Storm

by George R. Stewart

  In January the sun rides deep in Capricorn far from the northern Pole. Unbroken darkness lies over the Arctic, and from the ever-deepening chill of that night the cold air sweeps southward. Now it battles fiercely along the Polar Front, and now at some favorable point a lightning column breaks through and pierces clear to the Tropic. But still the forces of the South fight stiffly, and their ally never wholly deserts them. For even in mid-winter the broad equatorial belt lies hot in the sun, and high in the air through the great current of the anti-trades its reserves move northward toward the battle-line.

  So in mid-winter the combat is fiercest, for then the forces of heat and of cold both are strong, and have drawn most closely together. At that time, as in many another war, the citadels of the combatants are quiet and peaceful. In the South the trade winds blow gently, week in, week out. Far to the North the stars shine in the calm polar night. Only in that No Man’s Land which is the Temperate Zone the storms raid and harry.

  Then the sun moves from Aries into Taurus, and the southern forces drive northward once again.

  In meteorology the use of such a military term as “front” may be a chronological accident—that the theory was developed in the years following 1914, a time when such military expressions were on everyone’s tongue. The theory has become much complicated, but men still talk of the Polar Front, and may even yet talk of it when the Western Front has happily become a dim memory.

  Had the discovery been made in more peaceful years, men (who involuntarily try to humanize nature) would perhaps have derived a term from marriage rather than war. This comparison also is apt—love, as well as hate, arises between unlikes, and love like hate breeds violent encounters. Best of all would be to use words unrelated to human feelings. Those great storms know neither love nor hate.

  2

  Through the darkness after moon-set the big owl flitted, ghostlike, upon noiseless wings. The forested mountain-side held out thousands of convenient branches, and he circled first around a small pine tree, seeming just ready to alight. Then, driven by whatever force controls the destiny of owls, he spiraled down to a pole of the electric transmission line which ran straight along the side of the ridge.

  The owl sat in contentment upon the wooden cross-arm. In due time he neatly regorged, owl-fashion, some skins and bones of mice, and felt ready for further flight. He stretched out a wing comfortably, and with a feather-tip happened to touch one of the copper wires.

  A crackling flash of blue-white light illumined the mountain-side. Then came darkness again. In the darkness the scorched body of the owl tumbled to the ground, a few feathers drifted off in the breeze; from the wire a faint emanation, as of smoke, rose momentarily.

  Later a wild-cat picked up the owl’s body; he carried it away from the smell of man which clung to the pole and made a meal of it at his ease.

  3

  Huddling in overcoat and muffler against the winter chill, leaning heavily upon a cane, the old man moved along the sidewalk. With dimly seeing eyes he peered uncertainly through the yellow half-light of the street-lamps. He was very old; once he might have been fairly tall, but now he was bent and shrunken; the hair which showed at his temples was snow-white. As he came to the steps of the Federal Building, he paused and then tapped with his cane to be sure that he had seen aright.

  He rang the night-bell. The watchman recognized him, and let him in without question. Going up in the elevator, he was silent. Yes, he could remember the situation well. The low had moved in across Tennessee; the pressure at the center was 29.5 or close to that; and the year was ’98, April. But there was something else he couldn’t remember, something about Maine. Pressure had been high over Maine, he was sure of that all right; but there was something else and it bothered him—Maine, rain, Spain. And a senseless rhyme kept bobbing up in his head: “He drove the span-yards, back to their tan-yards.”

  The elevator-man spoke to him.

  “Think we’re goin’ to have some rain soon?”

  “Yes, it will rain soon.”

  “Feel it in your joints, eh!”

  “I do not feel it in my joints,” said the old man formally. “But—but—but I know.”

  “Well, I guess if the boys upstairs can’t figure us a rain with all them maps, we’d better not try.”

  “I—I know,” said the old man, and drew himself up stiffly.

  Feeling ahead with his cane, he came into the chart-room.

  “Good morning, sir,” he heard a voice say.

  “I should like to see the observations taken. I trust I am not too late.”

  “He’s just gone up, sir. . . . Here, I’ll help you.”

  “Thank you, sir; I see better sometimes than others.”

  With his right hand gripping the steel rail of the circular staircase the old man moved more confidently. He ascended carefully step by step, went through a door, and came out upon the roof. A row of electric lights showed him the way through a maze of skylights and ventilators. He came to the little louvered instrument-shelter, at which a man was reading a thermometer.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the old man.

  “Good morning,” said the other, and as he noted something upon his pad, the light falling on his face showed him to be very young.

  With professional courtesy the old man said nothing more during the taking of observations. But he watched carefully. The young man read temperatures on the maximum and minimum thermometers, and gave the former a spin for resetting. Then he dipped the wet-bulb thermometer in a can of water, spun the handle vigorously, read the result, spun again, then once more, and recorded wet and dry temperatures. Next he observed the star-covered sky for clouds, “None,” and visibility, “Unlimited.” He made his notations and turned to go.

  “Have you taken wind direction and velocity, sir?” said the old man.

  “They’re recorded automatically downstairs.”

