Overload

1

Heat!

Heat in stifling blanket layers. Heat that enveloped all of California from the and Mexican border in the south to majestic Klamath Forest, elbowing northward into Oregon. Heat, oppressive and enervating. Four days ago a hot, dry thermal trough a thousand miles long, three hundred wide, had settled over the state and sat there like a brooding hen. This morning-a Wednesday in July-a Pacific frontal system was supposed to shove the heat wave eastward, introducing cooler air, with showers on the north coast and in the mountains. It hadn't happened. Now, at 1 p.m., Californians still sweltered in temperatures from ninety degrees to well over a hundred, with no relief in sight.

Throughout cities and suburbs, in factories, offices, stores and homes, six million electric air-conditioners hummed. On thousands of farms in the fertile Central Valley-the richest agricultural complex in the world-armies of electric pumps gulped water from deep wells, directing it to thirsty cattle and parched crops-grain, grapes, citrus fruits, alfalfa, zucchini, a hundred more. Multitudes of refrigerators and food freezers ran unceasingly. And elsewhere the normal electrical demands of a pampered, spoiled, convenience-oriented, gadget-minded, power-guzzling populace continued unabated.

California had known other heat waves and survived their consequences. But in none had demands for electric power been so great. "That's it, then," the chief electric dispatcher said unnecessarily.

* * *

“There goes the last of our spinning reserve."

Everyone within hearing already knew it. And everyone, in this case, included regular staff and company executives, all crowding the Energy Control Center of Golden State Power & Light. Golden State Power-or, more often, GSP & L-was a giant, a General Motors among public utilities. It was the wellspring which produced and distributed two-thirds of California's electric power and natural gas. Its presence was as familiar in the state as sunshine, oranges and wine, and usually taken just as much for granted. GSP & L was also rich, strong and-by self-description-efficient. Its all-pervasiveness sometimes earned it the sobriquet "God's Power & Love."

The Energy Control Center of GSP & L was a security-restricted, underground command post, once described by a visitor as like a hospital operating theater mated with the bridge of an ocean liner. Its centerpiece was a communications console on a dais two steps above floor level. Here the chief dispatcher and six assistants worked. Keyboards of two computer terminals were nearby. The surrounding walls housed banks of switches, diagrams of transmission line circuits and substations, with colored lights and instruments announcing the present status of the utility's two hundred and five electrical generating units in ninety-four plants around the state. The atmosphere was busy as a half dozen assistant dispatchers monitored a constantly changing mass of information, though the sound level remained low, the result of engineered acoustics.

"You're damn positive there's no more power we can buy?"

The question came from a tallish, muscularly built, shirt sleeved figure standing at the dispatch dais. Nim Goldman, vice president, planning, and assistant to the chairman of GSP & L, had his tie loosened in the heat and part of a hairy chest was visible where the top buttons of his shirt were open. The chest hair was like that of his head-black and curly with a few fine wires of gray. The face, strong, big-boned and ruddy, had eyes which looked out with directness and authority and most times-though not at the moment-with a hint of humor. In his late forties, Nim Goldman usually appeared younger, but not today because of strain and fatigue. For the past several days he had stayed at work until midnight and been up at 4 am; the early rising had required early shaving so that he now had the stubble of a beard. Like others in the control center, Nim was sweating, partly from tension, partly from the fact that the air-conditioning had been adjusted several hours ago in deference to an urgent plea-originating here and transmitted through TV and radio to the public-to use less electric power because of a grave supply crisis. But, judging by a climbing graph line of which everyone in the center was aware, the appeal had gone mostly unheeded.

The chief dispatcher, a white-haired veteran, looked offended as he answered Nim's question. For the past two days two dispatch aides had been continually on phones, like desperate housewives, shopping for surplus power in other states and Canada. Nim Goldman knew that. "We're pulling in every bit we can get from Oregon and Nevada, Mr. Goldman. The Pacific Intertie's loaded. Arizona's helping out a little, but they've got problems too. Tomorrow they're asking to buy from us.

"Told 'em there wasn't a snowhall's chance," a woman assistant dispatcher called over.

"Can we make it through this afternoon ourselves?" This time it was J. Eric Humphrey, chairman of the board, who turned from reading a situation report developed by computer. As usual, the chairman's cultured voice was low-key in keeping with his old-Bostonian aplomb, worn today as always like a suit of armor. Few ever penetrated it. He had lived and thrived in California for thirty years but the West's informal ways had not dulled Eric Humphrey's New England patina. He was a small, compact person, tidy in features, contact-lensed, impeccably groomed. Despite the heat, he wore a dark business suit complete with vest, and if he was swhating, the evidence of it was decently out of sight.

"Doesn't look good, sir," the chief dispatcher said. He popped a fresh Gelusil antacid tablet in his mouth; he had lost count of how many be had had today. Dispatchers needed the tablets because of tensions of their job and GSP & L, in an employee-relations gesture, had installed a dispenser where packets of the soothing medicine were available free. Nim Goldman added, for the chairman's benefit, "If we do bang on, it'll be by our fingernails-and a lot of luck."

As the dispatcher had pointed out moments earlier, GSP & L's last spinning reserve had been brought to full load. What he had not explained, because none there needed to be told, was that a public utility like Golden State Power & Light had two kinds of electrical reserve "spinning" and "ready." the spinning reserve comprised generators running, but not at full capacity, though their output could be increased immediately if needed. The ready reserve included any generating plants not operating but prepared to start up and produce full load in ten to fifteen minutes.

An hour ago the last ready reserve-twin gas turbines at a power plant near Fresno, 65,ooo kilowatts each-bad had its status raised to 11 spinning."

Now the gas turbines, which had been coasting along since then, were going to "maximum output," leaving no reserves of either kind remaining.

A morose-appearing, bulky man, slightly stooped, with a Toby jug face and beetling brows, who had listened to the exchange between the chairman and dispatcher, spoke up harshly. "Goddammit to hell! If we'd had a decent weather forecast for today, we wouldn't be in this bind now." Ray Paulsen, executive vice president of power supply, took an impatient pace forward from a table where he and others had been studying power consumption curyes, comparing today's with those of other hot days last year.

"Every other forecaster made the same error as ours," Nim Goldman objected. "I read in last night's paper and heard on the radio this morning we'd have cooler air."

"That's probably exactly where she got it-from some newspaper! Cut it out and pasted it on a card, I'll bet." Paulsen glared at Nim, who shrugged. It was no secret that the two detested each other. Nim, in his dual role as planner and as the chairman's assistant, had a roving commission in GSP&L which cut across department boundaries. In the past be had frequently iwaded Paulsen's territory, and even though Ray Paulsen was two rungs higher in the company hierarchy, there was little lie could do about it.

"If by 'she' you mean me, Ray, you could at least have the good manners to use my name." Heads turned. No one had seen Millicent Knight, the utility's chief meteorologist, petite, brunette and selfpossessed, come into the room. Her entry was not surprising, though. The meteorology department, including Ms. Knight's office, was part of the control center, separated only by a glass wall.

Other men might have been embarrassed. Not so Ray Paulsen. He had climbed up through Golden State Power & Light the hard way, starting thirty-five years before as a field crew helper, then moving up to lineman, foreman and through other management positions. Once he was blown from a power pole during a mountain snowstorm and suffered spinal injuries which left him with a permanent stoop. Night college classes at the utility's expense cowerted young Paulsen to a graduate engineer; across the years since then his knowledge of the GSP & L system had become encyclopaedic. Unfortunately, nowhere along the way had he acquired finesse or polished manners.

"Bullshit, Milly!" Paulsen shot back. "I said what I thought, just like always-and would about a man. You work like a man, expect to be treated like one."

Ms. Knight said indignantly, "Being a man or a woman has nothing to do with it. My department has a high record of forecasting accuracy -eighty percent, as you perfectly well know. You won't find better anywhere."

"But you and your people really screwed up today!"

"For Chrissakes, Ray," Nim Goldman protested. "This isn't getting us anywhere."

J. Eric Humphrey listened to the argument with apparent indifference. The chairman never said so specifically, but sometimes left the impression he had no objection to his senior staff's feuding, providing their work was not impaired. There were some in business presumably Humphrey was one-who believed an all-harmonious organization was also a complacent one. But when the chairman needed to, he could cut through disputes with the sharp knife of authority.

At this moment, strictly speaking, the executives now in the control center-Humphrey, Nim Goldman, Paulsen, several others-had no business being there. The center was competently staffed. Actions to be taken in emergency were well known, having been worked out long ago; most were computer-activated, supplemented by instruction manuals conveniently at hand. In a crisis, however, such as the one GSP & L was facing now, this place with its up-to-the-second information became a magnet for those with authority to get in.

The big question, still unresolved, was: Would demands for electric power become so great as to exceed the supply available? If the answer proved to be yes, entire banks of substation switches would necessarily be opened, leaving segments of California without power, isolating entire communities, creating chaos.

An emergency "brownout" was already in effect. Since 10 am the voltage supplied to GSP & L consumers had been reduced in stages until it was now eight percent below normal. The reduction allowed some power saving but meant that small appliances like hair dryers, electric typewriters, refrigerators were receiving ten volts less than usual while equipment wired for heavy duty was being deprived of nineteen to twenty volts. The lower voltages made everything less efficient, and electric motors ran hotter and more noisily than usual. Some computers were in trouble; those not equipped with voltage regulators had already switched off automatically and would stay that way until normal voltage was restored.

One side effect was to shrink television pictures in home receivers, so that they failed to fill the screen. But over a short period there should be no lasting damage. Lighting, too-from ordinary incandescent bulbs-was slightly dimmed. An eight percent brownout, however, was the limit. Beyond that, electric motors would overheat, perhaps burn out, creating a fire hazard. Thus, if a brownout was not sufficient, the last resort was load shedding committing large areas to total blackout.

The next two hours would tell. If GSP & L could somehow bold on until mid afternoon, the time of peak demand on hot days, the load would ease until tomorrow. Then, assuming tomorrow was a cooler day -no problem. But if the present load, which had been climbing steadily all day, continued to increase . . . The worst could happen.

Ray Paulsen did not give up easily. "Well, Milly," be persisted, "today's weather forecast was ridiculously wrong. True?"

"Yes, it's true. If you want to put it in that unfair, ugly way."

Millicent Knight's dark eyes flashed with anger. "But it's also true there's an air mass a thousand miles offshore called the Pacific High.

Meteorology doesn't know very much about it, but sometimes it throws all California forecasts out of whack by a day or so." She added scornfully,

"Or are you so wrapped tip in electrical circuitry you don't know that elementary fact of nature?"

Paulsen flushed. "Now wait a minute!"

Milly Knight ignored him. "Another thing. My people and I gave an honest forecast. But a forecast, in case you've forgotten, is just that-it leaves some room for doubt. I didn't tell you to shut down Magalia 2 for maintenance. That's a decision you made-and you're blaming me for it."

The group by the table chuckled. Someone murmured, "Touche."

As they well knew, part of today's problem was the Magalia plant. Magalia z, part of a GSP & L facility north of Sacramento, was a big, steam-driven generator capable of putting out 600,000 kilowatts. But ever since it was built some ten years earlier, Magalia 2 had been a source of trouble. Repeated boiler tube ruptures and other, more serious malfunctions kept it frequently out of service, most recently as long as nine months while the super-heater was re-tubed. Even after that, problems had continued.

As one engineer described it, operating Magalia 2 was like keeping a leaking battleship afloat.

For the past week the plant manager at Magalia had pleaded with Ray Paulsen to allow him to shut down number 2 to repair boiler tube leaks-as he put it, "before this jinxed tea-kettle blows apart." Until yesterday, Paulsen had adamantly said no. Even before the present beat wave began, and because of unscheduled repair shutdowns elsewhere, Magalia 2's power had been needed for the system. As always, it was a matter of balancing priorities, sometimes taking a chance. Last night, after reading the forecast of lower temperatures for today, and weighing everything, Paulsen gave approval and the unit was shut down immediately, with work beginning several hours later when the boiler had cooled. By this morning, Magalia 2 was silent and leaky pipe sections had been cut from several boiler tubes. Though desperately needed, Magalia 2 could not be back on line for two more days.

"If the forecast had been accurate," Paulsen growled, "Magalia wouldn't have been released."

The chairman shook his head. He had heard enough. There would be time for inquests later. This was not the moment.

Nim Goldman had been conferring at the dispatch console. Now, his forceful voice cutting clearly across others', he announced, "Load shedding will have to begin in half an hour. There's no longer any doubt. We'll have to."

He glanced toward the chairman. "I think we should alert the media. TV and radio can still get warnings out."

"Do it," Humphrey said. "And someone get me the Governor on the phone."

"Yes, sir." An assistant dispatcher began dialling.

Faces in the room were grim. In the utility's century-and-a-quarter history what was about to happen-intentional disruption of service had never occurred before.

Nim Goldman was already telephoning Public Relations, over in another building. There would be no delay about warnings going out. The utility's PR department was geared to handle them; although, normally, the sequence of power cuts was known only to a few people within the company, now they would be made public. As another point of policy, a few months ago it had been decided that the cuts-if and when they happened-would be known as

"rolling blackouts," a PR ploy to emphasize their temporary nature and the fact that all areas would be treated fairly. The phrase "rolling blackouts" was a young secretary's brainchild, after her older, more highly paid superiors failed to come up with anything acceptable. One of the rejects: "sequential curtailments."

"I have the Governor's office in Sacramento, Sir," the dispatch assistant informed Eric Humphrey. “They say the Governor is at his ranch near Stockton and they're trying to reach him. They'd like you on the line."

The chairman nodded and accepted the telephone. His hand cupping the mouthpiece, he asked, "Does anyone know where the chief is?" It was unnecessary to explain that "chief" meant the chief engineer, Walter Talbot, a quiet, unflappable Scot now nearing retirement, whose wisdom in tight situations was legendary.

"Yes," Nim Goldman said. "He drove out to take a look at Big Lil."

The chairman frowned. "I hope nothing's wrong out there."

Instinctively, eyes swung to an instrument panel with the legend above it: LA MISSION NO- 5. This was Big Lil, the newest and largest generator at La Mission plant fifty miles outside the city.

Big Lil-Lilien Industries of Pennsylvania built the huge machine and a news writer coined the descriptive name which stuck-was a monster delivering a million and a quarter kilowatts of electric power. It was fuelled by oil in enormous quantities which created superheated steam to drive the giant turbine. In the past Big Lil had had its critics. During the planning stages experts argued it was sheerest folly to build a generator so large because too much reliance would be placed on a single source of power; they used a non-scientific simile involving eggs and a basket. Other experts disagreed. These pointed to "economies of scale," by which they meant: mass-produced electricity is cheaper. The second group prevailed and, so far, had been proven right. In the two years since it began operating, Big Lil had been economical compared with smaller generators, magnificently reliable, and trouble-free. Today, in the Energy Control Center, a strip chart recorder showed the heartening news that Big Lil was giving its utmost, running at maximum, shouldering a massive six percent of the utility's total load,

“There was some turbine vibration reported early this morning," Ray Paulsen told the chairman. “The chief and I discussed it. While it probably isn't critical, we both thought he should take a look."

Humphrey nodded approval. There was nothing the chief could do here, anyway. It was simply more comfortable to have him around.

"Here is the Governor," an operator announced on Humphrey's telephone.

And a moment later a familiar voice: "Good afternoon, Eric."

"Good afternoon, Sir," the chairman said. "I'm afraid I'm calling with unhappy . . ."

It was then that it happened.

Amid the bank of instruments under the sign LA MISSION NO- 5 a buzzer, urgently insistent, sounded a series of short, sharp notes. Simultaneously, amber and red warning lights began blinking. The inked needle Of NO- 5's chart recorder faltered, then descended steeply.

"My God!" someone's shocked voice said. "Big Lil's tripped off the line."

There remained no doubt of it as the recorder and other readings slid to zero.

Reactions were immediate. In the Energy Control Center a high speed logging typewriter came to life, chattering, spewing out status reports as hundreds of high voltage circuit breakers at switching centers and substations sprang open at computer command. The opening of the circuit breakers would save the system and protect other generators from harm.

But the action had already plunged huge segments of the state into total electric blackout. Within two or three successive seconds, millions of people in widely separated areas-factory and office workers, farmers, housewives, shoppers, salesclerks, restaurant operators, printers, service station attendants, stock-brokers, hoteliers, hairdressers, movie projectionists and patrons, streetcar motormen, TV station staffs and viewers, bartenders, mail sorters, wine makers, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, pinball players . . . a list ad infinitum-were deprived of power and light, unable to continue whatever, a moment earlier, they had been doing.

In buildings, elevators halted between floors. Airports, which had been bursting with activity, virtually ceased to function. On streets and highways traffic lights went out, beginning monumental traffic chaos.

More than an eighth of California-a land area substantially larger than all of Switzerland and with a population of about three millioncame abruptly to a standstill. What, only a short time ago, had been merely a possibility was now disastrous reality-and worse, by far, than feared.

At the control center's communications console-protected by special circuits from the widespread loss of power-all three dispatchers were working swiftly, spreading out emergency instructions, telephoning orders to generating plants and division power controllers, examining pedal-actuated roller system maps, scanning cathode ray tube displays for information. They would be busy for a long time to come, but actions triggered by computers were far ahead of them now.

"Hey," the Governor said on Eric Humphrey's telephone, "all the lights just went out."

"I know," the chairman acknowledged. "That's what I called you about."

On another phone-a direct line to La Mission's control room-Ray Paulsen was shouting, "What in hell has happened to Big Lil?"

2

The explosion at the La Mission plant of Golden State Power & Light occurred entirely without warning.

A half hour earlier the chief engineer, Walter Talbot, had arrived to inspect La Mission No. 5-Big Lil-following reports of slight turbine vibration during the night. The chief was a lean, spindly man, outwardly dour, but with a puckish sense of humor and who still talked in a broad Glaswegian accent, though for forty years he had been no nearer Scotland than an occasional Burns Night dinner in San Francisco. He liked to take his time about whatever be was doing and today inspected Big Lil slowly and carefully while the plant superintendent, a mild, scholarly engineer named Danieli, accompanied him. All the while the giant generator poured out its power-sufficient to light more than twenty million average light bulbs.

A faint vibration deep within the turbine, and differing from its normal steady whine, was audible occasionally to the trained cars of the chief and superintendent. But eventually, after tests which included applying a nylon-tipped probe to a main bearing, the chief pronounced, "It's naething tae worry over. The fat lassie will gi' nae trouble, and what's necessary we'll see to when the panic's bye."

As he spoke, the two were standing close to Big Lil on metal gratings which formed the floor of the cathedral-like turbine ball. The monstrous turbine-generator, a city block in length, sat perched on concrete pedestals, each of the unit's seven casings resembling a beached whale.

Immediately beneath was a massive steam chest with high pressure steam lines going in from the boiler and out to the turbine, as well as other service facilities. Both men were wearing hard hats and protective ear pads. Neither precaution, however, was of help in the explosion which occurred with a deafening roar an instant later. The chief and Plant Superintendent Danieli took the secondary force of a dynamite blast, originating beneath the main hall floor, which initially breached a three-foot diameter steam line, one of several running from the boiler to the steam chest. A smaller lubricating oil line was also pierced. The explosion, combined with escaping steam, produced an overwhelming noise, deep and thunderous. Then the steam, at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit and under pressure Of 2,400 pounds per square inch, rushed through the gratings on which the two men were standing.

Both died instantly. They were cooked, literally, like vegetables in a steamer. A few seconds later the entire scene was obscured by dense black smoke from the ruptured oil line, now burning-ignited by a spark from flying metal.

Two plant workers, painting on a scaffold high above the turbine room floor and in danger of being overcome by the rising black smoke, tried to clamber blindly to a walkway some fifteen feet higher. They failed, and fell to their deaths below.

Only in the plant control room-two hundred feet away and protected by double doors-was total disaster averted. The fast reactions of a technician at No. 5's control panel, aided by automatic devices, ensured that Big Lil was shut down without damage to the turbine generator's vital components.

At the La Mission plant it would take several days of inquiry-a painstaking sifting of debris by experts and questioning by sheriff's deputies and FBI agents-to discover the explosion's cause and circumstances. But a suspicion of sabotage would emerge quickly and later be proven true.

In the end, the accumulated evidence provided a fairly clear picture of the explosion and events preceding it.

At 2:40 that morning, a white male of medium build, clean-shaven, sallow-complexioned, wearing steel-rimmed glasses and in the uniform of a Salvation Army officer, approached the main gate of La Mission on foot.

He was carrying an attache-type briefcase.

Questioned by the gate security guard, the visitor produced a letter, apparently on Golden State Power & Light stationery, authorizing him to visit GSP & L installations for the purpose of soliciting funds from utility employees for a Salvation Army charity-a free lunch program for needy children.

The guard informed the Salvation Army man that he must go to the plant superintendent's office and present his letter there. The guard gave directions on how to reach the office which was on the second floor of the main powerhouse and accessible through a doorway out of sight from the guard post. The visitor then left in the direction indicated. The guard saw no more of him until the visitor returned and walked out of the plant about twenty minutes later. The guard noticed he was still carrying the briefcase.

The explosion occurred an hour later.

If security had been tighter, as was pointed out at a subsequent coroner's inquest, such a visitor would not have been allowed into the plant unescorted. But GSP & L, like public utilities everywhere, faced special problems-a dilemma-in matters of security. With ninety-four generating plants, scores of service yards and warehouses, hundreds of unattended substations, a series of widely scattered district offices and a central headquarters comprising two connected high-rise buildings, provision of strict security, even if possible, would cost a fortune. This, at a time of soaring fuel, wage and other operating costs, while consumers complained that bills for electricity and gas were already too high and any proposed rate increase should be resisted. For all these reasons security employees were relatively few, so that much of the utility's security program was cosmetic, based on calculated risk.

At La Mission, the risk-at a cost of four human lives-proved to be too high.

Ile police inquiries established several things. The supposed Salvation Army officer was an impostor, almost certainly wearing a stolen uniform.

The letter be presented, while it may have been on official GSP & L stationery-not difficult to come by-was a fake. The utility would not, in any case, allow its employees to be solicited at work, nor could anyone be located in the GSP & L organization who had written such a letter. The La Mission security guard did not remember a name at the bottom of the page, though he recalled the signature was "a squiggle."

It was also established that the visitor, once inside the powerhouse, did not go to the superintendent's office. No one there saw him. If anyone bad, the fact was unlikely to have been forgotten.

Conjecture came next.

Most probably the bogus Salvation Anny officer descended a short metal stairway to the service floor immediately beneath the main turbine ball.

This floor, like the one above it, had no intervening walls so that even through a network of insulated steam pipes and other service lines, the lower portions of the several La Mission generators could be clearly seen through the metal grating floor of the turbine hall above. Number 5-Big Lil-would have been unmistakable because of its size and that of the equipment near it.

Perhaps the intruder had advance information about the layout of the plant, though this would not have been essential. The main generating building was an uncomplicated structure-little more than a giant box. He might also have known that La Mission, like all modern generating stations, was highly automated, with only a small work force; therefore his chances of moving around without being observed were good.

Almost certainly, then, the intruder moved directly under Big Lil where he opened his briefcase containing a dynamite bomb. He would have looked around for an out-of-view location for the bomb, then would have seen what seemed a convenient metal flange near the junction of two steam lines. After actuating a timing mechanism, undoubtedly he reached up and placed the bomb there. It was in this choice of location that his lack of technical knowledge betrayed him. Had he been better informed, he would have located the bomb nearer the monster generator's main shaft, where it would have done most damage, perhaps putting Big Lil out of action for as long as a year.

Explosives experts confirmed that this indeed had been a possibility. What the saboteur used, they decided, was a "shaped charge"-a cone of dynamite which, when detonated, had a forward velocity similar to that of a bullet, causing the explosion to penetrate whatever was directly ahead. As it happened, this was a steam line leading from the boiler.

Immediately after positioning the bomb-the hypothesis continued the saboteur walked unaccosted from the main generating building to the plant gate, leaving as casually and with even less attention than when he arrived. From that point his movements were unknown. Nor, despite intensive investigation, did any substantial clue about identity emerge. True, a telephoned message to a radio station, allegedly from an underground revolutionary group-Friends of Freedom-claimed responsibility. But police had no information as to the whereabouts of the group or knowledge of its membership.

But all this came later. At La Mission, for some ninety minutes after the explosion, chaos reigned.

Fire fighters, responding to an automatic alarm, had difficulty extinguishing the oil fire and ventilating the main turbine ball and lower floors to remove the dense black smoke. When, at length, conditions were clear enough, the four bodies were removed. Those of the chief engineer and superintendent, scarcely recognizable, were described by a horrified plant employee as "like boiled lobsters"-the result of exposure to superheated steam.

A quick assessment of damage to No. 5 revealed that it was slight. A seized bearing where the lubricating oil supply was cut off by the explosion would require replacement. That was all. Repair work, including replacement of broken steam lines, would take a week, after which the giant generator could be back in service. Ironically, in that time, the slight vibration which the chief engineer had come to inspect could be corrected, too.

3

"An electrical distribution system that's gone into a widespread, non-scheduled blackout," Nim Goldman explained patiently, "is like the kids' game of 'Fifty-two Pickup! One minute you're looking at a full deck, then the next-without warning-a floor littered with cards. They have to be picked up one by one and the whole thing takes a while."

He was in an observation gallery, slightly above and separated by a glass wall from the Energy Control Center, to which reporters from newspapers, TV and radio had been admitted a few minutes ago, the reporters had been dispatched hastily to GSP&L from their various news centers, and the utility's PR vice president, Teresa Van Buren, had appealed to Nim to be the company's spokesman. An impromptu press conference was the result.

