Sub-Zero

by Robert W. Walker

  “Give me that, Tim!” shouted Walsh in his ear.

  “It’s all yours, maestro!” returned Tim, knowing Walsh couldn’t hear him.

  Walsh studied the prints for some time then shouted, “Damn it, it’s down below!”

  “What?”

  Walsh pointed downward, over the rail of the catwalk, using exaggerated movements. They were like deep sea divers, able to communicate only through gestures and lip reading. Walsh waved to the other two men, indicating that they were to follow. Tim didn’t like the way things were going.

  Gary and Tim followed Walsh down a flight of ladder-sized steps which ran along the huge side of one tank. The ladder was warm to the touch. The room was wet and sticky with clouds of steam. Once on the lower level, Walsh moved rapidly around the room, designating an area, pointing, disappearing ahead of the others. Going between tanks, stepping over pipes, and squeezing into areas that seemed impossible for his stocky frame to maneuver, he seemed too at home to Tim. But he did say he’d worked in construction for many years. Maybe he just knew what to look for, and what he was doing. Still, Tim couldn’t help but wonder. When Walsh had turned up at Gordy’s office, it had been timely. He’d known the corridors down here so well.

  Walsh suddenly stopped ahead of them and Tim caught up. Tim was having difficulty keeping up with his bandaged hands, but at least he hadn’t burned them as had Gary several times on hot pipes. Walsh could be heard better now. They had all become a little more accustomed to the noise level of the room. Still, the short, round man had to shout.

  “It looks like a conventional system, heating, cooling, and electrical. Rather old fashioned, really!”

  “I’m glad it looks like something to someone!” shouted Tim in return.

  “I don’t know where this 2-10-b could fit in here, Tim,” admitted Walsh. “I had an idea. I thought I knew. But, for the life of me, I’d swear it just doesn’t belong!” Walsh held the prints in his hands still.

  “For God’s sake, why didn’t you say so? You’re going to get us forever lost down here!” Tim shouted, pulling the blueprints out of his hands, straightening them and staring dumbly at them once more.

  “This whole area here is in question, Tim,” said Walsh, pointing. “It’s not the single element, this 2-1O-b, It’s this whole range of 2-mechanisms. There seems to be a 2 attached to everything in this area. I think we’re close to it, but it has nothing to do with the air system. It can’t!”

  “‘What’s wrong then?”

  “It appears, from down here, there’s not a damn thing wrong. 1 checked everything that has to do with the heating and air-filtration system. Like I said, it appears that all systems are go!”

  Tim could not accept it. He began to doubt Walsh thoroughly. “What happened upstairs in Wertman’s office didn’t happen? The god damn air in the building isn’t stifling? Gary didn’t faint? What the hell are you trying to sell me, Walsh?”

  “Look here, Crocker,” shouted Walsh, having heard most of Tim’s accusation, “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to stay here either. You can just locate this thing yourself, if it exists!”

  “Wait a minute,” Gary was shouting above them. “We need him, Tim.”

  “That’s the trouble with you types,” shouted Walsh, squeezing past them. “You use people when you need people. Get out of my way.”

  “Hey, don’t leave,” pleaded Gary. “Let him go, Gary,” said Tim.

  “We’ll be lost down here among these pipes,” said Gary. “I’m following him out.”

  “But it’d be all for nothing!”

  “Maybe he’s right,” returned Gary. “This has all been a wild goose chase!”

  Tim straightened up at this. Walsh was nearly out of sight ahead of them. Gary was following Walsh. Tim had little time to make up his mind if he would go with them. He shook his head, indecisive, and raised his eyes. Above him, suspended, it seemed, was an odd-shaped, circular machine. It frightened him at first because it seemed to be held up in midair, and would fall upon him in a second. It was as large as one of the hippopotamus drums but it had wings tubular, concentric pipes. The color was no different than all the other machines around Tim. But it was odd, like a giant goose egg, sitting there in the sky overhead, seemingly hidden there by some giant child playing at hiding toys.

  “Walsh! Gary!” he shouted and realized instantly they could not hear him. “This is it, I know it! This is it!”

  19

  “What is it, Walsh?”

  Walsh did not answer immediately. Tim had raced to Gary and George Walsh, and brought them back to the spot where he’d found the odd-shaped hippo-drum suspended overhead. They had found a ladder that took them up to the strange mechanism and found that it was suspended, as if hidden, between the upper and lower floors. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to spot from the catwalk above at any angle.

  “What is it’?” Tim repeated.

  Walsh stood on the little platform which went completely around the egg-shaped machine. His head continued to shake and he kept repeating the single word, “Impossible. “

  “What? What’s impossible?” asked Tim.

  “This,” said Walsh, pointing at the machine, and stepping around it.

  “This what?” Tim asked, following him. “This is a reactor, a nuclear reactor, Tim.”

