Storm
Page 2
By this time the book was really taking shape and assuming some of that quality which has led so many people to question me about its beginnings. In previous similar books the focus of interest was strongly upon the human characters, and the center about which they revolved was not much stressed in the writing, but in Storm the dominating character was to be Maria. More than any human character, as much perhaps as all of them put together, she was to be the center of attention. Her birth, growth, adventures, and final death were to be the main vortex of the story, with the various little human beings and their troubles and triumphs isolated here and there around the edges.
At this point I must apologize for not being able to go further. Since I did not keep a diary or date my notes, I cannot say just when I grasped this essential idea or just what was the background of reading or conversation or observation which made it spring into my mind suddenly, as such ideas do.
Once I had grasped what the plot was really to be, Storm was an interesting though strenuous book to work at. When a bad storm broke, I took to the road—up to the Pass, out with the Highway Patrol, through the flooded Sacramento Valley. I talked with the men, and saw what they were doing, and I was sometimes cold and wet and hungry along with them. Not the least among my later pleasures was to get comments and letters from men who might have stood for the originals of Rick or Johnny Martley, and to find that they knew the book to be genuine.
Re-reading the book now after some years, I find a number of things that I might say about it, but there is no need to try to put leading-strings on a reader. If you find the attitudes a little grim, however, you should remember that the text was largely written during those grim and terrible months of Dunkirk and the fall of France.
Another little point—although I don’t really care particularly, still I always thought of Maria and pronounced the name in the old-fashioned English and American way. The soft Spanish pronunciation is fine for some heroines, but our Maria here is too big for any man to embrace and much too boisterous. So put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it “rye.”
—George R. Stewart
1947
STORM
Every theory of the course of events in nature is necessarily based on some process of simplification of the phenomena and is to some extent therefore a fairy tale.
—SIR NAPIER SHAW
Manual of Meteorology: I, 123
IN GRATITUDE FOR GENEROUS ASSISTANCE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
California Division of Highways
California Division of Water Resources
California Highway Patrol
City of Berkeley Police Department
Pacific Gas and Electric Company
Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company
Pan American Airways Company
Southern Pacific Company
Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc
United Air Lines
United States Coast Guard
United States Engineers
United States Weather Bureau
University of California
Western Pacific Railroad Company
FIRST DAY
1
Enveloped in the gaseous film of the atmosphere, half-covered by a skim of water forming the oceans—the great sphere of the earth spun upon its axis and moved inflexibly in its course around the sun. Continuously, in the succession of day and night, season and season, year and year, the earth had received heat from the sun, and again lost into space that same amount of heat. But this balance of the entire sphere did not hold for its individual parts. The equatorial belt received yearly much more heat than it radiated off, and the polar regions lost much more heat than they received. Nevertheless the one was not growing hotter while the others sank toward absolute zero. Instead, at once tempering cosmic extremes and maintaining equilibrium with the sun, by a gigantic and complex circulation, the poles constantly cooled the tropics and the tropics reciprocally warmed the poles.
In this process, cold currents bore icebergs toward the equator, and warm currents moved poleward. But even these vast rivers of the oceans achieved only a small part of the necessary whole.
In the stupendous work of transport the paramount agent was the atmosphere, thin and insignificant though it was in comparison with the monstrous earth itself. Within the atmosphere the chief equalizers of heat were the great winds—the trades and anti-trades, the monsoons, the tropical hurricanes, the polar easterlies, and (most notable of all) the gigantic whirling storms of the temperate zones, which in the stateliest of earthly processions moved ever along their sinuous paths, across ocean and continent, from the setting toward the rising sun.
2
Early in November, had come “Election-Day rains.” Chilling after the warmth of October, low-lying clouds blew in from the southwest, thick with moisture from the Pacific. The golden-brown hills of the Coast Ranges grew darker beneath the downpour. In the Great Valley summer-dry creeks again ran water. Upon the Sierra the snow fell steadily. The six-month dry season was over.
Between drenching showers the sun shone brightly, warming the earth. Thousands of hillsides were suddenly green with the sprouted grass. In the valleys, overnight, the square miles of summer fallow became fields of new wheat and barley. Stockmen talked jovially to one another—a good year! Farmers in irrigated districts thought comfortably of rising water-tables and filling reservoirs. In the towns the merchants gave larger orders to wholesale houses.
November ended with two weeks of good growing-weather. The grass and the grain sucked moisture from the soil, and spread lush blades in the sunshine.
December came in—days still warm and sunny, nights clear, with a touch of frost in the valleys and on the higher hills. Farmers began to look more often to the south—but there were no clouds. Stockmen no longer went about slapping one another on the back; instead, they went secretly and inquired the price of cotton-seed meal at the Fresno mills. As the weeks passed, storekeepers grew chary about granting credit.
By Christmas, the green of the pasture-lands and the wide grain fields showed a faint cast of yellow. In favored spots the grass was six inches tall; but the blades were curled a little, and at the edges were brownish red. Where cattle had grazed, the ragged ends still showed.
