Storm

by George R. Stewart

  “You know a guy named Arnim? Well, anyway, he’s disappeared—him and a girl.”

  “Oh, him? Sure, I heard about him. Only, what I heard was . . .”

  Neither Max nor Jen had any family in Reno. People liked to talk, but nobody wanted to stick his finger into what might be after all just some other person’s very private business—live and let live. In the restaurant the waitresses began to whisper together, and Jen’s roommate felt they were looking at her. She broke down openly into a sudden fit of crying, and the proprietress just about snapped the heads off a couple of the girls.

  But when hundreds of people know something, the story must by the law of averages soon reach a person who will act instead of talk. This happened when someone passed the time of day with a policeman named McNenery.

  “D’ya hear about this Arnim fellow?”

  The citizen who passed on this information leaned to the prevalent romantic theory that the missing pair (like Tristram and Iseult having drunken of the potion) had suddenly looked into each other’s eyes, and counted the world well lost for love. But fifteen years on the force had destroyed McNenery’s illusions, and left him correspondingly clear-headed. In his world people did not endanger good jobs to go to bed, not when they could keep the jobs and go to bed anyway.

  McNenery looked at the sky, which was thickly overcast. There were several inches of snow on the streets, and snow was falling thinly. McNenery suddenly talked about the weather.

  “She’s raining a lot harder than this on the other side, and snowing plenty on the Hump. The mountains squeeze all the juice out of a storm before it ever gets to Nevada. It’s a long road back from Frisco.”

  Then he called headquarters to find out whether anything had come in from the California Highway Patrol. There was nothing. He made no report to Headquarters, but went around to the restaurant and dropped in, as if about nothing of importance. But the entrance of his uniform seemed to make electrical connections all over the establishment; even the dish-washers came peering out. McNenery talked with the proprietress, who called over Jen’s roommate, who again went into tears.

  “I think you ought to call that sister in San Francisco,” said McNenery gently. “Tell her something—you and Jen had a date, and you wanted to check up when she’d be back.”

  The roommate hesitated.

  “I’ll pay the tolls,” snapped the proprietress, who saw the restaurant demoralized until the matter was settled.

  The roommate went to the booth, and called long distance.

  •

  A light glowed on the Reno long-distance board. The operator plugged one of the San Francisco lines. More quickly than the mind of man conceives, the impulses ran along two hundred miles of circuit —through wires over the pass loaded to the breaking point with snow, through wires in the Valley dripping with rain, through the cables beneath the Bay. A light glowed on the great San Francisco board; an operator plugged the local exchange, and at that board another operator plugged the proper number. A bell rang in the house of Jen’s sister.

  Dot was washing the lunch dishes. “Drat it!” she said mildly, and went to the phone.

  •

  Jen’s roommate came from the telephone booth weeping hysterically. Everybody crowded around—patrons who were still eating their lunches, even the dish-washers.

  “They left her house Sunday night, and were going to drive right straight here. . . . She just went right off the handle because I hadn’t called her sooner. . . . She’s calling the police right now.”

  5

  The old coyote who ranged the summit of Donner Pass found the storm scarcely even an inconvenience. At the first warnings he had withdrawn to a rocky ledge on the lee side of Donner Peak. In a deep crevice he was comfortably protected from wind and snow; his winter coat was thick and warm; from the innermost recesses of the rocks a little ground-water dripped continually and he could lick up what he wanted before it froze. He spent forty-eight hours, mostly in sleeping. Then he was hungry.

  He floundered heavily in the deep snow, but had little difficulty in working down the steep face of the mountain-side. When he came to the railroad track, he smelled the wind cautiously. But he was used to the works of man, and like a trout inhabiting an irrigation ditch, he made use of them for his own ends. He trotted along the cleared track until he came to a point near a thick stand of fir. He hunted patiently and methodically, and soon was crunching the bones of a big rabbit. His meal finished, he needed water.

  Though it was broad daylight, the thickly flying snow gave him cover, and he moved boldly. He came to the highway, trotted along it easily for a short distance, and then scrambled rapidly over the snow-wall as he heard a car approaching.

  Close under the cliffs below the point at which the highway crossed the summit, he paused and sniffed suspiciously. The air was carrying a smell which he did not expect at this place. The smell was a mingled one. Some of the suggestions were alarming. Others were pleasant as of meat and eating. He sniffed about in the snow for a few moments, and then went on. The association of the odors and the place was recorded in his excellent memory for possible future investigation.

  6

  During ten years of work for the telephone company Rick had climbed more poles than anybody could count in a blue moon. He had climbed them by day and by night, in rain, in snow, in sleet, in fog so thick that from the ground you could hardly see the cross-arms; he had climbed them in blazing summer suns which made your head swim, in September northers which filled your eyes with dust, in the smoke of forest fires which half-strangled you. He felt that he knew about climbing poles, anywhere, any time. Climbing a pole was no more to him than going upstairs was to other people.

  On this day he kept at it, working alone. Where the wires were farther from the highway, linemen had to work in pairs for safety, but in this section the lead was everywhere close to the highway, usually within sight of it. Rick was glad today that he could work alone; it gave him more chance to think of the girl.

