Triumph

by Philip Wylie

  He merely hoped that if any letters were wrong he could send enough correctly so the gaps would be filled by guesses.

  What he "telegraphed" back was:

  "Two children. Woman. Man. Unconscious. Alive. Air here hot and exhausted.

  Radiation level okay. Can you fix hose on my line that I can haul through and get some fresh air here?"

  Back came tuggings he had trouble deciphering:

  "Wilco. Had already brought up and rigged air conduit. Start hauling. More wire on hose, for sending next message."

  Ben thought by the time he'd hauled the ever-more-resistant hose three-quarters of the distance, he couldn't make the last stretch. He was soaked now with sweat. His breath came raw into his lungs and went out in sobs. He gained another hundred yards. Then he couldn't budge the line an inch. Desperately, gasping, he looked about. Under the hole broken through stonework, near a pushed-back door, were tools they'd used. Including a crowbar. Ben grabbed it, twisted the aluminum wire around its lower end, braced the point of the bar against the wall, and began levering the line. Foot by foot, with relative ease now, his lever brought it toward him until, at last, he grabbed the end: copper tubing! But almost anything else, he realized, would have melted. He took off his face plate and thrust the air-pouring end of tubing into his suit. Coolness coursed over his body.

  A minute later he arranged the hissing tube on the floor and pulled the heads of the four unconscious people near it. He could see them breathing the air, slowly, but breathing it. He signaled back a second time, to report those acts. He added, "They seem okay. Heat rather than exhaustion of oxygen probably cause of their passing out. No bad burns, I think. How can we get them your side?"

  That problem required time for its solution.

  But Farr and George Hyama finally hit upon a method.

  In two hours they had readied another battery-propelled cart, one that could tow forward, and push backward, an enclosed "cabin" in which oxygen bottles furnished an atmosphere and around which Dry Ice-cooled and double-walled top, sides, end, and bottom made possible the transit of the long tunnel, even though the rock it penetrated still remained so hot that the air in its middle stood at a temperature above that of boiling water.

  By the time that conveyance, and information as to its operation, reached Ben, the two children were crying, the woman was sitting up, being sick, and the man--a dark-eyed, swarthy, piratical-looking person--was fully conscious and trying to help. Ben, by then, knew the man was named Al; the two children--ten or twelve, he believed--Dorothy and Dick; and the woman, Angelica. And that was all he knew: it hurt their throats to talk.

  He sent the two youngsters, screaming with fear, in the first load. The second carried Angelica. The man went next.

  When Ben finally opened the improvised heat lock of the automative vehicle, and ripped off his heavy, ruined fire suit, he lay down and fainted. He did not remember anything of the fairly fast trip back. He was dimly aware of being heaved out of something by somebody and vaguely conscious of surprise as the elevator sank. He could see, and he was breathing fairly well, when they carried him tenderly into the Hall.

  Everybody was there except the rescued people.

  Valerie rushed up and kissed him, then drew away in shame because her kiss fell upon a raw cheek. Ben tried to grin, murmured "Thanks," and passed out again.

  Next time he came to, he was in his own bunk and Faith was sitting at his side in a chair, reading. She looked up when she heard him stir. Her eyes widened a little when she saw his eyes, open, above bandages.

  "How are they?" Ben asked.

  She stood, came near. He realized she wore perfume. In a coverall, but perfumed!

  Nutty! But pleasant. She seemed to be baffled, then, quickly, to realize what he had meant.

  "They're fine, considering."

  "Good." He moved arms, legs.

  "You take it easy!" she admonished.

  "How about me?"

  She laughed softly and took hold of the exposed finger tips of his right hand.

  "You--you wonderful, homely, tough, hero! You'll be all right. You've got a few bad bums--face, hands, legs, arms--but nothing that won't heal. Lucky, because we couldn't treat third-degree ones; bad second-degree, even. You'll live. You'll be up and around, Dad thinks, in mere days. You may have a few minor scars."

  "Thanks." He tried to squeeze her fingers to emphasize his appreciation. It hurt cruelly to flex his hand.

  "Water?"

  "Please, Nurse."