Already some of the press people were antagonistic because of what they saw as a paucity of answers to their questions.

"Ob, for God's sake!" a reporter from the California Examiner, Nancy Molineaux, protested. "Spare us that homespun analogy crap and tell us what we came to find out. What went wrong? Who's responsible? What, if anything, will be done about it? When will the power be back on?"

Ms. Molineaux was intense, attractive in a severe way-high cheekbones made her face seem haughty, which she sometimes was-and her usual expression was a mixture of curiosity and scepticism bordering on disdain. She was also chic, wore good clothes well on a willowy body, and was black. Professionally, she had achieved a reputation for investigating, then exposing, venality in public places. Nim regarded her as he would a needle-sharp icicle. Her reporting in the past had made clear that GSP & L was not an institution Ms. Molineaux admired.

Several other reporters nodded agreement.

"What went wrong was an explosion at La Mission." Nim controlled an impulse to snap back angrily. "We believe that at least two of our people have been killed but there's an oil fire and dense smoke, and so far there are no more details."

Someone asked, "Do you have names of the two dead?"

"Yes, but they can't be released yet. The families must be informed first."

"Do you know the cause of the explosion?"

‘No.’, Ms. Molineaux injected, "What about the power?"

"Some power," Nim said, "is already back now. Most of the rest should be restored within four hours, six at the outside. Everything else should be normal by tonight."

Normal, Nim thought, except for Walter Talbot. Word of the chief's involvement in the explosion and his assumed death had reached the Energy Control Center with shattering suddenness only minutes earlier. Nim, a long-time friend of the chief’s, hadn't had time yet to grasp the reality of the news, or to grieve, as he knew he would later. Nim had known Danieli, the La Mission plant superintendent, only slightly, so that his loss, while tragic, seemed more remote. Through the soundproof glass partition separating the observation gallery from the Control Center working area, Nim could see urgent activity continuing at and around the dispatch console. He wanted to get back there as quickly as he could.

"Will there be another blackout tomorrow?" a wire service correspondent wanted to know.

"Not if the beat wave ends, as we understand it will."

As questioning continued, Nim. launched into a description of peak load problems in unexpectedly hot weather.

"So what you're really saying," Nancy Molineaux suggested tartly, "is that you people hadn't planned, hadn't foreseen, hadn't allowed for anything which might jolt you out of the ordinary."

Nim flushed. "Planning can only go so .

The sentence was never finished.

Teresa Van Buren, the public relations director, came into the gallery, from which she had been absent for several minutes. She was a short, plump, bustling woman in her mid-forties who invariably more rumpled linen suits and sensible brown brogues. Often she was untidy and uncombed, and looked more like a harried housewife than the experienced corporation executive she was.

"I have an announcement," Mrs. Van Buren said. Her voice was emotional and a paper in her hand was shaking. The room fell silent.

"We have just learned there have been four deaths, not two. All of the dead are company employees who were working at their jobs at the time of the explosion. Their next of kin are being informed now and we'll have a list of names for you, with brief biographies, in a few minutes. I'm also authorized to say that, while there is no proof at this moment, sabotage is suspected."

Amid the fusillade of questions which followed, Nim eased his way out.

* * *

Step by step, directed by Energy Control, the disrupted distribution system was returning to a state of order.

At the communications console the chief dispatcher, juggling two telephones and manipulating a battery of buttons, was issuing fast low-key instructions to switchmen, in an attempt to restore interconnections with other utilities; these had separated automatically when Big Lil tripped.

When the Pacific Intertie was re-established, the dispatcher leaned back in his gray metal swivel chair and released an audible sigh, then began pushing buttons to start restoring load. He glanced sideways briefly as Nim returned. "We're halfway home, Mr. Goldman."

It meant Nim realized, that nearly half the total area affected by sudden blackout had full electric power restored and the process was continuing.

A computer could, and did, shut down the system faster by far than any human agency. But it took direct switching by technicians, supervised from Energy Control, to put the system back together.

Cities and towns had priority and, district by district, were coming electrically alive once more. Suburbs, particularly those with concentrations of industrial plants, were next. Country villages would follow.

Outlying rural areas, at the bottom of the power totem pole, would be last of all.

A few exceptions were made. Hospitals, water and sewage treatment plants and phone company installations rated special preference because of their essential nature. It was true that such institutions usually had standby generators of their own, but these carried only a partial load and outside power was essential for normal functioning. There were also, here and there, pockets of special consideration for individuals.

The chief dispatcher had transferred his attention to an unusual wiring circuitry map which he was discussing on one of his telephones. The map had a series of colored circles dotted over it.

Waiting for a pause in the phoning, Nim asked, "What's that?"

The dispatcher looked surprised. "You don't know that one?"

Nim shook his head. Even a vice president of planning could not as-similate, or even see, the thousands of minutely detailed charts in an operation as large as GSP & L's.

"Life, sustaining equipment in private homes." the dispatcher beckoned one of his assistants and moved out of his seat as the other replaced him.

"I need a break." He ran a hand through his white hair in a gesture of tiredness, then absently popped another Gelusil tablet into his mouth.

Freed from pressures for the moment, the dispatcher positioned the circuitry map between himself and Nim. "Those red circles are iron lungs-respiratory equipment, they mostly call it nowadays. Green is kidney dialysis machines. This orange circle is an oxygen generating unit for an infant. We've got maps like this for every division and we keep them up to date. Hospitals, who know where the home equipment is located, help us."

"You've just filled a gap in my education," Nim acknowledged. He continued to study the map, which fascinated him.

"Most people relying on life-sustaining equipment have the kind that switches over to batteries in emergency," the dispatcher continued. "Just the same, when outside power fails it's traumatic for them. So what we do, if there's a local outage, is check quickly. Then, if there's any doubt or problem, we rush in a portable generator."

"But we don't have that many portables-surely not enough for a widespread outage like today's."

"No, and there aren't many crews available either. But today we were lucky. Divisions have been checking. No users of life-sustaining equipment at home were in trouble." the dispatcher indicated the map. "Now, in all these spots we have power back on."

The knowledge that a human element so small in numbers was being watched and cared about amid vaster concerns was moving and reassuring. Nim studied the map, his eyes roving. He found a street intersection he knew well. Lakewood and Balboa. One of the red circles marked the site of an apartment house he had driven by many times. A name beside it read "Sloan"-presumably the iron lung user. Who was Sloan? Nim wondered. What was he like?

His musing was interrupted. "Mr. Goldman, the chairman wants to speak to you. He's calling from La Mission." Nim accepted a telephone which a control room assistant offered.

"Nim," Eric Humphrey said, "you knew Walter Talbot pretty well personally, didn't you?" Despite the crisis, the chairman's voice was urbane as usual. Immediately after first reports of the explosion, be had summoned his limousine and left, along with Ray Paulsen, for La Mission.

"Yes," Nim said, "Walter and I were good friends." He was conscious of a catch in his voice, with tears not far away. Almost since Nim's recruitment to Golden State Power & Light eleven years ago, he and the chief engineer had shared a mutual liking and habitually confided in each other. It seemed inconceivable there would be no more confidences ever again.

"And Walter's wife? How well do you know her?"

"Ardythe. Very well." Nim sensed the chairman hesitate, and asked, "How is it out there?"

"Grim. I never saw bodies of men burned by superheated steam before. I hope I never do again. There's virtually no skin left, just a mass of blisters with everything underneath exposed. Faces are unrecognizable."

For a moment Eric Humphrey's composure seemed to waver, then he recovered it. "That's why I'd like you to go to Mrs. Talbot as soon as possible.

I understand she's taken the news badly, which is not surprising. As a friend you may be able to help. I'd also like you to dissuade her, if you can, from viewing her husband's body."

"Oh Christ, Eric," Nim said. "Why me?"

"For the obvious reason. Someone has to do this, and you knew them both, apparently better than any of us. I'm also asking a friend of Danieli's to go to his wife for the same purpose."

Nin wanted to retort: Why don't you go to the wives of all four men killed? You're our commander-in-chief, paid a princely salary which ought to compensate for an unhappy, messy duty once in a while. Besides, doesn't dying in the service of the company merit a personal call from the man at the top? But lie didn't say it, knowing that J. Eric Humphrey, while a hard working administrator, purposely kept a low profile whenever he could, and this was clearly one more occasion, with Nim and some other unfortunates acting as his surrogates.

"All right," Nim conceded, "I'll do it."

"Thank you. And please convey to Mrs. Talbot my deep personal sympathy.'

Nim brooded unhappily as be returned the telephone. What he had been instructed to do was not the kind of thing be was good at handling. He had known he would see Ardythe Talbot eventually and would have to grope emotionally for words as best lie could. What he hadn't expected was to have to go to her so soon.

On the way out of Energy Control, Nim encountered Teresa Van Buren. She looked wrung out. Presumably her latest session with the reporters had contributed to that, and Teresa, too, had been a friend of Walter Talbot's. "Not a good day for any of us," she said.

"No," Nim agreed. He told her where he was going and about the instructions from Eric Humphrey.

The PR vice president grimaced, "I don't envy you. That's tough duty.

By the way, I hear you had a run-in with Nancy Molineaux."

He said feelingly, "That bitch!"

"Sure, she's a bitch, Nim. She's also one spunky newspaperwoman, a whole lot better than most of the incompetent clowns we see on this beat."

"I'm surprised you'd say that. She'd made up her mind to be critical hostile-before she even knew what the story was about."

Van Buren shrugged. "This pachyderm we work for can survive a few slings and arrows. Besides, hostility may be Nancy's way of making Nim, and others, say more than you intend. You've got a few things to learn about women, Nim-other than calisthenics in bed, and from rumors I hear, you're getting plenty of that."

"You're a hunter of women, aren't you?" then her motherly eyes softened. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that right now. Go, do the best you can for Walter's wife."

4

His substantial frame jammed into his Fiat Xig two-seater, Nim Coldman wove through downtown streets, heading northeast toward San Roque, the suburb where Walter and Ardythe Talbot lived. He knew the way well, having driven it many times.

By now it was early evening, an hour or so after the homebound rush hour, though traffic was still heavy. The heat of the day had diminished a little, but not much.

Nim shifted his body in the little car, straining to make himself comfortable, and was reminded he had put on weight lately and ought to take some off before he and the Fiat reached a point of impasse. He had no intention of changing the car. It represented his conviction that those who drove larger cars were blindly squandering precious oil while living in a fool's paradise which would shortly end, with accompanying disasters. One of the disasters would be a crippling shortage of electric power.

As Nim saw it, today's brief power curtailment was merely a preview -an unpalatable hors d'oeuvre-of far graver, dislocating shortages, perhaps only a year or two distant. The trouble was, almost no one seemed to care. Even within GSP&L, where plenty of others were privy to the same facts and overview as Nim, there existed a complacency, translatable as: Don't worry. Everything will come out all right. We shall manage.

Meanwhile, don't let's rock the boat by creating public alarm.

Within recent months only three people in the Golden State Power & Light hierarchy-Walter Talbot, Teresa Van Buren and Nim-bad pleaded for a change of stance. What they sought was less timidity, more directness.

They favored blunt, immediate warnings to the public, press and politicians that a calamitous electrical famine was ahead, that nothing could avert it totally, and only a crash program to build new generating plants, combined with massive, painful conservation measures, could lessen its effect. But conventional caution, the fear of offending those in authority in the state, had so far prevailed. No change had been sanctioned. Now, Walter, one of the crusading trio, as dead. A resurgence of his grief swept over Nim. Earlier, he had held back tears. Now, in the privacy of the moving car, be let them come; twin rivulets coursed down his face. With anguish he wished be could do something for Walter, even an intangible act like praying. He tried to recall the Mourner's Kaddish, the Jewish prayer he had heard occasionally at services for the dead, said traditionally by the closest male relative and in the presence of ten Jewish men. Nim's lips moved silently, stumbling over the ancient Aramaic words. Yisgadal veyiskadash sh'may rabbo be'olmo deevro chiroosey ve'yamlich malchoosey . . . He stopped, the remainder of the prayer eluding him, even while realizing that to pray at all was, for him, illogical.

There had been moments in his life-this was one-when Nim sensed instincts deep with him yearning for religious faith, for identification, personally, with his heritage. But religion, or at least the practice of it, was a closed door, It was slammed shut before Nim's birth by his father, Isaac Goldman, who came to America from Eastern Europe as a young, penniless immigrant and ardent socialist. The son of a rabbi, Isaac found socialism and Judaism incompatible. He thereupon rejected the religion of his forebears, leaving his own parents hearthroken. Even now, old Isaac, at eighty-two, still mocked the basic tenets of Jewish faith, describing them as "banal chitchat between God and Abraham, and the fatuous fairy tale of a chosen people."

Nim had grown up accepting his father's choice. The festival of Passover and the High Holy Days-Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur-passed unobserved by, the Goldman family and now, as an outcropping of Isaac's personal rebellion, a third generation-Nim's own children Leah and Benjy-were removed from Jewish heritage and identity. No bar mitzvah for Benjy had been planned, an omission which occasionally troubled Nim and prompted the question: Despite decisions be had made about himself, did he have the right to separate his children from five thousand years of Jewish history? It was not too late, be knew, but so far Nim had not resolved the issue.

As he thought of his family, Nim realized he had neglected to call Ruth to tell her be would not be home until late. He reached for the mobile phone to his right below the instrument panel-a convenience which GSP & L supplied and paid for. An operator answered and lie gave her his home number. Moments later he beard a ringing tone, then a small voice.

"Goldman residence, Bcnjy Goldman speaking." Nim smiled. That was Benjy all right-even at ten, precise and systematized, in contrast to his sister Leah, four years older, perennially disorganized and who answered phones with a casual, "Hi!"

"It's Dad," Nim said. "I'm on mobile." He had taught the family to wait when they heard that because on a radio-telephone conversations couldn't overlap. He added, "Is everything all right at home?"

"Yes, Dad, it is now. But the electricity went off." Benjy gave a little chuckle. "I guess you knew. And, Dad, I reset all the clocks."

"That's good, and yes, I knew. Let me talk to your mother."

"Leah wants . . ."

Nim heard a scuffling, then the voice of his daughter. "Hi! We watched the TV news. You weren't on." Leah sounded accusing. The children had become used to seeing Nim on television as spokesman for GSP & L. Perhaps Nim's absence from the screen today would lower Leah's status among her friends.

"Sorry about that, Leah. There were too many other things happening. May I talk to your mother?"

Another pause. Then, "Nim?" Ruth's soft voice.

He pressed the push-to-talk bar. "That's who it is. And getting to talk to you is like elbowing through a crowd."

While talking, be changed freeway lanes, manoeuvring the Fiat with one hand. A sign announced the San Roque turnoff was a mile and a half ahead.

"Because the children want to talk, too? Maybe it's because they don't see much of you at home." Ruth never raised her voice, always sounding gentle, even when administering a rebuke. It was a justified rebuke, he admitted silently, wishing he hadn't raised the subject.

"Nim, we heard about Walter and the others. It was on the news; it's terrible. I'm truly sorry."

He knew that she meant it, and that Ruth was aware how close he and the chief had been. That kind of understanding was typical of Ruth, even though in other ways she and Nim seemed to have less and less rapport nowadays compared with how it used to be. Not that there was any open hostility. There wasn't.

Ruth, with her quiet imperturbability, would never let it come to that, Nim reasoned. He could visualize her now-composed and competent, her soft gray eyes sympathetic. She had a Madonna quality, he had often thought; even without the good looks she possessed in abundance, character alone would have made her beautiful. He knew, too, she would be sharing this moment with Leah and Benjy, explaining, treating them as equals in that easy way she always had. Nim never ceased to respect Ruth, especially as a mother.

It was simply that their marriage had become uninteresting, even dull; in his own mind he characterized it as "a bumpless road to nowhere." there was something else-perhaps an outgrowth of their mutual malaise. Recently Ruth seemed to have developed interests of her own, interests she wouldn't talk about. Several times Nim called home when normally she would have been there; instead, she appeared to have been out all day and later dodged explaining, which was unlike her. Had Ruth taken a lover? It was possible, he supposed. In any case, Nim wondered how long and how far they would drift before something definite, a confrontation, had to happen.

"We're all shaken up," he acknowledged. "Eric has asked me to go to Ardythe and I'm on my way there now. I expect I'll be late. Probably very late.

Don't wait up."

That was nothing new, of course. More evenings than not, Nim worked late.

The result: Dinner at home was either delayed or lie missed it entirely.

It also meant he saw little of Leah and Benjy, who were often in bed, sometimes asleep, when Nim arrived. Sometimes Nim had guilt feelings about the meager amount of time he spent with the children and he knew it troubled Ruth, though it was a rare occasion when she said so.

Sometimes he wished she complained more.

But tonight's absence was different. It needed no further explanations or excuses, even to himself.

"Poor Ardythe," Ruth said. "Just as Walter was getting near retirement.

And that announcement just now makes it even worse."

"What announcement?"

"Oh, I thought you'd know. It was on the news. The people who planted the bomb sent-a communiqué I think they called it-to a radio station. They were boasting about what they'd done. Can you imagine? What kind of people must they be?"

"Which radio station?" As he spoke, Nim put down the phone with a swift movement, snapped the car radio to "on," then scooped up the phone again in time to hear Ruth say, "I don't know."

"Listen," be told her, "it's important I bear. So I'm going to bang up now and, if I can, I'll call you from Ardythe's."

Nim replaced the phone. The radio was already tuned to an all-news station and a glance at his watch showed a minute to the half hour when he knew there would be a news summary.

The San Roque off-ramp was in sight and he swung the Fiat onto it. The Talbots' home was just a mile or so away.

On the radio, a trumpet blast punctuated by Morse code announced a news bulletin. The item Nim had been waiting for was at the top.

"A group calling itself Friends of Freedom has claimed responsibility for an explosion today at a Golden State Power & Light generating plant. The blast claimed four lives and caused a widespread failure of electric power.

“The disclosure was in a tape recording delivered to a local radio station late this afternoon. Police have said that information on the tape points to its authenticity. They are examining the recording for possible clues."

Obviously, Nim thought, the station he was listening to was not the one which received the tape. Broadcasters didn't like to acknowledge a competitor's existence and, even though news like this was too important to be ignored, the other radio station wasn't being named.

"According to reports, a man's voice on the tape recording-so far unidentified-stated, quote, 'Friends of Freedom are dedicated to a People's revolution and protest the monopoly of power -which belongs rightfully to the people! End quote.

"Commenting on the deaths which occurred, the recording says, quote, 'Killing was not intended, but in the people's revolution now beginning, capitalists and their lackeys will be casualties, suffering for their crimes against humanity.' End quote.

"An official of Golden State Power & Light has confirmed that sabotage was the cause of today's explosion, but would make no other comment.

"Retail meat prices are likely to be higher soon. In Washington today the Secretary of Agriculture told a consumers . . ."

Nim reached out, snapping off the radio. The news depressed him with its sickening futility. He wondered about its effect on Ardythe Talbot, whom he was soon to see.

In the growing dusk he saw that several cars were parked outside the Talbots' modest, neat two-story house with its profusion of flower beds -a lifelong bobby of Walter's. Lights were on in the lower rooms.

Nim found a spot for the Fiat, locked it, and walked up the driveway.

5

The front door of the house was open and a hum of voices was audible. Nim knocked and waited. When no one answered, he went in.

In the hallway the voices became clearer. They were coming from the living room to the right, be realized. Nim could hear Ardythe. She sounded hysterical and was sobbing. He caught disconnected words. “ those murderers, oh my God! . . . was good and kind, wouldn't harm anyone . . . to call him those filthy names . . ." Interspersed were other voices, attempting to bring calm but not succeeding.

Nim hesitated. The living room door was ajar, though he could neither see in nor be seen. He was tempted to tiptoe out, leaving as unnoticed as he had come. Then abruptly the living room door opened fully and a man came out. Closing the door quickly behind him, he leaned back against it, his bearded, sensitive face pale and strained, eyes shut tightly as if for a moment's relief. The closed door cut off most of the sound from inside.

"Wally," Nim said softly. "Wally."

The other opened his eyes, taking a few seconds to collect himself. "Ob, it's you, Nim. Thanks for coming."

Nim had known Walter Talbot Jr., an only son, almost as long as he had been a friend of the dead chief. Wally Jr., too, worked for GSP&L-as a transmission lines maintenance engineer. He was married, with children, and lived on the opposite side of the city.

“There's not a helluva lot anyone can say," Nim told him. "Except I'm sorry."

Wally Talbot nodded. "I know." He motioned with an apologetic gesture toward the room lie had left. "I had to come out a minute. Some damn fool put the TV on and heard that goddamned announcement those murdering bastards made. Before that we'd calmed Mother down a bit. It set her off again. You probably heard."

"Yes, I did. Who's in there?"

"Mary, for one. We left someone with the kids and came on over. Then a lot of neighbors have been coming in; most are still here. I guess they mean well, but it isn't helping. If Dad were here he'd . . ." Wally stopped, forcing a wan smile. "It's hard to get used to the idea he won't be around anymore."

"I've been feeling that way, too." It was clear to Nim that Wally Jr. was in no shape to take charge of what was happening in the house.

"Listen," Nim said, "it can't go on like this. Let's go in there. I'll talk to your mother and do the best I can. You and Mar), start easing the others out."

"Okay, that makes sense. Thanks, Nim' Obviously, what Wally had needed was a lead.

There were perhaps ten people standing or seated in the living room as Nim and Wally went in. The room was bright and comfortable, normally spacious, but seemed crowded now. It was also hot, despite air conditioning. Several conversations were being conducted at the same time and the TV had been left on, contributing to a general hubbub. Ardythe Talbot was on a sofa, surrounded by several women, one of whom was Mary, Wally Jr.'s wife. The others Nim didn't recognize. Presumably they were the neighbors Wally had spoken of.

'though Ardythe was sixty at her last birthday-Nim and Ruth had attended a party to celebrate it-shc remained a strikingly handsome woman with a good figure and a strong face only lightly marked with beginning lines of age. Her stylishly short auburn hair was streaked naturally with gray.

Ardythe played tennis regularly and the effect showed in radiant good health. Today, though, her poise had crumbled. Her tear-stained face appeared drawn and old.

Ardythe was still speaking as she had been earlier, her voice choked, the words disjointed. But she stopped when she saw Nim.

"Ob, Nim." She put out her arms and the others made way as he went to her, sat beside her on the sofa and held her. "Oh, Nim," she repeated.

"You heard the terrible thing that happened to Walter?"

"Yes, dear," lie said gently. "I heard."

Nim observed Wally across the room, switch off the TV, then take his wife aside and speak to her quietly. Mary nodded. Immediately the two of them approached others, thanking them, ushering them out one by one. Nim continued to hold Ardythe, not speaking, trying to calm and comfort her. Soon the living room was quiet. Nim heard the front door close behind the last of the departing neighbors. Wally and Mary, who had gone out to the hallway, came back. Wally ran a band through his hair and beard. "I could use a stiff scotch," be announced. "Anyone else?"

Ardythe nodded. So did Nim.

"I'll get them," Mary said. She busied herself with glasses and mixes, then ashtrays, tidying the living room, removing its signs of recent occupancy.

Mary was slim, gamine and businesslike. Before her marriage to Wally she worked on the creative side of an advertising agency and still did freelance work while also caring for her family. Ardythe was sitting up unaided now, sipping her scotch, some signs of composure returning. She said suddenly, "I expect I look a mess."

"No more than anyone would," Nim assured her. But Ardythe had gone to a mirror. "Oh, my goodness!" She told the others, "Have your drinks. I'll be back soon." She left the living room, carrying her scotch, and they could hear her going upstairs. Nim reflected with wry amusement: Few men are ever as resilient or strong as women. Just the same, he decided, he would tell Wally first of Eric Humphrey's warning that the family should not view Walter's remains. He remembered, with a shudder, the chairman's words. ". . . virtually no skin left . . .

Faces are unrecognizable." Mary had gone to the kitchen. While the two men were alone, as gently as he could and omitting details, Nim explained the situation.

The reaction was immediate. Wally tossed back the remainder of his scotch. With tears in his eyes he protested, "Oh Christ!-it's had enough to hear. I couldn't tell Mother that. You'll have to."

Nim was silent, dreading what was to come. Fifteen minutes later Ardythe returned. She had made up her face, rearranged her hair and changed from the dress she had been wearing into a smart blouse and skirt. While her eyes and demeanor revealed grief, superficially she was closer to her normal, attractive self. Mary, too, had returned to the living room. This time Wally replenished the drinks and the four of them sat, uneasily at first, uncertain of what to say.

It was Ardythe who broke the silence.

She said firmly, "I want to see Walter." then, turning to Wally, "Do you know where your father has been taken, what . . . arrangements have been made?"

"Well...there's a..." Wally stopped, got up and kissed his mother, then, standing where he did not have to meet her eyes, continued, “There's a problem, Mother. Nim is going to talk to you about it. Aren't you, Nim?"

Nim wished be were somewhere, anywhere, else.

"Mother, dear," Wally said, still standing. "Mary and I have to go home to the children for a while. We'll come back. And one of us will stay the night with you."

As if she had not heard, Ardythe intoned, "What problems? . . . Why can't I see Walter? . . Someone tell me."

Wally, went out quietly, Mary following. Ardythe seemed unaware they had gone.

"Please . . . Why can't I . . . ?"

Nim took her hands and held them between his own. "Ardythe, listen to me.

Walter died suddenly. It was all over in less than a second. He didn't have time to know what was happening and there could have been no pain." Nim hoped it was true. He went on, "But because of what happened, he was disfigured."

