by Jim Rudnick
“Sue, right? We met here about four years ago, when you and some others came for a tour—I’m Effram Howey—the boss up here at the dam. And we’ve got troubles but no way out of same yet,” he explained.
The big nor’wester had taken down many trees well up river, and when they came up to the dam, most could be lifted up and over and tossed downriver by the crane. Most. But a few had gotten stuck in the metal cage crates that protected their one working dam spillway. The branches were wedged into the square holes in the grate and wouldn’t let go. When the crane was attached to the trees, it only broke off branches as the two trees were now jammed into the grates together. The trees were enormous—at least a hundred feet tall.
Effram and his crew had launched their inflatable boat with the outboard figuring that the two men could help by getting a better lock on the central bole of the top tree so the crane could successfully lift it out of the way. They’d tried locking the big hawser onto the bole and then had backed off as the crane lifted and lifted, and the top tree jammed in on the other had begun to move. It had moved slowly up and up and then the hawser had let go … and the tree had fallen back down but was now ten or so feet higher up.
He shook his head then.
“And then I made a mistake—I okayed that the boat go back and retry to hook up the hawser. The boys did and the tree shifted when they were right under it, and its branches grabbed the side of the inflatable, and both of them hit the water. That’s Billy out there in the gray life jacket clutching the top of that damn tree, and Tony just a bit off beside him in the orange life jacket. And the boat is stuck but they can’t get to it ‘cause it’s off to that one side.”
He shook his head one more time.
“We need to get our men back safely—which is why we’re working on getting the crane extension hooked up,” he said as he pointed behind him with his thumb.
Everyone turned to look up on the roof of the generator building. A whole crew of workmen was involved in the dismantling of the rear end of the crane assembly, and they could see thirty-foot extension of the crane boom beside it on a set of pallets.
“How long ‘til that can be completed and tested?” Sue asked.
“Dunno about the testing part, but it’ll be at least an hour,” Effram answered.
From where they stood, the two men out holding onto the top of the tree looked like they weren’t doing so well.
“Water temp after the nor’wester would be …” Sue asked.
“Down,” Effram responded. “She’s probably at around forty to fifty degrees. They’ve been out there, what, forty minutes already.
“Don’t mean to ask ...” Sue said.
“An hour at forty degrees is your answer,” Effram answered.
They all knew that meant the two men out there had less than twenty minutes or so before deep hypothermia began to set in. One of the first things to go was the ability to hold on to things like tree branches. The men would slowly lose their ability to keep above the water level and slide down and into the cold, cold water.
“We gotta get them out of there soon,” Effram said, wringing his hands together.
Javor spoke up. “Could I ask—how far out exactly is that boat?”
Effram looked over at him and said, “Why?”
“Looks to me like it’s about fifty, maybe fifty-five, feet out there. Is that what you’d think?” he went on.
Effram took a few steps to his right and held out a hand to gaze directly at the concrete spillway sluice rail that lay out about the same distance as the boat.
“That sluice rail—see it—the concrete arm that juts out into the river that curls the water toward the spillway down below? She’s exactly sixty feet out there from the shoreline to the tip of same. And the crane is only setup for forty feet right now,” he finished off.
Javor nodded and began to take off his armored vest, his Colt, and other gear, and placed them all in a pile.
“You can’t swim out there—the current will rip you down into the spillway, and the turbines will cut you in two,” Effram said, holding out his hand.
“Ain’t gonna swim,” Javor said. “I’m just gonna jump out to the boat,” he answered, and that got a puzzled look from everyone.
Sue shook her head and held out an arm to bar his way. “Javor—that’s like fifty feet or so. No one can jump that far—you’ll fall into the water and get sucked down into the spillway tunnel and die. You do see that, right?” she said.
“Most people, yes. But I guess I neglected to mention that I was a decathlon winner a couple of decades ago and the long jump was my specialty. That, and as I’ve had my whole right knee rebuilt with alien tissue and technology, I used to hit fifty-feet jumps all the time. Well, at least a couple,” he said, and he was only fibbing by maybe five feet.
He had won the long jump with forty-eight feet when he was thirty-one those long years ago. “A couple of feet more he could do easy, right?” he said to himself as he moved along the shoreline to check the path for his approach run.
The edge of the dam itself was smooth concrete at the very edge with only a small two-inch up-curl at the water’s edge.
He placed his foot there and took twenty-two strides back at a perfectly perpendicular path, and he drew a line there on the concrete with his heel.
He had gathered quite a small group of bystanders, and he told them to stay out of that pathway to give him some security for the jump.
He knew he had to slap down his right foot flat, right up tight to that up-curl of concrete to launch himself up at less than twenty degrees to get the vertical impulse of his own center of gravity right. To maintain balance and control, he also knew, as he’d done this jump tens of thousands of times, he would then push back on his left arm to counterweight the right leg push off and fully extend that arm too.
He knew all of this, as he stretched and bounced on his right leg, warming up the alien tissue in his knee.
