Men flattered themselves that they were dominant, waving their muscles and all that jazz. In many cultures, as Zib had learned in an anthropology course, polygamy was the norm. Polyandry, on the other hand, was rarely practiced. And that merely demonstrated how out of joint man’s thinking was, because one woman could satisfy a dozen men, could she not? And a mere man was hard put to satisfy one woman. But, as the British said, there it was: man’s thinking callused over by the ages.
She stroked her shoulder and arm again and decided that there was something to this bath-oil bit: her skin did feel smooth, soft, exciting to the touch. She stroked her breasts gently. Better and better. But, “Easy, girl,” she said aloud, “save it all for Nat. Don’t waste it now.”
She got out of her bath, dried herself, and applied scent sparingly to throat, breasts, and belly. Then she put on the lightweight full-length white robe Nat liked especially, and the heeled mules he had given her, and went into the living room to put music on the record player. It was then that she decided to call the trailer office.
On the phone, “Hello,” Nat said.
And what had she thought to say anyway? “Hi.” And she added inanely, “I’m home.”
Nat heard the music in the background: “Scheherazade,” the violin voice just beginning its theme, Scheherazade herself beguiling the sultan. Balls. “I guessed that.”
“Darling, how is it going? I mean—”
“Great. Just great.” Through the open doorway Nat looked again at the crowded plaza. He raised one hand to wipe wearily at his forehead and saw the grime from the sub-basement on his palm.
Oh, he had known dirt before right here on the job, and he and Zib had even laughed together about the way he sometimes looked when he came home at night.
But this was different, as different as night from day, death from life. This was—
Zib said, “I—tried to watch on television. I—couldn’t.” She paused. “It’s a mess, isn’t it?”
“Understatement.” Nat paused. “Did you want something?”
The hesitation in her voice was un-Ziblike. “Not really. I came home and—” She stopped. Her voice now was uncertain. “Will you be coming home?” She could not bring herself to add the single word: ever.
Nat was conscious that Patty was watching him. He tried to ignore her and could not.
“Darling, I asked a question.”
“I don’t know the answer.” Nat hung up.
Zib hung up slowly. It was then that the tears began.
The telephone on the desk made noises. Nat walked quickly to it, picked it up, spoke his name.
The governor’s voice said, “Only two more women to go. Then we start the men’s lottery sequence.” His voice said nothing in particular, but a faint warning was plain.
“Okay,” Nat said. “I’ve talked with the chief. He says in a command situation either it’s obey or mutiny, and if a mutiny begins—”
“The chief reaches for the nearest belaying pin and whacks the nearest head, is that it?” the governor said. There was patent approval in his tone.
“That’s it,” Nat said. “He knows his equipment and he’s been through this before, and he says if disorder is allowed—” He paused, realizing he was speaking to one of the potential victims. Then he went on because there was no way to conceal the thought. “If disorder is allowed,” he repeated, “the chief says nobody is going to get out alive. I’m sorry, Governor, but that’s his message, and I have to agree with it.”
“No apology necessary, young man. I agree with it too. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Yes, sir. A couple.” Nat paused to gather his thoughts. “You might pass the word right now that at the first sign of disorder I’ll tell the chief and he’ll hold the breeches buoy on the Trade Center roof until people line up again. If anybody doubts that, have him get on this phone and I’ll tell him.”
“As long,” the governor said, “as the telephone line remains in service.”
“That’s the second thought, Governor,” Nat said. “We’ll get right through to the city radio station. They’ve got to have a mike and remote equipment here. If the phone goes out, we’ll go on radio. You’ve got a transistor radio up there?”
“Currently playing rock-and-roll,” the governor said. He paused. “Agreed.”
“If the phone is out,” Nat said, “you won’t be able to reach us. If there’s trouble, just flutter a handkerchief at the window and the chief will call down to me. Okay?”
There was a short silence. “Okay,” the governor said. Another silence. Then, “You think well, young man. You have done a superlative job. You have the gratitude of all of us.” Pause. “That is just in case the opportunity to tell you in person doesn’t arise.”
“We’ll do the best we can to get you all out,” Nat said.
“I know you will. And thanks.”
32
7:53P.M.-8:09P.M.
The lower forty floors of the building were now in shadow. Patrolman Shannon stared up at the smoking mass and shook his head in disbelief. “Do you see what I see, Frank? Up there the building is glowing!”
It was. Most of the windows had broken out because of the heat, and smoke poured through the empty frames. But through the smoke, in the darkened shadows plain to see, the building itself was faintly incandescent, and in the distorted air currents caused by its radiation the entire structure seemed to writhe.
“You’re a praying man, Mike,” Barnes said. “Better get to it.” He paused. “It was a grand sight, remember? And all of these grand people came to watch.”
High above them the breeches buoy swung out of the Tower Room again, by a trick of light glinting momentarily as it slid down the catenary curve toward the Trade Center roof. In the crowd all eyes watched. Shannon crossed himself.
“A cremation,” Barnes said. “I wonder how many are thinking of that.” He paused. “Or of Joan of Arc at the stake.” For the first time his tone was angry. “We let the maniac through, Mike, and I for one will not forget it even though the man, bless him, said we were only members of the lodge.”