The city-folk went about congratulating themselves on the fine weather. The tourist trade was flourishing. On New Year’s Day the sports experts broadcasting the football games talked almost as much about the fine weather as about the passes.
But just after the first of the year pessimistic crop-reports from California helped send the price of barley up a half cent on the Chicago exchange. That same day, six great trucks with trailers, heavy-laden with cotton-seed meal, plugged up the highway from Fresno; the richer stockmen had started to buy feed.
So, in the first weeks of the new year a winter drought lay tense upon the land.
3
From Siberia the wide torrent of air was sweeping southward—from death-cold Verkhoyansk, from the frigid basin of the Lena, from thick-frozen Lake Baikal. The great wind poured over the Desert of Gobi. Even the hardy nomads winced; the long-haired northern camels stirred uneasily; the rough-coated ponies shivered; all sound of running water was hushed. High in the air swirled the dust blown up from the desert. Over the mountain-jagged rim of the table-land the wind poured forth; through all the gaps and passes of the Khingan Mountains, down the gorge of the Hwang-ho. As in centuries past, it stormed across the Great Wall, asking no emperor’s leave. Swifter than Tartar, more terrible than Mongol, more pitiless than Manchu, it swept down upon the plains of China.
Descending from the plateau and entering a warmer region, the air lost some of its arctic coldness; nonetheless, in the ancient northern capital the chill struck into men’s blood. By day, a sun like tarnished brass shone without warmth through clouds of yellow dust. By night, the eyes saw nothing, but t
he dryness and smell of dust pinched the nostrils. The fur-coated foreigners (as was their birthright) blasphemed at the weather; the thin-clad, shivering coolies moved stoically about their business. Nightly in hovel and doorway, huddling in corners, some scores of the poor froze slowly to death.
Southward along the coast of China ran that river of air. Among the hills of Shantung it was still an iron-cold blast, but on the plain of the Yangtze its power was less. In Nanking and Shanghai the ice formed only in quieter, shallower pools.
The air at last swung away from the coast, and moved out over the sea; with every mile of passage across the water it grew more moist and temperate. Through a thinning yellow haze the sun pierced more warmly. Now the wind was no longer a gale, scarcely even a strong breeze. The polar fury was spent. But still, east by south, the river of air flowed on across the China Sea toward the far reaches of the Pacific.
4
In mid-afternoon the front of the Siberian air-mass was pushing slowly across the island-studded ocean which lies east of China and south of Japan. Its cold heavy air clung close to the surface of the water. Advancing thus as a northeasterly breeze, it forced backward the warmer, lighter air ahead of it, and occasionally pushed beneath this air vigorously enough to cause a shower.
This opposing and retreating air had lain, some days previous, over the tropical ocean near the Philippine Islands. A storm had taken it northeast, shedding rain, clear to the Japanese coast; it had then moved slowly back before the pressure of the cold wave. By this northern foray it had lost its extreme humidity and warmth, and become temperate rather than tropical. Nevertheless it still remained warmer and more moist than the air which had swept down from Siberia.
The advance of the northern air and corresponding retreat of the southern were related, like all movements in the atmosphere, to conditions existing concurrently over the whole earth. The conditions of this particular day were such that the advance was losing its vigor and becoming slower.
An hour before sunset, one section of the front reached a small island—a mere mountain-peak above the ocean. A dead-tired man may stumble over a pebble and fall; but his weariness, rather than the pebble, is the cause. Similarly, a vigorously advancing front would simply have swept over and around the island, but now the obstruction caused an appreciable break, and a hesitant eddy, about a mile in diameter, began to form—weakened—took shape again. At one point the southern air no longer yielded passively to the northern, but actively flowed up its slope, as up a gradual hill. Rising, this air grew cooler, and from it a fine drizzle began to fall. This condensation of water in turn further warmed the air, and caused it to press up the slope more steadily with still further condensation. The process thus became self-perpetuating and self-strengthening.
The movement of this advancing warm air was now a little southwest breeze, where previously all the flow of air had been from the northeast. With this new breeze, air which was still warmer and more moist moved in from the south along the near-by section of the original front, renewing its vigor and causing a little shower. All these new and renewed activities—winds, drizzle, and shower—were now arranged in complex but orderly fashion around a single point.
As from the union of two opposite germ-cells begins a life, so from the contact of northern and southern air had sprung something which before had not been. As a new life, a focus of activity, begins to develop after its kind and grow by what it feeds on, so in the air that complex of forces began to develop and grow strong. A new storm had been born.
5
The ship’s course lay almost due west. Her position was about three hundred miles southeast of Yokohama, but her port was Foochow on the coast of China, still fourteen hundred miles distant.
At seven that evening when the radio-operator came on deck, he found that the weather had changed. He noted breaks in the high cloud-deck beneath which the ship had been moving for several days. The air seemed both cool and dry, in comparison with the former half-tropical suavity. Automatically, he looked at the smoke-wisp trailing behind; knowing the ship’s course, he estimated that in the last hour the wind had veered from about two points south of west to an equal angle north of west.
