The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

  He took a truck out that day, nobody saw him go. Nobody missed him either. About five in the afternoon a patrol came through from Indian Valley on a routine job, saw something they never would have believed. One of the men told Rick later, they drove down and stopped and got out of the car and stood staring, and they still could hardly believe. Parked beside one of the towers was the trouble wagon; and up above it, way up in the sky, Jim Halloran was crouched over an insulator stack, blue fire in his hands and the pain of the Pit in his eyes . . .

  Rick began to lose staff. They sloped off in ones and twos, found other jobs where they wouldn’t have to keep looking over their shoulders wondering who was going next. Halloran’s death hit them harder than anything else that had happened. Old farmers can go crazy, bums can get tired of life, but Halloran was a guy they’d worked with, got drunk with. He wouldn’t have killed himself, that was what they muttered. Something dragged him up to that tower, he didn’t take his own life, and whatever the something was, if it could kill a guy like Halloran it could do anything.

  Rick knew the rumours were going round, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. He’d got his hands full as it was; there was a lot of routine work on the lines, repair jobs were always coming up; kids out for kicks shooting up the insulators, all sorts of things like that. The choppers were still being taken apart to find out what made them fly into rock walls, he’d had to split the remnants of half a dozen gangs and make up new bosses, and there was trouble there. Always friction when a thing like that has to be done. He was working most hours God gave, his wife was headed for a nervous breakdown on account of all the trouble, he’d just about had enough. Then he heard about Stallion Jim.

  It seemed one of the gangers was a halfbred Indian. Whatever the truth of his tale, he reckoned years back his people had owned most of Saskeega County. He said that Indian Valley had been their chief hunting ground, which explained its name, and that the Black Horse was sacred land, the home of the tribal gods. Stallion Jim was the boss spirit or totem, and there was a legend that one day he would return and drive the white-eyes back into the east. There would be portents when that happened, thunder and lightning on the peak, and people would be killed by fire from the sky. It all fitted in very nicely, and it was just about what was needed to start a general rout.

  Rick decided this was one thing he could knock over the head. He had the Indian – Joey, they called him – in his office, and had the mother, father and grand-daddy of all rows. He told him one more word out of him about phantom horses or curses or fire from above and there’d be more fire than he knew what to do with right down on earth, and he’d personally kick him to the other side of Saskeega. Joey didn’t answer much; but even while his boss was bawling him out his eyes were flicking to the window of the office. The lines were visible from that window, threading away towards the hills, and the Black Horse was lowering in the distance . . .

  The Indian saved Rick his trouble. He lit out the same day, they never saw him again.

  But the damage had been done. Saskeega lost more men than ever till Rick was practically working with skeleton crews. He didn’t have a day off for a month; then he got sick and tired. He told Judy to pack a lunch, they’d be getting out for a time. He’d seen as much of the Company as he wanted, if the whole shebang fell apart while he was away it was just too Goddam bad.

  They drove round the long way to Indian Valley. It had always been one of Judy’s favourite spots. It was a hot day, Rick pulled the car off the road under a group of trees. They sat and talked and ate the meal; then he leaned back and smoked a cigarette, and looked through the leaves to where he could see the Black Horse framed in the distance. The top of the mountain seemed to move as he stared at it, crawling forward against the clouds and not getting anywhere. Rick started to doze; he was feeling at peace with the world.

  There was the most fearsome noise he’d ever heard. It wasn’t like thunder, wasn’t like anything he could think of. It filled the air, it was deep and hollow at the same time, a series of concussions that hit him like punches under the heart. There was nothing to see, just the mountain and the sailing clouds. He sat with the cigarette in his fingers and his mouth open. The row lasted maybe ten seconds, maybe twenty. When it finished Judy started to whimper. She said, “Stallion Jim . . .” She ducked, like the sight of the mountain was burning her. It was the first time Rick knew she’d heard the story.