Ardythe moaned.

" Walter was my friend," Nim persisted. "I know bow be thought. He wouldn't have wanted you to see him as he is now. He would have wanted you to remember him He stopped, choked by his own emotion, not sure that Ardythe had heard or, even if she had, had understood. Once more they sat in silence.

More than an hour had gone by since Nim arrived.

"Nim," Ardythe said at length. "Have you had any dinner?"

He shook his head. “There wasn't time. I'm not hungry." He was having trouble adjusting to Ardythe's sudden changes of mood.

She got up. "I'm going to make you something."

He followed her into the compact, orderly kitchen which Walter Talbot had designed himself. Characteristically, Walter had first made a time and motion study of functions to be performed, then positioned everything for maximum convenience and a minimal need to move around. Nim seated himself at an island worktable, watching Ardythe, not interfering, reasoning she was better off with something to do. She heated soup and served it in earthenware mugs, sipping her own while she put together an omelette, seasoned with chives and mushrooms. When she divided the omelette between them, Nim discovered he was hungry after all, and ate with enjoyment. Ardythe made an initial effort, then left most of her portion. They followed the meal with strong coffee which they took into the living room. Speaking quietly and rationally, Ardythe said, "I may insist on seeing Walter."

"If you do," Nim told her, "no one can stop you. But I hope you won't."

"Those people who planted the bomb, who killed Walter and the others. Do you think they'll be caught?"

“Eventually. But it's never easy when you're dealing with crazies. Because they aren't rational, it makes them harder to catch. But if they try something similar-which they probably will-thc odds are on their being caught and punished."

"I suppose I ought to care about them being punished. But I don't. Is that bad?"

"No," Nim said. "In any case, other people will take care of that."

"Whatever happens, it can't change anything. It wouldn't bring Walter . .. or the others . . . back." Ardythe mused. "Did you know we were married thirty-six years? I should be grateful for that. It's more than many people have, and most of the time was good . . . Thirty-six years . . ." She began crying softly. "Hold me, Nim."

He put his arms around her and cradled her head on his shoulder. He could feel her crying, though not hysterically any longer. These -were tears of farewell and acceptance, of memory and love; gentle and cleansing tears as the human psyche began its healing process-as old, Unexplainable and wondrous as life itself.

Holding Ardythe, Nim became aware of a fragrant, pleasing perfume. He had not noticed it when they were close together earlier, and wondered when she had put it on. Probably when she went upstairs. He switched his thoughts away.

It was getting late, Nim realized. Outside it was fully dark, the only exterior lights from occasional passing vehicles. But the street was secluded and quiet, with traffic infrequent. Inside, the house had settled down, as houses do for the night, and was silent.

Ardythe stirred in Nim's arms. She had stopped crying and moved closer. he breathed the heady perfume once more. Then, to his consternation, be discovered his body becoming aroused, and an increasing awareness of Ardythe as a woman. He tried to divert his mind with other thoughts, to control and negate what was happening, but without success.

"Kiss me, Nim." She had moved so their faces were close. Their lips touched, gently at first, then strongly; Ardythe's mouth was seductive, warm, demanding. As he felt sexual excitement surge in them both, he asked himself: Can this be happening?

"Nim," she said softly, "turn out the lights."

He complied, a part of him urging: Don't do it! Go! Leave now! But even while despising himself, he knew he wouldn't leave, and that the inner voice was a token protest only.

There was plenty of room on the sofa. While he had turned out the lights, Ardythe had removed some of her clothing-, he helped her with the rest and swiftly shed his own. As they reached out, then held each other, he found her eager, excited and experienced. Her fingers, traveling lightly, deftly, sought to please him, and succeeded. He responded in kind. Soon, Ardythe moaned, then cried aloud, "Ob God, Nim! Don't wait any longer, please . . . please!"

He had a last, vague stirring of conscience and a sudden, dismaying notion that Wally Jr. and Mary might return, as they had said they would, and walk in. Then that and all else dissolved as pleasure and passion engulfed him.

* * *

"You're troubled, aren't you?"

"Yes," Nim admitted. "Troubled as hell."

It was an hour later. They had dressed and the lights were on. A few minutes ago Wally had phoned, announcing that he and Mary were on the way back and both would stay the night.

"Don't be." Ardythe touched his arm lightly and gave a swift, shy smile.

"You've helped me more than you know."

Nim's instincts told him she had left something unsaid: That the compatibility they had just shared was discovered rarely by two people and, in all probability, the experience would be repeated. If so, there was now a dual worry: Not only had he behaved shamefully on the day of his good friend's death, but an additional complication had entered his own life-one he didn't need.

"I'd like to explain something," Ardythe said. "I loved Walter dearly. He was a sweet, kind, gentle man. We had fun together; he was always interesting to be with. Life without him . . . well, I can't begin to think about that yet. But Walter and I hadn't had sex together for a long time-it must be six or seven years. Walter simply couldn't manage it anymore. That often happens to men, you know, much more than to women."

Nim protested, "I don't want to hear .

"Whether you do or not, you're going to. Because I don't want you leaving here tonight all mixed up and miserable. I'll tell you something else, Nim.

You didn't seduce me just now; I seduced you. And I knew what was going to happen, what I wanted to happen, long before you did."

He thought: the perfume. It had acted on him like an aphrodisiac. Could Ardythe really have intended it that way?

"When a woman is deprived of sex at home," Ardythe went on firmly, "she either manages or goes elsewhere. Well, I managed. I settled for what I had, which was a good man I still loved, and I didn't go elsewhere. But it didn't stop my wanting."

"Ardythe," Nim said, "please . . ."

"No, I'm almost finished. Today . . . tonight . when I realized I'd lost everything, I wanted sex more than ever. Suddenly all that missing seven years swept over me. And you were here, Nim. I've always liked you, maybe a little more than 'liked,' and you were here when I needed you most." She smiled. "If you came to comfort me, you did. it's that simple.

Don't make it more complicated, or feel guilt where there should be none."

He sighed. "If you say so, I won't." It seemed an easy way to put conscience to rest. Perhaps too easy.

"I say so. Now kiss me once more, and go home to Ruth."

He did as she said, and was relieved to be leaving before Wally and Mary arrived.

* * *

In the car, driving home, Nim pondered the complexities of his personal life. By comparison, the intricate conundrums of Golden State Power & Light seemed simple and preferable. At the top of his own immediate problem list were Ruth, their drifting-in-circles marriage, and now Ardythe. Then there were other women he had had affairs with from time to time, including a couple of recent ones still simmering. Those kinds of involvements seemed to happen to Nim without his seeking them. Or was he deluding himself there? Did he, in fact, search out entanglements, rationalizing later that they simply happened? Either way, for almost as long as he could remember, there had been no lack of sexual opportunities.

After his marriage to Ruth fifteen years ago, he had resolutely stayed a one-woman man-for about four years. Then an opportunity for extracurricular sex occurred, and he hadn't fought it. Afterward there had been still more opportunities-some the usual one-night stands, others that lasted enthusiastically for a while, then faded like bright stars dimming before extinction. At first Nim assumed he could keep his sexual philandering a secret from Ruth-the nature of his work with its heavy demands of time, plus irregular hours, helped make that possible. Probably it even worked for a while. Then common sense told him that Ruth, who was not only sensitive but shrewd, must realize what was happening. The extraordinary thing was that she never protested, simply seeming to accept. Illogically, Ruth's reaction-or, rather, the lack of it-galled him and still did. She should have minded, ought to have protested, perhaps shed angry tears. True, none of it might have made any difference, but Nim had asked himself: Wasn't his defection at least worth that much?

Something else Nim weighed from time to time was that news about his womanizing seemed to become known no matter how discreet he tried to be. There had been several examples of such leakages, the latest this afternoon. What was it Teresa Van Buren had said? "You've got a few things to learn about women, Nim-other than calisthenics in bed, and from rumors I hear, you're getting plenty of that." Obviously Teresa had more than rumors to go on or she would not have spoken so bluntly. And if Teresa knew, so did others in GSP & L.

Was Nim imperilling his own career? If so, was it worth it? Why did he do it, anyway? And was it for real or just a game?

"I'll be damned if I know," Nim said aloud in the small closed car, and the remark seemed applicable to what he had been thinking about and a good deal more.

His own house, near the outskirts of the city, was silent when he arrived, with only a dim night-light in the downstairs hallway left burning. At Nim's urging, the Goldmans were a conservation-conscious family.

Upstairs be tiptoed into Leah's and Benjy's rooms. Both youngsters were sleeping soundly.

Ruth stirred as he came into their bedroom, and inquired sleepily, "What time is it?"

He answered softly, "A little past midnight."

"How's Ardythe?"

"I'll tell you in the morning."

The answer seemed satisfactory and Ruth returned to sleep.

Nim showered quickly, remembering that he should remove any traces of Ardythe's perfume, then climbed into his own twin bed. Moments later, surrendering to exhaustion from the pressures of the day, he was asleep himself.

6

"We are agreed, then," J. Eric Humphrey said. His inquiring gaze swept over the nine men and two women seated with him around the conference room table. "We are agreed we should accept Nim's planning report in toto and press at the highest level for immediate, urgent approval of the three projects-Tunipah coal-burning plant, Devil's Gate pumped storage, and opening the Fincastle geothermal field."

As nods and murmured assent greeted the chairman's summation, Nim Goldman leaned back, for the moment relaxed. His presentation of future plans-the product of intense work by himself and many others-had been a grueling one.

The group, GSP&L's management committee, included all officers reporting directly to the chairman. Officially, it rated second in authority to the Board of Directors. In fact, it was the real fount of policy decisions and power. It was Monday afternoon and the meeting, which had carried over from the morning, had worked its way through a long agenda. A few around the table showed signs of weariness. Five days had passed since the disastrous explosion at La Mission and the subsequent power failure. In the meantime there had been intensive studying of entrails-the cause and effect of what had happened, along with prognostications for the future. The inquisitions had continued late into every night and over the weekend. Also, since last Wednesday, because of cooler weather and some luck, no further blackouts had occurred. But one conclusion was inescapable. There would be other blackouts, far more serious, unless GSP & L began building more generating capacity soon.

"Soon" meant within the next year. Even then there could still be serious shortages ahead since a conventional fossil-fueled power plant took five years to design and build, a nuclear plant six-preceded, in each case, by the four to six years it took to obtain the needed licenses.

"As well as those three projects we've been talking about," Oscar O'Brien, the utility's general counsel, said, "I assume we will still press on with our nuclear license applications." O'Brien was a former government lawyer from Washington, a burly man, shaped like a bass fiddle, who smoked cigars continuously. Across the table from him, Ray Paulsen, executive vice president of power supply, growled, "We goddam well better."

Next to Paulsen, Nim Goldman doodled thoughtfully on a pad. He reflected: Despite their mutual dislike, and disputes in many areas, the one thing he and Paulsen agreed on was a need for more power generation.

"Naturally," Eric Humphrey said, "we shall continue our nuclear program.

But in terms of public psychology we'll be better off, I believe, to let nuclear stand alone and not be linked with the other plans. The route to nuclear is strewn with hazards." He added hastily, "I mean hazards of opposition."

The chairman continued, "Anticipating our decision here, I have already arranged a meeting with the Governor-in Sacramento, the day after tomorrow.

I intend to urge him to bring pressure on all regulatory agencies to move swiftly. I shall also suggest, for each of the three projects, combined hearings before all regulatory bodies from whom we require approval, perhaps starting as early as next month."

"It's never been done that way, Eric," Stewart Ino, a senior vice president in charge of rates and valuation, objected. Ino was an old-timer at GSP & L; he had a chubby yeoman's face and with the addition of a ruff and velvet hat could have been a British beefeater. An expert on licensing procedures, he liked to follow them precisely. "Separate hearings have always been the rule," he added. "To combine them would create complications." =

"Let the lousy bureaucrats worry about that," Ray Paulsen told him. "I'm for Eric's idea which would shove a live wire up their asses."

"Three live wires," someone said.

Paulsen grinned. "Better still."

Ino looked offended.

Ignoring the last exchange, Eric Humphrey observed, "Let's remember there are strong arguments in favor of exceptional action. Moreover, we shall never have a better time to press them. The power failure of last week showed clearly that a crisis can happen; therefore crisis methods are needed to counter it. Even in Sacramento I think they'll see that."

"In Sacramento," Oscar O'Brien said, "all they see is politics, just as in Washington. And let's face it-the opponents of what we plan will use politics to the hilt, with Tunipah at the top of their bate list."

There were reluctant murmurs of assent. Tunipah, as everyone around the table realized, could prove the most controversial of the three developments now being discussed. It was also, in several ways, the most vital of their plans.

Tunipah was a wilderness area near the California-Nevada border. It was neither inhabited-the nearest small town was forty miles distant -nor favored by sportsmen or naturalists since it held little of interest for either. 'tle region was difficult to get to and no roads, only a few trails, traversed it. For all these reasons Tunipah had been chosen carefully.

What Golden State Power & Light proposed to build at Tunipah was an enormous generating plant, capable of producing more than five million kilowatts of electricity-enough to supply six cities the size of San Francisco. The fuel to be used was coal. This would be transported by rail from Utah, seven hundred miles away, where coal was plentiful and relatively cheap. A rail link would be built-to the main line of the Western Pacific Railroad-at the same time as the plant.

Coal could be North America's answer to Arab oil. Coal deposits within the conterminous United States represent a third of the entire world's known supply and are more than enough to satisfy U.S. energy needs for three centuries. Alaska is believed to have another two thousand years' supply. Admittedly, coal presented problems. Mining was one, air pollution another, though modern technologies were at work on both. At new electric utility plants in other states, smokestacks a thousand feet high, supplemented by electrostatic filters and scrubbers that removed sulfur from smokestack gases, were reducing pollution to acceptable levels. And at Tunipah, what pollution there was would be far removed from inhabited or recreation areas.

Something else Tunipah would do was to permit the closing of some of GSP&L's older, oil-burning plants. This would further reduce dependence on imported oil and produce big cost savings, present and future.

Logic favored the Tunipah project. But, as all public utilities had learned from experience, logic didn't rule, nor did the greater public good if a handful of determined objectors-no matter how warped or unqualified their judgments-decided otherwise. By the use of slow, procedural tactics applied with ruthless skill, a project like Tunipah could be so long delayed as to be, in reality, defeated. Those who consistently opposed any electric utility expansion made effective use of Parkinson's third law: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

"Is there more discussion?" J. Eric Humphrey asked. Several of those around the conference table had begun stuffing papers into briefcases, assuming the meeting to be almost over.

"Yes," Teresa Van Buren said. "I'd like a nickel's worth."

Heads turned toward the public relations vice president, her short, plump figure thrust forward to command attention. Her normally unruly hair was more or less tidy today, presumably in deference to the occasion, but she still wore one of her inevitable linen suits.

"Twisting the Governor's arm the way you plan, Eric, and stroking other egos around the state capitol is okay," she pronounced. "I'm in favor of it. But it isn't enough, not nearly enough to achieve what we want, and here's the reason."

Van Buren paused. Reaching down beside her seat, she produced two newspapers and spread them on the conference room table. "This is this afternoon's California Examiner-an early edition I had sent inand this one, this morning's Chronicle-West, which you've undoubtedly all seen. I've been through both papers carefully and there's not a word in either about last week's power outage. For one day, as we know, the subject was big news, the next day minor news; after that it disappeared. And what's true of the press is true of other media."

"So what?" Ray Paulsen said. “There's been other news. People lose interest."

“They lose interest because no one keeps them interested. Out there" -Van Buren waved an arm in the general direction of the world beyond the conference room-"out there the press and public think of an electric power shortage as a here-today-gone-tomorrow, short-term problem. Almost no one is considering the long-term effects of power shortages which we know are getting closer-drastically lower living standards, dislocation of industry, catastrophic unemployment. And nothing will change that outside, uninformed thinking unless we make it change."

Sharlett Underhill, executive vice president of finance and the other woman at the table, asked, "How do you make anybody think anything?"

"I'll answer that," Nim Goldman said. He snapped down his pencil. "One way is to start shouting the true way things really are, not holding back-and to go on shouting loud and clear and often Ray Paulsen said sardonically, "In other words, you'd like to be on TV four times a week instead of twice?"

Nim ignored the interruption. He went on, "We should, as company policy, keep on proclaiming what everyone at this table knows: That last week our peak load was twenty-two million kilowatts, and demand is growing by a million kilowatts a year. That, assuming the same growth rate, in three years We'll be short on reserves, in four years we'll have none. So bow will we manage? the answer is: we won't. Any fool can see what's coming-three years from now, blackouts every time It's hot; and in six years, blackouts every summer day. We have got to get some new generators built and we have to tell the public the consequences of not building them."

There was a silence which Van Buren broke. "We all know every word of that is true, so why not say so? there's even an opportunity next week. Nim has been booked for Tuesday on the Good Evening Show, which has a big following."

Paulsen grunted. "Too had I'll be out that night."

"I'm not at all sure we should be that forthright," Sharlett Underhill said. "I need hardly remind everyone we have an application in process for a rate increase and we desperately need that extra revenue. I don't want to see our chances of getting it jeopardized."

"Frankness is likely to improve our chances," Van Buren said, "not diminish them."

The finance vice president shook her bead. "I'm not so sure. And something else I believe is that the kind of statements we're talking about, if made at all, should come from the chairman."

"For the record," Eric Humphrey put in mildly, "I was asked to appear on the Good Evening Show and I deputed Nim. He seems to do that kind of thing quite well."

"He'd do a whole lot better," the PR vice president said, "if we gave him carte blanche to issue some plain, ugly warnings instead of insisting on the 'moderate line' we always do."

"I'm still in favor of a moderate line." This time the speaker was Fraser Fenton, who held the title of president, though his main responsibility was for the utility's gas operations. Fenton, thin, balding and ascetic, was another veteran.

"Not all of us," he continued, "accept your gloomy view, Tess, of what's ahead. I've been thirty-four years with this utility and I've seen problems come and go. I believe we'll get around the capacity shortage somehow . . ."

Nim Goldman interjected, "How?"

"Let me finish," Fenton said. "Another point I want to make is about opposition. It's true that right now we encounter organized opposition to everything we try to do, whether it's build more plants, increase rates, or give stockholders a decent dividend. But I believe most, if not all of that-the opposition and consumerism-will pass. It's a fashion and a fad. Those involved will eventually become tired, and when that happens we'll go back to the way things used to be, when this utility and others did pretty much what they wanted. That's why I say we should continue talking a moderate line, and not stir up trouble and antagonism by alarming people needlessly."

"I agree with A that," Stewart Ino said.

Ray Paulsen added, "Me, too."

Nim's eyes met Teresa Van Buren's and he knew their thoughts were the same. Within the public utilities business, Fraser Fenton, Ino, Paulsen, and others like them represented a cadre of entrenched executives who had grown up in their jobs during easier times and refused to acknowledge that these were gone forever. Mostly, such people attained their present eminence through seniority, never having been subject to the tough, cutthroat competition for advancement which was a norm in other industries. The personal security of the Fraser Fentons et al had become wrapped around them like a cocoon. 'His status quo was their holy grail. Predictably, they objected to anything they saw as rocking the boat.

There were reasons for this-often debated by Nim and other younger executives. One was the nature of a public"utility-monopolistic, not subject to day-by-day competition in the marketplace; this was why utilities like Golden State Power & Light sometimes resembled government bureaucracies. Secondly, utilities, through most of their history, had been in a strong seller's market, able to sell as much of their product as they could produce, the process helped along by abundant sources of cheap power. Only in recent years, as power sources became scarcer and more costly, had utility executives needed to face serious commercial problems and make hard, unpopular decisions. Nor, in older days, were they locked in combat with tough-minded, skilfully led opposition groups, including consumers and environmentalists.

It was these profound changes, the Nim Goldman types argued, which a majority of top level executives had failed to accept, or deal with realistically. (Walter Talbot, Nim remembered sadly, had been a notable exception.) the oldsters, for their part, regarded Nim and his kind as impatient, troublemaking upstarts and usually, since the older group comprised a majority, their point of view prevailed.

"I'll admit to being ambivalent," J. Eric Humphrey told the group, "on this question of should we, or shouldn't we, bore in harder with our public statements. My personal nature is against it, but at times I see the other side." the chairman, smiling slightly, glanced at Nim. "You were bristling just now. Anything to add?"

Nim hesitated. Then he said, "Only this. When the serious blackouts begin-I mean the long-lasting and repeated blackouts a few years from now-we, the utilities, will be blamed, no matter what has, or hasn't, happened in the meantime. The press will crucify us. So will the politicians, doing their usual Pontius Pilate act. After that the public will blame us too, and say: Why didn't you warn us while there was still time?

I agree with Teresa-that time is now."

"We'll vote on it," Eric Humphrey announced. "A show of hands, please, for the harder approach we've just beard advocated."

Three hands went up-Teresa Van Buren's, Nim's, and that of Oscar O'Brien, the general counsel.

"Against," the chairman called.

This time the raised hands numbered eight.

Eric Humphrey nodded. "I'll go with the majority, which means we continue what someone called our 'moderate line."'

"And make goddam sure," Ray Paulsen cautioned Nim, "you keep it moderate on those TV talk shows."

Nim glared at Paulsen, but contained his anger, saying nothing. As the meeting broke up, the participants divided into smaller segments-twos and threes-discussing their separate, special interests.

* * *

"We all need a few defeats," Eric Humphrey told Nim cheerfully on the way out. "A certain humbling from time to time is good."

Nim avoided comment. Before today's meeting be had wondered if the old guard's laissez-faire viewpoint about public relations could be sustained after the events of last week. Now be had the answer. Nim wished, too, that the chairman had supported him. He knew that if the subject had been one on which Humphrey held strong views they would have prevailed, regardless of any vote.

"Come in," the chairman said as they neared their adjoining offices down the hallway from the conference room. “There's something I want you to handle."

The chairman's office suite, while more spacious than others on the senior management floor, still conformed to a GSP&L policy of being relatively spartan. This was to impress on visitors that shareholders' and customers' money was spent on essentials, not frills. Nim, following custom, went to a lounge area containing several comfortable chairs. Eric Humphrey, after crossing to his desk to pick up a file, joined him.

Though it was bright daylight outside and windows of the suite commanded a view across the city, all draperies were drawn, with artificial lighting on. The chairman always evaded questions about why he worked this way, though one theory held that, even after thirty, years, he missed the view of his native Boston and would accept no substitutes.

"I presume you've seen the latest report in here." Humphrey indicated the file which was labeled:

PROPERTY PROTECTION DEPARTMENT

Subject: theft of Power

"Yes, I have."

"Obviously the situation's getting worse. I know in some ways it's a pinprick, but it makes me damned angry."

"A twelve-million-dollar loss per year is a whopping pinprick," Nim observed.

The report they were speaking of, by a department bead named Harry London, described ways in which stealing of electric power and gas had become epidemic. The method of theft was through tampering with meters-usually by individuals, though there were indications that some professional service firms were involved. Eric Humphrey mused, “The twelve million figure is an estimate. It could be less, or perhaps a whole lot more."

“The estimate is conservative," Nim assured him. "Walter Talbot believed that too. If you recall, the chief pointed out there was a two percent gap last year between electric power we produced and the amount we were able to account for-billings to customers, company use, line losses, et cetera."

It was the late chief engineer who had first sounded the alarm within GSP & L about theft of service. He, also, prepared a report-an early and thorough one which urged creation of a Property Protection Department. The advice was acted on. It was one more area, Nim thought, in which the chief's contribution would be missed.

"Yes, I do recall," Humphrey said. "That's an enormous amount of unaccounted-for electricity."

"And the percentage is four times higher than two years ago."

The chairman drummed fingers on his chair arm. "Apparently the same is true with gas. And we can't just sit back and let it happen."

"We've been lucky for a long time," Nim pointed out. "Power theft has been a worry in the East and Midwest far longer than it has been here. In New York last year Con Edison lost seventeen million dollars that way. Chicago-Commonwealth Edison-which sells less electricity than we do and no gas, set their loss at five to six million. It's the same in New Orleans, Florida, New Jersey . . ."

Humphrey interrupted impatiently, "I know all that." He considered, then pronounced, "All right, we'll intensify our own measures, if necessary increasing our budget for investigation. Regard this as your own over-all assignment, representing me. Tell Harry London that. And emphasize I'm taking a personal interest in his department, and I expect to see results."

7

"Some people around here have the misguided notion that stealing power is something new," Harry London declared. "Well, it isn't. Would you be surprised if I told you there was a recorded case in California over a century ago?" He spoke in the manner of a schoolmaster addressing a class, even though he had an audience of one-Nim Goldman.

"Most things don't surprise me; that does," Nim said.

London nodded. “Then get a load of this one."

He was a short, craggy man with crisp speech which bordered on the pedantic when he set out to explain any subject, as he was doing now. A former master sergeant of Marines, with a Silver Star for gallantry in action, he had later been a Los Angeles police detective, then joined Golden State Power & Light five years ago as assistant chief of security. For the past six months Harry London had headed a new department-Property Protection-specifically set up to deal with thefts of power, and during that time he and Nim had become good friends. The two men were in the department's makeshift quarters now-in London's office, one of a series of cramped glass cubicles.

"It happened in 1867 in Vallejo," London said. “The San Francisco Gas Company set up a plant there and the man in charge was an M. P. Young.

One of Vallejo's hotels was owned by a guy named John Lee. Well, this Lee was caught cheating on his gas bills. What he'd done was put a bypass around his meter."

"I'll be damned! That long ago?"

"Wait! That isn't the half of it. The gas company man, Young, tried to collect money from John Lee to pay for the gas which had been stolen. That made Lee so mad he shot Young and was later charged with assault and attempted murder."