No troubles with same since the nor’wester either. Not a single spasm or the like either.
He grinned to himself. Of course, that might be because the right knee had been in a truck for the last two days instead of hiking along the interstate.
He got ready and then realized that once he hit the boat, he had no plan, so he waved Effram and Sue over.
“And when I land in the boat—she’s a standard outboard, right?
“Right,” Effram said. “Just run her up, get the two of them to climb aboard, and then take off directly across the river to the far side. We’ll have someone there to meet you.” He turned to bark orders to the crews around him.
Javor looked at Sue who was the only one now in front of him.
“You can do this, right?” she asked with a look on her face that said she hoped so.
He just nodded. “Can of corn,” he added and then waved her out of his way.
Out in the water, the man in the gray life jacket was slipping off the treetop, and he knew it was time.
He flexed his legs, doing a couple of deep knee bends—the right one felt great.
He turned to face totally away from the dam, said a small thanks to the alien who’d provided his tissue, and then turned and sprinted down the path directly at the edge of the dam.
He counted his steps as he knew when he got to the last two of them, how he stepped off those two would be the success or failure of his jump.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty—and he ensured that his focus was down at his feet as he placed step twenty-one a single bound short of the edge of the dam.
Twenty-one—and he moved his right foot forward at breakneck speed as he slapped it down totally flat on the edge of the dam just short of the up-curl of concrete. Throwing back his left arm to be straight, he launched himself into the air.
Twenty-two—and his body remembered what it had known for decades.
He sailed, feet outstretched. Out and out and over the darkly roiling water below him.
> Out and out and still going up as he tucked his body into a V shape, legs still going up.
Out and out and now no longer up but heading down toward the water below.
As he focused on the water as it got closer and closer, the edge of the inflatable began to jut into his eyesight, but he ignored it for a whole second. His legs were still ahead of the rest of his body, but he was slowly flexing his abdominals to force his body more upright.
Down. Down and as his butt hit the water, the side of the boat slammed him in the chest, and he grabbed it with all his might.
The water below tried to seize him and move him downward toward the spillway, but he wrestled with the side of the boat, happy that the designers had added a set of rope cleats to the sides. As he grabbed that yellow rope, he pulled his now cold legs out from under the boat, hoisted them over the side, and fell in.
The cheers from the shore were huge, but before he could rise to acknowledge same, he knew he had to get the two dam workers. He was shivering and getting colder himself, but he crawled down the short floor and took the seat at the helm in the rear.
His hands were freezing, so he jammed them under his armpits and squeezed them for a minute to get them warm so he could feel things again.
He looked at the tiller on the boat and saw that it was in forward, but a big sheaf of fir branches was jammed between the seat and the throttle. He ripped them out and threw them overboard, and the boat quit moving about at random. He twisted the throttle again, in neutral. The gas fed well, and he looked ahead at the two dam workers.
Orange jacket was closest, so he eased the boat into forward and then threaded a path through the mess of fir trees ahead. He got hung up on something below and had to rev the hell outta the outboard in reverse to get free, but in a minute he was sidling up to the orange-jacketed worker, and he dumped it into neutral again.
“Guess you’re Tony—let me help you in,” he said as he grabbed the man by the scruff of his jacket and slowly rolled the man backward and up and over the soft gunwales to lie in the boat bottom. No time to even talk to this, one but as he slid back up and onto the helm seat, Tony waved at him and clasped his legs to try to conserve warmth.
He put her in forward again and moved the boat around one more tree to where the gray-jacketed worker was—and the man was gone. No gray jacket to see. He rammed the boat into the tree at once, thinking that maybe it had slid down more into the spillway as the strong river current forced it down—but there was no—wait, he could see the gray jacket just below that side branch.
Javor jammed the throttle on full speed, and the boat slowly pushed and pushed against the treetop. Suddenly, the worker popped up, out of the clutches of the tree, and Javor grinned as he saw the worker trying to swing his arms to swim.
He put the boat in neutral, and with a bit of help from Tony, they both manhandled Billy on board too. He pushed the two of them into each other’s arms to try to generate some warmth, and then in forward once more, he steered the boat away from the spillway feeder area and across the river.
He didn’t much care about depth, as he got close, and he ran the inflatable right up on shore and was met with more workers than he thought would be at the dam. They hustled Tony and Billy off the boat, onto stretchers, and back toward wherever their sick bay was, and he smiled.
Just a jump and some boat work too.
Sue grinned at him on the shore, and Bixby barked twice too.
“So, now we’ve got a hero who can, like, jump almost across the whole bloody river,” she said, and Wayne who’d just run up laughed right out loud.
“Boys look okay so far, and they’re getting the hot towel treatment too,” he said.
“Sleep, all I wanna do is to have a nap,” Javor said as he slowly got up and out of the boat.
Sue clasped him around the shoulders and walked with him all the way back to the administration building.
“They gave us this room for our use—so the couch is yours for a few hours anyway,” she said as she smiled at him.
