Drop by Drop

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Jack ordered a double.

  He had spent much of his adult life on the fringes of the military/industrial behemoth that spanned continents. By now he knew his abilities and limitations. He accepted that he would never rise to the top, lazing in a luxurious retreat on a private island while he pulled invisible strings. That would not suit his disposition. He preferred being in the heart of the action.

  In the past if a payout was sufficiently lavish he had used it to take a chunk of his retirement, indulging himself while he was still young enough and healthy. Or sitting on his aunt’s front porch with his feet propped on the railing, watching the world go by until restlessness seized him again.

  Being a small-town entrepreneur was not what he had envisioned as a lifetime career.

  Lifetime …

  Jack set down his glass.

  For a supposedly smart man you’ve been a damned fool, he told himself. You never really thought about how you’d spend the rest of your life. What a bloody jackass. You assumed you’d always be young and the world would be the same forever.

  Until Nell Bennett came along. That gentle woman who just might complete the riddle of me.

  At a time when it looks like all hell’s going to break loose.

  * * *

  Bea Fontaine had not discussed Oliver Staunton’s proposal with her nephew. She knew what he would say, and he would be right. Chaos was lurking on the horizon; it would be ridiculous to add five unmanageable children to their household. For once she was thankful for Jack’s basic selfishness. He would not let her take them even if she wanted to.

  Which was a good thing. What those boys might do to her cats didn’t bear thinking about.

  Yet while she was cooking supper she did think about it. And about five children, all of them still suffering from injuries both physical and emotional, who now had no responsible parent. Waiting for someone to decide their future.

  * * *

  Gerry and Gloria Delmonico wanted to keep the world at arm’s length, but it was no longer possible. Gloria was on leave from the hospital, but she could not just sit at home and worry about her unborn baby. She rode with Gerry in the new carriage, which meant that the paying passengers were able to give her all the news she did not want to know.

  She was waiting.

  They were all waiting. For an event, an enemy, a nightmare. Something they could feel in the atmosphere but not see.

  * * *

  Evan Mulligan was worried about Rocket. “She’s off her feed, Dad. I’ve given her oats and bran mash and alfalfa…”

  “Alfalfa’s too rich for a mare in foal, I’ve told you that.”

  “But she has to eat! What d’you think’s wrong with her?”

  “Animals are more sensitive than we are, Evan. Even that Rottweiler of Paige’s is refusing his food; not all of it, but some. Don’t worry about Rocket, I’ll give her a feed supplement tonight and an appetite stimulant. She’s going to be a mother and she has good instincts; she won’t let her foal starve.”

  * * *

  While Lila Ragland lay on the narrow bed in the Spartan chamber Edgar Tilbury called his “guest quarters,” she ran a parade of favorite scenes across the screen of her mind. It was her favorite way of unwinding and courting sleep. Trees in a Swedish park, black against a startlingly bright sky. Sipping a mug of hot chocolate on the topmost platform of the Mont Blanc ski lift. A marble sculpture in the Musée d’Orsay, depicting the nature god Pan as a little boy playing with two bear cubs.

  The next image came unbidden. Shay Mulligan cradling a black cat.

  * * *

  Since the afternoon when Jack and Nell met the Delmonicos there, Bill’s Bar and Grill had become their frequent meeting place. All over town people were forming little groups, tribes composed of friends rather than relatives. Bill’s exercised a magnetic attraction and not just for Hooper Watson and Morris Saddlethwaite. The central location combined with good food and a relaxed, convivial atmosphere encouraged other patrons to linger.

  As Bill remarked to his sister-in-law, “Funny thing, Marla; people don’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as they used to be.”

  “But you want me to hurry up with that last order, right?”

  “Right,” he affirmed.

  When Shay Mulligan brought Lila Ragland to join the band of regulars, Hooper Watson glowered fiercely at him. Unabashed, the younger man gave him a cheery wave. “Hi, Hoop! How ya doin’?”