Nim said skeptically, "Is all that true?"

"It's in California history books," London insisted. "You can look it up the way I did."

"Never mind. Let's stick to here and now."

"You read my report?"

"Yes. So did the chairman." Nim repeated J. Eric Humphrey's decision about intensified action and his demand for results. London nodded. "You'll get results. Maybe as early as this week."

"You mean Brookside?"

"Exactly."

Brookside, a bedroom community some twenty miles from the city center, had been mentioned in the Property Protection Department report. A pattern of power theft cases had been discovered there and now a more thorough investigation was planned.

"D-day in Brookside," Harry London added, "is the day after tomorrow."

"That's Thursday. I hadn't expected you could set things up so fast."

The report had indicated, without specifying when, that a "raid" on Brookside was planned. It would be spearheaded by the Property Protection staff, comprising London, his immediate deputy Art Romeo, and three assistants. They were to be supported by a contingent of other CSP & L employees-thirty specially trained meter readers, borrowed from Customer Service, plus a half-dozen service engineers and two photographers who would record any evidence on film.

The entire force would assemble downtown and be conveyed to Brookside by chartered bus. Accompanying them would be a radio van, to be used as the communications center. Walkie-talkies would be issued to key people, A fleet of small vehicles would provide local shuttle service.

During the preceding day-"D-day minus one"-the meter readers and engineers would be briefed on what was expected of them, though their actual destination would be kept secret.

On arrival at Brookside on D-day, the meter readers would begin house-to-house and business-to-business checks of electric and gas meters, searching for signs of tampering. They would also go to specific buildings, selected because of known theft patterns. Supermarkets, for example, were always prime suspects because electricity was their second largest operating cost (labor was the first) and many such businesses had cheated in the past. Thus all supermarkets in the area would be checked. As and when anything suspicious was located, the service engineers, backed up by Harry London's Property Protection men, would move in.

"The quicker you put something like this together, the less danger there is of leaks." London grinned. "In the Marines there were bigger jobs we did a whole lot faster."

"Okay, gyrene," Nim said, "I was just a dogface. But I'd like to be in on this operation."

Although Nim's own military service had been brief, it gave him something of a common bond with Harry London. Immediately after college Nim was drafted and sent to Korea. There, a month after arrival and while his platoon was probing the enemy from an advanced position, they were strafed and bombed by American planes. (Afterward the ghastly error was described in military double-talk as "friendly fire.") Four U.S. infantrymen were killed, others injured, including Nim, who sustained a perforated eardrum which became infected, leaving him permanently deaf on the left side. Soon after, he was sent home and quietly given a medical discharge, the Korean incident hushed up. Nowadays, most of Nim's colleagues and friends were aware they should sit on his right during conversations-the side of his good ear. But only a few knew exactly why. Harry London was one of the few.

"Be my guest on Thursday," London said.

They arranged a rendezvous. Afterward they talked about the sabotage at La Mission which had killed Walter Talbot and the others. Although Harry London was not involved directly in the investigation, he and the utility's chief security officer were after-hours drinking cronies and exchanged confidences; also London's background as a police detective had given him contacts with law enforcement agencies which he kept operative. “The county sheriff is working with the FBI and our own city police," he informed Nim. "So far all leads have run up against a brick wall. The FBI, which does most processing of evidence in this kind of case, believe they're looking for a new batch of kooks without police records, which makes everything harder."

"How about the man in Salvation Army uniform?"

"That's being worked on, but there's a hundred ways they could have got the uniform, most not traceable. Of course, if they pull the same dodge again, that's something else. A lot of people will be alert and waiting."

"You think they might?"

London shrugged. “They're fanatics. Which makes them crazy-smart, brilliant in some ways, stupid in others. You never can tell. Often it just takes time. If I hear any rumbles I'll let you know."

"Thanks."

What he had just heard, Nim realized, was in essence what be had told Ardythe last Wednesday night. It reminded him that he should call Ardythe, and perhaps go to her, soon. Nim had seen her once since Wednesday-briefly at Walter's funeral on Saturday morning, which many from GSP&L had attended. It had been, to Nim, a depressingly ritualistic occasion, supervised by an unctuous undertaker whom Walter Talbot would have detested. Nim and Ardythe had exchanged a few stilted words, but that was all. Now he wondered: Ought he to allow a "decent" interval before telephoning Ardythe? Or "as it hypocritical, at this stage, for him to consider decency at all? He told Harry London, "I'll see you on D-day."

8

It would be another scorching day in that long, hot summer. That much was evident, even at 9 am when Nim reached Brookside.

The D-day force had arrived an hour earlier. Its communications center was set Lip oil the parking lot of a conveniently central shopping plaza where a half-dozcn of the utility's vehicles were clustered, identifiable by their distinctive orange and white coloring and the familiar GSP & L logo. Already the thirty meter readers had been driven to dispersal points. They were mostly young men, among them some college students working during the summer, and each was in possession of a batch of cards showing addresses where meters and related equipment were to be inspected. The cards were from a special computer printout last night. Normally the meter readers' job was simply to read numbers and report them; today they would ignore the numbers and search only for signs of power theft.

Harry London, emerging from the communications van, met Nim as he arrived. London appeared perky and cheerful. He wore a short-sleeved, military-style shirt and smartly creased tan slacks; his shoes were brightly shined. Nim removed his own suit coat and tossed it back into his Fiat. The sun had begun to bake the parking lot, sending beat waves upward.

"We're getting results already," London said. "Five clear fraud cases in the first hour. Now our service guys are checking out three more."

Nim asked, “The first five-are they business or residential?"

"Four residential, one business, and that's a lulu. The guy's been stealing us blind, gas and electric both. Do you want to see?"

"Sure. "

London called into the communications van, "I'll be in my car, with Mr. Goldman. We're going to incident number four."

As they drove away, lie told Nim, "I've already got two feelings. One, what we'll be seeing today is the tip of an iceberg. Two, in some cases we’re up against professionals, an organized ring." "Why do you think so?"

"Let me answer that after you've seen what I'm going to show you."

"Okay." Nim settled back, inspecting Brookside as they moved through it.

It was an affluent suburb, typical of many which mushroomed in the late 195os and early sixties. Before then it was farmland; now the farms were gone, replaced by housing developments and businesses serving them. There was-at least, outwardly-no poverty in Brookside.

Even small tract houses, in regimented rows, appeared well cared for, their handkerchief lawns manicured paintwork fresh. Beyond this modest housing were several square miles of larger homes, including palatial mansions with three-car garages and separate service driveways. The community's stores, some in attractive tree-lined malls, displayed quality merchandise which reflected the area's prosperity. To Nim it seemed an unlikely locale for thefts of power.

As if reading his mind, Harry London offered, "Things ain't always what they seem." He turned the car away from the shopping area toward a gas station and garage complex which included a tunnel-type car wash. London stopped at the gas station office and got out. Nim followed.

A GSP & L service truck was also parked. "We've called for one of our photographers," London said. "Meanwhile the service guy is guarding the evidence."

A man in gray coveralls walked towards them, wiping his hinds on a rag. He had a spindly body, a fox-like face, and appeared worried. "Listen," he said, "like I told you already, I don't know nothing about no..."

"Yes, sir; so you did." London turned to Nim. "This is Mr. Jackson.

He gave us permission to enter his premises to inspect the meters."

"Now I'm not so sure I should've," Jackson grumbled. "Anyways I'm just the lessee here. It's another outfit owns the building."

"But you own the business," London said. "And the gas and electric accounts are in your name. Right?"

“The way things are, the bank owns the goddam business."

"But the bank didn't interfere with your gas and electric meters."

"I'm tellin' the truth." the garageman's hands clutched the rag more tightly. "I dunno who done it."

"Yes, sir. Do you mind if we go in?"

The garageman scowled but didn't stop them. London preceded Nim into the gas station office, then to a small room beyond, clearly used for storage. On the far wall were switches, circuit breakers, and meters for gas and electricity. A young man in GSP & L service uniform looked up as they came in. He said casually,

"Hi"

Harry London introduced Nim, then instructed, "Tell Mr. Goldman what you found."

"Well, the electric meter had the seal broken and was put in the way it is now-upside down."

"Which makes the meter run backwards or stop," London added.

Nim nodded, well aware of that simple but effective way to get free power. First, the seal on a meter was pried open carefully. After that, the meter-which was simply plugged in to slots behind it-could be lifted out, inverted, and replaced. From then on, as electricity was consumed, the meter would either reverse itself or stop entirely-if the first, the record of consumption would diminish instead of increasing as it should. Later-probably a few days before a power company meter reader was expected-the meter would be restored to normal functioning, "with the disturbance of the seal carefully concealed.

Several power companies which had suffered this kind of theft countered it nowadays by installing newer-type meters which operated correctly whether upside down or not. Another prevention method was through elaborate locking rings which made meters non-removable, except with special keys. However, other ingenious ways of power theft existed; also there were still millions of older-type meters in use that could not accommodate locking rings, and they would cost a fortune to replace. Thus, through sheer numbers, plus the impossibility of inspecting all meters regularly, the cheaters held an advantage.

“The job on gas was fancier," the serviceman said. He moved to a gas meter nearby and knelt beside it. "Take a look here."

Nim watched as, with one hand, the serviceman traced a pipe which emerged from a wall, then connected to the meter several feet away. "This is the gas line coming in from outside."

"From the street," Harry London added. "From the company main."

Nim nodded.

"Over here"-the serviceman's hand moved to the far side of the meter-"is a line to the customer's outlets. They use gas here for a big water heater, hot-air car dryers and for the stove and heater in an apartment upstairs. Every month that's a lot of gas. Now look at this closely." This time, using both bands, he fingered what appeared to be pipe joints where the two pipes he had pointed to disappeared into the wall. Around each the cement had been loosened, some of it now in a small pile on the floor.

"I did that," the serviceman volunteered, "to get a better look, and what you can see now is that those aren't ordinary joints. 'they're T-joints, connected to each other by another pipe, buried out of sight inside the wall."

"An old-fashioned cheater's bypass," London said, "though this is the neatest one I've seen. What happens is that most of the gas used doesn't pass through the meter the way it should, but goes directly from the street to the appliances."

“There's enough still goes through the meter to keep it operating," the young serviceman explained. "But gas flows where there's least resistance.

There's some resistance in the meter, so most gas goes through that extra pipe-the freebie route."

"Not anymore," London pronounced.

A pert young woman carrying cameras and equipment came in from outside. She inquired cheerfully, "Somebody here want pictures?"

"Sure do." London indicated the gas meter. "That setup first." He told Nim,

"When we get a shot the way it is, we'll chip out the rest of the cement and expose the illegal pipe."

The fox-faced garageman had been hovering in the rear. He protested, "Hey, you guys can't break up no wall. This's my place."

"I'll remind you, Mr. Jackson, you gave us permission to come in and check on our company's equipment. But if you want to review your rights, and ours, I suggest you call your lawyer. I think you'll need one, anyway.

“I don't need no lawyer."

"That will be up to you, sir."

"Mr. Jackson," Nim said, "don't you realize the seriousness of all this?

Tampering with meters is a criminal offense, and the photos we are taking can be evidence."

"Oh, there'll be criminal prosecution all right," London said, as if on cue. "Though I will say that if Mr. Jackson co-operates in two ways it might work out in his favor."

The garageman looked at them suspiciously. "What ways?"

As they talked, the photographer clicked away, shooting flash pictures of the gas meter, then moving to the electric one. Ile serviceman began loosening more cement, exposing more of the concealed pipe within the wall.

“The first thing you have to do," London told Jackson, "is pay for what you owe and what you stole. Since I was here the first time, I've been in touch with our Billing Department. Comparing recent bills with what your gas and electric charges used to be, they've come up with five thousand dollars owing. That includes a service charge for what we're doing today."

The garageman paled; his mouth worked nervously. "Jesus! It can't be that much. Why, it's only been . . ." He stopped.

"Yes," Nim prompted. "How long has it been since you began tampering with the meters?"

"If Mr. Jackson tells us that," London joined in, "maybe he'd tell us who did the job on the gas meter. That's the second thing we'd look on as co-operation."

The serviceman called over his shoulder, "I'll tell you one thing for sure.

Whoever did it was no amateur."

London glanced at Nim. "Remember what I told you? A lot of what we're seeing is professional work." He returned to Jackson. "How about that, sir? Feel like telling us who did it?"

The garageman scowled, but didn't answer. London told him, "When we've finished here, Mr. Jackson, we'll be disconnecting your gas and electricity. They'll stay disconnected until the amount owing is paid."

Jackson spluttered, “Then how the hell do I run my business?"

"If it comes to that," London retorted, "how would we run ours if every customer was a cheat like you?" He asked Nim, "Seen enough?"

"Too much," Nim said. "Let's go."

Outside, London said, "Ten will get you one, he's in hock too deep to pay what's owing. Doubt if he'll tell us who did the work either."

As they got into the car, Nim asked, "Can we prosecute and make it stick?"

The ex-policeman shook his head. "I'd like to try, and we might even get a conviction. More likely, though, a court would insist we prove either that Jackson did the meter rigging, or knew about it. No way we can."

'So in some ways it's a lost cause."

'Some ways, maybe; not all. Word will get around; it probably has already, and that will scare a lot of other, would-be Jacksons. Also remember, we've spread our net wide today. There'll be a lot more cheaters in it before sundown."

"But only from Brookside." Nim considered gloomily the enormous area which GSP & L served; within it Brookside was a single peanut in a huge plantation. A few minutes later they were back at the communications center on the shopping plaza parking lot.

* * *

As Harry London had forecast, Brookside's D-day caught many meter-tampering offenders. By noon there were more than forty cases, either proven or suspected; it seemed likely there would be at least as manymore during the afternoon. Some supermarkets were included in the bag; an entire local chain had been raided, with illegal installations found in five out of eight stores.

Nim stayed close to Harry London, observing, visiting the scene of some of the more interesting, ingenious violations.

During the late morning they had gone together to one of the trim tract houses Nim noted earlier. Two GSP & L vehicles were parked outside. One of the Property Protection staffers, a serviceman, and the same photographer as before were clustered around an exterior electric meter near the side door.

"Nobody's at home," London said in explanation, "but downtown they checked on the guy who lives here, and it seems he's a tool-and-die maker. It figures. Take a look at this." As the others moved aside, London pointed to a tiny hole in the glass cover of the meter. A small piece of stiff wire protruded through it. Inside the meter the wire extended to a central metal disc which normally revolved as electricity was consumed.

"That wire, which shouldn't be there, stops the disc from turning," London said.

Nim nodded his understanding. "So the meter doesn't record, even though current goes on flowing."

"Right. But stopping the disc does no harm, so when the wire's removed, everything's back the way it should be."

"Except for that little hole."

"You'd never notice it," the serviceman behind them said, "unless you were looking hard. My guess is, the guy used a jeweler's drill to make the hole, which is why the glass didn't break. Damn clever."

"He won't feel so clever when he gets his next bill," London said. "Besides which, we'll watch the house tonight. More than likely the neighbors will tell him about us being here, which will make him nervous and he'll want to take out that wire. When he does, and if we catch him at it, we can make a prosecution stick."

They left while the photographer was taking close-ups of the incriminating hole and wire.

At the communications center, reports of other discoveries continued to flow in. An even more ingenious power thief had penetrated the heart of his electric meter, apparently filing off several teeth from a shaft gear which turned the meter recording disc. This had the effect of slowing the disc and reducing recorded consumption by approximately half. The downtown Billing Department, searching their records, estimated the cheating had gone on for three years, undetected.

In another instance a customer had adroitly switched meters. Somehow he had obtained an extra electric meter-Harry London suspected it was stolen-and substituted it for the regular meter supplied by GSP & L. Obviously the customer left his "private" meter in place for a portion of each billing period, during which any electricity used was "free."

Though gas meters were considered more difficult to tamper with, this had not deterred some ambitious freeloaders. As London put it, "Disconnecting or connecting a gas meter takes some plumbing skill, but not much. A do-it-yourselfer can catch on fast."

One such do-it-yourselfer, a meter reader found, had removed his gas meter entirely, filling the gap with a length of rubber hose. It was a dangerous theft method, but effective. Presumably the meter was left disconnected for part of each month, then replaced near the time a regular meter reading was expected. Another offender-a businessman owning several adjacent stores which he leased to others-had acted similarly, except his gas meter was reversed, with its face turned toward the wall, causing it to run backwards. It was here the only violent incident of the day erupted. The businessman, enraged at being discovered, attacked the company serviceman with a pipe wrench and beat him badly. The serviceman was later taken to the hospital with a broken arm and nose, the businessman to jail where he faced assault and other charges. One facet of the many cases being uncovered puzzled Nim. He told Harry London, "I thought our billing computers were programmed to signal warnings of abrupt changes in any customer's consumption."

“They are, and they do," London acknowledged. "Trouble is, people are getting wise to computers, learning to outwit them. It isn't hard. If you steal power and have the sense to reduce your bills gradually-a little the first month, then a little more every month after that, instead of a big reduction all at once-a computer will never pick it up."

"Any way you look at it, we're on the losing side."

"Maybe right now. But that will change."

Nim was less sure. Perhaps the most bizarre episode occurred at mid-afternoon when London received a message at the communications center, calling him to an address a mile or so away. The house, they saw on arrival, was large and modern; it had a landscaped garden and a long curyed driveway in which a shiny Mercedes was parked. The ubiquitous orange and white GSP & L vehicles were assembled on the road outside. The same young serviceman who had been at the gas station-garage complex this morning approached London's car as it pulled up. "Problems," he announced. "Need some help."

"What kind of problems?"

One of the Property Protection staffers, who had joined them, said, “The woman inside is threatening to turn a dog loose on us. It's a big German Shepherd. She says her husband's a doctor, a big wheel in the community, and they'll sue the company if we cause them any trouble."

"What brought you here?"

The serviceman answered. "One of the meter readers-a sharp college kid-reported a suspicious wire. He was right, I took a look behind the electric meter, and the pot strap's been dropped, with two wires bridging it. I traced the wires to a switch in the garage-there was no one around and the garage door was open. That's when the woman showed up with the dog."

Nim looked puzzled. London ordered, "Explain to Mr. Goldman."

"At the back of some types of meter there's a 'potential strap,' " the serviceman said. "If it's disconnected-'dropped'-it breaks a circuit so the meter stops registering. But put a switch across, in place of the pot strap, and the meter can be turned on and off whenever you want."

"And that's been done here?"

"Sure has."

Nim cautioned, "You're absolutely certain?"

"I'll swear to it."

The Property Protection man added, "I saw it, too. There isn't any doubt." He consulted a notebook. “The customer's name is Edgecombe."

"Okay," London said, "to hell with the dog! Call for a photo, and let's try to get evidence."

They waited while the serviceman used a radio transmitter in his truck, then Harry London led the small procession up the driveway, As the), neared the house, a tall, handsome woman, probably in her forties, emerged through the front door. She was wearing blue linen slacks and a matching silk shirt; long, dark brown hair was tied back with a scarf. Beside her was a German Shepherd, growling and straining on a leash which the woman held. She announced coldly, "I warned you men that if you continue trespassing I'll release this dog and you can take the consequences. Now get off this property!"

"Madam," London said firmly, "I caution you to hang on to that dog or tie it up. I'm a security officer for Golden State Power & Light"-he produced a badge-"and this is Mr. Goldman, a vice president of the company."

"Vice presidents don't impress me," the woman snapped. "My husband knows the president of your company well, and the chairman."

"In that case," Nim told her, "I'm sure he'll appreciate that everyone here today is simply doing his job. You are Mrs. Edgecombe?"

She answered haughtily, "Yes."

"Our Service Department has reported you have an illegal installation across your electric meter."

"If there is, we know nothing about it. My husband's an important orthopedic surgeon, and he's operating today or I'd call him to deal with your impertinence now."

For all the bravado, Nim thought, there was a hint of nervousness in the woman's eyes and voice. London caught it, too "Mrs. Edgecombe," he said, “we want to take photographs of the electric meter and some wires behind it; they lead to a switch in your garage. We'd appreciate it if you'd give us permission."

"And if I won't?"

“Then we'll seek a court order. But I should point out in that case everything will become a matter of public record."

The woman hesitated and Nim wondered if she realized Harry London was largely bluffing. By the time a court order was obtained the evidence could have been destroyed. But the exchange had flustered her. "That won't be necessary," she conceded. "Very well, do what you must, but be quick about it."

"Just one other thing, madam," London said. "When we're finished here, your electricity will be disconnected until the arrears, which our Billing Department will estimate, are paid."

"That's ridiculous! My husband will have plenty to say about that." Mrs. Edgecombe turned away, fastening the dog's leash to a steel ring in the wall. Nim observed that her hands were trembling.

* * *

"Why do they do it-people like that?" Nim posed the question softly, asking it of himself as much as Harry London. They were in London's car, headed once more for the shopping plaza where Nim would retrieve his own car, then drive downtown. He had seen more than enough of Brookside, he decided, and enough of power thievery to grasp truly, for the first time, the size and hydra-beaded nature of the beast.

“There's lots of reasons why they do it," London answered. "Where we’ve just been, and at the other places, too. For one thing, people talk. They like to boast about how smart they are, beating a big outfit like Golden State Power. And while they're talking, others listen, then do the same thing later."

"You think that explains epidemics like we've seen today?"

"It's some pieces in the puzzle."

"And the rest?"

"Some of its crooked tradesmen-the ones I really want to catch. They put the word around that they'll do the meter fixing-at a price. It all sounds easy, and people go along."

Nim said doubtfully, "That still doesn't explain that last place. The wealthy doctor-an orthopedic surgeon, one of the highest paid specialties. And you saw his wife, the house. Why?"

"I'll tell you something I learned as a cop," London said. "Don't let appearances fool you. Plenty of people with big incomes and flashy houses are deep in debt, struggling to stay afloat, to save a buck wherever they can, and not too fussy about bow. I'll bet the same thing's true of this whole place, Brookside. And look at it this way: Not so long ago utility bills didn't amount to much; but now bills are big and getting bigger, so some who wouldn't cheat before, because it wasn't worth it, have changed their minds. The stakes are higher; they'll take the risk."

Nim nodded agreement, adding, "And most public utilities are so huge and impersonal, people don't equate theft of power with other kinds of stealing. They're not as critical-the way they would be about burglary or purse snatching."

"I've done a lot of thinking about that part of it. I believe the whole thing's bigger." London stopped the car while waiting for a traffic light to change. When they were moving again he continued, “The way I see it, most people have decided the system stinks because our politicians are corrupt, in one way or another, so why should ordinary Joes punish themselves by always being honest? Okay, they say, one bunch got flushed out with Watergate, but the new people, who were so damned righteous before they got elected, are doing the same crooked things political payoffs and worse-now that they're in power."

"That's a pretty depressing viewpoint."

"Sure it is," London said. "But it explains a lot that's happening, and not just what we've seen today. I mean the crime explosion, all the way from big crime down to petty larceny. And I'll tell you something else: there are days-this is one-when I wish I was back in the Marines where everything seemed simpler and cleaner."

"It wouldn't now."

London sighed. "Maybe."

"You and your people did a good job today," Nim said.

"We're in a war." Harry London pushed aside his seriousness and grinned.

"Tell your boss-the commander-in-chief-we won a skirmish, and we'll win him some more."

9

"At the risk of inflating your ego," Ruth Goldman said across the breakfast table, "I'll tell you you were pretty good on TV last night. More coffee?"

"Yes, please." Nim passed his cup. "And thanks."

Ruth lifted the percolator and poured; as always, her movements were easy'

graceful and efficient. She had on an emerald green housecoat in vivid contrast to her neatly combed black hair, and her small, firm breasts were attractively visible as she leaned forward; when Nim and Ruth were courting he had referred to them fondly as "half-pint specials." At this moment her face had the merest trace of makeup, exactly the right amount, complementing a milk-and-roses complexion. No matter how early it was, Ruth always looked naturally impeccable. Nim, who had seen many other women in their morning-after shambles supposed he should be grateful.

It was Wednesday. Almost a week had passed since D-day at Brookside. Because he had been unusually tired-a result of long work hours and pressure over several weeks, culminating in last evening's session in a hot TV studio under lights-Nim had slept late this morning-late. Leah and Benjy had left for an all-day recreation program before he came down, and now he was having a leisurely breakfast with Ruth, something which happened rarely. Nim had already telephoned his office to say he would not be at work until midmorning.

"Leah staved up to watch the Good Evening Show," Ruth said. "Benjy wanted to, but fell asleep. Children aren't apt to say so, but they're both quite proud of you, you know. In fact they idolize you. Whatever you say, it's as if it came from God."

"I like this coffee," Nim said. "Is it a new brand?"

Ruth shook her bead. "It's because you're not drinking it on the run. Did you hear what I said about Leah and Benjy?"

"Yes, and I was thinking about it. I'm proud of the kids too." He chuckled.

"Is this my day for compliments?"

"If you're wondering if I want something from you, I don't. Except I'd like us to have breakfast this way more often."

He said, "I'll work on it." He wondered if Ruth was being especially agreeable because, like himself, she sensed the gap which had been growing between them of late-the gap created by his own indifference and, more recently, by Ruth's mysterious pursuit of some private interest, whatever that might be. Nim tried to remember, but couldn't, when they had last made love. Why was it, he speculated, that a mail could lose sexual interest in his own attractive wife, yet desire other women? He supposed the answer was familiarity, along with an urge for fresh territory, new conquests. Just the same, be thought guiltily, he should do something about sex with Ruth. Perhaps tonight.

“There were a couple of times on that TV show when you looked angry, ready to blow," she said.