  He took it through a glass straw--great draughts of water. He had never been so thirsty. It gave him a little more strength.

  "Who are they?"

  "It's a long story."

  "Shoot."

  She looked at him dubiously, made her mind up, sat down, and began: "They had pretty good shelters over at Candlewood Manor--Connecticut law required them for all recent buildings. But when the sirens went, most tenants were anywhere but in the buildings. The men were mostly in New York. Whole families were away on summer vacations. Men were playing golf. People were weekending on the Sound. Angelica says, too, that the tenants, when the alarm began, in the main didn't even consider the shelters.

  They got in cars and rushed away. To get kids--or just get clear. Crazy, she said. She was asleep when the sirens started. Her brother, Alberto Rizzo--she says he's a brother, anyhow--was staying in her apartment. He woke her. She dressed fast. They went to the apartment-house shelter. About fifty people had reached it, he says, when the bombs began to go. The shelter in each building adjoined the cellar. The building over their heads began to come apart--with blast waves. Most of the people in the basement shelter got panicky and decided they'd be better off, out from under the building. Raced out some back exit. Somebody left those two kids!

  "Alberto, brother or not--and incidentally, he's a handsome guy!--was afraid to leave with that wild mob. Angelica told him there was a furnace room, deeper down, and a trunk room, and, maybe, that she knew where and how to reach an even better shelter from there. So they went, Angelica grabbing the two kids, who would otherwise have been left all alone. They got to the trunk room, and moved one of her trunks over a trap door into the tunnel that led to the cave. Where you--" Faith paused, collected herself, and went on. "They stayed there for a long time but they couldn't make anybody hear their hammering at the other end of the tunnel, which Angelica located and Al battered open. It had been jammed, probably by earth shocks. Too much noise for us to hear--

  buildings afire and falling. Then, after hours, the cave began to heat up. The tunnel finally became so hot they shut the door. The whole building, they think, had by then caved in on top of them. We think it burned but that they were insulated enough not to be cooked. Finally the air began to get unbearably hot. They tried to get back to the trunk room and couldn't, because of a cave-in. So they started smashing the tunnel open again, and did, and whatever air-motion there was went from them into it, or they'd have been cremated. They then began trying to signal with a hammer, and passed out, one by one, doing that. End of their story."

  Faith thought Ben had drifted off, when his voice came, "Sounds possible. In fact, only some such events would explain their being alive."

  "Yes."

  "I'm very glad."

  "So is everybody." Before she thought, Faith had added, "Except--"

  He whispered, "I know. Your mother. And father."

  She was silent for a while. "Yes. I suppose Dad told you, when he explained about the tunnel? Dad's pretty humiliated."

  "Oughta be." She thought he chuckled a little.

  "You see," Faith said, after considering, "Mother knew about Angelica, from the very night, years ago, when Dad saw her in the chorus line of Show Me the Way. A musical."

  "Saw it, myself. Nice show!"

  Faith looked at the bandaged man on the bunk with faint surprise. "Did you?

  Anyhow, Mother guessed, from Dad's very effort to hide his interest. And she knew there had been other Ang
elicas before, whom Dad had thought were safely kept secret. That hypocrisy of Dad's was why Mother got to drinking so much. Dad never knew the real cause. Doesn't, now. Funny. Except for Mother, I think no one ever guessed that Dad had a--"

  "Mistress?"

  "Mistresses. Even I didn't, till recently. But it means nothing to you--"

  Ben sighed, "Except, I helped save the lady."

  "Helped? You did it! And her chi-chi Latin boy friend, who--I bet anything--is not a brother. Which, I think, Dad also realizes. With what emotions, I can't imagine!" She laughed rather sadly. "The fool! I'm sure if Dad hadn't gone to such infinite pains to hide affairs Mother knew about anyhow--wives do! --that mother would never have been so—

  so--upset about it all!"

  "Too bad." He said that, shut his eyes, slept again.

  CHAPTER 9

  Lotus Li wrote, "August," and "Saturday," in her small hand, each letter engraving-clear. Then she stopped to count on her fingers-an uncommon habit for a math whizz, which the Chinese girl was. After that she wrote the date, left a blank line, and continued, rapidly, to fill pages of a thick, ruled notebook. . . .