  Gary and Tim looked at one another and then back to Walsh. “Holy cowl” shouted Gary.

  “You must be crazy,” said Tim.

  “I wish I were,” answered Walsh. “This is the 2 system, the alternate. Perhaps the only one really. It’s run on computerized chips. It has its own little brain, right here.” Walsh was pointing at a tiny door, hardly visible. “It receives instructions here.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Tim shouted over the roar of the machinery around them. “What’s all this other stuff for then?”

  Tim left his bandaged hands up in the air, in an exaggerated shrug.

  Walsh swallowed hard. “You tell me. You’re the investigator. Put two and two together.”

  Gary Hornell and Tim Crocker studied the gray metal globe once more. It had become even more ominous now that they knew what it was and what it contained. It looked like a flying saucer. Tiny, thick-glassed windows studded each end, where powerful microscopes could be used. A long, hollow tube entered on one side, and another tube exited on the other side.

  “This thing is programmed to heat the building?” asked Tim.

  “Why else would it be here? It’s like the reactors you’d find at Camp Century in the Arctic, or McMurdo in the Antarctic, for light, water, heating. It can generate all three alternately if programmed to do so. It can also be programmed to generate only water, or only electrical power.”

  They still had to shout to hear one another. “And all the rest of this?” Tim motioned to take in the entire room. “This is all for, for ...”

  “For show!” shouted Walsh.

  “You’ve got to be wrong, Walsh!” cried Tim. “Damn it, Tim, this thing’s in operation! It’s probably even running this show, making this room appear to be a conventional boiler room. It’s masking itself!”

  “Camouflage,” shouted Gary.

  “Hold on. I’ve worked over this thing for years and haven’t known it?” shouted Tim.

  Walsh nodded several times, tired of shouting.

  “I’ve read about even smaller units than this,” shouted Gary. “Like the power packs the Icemen used and the astronauts. They had units on their land rovers, and for their own oxygen supply.”

  “Come on,” Walsh said, indicating the stairs downward. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We can’t just leave it, not the way it is,” said Tim.

  “Can’t do a thing about it without the proper program,” countered Walsh, going ahead of them. “We’ll have to return.”

  “The office!” shouted Gary. “What office?” asked Tim.

  “Right at the bottom of the stairs as we came in, there was a tiny
office, windowed-in partition, really. Maybe there’s a computer file there.”

  20

  Tim left George Walsh and Gary Hornell to correct the computerized, nuclear-powered, air-filtration and heating system. He’d argued once more with Walsh when Gary said it was scary being so close to nuclear material, because Walsh had tried to minimize the situation.

  “A lot of superstition is involved in your fear, Gary,” Walsh had said, standing in the small office on the lower level of the boiler room. The office was hardly larger than a telephone booth, but Gary had been right. There was a complete set of computer chips in a file, marked appropriately, 2-10 System. Walsh had identified the computer chip which would put the reactor back into proper order.

  “Maybe Gary’s built up some superstition,” Tim argued, “but a lot of fact is involved in my fear of that thing out there. In 1982 a nuclear reactor caused the deaths of hundreds of workers at a laboratory for Nuclear Research in Colorado. Thousands more would have died if the correct measures hadn’t been taken at once.”

  “That was experimentation, Tim. A thing like this, well, that’s just a well tested tool. You’ve both read too damn much trash about nuclear power. The system we have here is a controlled radiation system, using the lowest grade uranium and no more than is necessary to do a relatively simple job. We can shut it down or we can go without heat, air, electricity, and water. What’s it to be?”

  Gary Hornell only repeated his lament. “It’s still scary being so close to it.”

  “The thing is potentially dangerous, Walsh,” said Tim. “For heaven’s sake, Joanna was almost killed because of it.”

  “She could have just as easily been killed using a conventional air system, if the killer knew the source control,” Walsh shot back.

  “The source,” mumbled Tim, shaking his head. “The control. The programmed chip, the instructions given the computer. Whoever tried to kill Wertman knew how to make one of these gizmos.”

  “What he didn’t know was that Joanna, and not Wertman, would use the Enviro-box.”

  Tim and Walsh stared at one another for some time. Tim finally said, “Then we have a sophisticated killer on our hands, and not just a psycho with a wrench.”

  “Someone who wants your guy—the weather guy—Wertman dead,” added Walsh. “It was quite by design. No chance of an accident.”

  “Who’d know the reactor was here, Tim?” asked Gary. “That’s a good question, Gary.” Tim turned to George Walsh, “Who would know about this elaborate hoax?”

  “Are you insinuating that I had something to do with this, and with the attempt on Wertman’s life, Tim? ‘Cause if you are, you can just go to hell, and you can correct that thing out there yourself!”

  Tim stood silent for a long time and finally shook his head. “No, I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I’m just getting edgy, and my skin’s starting to itch everywhere. This whole place is getting to me.”