  Under his breath Watson muttered to Morris Saddlethwaite, “Not gonna let him drive me outta my place.” He spent the entire evening firmly planted on his stool, like a frog on a log.

  When the regulars ordered a round of drinks Shay made a point of having one sent to “Sheriff Watson.”

  That set the pattern for subsequent occasions.

  The group discussed regular meetings. Perhaps on a Wednesday. “I go to my office every Wednesday morning to check my mail,” Nell said, “but I wonder why I bother. No one’s making any offers on property; almost the only letters I get are from people trying to sell theirs, and I can’t help them. It would be easier to visit the office in the afternoon and then drop by here for an early supper. Jess and Colin want fish fingers or hamburgers and my mother fixes those for them.”

  “I thought you were planning to move,” said Shay.

  Her expression was rueful. “I am; I just don’t know where. Much good it does me to be in real estate.”

  “I can make this the regular stop for my supper break,” Gerry decided. “Now that we have Danielle I can pick up Gloria and the baby and bring them too … if Bill’s not averse to one of his customers breast-feeding.”

  Bill Burdick responded with a thumbs-up. “Only if you’ll let me be her godfather.”

  The group took a proprietary interest in the newest Delmonico. Gerry enjoyed boasting, “She’s the first baby in Sycamore River to be born in a pony and trap; the hospital’s only working ambulance was on another call. Young Evan Mulligan helped with the delivery. That boy has a great future as an obstetrician ahead of him,” he added with a chuckle.

  Among Rob’s effects at home Nell had found a very early AllCom that still worked. Battered and grimy, it had been in the bottom of Colin’s sock drawer. Gerry Delmonico had another reclaimed from a locker at RobBenn; Shay’s son had a third he had been given on his tenth birthday. Joined with the AllCom at the vet clinic they formed a sketchy network not to be trusted, but better than nothing.

  On the strength of his AllCom and his assistance with Danielle’s birth, Evan Mulligan was invited to join the group.

  And Lila invited Edgar Tilbury.

  “Those youngsters won’t want an old fart around,” he told her.

  “You’re the most interesting man I know, and they talk about things that would interest you. Don’t be a hermit, Edgar.”

  “I’m not a hermit,” he said indignantly. And accompanied her to the next meeting.

  The Wednesday Club commandeered the largest booth and augmented it with a table pushed against the end. If he was not busy Bill himself was invited to sit in. He enjoyed the conversation and often had something to contribute.

  Watson and Saddlethwaite retained their familiar stools, but made no secret of the fact that they were listening too. What was happening in Bill’s was more interesting and more entertaining than anywhere else. When it was time to buy a round of drinks the two men began to chip in, which entitled them to call out, “Say what?” if they missed something.

  Conversation was the glue in the Wednesday Club.

  One evening Shay said, “Thanks to the Change we know less and less about what’s happening abroad, it’s like the expanding universe after the Big Bang. Other countries are becoming distant galaxies.”

  “But we know more about what’s going on in Sycamore River,” Gloria interjected. “The Seed is down to only two pages a week, but the paper has more subscribers than ever; I know because we deliver a lot of them. We’re taking more interest in our neighbors because t
hey’ve become our world.”

  “Which is no bad thing,” said Lila. “People were almost surgically attached to their electronic communicators. I’ll bet whole families went to bed without ever speaking to each other.”

  “I liked it better when the wife didn’t speak to me,” Saddlethwaite volunteered. “Long as she was busy with her social network she wasn’t finding jobs around the house for me. Being retired is hell on a man. But tell me, Jack: What did you mean about an expanding universe? I never heard of that. Are we blowing up?”

  On another evening Edgar Tilbury asked, “Has anyone considered the Change may be natural?”

  “What do you mean by ‘natural’?” Bill inquired.

  Tilbury cleared his throat. “The discoveries of Darwin, Mengel, and Watson and Crick have demonstrated that all life on Earth is connected and is subject to natural law. And natural law is determined by nature.”

  “The Change can’t be natural, Edgar. Someone’s behind it, everybody knows that.”