"But I didn't. I remembered the stupid rules." It wasn't necessary to explain the management committee's "moderate line" decision. He had told Ruth about it the same day it happened and she was sympathetic.

"Birdsong was baiting you, wasn't be?"

“The son-of-a-bitch tried." Nim scowled, remembering. "It didn't work."

Davey Birdsong, who headed an activist consumer group called 11power & light for people," had been on the TV talk show too. Birdsong had made caustic comments about Golden State Power & Light, ascribing the basest motives to everything the company did. He had implied that Nim's personal objectives were no better. He also attacked GSP & L's latest application for an increase in rates, on which a decision was due soon. Despite all these provocations, Nim had kept his cool, reluctantly staying within the guidelines he had been given.

"This morning's Chronicle says Birdsong's group, as well as the Sequoia Club, will oppose the plan to develop Tunipah."

"Let me see."

She passed the paper. "It's on page seven."

That was something else about Ruth. Somehow she managed to stay a jump ahead of most others in keeping herself informed. It was characteristic that, as well as preparing breakfast, she had already been through the Chronicle-West. Nim riffled pages and found the item. It was brief and told him no more than Ruth had done already. But it gave him the idea for a course of action which made him impatient to be at his desk. He gulped the rest of his coffee and stood up.

"Will you be home for dinner tonight?"

"I'll try to be." As Ruth smiled gently, he remembered how many times he had said the same thing, then for some reason failed to show. Irrationally, as he had in his car the evening be had gone to Ardythe's, he wished that once in a while Ruth would be less patient. He asked her, "Why don't you blow up occasionally? Get mad?"

"Would it make any difference?"

He shrugged, not knowing what to make of her response, nor how to answer.

"Oh, there is one thing. Mother phoned yesterday. She and Dad would like us to go over for dinner a week from Friday and take Leah and Benjy."

Inwardly Nim groaned. Going to the home of the Neubergers, Ruth's parents, was like entering a synagogue; they proclaimed their Jewishness in myriad ways. The food was always announced pointedly as kosher; there were reminders that the Neubergers kept two separate sets of utensils and crockery, one each for flesh and dairy food. There would be a prayer over bread and wine before dinner as well as a ceremony over washing hands. After dinner would be solemn prayers which the Neubergers, in Eastern European tradition, referred to as "benching." If there were meat at table, Leah and Benjy would not be permitted to drink milk, as they liked to do at home. Then there would be the not-so-subtle pressures, the wondering aloud why Nim and Ruth failed to observe the Sabbath and holy days; glowing descriptions of bar mitzvahs the Neubergers had attended, along with the implication that, of course, Benjy would attend a Hebrew school so his bar mitzvah would take place when he reached thirteen. And later at home, because the children were the ages they were, and curious, there would be questions for Nim to answer, questions he wasn't ready for because of the ambivalence within himself.

Ruth invariably kept quiet at such times, though he wondered occasionally if her silence wasn't really an alliance with her parents against him. Fifteen years ago, when Ruth and Nim were married, Ruth made clear she didn't care one way or the other about Jewish observances; it was an obvious reaction to the Orthodox strictness of her home. But had she changed? Was Ruth, beneath the surface, a traditional Jewish mother, wanting for Leah and Benjy all the trappings her parents' faith demanded? He recalled what she had said a few minutes ago about himself and the children. "In fact they idolize you. Whatever you say, it's as if it came from God." Were the words an artful reminder of his own Jewish responsibility, a silken nudge toward religion? Nim had never made the mistake of taking Ruth's gentleness at its face value; beneath it, he realized, was as much real strength as any person could have.

But apart from all that, Nim knew there was no valid reason not to go to Ruth's parents, as she asked. It didn't happen often. And Ruth demanded very little of him, ever.

"Okay," he said, "Next week's pretty clear. When I get to the office I'll make sure about Friday and phone you."

Ruth hesitated, then said, "Don't bother doing that. Just tell me tonight."

" Why?

Again a second's hesitation. "I'm leaving right after you've gone. I'll be out all day."

"What's happening? Where are you going?"

"Oh, here and there." She laughed. "Do you tell me everywhere you go?"

So there it was again. The mystery. Nim felt a stab of jealousy against the unknown, then rationalized: Ruth had a point. As she had reminded him, there was plenty he didn't tell her.

"Have a good day," he said. "I'll see you this evening."

In the hallway, he put his arms around her and they kissed. Her lips were soft; her figure beneath the housecoat felt good. What a damn fool I am, be thought. Yes, definitely, sex tonight.

10

Despite his haste in leaving home, Nim drove downtown at a leisurely pace, avoiding the freeway and using quiet streets. He employed the time to think about the Sequoia Club, mentioned in this morning's Chronicle-West.

Though it was an organization which frequently opposed the programs of GSP&L, and sometimes thwarted them, Nim admired the Sequoia Club. His reasoning was simple. History showed that when giant industrial concerns like Golden State Power & Light were left to their own devices, they paid little or no heed to protecting the environment. Therefore a responsible restraining force was needed. The Sequoia Club filled that role.

The California-based club had achieved a national reputation for skill and dedication in fights to preserve what remained of the natural unspoiled beauty of America. Almost always its methods were ethical, its arguments judicious and sound. True, the club had critics, but few failed to accord it respect. One reason was the Sequoia Club's leadership, which, through its eighty years of existence, had been of the highest caliber, a tradition which the incumbent chairman-a former atomic scientist, Laura Bo Carmichael-was continuing. Mrs. Carmichael was able, internationally respected and, incidentally, a friend of Nim's.

He was thinking about her as he drove.

What he would do, he decided, was make a direct personal appeal to Laura Bo Carmichael concerning Tunipah and the other two power plants which Golden State Power proposed to build. Perhaps, if lie argued the urgent need convincingly, the Sequoia Club might not oppose the projects or at least would be moderate in opposition. He must arrange a meeting as soon as possible. Preferably today.

Nim had been driving automatically, paying little attention to street names. Now he noticed, at an arterial stop, that he was at the intersection of Lakewood and Balboa. It reminded him of something. What?

Suddenly he remembered. The day of the explosion and power failure two weeks ago, the chief dispatcher had produced a map shoving life-sustaining equipment in use in private homes. Colored circles on the map denoted kidney dialysis machines, oxygen generating units, iron lungs and similar apparatus. At Lakewood and Balboa a red circle had warned of a person dependent on an iron lung or some other kind of powered respirator. The equipment was in an apartment building. For some reason the memory had stayed with Nim; so had the user's name -Sloan. At the time, be recalled, be had looked at the small red circle and wondered what Sloan was like.

There was only one apartment house at the intersection-an eight-story, white stucco building, modest in design but, from its outward appearance, well maintained. Nim's car was alongside it now. A small forecourt contained several parking spaces, two unoccupied. Oil impulse, Nim turned in, wheeling the Fiat into one of the empty places. He got out and approached the apartment house entrance.

Above a series of mailboxes was a score of names, among them "K. Sloan."

Nim pressed a button beside the name. Moments later the front door opened. A wizened old man appeared, wearing baggy trousers and a windbreaker. He looked like an ancient squirrel as he peered at Nim through thick lenses. "You ring Sloan?"

"Yes, I did."

"I'm the janitor. Rings down my place, too,"

"Can I see Mr. Sloan?"

"Ain't no Mr. Sloan."

" Oh." Nim pointed to the mailbox. "Is it Mrs. Sloan, then? Or Miss?"

Unaccountably be had assumed Sloan to be a man.

"Miss Sloan. Karen. Who're you?"

"Goldman." Nim showed a GSP & L identification card. "Am I correct in believing Miss Sloan is an invalid?"

"You could be. Except she don't like being called that."

”How should I describe her, then?"

"Disabled. She's a quadriplegic. Know the difference between that and para?"

"I think so. A paraplegic is paralyzed from the waist down, a quadriplegic through the whole body."

"That's our Karen," the old man said. "Been that way since she was fifteen. You want to see her?"

“Do you know if it's convenient?"

'Soon find out." the janitor opened the front door wider. "Come in. This way."

A small lobby matched the building's exterior; it was simple and clean.

The old man led the way to an elevator, motioned Nim inside, then followed. As they ascended be volunteered, "Place ain't the Ritz. But we try to keep her shipshape."

"That shows," Nim said. The interior brass of the elevator gleamed and its machinery hummed smoothly.

They got out on the sixth floor. The janitor led the way and stopped before a door while he selected a key from a large bunch. He opened the door, knocked, then called out, "It's Jiminy. Brung a visitor for Karen."

"Come in," a new voice said, and Nim found himself facing a short, sturdy woman with a dark skin and Hispanic features. She wore a pink nylon smock similar to a nurse's uniform.

"You selling something?" the question was asked cheerfully, without hostility.

"No. I was just passing and...”

"Never mind. Miss Sloan likes visitors."

They were in a small, bright vestibule which opened onto a kitchen on one side and what appeared to be a living room on the other. In the kitchen, cheerful yellows and whites predominated; in the living room the decor was yellow and green. Part of the living room was out of sight and from it a pleasant voice called, "Come in-whoever you are."

Janitor said from behind Nim. "Got things to do

"I’ll leave you now," the janitor left.

As the outer door closed, Nim stepped inside the living room.

"Hello," the same voice said. "What do you know that's new and exciting?"

Long afterward, and through the months ahead when fateful events unfolded like succeeding tableaux of a drama, Nim would remember this moment-the first in which he ever saw Karen Sloan-in sharply vivid detail.

She was a mature woman, but appeared young and was extraordinarily beautiful. Nim guessed her age as thirty-six; later he would learn she was three years older. Her face was long with perfectly proportioned features-full, sensuous lips, now opened in a smile, wide blue eyes appraising Nim with frankness, and a pert nose, suggesting mischief. Her skin was flawless and seemed opalescent. Long blonde hair framed Karen Sloan's face; parted in the middle, it fell to her shoulders, with golden highlights glinting in a shaft of sunlight. Her hands were on a padded lapboard, the fingers long, nails manicured and shining. She wore an attractive light blue dress.

And she was in a wheelchair. A bulge in her dress showed that a respirator was beneath it, breathing for her. A tube, emerging below the dress hemline, was connected to a suitcase-like device secured to the rear of the chair. The respirator mechanism emitted a steady bum along with a hiss of air, inward and out, at the normal pace of breathing.

The chair's electric components were connected by a cord to a wall power outlet.

"Hello, Miss Sloan," Nim said. "I'm the electric man."

The smile widened. "Do you work on batteries or are you plugged in too?"

Nim grinned in response, a trifle sheepishly, and uncharacteristically he had a moment's nervousness. He wasn't sure what he had expected but, whatever it was, this exquisite woman before him was completely different. He said, "I'll explain."

"Please do. And won't you sit down?"

"Thank you." He chose a soft armchair. Karen Sloan moved her bead slightly, putting her mouth to a plastic tube extending on a gooseneck. She blew softly into the tube and at once her wheelchair swung around so she was facing him directly.

"Hey!" he said. "That's a neat trick."

"I can do lots more. If I sip instead of blow, the chair moves backward."

She showed him while be watched, fascinated.

"I'd never seen that," he told her. "I'm amazed."

"My head is the only part of me I can move." Karen said it matter-of-factly, as if speaking of a minor inconenience. "So one learns to do some necessary things in unusual ways. But we got sidetracked; on were going to tell me something. Please go on."

"I started to explain why I came," Nim said. "It all began two weeks ago, the day we had the power failure. I saw you as a small red circle on a map.

"Me-on a map?"

He told her about the Energy Control Center and GSP & L's watchfulness over special power users, like hospitals and private homes with life-sustaining equipment. "To be honest," he said, "I was curious.

That's why I dropped in today."

"That's nice," Karen said. "To be thought about, I mean. I do remember that day-well."

"When the power went off, bow did you feel?"

"A little frightened, I suppose. Suddenly my reading light went off and other electrical things stopped. Not the respirator, though. That switches over to battery right away."

The battery, Nim observed, was a twelve-volt type, as used in automobiles. It rested on a tray, also fixed to the wheelchair at the rear, below the respirator mechanism.

"What you always wonder," Karen said, "is how long the power will be off, and how long the battery will last."

"It ought to be good for several hours."

"Six and a half when fully charged-that's if I use the respirator only, without moving the chair. But when I go out shopping or visiting, as happens most days, I use the battery a lot and it gets run down."

"So if a power cut happened, then . . ."

She finished the sentence for him. "Josie-that's who you met coming in-would have to do something quickly." Karen added knowledgeably, “The respirator draws fifteen amps, the wheelchair-when it's in motion-another twenty."

"You've learned a lot about the equipment."

"If your life depended on it, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, I expect I would." He asked her, "Are you ever alone?"

"Never. Josie is with me most of the time, then two other people come in to relieve her. Also, Jiminy, the janitor, is very good. He helps with callers, the way he did with you." Karen smiled. "He doesn't let people in unless he's sure they're okay. You passed his test."

They went on chatting easily, as if they had known each other a long time.

Karen, Nim learned, had been stricken with poliomyelitis just one year before the Salk vaccine went into widespread use in North America and, with Sabin vaccine a few years later, wiped polio from the landscape. "My bug bit too soon," Karen said. "I didn't get under the wire."

Nim was moved by the simple statement. He asked, "Do you think about that one year much?"

"I used to-a lot. For a while I cried over that one-year difference. I'd ask: Why did I have to be one of the last few? And I'd think: If only the vaccine had come lust a little sooner, everything would have been different. I'd have walked, danced, been able to write, use my bands . . ."

She stopped, and in the silence Nim could hear the ticking of a clock and the soft purr of Karen's respirator. After a moment she went on, “Then I got to telling myself: Wishing won't change anything. What happened, happened. It can't be undone, ever. So I started making the best of what there was, living a day at a time, and when you do that, if something unexpected happens, you're grateful. Today you came." She switched on her radiant smile. "I don't even know your name."

When he told her, she asked, "Is Nim for Nimrod?"

"Yes."

"Isn't there something in the Bible . . . ?"

"In Genesis." Nim quoted, "'Cush also begat Nimrod who was the first man of might on earth. He was a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord."' He remembered hearing the words from his grandfather, Rabbi Goldman. Ile old man had chosen his grandson's name-one of the few concessions to the past that Nim's father, Isaac, had allowed.

"Are you a hunter, Nim?"

On the point of answering negatively, he remembered what Teresa Van Buren had said not long ago: "You're a hunter of women, aren't you?" Perhaps, he thought, if circumstances had been different, he would have hunted this beautiful woman, Karen. Selfishly be, too, felt sad about that year-too-late vaccine.

He shook his head. "I'm no hunter."

Later, Karen told him that for twelve years she had been cared for in hospitals, much of that time in an old-fashioned iron lung. Then, more modem, portable equipment was developed, making it possible for patients like herself to live away from institutions. At first she had gone back to live with her parents, but that hadn't worked. "It was too much of a strain on all of us." then she moved to this apartment where she had been for nearly eleven years.

“There are government allowances which pay the costs. Sometimes it's tight financially, but mostly I manage." Her father had a small plumbing business and her mother was a salesclerk in a department store, she explained. At the moment they were trying to accumulate money to buy Karen a small van which would increase her mobility. The van, which Josie or someone from Karen's family would drive, would be adapted to contain the wheelchair.

Although Karen could do almost nothing for herself, and had to be washed, fed, and put to bed by someone else, she told Nim she had learned to paint, holding a brush in her mouth. "And I can use a type writer," she told Nim. "It's electric and I work it with a stick in my teeth. Sometimes I write poetry. Would you like me to send you some?"

"Yes, please. I'd like that." He got up to go and was amazed to discover lie had been with Karen more than an hour.

She asked him, "Will you come again?"

"If you'd like me to."

"Of course I would-Nimrod." Once more the warm, bewitching smile. "I'd like to have you as a friend."

Josie showed him out.

* * *

The image of Karen, her breathtaking beauty, warm smile and gentle voice, stayed with Nim through the remainder of the drive downtown. He had, lie thought, never met anyone quite like her. He was still thinking of her as be left his car in the parking garage of Golden State Power & Light's headquarters building, three floors down from street level.

An express elevator, accessible only with a key, operated from the parking garage to the senior executive offices on the twenty-second floor. Nim used his key-a status symbol at GSP & L-and rode up alone. On the way, he remembered his decision to make a personal appeal to the Sequoia Club chairman.

His secretary, Victoria Davis, a young, competent black woman, looked up as lie entered his two-room office. "Hi, Vicki," he said. "Is there much in the mail?"

"Nothing that's urgent. There are some messages, though-including several saying you were good on TV last night. I thought so, too."

"Thanks." He grinned. "Welcome to my fan club."

"Oh, there's a 'private and confidential' on Your desk; it just come. And I have some things for you to sign." She followed him into his inner office. At the same moment a dull, heavy thud occurred some distance away. A water carafe and drinking glasses rattled; so did the window which overlooked an interior Courtyard.

Nim halted, listening. "What's that?"

"I've no idea. There was the same kind of noise a few minutes ago. Just before you got here."

Nim shrugged. It could be anything from an earthquake tremor to the effect of some heavy construction going on nearby. At his desk be riffled through the messages and glanced at the envelope which Vicki had referred to, marked "private and confidential." It was a buff manila envelope with a dab of sealing wax on the back. Absently be began to Opel-,

"Vicki, before we do anything else, see if you can get Mrs. Carmichael on the phone."

"At the Sequoia Club?"

"Right."

She put the papers she was carrying in a tray marked "signature" and turned to go. As she did, the outer office door flew open and Harry London raced in. His hair was disordered, his face red from exertion.

London saw Nim.

"No!" he screamed. "No!"

As Nim stood still in bewilderment, London flew across the room and hurled himself across the desk. He seized the manila envelope and put it down.

"Out of here! Fast! All of us!"

London grabbed Nim's arm and pulled, at the same time pushing Victoria Davis roughly ahead. They went through the outer office to the corridor outside, London pausing only long enough to slam both doors behind them.

Nim began an angry protest. "What the hell .

He didn't finish. From the inner office came the boom of an explosion. The corridor walls shook. A framed picture nearby fell to the floor, its glass shattering.

A second later another thud, like the earlier one Nim had beard but this time louder and clearly an explosion, came from somewhere beneath their feet. It was unmistakably within the building. Down the corridor, figures were running out of other doors.

"Oh Christ!" Harry London said. His voice was despairing.

Nim exclaimed urgently, "Dammit! What is it?"

Now they could hear excited shouting, telephones ringing stridently, the sound of approaching sirens in the street below.

"Letter bombs," London said. “They're not big, but enough to kill anybody close. That last one was the fourth. Fraser Fenton's dead, others injured.

Everyone in the building's being warned, and if you feel like praying, ask that there aren't anymore."

11

With a short stub of pencil, Georgos Winslow Archambault (Yale, class of'72) wrote in his journal:

Yesterday, a successful foray against the fascist-capitalistic forces of oppression!

An enemy leader-Fenton, president of Golden State Piss & Lickspittle-is dead. Good riddance!

In the honored name of Friends of Freedom, the headquarters bastion of the ruthless exploiters of the people's energy resources was successfully attacked. Out of ten F-of-F weapons directed at target, five scored direct hits. Not bad!

The true score of hits may be even greater since the establishment-muzzled press has, as usual, minimized this important people's victory.

Georgos repositioned the pencil stub. Even though it was uncomfortable, he invariably wrote with a stub, having once read that Mohandas K. Gandhi did so, holding that to discard a partially used pencil would be to denigrate the humble labor which created it.

Gandhi was one of Georges Archambault's heroes, as were Lenin, Marx, Engels, Mao Tse-tung, Renato Curcio, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Cesar Chavez and assorted others. (the anomaly that Mohandas Gandhi was an apostle of non-violence seemed not to bother him.) Georgos went on writing.

Furthermore, the capitalist-bootlicking press today sanctimoniously deplored the death and injury of what it labeled "innocent victims." How naively ridiculous!

In any war, so-called "innocents" are inevitably killed and maimed, and the larger the war, the larger the number of "innocent" casualties. When belligerents are the misnamed "great powers"-as in World Wars I and II and the despicable Vietnam aggression by America-such "innocents" are slaughtered in their thousands, like cattle, and who objects? No one!

Certainly not the dollar-worshiping press-Fuhrers and their know-nothing, toadying writers.

A just, social war, like that now being waged by Friends of Freedom, is no different-except that casualties are fewer.

Even at Yale, in written papers, Georgos had had the reputation among his professors of be laboring a point, spreading adjectives like buckshot. But then English had not been his major-it was physics and later be parlayed that degree into a doctorate in chemistry. Later still, the chemistry knowledge proved useful when he studied explosives -among other things-in Cuba. And all along the way his interests narrowed, as did his personal views on life and politics.

The journal entry continued:

Even the enemy press-which obediently exaggerates such matters rather than minimizes them-admits there were only two deaths and three major injuries. One of the dead was the senior management criminal, Fenton, the other a pig security guard-no loss! The rest were minor lackeys-typists, clerks, etc. -who should be grateful for their martyrdom in a noble cause. So much for the propaganda nonsense about "innocent victims"!

Georgos paused, his thin, ascetic face mirroring an intensity of thought.

As always, he took considerable pains over his journal, believing that one day it would be an important historical document, ranking alongside such works as Das Kapital and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung,

He began a new train of thought.

The demands of Friends of Freedom will be announced in a war communiqué today. They are:

-Free supply of electricity and gas for one year to the unemployed, those on welfare, and old people. At the end of a year the matter will be reviewed again by Friends of Freedom.

-An immediate 25 percent reduction in charges for electric power and gas supplied to small homes and apartments.

-Abandonment of plans to build more nuclear power plants. Existing nuclear plants to be closed immediately.

Failure to accept and obey these demands will result in a stepped-up program of attacks.

That would do for starters. And the threat of intensified action was a real one. Georgos glanced around the crowded, cluttered basement workroom in which he was writing. The supplies of gunpowder, fuses, blasting caps, pipe casings, glycerine, acids and other chemicals were ample. And he, as well as the three other freedom fighters who accepted his leadership, knew how to use them. He smiled, remembering the ingenious device which had gone into yesterday's letter bombs. A small plastic cylinder contained high explosive tetryl with a tiny detonator. Poised over the detonator was a spring-loaded firing pin and opening the envelope released the firing pin, which hit the detonator. Simple but deadly. The charge of tetryl was enough to blow the letter opener's head off, or a body wide open.

Obviously our demands are awaited because already the press and its docile ally television have begun echoing the Golden State Piss & Lickspittle line that no policies will be changed "as a result of terrorism."

Garbage! Empty-headed stupidity! Of course terrorism will cause changes. It always has, and always will. History abounds with examples.

Georgos considered some of the examples drilled into him during the Cuban revolutionary training, That was a couple of years after getting his doctorate, and in between the two he had been increasingly consumed by hatred for what he saw as the decadent, tyrannical country of his birth. He contemptuously spelled it amerika.

His general disenchantment had not been helped by news that his father, a wealthy New York playboy, had gone through his eighth divorce and remarriage, and that Georgos' mother, an internationally adored Greek movie actress, was again between husbands, having shed her sixth. Georgos loathed both his parents and what they represented, even though he had not seen either since he was nine years old nor, in the intervening twenty years, had be beard from them directly. His costs of living and schooling, including the fees at Yale, were paid impersonally through an Athens law firm.

So terrorism wouldn't change anything, eh?

Terrorism is an instrument of social war. It permits a few enlightened individuals (such as Friends of Freedom) to weaken the iron grip and will of reactionary forces which hold, and abuse, power.

Terrorism began the successful Russian Revolution.

The Irish and Israeli republics owe their existence to terrorism. IRA terrorism in the first World War led to an independent Eire. Irgun terrorism in Palestine forced the British to give up their Mandate so the Jews could establish Israel.

Algeria won independence from France through terrorism.

The PLO, now represented at international conferences and the UN, used terrorism to gain worldwide attention.

Even more world attention has been achieved by terrorism of the Italian Red Brigade.

Georgos Winslow Archambault stopped. Writing tired him. Also, be realized, he was drifting out of the revolutionary jargon which (he had also learned in Cuba) was important, both as a psychological weapon and an emotional outlet. But it was sometimes bard to sustain.

He stood up, stretched and yawned. He had a good, lithe body and kept himself fit with a rigid daily exercise schedule. Glancing in a small, cracked wall mirror be fingered his bushy but trim moustache. He had grown it immediately after the attack on the La Mission generating plant when be had posed as a Salvation Army officer. According to news reports the following day, a plant security guard had described him as clean-shaven, so the moustache might at least confuse identification, if it ever came to that. The Salvation Army uniform had, of course, been destroyed long since.

The memory of the La Mission success pleased Georgos, and he chuckled.

One thing he had not done, either before or after La Mission, was grow a beard. That would be like a signature. People expected revolutionaries to be bearded and unkempt; Georgos was careful to be precisely the reverse. Whenever he left the modest east-side house lie had rented he could be mistaken for a stockbroker or banker. Not that that was difficult for him since he was fastidious by nature and dressed well. The money which the Athens lawyer still paid regularly into a Chicago bank account helped with that, though the amount was less than it used to be, and Georgos needed considerably more cash to finance the future plans of Friends of Freedom.

Fortunately be was already getting some outside help; now the amount from that source would have to be increased.

Only one factor contradicted the cultivated bourgeois image was Georgos' hands.

In the early days of his interest in chemicals, and then explosives, he had been careless and worked without protective gloves. As a result his hands were scarred and discolored. He was more careful now but the damage was done. He had considered seeking skin grafts, but the risks seemed high. The best he could do, when away from the house, was keep his hands out of sight as much as possible.

