Triumph

by Philip Wylie

  "--get it? Yes. Some of my colleagues still submit their youngsters to that species of educational torment. Torment . . . owing to the absence of all discipline."

  "Exactly! Well, a lot of the ideas still adhere to Valerie. Some, I've benefited from greatly. My people were ultraconservative. The complete opposite of hers. I suppose that was what first so attracted me. Anyhow, when Heliconia Davey reached high-school age, she went on for a summer or two doing things she'd always taken for granted--including one my wife insisted on. That is, mixing with other kids, like Faith--" he hesitated an instant before going on--"along with George Hyama. Even swimming together in our indoor pool in the old place. But a time came when Connie quit. She had the body of a leopard, golden-brown, and just that taut, that alive. She wanted to be a dancer. Ballet.

  But she had to work her way, in Vassar--earn whatever her folks couldn't furnish from earnings and savings, which meant hard work for Connie. Connie learned a trade. Pride and effort--or something--changed her to a more intellectual person.

  "But, as a high-school girl, past adolescence, she became the most-chased young woman in this part of Connecticut--and many pursuers were older men, also--white, rich, and very respectable, except when they saw Connie. I'm not sure what caused her to change her ways. I know her parents went through agonies, certain their one child would end up a grade-A bum. But almost overnight, in her senior year at high, Connie stopped even talking to all white men and most white women--Valerie and Faith and me, excepted. So far as I know she's never dated--seriously or frivolously--any white man, since. She never again showed up for a swim. Till her graduation from Vassar she lived, I think, like a nun. Since then, I can't say. On a glance, she makes ninety-five per cent of all men of all sorts and ages forget she is a Negress and concentrate on the fact she's a woman."

  Ben said nothing.

  That discomfited Farr. "Perhaps I should be a bit more explicit, Ben." The scientist thought not, but said nothing. "I myself am a broad-minded man. I'd have to be, married these near-thirty years to Valerie. Understand, I love my wife. I'd give--have given--all I possess, to have been able to prevent her from--from--from putting a booze barricade between her and life." Ben reflected that even without "all he possessed,"

  Vance Farr would have been comfortable with his wife's inheritance; he decided it was an unworthy thought. After all, people like the Farrs had never known what it is to wait table and do odd jobs to get an education. Or to be born in a family where the daily fluctuation in the price of hamburger was important. Or to grow up thinking, always, whether to spend or not spend a dime, as Ben had done for the first twenty years of life. Vance Farr did love his wife genuinely, although in a way Ben hardly regarded as ideal. A way Farr now made even plainer and even less ideal-seeming:

  "It is destroying Valerie. Drink. A wonderful woman, too."

  Ben said, quietly, "She'll get a chance, here. I mean--!"

  Vance Farr shook his head. "No. You mean, there's nothing to drink in this labyrinth?"

  He laughed mirthlessly. "For one thing, though I never told Valerie and didn't bother to show you, this place connects, through steel doors up the shaft, with a wine cellar Granddad built. I kept it stocked, in the family tradition. You'll see! But the real thing is, I hoped, if this dungeon had to be used, Valerie would most likely get here in time. And I didn't want her to suffer the misery of being an immolated-alcoholic, without a drink to assuage that craving. There's plenty of liquor!" He eyed the scientist. "Oh. That! I did wonder for a while how come Val managed to get tight right off, without asking me, or somebody, to get her a drink. No. If she ever 'finds herself,' she'll have to do it by herself, and in the midst of people who go on drinking. I'd hate myself for trying a forcible reform. You'll get to realize, Ben, when you've come to know her sober--which she is, nearly all day--what an extraordinary person Valerie is."

  "Couldn't she," Ben asked, rather vaguely, and not quite sure just what he meant,

  "I mean--won't she--more or less naturally act as chaperone for the young women you're worried about?"

  Vance stared. "Val? Chaperone! But I told you of her up-bringing! You don't understand! To Val's parents free love wasn't just one of four freedoms--it was all four!