  He shoved her in the car and started up. He had no idea what he was going to do, he just knew he was going to get away from that place but fast. The noise had shaken him up badly, more badly than he was prepared to admit either then or later. He heard himself saying over and over, “Was a storm, honey, it was thunder, that’s all . . .” But he didn’t even believe that himself. The din hadn’t sounded like any thunder he’d ever heard. It had sounded just like it should; like the beat of huge, horrid hooves round the mountain . . .

  They got home, the phone was raising Hell. Would Rick Cameron go up to the Black Horse right away, Station Seven had exploded.

  He didn’t waste time explaining that transformer stages don’t explode, he just put Judy back in the motor and drove down to Stan’s place. Jeff was at home; he thanked God for that at least. She looked pretty white herself; Rick said things were under control, could she look after Judy while he went up the hill. He felt better after that; he knew his wife would be OK. He drove for the Black Horse.

  He didn’t make good time. Traffic was stalled on the mountain, somebody said a tower was down across the road. Rick would have got through faster with a trouble wagon, but he’d only got his private car and no identification. In the end he gave up arguing. He drove through on the wrong lane and the Hell with everybody. He got up to Number Seven, the tower wasn’t down, but she was leaning out across the road like she’d come any minute. The sky was full of cables. Rick left the car and walked.

  It looked like half Saskeega had got there in front of him. Stan was there and Sheriff Stanton, they said old man Perkins had been up but he’d cleared off again. That suited Rick fine. He went and had a look at what was left of the stage. There wasn’t much; a few bits of metal scattered around, some lumps of concrete, pieces of the insulator stacks. Where the transformers had stood was a hole. A crater. It was twelve, maybe fifteen feet deep and thirty feet across. It had an obscene look about it, it was black inside like the earth had been burned, and it threw rays and arms out across the road like a filthy star. Rick walked to the edge of it with Stan, stood looking down. He didn’t know what to think. He said quietly. “How do you read this, mister?”

  His boss shook his head. “Only one answer. Somebody blew it. We been sabotaged but good . . .”

  The linesman stared at him, grinning without humour. “No. Oh, no . . . somebody blew it? You mean, they blew this thing up? You just see that hole, Stan, you know what it’d take to dig that out? You worked out what size charge you’d put in to make a hole like that?”

  Stan looked angry. “So they didn’t know what they were doing. They used a big charge.”

  Rick nodded. “Yeah, they did. They used a big charge. And that row I heard was the charge going off. Yeah.”

  He walked round the lip of the crater. Stan followed up. He said, “So it blew on its own. How’s that, Rick, it just sort of blew up. Just like so.”

  Rick could feel the sweat starting out on his face. It was like he was going crazy. He said, “Transformer stages do not explode. I am a working stiff, I am not too bright in the head, I just know this, transformer stages do not spontaneously . . . explode.”

  He’d never had a row with Stan. He didn’t have one then, but it got mighty close, When things had calmed down a bit, the overseer said, “OK, Rick, OK So we take first things first. What do we do?”

  Rick was still glaring at the hole. He said, “Block that road, Stan, east at Saskeega, west at the end of Indian Valley.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Relieving tackle on that downhill tower. Then g
et the traffic all through, get it clear. We can guy her then so she won’t fall, if she does we’ll have the line laying down right back to Saskeega. When we’ve secured her we go back down the hill and face the music. By then they’ll be playing a real pretty tune . . .”

  They got busy. Supporting the tower was a ticklish job, it was nearly night before they’d finished, and a storm was blowing up over the Black Horse. A queer fancy came into Rick’s mind, wedged itself there somehow so it wouldn’t be driven away. The next tower downhill was the one Jim Halloran had died on. He kept thinking he’d look up and see him still up there, riding the wires like a big, ragged crow as the stalk was winched upright. When everything was tied off, the vehicles convoyed back down. Rick couldn’t stop from looking in his mirror and seeing the red hood just behind and feeling glad he wasn’t the last in line. He was still pretty badly shaken up, he just felt like that. Glad he wasn’t the last in line . . .

