” the governor said. “But what gives me the right of decision over another man’s life?”

  “Are you abdicating your position?”

  “There, Bob,” the governor said, “is one of the differences between us. I don’t believe in the Papa-knows-best-in-all-matters theory. In areas of public concern I will take a stand. But what a grown man chooses to do, unless it directly affects others, is not my concern.”

  From the large outer room the rock beat was plain. A female voice rose suddenly in laughter, shrill, alcoholic, tinged with hysteria. Somebody shouted, “Hey, look! He’s going out the door!”

  “This is your total public at the moment, Bent,” the mayor said. “And they are affected by Frazee. You can’t deny that.”

  “That,” the governor said, “is what makes it a judgment call. On balance I think the public is best served by letting him go. One more disruptive force—out of sight.”

  Senator Peters said mildly to the room in general, “Cold-blooded son of a bitch, isn’t he?”

  There was no answer.

  The senator smiled. “But I’ll have to go along with you, Bent.” The governor roused himself in the desk chair. “So what we have left,” he said, “is the hope that somehow your people, Pete, are going to be able to contain the fire before it reaches”—he smiled suddenly—“the nest.”

  “Like I said,” the commissioner said, “it’s a hell of a big tree.” Ben Caldwell said, “Has anyone had a weather report? A good drenching thunderstorm would help.”

  Beth, watching, listening, could almost feel a storm in the air. Losing herself in memory, she thought of the approaching darkness as the thunderheads build. Then the first stir of the winds that mount, the first distant muttering of the storm. How often had she experienced it, and how many times, particularly as a child, had she resented the spoiling of a summer afternoon?

  The drops at first would be large, heavy, widely spaced, while the lightning flashes came in faster sequence and the intervals between flash and thunderclap diminished.

  One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus. . . counting the length of the intervals in seconds to estimate the distance of the flash until, with the center of the storm directly overhead, there was no longer any interval, flash and thunderclap simultaneous.

  Then the heavens opened and the rain became a solid mass, sometimes with hailstones bouncing or rattling on windows and roof, and the gods themselves seeming to shake the universe.

  And she had resented this? When now, merely because of Ben Caldwell’s two sentences, a thunderstorm suddenly represented hope of salvation? Incredible.

  “A nice summer rain would be good,” the governor was saying. He was smiling. “Do you know any rainmakers, Ben?”

  The telephone made noises. The governor flipped on the speaker switch that all might hear. “Armitage here.”

  Nat Wilson’s weary voice said, “The second shot was no better than the first, Governor. It wasn’t much of a hope from the start, but we gave it the best try we could.”

  “Understood,” the governor said. “We appreciate the effort.”

  “Brown wants to know if his two men reached you safely.”

  “They did. They are sitting here now.” The governor paused. “Did the other two get back down?”

  There was a pause. Brown’s voice came on the speaker. “I’m sorry to say they haven’t, Governor. They’re on about the fiftieth floor. There’s fire in the stairwell beneath them.”

  “Then send them back up, man. If they can still walk, that is.”

  “There is fire above the
m too, Governor.”

  The governor’s eyes were closed. At length he opened them. “Brown.”

  “Sir?”

  “Put Wilson on again.” And when Nat’s voice acknowledged, “I want a complete report prepared,” the governor said. “Chapter and verse of this—comedy of errors. I want it made now, while some testimony can still be taken. No holds barred, no sensitivities pampered. Who did what or failed to do what and, where possible, why. As long as we are able we will keep you informed of everything that happens up here, every decision we make, every fact we find.”

  Plain on the speaker was a muttering voice in the background: Giddings rumbling protest.

  “Tell whoever that is,” the governor said, “that this is a court of inquiry before the eventual fact, and that if properly done, this report may prevent further ridiculous episodes such as this one. At least I hope to God it will.”

  “I understand, Governor,” Nat said.

  “Let the facts themselves tell the story,” the governor went on. “Grind no axes. They aren’t necessary. I think under the circumstances there will be blame enough to go around.” He paused. “Including blame among some of us up here for letting our ambitions get out of hand.” He paused once more. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right,” the governor said. “We will put together—” He stopped at the sudden hush out in the big room.

  Someone screamed, screamed again. It was contagious.

  “Hold on,” the governor said and jumped from his chair to rush to the doorway and look out. “God!” he said. “God in heaven!”

  Someone had opened the fire door in answer to hammered knocks. Grover Frazee stood framed in the doorway. Most of his clothing had burned away. He was burned bald and blackened, his eyes were merely dark holes in the torment of his face. His teeth showed white in a rictus grin. Flesh from his upper body hung in ragged strips and the remaining leather of his shoes smoldered. He made one wavering step forward, arms partially outstretched, a bubbling rattling sound deep in his throat. And then all at once he collapsed face forward into a huddled, blackened, smoking heap. He made one convulsive shudder, and then no further move and no sound.

  The big room was silent, in shock.

  The governor said quietly, “Cover him up.” His face was expressionless as he turned back into the office. A judgment call, he thought, and closed his eyes briefly.

  26

  6:09P.M.-6:19P.M.

  It could not be happening—but it was. One by one the building’s defenses tried to meet the attack and, failing, collapsed.

  Lights blinked unseen in the computer-control console for a time, but when all power failed, they too went dead.

  On floor after floor sprinklers went into action, their fusible metal links melted by the heat. But much of the heat was within the structure itself, unreachable by sprinkler spray, and when fire did burst into the open, gulping fresh air to fuel its fury, temperatures rose so rapidly that water within the sprinkler pipes turned to steam, and the pipes burst; and one more enemy attack had carried.

  Within the building’s core not one but a hundred, a thousand vertical crevices turned swiftly into chimneys, carrying heat up and concomitantly reaching down to suck in more fresh air, first to generate and then to support combustion.