  “Oh, yes. I had forgotten.” Then the old man made a little snorting noise. “You youngsters—pretty soon you’ll make up a forecast without even going outdoors! In my day a weather-man had to be good. Now, with all your instruments and reports coming in by wireless, anybody can do it. In my day, we used to say, you read the barometer, and stuck your head out the window, and then made a forecast. You had to be good, sir, to do that.”

  “You think so, eh!”

  They moved back toward the stairway. The old man was ahead; the young man was impatient, but he could not shove past among the skylights and ventilators.

  “We are going to have rain,” said the old man.

  “Well, Grandpa, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s impossible with the present air-mass situation—for several days anyway.”

  “Air-mass poppycock! I don’t need any square-head Scandihoovian telling me about my own weather. Why, in those days we didn’t get reports from west of the Mississippi half the time. We had some stations—Fort Benton, and Corinne, and so forth—but the Sioux were still on the warpath, and I guess they cut the wires. Yes, you had to be good, then. We were quite a crowd in the old Signal Service days. ‘The duties of this office,’ our Chief used to say—‘permit little rest’—yes—‘little rest and less hesitation.’”

  Both were silent a moment, and the old man’s next remark was startling for lack of connection.

  “The New York papers had editorials.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, I remember the Herald distinctly; the editor commended our work. Of course it really was a good deal colder than we expected. Some of the West Point cadets were frost-bitten quite badly.”

  “Oh, you mean the forecast for Grant’s inauguration? I’ve heard that one before, thanks.”

  As they came to the stairway, the young man moved ahead and went rapidly down.

  The old man descended slowly. He went on through the chart-room and along the corridor. He was almost sure th
at he had forgotten something. Also he felt a little hurt and confused. The young man had seemed almost disrespectful to him. Sometime he must take up this air-mass matter; he wasn’t sure that he really understood it, and these strange three-dimensional storms.

  Then his mind turned in sudden flight from the present, and he was in the winter of 1881. That was the year he had been in Chicago; he remembered things very clearly, even a red-haired girl. Yet the memory of her was not half so vivid as the memory of a storm which had moved down from Minnesota. He saw the whole map clear in his mind. Then he entered the elevator, and went down.

  On the ground floor as he walked toward the door, someone greeted him:

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, sir,” he replied, blinking to clear away the little haze before his eyes. “I remember the face, but I’m afraid I don’t know who you are.”

  “I’m the Chief Forecaster, sir.”

  “Oh, of course. You look older.”

  “Not since day before yesterday, I hope!”

  (But the old man was thinking of 1902, and the bright youngster he had hired that year to sweep out the office and such things, over in the old building.)

  “It is going to rain,” he said.

  “Well, in that case you’ll want to stay, won’t you, and see the map made up.”

  Then he remembered—that was what he had forgotten. He should have stayed, but now there was his pride.

  “No, thank you, sir. No, thank you. I have some appointments.” And he walked out as stiffly as he could, into the morning darkness.

  As he went along, he tapped now and then with his cane to be sure where he was. “It is going to rain,” he said to himself sometimes. “I know, I know.”

  4

  The Load-Dispatcher entered the Power-Light Building promptly a little before eight. His entry caused no flurry among the dozens of employees who were moving toward the elevators. Only, in one corner of the lobby two burly men were standing; there was a certain country-jake look about them, and they stood ill at ease—strangers to the city. As the Load-Dispatcher passed by, one of them nudged the other.

  “That’s him!”

  “Gosh, you mean the L. D.!”

  Those two—down to see the white lights on a vacation—were from Johnny Martley’s maintenance gang which worked out from French Bar Power-House. In their lives the President of Power-Light was only a vague “big-shot,” but the L. D. spoke with the voice of God. In this opinion they did not differ from some thousands of other employees in the far-reaching system—linemen, operators, ditch-tenders, switchboardmen, foremen, even superintendents of sub-stations and power-houses. Many hundreds of them had never seen him, but he was as close as the telephone-bell. Generally some subordinate was on the line: “The L. D. says . . .”; occasionally it was even more like a thunderbolt: “The L. D. speaking . . .” In Plumas County a ditch-tender’s wife kept her children quiet by threatening to “tell the L. D.” During the fire at North Fork Power-House a Mexican laborer in imminent danger of being cooked had spontaneously called for help to the L. D. instead of the Virgin.

  Nevertheless the actual Load-Dispatcher who entered his office at 7:59 was not god-like in appearance. His office too was ordinary; since the public did not penetrate to it, the company saw no reason to replace a shabby desk which had stood there out of memory.

  The L. D. pressed a buzzer. A man in shirt-sleeves entered; he wore a green eye-shade, and had a portable telephone-transmitter on his chest.

  “Hello, Terry,” said the L. D. “What news?”

  “French Bar reported a momentary short—just after midnight—on their sixty k-v line.”

  “Has Martley reported what caused it?”

  “No, not yet.”

  The L. D. was silent for the space of six seconds. Through his mind were rushing figures which represented time and space modified by conditions of topography, season of year, and efficiency of men. From long skill the calculation was so rapid that it resembled intuition; thus by being so highly rational the L. D. had gained the reputation of playing hunches.