Since one of his duties was to read the instruments and report to shore stations, the radio-operator felt more than the usual seafaring-man’s interest in the weather. He stepped in to look at the barometer; it had fallen slightly, but not enough to matter. In January a typhoon was unlikely; and besides, the international reports showed no disturbance in the region which they were now traversing.
Nevertheless, about eight o’clock a light drizzle began. This increased to a steady gentle rain; but the air was warmer than before. The light wind had backed sharply, and was now from the southwest. The smoke rose almost vertically. After a few minutes the rain ceased, but the ship still moved beneath the low cloud-deck. The air was again warm and oppressive as it had been on preceding days.
A quarter of an hour later, the weather changed again. A gust of wind, not enough to be called a squall, raised a few white-caps. Along with it but scarcely of ten seconds’ duration, a sudden shower spattered the deck with large raindrops. The temperature seemed to drop immediately at least ten degrees.
“Queer weather!” remarked the radio-operator to the second officer, at the same time noticing the smoke. It was trailing off to port, again indicating a northerly wind; moreover, instead of rising, the smoke lay close to the surface of the ocean.
“Something getting ready to begin,” said the second officer. “Hope it’s not for us.”
There was, however, no further marked change. At nine o’clock—noon by Greenwich time—the radio-operator began to make his observations, preparatory to reporting to the nearest shore station. He recorded the barometer at 1011, slightly higher than at the time of the shower. He noted the Fahrenheit temperature at 55, fourteen degrees cooler than on the preceding evening. The wind was a steady breeze from the northwest. The cloud-deck was breaking, and a new moon, low in the west, shone over the ocean-surface.
West toward the Chinese coast the ship plowed on steadily. “Whatever we ran through back there,” said the radio-operator, “we’re done with it.” Then he sniffed curiously. “Funny thing—hundreds of miles at sea, and I’d swear I smell dust!”
6
The new Junior Meteorologist ($2,000 a year) was working at his table. The telephone rang and he answered it mechanically. “Weather Bureau. . . . Fair tonight and Wednesday; no change in temperature; moderate northwest winds. . . . You’re welcome.” He clicked down the receiver with unnecessary vigor, showing his irritation. In the five weeks since he had come to work in the Bureau, the weather had been inane. Sometimes he wanted to take up the telephone and shout into it: “Blizzards, lightning, and hurricanes!” But as he bent over his table again, irritation oozed away. Instead, there swelled up within him the joy of the workman, of the scientist, even of the artist. For, as he often told himself, his present task was the only one of his daily assignments over which he could work with some degree of calm and detachment. It was not like the hurried preparation of the early morning map upon which the forecasts were based. His present work had its uses, but they were a little removed from the immediate present.
On the table lay a large map which he had almost finished preparing. It was large not only by its own dimensions but also by its coverage of about one half the northern hemisphere. At its top were the Arctic regions; from these the two continents slanted down—to the right, North America, the left, the eastern portion of Asia. In the center of the map stretched the great spaces of the North Pacific Ocean. The outline of land and sea, the parallels and meridians, the names and numbers of weather stations formed the printed background. Upon this the Junior Meteorologist had entered the current weather data as they had been reported by radio and telegraph, internationally, some hours earlier.
Visitors to the Weather Bureau found such a map confus
ed and unintelligible. But to its maker it was simple, beautiful, and inspiring. Now he was giving it the final revision; with the care of a poet polishing a quatrain, he erased an inch of one line and redrew it with slightly altered curve.
He laid aside his eraser and colored pencils, and sat back to look at the work. Involuntarily, he breathed a little more deeply. To him, as to some archangel hovering in the ninth heaven, the weather lay revealed. Suppose that the telephone should ring and some voice inquire the weather in Kamchatka, upon Laysan Island, or at Aklavik in the frozen delta of the Mackenzie. He could reply not only as to what the weather actually was but also with fair assurance as to what it would most likely be in the near future.
The first sweeping glance assured him that nothing exceptional or unforeseen had happened in the twenty-four hours since he had prepared the last similar map. Antonia had moved about as he had expected. Cornelia and the others were developing normally. Not at any price would the Junior Meteorologist have revealed to the Chief that he was bestowing names—and girls’ names—upon those great moving low-pressure areas. But he justified the sentimental vagary by explaining mentally that each storm was really an individual and that he could more easily say (to himself, of course) “Antonia” than “the low-pressure center which was yesterday in latitude one-seventy-five East, longitude forty-two North.”
The game, nevertheless, was beginning to play out. At first he had christened each new-born storm after some girl he had known—Ruth, Lucy, Katherine. Then he had watched eagerly, hoping in turn that each of these little storms might develop in proper fashion to bring the rain. But one after another they had failed him. Of late the supply of names had run short, and he had been relying chiefly upon long ones ending in -ia which suggested actresses or heroines of books rather than girls he had ever known.