The agreeable odor of lunch-stuffed bell peppers-drifted down to him from above. His woman, Yvette, was an accomplished cook who knew what Georgos liked and tried to please him. She was also in awe of his learning, having had a minimum of schooling herself.

He shared Yvette with the three other young freedom fighters who lived in the house-Wayde, a scholar like Georgos and a disciple of Marx and Engels; Ute, an American Indian who nursed a burning hatred of the institutions which eclipsed his people's nationhood; and Felix, a product of Detroit's inner city ghetto, whose philosophy was to burn, kill or otherwise destroy everything alien to his own bitter experience since birth.

But, for all the sharing with the others, Georgos had a proprietorial feeling, bordering on affection, for Yvette. At the same time, he despised himself for his own failure in an aspect of the Revolutionary Catechism (attributed to the nineteenth-century Russians, Bakunin and Nechayev), which read in part:

The revolutionary is a lost man; he has no interests of his own, no feelings, no habits, no belongings . . . Everything in him is absorbed by a single, exclusive interest, one thought, one passion-the revolution. . . He has broken every tie with the civil order, with the educated world and all laws, conventions and . . . with the ethics of this world.

All the tender feelings of family life, of friendship, love, gratitude and even honor must be stilled in him . . . Day and night he must have one single thought, one single purpose: merciless destruction . . .

The character of the true revolutionary has no place for any romanticism, sentimentality, enthusiasm or seduction . . . in ways and everywhere he must become not what his own inclination would have him become, but what the general interest of the revolution demands.

Georges closed his journal, reminding himself that the war communiqué, with its just demands, must arrive at one of the city's radio stations later today. As usual, it would be left in a safe location, then the radio station advised by phone. The radio idiots would fall all over themselves to pick it up.

The communiqué, Georgos thought with satisfaction, would make a lively item on the evening news.

12

"First of all," Laura Bo Carmichael said when they had ordered drinks -a martini for her, a bloody mary for Nim Goldman-"I'd like to say how sorry I am about your president, Mr. Fenton. I didn't know him, but what happened was shameful and tragic. I hope the people responsible are found and punished."

The Sequoia Club chairman was a slender, svelte woman in her late sixties with a normally brisk manner and alert, penetrating eyes. She dressed severely, wore flat-heeled shoes, and had her hair cropped short, as if to exorcise her femininity. Perhaps, Nim thought, it was because, as an early atomic scientist, Laura Bo Carmichael had competed in a field which at the time, was dominated by men.

They were in the elegant Squire Room of the Fairhill Hotel, where they had met for lunch at Nim's suggestion. It was a week and a half later than he had intended, but the turmoil which followed the latest bombing at GSP&L had kept him occupied. Elaborate security measures, which Nim had shared in planning, were now in force at the giant utility's headquarters. More work had also conic his way as a result of the critical need for a rate increase, now being considered by the Public Utilities Commission.

Acknowledging the remark about Fraser Fenton, he admitted, "It was a shock, particularly after the earlier deaths at La Mission. I guess we're all running scared right now."

And it was true, lie thought. The company's senior executives, from the chairman down, were insisting on low profiles. They did not want to be in the news and thereby expose themselves to terrorist attention. J. Eric Humphrey had given orders that his name was no longer to be used in company announcements or news releases, nor would he be available to the press, except possibly for off-the-record sessions. His home address had been withdrawn from all company records and was now a guarded secret-as much as anything of that kind could be. Most senior executives already had unlisted home phone numbers. no chairman and senior officers would have bodyguards during any activity where they might be considered targets-including weekend golf games.

Nim was to be the exception.

His assistant, the chairman had made clear, would continue to be GSP & L's policy spokesman, Nim's public appearances, if anything, increasing.

It put him, Nim thought wryly, squarely on the firing line. Or, more precisely, the bombing line.

The chairman had also, quietly, increased Nim's salary. Hazardous duty pay, Nim thought, even though the raise was overdue.

"Although Fraser was our president," he explained to Laura Bo, "he was not the chief executive officer and, in some ways, wasn't in the mainstream of command. He was also five months from retirement."

"That makes it even sadder. How about the others?"

"One of the injured died this morning. A woman secretary." Nim had known her slightly. She was in the treasurer's department and had authority to open all mail, even that marked "private and confidential." the privilege had cost her her life and saved that of her boss, Sharlett Underhill, to whom the booby-trapped envelope was addressed. Two of the five bombs which exploded had injured several people who were nearby; an eighteen-year-old billing clerk had lost both hands.

A waiter brought their drinks and Laura Bo instructed him, “These are to be on separate checks. And the lunch."

"Don't worry," Nim said, amused. "I won't suborn you with my company expense account."

"You couldn't if you tried. However, on principle I won't take anything from someone who might want to influence the Sequoia Club."

"Any influencing I try will be out in the open. I simply thought that over a meal was a good way to talk."

"I'll listen to you anytime, Nim, and I'm happy to have lunch. But I'll still pay for my own."

They had first met, years before, when Nim was a senior at Stanford and Laura Bo was a visiting lecturer. She had been impressed by his penetrating questions, be by her willingness to address them frankly.

They had kept in touch and, even though they were adversaries at times, respected each other and stayed friends.

Nim sipped his bloody mary. "It's about Tunipah mostly. But also our plans for Devil's Gate and Fincastle."

"I rather thought it would be. It might save time if I told you the Sequoia Club intends to oppose them all."

Nim nodded. The statement did not surprise him. He thought for a moment, then chose his words carefully.

" What I'd like you to consider, Laura, is not just Golden State Power & Light, or the Sequoia Club, or even the environment, but a whole wider spectrum. You could call it 'basic civilized values,' or 'the life we lead,' or maybe-more accurately-'minimum expectations."'

"Actually, I think about those things a good deal."

"Most of us do, but lately not enough-or realistically. Because everything under all those headings is in peril. Not just in part, not a few bits and pieces of life as we know it, but everything. Our entire system is in danger of coming apart, of breaking up."

"That isn't a new argument, Nim. I usually hear it in conjunction with a line like, 'If this particular application-to build a polluting this or that, exactly where and how we want it-is not approved by tomorrow at the latest, then disaster will be swift and sure."'

Nim shook his head. "You're playing dialectics with me, Laura. Sure, what you just said is stated or implied sometimes; at Golden State we've been guilty of it ourselves. But what I'm speaking of now is overall-and not posturing, but reality."

Their waiter reappeared and presented two ornate menus with a flourish.

Laura Bo ignored hers. "An avocado and grapefruit salad with a glass of skim milk."

Nim banded back his own menu. "I'll have the same."

The waiter went away looking disappointed.

"What seems impossible for more than a handful of people to grasp," Nim continued, "is the total effect when you add together all the resource changes and calamities-natural plus political-which have happened, virtually at once."

"I follow the news, too." Laura Bo smiled. "Could it be I've missed something?"

"Probably not. But have you done the addition?"

"I think so. But give me your version."

"Okay. Number one, North America is almost out of natural gas. All that remains is seven or eight years' supply, and even if new gas reserves arc found, the best we can hope for is to serve existing users. No new customers can be taken on-now or later. So for large-scale, unlimited use we're at the end of the line, except for gasification of our coal reserves, and stupidity in Washington has slowed that to a walk. Do you agree?"

"Of course. And the reason we're running out of natural gas is because the big utility companies-yours and others-put profits ahead of conservation and squandered a resource which could have lasted half a century more."

Nim grimaced. "We responded to public demand, but never mind. I'm talking hard facts, and how all that natural gas got used is history. It can't be undone." On his fingers he ticked off a second point. "Now, oil. There are still big supplies untapped, but the way oil is being guzzled, the world could be scraping the bottom of its wells by the turn of the century-which isn't far away. Coupled with that, all industrialized free world nations are dependent more and more on imported oil, which leaves us open, any damn day the Arabs want to kick us in the ass again, to political and economic blackmail."

He stopped, then added, "Of course, we should be liquefying coal, just as the Germans did in World War II. But the politicians in Washington can get more votes by holding televised hearings where they vilify the oil companies."

"You have a certain glib persuasiveness, Nim. Have you ever thought of running for office?"

"Should I try at the Sequoia Club?"

"Perhaps not."

"All right," he said, "so much for natural gas and oil. Next, consider nuclear power."

"Must we?"

He stopped, regarding her curiously. At the mention of "nuclear," Laura Bo's face had tightened. It always did. In California and elsewhere she was an impassioned foe of nuclear power plants, her opinions listened to respectfully because of her association with the World War II Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs.

Nim said, without looking at her, "That word is still like a dagger in the heart to you, isn't it?"

Their lunch had arrived, and she paused until the waiter had gone before replying.

"I imagine you know by now that I still see the mushroom cloud."

"Yes," he said gently. "I know, and I think I understand."

"I doubt that, you were so young, you don't remember. You weren't involved, as I was."

Though her words were controlled, the agony of years still seethed beneath them. Laura Bo had been a young scientist who came to the atomic bomb project in the last six months before Hiroshima. At the time she had wanted desperately to be a part of history, but after the first bomb-code name: Little Boy-had been dropped, she was horrified and sickened. What gave her greatest guilt, however, was that she had not protested, after Hiroshima, the dropping of the second bomb-code name: Fat Man-on Nagasaki. True, there had been only three days between the two. Equally true, no protest she might have made would have stayed the Nagasaki bomb and saved the eighty thousand souls who died there or were mutilated, merely-as many believed-to satisfy military and scientific curiosity. But she had not protested, to anyone, and thus her guilt was unalloyed.

She said, thinking aloud, “They didn't need the second bomb, you know.

It was totally unnecessary. The Japanese were going to surrender because of Hiroshima. But Fat Man was a different design from Little Boy, and those responsible wanted to try it out, to learn if it would work. It did."

"It's all a long time ago," Nim said. "And the question has to be asked: Should what happened then be a factor in building nuclear plants today?"

Laura Bo said with finality, "To me the two things are inseparable."

Nim shrugged. He suspected the Sequoia Club chairman was not the only anti-nuclear lobbyist expiating personal or collective guilt. But true or false, it made little difference now.

"In one way you and your people have won the nuclear battle," he declared. "You won because you've imposed a stalemate, and you did it, not by logic or because you had a majority in your favor, but by legal ruses and delay. Along that route some of the restraints you insisted on were good; we needed them. Others are absurd. But, while it all happened, you forced the cost of nuclear plants so high, and made the outcome of any nuclear proposal so uncertain, that most utilities simply can't commit themselves anymore. They can't take a chance of waiting five to ten years, spending tens of millions in preliminaries, and then being turned down."

Nim paused, then added, “Therefore at every point in planning we need an escape hatch, a clear alternative route to go. That's coal."

Laura Bo Carmichael picked at her salad.

"Coal and air pollution go together," she said. "Any coal-burning plant must be sited with extreme care."

"Which is why we chose Tunipah."

“There are ecological reasons why that choice is wrong."

"Will you tell me what they are?"

"Certain species of plants and wildlife are found almost nowhere else but in the Tunipah area. What you're proposing would endanger them."

Nim asked, "Is one of the endangered plant species the Furbish lousewort?"

"Yes.

He sighed. Rumors about Furbish lousewort-a wild snapdragon had already reached GSP & L. The flower was rare and once believed extinct, but recently new growths had been discovered, One, in Maine, had been used by environmentalists to halt a $6oo million hydroelectric project already.

"You know, of course," Nim said, "that botanists admit the Furbish lousewort has no ecological value and isn't even pretty."

Laura Bo smiled. "Perhaps, for the public hearings, we'll find a botanist who takes an opposite view. Then there's the other Tunipah inhabitant to be considered-the Microdipodops."

Nim asked, "What in hell is that?"

"It's sometimes known as a kangaroo mouse."

"Oh, my God!" Before their meeting Nim had cautioned himself to stay cool, but found his resolve slipping. "You'd let a mouse, or mice, prohibit a project which will benefit millions of people?"

"I expect," Laura Bo said calmly, "those relative benefits are something we'll be discussing in the months ahead."

"You're damn right we will! And I suppose you'll have the same kind of objections to the Fincastle geothermal plant and Devil's Cate pumped storage, both of which are the cleanest type of operation known to man or nature."

"You really can't expect me, Nim, to give away all our reasons for opposition. But I assure you we will have persuasive arguments against both."

Impetuously Nim called to a passing waiter, "Another bloody mary!“ He motioned to Laura Bo's empty martini glass, but she shook her bead.

"Let me ask you something." Nim kept his voice controlled, annoyed at himself for revealing his anger a moment ago. "Where would you locate any of those plants?"

"That's really not my problem. It's yours."

"But wouldn't you-or, rather, the Sequoia Club-oppose anything we proposed, no matter where we suggested putting it?"

Laura Bo didn't answer, though her mouth tightened.

“There's another factor I left out," Nim said. "Weather. Climate patterns are changing worldwide, making the energy outlook-especially electrical energy-worse. Meteorologists say we're facing twenty years of colder weather and regional droughts. We've already seen the effect of both in the mid-seventies."

There was a silence between them, punctuated by the restaurant sounds and a bum of voices from other tables. Then Laura Bo Carmichael said, "Let me be clear about something. Exactly why did you ask me here today?"

"To appeal to you-and the Sequoia Club-to look at the big picture, and then to moderate your opposition."

"Has it occurred to you that you and I are looking at two different big pictures?"

"If we are, we shouldn't be," Nim said. "We're living in the same world."

He persisted, "Let me come back to where I started. If we-Golden State Power-are blocked in everything, the result can only be catastrophic in ten years or less. Daily blackouts, long ones, will be a norm.

That means industry dislocation and massive unemployment, maybe as high as fifty percent. Cities will be in chaos. Few people realize how much we live by electricity, though they will-when they're deprived of electric power in a big way. Out in the country there'll be crop failures because of limited irrigation, resulting in food shortages, with prices going through the roof. I tell you, people will lack the means to live; they'll go hungry, there will be a bigger impact on America than the Civil War.

It will make the 1930’s depression look like a tea party. It isn't imagination, Laura. Not any of it. It's hard, cold fact. Don't you and your people care?"

Nim gulped at his bloody mary, which had arrived while he was talking.

"All right," Laura Bo said; her voice was harder, less friendly than when they started. "I've sat here through all you've had to say. Now it's my turn, and you listen carefully." She pushed her plate away, only half of the salad eaten.

"All your thinking, Nim, and that of others like you is near-term. Environmentalists, including the Sequoia Club, are looking at the long range future. And what we intend to halt, by any means, is three centuries of spoliation of this earth."

He interjected, "In some ways you've already done that."

"Nonsense! We've scarcely made a dent, and even the little we've achieved will be undone if we let ourselves be seduced by voices of expediency. Voices like yours."

:'All that I'm pleading for is moderation."

'What you call moderation I see as a step backwards. And taking it won't preserve a habitable world."

Nim said scornfully, not bothering to conceal his feelings anymore, "How habitable do you think the kind of world will be which I just described-with less and less electric power?"

"It might surprise all of us by being better than you think," Laura Bo answered calmly. "More important, we'd be moving the way civilization should-toward less waste, less opulence, a lot less greed, and a less materialistic standard of living which would be a good thing for us all."

She paused, as if weighing her words, then continued, "We've lived so long here with the notion that expansion is good, that bigger is better and more is mightier, that people are brainwashed into believing it's true. So they worship 'gross national product' and 'full employment,' overlooking the fact that both are suffocating and poisoning us. In what was once 'America the Beautiful' we've created an ugly, filthy concrete wasteland, belching ashes and acids into what used to be clean air, all the while destroying natural life-human, animal and vegetable. We've turned sparkling rivers into stinking sewers, glorious lakes into garbage dumps; now, along with the rest of the world, we're fouling the seas with chemicals and oil. All of it happens a little at a time. Then, when the spoilage is pointed out, your kind of people pleads for 'moderation' because, you say, 'This time around we won't kill many fish,' or 'We won't poison much vegetation,' or, 'We'll only destroy a little more beauty.' Well, some of us have seen it happen too long and too often to believe that canard anymore. So what we've done is dedicate ourselves to saving something of what's left. Because we think there are things in this world more important than GNP and full employment, and one of them is preserving some cleanliness and beauty, plus holding back a share of natural resources for generations not yet born, instead of squandering everything here and now. And those are the reasons the Sequoia Club will fight Tunipah, and your Devil's Gate pumped storage plant, and Fincastle geothermal. And I'll tell you something else-I think we'll win."

"I agree with some of what you've said," Nim acknowledged. "You know I do, because we've talked about it before. But the mistake you make is to stomp on every opinion that's different from yours, and set yourself up as God, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, rolled up into one. Laura, you're part of a tiny group which knows what's best for everyone -or thinks it does-and you're prepared to ignore practicalities and damn the rest of us while you have your way like spoiled children. In the end you may destroy us all."

Laura Bo Carmichael said coldly, "I don't believe we have anything more to say to each other." She beckoned their waiter. "Please bring our separate checks."

13

Ardythe Talbot led the way into her living room.

"I thought you'd never call," she said. "If you hadn't, in a day or two I was going to call you."

"We've had more trouble and I'm afraid it kept me busy," Nim told her.

"I suppose you heard about it."

It was early evening. Nim had driven to Ardythe's-as be put it to himself, "on the way home." This afternoon, depressed by his meeting with Laura Bo Carmichael and blaming himself for the antagonism with which it ended, he had telephoned Ardythe on impulse. Predictably, she was warm and friendly. "I've been feeling lonely," she confided, "and I'd love to see you. Please come out after work and have a drink."

But when he arrived a few minutes ago it was clear that what Ardythe had in mind was more than a drink. She had greeted him with an embrace and kiss which left no doubt of her intentions. Nim wasn't averse to what seemed likely to follow, but for a while over drinks they settled for conversation.

"Yes, I did hear what happened," Ardythe said. "Has the whole world gone mad?"

"I guess it always has been. When it's close to home you notice it more."

Today, Nim thought, Ardythe seemed greatly improved from the grim day nearly a month ago when she learned of Walter's death. Then, and at the funeral-which was the last time she and Nim had seen each other-she seemed drawn and old. In the meantime, clearly, Ardythe's vitality and attractiveness had returned. Her face, arms and legs were tanned, and the shapely outline of her body beneath a snug print dress reminded him again of the excitement they aroused in each other last time he was here. Nim remembered, years ago, coming across a book called In Praise of Older Women. Though he recalled little more about it than the title, he had a notion now of what the author must have had in mind.

"Walter always believed," Ardythe said, "that everything that happens in the world-wars, bombings, pollution, all the rest-are a necessary part of the balance of nature. Did he ever talk to you about that?"

Nim shook his head. Though he and the dead chief engineer had been friends, their talk was usually practical, seldom philosophic.

"Usually Walter kept that kind of thinking to himself," Ardythe said.

"He'd tell me, though. He used to say, 'People think human beings have control over the present and future, but we really don't.' And: 'Man's apparent free will is a delusion; human peryersity is just one more instrument of the balance of nature.' Walter believed even war and disease have a purpose in nature-to thin out populations which the earth can't support. 'Humans,' he once said, 'are like lemmings who over-multiply, then rush over a cliff to kill themselves-except that humans do it more elaborately."'

Nim was startled. Though Ardythe's words were not in Walter Talbot's broad Scots accent, just the same Nim could hear an uncanny echo of Walter, who, when alive, expressed himself in just that thoughtful, half-sardonic way. How strange, too, that Walter should have stripped his mind bare for Ardythe, whom Nim had never regarded as a deep thinker. Or was it strange at all? Perhaps, Nim reasoned, he was learning about a mental intimacy of marriage which he himself had never known.

He wondered how Laura Bo Carmichael would react to Walter's conviction that environmental pollution was a needed part of nature's balance, a facet of some dimly perceived master plan. Then remembering his own spiritual questing recently, he asked Ardythe, "Did Walter equate the balance of nature with God?"

"No. He always maintained that that was too easy, too elementary he said God was 'man-created, a straw grasped at by small minds afraid of darkness . ..'" Ardythe's voice trailed off. Suddenly Nim saw tears course down her face.

She wiped them away. "This is the time of day I miss Walter most. It's the time we would talk."

For a moment there was an awkwardness between them, then Ardythe said firmly, "No, I won't let myself go on being depressed." She had been sitting near Nim and now moved closer. He became aware of her perfume, the same perfume which so aroused him the last time he was here. She said softly, with a smile, "I think all that talk of nature has affected me."

Then, as they reached for each other, "Make love to me, Nim! I need you more than ever."

His arms around her tightened as they kissed fiercely. Ardythe's lips were moist and giving and she sighed with pleasure as their hands explored each other, both remembering the time before. Nim's own desire, never far below the surface, surged urgently so that he cautioned with a whisper, "Let's slow down! Wait!"

She whispered back, "We can go to my bedroom. It will be better." He felt her stir; she stood up. So did Nim.

Still close, they ascended the stairs. Except for the sound of their movements, the house was silent. Ardythe's bedroom was at the end of a short landing and the door was open. Inside, Nim saw, the coverlet and top sheet were already folded back. Ardythe had clearly made her plans before he got here. He remembered, from a conversation long ago, that Ardythe and Walter had occupied separate bedrooms. Though no longer troubled by the inhibitions of a month ago, Nim was glad they would not be in Walter's bed.

He helped Ardythe off with the tight-fitting dress he had admired and shed his own clothes quickly. They sank together onto the bed, which was soft and cool. "You were right," he murmured happily, "it is better here." then impatience conquered them. As be entered her, she thrust her body forward and cried aloud with joy. Minutes later, passion expended, they lay contented and entwined. Nim reflected on something he had once heard: That the sex act left some men drained and depressed, wondering why they had gone to all the trouble which preceded it. But it never happened that way to Nim. Once more, as always, he felt uplifted and renewed. Ardythe said softly, "You're a sweet, tender man. Is there any way you can stay the night?"

He shook his head. "Not this time."

"I suppose I shouldn't have asked." She traced a finger down his face, following the lines around his mouth. "I promise I won't be greedy, Nim, or bother you. Just come sometimes, when you can."

He promised he would, though wondering how to manage it amid the pressures and complications which grew in number daily. While they were dressing, Ardythe said, "I've been going through Walter's papers and there are some I'd like to turn over to you. Things he brought home from the office. They ought to go back."

"Sure, I'll take them," Nim agreed.

Ardythe showed him where the papers were-in three large cardboard cartons in what had been Walter's den. Nim opened two of the cartons and found the contents to consist of filed reports and letters. He riffled through a few while Ardythe was in the kitchen making coffee; he had declined another drink.

The papers appeared to concern matters in which Walter Talbot had taken a special personal interest. A good many were several years old and no longer relevant. One series of files contained copies of Walter's original report on theft of service and correspondence afterward. At the time, Nim remembered, the report attracted wide attention in the utility industry and was circulated far beyond GSP & L. As a result, Walter had taken on the coloration of an expert. There had even been a court case in the East in which he appeared as an expert witness, part of his report being admitted into evidence. Later, the case had gone to higher courts, Walter's report along with it. Nim had forgotten the eventual outcome; not that it mattered now, he thought.

He glanced through more correspondence, then replaced the files and closed the cartons. After that be carried them out to the hallway so be would remember to take them with him to his car.

14

The earth underfoot vibrated. A great roaring, like a covey of jet airplanes taking off together, shattered the near-silence and a fat plume of steam shot violently skyward. Instinctively, those in the small group standing on a knoll pressed hands over their ears in self-protection. A few appeared frightened.

Teresa Van Buren, uncovering her own ears momentarily, waved her arms and shouted, urging a return to the chartered bus in which the group arrived, No one heard the shouts but the message was clear. The twenty or so men and women moved hastily toward the bus parked fifty yards away.

Inside the air-conditioned vehicle, with doors closed tightly, the noise from outside was less intense.

"Jesus H. Christ!" one of the men protested. "That was a lousy trick to pull, and if I've lost my hearing I'll sue the goddamned utility."

Teresa Van Buren asked him, "What did you say?"

"I said if I've frigging well gone deaf . . ."

"I know," she interrupted, "I heard you the first time. Just wanted to make sure you hadn't."

Some of the others laughed.

"I swear to you," the GSP & L public relations director told the group of reporters on the press tour, "I had no idea that was going to happen.

The way it worked out, we just got lucky. Because, folks, what you had the privilege of seeing was a new geothermal well come in."

She said it with the enthusiasm of a wildcatter who has just brought in a Texas gusher.

Through windows of the still stationary bus, they looked back at the drill rig they had been watching when the unscheduled eruption occurred.

In appearance it was the same kind of tower-topped mechanism used in an oil field; it could, in fact, be moved and converted to oil exploration at any time. Like Teresa Van Buren, the hard-hatted crew clustered around the rig was beaming.

Not far away were other geothermal wellheads, their natural pressurized steam deflected into huge insulated pipes. An aboveground network of the pipes, covering several square miles like a plumber's nightmare, conveyed the steam to turbine generators in a dozen separate buildings, severe and square, perched on ridges and in gullies. Combined output of the generators was, at this moment, better than seven hundred thousand kilowatts, more than enough electricity to sustain a major city. The new well would supplement this power.

Within the bus, Van Buren regarded a TV cameraman who was busy switching film containers. "Did you get pictures when it happened?"

"Damn right!" Unlike the reporter who had complained-a minor league stringer for some small-town papers-the TV man looked pleased. He finished his film changing. "Ask the driver to open the door, Tess. I want a shot from another angle."

As he went out, a smell of hydrogen sulfide-like rotten eggs wafted in.

"Migawd, it stinks!" Nancy Molineaux of the California Examiner wrinkled her delicate nose.

"At European health spas," a middle-aged Los Angeles Times writer told her, "you'd have to pay to breathe that stuff."