  Heated air rises—the statement is axiomatic—and superheated air rises more quickly than air merely warmed. But heat can be transmitted by conduction as well: quickly through steel structure, more slowly but still inexorably through paneling and tiling and flooring, through ducts themselves, wiring and piping and curtain walls. And a fire once well begun becomes almost self-sustaining, raising temperatures above combustion levels, causing materials seemingly to ignite spontaneously. Prometheus has much to answer for.

  Word had spread. The great building which was to have been a world communications center was now focus for world communications of a different kind. Around the world it was known, and in some places the knowledge was received with pleasure, if not joy, that in the richest country on earth, in the newest, tallest building man had ever conceived, a peacetime catastrophe was in the making, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men were helpless to cope.

  Not quite.

  They had covered what was left of Grover Frazee with a white tablecloth and left the body where it had fallen. The fire door was again closed, but to everyone in the room it was clear now that fire doors were only temporary protection. The invading enemy would break through in his own time. Unless—

  “They are trying to contain the fire in the lower floors,” the governor said. He was again standing on the chair. “That is our best hope.” He had almost said only hope.

  He no longer had a full audience. Over in one corner of the big room the transistor radio again played rock music. Half a dozen people were dancing, if that was what it could be called. Well, the governor thought, he had said it himself: it was either that or hymns and prayer. He ignored the spectacle.

  “I am sorry to report that the elevator attempt failed.” He paused. “Considering what happened to the first attempt, maybe that is just as well.” Jesus H Jumping Christ, he thought, I am reduced to platitudes. He made himself smile suddenly. “I won’t say that everything is ginger-peachy. It isn’t. On the other hand, we are all right here for the present, and I for one intend to hold the thought that our fire-fighting friends will get here in time.” He paused. “And now I am going to have a drink. After all, this started out as a reception.”

  He stepped down from the chair and took Beth’s arm. “A drink,” he said, “and somewhere to talk. I am tired of grinning like an idiot to show how confident I am.”

  With her, Beth thought, he did not feel that he had to dissemble. There was the miracle.

  Together they walked to the bar, and then carried drinks to a deserted corner. The governor swung two chairs into proximity. They sat companionably close, their backs to the room.

  It was Beth who broke the silence. “Thoughts, Bent?” she said.

  “Gloomy and angry.” The governor smiled suddenly, this time with meaning. “I’m thinking of waste. Regretting it. Hating it.” He paused. “Mentally shaking my fists at the sky. Exercise in childish futility.”

  She could understand the feeling, even share it. She forced it aside. “When I was a child,” she said, “and being punished, confined to my room”—she made herself smile—“I used to try to think of what I would most like to do, concentrate on that. What would you most like to do, Bent?”

  Slowly, even perceptibly some of the tension flowed from him. His smile turned easy and gentle. “Retire from politics,” he said. “I have the means and I have had the fun. That ranch out in New Mexico—”

  “Just that, Bent? Nothing more.”

  He took his time. At last he shook his head. “No. You make me look at myself. I would hate total retirement.” Again the meaningful smile. “I am a lawyer. I’d like to find out how good a lawyer I am.”

  “You would be good at anything you decided to do.”

  “But the fishing would always be there,” the governor said, almost as if she had not spoken, “and I would see to it that there was always time for it.” He paused. “And since I am painting a picture of Utopia, you would always be there too.”

  There was warmth in her mind, in her being. “Is that a proposal?”

  Without hesitation, “It is.”

  “Then,” Beth said slowly, “I accept with pleasure.”

  Nat walked to the door of the trailer and down the steps to stand on the plaza level and stare up at the immensity of the building. Until she spoke, he was unaware that Patty had followed him.

  “All the people,” Patty said.

  Nat looked then at the huge crowd beyond the barricades. “Times Square New Year’s Eve,” he said. There was anger in his voice. “Goddam ghouls. Maybe we ought to burn people at the stake in public, sell tickets, make millions.”

  Patty was silent.
<
br />   “We’re all to blame,” Nat said. “That’s the first thing. I’m glad Bert never knew.”

  “Thank you for that.” Patty paused. “And remember it. Others are involved too. Even Daddy. Everybody had a hand in it, not just you, don’t you see?”

  He could smile then with effort. “You’re a cheerer-upper.” Unlike Zib, who tended to be stylishly downbeat. And that, he thought, was another of the big city’s characteristics he did not like: the firm conviction that nothing was ever what it appeared to be; that there was nothing really to be for, only against; the ubiquitous you-aren’t–going–to–make–a–sucker–out–of-me defense thrown up like a barbed-wire entanglement to protect the insecure inner compound; all of it in the name of worldly sophistication. Sophistry, perhaps, but not sophistication.

  “What is going to happen to all those people, Nat?” Patty’s voice was quietly intense. “Will they—” She left the question unfinished.

  “They’re hauling hose in and up,” Nat said, “a floor at a time. Every step is a fight. There are one hundred and twenty-five floors to go.”

  “But what is burning? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Everything. Some of the offices have been leased. Furniture, carpeting, paneled doors, paper records—those are the first to burn. And that raises the temperature to the point where paint will burn and floor tiling and plaster will melt, and that in turn raises the temperature even more until things you wouldn’t believe combustible start to go too.” Nat paused. “I’m not a fire expert, but that in general is how it goes.”

  “Suppose,” Patty said, “that the building had been occupied when this happened. Thousands of people instead of a hundred.” She paused. “But numbers aren’t really important, are they? If it were only one person, it would still be—tragic.”

  In the midst of her own grief over Bert McGraw’s death, Nat thought, she could still concern herself with others. Maybe because of McGraw’s death, the loss somehow making all men kin.