  Why in the world Val has remained faithful to me through all our marriage, I'll never figure out! I don't deserve it!" He rose, paced, sat again. "After all, a man in my business-

  -a merchant--spends a lot of his life in other cities, other lands, far from his home. I haven't been exactly a saint. Val never expected me to be! Quite the contrary! Not a jealous bone in her body! Of course, as we've grown older, and as I've become, I suppose, monotonous and over-familiar, less desired and desiring--and as Val, poor girl, has become more and more alienated by drink--she's developed a certain shrewishness about purely imaginary 'other women.' Her mind is warping, I fear. For I've never to her knowledge been 'indiscreet,' Bernman. Never to her certain knowledge!"

  The scientist caught again an overtone of sanctimoniousness, or a false undertone of self-righteous defensiveness. He wished the other man were not thus revealing a flaw in his personality. It wasn't necessary, and Ben had found Farr, otherwise, a sincere, very brilliant, imaginative person. He again said nothing.

  Farr waited, drumming uncertain fingers on the bridge table. Finally, with a shrug, he said, "That's about it! I merely meant to explain that if we're entombed here for month after month, there are inevitably going to be some romances. When they begin, the inevitable result will be some pretty violent jealousies. In close quarters that emotion can be dangerous. I went into all this because I knew you'd be on the side of keeping order, preventing quarrels--fights, even--and demanding decency, or grace, anyway, from all hands."

  "But," Ben said perplexedly, "naturally! What else?"

  "Good man!" Farr seemed to have been relieved of a burden. He rose and clasped Ben's limp, surprised hand. "Knew you'd understand. "

  Startled, Ben thought for a second, returned the handshake mildly, and decided he had to be absolutely sure. "Vance," he asked solemnly, "do you, by chance, mean, in all that talk, that you are warning me to—to--"

  "To what?"

  "To leave Faith alone?" He blurted it.

  "Good Lord!" Farr was chuckling. Fantastically, Ben felt. "Faith decides who leaves her alone--or doesn't!"

  "Then"--Ben was still puzzled--"do you plan to give a similar talk to all the other men? As a general precaution?"

  Farr shook his head, almost aggrievedly. "No. I simply gave you the background of those here, as I know it, for the reason I said. You're a solid-seeming type, emotionally. You have standards. And guts. Don't stop me." He raised his short-fingered hand. "I know what it cost you to face the fact, just after you came here, that you cared about my daughter, and wouldn't ever let it show. Proud of you for it! In a way, anyhow.

  But I feared you assumed others have as much self-command as you. They haven't!

  You'll see, I think. And I'm glad I know now that you'll help, if, or when, I need help, to keep things sane."

  "I'm sure," Ben answered, "you're needlessly worried."

  "I hope so. Anyhow, I'll worry less, since we've talked." Once again he looked at his watch. "Time, nearly, to check the heat situation. Shall we go?"

  Halfway up the shaft they saw that the area of luminosity on the underside of the middle doors had grown dimmer and, they both thought, slightly smaller. Relieved, they came back.

  Ben said, as the elevator portal shut and Farr started toward the ladder, "I think I might take the outside radiation-level readings after this." He held the metal rungs till Farr shouted from the highest: "Dropped back to eighty-nine!" He climbed down.

  Ben was absent for fifteen minutes. When he returned Farr was lounging and smoking a cigar. Ben had wanted a cigarette all day, all this night, like the others who smoked and yearned to do so here--achingly, nervously, tensely. But since Farr had not smoked, Ben had assumed, like the rest, that their air supply wouldn't per
mit it. Now, seeing the thick, spiral-issuing cigar in Farr's fingers, Ben snatched a pack of cigarettes from a pocket and greedily lighted up.

  Farr watched him, almost without awareness. Looked at his cigar. "Funny. I smoke a dozen of these a day, or even more. And hadn't thought to--till just now."

  Ben explained that everybody else had assumed smoking was "out."

  Farr's head shook. "Lord, no! The air's filtered constantly. We clean it, dry it, take out the carbon dioxide, add oxygen as required, and reuse it. Like a submarine."

  Ben smiled. "About everybody will sure be glad to know that! But how come, with a cigar habit, you didn't smoke all these hours?"