  If he thought he’d had trouble over the suicides he soon found out that had been nothing. There was trouble and trouble and trouble. Saskeega was important, whatever happened there was important. Saskeega fed Sand Creek, and Sand Creek was part of the National Effort and that was very important. Nobody thought too much about sleep until the stage was rebuilt and the lines were in again. Stan and Rick were grilled by the FBI, they asked did they think the feeder had been sabotaged, they said the Hell yes, there didn’t seem to be anything else they could say. Yes, somebody blew that stage, somebody that wanted Sand Creek shut down. And that was all that was needed. The state troopers were turned out, and after that Rick complained bitterly he needed a countersigned pass to get from his house across to his own garage and back.

  A patrol crossed the Black Horse the night the stage blew, to check that the tower was OK and the tackles holding. The driver said later it was queer up there, the wind gusting so strong the tail of the car got nearly snatched off the road a couple of times. Nothing impossible in that; as Stan said, anything could happen on that mountain in a blow and most times it did. The other linesman acted strangely, wouldn’t talk on the hill, just sat making bug-eyes up at the wires in the dark. He killed himself the same night, ran his car in the garage. That made six . . .

  Rick found out something about himself. He was scared of the Black Horse.

  It was crazy, he knew that, he told himself it was crazy, but he couldn’t shake it off. The Black Horse was a hill. A lump of dirt stuck there in the way so they’d had to put the lines across it, give it a wire necklace. Rick told himself the lines were just lines, they carried supertension up from Saskeega to Indian Valley, across to Sand Creek. Just power lines, that was all. But some part of him insisted there was something else.

  He’d get up nights, go to the windows and watch the green lightning-flicker over the mountain, listen to the war-drums of the thunder. That was the line where people died. That was where they took hold of bus bars, scalded themselves into mummies. That was where they climbed towers, reached out and got a good firm grip on Death. That was where transformers exploded, and blew half the mountain out doing it. That was the line to High Eight.

  He’d never felt like that, never had a thing in his mind that was crazy but that he couldn’t drive away. He tried to tell himself there was a Reason, there was always a Reason for everything, but that didn’t help because then he’d try and imagine what the Reason looked like. He’d see it stalking up there on its own two legs, he’d see it walking empty roads under the lightning flashes and glaring down at Saskeega, scurrying home to a little white building, nesting down before the dawn caught up with it. That was how he got to feel about High Eight.

  They built the new stage. They costed it and ordered the parts and put them together, and tested and checked and corrected until it was all fine. Then they started the feeder again and Rick hoped he’d get some peace.

  He did, for a couple of months. He got Judy to go away to her folks, she came back looking brown and well. They started going down to Stan’s place again, had a lot of fun. And the Indian Valley line stayed like it should, it was just a string of well-behaved towers humping away across a hill. Everything was OK.

  Then Rick got a call that started it all again. This time for keeps.

  He was over in his office one afternoon. It was a nice day, the sun was shining and he was sitting up there with his feet on the desk and a cup of coffee in his hand. Then the phone rang. He picked it up. “Yeah, line maintenance, Cameron here . . .”

  A voice gabbled in his ear. “That you, Rick? For Chrissake come up here, Rick, come up for Chrissake, we got a tower m-mm.”

  Cameron frowned. “What? Say again?” It sounded like the phone had said, “We got a tower melting.”

  It had.

  Rick didn’t know what to make of one of his boys gone crazy, raving on the line like that. He said, “Er . . . Look, Johnny, you on your own? Who you got with you, pal, who’s with you?”

  “Rick, for Chrissake . . .”

  “Take it easy, Johnny, you got Grabowski with you? You get him on the line, will you? and, Johnny, take it easy . . .”

  The phone swore. It said, “Damn it to Hell an’ gone, Rick, I ain’t shook my bolts, I’m at High Eight and the place is goin’ crazy again and there’s people all over, will you damn well come . . . ?” The line went dead.