  “Get out of here then!” shouted Walsh, throwing up his hands. “You’re making me edgy. Go look for that girl you’re so worried about. The one you said you couldn’t find. That Marie.”

  “All right, I will,” answered Tim, leaving Walsh and Gary to do whatever was necessary in the boiler room.

  Tim was glad to get away from the deafening room, and away from the nuclear reactor. Superstition, hell. A nuclear reactor leak could kill them all. The very idea of installing such a potentially deadly device in a building in the heart of Chicago, was beyond Tim’s wildest dreams. Fieldcrest seemed to be a man possessed of no scruples. The reactor was there to save on fuel, electricity, and other expenses. To hell with people, to hell with the risks involved, just keep showing a profit! It would make a fine story one day, Tim told himself, once he’d secured a job with the San Francisco Sentinel, or the L. A. Times. One day he’d write it, whether it cost him his job or not. He knew that if he ever met James Fieldcrest he would lose his job. He’d be fired for hitting Mr. Big square in the face.

  But for now, Tim’s concern was for Marie Stanton. He’d gotten on the elevator for the cafeteria. Perhaps she’d be there.

  21

  In the cafeteria, Tim caught snatches of a heated conversation at a table in the corner as he glanced around for a sign of Marie, One man at the table was nearly shouting.

  “From a management point of view you don’t have a leg to stand on,” he was saying. “You people have no idea .of the difficulties involved in running an organization of this size.”

  “And you do?” sneered another.

  “Businesses remaining in the Chicago land area must face untold losses,” the shouter continued without missing a beat. “You want increases, benefits, more time off the job, increased data bank support for your hair-brained ideas. You want to be treated like professional men when it’s time for evaluation and review, but you want consideration granted your persona/lives when it comes down to being late, absent, or in the wrong. Then, you want to be mollycoddled like children!”

  “You’re full of shit, Atgeldl” cried the other man. Tim recognized the thin-lipped, mustached Atgeld, the Personnel Director. The poor man had probably never had to deal with so many of Fieldcrest’s employees at once before. Tim was sure he felt cornered where he sat. There were several men and two women glaring at him.

  “Mr. Atgeld is right in a lot of ways,” said one of the women suddenly.

  “Oh, Jesus,” groaned several of the men.

  The woman continued, imploring the others to listen to her. “It’s not his fault. It’s the cold, the snow. Increases in absenteeism, delays in shipments to and from FBE, fuel and power shortages, and higher production costs are taking the company down!”

  “Bad weather hurts any enterprise,” said Atgeld, straightening up, looking a little more confident now, knowing he had at least one ally at the table.

  The woman continued when she realized the others were staring at her. “Why should the factory, or the store, or the newspaper pay for it all?”

  “Party line,” moaned the other woman.

  “Talk about your Organization Woman!” said a blonde-headed fellow.

  “Maybe you should read it,” said the woman. “You might learn something.”

  A tall and silent man at the table pressed his finger against his chest and said, “I’m a worker, Mr. Atgeld, and from the viewpoint of the workers, there are impossible difficulties just in getting to work when trains and buses can’t keep to schedules. And we’re docked for being minutes late! Meanwhile we have higher heating costs, there are greater risks of fire from overheating, or simply in driving here. Daily we face disappointmentscancelled parties, classes, programs, sports events. We’ve lost out on hobbies like gardening, and even winter sports are too dangerous to engage in. We fear entrapment, freezing somewhere, losing electricity or gas, not being able to get to hospitals. We fear getting stuck somewhere with personnel managers!”

  Atgeld merely flexed his mustache at this remark. “All of these things are equally true of the corporation, if you were to multiply them by hundreds of thousands. You can’t hold corporate business responsible for the weather!”

  Then the young woman spoke again in her controlled tones. “But the corporations should be helping where they can, Mr. Atgeld.”

  “The corporation has no heart,” the blonde-haired man groaned melodramatically.

  Then the tall worker said with measured grace, “Yes, but the corporation does have a penis and we are getting screwed every day.”

  Tim snickered at this, and would normally have become embroiled in a conversation like this one. He hated management types who took themselves too seriously. But he spotted a table where the switchboard operators were spread out, some talking, others asleep. He stared long for some sign of Marie. She didn’t seem to be among them.

  As he approached the switchboard girls, Tim could hear Atgeld defending himself further. “What do you think we’re running here? A recreation hall?”

  Tim recognized Cindy
, Georgette, Pat, and Cheryl sleeping amid their coffee cups. Jackie Pendleton first noticed him, and waved him over. Jackie and Tim were always on good terms.

  Jackie was a thin girl with no breasts to speak of but a smile large enough to make up for any deficiencies. She seemed ecstatic to see Tim, shouting his name and waking the girls beside her.