Javor nodded. The knee was a bit stiff. Too much asked for too seldom was the problem. Still, couldn’t have been for a better purpose, he thought.
He tucked his left arm under the pillow as he cautiously placed his right leg directly on top of his left and noted that Bixby had also come in to sit at the side of the couch.
“Sleep … sleep is always good,” he said to himself as his right knee pulsed and the waves of pain began to subside.
#####
Four hours later, Effram knocked on the door, and Bruce let him in.
“And you all are …” he said, and Sue did the names all around.
When she got to Javor, who she saved for last, she sort of shrugged and said in a tone that reminded one of a tall tale.
“And this is Javor Novak—our spaceman. True story—he landed here on Bones only a few weeks back, and it’s our job to get him to the Regime HQ in Arlington as soon as possible. And the dog is his too—Bixby is the pup’s name—and he’s a godsend when it comes to finding out what’s ahead of us on the road—when we’re walking, I mean. Truck we found back in Walkerville, and she’s a godsend too, and we expect to be in Arlington now much sooner.”
Effram nodded and held out his hand. “Well, that, and he can jump too. Jump far enough to help us out too. Tony is fine, and Billy will need another day or so on light duty, but yeah, Javor, many, many thanks.”
He nodded and held out a hand to shake, and Javor did just that remembering that Bones citizens liked the use of personal touch to reinforce their feelings.
Effram smiled at him again. “Spaceman, eh? Then good to meet you and welcome to Bones—well, Ceti4 really, but we all use Bones ‘cause she’s got good ones. We just need to help rebuild the planet—which is what we do here at the Adair Dam. We push power out every single second to the lines. Tour?” he asked suddenly and turned to lead the way.
Guess one can’t say no, Javor thought, and he fell into line to make their way across the administration building and down a long hallway that was plain gray concrete. It angled down and down and then leveled out and stretched ahead. At the end of that long corridor, there was a large open three-story-high room. In the middle of it ran a row of generators all topped with huge transformers sitting unpowered—they obviously had been put out of working order by the Boathi bombs eight years ago. But at the very end, the last generator was running and humming and, yes, probably generating power as the transformer was humming too. As they went by, they waved at the two workers who were tending the unit and continued to a circular staircase that went down.
At the bottom, they turned to their left and went back under the huge room well above and were stopped by a big glass wall in front of them. Peering through, Javor could see that at this level what lay ahead was the actual spillway and the turbine that spun accordingly. It was tied via cables and arrays to the ceiling, and all were vibrating slightly.
Effram spread out his arm to encompass the whole room. “We have the six turbines all unpowered by the Boathi bombs which took them out, but the one that is running comes out of our extra or side spillway. The Boathi missed that one, and we push more than 150 MW of power out of here at a time. That adds big time to our power production here on Bones—we have many more plants—some in the north push 1000 MW of power in a day too.
Javor watched and thought on that for second or two. “So the dam creates power; it’s pushed to the substation over at Adair, then via towers to the grid that runs over the continent. If that’s the case—is there an Achilles’ heel in this system?”
Effram nodded as he led them back to the circular staircase and started back up to the ground levels. “If anything—our weakness is the lines themselves. There are so few crews who can update the lines, change the lines and insulators, and when we have a nor’wester like a few days ago, how to fix the lines too. ‘Til we can ramp up those crews and get them out there on a daily basis—our big area where we run into trouble is the
line crews.”
He opened the doorway back through the large generator room and toward his offices.
Back there, he asked an aide to help them use the ham radio setup. Sue excused herself to talk to the Regime HQ and update them on their new mode of transport.
Two of the other dam workers provided a quick dinner, and they ate quickly. Sue got back in time to get the last sandwich.
“HQ says take it easy with the truck—they’d love to see it themselves. Oh, and in Lindos, we should not enter that free city with the truck they said, but park it outside of town like she’s wrecked. Else, they said, we’d be targets for sure.”
She smiled at Effram and rose. “We gotta go, I’d guess, but did want to say thanks! For the lunch and the quick tour too, Effram. Next time through, we’ll stop again for sure.”
A few minutes later, they were all back in the truck, and Bixby was happily ensconced in the middle of the back seat, looking out the windshield as Javor started her up and they waited for the gate to slide open.
As he slowly left the dam area, he turned to his left and the truck moved back up the slope of the road to head toward Adair. In the side mirror, the dam grew smaller as they went back toward the interstate.
“Anything else perhaps that the Regime had to say?” Wayne said from the back seat.
Sue nodded and turned to face back toward him. “One thing of import, yes. That in the Badlands, there was a large uprising of some of the tribe there—and that meant that the interstate would be the only safe way through same—stay off the regionals, they said. Not important for us, as we’re going to use the interstate, but good to know,” she said and then reached back to ruffle Bixby’s chest. The dog stretched out his muzzle to enjoy the scratching.
“We’ll need to find a spot to camp out tonight,” Bruce said.
They sat in silence as they thought about the trip ahead and what further issues would arise.