  "It is hard to believe we have been here two whole weeks I Time seems to drag, often; but there are no days or nights except what clocks show. So, I think, monotony makes the passage of days seem fast, on looking back at them.

  "Everybody tries with all their might to seem not exactly cheerful, but not stricken. I suppose they really feel as I do. All day I keep as busy as possible, and smile, and read, and do things. But in this room, at night, I look in my heart and it is one great swamp of sorrow. Everything--everybody-- gone! Poor Dad! Mother! My brothers and sisters and their children! Eleven people, in just my family, in Hong Kong, on the Mainland and in the Islands. And it is almost certain not one of them is still alive! I can only hope (and pray!) whatever happened to each one happened quickly and they did not-

  -as so many must have--die in agony, over days, in conditions we are only now just starting to get some news of.

  "Doctor Bernman--it is still difficult to call him 'Ben,' though we all are told to use first names and nicknames-has worked almost without rest, since he was able to leave his bed, a week ago. How strange I should find myself living here with the one scientist my favorite Radcliffe and Harvard professors almost worshiped! And am told to call him

  'Ben'! Odd. But thrilling!

  "And what a terrific person he is! Mr. Farr-- 'Vance' --told us, one day when Ben was working with George (as usual), that Doctor Bernman's volunteering to run the gantlet in that oven-hot tunnel was the bravest act he's ever seen or heard of. I'm sure it was. Besides, I often shake to think how scared the men must have been about the crowd Ben might have found, alive, on the other side. They actually had set up machine guns and got out grenades before Ben 'telegraphed' there were only four people. I remember how, years back, arguments flared up over whether or not people in shelters should let outsiders in, even if they overcrowded the shelters. And now the answer is plain: anyone, apparently, would kill, if it required killing to save those he had arranged for and held dear! Though, of course, Mr. Farr had no idea it would be us who landed down here.

  "We're still in a kind of stupor. Each day's news from outside, skimpy as it is, keeps us that way. We know, now, the Soviets had always planned to wipe us out, shelters or not, open cities and all. Of course, some people-scientists and military people and any laymen (like me!) who wished to keep abreast-have known for years, maybe almost twenty in the case of my elders, that an enemy could, even that far back, do what the Reds have done. The information was there. The weapons could be made. The possibility was even discussed in books and in magazines twenty years old. But always the official viewpoint prevailed that no enemy would dream of eradicating all of us and would, at most, try to knock us out enough, militarily, so we'd surrender.

  "All that sort of 'thinking' seems so unrealistic now! After all, earlier in this country, in two so-called 'world' wars, both sides did the very worst they knew how, to each other. And military leaders were trying, even before Hiroshima, to find some kind of gas or germs that would wipe out populations. Father used to say germs and nerve gas would have been used in the Second War, except that fire bombs, high explosives, buzz bombs, and rockets proved more deadly than anything else people had, back then. Till A-bombs and H-bombs and all.

  "That being the case, why, why, why didn't our leaders realize that, in an atomic war, our enemy (anyhow) would again do the worst he could with nuclear devices and weapons, not some modified thing that wouldn't really represent their 'all-out' effort?

  There were also lots of prophetic books and movies about total war in the atomic age, and all of them were practically as mistaken as plain people and politicians and the Pentagon planners. In all of them that I recall, except for one, we Americans took dreadful punishment and then rose from the ground like those Greek-legend soldiers--Jason's men-

  -and defeated the Soviets and set the world free. That one, which came closer to reality so far as the Northern Hemisphere is concerned, showed how everybody on earth died. But from what George and Doctor Bernman are hearing, although things below the equator are in turmoil, it's not owing to radioactivity. Just to uprisings caused by panic at what's happened up here.

  "Soon we should get a better concept of exactly what that is. There has been such a torrent of ionization in the atmosphere that, even now, only freaky scraps of radio broadcasting Can be received--though the men have managed to get two of the (several) big antennas, buried deep in 'wells,' hoisted (by remote control, of course) up into the air, after the war ended. Mr. Farr had six such antennas planted deep to resist blast and to penetrate junk landing on them as they were raised by hydraulic pressure. Only the two worked. But it is at least a comfort to know that below the equator everybody is alive--

  except people killed in mob action and revolutions and panics-and that the scientists down there believe they'll remain safe. That information is not definite but has been inferred from such bits of broadcasting as George and--okay, Ben--have managed to receive.