  The older man gave a lopsided smile. “Don’t believe anything everybody knows.”

  Gloria, with her sleeping baby cradled in her lap, asked, “Don’t you think there’s something rather hesitant about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well … when I’m introducing new things into my garden I try them out first to see if the site and the soil agree with them. If I’m doing a bedding arrangement I start seeds in several different places and watch how they grow before I commit to a mass planting. With expensive shrubs I put them in pots and move them around until I find a location where they thrive. The Change is like that. It’s as if somebody’s trying ideas out, not destroying everything at once.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “What have you been drinking? That’s like saying a tornado can choose what town to strike.”

  “How do you know it can’t?” asked Hooper Watson. “When I was a kid we lived in the Midwest, that region they call Tornado Alley, and I can tell you there’s something fiendish about those storms. One can turn a man’s entire house into splinters but leave the front porch untouched with the swing still swinging and the cushions on it. I’ve seen it myself. It’s like the damned wind’s laughing at flesh-and-blood people.”

  20

  The article in The Sycamore Seed occupied the entire front page:

  BREAKTHROUGH!

  “Last week a team of microbiologists in Sweden announced a major discovery that could lead to a Nobel Prize. They claim that a hitherto unknown life-form, a bacteria so minute its existence has been undetected until now, could be the cause behind the Change. Its near relative, saprophytic bacteria, performs an ecologically indispensible role in the breakdown of organic wastes.”

  * * *

  The Wednesday Club had their topic for the evening.

  Jack was elated. “I had a hunch the sun had something to do with the Change, and here’s proof. Bacteria use photosynthesis to generate energy.”

  “Whoa there!” cautioned Gerry. “Only some bacteria do. They’re called phototrophs and they’re totally different from saprophytes. The bacteria kingdom’s divided into groups; any one of them’s a specialized field of study.”

  “Why hasn’t this new bacteria been discovered before now?” Nell wanted to know.

  “Maybe it’s like black holes,” said Evan, proud to have something to contribute. “We studied those in school last year. They were only detected when their effects were noticed.”

  Gerry looked thoughtful. “By God, Jack, I know I laughed at the time, but maybe you weren’t far off the mark when you talked about an unknown factor dissolving the molecules in hydrocarbons.”

  “An amateur’s guess,” Jack said. “But if the Swedes are right about this it means someone’s developed a chemical superweapon. The next question is, who’s behind it? Every country seems to be targeted. Are we talking about a mad scientist with a grudge against the whole human race?”

  Nell laughed. “You’ve been reading too many comic books.”

  “No, I’m serious. What do you think the atom bomb was to begin with? A mad scientist’s dream. We’ll need to find a poison that will kill the bacteria, then develop a way to administer it.”

  “Like spraying antibiotics over the entire globe?”

  “The cure would be worse than the disease,” Shay said grimly. “Remember DDT? It wiped out a whole slew of species.”

  The Wednesday Club ordered another round of drinks. Strong ones for everybody but Evan. Who took a gulp of his father’s when no one was looking.

  * * *

  With people unimpressed by the Swedish discovery, wars large and small continued to expand or erupted afresh, among nations and allies and strangers. Anger was bubbling to the surface everywhere. The weapons employed were changing too, becoming less technical but no less lethal. Plastic-free equivalents of earlier weapons of mass destruction were being designed and rushed into production. So were the many weapons that had marked mankind’s climb up the evolutionary ladder.

  * * *

  Jack Reece was more disturbed by the Change than he wanted to admit, even to himself. Disturbed by the change in himself. From being a freewheeling risk-taker he had become cautious, like a man who had something valuable to protect. Yet in spite of the chaotic global situation nothing had changed in his own life, except …

  After a determined search he located two simple pagers, one for himself and one for Nell, and asked her to keep hers with her at all times. Being much less complicated than AllComs, pagers were not failing as frequently. Yet.

  Jack hated that word “yet.” The implications behind it were profound. Nothing was certain, nothing was permanent, the most felicitously arranged life would end.

  His.

  Nell Bennett’s.