  Farr's smile was wide and yet his eyes were unamused. "Dunno. Just didn't notice the urge. What were the readings?" Ben hesitated. "It must have been sodium," he said.

  "Not serious for us--short half--life-but--"

  Farr clamped down on the cigar. "You're not making sense."

  Ben still hesitated. "First gauge I read made me think--one George says came up on signal from behind a cave door, at the far rim of the quarry."

  "I know. Go on!"

  "I thought the system had blown! Reading was so high. Second one, in your north property, in a special well, confirmed the first. I still can hardly believe it! But all the gauges radioing us any information--half of those you fixed up--agree, more or less."

  "Man, out with it! High, I take it?" "The level outside, around your property--or what used to be yours--seems close to one million roentgens."

  "A million! No!" Farr blanched, sagged, muttered. "A million! Impossible!"

  "Not if the enemy set off enough devices rigged to spill maximum amounts of radioactive sodium over the American landscape. It's what you'd expect."

  "But, a million roentgens! When six hundred is fatal, if you take it over your whole body for minutes!"

  "Sure. And if you stepped into a million roentgens, you'd--I don't exactly know!

  Sort of wilt, crumple, start to go black and die, standing--at a guess."

  "How far inland would it--?"

  "Can't say. Clear across the United States in the next few days. Some big fraction of that level anyhow, if they used enough sea mines on both coasts. We've known such things would be possible, as you said, since mid-1950. But we never officially presumed any enemy would try it."

  "Crazy!"

  "The whole thing is! So's this place, for that matter!"

  Farr sat rooted. "Nonsense! This place is the only fragment of common sense left in--the whole world, maybe! But, a million roentgens! Even half a million! A quarter!

  And even if half of the amount fades in--what?"

  "Fifteen hours, if it's sodium."

  "Will anybody survive it? Short of having--?" Farr looked at the vast oblong chamber carved from stone.

  "I'd imagine not," Ben answered listlessly. "Unless they're airtight, like us, and heavily barricaded, like this place. Small leaks of air, that hot, would be enough to do the job. In the best of standard civilian shelters."

  Farr rose like a man aged by some instant curse. "Incredible! Nevertheless, Ben, I'm going to lie down. I'm whipped. I may not sleep. I may never be able to sleep again!

  But I've got to rest. And I advise you to do the same." He started to depart, raggedly.

  "Yeah. I will."

  On the comfortable bunk in the blank-walled room assigned to him, Ben lay quietly, trying to think. To think about what, he could not have said. So many things!

  And one above all--the end of his world!--except this little pocket. Or maybe a few like it.

  The end, actually, of half the world. His brain spun, blurred, and made pictures that tensed his muscles, but eventually that horrid process ceased and he dozed.

  At four o'clock, which was not much after Ben drowsed off, Kit Barlow's alarm watch woke him. It took him seconds to remember where he was. Then, slowly and as if in pain, the tall, rugged, handsome playboy dressed, in the already-standard shelter outfit: coveralls, socks, shirt, and loafers. He went to the kitchen and turned on lights. Their gleam on so much stainless steel hurt his eyes for a moment. He blinked, moved, filled a kettle, turned a switch, and minutes later carried a thermos of coffee, a cup, a saucer, and a handful of lumps of sugar into the vast main chamber. There he smelled smoke and thought something was on fire, a thought that brought him close to panic. Then he realized it was tobacco smoke.

  He rushed to the bridge table. One neat set of tipped-off cigar ashes. Numerous crushed-out cigarettes. He raced back to his room for his own package and returned with a cigarette already going, to sit and merely smoke, with immense satisfaction.

  By-and-by he made such rounds as he was capable of at that time. All doors to private rooms were shut. Nobody was about. In the remote chambers where diesels throbbed, and in those where generators spun, the machinery seemed, to Kit's inexpert eye, purring smoothly, under rows of brilliant electric lights.