  “If Martley doesn’t call before eight-seventeen, get in touch with him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The L. D. noted, not without satisfaction, the slightly awed air with which Terry departed. Well, he hoped eight-seventeen would be all right; Martley was as good as any of them, but the open winter tended to make men get slack. Nevertheless, to ask for a report too soon merely made men think the L. D. was nervous or petulant or demanding the impossible. To let them report before you asked encouraged them to be slow. But if by keen calculation you hit close to the exact minute, word of it would run along the company lines from Shasta to Tehachapi, and every man in the system would get on his toes, feeling that the L. D. was watching.

  He turned to the papers on his desk. The weather forecast—fair, no change in temperature. He looked at his own forecast of power requirements for the present day, shown as a red line plotted on graph paper. In the early morning hours the curve was lowest, for then the only demands were from the twenty-four-hour industries and an occasional night-hawk. The red line mounted as (from long experience) he had made allowance for early risers snapping on their lights. It jumped suddenly around seven-thirty as daytime industries took over, and thousands of housewives plugged in percolators and toasters. It stayed high until noon, dropped suddenly for the midday lull, rose at one o’clock, and mounted to its peak at five-thirty when in the winter twilight millions of lights came on. Beneath the forecast curve, plottings in colored pencil showed the distribution of load among the many power-houses, allowance made for repair work in progress, depleted water reserves, and a hundred other factors.

  This was the forecast, but any unforeseen happening would disturb it. If a sudden cloud appeared, twenty thousand office-workers might casually turn on the lights, and the L. D. was responsible that those unexpected lights should neither flicker nor be dim. If the evening was warmer than usual, five thousand old ladies might decide not to plug in the electric heater, and the L. D. was responsible that this unused energy did not flood the system and disarrange the delicate continuous process in operation at the Consolidated Paper Mill.

  Nevertheless, the L. D., sitting at his desk, was not busy that morning. Like all first-class executives he arranged that assistants handled the routine, and he held himself for emergencies and long-time planning. And this year had been easy. As often, he thought of the paradox in which he was involved. In the long run, not only Power-Light but also the whole state depended upon the water furnished by the great winter storms; yet these indispensable storms were his chief problem, and sometimes he caught himself, against all rationality, wishing for a dry year.

  Yes, this was an easy season, so far. The November rains had caused little trouble; in fact they had been a help rather than otherwise, for they had shown up a few weak places which had since been made strong. But eventually something would happen. No need to say that he had a hunch or felt it in his bones. Sooner or later, it was a mere matter of record, the storm struck.

  He thought of his thousands of miles of power-line. In their great spans the 220,000-volt wires hung from the high steel towers—dipping and rising in their perfect curves, mile after mile. In never-varying sets of three the graceful waves of copper crossed hill and valley, spanned river and canyon, formed the sky-line along foothill ridges—165,000-volt, 110,000-volt. Less majestic, the 60,000-volt wires hung from sturdy cross-arms upon wooden poles. And below the high-voltage system came the low-voltage distribution lines, a mileage of them that was dizzying to contemplate.

  Yet the wires were not all. They headed up at the power-houses, but above the power-houses were penstocks and canals and dams and lakes like inland seas. Then, mixed in with the power-lines were sub-stations with maze-like bus-structures and myriads of switches.

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sp; It was all his responsibility, and it all lay open—open as the face of the town clock—to every storm. You could hardly blame him if now and then he inconsistently wished for a dry year.

  To be sure, he was neither single-handed, nor defenseless, nor unprepared. Except in occasional nightmares, he felt himself master of the situation. First of all, his ally, the age-long experience of man against the weather, stood behind him. Next came the half-century of trial and error which his predecessors had undergone—and paid for. Brains long since moldered had discovered for him the proper length of span and height of tower, the strength of wire, and toughness of wood and steel. He was wise with the knowledge gained as men died in blinding flashes, or lay crushed beneath broken poles.

  Every wire in that system, every tower and pole, every dam, yes—he thought—the strength and courage of every maintenance-man was figured to balance the power of that old storm-bringer, the southeast wind. The lines were strong enough to stand average bad weather; beyond that they had a margin of safety for any bad weather of record. Moreover, during the autumn all lines had been patrolled. Men had inspected every doubtful point with field-glasses, and had replaced worn wire, spotted insulators, and uncertain cross-arms.

  In spite of it all, the L. D. did not scoff at storms. The system was so large that concealed in it here and there must lie countless flaws—faulty material, slips of workmanship, totally unpredictable injuries. All those flaws now lay quiescent; or cropping up one by one, they could be repaired in good weather by routine maintenance-gangs. In rain, wind, snow, and clinging ice, many might let go all at once and under conditions which would make their repair a tenfold problem.

  It was a condition of his life. To build equipment so strong that it never broke down was not economically feasible, even if it were practically possible. The system had gone through ’16 and ’38; it could keep on going.

  The door opened and Terry stood there again, telephone on chest.