“And,” Shannon said, “whatever did he mean by that?”
“That the blame is shared, even though I don’t know how or why. But I can guess. A—thing like this does not happen from one cause. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow may have kicked over the lantern, but a thousand other things had to go wrong before Chicago could burn to the ground. It has to be the same here, although that is damn small consolation.”
Shannon said nothing. He seemed unimpressed.
“There are people up there, man,” Barnes said, “people like you and me, yes, I even saw a few black faces. And—”
“That what-you-may-call-it,” Shannon said. “They’re getting them out.”
“They won’t get them all out,” Barnes said. “Not with heat that already makes the building glow. And do you know the worst of it, Mike, the hell of it?” He paused. “The best ones will be the ones to stay behind.”
On the Trade Center roof Kronski said, “You’re expecting trouble over there, huh, Chief?”
“Maybe. I hope not.” The chief’s massive calm was unshaken. Together he and Kronski caught the swinging breeches buoy, and the chief lifted the woman out.
She was sobbing, from fright, from grief. “Mein husband—”
“We’d like your name, ma’am,” the chief said. “We’re keeping a list.”
“Bucholtz! But mein husband! You must bring him next! He is a very important man! He vill pay! He—”
“All right, lady,” the chief said. “These cops will take care of you. We’re trying to get everybody out.” He gestured to the policemen who took the woman by both arms.
“Mein husband! He knows many important people! He—”
“One question,” the chief said. “How many more women to come?”
Frau Bucholtz shook her head. “I do not know.”
“You were number forty-eight,” the chief said. “How many were th
ere?”
“1 think forty-nine. But I do not know. And I do not care. Mein husband—”
“Yeah,” the chief said. “Take her away.” He turned to watch the breeches buoy on its long climb back to the Tower Room.
Kronski said, “I seen a lifeboat once up in the Bering Sea.” He shook his head. “Cold up there, you know what I mean, Chief? You been there.”
“I’ve been there.” The chief was pretty sure he knew that what was coming was some grisly tale he did not particularly want to hear, but he said nothing more.
“One of them coastal freighters,” Kronski said. “Fire aboard. They’d lost their engines. Big seas, and the freighter began to break up. They took to the boats.” He paused. “We got it all from one guy, the first officer. He lasted a little while. He was the only one.
“The thing was,” Kronski said, “when they launched the boats, one of them capsized. Otherwise—” He shook his head and spread his hands. “You know what I mean, Chief?”
The chief said heavily, “I know what you mean.” He paused. “So everybody tried to get into the other boat, isn’t that how it was?”
Kronski nodded. “Right. They tried to beat them off with oars, the first officer said. No good. No fucking good. They kept coming.” He was silent.
The chief’s eyes were on the distant windows. He watched the breeches buoy swing through. In his mind was memory of the gigantic seas in those northern waters, the bellowing wind, and the cold—above all the bone-chilling cold. Men in open boats, he thought, or men trying to launch open boats, desperate freezing men. He kept his eyes on the windows, but he said, “And what happened was that they capsized the second boat too, isn’t that it?”
Kronski nodded again. “Right. We got there less than an hour later.” Pause. “Might as well have been a month. Only that first officer was still alive, and, like I said, he didn’t last long.” Another pause. “They might of saved maybe half—”
“But they panicked,” the chief said, “and didn’t save any. That’s just the way it goes.” His voice was savage, and his eyes were still on the windows. No handkerchief waving. Yet.
The governor walked back to the office and sank into the desk chair. He felt suddenly old, and tired beyond mere fatigue. It was as if in Beth’s light presence he had spent these past few hours in the refreshing spring of eternal youth, knowing that it could not last, and yet half-believing that somehow it would. Now Beth was gone, the last woman out safely. At the final moment the governor had not been able to watch.
No fool like an old fool—he wondered who had first dreamed up that aphorism and in what circumstances. Probably some old gaffer mocking himself when the young chick he thought cared for him discovered that she preferred males of her own age after all.
Oh, it had not been like that with Beth. Given other circumstances in which choice was as free as choice ever was, the governor thought that Beth would have gone willingly, if not eagerly with him to that ranch in high New Mexico. Dream idyll—now where did that phrase come from? Dream stuff, pure and simple. And not to be.
But why not? The recurrent question that even Beth had asked. Why me?
Why couldn’t the dream stuff have become reality? Why did lightning strike one person and not another? Why couldn’t he have been allowed to live out what was left of his life in the peace and contentment he had planned, with the bonus of this new joy he had only today discovered?
If You exist, answer me that, Lord.
Feeling sorry for himself, wasn’t he? Well, why the hell not? Down in that plaza there were a thousand people, maybe ten thousand who were going home when the show was over to do whatever they damned well chose before they went to bed, knowing that they were going to wake up in the morning. Oh, sure, most of them, in Thoreau’s words, led lives of quiet desperation, but that didn’t alter the fact that they had at least some freedom of choice, some options open, and he now had none.