  Lower down in the foothills the snow was sticky, and several crews were busy on the local lines. But on the transcontinental there had been only sniping trouble—here a wire, there a wire.

  •

  When he saw this particular break, Rick halted the truck and parked it as usual. The snow-wall was high and clean-cut, for recently a rotary plow had passed by. Down around the first curve he could see it throwing its curve of snow out among the pine trees.

  There was a hundred-yard stretch of rough going to the pole. When he got there, he saw that the broken wire was from the lowest cross-arm, and would be an easy job. He was glad, for he was thinking of that girl—maybe the next time he got a chance he would telephone her for a date, and the sooner he fixed this wire the sooner he could do it.

  The pole stood in a rather open spot in the forest, but near it was a young lodge-pole pine about thirty feet tall and bending over heavily with snow. If it had been bigger, the maintenance-men would have felled it; but they had not bothered with this tree, for even though it should be blown down or bend clear over because of the snow-load, it would be too short to touch the wires and too small to damage a pole.

  Rick finished his work on the ground, and made ready to ascend. He stuck his ski-poles into the snow. As he did so, a thought of the girl came to his mind; he did not thrust one of the poles quite hard enough; it leaned over so that its top touched against the top of the other.

  In a sudden flurry the snow came more thickly in great flakes. The near-by tree loaded more heavily and bent over still farther. The wind blew it back and forth a little, but from some trick of its own growth it leaned into the wind and in the direction of the telephone pole.

  Rick climbed up to the cross-arm, snapped on his safety-belt, and started working.

  The tree, weighted beyond its strength, leaned farther and farther.

  Rick worked on. Above him passed t
he forty wires of the Central Transcontinental Lead—a miracle of engineering. Each of those pairs of wires could carry many voices at the same time, and yet unscramble them perfectly at the end. Booming voices put through deals and shouted orders. Anxious voices inquired about the operation or the accident. Triumphant voices called for congratulations, and sorrowful voices passed into sobs.

  To Rick upon the pole, the wire was only something to be mended. He attached his little block-and-tackle. The tree leaned still lower, almost brushing the pole.

  Voices coursed along the wires in English of a half dozen different intonations, in Dutch, Japanese, German, Spanish, and Greek. An Assistant Secretary of State was talking to the Minister to Thailand. Teletype circuits were being operated; cable messages were going through in code; a symphony orchestra was playing for a radio network.

  Rick was just attaching the wire to the insulator. Below him, the tip of the tree settled noiselessly against the pole.

  The Minister to Thailand was taken with a fit of coughing, and two faithful wires just above Rick’s head transmitted half way around the world the senseless spasms of his midriff equally as well as they had his keenest comments upon the international situation.

  Rick finished his work, and rested a moment. He shook the snow off his coat, and brushed it from his eye-brows. He was warm from his work, and unbuttoned his coat. He did not glance down the pole, and see that the tip of the tree rested lightly against it a few feet below him. The thought of the girl with blue eyes and dark-tanned face was in his mind; he felt in some way touched with nobility; for the moment he was again absent-minded. Upon the pole on the mountain-side with the falling snow thick about him in all directions, beneath the wires which reached to all corners of the world, he was wholly alone.

  He unsnapped his safety-belt and started down, his coat blowing loosely about him. At its second stroke the climbing-iron on his right foot pierced deceptively the top twig of the leaning tree, and through it barely nicked the pole itself. As Rick shifted his weight to that leg, the climbing-iron cut loose; and he fell sprawling through the air.

  He whirled round as he fell, his coat flew open; with no protection but his shirt and underwear he lit squarely with the middle of his body upon the tops of his two ski-poles. One pole might have given way, or been pushed into the soft snow, but the two poles together thrust stiffly against his diaphragm, just below his heart.

  The tree, jarred by his fall, released its load, and sprang upright. Snow scattered upon Rick where he lay.

  In a moment he came to, without realizing that he had been unconscious. “Must have knocked the wind out of me,” he thought, afraid to admit anything worse. The great numbness around the base of his chest frightened him.

  Rick was mountain-bred, a fighter. He managed to get himself from the hole which he had made when he fell; he wormed along inch by inch to his skis, but when he reached them, he could not get to his feet and put them on. He decided to lie upon them and use them as a sled. Before he could get himself placed, he was growing numb; he thought that he should have eaten more heavily before coming out on this job.

  Overhead were passing the strains of the orchestra playing Beethoven’s Third Symphony. “This connection is rotten,” said a man in Pocatello angrily to a man in Fresno. A teletype circuit was recording an unsettled market in Chicago caused by nervousness as to the crop-effect of the cold wave which was sweeping the wheat belt.

  Rick slid down the first little slope. “It’s easy!” he thought for one joyous moment. Then he plunged head-on into the tangle of a cedar tree. He found himself so stiff that he could not possibly turn himself around and crawl out. He began doggedly to back himself out feet first, squirming, inch by inch. Then he realized that his circulation was not working as it should; he thought fearfully that there must be a great bruise close to his heart; he was cold. The pain of the squirming motion was intense. Nevertheless he worked himself back until his head was free, and then he felt himself growing dizzy and faint. He realized that he must rest for a minute. It was an extreme pleasure to stop struggling and lie still.