  "It's hard to tell exactly how our group really feels. Certainly the arrival of Angelica Rosa, and Alberto, and, from my point of view, the two children, especially, has made many great differences. The children are darling--and so sad! Big, light-brown eyes and curly chestnut hair and terribly nice manners. Dorothy Walker is 'going on ten' and Richard is twelve. They keep forgetting constantly that their parents, playmates, and all are . . . gone. They start talking, at meals or anytime, about someone as if that person, child, or grownup were alive; and then they remember and get very quiet and tum their heads down and grow tense and try not to let anybody see their tears. It's heart-breaking!

  "Still, the adults also say thoughtless, even, sometimes, unintentionally hurtful things.

  "The other day, at supper . . . it was Faith's and my tum to do the cooking and sweet Paulus Davey's turn, with me, to do the kitchen policing afterward . . . Kit made a faux pas. We'd put the meal on the Hall table and all of us were eating. The Hall, I ought to note here, contains more furniture now, and there are even big, deep-piled scatter rugs on the flooring--the only flooring in this whole labyrinth that isn't bare, smooth stone. It's covered with some new sort of neutral-colored plastic blocks.

  "But--the faux pas. We were all at table. Vance Farr had said grace: sincere thanks, mostly, for our continuing safety. Afterward, since nobody talked, but just began eating--we have long stretches of such silence--Kit made an attempt to break it up. He said something like, 'You were so right, Vance! I mean in being grateful to God that you and Valerie and Faith--even me!--made it down here. Because it's been a hoary old gag around the clubs and golf courses and in New York City offices that the only people who could build adequate shelters would be the well-heeled. And the well-heeled would have servants. And when the whistle blew--so the gag ran--the well-heeled heads of families would be away at their businesses while the chatelaines would be out shop
ping for mink or playing bridge or engaged in some other activity of upper-class femmes. So, servants alone would reach the only decent shelters.'

  "He said that, and began to grow red when nobody laughed. Kit's a nice person, though. Because he stood up, right off, and said, 'I'm terribly sorry, people! Paulus, I apologize!' He turned toward George and then shook his head. 'Nope,' Kit said and he put on a dandy, meant grin. 'Not you, George! With the chips down, I'm better fitted to be a servant than you, and you're better equipped to be a boss!'

  "Valerie tried to smooth over Kit's crack about servants being saved. 'I think,' she said, 'it's perfectly miraculous, this group! A real League of Nations, yet everyone an American.'

  "Pete Williams, as he often does (to everybody's surprise, at first) actually got us past that embarrassing moment. 'A meter reader,' he said quickly, 'is about three stages below a butler. Besides which, I never went to college.' He sort of bowed at George Hyama, Connie Davey, and me. 'But I always was crazy about collecting minerals. That's how come I'm down here. When I got to the side drive at Sachem's Watch, I stood looking at that quarried stone. That mountain of new-removed rock had always fascinated me. Of course, I'd heard why it was being taken out and left there. Down I went. But when I was sure it was all just cubic miles of blasted limestone, and nothing really interesting, I climbed back and started in on my job, at the Davey house. Out came Connie all dressed up in a summer frock and looking like a Bowl Queen. She gave me that stare and nod people always give meter readers--and the sirens went. She grabbed me and yanked me up the hill, me not knowing what was happening. Startled me. But, folks, I had with me some rocks I'd gathered on my last vacation. If you like, I'll give you a knockout demonstration of how geology is taught in night school in Hartford.'

  "We all laughed. And took him up. And, after supper, Pete got out mineral samples. He gave a very funny burlesque of a teacher trying to instruct a dumb pupil. For the pupil, he used Connie. She acted her part very amusingly, though Connie's anything but dumb! Pete calls her his 'Savior Angel' and other kidding names like 'Nubian Nike'