Did any man ever die happy? That was the question. No, strike the final word. Did any man ever die content? The governor thought not.
Some men accomplished a great deal, some accomplished little or nothing—but no man ever accomplished enough.
Jake Peters had said the same, and he, Bent Armitage, had chided him for it.
All right, he thought, all right! Cast up the balance. Things left undone, words unsaid, yes, but could any man say different? But no debts unpaid. And how many could say that? Pay as you go. Honest Bent Armitage. It sounded, he thought, like the name of a used-car dealer.
What of the knowledge and the judgment that would die with him? Well, what of them? Were they unique? Irreplaceable? Or was it just that he took such pride in them because they happened to be his?
Face it, he told himself as he had told the senator, you’ve had just the hell of a good time, haven’t you? And what would you change if you had it to do over? Probably not a single bloody thing.
Except Beth.
Maybe, he thought, if he had tried harder, he might have found her or someone like her before it was too late. Someone like her? Well, if he had never met and known the real article, he would never have known the difference, would he? My God, what a rationalizing machine the mind was!
Beth. At least she was down safe. He hoped. He wished now that he had stayed to watch, just to be sure. Well, it was easy enough to make sure.
He flipped on the telephone’s speaker switch. “Armitage here,” he said. There was no answer. He punched the disconnect buttons, punched them again. There was no sound. The phone was dead.
And now, he thought, we are truly alone.
The heavy line stretching from Tower Room to Trade Center roof supporting the weight of the breeches buoy was nylon, strong, flexible, flawless nylon. It was secured around a ceiling beam in the Tower Room, and the knot that secured it, a bowline, had been tied under the watchful eyes of the two firemen.
Because with nylon even a bowline, the queen of knots, has been known to work loose, the firemen had taken the added precaution of bending the bitter end of the line into two half-hitches around the standing part. The half-hitches showed no signs of slipping, and unless or until they did, the bowline had to hold.
But the beam around which the line was bent was steel, a part of the building’s structure, major support for the communications mast that rose still shining into the waning sunlight.
Steel conducts heat well.
And nylon melts.
The telephone on the desk in the trailer made noises. Nat picked it up and spoke his name. The sound of his voice in the instrument was all wrong: it echoed. Like the governor, he tapped the disconnect buttons, tapped them again, and yet a third time. The dial tone sounded suddenly in his ear.
He dialed the Tower Room office number, dialed it again, and then hung up. “That’s that,” he said to no one in particular. “Their line’s gone.”
The building’s systems had been so carefully prepared, he thought, so cunningly designed, so expensively researched, and now one by one they were collapsing. Were collapsing? Had collapsed. There was something of finality in the death of the telephone.
He dialed again the number he had already called once, the city radio station. He was answered immediately. “World Tower Plaza,” he said. “Their phone line has gone. You’re the only way we can reach them.”
“We’ll hold this line open. When you give the word, you’ll talk right on the air.”
“One thing,” Nat said. “You have an automatic delay, don’t you? So you can cut off foul language, that kind of thing?”
“You’ll go straight on the air. No delay.”
“Okay,” Nat said. “Thanks. We’ll stand by.” He laid the phone on the desk again and picked up the walkie-talkie. To the chief on the Trade Center roof he said, “Telephone’s out. If you get a signal, call me. I’ll get on the radio.”
“Will do,” the chief said.
Nat leaned back in the chair and looked around the trailer. Tim Brown was there, one battalion chief,
Giddings, and Patty. “You heard it,” Nat said. He lifted his hands and let them fall. “What the hell is there to say?” he said.
“I have the feeling,” the battalion chief said, “that something’s going to happen, you know what I mean? That the alarm will go off, or I’ll fall out of bed, or, you know, some way this goddam nightmare will end!” He paused. “Only it won’t, will it?” His voice was low-pitched, venomous.
Giddings’s big shoulders moved restlessly. He looked at Patty. “Simmons is your husband,” he said, “and I’m sorry about that.” He paused. “But if I get half the chance, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch with my bare hands.”
Police Lieutenant Potter came in through the doorway. He looked at them all. “Anything I can do?”
No one spoke.
“That’s what I thought,” Potter said. He leaned against the wall. “If you don’t mind, I’ll stick around.” He paused. “Though God knows why I bother.”
It was Patty who said, “You found what you wanted about John Connors?”
“More than I wanted,” Potter said. He told them what he had told the captain and the chief inspector.
None of the men in the trailer spoke. Patty said softly, “The poor man.”
“I won’t argue,” Potter said. There was no bitterness, only sadness in his voice. Then, slowly, “I’m a rotten cop. My job is to find who’s at fault.” He shook his head. “Sometimes that’s pretty easy. But sometimes, like now, it isn’t.” He pointed upward. His voice rose. “Those people up there—somebody has to be to blame for them, isn’t that so?” He was looking at Brown. “Isn’t it?”
“How the hell can I answer that?” It was almost a shout. And then, quieter, “It doesn’t make sense. None of it. You’ve got a man who flipped because somebody let his wife die.” Brown pointed at Patty. “She’s got a husband who did things he wasn’t supposed to do.”
The Tower Page 29