  He went into the communications room and read the message George had typed out. It chilled him but he shrugged away the icy feeling. What the devil could he do about three guys stuck in some weather satellite, a thousand miles high, over--he looked at the nearby globe--over the southern edge of Colombia, in South America? His eyes moved around the walls and touched on the electronic devices, lining them. They meant nothing to Kit. He glanced into the seismological chamber, but merely glanced. The earth wasn't shaking or rocking now, and no deadly hunks of stone were falling from their ceilings, or likely to fall, so long as no more bombs made near hits.

  He returned to the Hall and poured another cup of coffee. Soon he began to feel sheepish about accepting the suggestion that he take this early morning "watch." Kit grinned faintly as he realized that he'd been given that duty so he'd turn in, like a good little boy. Old man Farr, he mused, is sure a smart operator! Wanted people to go to bed, to sleep, and so steady up! And tricked 'em into it, in his case. He should have been brighter at the time, he thought. Bright enough to know there was nothing he could

  "watch," simply because everything ran automatically and if there was a breakdown of any sort, he could only wake somebody--George Hyama, specifically--providing he had sense enough to notice the breakdown. Doubtless there were breakdown warning bells, or some such gadgets.

  In fact, he now reasoned correctly, failure of any apparatus on which their survival depended would certainly set off alarms in George's room. Farr's, too.

  He sat there, smoking and feeling a fool.

  Once in a while pain coursed through him as the thought of his parents, and other people he cared for, came burning into his mind. Like everybody in his group during the first day--a half day and an evening, actually--he shoved away as best he could such miserable reflections. He took to mere sitting and smoking, almost vacant of mind.

  Everybody had been--was--probably would be, for days--stunned as hell. Shock. And why not?

  He had about decided to get a book or a magazine from the unopened room he'd been told was a library, to pass time till somebody else finally appeared, when he noticed, or thought he noticed, a change in the even, very faint humming that was the background sound of the Hall--and of the whole place, so far as he'd seen it. He listened, and decided his ears had tricked him.

  Then it came again.

  Three far-off, nearly-inaudible taps, a pause, three more, and so on, till a series ended. A considerable interval followed. Then the sounds were repeated. This time Kit went into one of the exits and listened. He heard nothing there. Though if the noise had been made by machinery, he'd have heard it better.

  Something, or maybe somebody, apparently outside, was making that distant, repetitive noise. It could not be true, but there it was.

  Kit Barlow then went into several more of the passageways that opened off the main chamber. In each he listened. In none could he hear the faint, tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap that was occasionally audible in the big room. He returned to it.

  For perhaps two minutes he simply stood i
n the center of the lofty, oblong place.

  His forehead was wrinkled. He thrust a hand now and again through his short, tight-curled, dust-hued hair. His broad shoulders boxed up. He tried hard to think what non-human circumstance might cause the seeming signals. In that effort he clamped his big fists and his eyes grayed; the tenseness produced no idea. He scowled, though the normal furrows on his brow were not etched by hard study or meditation; they were the lines carved into the foreheads of men who, since prep-school days, have strained in athletic effort--becoming taut, in Kit's case, every time signals were called on a gridiron and he had knelt, usually at tackle, gazing up balefully at his opponent and preparing to charge, his forehead corrugated with the intent.

  Now, he felt fear. Thoughts of the long-disputed problem of how people sheltered in nuclear war ought to react, if outsiders tried to force their way in, raced through his brain. Was it possible that anyone had survived up above? That they were, even now, signaling an entreaty for rescue? Or--and it startled him!--pounding drill holes with the intention of dynamiting down to this luxury and security?

  He said to himself, aloud, but not aware of that detail: "Take it easy, Kitsie-boy!"

  He had an idea and rushed across the chamber, pressing an ear to its naked, stone wall. When the chinking came again, it seemed nearer. It had the ring of metal hitting stone. And now the rhythm of the signaling changed. He heard one tap, then two, then three:

  Tink, it went. Tink-tink. Tink-tink-tink. Tink-tink-tink-tink. And it ran on, up to six

  "tinks." Then a pause. Then the count began again.

  He stepped back, afraid. Again unknowingly, he spoke aloud: "Christopher! Don't let the little mushroom clouds get you down!" Another sound made him whirl, almost as if to attack.