The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

  They went in.

  It could have been worse. The body was lying curled up just inside the door, a little old man, grey-haired, clothes ragged. Just an old hobo. The flash had blown him clear instead of taking him in and cooking him, his hands were charred but that was all. He’d smashed the back of his skull on the guard-rail. Not that that mattered, he’d been dead when he hit it. A yard or so away was a tin box. The lid had come off, there were old papers scattered, a couple of photographs. And there were the bus bars shining in the half dark, the transformers singing all round.

  An ambulance had been called, they loaded him in as soon as it arrived. Stanton picked up the junk that was spread about, thumbed through it. He shrugged. “No names. Guess if we could trace next of kin they wouldn’t want to know. Maybe he’s better off, poor old guy. You boys known a thing like this before?”

  Rick shook his head slowly. Suicides happened, they just happened all the time, but there weren’t many people that chose the lines. It wasn’t a nice way to go . . .

  The door lock was smashed where the old man had broken in. Stan fingered it; he said slowly, “Maybe he was just lookin’ for shelter and a place to sleep awhile. He sure as Hell found that.” They told one of the maintenance men to get up there with a new lock, that was about all they could do. Rick drove back down with Stan, tried to put the whole thing out of his mind. He managed it till he got home that night. He saw Judy’s face and could tell she knew. He asked her how she’d found out. She said she saw the trouble wagon in town, asked one of the boys. Rick swore under his breath about guys who just had to shoot off their big mouths. It wasn’t the sort of thing it did Judy any good to know, not feeling the way she did about the lines. Rick blamed himself partly for that. He’d taken her up to High Eight one day, and it had scared the Hell out of her. The big housings singing like cats, the static over their tops making blue crackles in the dark. She’d lived with the fear for years, but she’d got no better.

  He could see the thing was on her back again. She said, “Why’d he do it, Rick, you find out why he did it? Maybe, you know, did he leave a note or something, say why . . . ?”

  He said, “No note, honey, nothing. Just wasn’t a reason, I guess. Poor old guy was crazy, is all.” He stood squarely, facing her and frowning, worrying about something outside his experience and wondering how to quieten her.

  She shook her head violently. She said, “I know why he did it, Rick, I can see why, can’t you?” She gulped. Then, “Was he . . . much burned?”

  “Look, Judy . . .”

  She said. “It was the lines. It’s always the lines. Like the rails in a . . . station, in a subway, they pull, Rick, you never felt them pull? You stood there with the train coming and the noise and felt the rails pull harder and harder . . .”

  “Honey, please . . .”

  She ignored him. “It’s that way with the lines, Rick. They drew him. Can’t you see him up there, that poor old man, lonely, nobody to go to, nobody around? That’s when they pull most, when there’s nobody around. He was hungry and cold and the night was coming and there were the lights on the wall inside High Eight, like sort of red and amber eyes watching and saying come on, it’s OK, come on . . . and the singing all round, and the shining things behind the rail pulling and pulling . . .”

  He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Judy, for God’s sake . . .”

  She wrenched away from him, ran into the kitchen. She snapped switches. She said, “Electricity, Rick. It scares me. Look at it all round, Just think, if it was waiting. If it all wanted to pull . . .”

  His temper snapped. He yelled at her, “For Christ’s sake, shut up . . .” He said, “I was the one had to pick him up, get him in the bloodwagon. I didn’t like it, honey, I don’t like that sort of thing. You think I’m a sort of ghoul likes going round picking people off the lines? You want it, you asked to know, yeah, his hands were burned. They were burned black, you could see the bones . . . Now are you happy, I been trying to forget it most of the day . . .”

  She screwed her eyes up, hand across her mouth as if she was in pain. A long wait; then, “Rick I’m . . . I’m sorry, honey, I don’t know what gets me going like that. It’s a thing I got, about the lines . . . I’m sorry . . .”

  He sighed, feeling the old trembling he always felt when he rowed with her. “OK, so we both got it out of our systems. Now what say we forget it all. These things happen, honey, isn’t any cause to go wild . . .”