  Down on the highway the little green truck was already so plastered with snow that a man driving along the highway could hardly distinguish it from a drift.

  7

  On the rocky ledge the rotting bole of the cedar tree was settling by minute gradations, but steadily. The direction of the storm was such that snow piled up on top of the bole, and was swept out from beneath it. This distribution increased the tendency toward rotation instead of mere settling, as the rotten fibers yielded under increasing weight. By infinitesimal fractions of an inch the center of gravity moved forward.

  Blue Boy, the big boar, did not mind the rain. His fat kept him warm, and as a natural wallower in swamps and marshes he was adjusted to water. As the ground softened, he rooted after what he could find. This occupation was chiefly a pastime, for there were still plenty of acorns lying about. As he worked back and forth along the steep hillside, he saw with incurious eyes the trains passing along the double-tracked railroad below him—heavy freights, swiftly moving expresses, the shiny streamliner. When the downpour became uncomfortably heavy and the wind was high, Blue Boy withdrew for shelter to the thick covert of a low-growing live-oak.

  •

  The bullet which “Dirty Ed” had shot at the switch-box had pierced a little hole in the metal, pinged against the other wall, and then fallen to rest on the bottom of the box. The electrical connections had suffered no damage.

  The switch-box controlled the power for Underpass 342-2 by which U.S. Highway 101 went beneath a railroad. The underpass was in flat country close to the Bay, and could not drain by natural flow. During heavy rains much water ran down the slope of the highway on either side, and collected in a sump at the bottom of the underpass. In the sump was a float; when the rising water had lifted this float to the proper point, switches were automatically tripped, a motor started with a whir, and a pump began to work. If the water-level rose still higher, a second pump started. One pump could keep the underpass clear of water in any ordinary rain; the second supplied an ample reserve of capacity for even the heaviest cloudburst.

  The construction was similar to that used in hundreds of underpasses so situated that they could not drain by gravity. Accident, of course, was possible, as with all works of man. But the maintenance gangs inspected the working of the underpass when a storm was expected, and frequently during the storm. The results were so nearly perfect that every day thousands of drivers dipped into the slope of the underpass and steered around its curve without ever thinking that this stretch of the road was at all different from any other.

  8

  Station KPDS calling all cars of the State Highway Patrol. Car, driver, and passenger reported missing. License—Nevada, seven, seven, one, two, four. Repeat: License—Nevada, seven, seven, one, two, four. Details of description will be broadcast later. That is all. . . .

  (From the Register)

  RENO PAIR MISSING

  Left Here Sunday

       Evening: Fail

        to Arrive.

  EXTRY! EXTRY!! EXTRY!!! This is Ye Old-Time Newsy, folks. . . . And now here’s an item that’s not so good. “Max Arnim, 30, and Jane Stongliff, 24, both of Reno, left San Francisco on . . .”

  •

  A million people read it in the headlines. A million heard it by news broadcasts. Amateur detectives and boys playing G-man picked up the police broadcasts.

  •

  “Say, y’see the headline there! I used to know that guy Arnim, went to high school with him. What you know about that!”

  •

  “Maybe it was that nice young couple I served coffee and doughnuts to Sunday night. I remember thinking about them at the time—had a kind of funny feeling. I didn’t see the car, but maybe it was Nevada.”

  •

  “Wish to hell I
could remember the number of that Nevada car I serviced. It was Nevada all right, and it had some sevens. I always notice sevens.”

  9

  The airport lights came on, and the Chief Service Officer saw the sudden long lines of reflection cast from wet asphalt and shallow puddles. He had worked through a hard day, and it was time to be laying off. The planes had been kept going, except when low ceilings and turbulence over the Siskiyous grew too bad about midday and he cancelled the 12:30 for Seattle; the situation looked better now, and probably the seven o’clock could go north; that would be up to the dispatcher on the night shift. The planes did not have to stop for much weather, these days. Staunch and powerful, they could bore through any except the very worst fronts.

  He watched the big transcontinental leave for Salt Lake City. He himself had worked out the course of the flight.

  The pilot would climb steadily until, when he turned to the path of the Reno beam above Blue Canyon, he would be at thirteen thousand feet and above the level at which icing was likely. He would keep at that level until he crossed the summit, and then he could drop down to Reno. Reno reported ceiling at two thousand. If by any chance Reno should be buttoned up before the pilot got there, he had plenty of reserve fuel to take him on to Elko, which reported only scattered clouds and a northeast wind. There was no guess-work involved. Most likely, however, this flight would be held up at Salt Lake City. All through the day fog had been creeping northward across the plains. Dallas had been buttoned up tight since early morning. Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Denver, North Platte—one by one they had gone under. Cheyenne and Omaha would be next. But as far as Salt Lake City everything was safe, and beyond that point was out of his own territory and responsibility.