  And there was nothing he could do about it.

  * * *

  “Aunt Bea, do you believe in God?”

  Bea Fontaine was barely inside the front door after yet another difficult day at the bank. The First Federal in the new shopping center had cut its staff to the bone and was only open on two mornings a week. She suspected O. M. Staunton was planning a similar arrangement. Thank God for the weekend; at least she’d have time to brace herself.

  She paused long enough to take off her coat while she digested Jack’s unexpected question. “I suppose I do,” she told him. “I still go to church sometimes—and I took you to Sunday school when you were little, in case you’ve forgotten.” When she opened the closet door to put her coat away a tangle of wire hangers clattered to the floor. Jack always was careless about hanging up clothes.

  Bea let them lie there.

  “You go to church at Christmas and I don’t go at all,” Jack said. “That’s not what I’m asking. Do you believe in God? God, heaven, an afterlife…”

  “What brought this up?”

  “The international situation’s ominous, Aunt Bea. There’s going to be another world war in the near future and America won’t be safe, not this time. We’ll be in the front line and a lot of people are going to die. I want to know if there’s a heaven they can go to.”

  “What a cheerful greeting! I’d have preferred a cup of hot coffee.”

  “I’ll fix one for you if you’ll answer my question.”

  In the living room they sat side by side on the couch, facing the dead wallscreen. After Bea had drained her cup she gave a deep sigh. “I needed that.”

  “And my question?”

  “Well. Yes.” She set down the cup and turned to face him. “Here goes. Humans have grappled with the idea of God, or gods, for thousands of years. It appears we’re hardwired to have faith in something, but in the end people believe what they want to believe. They worship God or sorcery or sports stars … to our shame, anything will serve. Perhaps having faith is more important than what we have faith in. The journey rather than the destination. I must say I never expected to have this conversation with you, Jack. You’ve always seemed so sure.”

  “That’s
down to you,” he acknowledged. “You gave me such a solid grounding nothing could shake my confidence. But now…” He hesitated, reluctant to make a revelation about his private feelings.

  She took off her glasses to study his face at close range. “You’re scared, is that it?”

  He was grateful to her for making it easier. “I guess I am, but not for myself.” The old grin flickered but did not hold. “Well, maybe a little for myself. I have this sense of”—he struggled to find the right word—“of foreboding.”

  “Because of the Change? We’re not plastic, we’re not going to melt.”

  “This isn’t about the Change, Aunt Bea. It’s like when you go into a dark room and you’re aware of danger before you turn on a light. That’s what I’m feeling now. Intuition’s always been my stock-in-trade; if a deal’s going to go sour I usually know ahead of time. I can’t tell you how often that’s saved my neck. It’s my only real talent, but it’s a good one.”

  “You’re lucky, the rest of us have to rely on hindsight,” she said drily. “From the direction of this conversation I guess you’re worried about a special person?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Bea’s face lit up. “Does she feel the same about you?”

  “I didn’t say it was a woman.”

  “Don’t tease me, I know you too well. You’ve been chasing girls since middle school.”

  “Since before that, Aunt Bea.”

  “And this one is serious?”

  “When I’m certain I’ll tell you.”

  The light went out of Bea’s face. “That’s the problem: Nothing’s certain anymore.”

  * * *

  At the next meeting of the Wednesday Club Jack announced, “I’ve been doing a little experimenting around the house and found some materials that can replace plastic. Cork is a good one. Leather’s another. And when our high-perf tires wear out we’ll have natural rubber too.”

  Marla Burdick spoke up from behind the bar, where she was stacking clean glasses. “Wool might work if it’s thickly packed.”

  “How about felt?” Morris Saddlethwaite asked unexpectedly.

  “I went back to RobBenn and did a little scavenging in the ruins of the laboratory before the bulldozers came in,” Gerry admitted. “I had the company ID with me; no one tried to stop me. I brought home things I thought might be useful and I’ve been doing some experimenting myself. Several of the silicates could substitute for plastic under the right conditions.”