  “Rick, couldn’t we go off? You know, you get some other job, we could go some place miles from Saskeega where we didn’t have to see the lines . . .”

  They’d been through that fifty, a hundred times before. Rick would have done most things for her even if she wanted them for crazy reasons but he couldn’t take another job, the lines were all he knew. Or so he told himself. But there was something else, something he didn’t talk about with Judy because she wouldn’t understand. The lines did get you, after a time. Oh, not in the crazy way she said, but there was something about them, the towers and the lines soaring off across the country taking power to run peoples’ lives, run the world. There was something in that. He used to talk about it odd times with Stan; he never really knew how to get it into words but Stan knew what he meant.

  That night Rick kept having a recurring dream. It seemed the phone was ringing and he kept answering it and finding there was another body in High Eight. The fifth or sixth time it happened he sat up in bed, thinking blearily that the crazy talk Judy had given him had somehow gotten on his mind. He looked round. The room was dark, he could see his wristwatch dial on the side table. He picked the watch up. It read just after three. He yawned and rubbed his eyes, then the noise that had woken him started again.

  The phone was ringing.

  He got up and answered it. He listened to what it had to say, then he put the handset down and wondered if he was going to wake up again. But it was no good, this was for real. He went back to the bedroom and started to dress. His hands worked mechanically, almost of their own volition. There was another body in High Eight, the lines were out, he had to get up there quick as he could.

  Judy put the light on, and Rick turned round. She was shivering. “Rick, what is it, what goes on? Was it the phone . . . ?”

  He said, “Look honey, I gotta go out. They got some trouble, I’ll try and not be too long . . .”

  She got hold of his arm. “It’s another one. In that God-awful place . . .”

  “Honey, it isn’t, isn’t anything like that. They got some trouble down at the plant. Icing on the insulators.” He said the first thing that came into his head. It didn’t do any good, he could see the look in her eyes, he could tell she knew.

  Rick got the car out and drove for the pass. Soon as he left the shelter of town he started to feel the wind pulling and twitching at the steering. There was always a wind on the Black Horse, it blew like a bitch up there night and day. Something came into his mind. He remembered the wind in the poem, the wind that blew in the wasteland where nobody ever came. There was nothing on the mountain either except High Eight.

  He didn’t care for that idea too much. Essentially, Rick was a rational guy; but the morning had been bad, and with the wind yelling that way and everything black as Hell it was a whole lot worse. He tried to think about something else, started a sort of mental argument with Judy.

  “Look honey, there’s nothing wrong with electricity. You use it right, it’s fine. You fool about and you get in trouble, most things are like that. Look, the lines are good. They light your home, cook your meals, run your television, help you have fun. They keep you warm, they keep you happy. We couldn’t do without the lines . . .”

  Somehow he knew what she’d answer. It was almost like she was there with him in the car. She said, “The lines are waiting, Rick. Every place, all the time. Just waiting. And one day . . .”

  He took a bend. The headlights shone silver off the foot of one of the towers. He wondered suddenly if the thing wa
s a gag, somebody had decided to have a little fun sending him chasing up there in the middle of the night. Didn’t seem likely, but there was a chance. That meant he’d get to High Eight, wouldn’t be a soul around. Just the wind booming off the cliff and the coloured eyes up there in the housings singing in the dark . . . He tried to see up towards the pass, but as far as he could tell it was all black. He was suddenly sure the thing was a gag. He felt like turning the car and going straight back, but he knew he couldn’t do that.

  Rick got a cigarette out of his windcheater pocket and fumbled it alight. He was angry with himself; he was acting and thinking like a kid fresh from High School. What he was going to do was ride on up and check the place; and if there was nobody around he was going to phone back to Saskeega and somebody was going to get taken apart. That was all there was to it.

  There were folk there. There was a patrol car, he saw the roof-flasher from a couple of miles down the road. Somebody was waving a lamp. He stopped the car and got out. The wind was evil; it felt like a solid, animate thing. He leaned into the gusts, tacked across to High Eight.