  The fear had a galvanic effect, it bounced Rick out of his chair and out of the office. He jeeped across to Main Block and burst in on Stan. He said breathlessly, “High Eight again, Stan, something wrong with a tower. Can you come?” The Controller didn’t waste time answering, just grabbed his hat and ran after him.

  There was an accident truck outside, they jumped in and Stan set the siren blaring. He drove for the gates scattering people right and left. Rick yelled at him. “There’ll be Hell for this, the old man’ll give us Hell, using a siren without a main alarm . . .”

  He shouted back. “If it’s a phoney we give out we got a short on the button. If it’s the real thing, best we keep it to ourselves. What the Hell they say’s the matter?”

  “Say we got a tower melting.”

  “What?”

  Rick bawled, “Melting . . .” Stan didn’t ask anything else, just put his foot down and kept it there. They bounced through the gate and screeched onto the main road.

  There was plenty wrong.

  They passed Number Seven, everything still looked OK. The truck swung round the last bend but one and there was High Eight, above and tiny in the distance. Rick said “Jesus Christ . . .” He couldn’t help it.

  Strain towers are extra-heavy stalks put in to take the pull where the cables change direction. Last one before Indian Valley was just below High Eight, and like the linesman had said it was melting. There wasn’t any doubt it was melting. Metal was dropping off the arms, running like solder under a torch, splashing down onto the rock in gobs a foot across. While Rick stared the whole thing sagged, shoved a spar towards the mountain like a man thrusting his knee out, bracing himself for a big yawn. Beyond the tower was a trouble wagon, and a little figure in Saskeega blue was running like Hell down the mountain. In front of him were the people.

  The road was full. There were a couple of hundred of them, maybe more. They were formed in a ragged column, moving up the middle of the carriageway towards High Eight. All sorts of people. There was a garageman still in his soiled whites, a girl in a blowy dress. . . . And in front of them the tower was bending into crazy shapes and over their heads the wires were waltzing from side to side.

  Rick slammed the siren in again and the truck came down behind them howling and bellowing. Stan was leaning out of the cab yelling at the top of his voice. “Get out from under the wires . . . Get back, get off the road, get out from under the wires . . .”

  For all the notice they took the wagon might not have been there. Stan left it nearly too late to stop. At the last instant he trod on the anchors and wrenched the wheel round and the truck screeched and broadsided onto the rough. It dragged a plume of d
ust behind it forty, fifty yards, then it smashed its pan across a rock and the ride was over. Rick banged his head on the screen, fell back and heard the cables part. Something slapped on the road behind the truck’s tail, the Saskeega men curled up instinctively away from the cab sides, there was the rush and whimper of the arcing then the cutoffs killed the line. Stan got out; Rick followed him cautiously, feeling himself to see he was still in one piece. The Sand Creek feeder was out again . . .

  Boris Grabowski reached the truck. His face was as near white as it could get and his eyes looked as if they were bolting out of his head. He said, “Boss, I’m going bloody-crazy.”

  Rick said heavily, “You and me both, Boris, you and me both.” He looked up towards the strain tower. She was mostly all gone; there was a stump about six or eight feet tall, and the struts of that were twisted and blackened. What was left of the head had been dragged ninety, a hundred feet downhill, and all the road was a jumble of wires. The people were standing about in the middle of the mess. The cables had come down right among them, but they were still all on their feet, God alone knew how. The Saskeega men tried to talk to them, but it was no use. They started pushing them clear of the cables. It was hard work. The strangers stared straight ahead, walked when they were being shoved, stopped still as soon as they were left alone. “What we need,” said Rick furiously, “is a bloody sheep-dog.”

  He sent Boris down to phone for roadblocks and ambulances and lifting gear to clear the carriageway. Then he walked on up to High Eight with Stan. They got another shock. The people they’d seen had been only the second wave, the first crowd of zombies had got there before the lines parted. There were red smears on the door where they’d torn the locks apart. They were the folk Johnny had tried to tell about on the phone.