"And if you decide to print that," Van Buren assured the L.A, Timesman, "we'll carve it on stone and salute it twice a day."

The press party had traveled from the city, starting early this morning, and was now in the rugged mountains of California's Sevilla County, site of Golden State Power's existing geothermal generating plants. Later they would move on to neighboring Fincastle Valley, where the utility hoped to create a further geothermal power complex. Tomorrow, the same group would visit a hydroelectric plant and the intended site of another.

Both proposed developments were soon to be the subject of public bearings. The two-day excursion was intended as a media preview.

"I'll tell you something about that smell," the PR director continued.

“The hydrogen sulfide in the steam is only present in small amounts, not enough to be toxic. But we get complaints-mostly from real estate people who want to sell land in these mountains for resort development. Well, the smell was always here because steam filtered up through the ground, even before we harnessed it to generate electricity. What's more, old-timers say the smell isn't any worse now than it was originally."

"Can you prove that?" a reporter from the San lose Mercury asked.

Van Buren shook her bead. "Unfortunately no one had the foresight to take air samples before drilling began. So we can never compare the 'before' and 'after,' and we're stuck with the critics."

"Who are probably right" San lose Mercury said sardonically. "Everybody knows a big outfit like Golden State Power bends the truth now and then."

"I'll take that as a joke," the PR director responded. "But one thing is true. We try to meet our critics halfway."

A new voice said skeptically, "Give one example."

“There's one right here. It has to do with the smell. Because of the objections I told you about, we located two recently built power plants on ridges. There are strong air currents there which dissipate all odors quickly."

"So what happened?" Nancy Molineaux asked.

“There have been even more complaints than before-from environmentalists who say we've ruined the skyline."

There was mild laughter and one or two people wrote in notebooks.

"We had another no-win situation," Van Buren said. "GSP & L made a film about our geothermal generating system. When we started, the script had a scene showing bow a hunter named William Elliott discovered this place in 1847. He shot a grizzly bear, then looked up from his rifle sights and saw steam gushing from the ground. Well, some wildlife people read the script and said we ought not to show a grizzly being killed because bears are now protected here. So . . . The script was rewritten. In the film the hunter misses. The bear gets away."

A radio reporter with a tape machine going asked, "What's wrong with that?"

“The descendants of William Elliott threatened to sue us. They said their ancestor was a famous hunter and a crack shot. He wouldn't have missed the grizzly; he'd have shot it. Therefore the film maligned his reputation-and the family's."

"I remember that," the L.A. Timesman said.

Van Buren added: “The point I'm making is: In advance of anything we do-as a public utility-we can be certain we'll be kicked in the butt from one direction or the other, sometimes both."

"Would you prefer us to weep now?" Nancy Molineaux inquired. "Or later?"

The TV cameraman rapped on the bus door and was readmitted.

"If everyone's ready we'll move on to lunch," Van Buren said. She motioned to the bus driver. "Let's go."

A feature writer from New West magazine asked her, "Any booze, Tess?"

"Maybe. If everyone agrees it's off the record." As she looked around inquiringly there were calls of "Okay," "Off the record," and "That's a deal."

"In that case-yes, drinks before lunch."

Two or three in the bus gave a ragged cheer.

Behind the exchange was a piece of recent history.

Two years earlier GSP & L had been generous in supplying food and liquor during a similar press tour. The press representatives had eaten and imbibed with gusto, then, in published reports, some had sniped at GSP & L for extravagant entertaining at a time of rising utility bills. As a result, food supplied to the press nowadays was deliberately modest and, unless an off-the-record pledge was given, liquor was withheld.

The stratagem worked. Whatever else the press criticized, they now kept silent* about their own care and feeding.

The bus traveled about a mile within the geothermal field's rugged terrain, over narrow roads, uneven in places, winding between wellheads, generator buildings and the ever-present maze of hissing, steaming pipes. There were few other vehicles. Because of danger from scalding steam, the public was banned from the area and all visitors escorted.

At one point the bus passed a huge switching and transformer yard. From here, high voltage transmission lines on towers carried power across the mountains to a pair of substations forty miles away, where it was funneled into the backbone of the Golden State Power & Light electric system.

On a small, asphalted plateau were several house trailers which served as offices, as well as living quarters, for on-site crews. The bus balted beside them. Teresa Van Buren led the way into one trailer where places had been set on trestle tables. Inside she told a whitecoated kitchen helper,

"Okay, open the tiger cage." He produced a key and unlocked a wall cabinet to reveal liquor, wine, and mixes. A moment later a bucket of ice was brought in and the PR director told the others, "Everybody help yourselves."

Most were on their second drink when the sound of an aircraft engine overhead became audible, then grew quickly in volume. From the trailer's windows several people watched a small helicopter descending. It was painted in GSP & L's orange and white and bore the company insignia. It alighted immediately outside and the rotors slowed and stopped. A door at the front of the fuselage opened. Nim Goldman clambered out.

Moments later Nim joined the group inside the trailer. Teresa Van Buren announced, "I think most of you know Mr. Goldman. He's here to answer questions."

"I'll put the first question," a TV correspondent said cheerfully. "Can I mix you a drink?"

Nim grinned. "Thanks. A vodka and tonic."

"My, my!" Nancy Molineaux observed. "Aren't you the important one, to come by helicopter when the rest of us rated a bus!"

Nim regarded the young, attractive black woman cagily. He remembcred their previous encounter and clash; also Teresa Van Buren's assessment of Ms. Molineaux as an outstanding newspaperwoman. Nim still thought she was a bitch.

"If it's of any interest," he said, "I had some other work to do this morning, which is why I left later than you and came the way I did."

Nancy Molineaux was not deterred. "Do all the utility executives use helicopters when they feel like it?"

"Nancy," Van Buren said sharply, "you know damn well they don't."

"Our company," Nim volunteered, "owns and operates a half-dozen small aircraft, including two helicopters. Mainly they are used for patrolling transmission lines, checking mountain snow levels, conveying urgent supplies, and in other emergencies. Occasionally-very occasionally-one will convey a company executive if the reason is important. I was told this session was."

"Are you implying that now you're not so sure?"

"Since you ask, Miss Molineaux," Nim said coldly, "I'll admit to having doubts."

"Hey, knock it off, Nancy!" a voice called from the rear. “The rest of us are not interested in this."

Ms. Molineaux wheeled on her colleagues. "Well, I am. I'm concerned about how the public's money is squandered, and if you aren't, you should be."

“The purpose of being here," Van Buren reminded them all, "is to view our geothermal operations and talk about . . ."

"No!" Ms. Molineaux interrupted. "That's your purpose. The press decides its own purposes, which may include some of yours, but also anything else we happen to see or hear and choose to write about."

"She's right, of course." the comment came from a mild-mannered man in rimless glasses, representing the Sacramento Bee.

"Tess," Nim told Van Buren as he sipped his vodka and tonic, I just decided I prefer my job to yours."

Several people laughed as the PR director shrugged.

"If all the horseshit's finished," Nancy Molineaux said, "I'd like to know the purchase price of that fancy eggbeater outside, and how much an hour it costs to operate."

"I'll inquire," Van Buren told her, "and if the figures are available, and if we decide to make them public, I'll make an announcement tomorrow. On the other hand, if we decide it's internal company business, and none of yours, I'll report that."

"In which case," Ms. Molineaux said, unperturbed, "I'll find out some other way."

Food had been brought in while they talked-a capacious platter of hot meat pies and, in large earthenware dishes, mashed potatoes and zucchini. Two china jugs held steaming gravy.

"Pile in!" Teresa Van Buren commanded. "It's bunkhouse food, but good for gourmands."

As the group began helping itself, appetites sharpened by the mountain air, the tensions of a moment earlier eased. When the first course was eaten, a half-dozen freshly baked apple pies appeared, accompanied by a gallon of ice cream and several pots of strong coffee.

"I'm sated," Los Angeles Times announced at length. He leaned back from the table, patted his belly and sighed. "Better talk some shop, Tess, while we're still awake."

The TV man who had mixed Nim's drink now asked him, "How many years are these geysers good for?"

Nim, who had eaten sparingly, took a final sip of black, unsweetened coffee, then pushed his cup away. "I'll answer that, but let's clear up something first. What we're sitting over are fumaroles, not geysers.

Geysers send up boiling water with steam; fumaroles, steam only much better for driving turbines. As to how long the steam will last, the truth is: no one knows. We can only guess."

"So guess," Nancy Molineaux said.

"Thirty years minimum. Maybe twice that. Maybe more."

New West said, "Tell us what the bell's going on down there in that crazy teakettle."

Nim nodded. “The earth was once a molten mass-gaseous and liquid. When it cooled, a crust formed which is why we're living here and now and not frying. Down inside, though-twenty miles down it's as damned hot as ever and that residual heat sends up steam through thin places in the crust. Like here."

Sacramento Bee asked, "How thin is thin?"

"We're probably five miles above the hot mass now. In that five miles are surface fractures where the bulk of the steam has collected.

When we drill a well we try to hit such a fracture."

"How many other places like this produce electricity?"

"Only a handful. The oldest geothermal generating plant is in Italy, near Florence. There's another in New Zealand at Wairakei, and others in Japan, Iceland, Russia. None is as big as California's."

“There's a lot more potential, though," Van Buren interjected. "Especially in this country," Oakland Tribune asked, "Just where?"

"Across the entire western United States," Nim answered. "From the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific."

"It's also one of the cleanest, non-polluting, safest forms of energy,"

Van Buren added. "And-as costs go nowadays-cheap."

"You two should do a soft-shoe routine," Nancy Molineaux said. "All right-two questions. Number one: Tess used the word 'safe.' But there have been accidents here. Right?"

All the reporters were now paying attention, most of them writing in notebooks or with tape recorders switched on.

"Right," Nim conceded. “There were two serious accidents, three years apart, each when wellheads blew. That is, the steam got out of control. One well we managed to cap. The other-'Old Desperado' it's known as-we never have entirely. There it is, over there."

He crossed to a window of the trailer and pointed to a fenced-in area a quarter mile away. Inside the fence, steam rose sporadically at a dozen points through bubbling mud. Outside, large red signs warned: EXTREME DANGER-KEEP AWAY. The others craned to see, then returned to their seats.

"When Old Desperado blew," Nim said, "for a mile around it was raining hot mud, with rocks cascading down like hail. It did a lot of damage.

Muck settled on power lines and transformers, shorting everything, putting us out of action for a week. Fortunately, it happened at night when few people were at work and there were only two injuries, no deaths. The second blowout, of another well, was less severe. No casualties."

"Could Old Desperado ever blow again?" the stringer for small-town papers inquired.

"We believe not. But, like everything else to do with nature, there's no guarantee."

“The point is," Nancy Molineaux insisted, "there are accidents."

"Accidents happen everywhere," Nim said tersely. “The point Tess was making, correctly, is that the incidence is low. What's your second question?"

"It's this: Assuming everything the two of you have said is true, why isn't geothermal more developed?"

"That's easy," New West offered. “They'll blame environmentalists."

Nim countered sharply, "Wrong! Okay, Golden State Power has had its differences with environmentalists, and will probably have more. But the reason geothermal resources haven't been developed faster is-politicians. Specifically, the U. S. Congress."

Van Buren shot Nim a warning look which he ignored.

"Hold it!" one of the TV correspondents said. "I'd like some of this on film. If I make notes now, will you do it again outside?"

"Yes," Nim agreed. "I will."

"Christ!" Oakland Tribune protested. "Us real reporters will settle for once around. Let's cut the crap and get on!"

Nim nodded. "Most of the land which should have been explored, long ago, for geothermal potential is federal government property."

"In which states?" someone asked.

"Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico. And lots more sites in California."

Another voice urged, "Keep going!" Heads were down, ball-points racing.

"Well," Nim said, "it took a full ten years of Congressional do-nothing, double-talk and politics before legislation was passed which authorized geothermal leasing on public lands. After that were three more years of delay while environmental standards and regulations got written. And even now only a few leases have been granted, with ninety percent of applications lost in bureaucratic limbo."

"Would you say," San lose Mercury prompted, "that during all this time our patriotic politicians were urging people to conserve power, pay higher fuel costs and taxes, and be less dependent on imported oil?"

Los Angeles Times growled, "Let him say it. I want a direct quote."

"You have one," Nim acknowledged. "I accept the words just used."

Teresa Van Buren broke in firmly. "That's enough! Let's talk about Fincastle Valley. We'll all be driving there as soon as we're finished here."

Nim grinned. "Tess tries to keep me out of trouble, not always succeeding. Incidentally, the helicopter's going back shortly; I'm staying with you through tomorrow. Okay-Fincastle." He produced a map from a briefcase and pinned it to a bulletin board.

"Fincastle-you can see it on the map-is two valleys over to the east.

It's unoccupied land and we know it's a geothermal area. Geologists have advised us there are spectacular possibilities-for perhaps twice the electric power being generated here. Public hearings on our Fincastle plans are, of course, to begin soon."

Van Buren asked, "May I. . . . ?"

Nim stepped back and waited.

"Let's spell out something loud and clear," the PR director told the group. "In advance of the bearings we aren't trying to convert you, or to undercut the opposition. We simply want you to understand what's involved, and where. Thanks, Nim."

"A piece of gut information," Nim continued, "about Fincastle-and also Devil's Gate which we'll visit tomorrow-is this: they represent a Niagara of Arab oil which America will not have to import. Right now our geothermal setup saves ten million barrels of oil a year. We can triple that if . . ."

The briefing, with its information and cross-examination, leavened by badinage, rolled on.

15

The pale blue envelope bore a typewritten address which began:

NIMROD GOLDMAN, ESQUIRE-PERSONAL

A note from Nim's secretary, Vicki Davis, was clipped to the envelope. It read:

Mr. London, himself, put this through the mailroom metal detector. He says it's okay for you to open.

Vicki's note was satisfactory on two counts. It meant that mail arriving at GSP & L headquarters and marked "persona!” (or "private and confidential," as the recent letter bombs had been) was being handled warily. Also, a newly installed detection device was being used.

Something else Nim had become aware of: Since the traumatic day on which Harry London had almost certainly saved the lives of Nim and Vicki Davis, London appeared to have appointed himself Nim's permanent protector. Vicki, who nowadays regarded the Property Protection Department bead with something close to veneration, co-operated by sending him an advance daily schedule of Nim's appointments and movements. Nim had learned of the arrangement accidentally and was unsure whether to be grateful, irritated or amused.

In any case, he thought, he was a long way from Harry's suryeillance now.

Nim, Teresa Van Buren, and the press party had spent last night here at a Golden State Power outpost-Devil's Gate Camp-having continued by bus from Fincastle Valley. It had been a four-hour journey, in part through the breathtaking beauty of Plumas National Forest.

The camp was thirty-five miles from the nearest town and sheltered in a rugged fold of mountains. It comprised a half-dozen company owned houses for resident engineers, foremen and their families, a small school-now closed for summer vacation-and two motel-type bunkhouses, one for GSP & L employees, the second for visitors. High overhead were high voltage transmission lines on steel-gridded towers-a reminder of the small community's purpose.

The press party had been divided by sex, then housed four to a room in the visitors' quarters, which were plain but adequate. There had been mild grumbling about the four-in-a-room arrangement, one implication being that, given more privacy, some bed-hopping might have developed. Nim had a room to himself over in the employees' bunkhouse. After dinner last night he stayed on for drinks with some of the reporters, joined a poker game for a couple of hours, then excused himself and turned in shortly before midnight. This morning be had awakened refreshed, and was now ready for breakfast, which would be in a few minutes, at 7:30 am.

On a veranda outside the employees' bunkhouse, in the clear morning air, be examined the blue envelope, turning it over in his hand.

It had been brought by a company courier, traveling through the night like a modern Paul Revere and bearing company mail for Devil's Gate and other GSP&L frontiers. It was all part of an internal communications system, so the letter for Nim imposed no extra burden. Just the same, he thought sourly, if Nancy Molineaux learned about a personal letter routed that way, her bitchiness would have another workout. Fortunately she wouldn't.

The disagreeable reminder of the Molineaux woman had been prompted by Teresa Van Buren. In bringing Nim his letter a few minutes ago, Tess reported that she, too, had received one-containing information she had asked for yesterday about helicopter costs. Nim was shocked. He protested,

"You're actually going to help that trollop nail us to a board?"

"Calling her nasty names won't change anything," Van Buren had said patiently, then added, "Sometimes you big-wheel executives don't understand what public relations is all about."

"If that's an example, you're damn right!"

"Look-we can't win 'em all. I'll admit Nancy got under my skin yesterday, but when I thought about it some more, I reasoned she's going to write about that helicopter whatever we do or say. Therefore she might as well have the correct figures because if she asks elsewhere, or someone guesses, for sure they'll be exaggerated. Another thing: I'm being honest with Nancy now, and she knows it. In future, when something else comes up, she'll trust me and maybe that time will be a lot more important."

Nim said sarcastically, "I can hardly wait for that acid-mouthed sourpuss to write something favorable."

"See you at breakfast," the PR director had said as she left. "And do yourself a favor - simmer down."

But he didn't. Now, still seething inwardly, be ripped open the blue envelope.

It contained a single sheet of paper, matching the blue envelope. At the top was printed: From Karen Sloan.

Suddenly he remembered. Karen had said: "Sometimes I write poetry. Would you like me to send you some?" And he had answered yes.

The words were neatly typed.

Today I found a friend,

Or maybe he found me,

Or was it fate, chance, circumstance-

Predestination, by whatever name?

Were we like paranoid stars whose orbits,

Devised at time's beginning,

In due season

Intersect?

Though we will never know,

No matter! For instinct tells me

That our friendship, nurtured,

Will grow strong.

So much of him I like:

His quiet ways, warmth,

A gentle wit, and intellect,

An honest face, kind eyes, a ready smile.

"Friend" is not easily defined. And yet,

These things mean that to me

Concerning one whom, even now,

I hope to see again

And count the days and hours

Until a second meeting.

What else was it Karen had said that day in her apartment? "I can use a typewriter. It's electric and I work it with a stick in my teeth."

With a flash of emotion Nim pictured her toiling-slowly, patiently -over the words be had just read, her teeth gripping the stick tightly, her blonde head-the only part of her she could move-repositioning itself after each laborious effort to touch a keyboard letter. He wondered how many drafts Karen had done before the letter-perfect final version she had sent him.

Unexpectedly, be realized, his mood had changed. The sourness of a moment earlier was gone, a warmth and gratitude replacing it.

* * *

On his way to join the press party at breakfast, Nim was surprised to meet Walter Talbot Jr. Nim had not seen Wally since the day of his father's funeral. Momentarily, Nim was embarrassed, remembering his recent visit to Ardythe, then rationalized that Wally and his mother led separate, independent lives.

Wally greeted him cheerfully. "Hi, Nim! What brings you here?"

Nim told him about the two-day press briefing, then asked, "And you?"

Wally glanced at the high voltage lines above them. "Our helicopter patrol found broken insulators on one of the towers-probably a hunter using them for target practice. My crew will replace the whole string, working with the line hot. We hope to be finished this afternoon."

While they talked, a third man joined them. Wally introduced him as Fred Wilkins, a company technician.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Goldman. I've heard of you. Seen you a lot on TV."

The newcomer was in his late twenties, had a shock of bright red hair and was healthily suntanned.

"As you can see from the look of him," Wally said, "Fred lives out here."

Nim asked, "Do you like the camp? Doesn't it get lonely?"

Wilkins shook his head emphatically. "Not for me, sir, or the wife. Our kids love it, too." He inhaled deeply. "Breathe that air, man! A lot better'n you'll get in any city. And there's plenty of sunshine, all the fishing you need."

Nim laughed. "I might try it for a vacation."

"Daddy!” a child's voice piped. "Daddy, has the mailman come?"

As the trio turned their heads, a small boy ran toward them. He had a cheerful, freckled face and bright red hair, making his parentage unmistakable.

"Just the company mailman, son," Fred Wilkins said. “The post office van'll be another hour." He explained to the others, "Danny's excited because it's his birthday. He's hoping for some packages."

"I'm eight," the small boy volunteered; be looked strong and sturdy for his age. "I had some presents already. But there might be more."

"Happy birthday, Danny!" Nim and Wally said together.

Moments later they parted company, Nim continuing toward the visitors' bunkhouse.

16

In the tailrace tunnel's semi-darkness, above the mighty thunderous sound of confined rushing water, Oakland Tribune shouted, "When I get through these two days I'm gonna ask for a quiet week on the obit desk."

Several others nearby smiled but shook their heads, unable to bear the words for two reasons-the all-enveloping water sound and plugs of absorbent cotton in their ears. Material for the plugs, which muffled the echoing tunnel noise a little, had been handed them outside by Teresa Van Buren. That was after the group scrambled down a steep rock stairway to where the tailrace of Devil's Cate 1 generating plant emptied boisterously into Pineridge River, twenty feet below.

As they fiddled with the earplugs, preparing to enter the tunnel, someone had called out, "Hey, Tess! Why you takin' us in by the back door?"

"It's the tradesmen's entrance," she answered. "Since when did you characters deserve better? Besides, you're always sounding off about needing color for your stories. Here it is."

"Color? In there?" Los Angeles Times had said skeptically, peering forward into the blackness which was punctuated only by a few dim light bulbs. The tunnel was approximately circular, hewn out of solid rock, with the walls left rough and unfinished as at the time of excavation.

The light bulbs were near the roof. Suspended halfway between them and the turbulent water was a narrow catwalk on which the visitors would walk. Ropes on either side of the catwalk could be grabbed as handholds. Earlier, following breakfast, Nim Goldman had explained what they would be seeing-"a hydroelectric plant that's completely underground, inside a mountain. Later we'll talk about the proposed Devil's Gate pumped storage plant which will also be underground-entirely out of sight."

He continued, “The tailrace, where we're going, is actually the end of the generating process. But it will give you an idea of the kind of forces we're dealing with. The water you'll see has passed through the turbine blades after having been used to spin the turbines, and comes out in tremendous quantities."

The massive flow had been evident outside the tunnel to some who had leaned over a metal guardrail above the river, watching the awesome torrent join the already angry maelstrom below.

"By God! I'd hate to fall in," KFSO Radio observed. He asked Van Buren,

"Has anyone ever?"

"Once that we know of. A workman slipped from here. He was a strong swimmer, even had some medals we found out after, but the flow in the tailrace pulled him under. It was three weeks before the body came up."

Instinctively, those nearest the guardrail took a step backward.

Something else Nim had told them in advance was that this particular tailrace was unique. “The tunnel is a third of a mile long and was cut horizontally into the side of a mountain. While the tunnel was being built, and before any water was let in, there were points where two construction trucks could pass side by side."

Nancy Molineaux had pointedly stifled a yawn. "Shit! So you got a long, fat, wet cave. Is that news?"

"It doesn't have to be news. This entire two-day deal is for background,"

Van Buren pointed out. "That was explained to everyone beforehand, including your editors."

"Did you say 'background' or 'craparound?"' Ms. Molineaux asked.

The others laughed.

"Never mind," Nim said. "I'd finished anyway."

Some twenty minutes later, after a short bus ride, be had led the way into the tailrace tunnel.

The cool dampness was in contrast to the warm, sunny day outside. As the group moved forward in single file, only a few feet above the foam-flecked water rushing beneath them, the circle of daylight behind receded to a pinpoint. Ahead, the few dim light bulbs seemed to stretch into limitless distance. Now and then someone would pause to look down, all the while clinging tightly to the guide ropes.

At length, the end of the tunnel and a vertical steel ladder came in sight. At the same time a new sound intruded-a hum of generators, growing to a mighty roar as the ladder was reached. Nim motioned upward and ascended first, the others following.

They passed through an open trapdoor into a lower generating chamber, then, by way of a circular staircase, to a brightly lighted control room two floors above. Here, to general relief, the noise level was diminished, only a faint hum penetrating the insulated walls.

A wide, plate glass window provided a view of two huge generators, both in operation, immediately below.

In the control room a solitary technician was writing in a logbook as he studied an array of dials, colored lights and graphic pen recorders which occupied one wall. Hearing the group enter, he turned. Even before that, Nim recognized him from his shock of red hair.

"Hullo, Fred Wilkins."

"Hi, Mr. Goldman!" the technician offered a brief "good morning" to the visitors, then continued writing.

"Where we are standing," Nim announced, "is five hundred feet underground. This plant was built by sinking a shaft from above, the way you would for a mine. There's an elevator goes from here to the surface and, in another shaft, high voltage transmission lines."

"Not many people working here," Sacramento Bee commented. He was looking through the window at the generator floor where no one was in sight.

The technician closed his logbook and grinned. "In a couple of minutes you won't see any."

"this is an automated generating plant," Nim explained. "Mr. Wilkins here comes in to make a routine check"-he queried the technician-"how often?"

"Just once a day, sir."

"Otherwise," Nim continued, "the place stays tightly locked and unattended, except for occasional maintenance or if something goes wrong,"

Los Angeles Times asked, "How about starting up and shutting down?"

"It's done from the control center a hundred and fifty miles away. Most new hydroelectric plants are designed this way. They're efficient, and there's a big saving in labor costs."

"When something is wrong, and there's a panic," New West inquired, "what then?"

"Whichever generator is affected-or even both-will send a warning to control, then shut down automatically until a service crew gets here."

"It's this kind of generating plant," Teresa Van Buren interjected, "that Devil's Gate z, the proposed pumped storage plant, will be removed from view so it won't mar the landscape, also non-polluting and economic."

Nancy Molineaux spoke for the first time since coming in. “There's one teensy item you left out of that snow job, Tess. The goddam great reservoir that would have to be built and the natural land which would be flooded."