  It was quieter inside, the wind was muted and the housings were silent because the lines were out. A couple of the night maintenance staff from Saskeega were there, and two cops. They were standing in a group looking at the bus bars. One of the engineers was saying “Gee, look at that! Gee, look at that!” He was talking softly, like somebody at a pretty firework display. “Gee, look at that . . . !”

  The Thing squatted with its back turned to Rick, showing him the top of its bald head. Its hands were on the bus bars, but he wasn’t holding the contacts any more. Its arms were burned off at the wrists. The stumps sticking out from the body were dried and twisted. The man must have dived in head first, got hold of the bars one in each hand. God alone knew how . . . Then they’d got hold of him and the arcing hadn’t stopped till his arms were burned apart. All round for yards across the concrete floor were the black scars where the sparks had drummed and hissed.

  The wind howled outside. The man said, “Gee, look at that . . .!”

  Rick turned round on him, managed to talk somehow. “Turn if off, will you? Just turn it off . . .”

  The engineer looked at him and shook his head. “Gee, Rick,” he said. “Just look at that . . .!”

  The overseer walked the length of the building to the phone. He rang through to Saskeega, got the duty engineer in West Power Block. He said harshly, “Donnell, what in Hell you playing at down there?”

  There was a lot of static on the line. It was hissing and crackling like it was trying to talk as well, a gibberish of embryonic words. Rick could hardly hear his own voice. He said, “What in Hell you playing at?” Suddenly he couldn’t stop himself yelling. He felt he wanted to take somebody and pound their face in because of what had happened. But there was no one to blame . . .

  Donnell sounded half crazy. “Rick, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know how in Hell it happened. Trips shoulda pulled the line, they stayed in. Trips didn’t work, I don’t know what in Hell happened . . .”

  Cameron swore. “What are you using for eyes down there, what about your line volts? What you doing down there, what you using for eyes . . . ?”

  A great guffaw of static. Then, “I pulled the line soon as the volts, jumped. Rick, I don’t know what in Hell happened . . .”

  “Soon as Hell you did. Guy’s hands fried off up here, Donnell, while you were sitting waiting for your meters to kick. You took his hands off his body, God damn it, you took ’em right off his body . . .”

  “Rick, I don’t know how in Hell –”

  The overseer slammed the phone down and got out. The whole place smelled like somebody had been cooking meat with no salt, and he knew within two minutes he was going to be sick as a dog.

  They had to wait while photographs were taken. You always had to have pictures of a thing like that, Rick reflected bitterly, just in case you ever managed to forget it. Then they started clearing the lines. Rick would have called Stan but it would have done no good; he’d gone off to a big convention the afternoon before, he wasn’t expected back for a couple of days.

  Power was restored about six in the morning, and Rick Cameron drove back down to Saskeega and into a hornets’ nest; the feeder had been out most of the night, they’d had to pull juice from half across the country to keep Sand Creek alive. He called Stan long-distance from his office. He still felt pretty shaken up. He had to try three hotels before he reached his boss, when he came on the line he already knew what had happened. Stan flew back the same morning, he was in Saskeega in about six hours. They went down together to see Sheriff Stanton.

  They’d taken all the precautions they could; the lock on the door had been fixed, but the second victim hadn’t got in that way. There were a couple of windows in the transformer house, they were fairly small and they had heavy bars across, but it looked like the suicide had pulled the bars out with his bare hands and the glass and frame as well. There was no sign of anything he could have used as a lever and there was blood on the sill and on the floor inside, a trail of it to the bus bars. It looked as if he’d torn his hands to pieces smashing the window. Stanton said maybe more would be known after the autopsy, but it looked plain enough; the guy had been crazy, like the hobo. He shook his head. He said he’d known the dead man, he was a farmer from down in Indian Valley. He said, “Beats me how a little guy like that could have busted that window apart. He must have been deranged, crazy as Hell . . . but that don’t help us none, what you boys goin’ to do about this?”

  The Saskeega men looked at each other a little blankly. Then Stan said, “Don’t seem to be much we can do, Andy. Like you said, suicides happen. If a guy goes crazy we can’t read his mind. We didn’t kill those folk.”

  Stanton grunted. “Your juice did. Look fellers, I seen things like this before. Take my word. Not on the lines, that’s something new, but I’m telling you if there’s a suicide, say a drowning, and the word goes round, you’ve got a dozen more. Seems the idea gets in peoples’ minds, triggers half the potential nut cases in the county. Now I’ve seen this and I don’t want no more bodies coming down off that mountain, what’re you going to do?”

  Rick said carefully, “You think maybe the old guy heard about the hobo?”

  “Don’t see how. Lived on his own, got a little place way out of town, hardly ever saw any folks. I’ll check on it, but I don’t see how in Hell he could have known.”

  Stan said, “Well, we can’t write it off as just bad luck. What say we put a guard on that place a few nights, Rick, till things quiet down?”

  Rick thought of the blackness up there, the wind talking in the wires all the night through. The warning lights that Judy reckoned said come on . . . He said, “Two men, Stan, and better arm ’em. Makes ’em feel better.”

  Stan looked at the overseer sharply, but nothing more was said. He brought the thing up again that night though, while Rick was driving him home. “Two lots of double time just to watch one bloody little transformer stage, see no more crazy bastards turn themselves into rare steak . . . The old man’s going to nail my ears to the wall for this, Rick. They want a guard, I say put on a guard, fine, put a guard on the place. But why the Hell two?”

  Rick narrowed his eyes and squinted at a bend. “You like to do it, Stan, you do it on your own?”

  He said, “I’d do it if I had to, and you damn well know it, what’n Hell you getting at?” He sounded surly. Rick glanced at him quickly. That wasn’t like Stan . . .

  They posted the guards and that took care of things at High Eight for a time. But High Eight wasn’t the real worry. What Rick wanted to know, what Stan wanted to know, what it seemed everybody in Saskeega wanted to know was why those trips hadn’t worked. On all high-tension lines there is gear designed to kill the circuit in an emergency, if, for instance, a tower blows down or gets struck by lightning. If the lines stayed in they’d burn up everything, fry anybody within yards as well. That’s what
the trips are for, in the event of a major short they pull the plug after three or four seconds at the outside. But the suicide had been on the bars a lot longer than that and the lines didn’t cut at all till Donnell shut down by hand.

  That was another mystery, of course. How could Donnell and the whole night staff have missed seeing things were wrong? Donnell swore he took action as soon as the voltage went crazy and he was a good engineer, Stan knew that. “But the Hell, Rick,” he said worriedly. “He didn’t pull those lines till there was nearly nothing left of the guy, he didn’t pull till the voltage had steadied again. He could have had the whole feeder burn out under his nose. Under all their noses . . .”

  The Controller questioned everybody, but he could get no leads. There just didn’t seem to be a reason for any of it. The trip gear was checked a dozen times, there wasn’t a thing out of place. That line just had to pull. And yet it didn’t.

  They had to leave things like that. Nobody liked it, but there wasn’t anything to be done. The guards were kept on High Eight a couple of weeks, but nothing else happened. Rick put another set of bars on the window, had the door double-locked and hoped the line had settled down for good. But it had not. The day after the guards were removed Saskeega lost three men.

  Two of them were killed in a chopper that crashed into the cliff right below High Eight. Nobody could explain it; a farmer who saw it happen said the machine just turned and flew straight at the rock. The Company ran half a dozen helicopters, they were good for patrolling lines in awkward country. Stan grounded the rest as soon as he heard; that didn’t make Rick’s job any easier. He tried to make the best of it. He was sanguine enough to realize there was nothing else his boss could have done.

  The other death was on the Indian Valley feeder as well. The man’s name was Halloran, Rick had known him very well. He was half Irish, hadn’t seemed to have a nerve in his body. He was boss of one of the maintenance gangs, he’d been with Saskeega for years.