"A lake in these mountains, which is what it will be, is every bit as natural as dry wilderness," the PR director retorted. "What's more, it will provide fishing . . ."

Nim said gently, "Let me, Tess." He was determined, today, not to let Nancy Molineaux or anyone else ruffle him.

"Miss Molineaux is right," he told the group, "to the extent that a reservoir is needed. It will be a mile from here, high above us and visible only from airplanes or to nature lovers willing to make a long, hard climb. In building it we'll observe every environmental safeguard . . ."

“The Sequoia Club doesn't think so," a male TV reporter interrupted.

"Why?"

Nim shrugged. "I have no idea. I guess we'll find out at the public hearing."

"Okay," the TV man said. "Carry on with your propaganda spiel."

Remembering his resolve, Nim curbed a sharp reply. With media people, be thought, it was so often an uphill battle, a fight against disbelief no matter how straightforward anyone involved with industry and business tried to be. Only radical crusaders, and never mind bow misinformed, seemed to have their viewpoints quoted verbatim, without question.

Patiently, he explained pumped storage-"the only known method of hoarding large quantities of electricity for use later at times of peak demand.

In a way, you could think of Devil's Gate 2. as an enormous storage battery."

There would be two levels of water, Nim continued-the new reservoir and Pineridge River, far below. Connecting the two levels would be massive underground pipes-or penstocks and tailrace tunnels. The generating plant would be between the reservoir and river, the penstocks ending at the plant, where the tailrace tunnels start.

"When the plant is producing electricity," Nim said, "water from the reservoir will flow downward, drive the turbines, then discharge into the river beneath the river surface."

But at other times the system would operate the opposite way around. When electrical demands everywhere were light-mostly during the night-no electricity would be produced by Devil's Gate 2. Instead, water would be pumped upward from the river-some three hundred million gallons an hour-to replenish the reservoir, ready for next day.

"At night we have great quantities of spare electric power elsewhere in the GSP & L system. We'd simply use some of it to operate the pumps."

New West said, "Con Edison in New York has been trying to build a plant like that for twenty years. Storm King, they call it. But ecologists and lots of others are against it."

“There are also responsible people who are for it," Nim said.

"Unfortunately nobody is listening."

He described one demand of the Federal Power Commission-proof that Storm King would not disturb fish life in the Hudson River. After several years of study the answer was: there would be a reduction of only four to six percent in the adult fish population.

"Despite that," Nim concluded, "Con Edison still doesn't have approval, and someday the people of New York will wake up to regret it."

"That's your opinion," Nancy Molineaux said.

"Naturally it's an opinion. Don't you have opinions, Miss Molineaux?"

Los Angeles Times said, "Of course she doesn't. You know how totally unprejudiced we servants of the truth are."

Nim grinned. "I'd noticed."

The black woman's features tightened, but she made no comment.

A moment earlier, when speaking about Hudson River fish, Nim had been tempted to quote Charles Luce, Con Edison's chairman, who once declared in a public moment of exasperation, “There comes a point where human environment must prevail over fish habitat. I think in New York we've reached it." But caution prevailed. The remark had got Chuck Luce into trouble and produced a storm of abuse from ecologists and others. Why join him?

Besides, Nim thought, he already had public image problems himself over that damned helicopter. It was coming this afternoon to Devil's Gate to return him to the city where urgent work was piled up on his desk. He had made sure, though, that the chopper would not arrive until after the press contingent had departed by bus.

Meanwhile, disliking this chore and relieved that it would end soon, he continued fielding questions.

* * *

At 2 pm, at Devil's Gate Camp the last few stragglers were climbing aboard the press bus, which had its motor running and was ready to leave. The group had lunched; their journey back to the city would take four hours. Fifty yards away, Teresa Van Buren, who was also going on the bus, told Nim, "Thanks for all you did, even though you hated some of it."

He said with a smile, "I get paid to do a few things, now and then, that I'd rather not. Was anything accomplished, do you . . . ?"

Nim stopped, not certain why, except for a sudden chilling instinct that something was wrong in the scene around him, something out of place. They were standing roughly where be had been this morning when he paused en route to breakfast; the weather was still beautiful clear sunshine highlighting a profusion of trees and wild flowers, with a breeze stirring the fragrant mountain air. Both bunkhouses were visible, the bus in front of one, a couple of off-duty employees sunning themselves on a balcony of the other. In the opposite direction, over by the staff houses, a group of children was playing; a few minutes earlier Nim had noticed among them the redheaded boy Danny, whom be had spoken to this morning. The boy was flying a kite, perhaps a birthday present, though at the moment both boy and kite had disappeared from view. Nim's gaze moved on to a GSP & L heavy-duty service truck and a cluster of men in work gear. among them he caught a glimpse of the trim, bearded figure of Wally Talbot Jr. Presumably Wally was with the transmission line crew he had mentioned earlier. On the road leading into camp a small blue tradesman's van appeared.

Someone at the bus called over impatiently, "Tess, let's go!"

Van Buren said curiously, "Nim, what is it?"

"I'm not sure. I . . ."

An urgent, frantic shout cut across the camp clearing and all other sounds.

"Danny! Danny! Don't move! Stay where you are!"

Heads turned-Nim's and Van Buren's simultaneously-seeking the source of the voice.

Another shout, this time close to a scream. "Danny! Do you hear me?"

"Over there." Van Buren pointed to a steep path, partially hidden by trees, on the camp's far side. A red-haired man-the technician, Fred Wilkins-was racing down it, shouting as he ran.

"Danny! Do what I tell you! Stop! Don't move!"

Now the children had stopped playing. Bewildered, they turned together in the direction where the shouting was aimed. Nim did the same.

"Danny! Don't go any further! I'm coming for you! Keep still!"

"Oh Christ!" Nim breathed.

Now he could see. High overhead, on one of the towers carrying high voltage lines across the camp, the small boy, Danny Wilkins, was ascending. Clinging tightly to a steel support member more than halfway from the tower base, he was clambering upward, slowly, steadily. His objective was visible above him-the kite he had been flying, now entangled in a transmission line atop the tower. A flash of sunlight showed Nim what moments earlier he had seen, so swiftly and briefly that it barely registered-the reflection from a slim aluminum pole the boy was clutching, a pole with a hook at one end. Clearly, Danny planned to use it to retrieve the kite. His small face was set determinedly as his sturdy body moved higher, and either he failed to bear his father's shouts or was ignoring them.

Nim and others began running hard toward the tower, but with a sense of helplessness as the small boy continued climbing steadily toward the high voltage lines. Five hundred thousand volts.

Fred Wilkins, still some distance away, was forcing himself to even greater speed, his face despairing.

Nim joined the shouting. "Danny! the wires are dangerous! Don't move!

Stay there!"

This time the boy paused and glanced down. Then he looked up again at the kite and continued climbing, though more slowly, the aluminum pole extended out in front. He was now only a few feet from the nearest power line.

Then Nim saw that a new figure, nearer to the tower than anyone else, had sprung into action. Wally Talbot. Shooting forward, his stride long, feet barely seeming to touch the ground, Wally was racing like an Olympic sprinter.

The press reporters were scrambling from the bus.

The tower, like others in the camp area, was surounded by a protective chain link fence. Later it would be learned that Danny had surmounted the fence by climbing a tree and dropping from a low branch. Now Wally Talbot reached the fence and leaped. With what seemed a superhuman effort he grabbed the top and scrambled over. As he landed inside it could be seen that one of his hands was cut and bleeding. Then he was on the tower and climbing fast.

Breathlessly, tensely, the hastily assembled group of spectators, reporters and others watched from below. While they did, a trio of workmen from Wally's transmission line crew arrived and, after trying several keys, unlocked a gate in the chain link fence. Once inside the enclosure they, too, began climbing the tower. But Wally was far ahead, rapidly closing the distance between himself and the small redheaded boy.

Fred Wilkins had reached the base of the tower; he was winded and trembling. Briefly he moved as if to climb also, but someone restrained him.

All eyes were focused on the two figures nearest the top-Danny Wilkins, only a foot or two from the transmission lines, and Wally Talbot, now close behind.

Then it happened-so swiftly that those watching could not agree afterward on the succession of events or even precisely what they were.

In what seemed a single moment, Danny-perched, it seemed, within inches of an insulator which separated the tower from a transmission line conductor-reached out with the aluminum pole in an attempt to snare the kite. Simultaneously, from just below and slightly to one side, Wally Talbot grabbed at the boy and pulled and held him. A pulsebeat later both appeared to slip, the boy sliding downward, clinging to a girder, and Wally losing his grasp. At the same time, Wally, perhaps instinctively to maintain a precarious balance, seized the metal pole as Danny released it. The pole swung in an arc. Instantly a great ball of crackling orange light erupted, the pole disappeared, and Wally Talbot was enveloped in a corona of transparent flame. Then, with equal suddenness, the flame was gone and Wally's body sagged limply, motionless, across a tower support.

Miraculously, neither fell. Seconds later two of Wally Talbot's crew reached his body and began easing it down. The third man pinned Danny Wilkins to a girder and held him there while the others descended. The boy was apparently unhurt; he was sobbing and the sound could be heard below.

Then, somewhere on the other side of the camp, a siren began sounding short, sharp blasts.

17

The cocktail bar pianist switched nostalgically from Hello, Young Lovers! to Whatever Will Be, Will Be.

"If he plays manymore of those oldies," Harry London said, "I'm gonna start crying in my beer. Another vodka, pal?"

"Why the hell not? Make it a double." Nim, who had been hearing the music too, now listened to himself objectively. His speech was slurring at the edges, he observed, which figured. He had already had too much to drink, and knew it, but found himself not caring. Groping in a pocket, he took out his car keys and pushed them across the small, black-topped table.

"Take care of these. See that I get a taxi home."

London pocketed the keys. "Sure thing. You can stay at my place overnight, if you want."

"No thanks, Harry." Soon, when the liquor had dulled his perceptions further, Nim intended to go home, in fact wanted to. He wasn't worried about appearing there drunk-at least, not tonight. Leah and Benjy would be asleep and wouldn't see him. And Ruth, with her compassion and sympathy, would be forgiving.

"Testing, testing," Nim said. He had wanted to bear his voice again before using it. Now, satisfied with his coherence, he told Harry, "Y'know what I think? I think Wally'd be better off dead."

London took a swig of beer before answering. "Maybe Wally won't see it that way. Okay, so be got burned had and lost his pecker. But there's other . .."

Nim's voice rose. "For Chrissakes, Harry! Do you understand what you're saying?"

"Take it easy," London cautioned. Others in the bar had glanced their way.

He added quietly, "Sure, I understand."

"In time . . ." Nim leaned across the table, balancing his words the way a conjurer might stand a plate on edge. "In time the burns will heal. They'll do skin grafts. But you can't order a new penis from the Sears catalogue."

"It's true. Can't deny it." London shook his head sadly. "That poor benighted bastard!"

The cocktail pianist was now into Lara's theme and Harry London wiped away a tear.

"Twenty-eight!" Nim said. "That's how old he is. For God's sake, twenty-eight! Why, any normal man that age has still got ahead of him a lifetime of. . ."

London said curtly, "I don't need a diagram." He finished his beer and motioned a waiter for another. "One thing you gotta remember, Nim. Not every guy's an all-star cocksman like you. With you, if you lost out the way Wally has, I could understand it being the end of the road, or you thinking it was." He asked curiously, "You ever kept score? Maybe you could get in the Guinness Book of World Records."

“There's a Belgian writer," Nim said, his thoughts for the moment diverted,

"Georges Simenon, who says he made it with ten thousand different women.

I'm not up to that many, or even near it."

"Leave out the numbers, then. The point is, maybe his dong was never as all-fired important to Wally as yours is to you."

Nim shook his head. "I doubt it." He remembered the times be had seen Wally Jr. and his wife, Mary, together. Nim's finely boned instincts told him the two of them had a good thing going sexually. He wondered sadly what might happen to their marriage.

The beer and double vodka arrived. "When you're coming back," Nim told the waiter, "bring the same again."

It was early evening. The bar they were in-the Ezy Duzzit, smallish and dark, with a sentimental pianist who was just easing into Moon River-was not far from GSP & L headquarters. Nim and Harry London had walked over here at the end of their working day. The third day.

The past three days had been the worst short period of his life that Nim ever remembered.

On the first day, at Devil's Gate, the sense of stupefaction following the electrocution of Wally Talbot Jr. had lasted only seconds. Then, while Wally was still being brought down from the tower, standard emergency procedures went into high gear.

In any big utility company, electrocutions are rare but inevitably they happen-usually several times a year. The cause is either momentary carelessness, nullifying costly and rigid safety precautions, or a "thousandth chance" accident such as that which happened so swiftly while Nim and others watched.

Ironically, Golden State Power had an aggressive publicity program, aimed at parents and children, warning of dangers when kites were flown near overhead power lines. The utility had expended thousands of dollars on posters and comic books devoted to the subject and distributed them to schools and other agencies.

As Fred Wilkins, the red-haired technician was to disclose with anguish later, he knew of the warning program. But Wilkins' wife, Danny's mother, didn't know. She tearfully admitted having a vague impression that she might have heard something of the kind, but had forgotten when or where, nor had the memory surfaced when the kite-a birthday present from grandparents-arrived with the morning mail and she helped Danny put it together. As for Danny's climbing the tower, he was described by those who knew him as "a determined boy, and fearless." the hooked aluminum rod he had carried aloft was a gaff his father used for occasional deep sea fishing; it was stored in a tool shed where the boy had seen it often. None of that was known, of course, when a trained first-aid team, alerted by the camp siren, rushed to administer help to Wally Talbot. He was unconscious, had been badly burned over large areas of his body, and breathing had stopped.

The aid team, led by a registered nurse who ran the camp's small medical clinic, competently began mouth-to-mouth breathing in conjunction with external cardiac compression. While the resuscitation continued, Wally was carried to the one-bed clinic. There, the nurse-taking radiophone instructions from a doctor in the city-used a closed-chest defibrillator in an attempt to restore normal heart action. The attempt succeeded. That, and the other measures, saved Wally's life.

By then a company helicopter was on the way to Devil's Gate-the same machine which was to have collected Nim. Wally, accompanied by the nurse, was flown directly to a hospital for more intensive treatment. It was not until next day that his suryival was assured and the detailed nature of his injuries made known. On that second day, newspapers played the story big, its impact strengthened by eyewitness accounts from reporters on the scene. The morning Chronicle-West gave it front-page treatment with a headline:

ELECTROCUTED MAN IS HERO

By afternoon, though the immediacy had lessened, the California Examiner devoted half of page three to a Nancy Molineaux by-line story headed:

Sacrifices Self in Saving Child.

The Examiner also ran a two-column cut of Wally Talbot Jr. and another of young Danny Wilkins with one side of his face bandaged-the result of abrasions when the boy slid downward near the top of the tower, the only injury he received.

TV and radio had carried bulletins the night before, but continued their coverage the following day. Because of its human interest, the story drew statewide and some national attention.

At the city's Mount Eden Hospital, shortly after noon on that second day, an attending surgeon held an impromptu press conference in a corridor.

Nim, who had visited the hospital earlier, had just returned and listened from the fringes.

"Mr. Talbot's condition is critical but stable, and he is out of immediate danger," the young surgeon, who looked like a reincarnated Robert Kennedy, announced. "He has severe bums over twenty-five percent of his body and has suffered certain other injuries."

"Could you be more specific, Doctor?" one of a dozen news reporters asked. "What are the other injuries?"

The surgeon glanced at an older man beside him whom Nim knew to be the hospital administrator.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," the administrator said, "normally, out of respect for privacy, no additional information would be disclosed.

In this instance, however, after discussion with the family, it has been decided to be open with the press-quite frankly, to put an end to speculation. Therefore the last question will be answered. But before it is, I plead with you-out of consideration for the patient and his family-to be discreet in what you write and speak. Thank you. Please continue, Doctor."

“The effects of electrocution on the human body are always unpredictable,"

the surgeon said. "Often, death results when large charges of electricity pass through internal organs before escaping to ground. In the case of Mr. Talbot this didn't happen, so to that extent he was fortunate. Instead the electricity passed over the upper surface of his body and exited-to ground through the metal tower-by the route of his penis."

There were gasps, and a shocked silence during which no one seemed eager to ask the next question. Eventually an elderly male reporter did. "And, Doctor, the condition of . . ."

"It was destroyed. By burning. Totally. Now, if you'll excuse me . . .

The press group, unusually subdued, drifted away.

Nim had stayed on. He identified himself to the administrator and inquired about Wally Jr.'s family-Ardythe and Mary. Nim had not seen either since the accident, but knew he would have to meet both women soon.

Ardythe, Nim learned, was at the hospital under sedation. "She went into shock," the administrator said. "I presume you know about her husband's death just a short time ago."

Nim nodded.

“The younger Mrs. Talbot is with her husband, but no other visitors are being allowed for the time being."

While the administrator waited, Nim scribbled a note to Mary, telling her he was available if needed, and in any case would return to the hospital next day. That night, as during the preceding one, Nim slept only fitfully, the scene at Devil's Gate Camp repeating itself in his mind again and again, like a recurring nightmare.

On the morning of the third day he saw Mary, then Ardythe.

Mary met him outside the hospital room where Wally was still under intensive care. "Wally's conscious," she said, "but doesn't want to see anyone. Not yet." Wally's wife looked pale and tired, but some of her normal businesslike manner still came through. "Ardythe wants to see you, though. She knew you were coming."

Nim said gently, "I guess words aren't a lot of good, Mary. Just the same, I'm sorry."

"We all are." Mary led the way to a door a few yards distant and opened it.

"Here's Nim, Mother." She told him, "I'm going back to Wally. I'll leave you now."

"Come in, Nim," Ardythe said. She was dressed and resting on a bed, propped up by pillows. "Isn't this ridiculous-for me to be in the hospital too?"

There was hysteria beneath her voice, he thought, and her cheeks were too flushed, her eyes showed an artificial brightness. Nim remembered what the administrator had said about shock and sedation, though Ardythe appeared not to be sedated now.

He began hesitantly, "I wish I knew what to say pausing, he bent to kiss her.

To his surprise, Ardythe stiffened and turned her head away. He ended by clumsily touching his lips to her cheek, which felt hot.

"Noill Ardythe remonstrated. "Please . . . don't kiss me."

Wondering if he had offended her in some way, finding it hard to gauge her mood, he moved a chair and sat beside the bed.

There was a silence, then she said, half musingly, “They say Wally will live. Yesterday we didn't know, so at least today is that much better.

But I suppose you know how he will live; I mean, what's happened to him,"

"Yes," he said, "I know."

"Have you been thinking the way I have, Nim? About a reason for what happened?"

"Ardythe, I was there. I saw .

"I don't mean that. I mean why."

Bewildered, he shook his head.

"I've done a lot of thinking since yesterday, Nim. And I've decided that what seemed like an accident could be because of us-you and me."

Still not understanding, he protested, "Please. You're overwrought. It's a terrible shock, I know, especially coming so soon after Walter."

"That's the point." Ardythe's face and voice were tense. "You and I were sinful, so soon after Walter died. I've a feeling I'm being punished, that Wally, Mary, the children, are all suffering because of me.

For a moment he was reduced to shocked silence, then said vehemently,

"For God's sake, Ardythe, stop this! It's ridiculous!"

"Is it? Think about it when you're alone, the way I've been doing. And just now you said 'for God's sake.' You're a Jew, Nim. Doesn't your religion teach you to believe in God's anger and punishment?"

"Even if it does, I don't accept all that."

"I didn't either," Ardythe said mournfully. "But now I'm wondering."

"Look," he said, searching desperately for words to change her thinking,

"sometimes life causes one family to suffer-the way it seems: firing at it with both barrels-while other families go untouched. It isn't logical, it isn't fair. But it happens. I can think of other instances; so can you."

"How do we know those other instances weren't punishments also?"

"Because there's no way they could be. Because all of life is chance the chances we make ourselves, by error or had luck, including the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all it is, Ardythe, and it's madness to blame yourself, in any way, for what's happened to Wally."

She answered dully, "I want to believe you. But I can't. Leave me now, Nim. They're going to send me home this afternoon."

Standing, he told her, "I'll drive out soon."

She shook her head. "I'm not sure you should. But phone me."

He bent to kiss her cheek, then remembering her wishes, abandoned the attempt and went out quietly.

His mind was in turmoil. Clearly, Ardythe needed psychiatric help, but if Nim himself suggested it to Mary or anyone else, he would have to explain why-in detail. Even under the seal of medical confidence, he couldn't see himself doing that. At least, not yet.

The grief about Wally, Ardythe, and his own dilemma stayed with him through the day, refusing to be pushed away.

As if that wasn't enough, Nim was pilloried that afternoon in the California Examiner.

He had wondered if, in view of the emergency employment of a belicopter to airlift Wally out of Devil's Gate Camp, Nancy Molineaux might abandon her intention to write about the helicopter's other uses.

She hadn't.

Her story was in a box facing the editorial page.

The Captains and the Kings

. . . and GSP & L's Mr. Goldman

Ever wonder what it would be like to have a private helicopter whisk you wherever you wanted while you sat back and relaxed?

Most of us will never experience that exotic pleasure.

Those who do fall into certain categories-the President of the United States, the Shah of Iran, the late Howard Hughes, occasionally the Pope, and, oh yes, certain favored executives of your friendly public utility, Golden State Power & Light. For example-Mr. Nimrod Goldman.

Why Goldman?, you might ask.

Well, it seems that Mr. Goldman, who is a GSP & L vice president, is too important to ride on a bus, even though one -privately chartered by Golden State Power-was going his way the other day and had plenty of spare seats. Instead be chose a helicopter which . . .

There was more, along with a picture of a GSP & L helicopter and an unflattering portrait of Nim which, he suspected, Ms. Molineaux chose from the newspaper's files.

Especially damaging was a paragraph which read:

Electric and gas consumers, already beset by high utility bills, and who have been told that rates must soon go up again, may wonder about the way their money is being spent by GSP & L, a quasi-public company. Perhaps if executives like Nimrod Goldman were willing to travel-like the rest of us-less glamorously, the resultant savings, along with other economies, could help hold down those persistent rate increases.

In mid-afternoon Nim folded the newspaper and flagged the article, then gave it to J. Eric Humphrey's secretary. "Tell the chairman I figured he'd see this anyway, so he might as well get it from me."

Minutes later Humphrey strode into Nim's office and tossed the paper down. He was angrier than Nim had ever seen him and, uncharacteristically, raised his voice. "In God's name what were you thinking of to get us into this mess? Don't you know the Public Utilities Commission is considering our application for a rate increase, and will hand down a decision in the next few days? This is just the kind of thing to raise a public clamor which could make them cut our throats."

Nim released some irritability of his own. "Of course I know that." He motioned to the newspaper. "I'm as upset about this as you are. But that damn woman reporter had her scalping knife out. If she hadn't picked the helicopter, it would have been something else."

"Not necessarily; not if she hadn't found anything. By using the helicopter indiscreetly as you did, you dumped an opportunity in her lap."

On the point of snapping back, Nim decided to keep quiet. Taking blame unfairly, he supposed, could be considered part of an assistant's job. Only two weeks earlier the chairman had told his senior aides at an informal meeting, "If you can save yourself half a day's travel, and do your job faster and more efficiently, use a company helicopter because it's cheaper in the long run. I realize we need those aircraft for transmission line patrols and emergencies, but when they're not in use that way, it costs very little more to have them in the air than it does to keep them on the ground."

Something else Eric Humphrey had presumably forgotten was asking Nim to take on the two-day press briefing and to represent him at an important Chamber of Commerce meeting the morning of the first day of the press tour.

There was no way Nim could have done both without using the helicopter.

However, Humphrey was a fair man and would probably remember later. Even if he failed to, Nim reasoned, it didn't much matter.

But that three-day combination of events had left him exhausted and melancholy. Thus, when Harry London, who knew some-though not all-of the reasons behind Nim's depression, had dropped in to suggest some drinking after work, Nim accepted promptly.

Now he felt the liquor taking hold and, while he wasn't any happier, an increasing numbness was somehow comforting. In a corner of his brain still functioning with clarity, Nim. despised himself for what he was doing, and the implied weakness. Then he reminded himself it didn't happen often-he couldn't remember the last time he had had too much to drink-and maybe just letting yourself go once in a while, saying to hell with everything, could be therapeutic.

"Let me ask you something, Harry," Nim said thickly. "You a religious man? Do you believe in God?"

Once more London drank deeply, then used a handkerchief to wipe beer foam from his lips. "No to the first. About the second, put it this way: I've never made a big deal about not believing."

"How about personal guilt? You carry a lot of that around?" Nim was remembering Ardythe, who had asked: "Doesn't your religion teach you to believe in God's anger and punishment?" This afternoon he had dismissed the question. Since then, annoyingly, it had replayed itself in his mind several times.

"I guess everybody's got some guilt." London seemed inclined to end his statement there, then changed his mind and added, "I sometimes think about two guys in Korea, close buddies of mine. We were on a recce patrol near the Yalu River. Those two were further forward than the rest of us, then we were all pinned down by enemy fire. The two guys needed help to get back. I was a topkick, in charge, and should have led the rest of us right then, taking a chance to reach them. While I was still dithering, making up my mind, the gooks found them; a grenade blew them both to bits. That's a guilt I carry around; that and some others."

He drank again, then said, "You know what you're doing, pal? You're getting us both . . . what's that word?"

"Maudlin," Nim said, having trouble pronouncing it.

"You got it! . . . maudlin." Harry London nodded solemnly as the cocktail bar pianist began playing As Time Goes By.