“That position’s been amalgamated with the vice presidency; a reduction in staff, you understand. But the vice president is away right now. Would you like to see the president?”
The mere suggestion sent a shiver up Martha Frobisher’s spine. Presidents were not on her radar. “I don’t think Mr. Staunton would—”
“It’s not Mr. Staunton anymore. Sit down a moment and I’ll get her for you.”
Martha perched on the edge of a chair, a bird about to take flight. The room with its marble surfaces echoed like a tomb. Her nerve broke. She was about to hurry away when Bea Fontaine appeared, carefully negotiating a path of planks.
When she saw who was waiting for her she smiled warmly. Over the years Bea had purchased a number of floral arrangements from Gold’s Court Florist, a few for her own use but most to brighten up the bank. “Martha! What can I do for you?”
At Bea’s request the receptionist brought coffee and cookies into the president’s office—which also had planks on the floor—and left the room. For a quarter of an hour the two women discussed the weather and their mutual acquaintances. From time to time Martha glanced at the portraits on the wall. She couldn’t help asking, “Do they ever make you nervous?”
“I’m starting to get used to them, but at first it was like having Mr. Staunton looking over my shoulder. Sometimes I wonder how he stood it all these years.”
“Is he not coming back?”
“I’m afraid not. We’re going to have his picture painted, though.”
After checking Martha’s financial situation, Bea assured her she could qualify for a business loan. “We’ll give it to you in the form of credit. Not much actual money changes hands these days; people are trying to do all they can by barter. Barter depends on trust to a certain extent, but in a town the size of Sycamore River almost everyone knows everyone and you’re unlikely to cheat a person you’ll see again tomorrow. The situation’s probably different in the cities, though.”
“I used to wish I lived in a city with symphonies and theaters,” the other woman said wistfully. “Now I’m glad I don’t. Still, I don’t understand how a bank can stay in business without using money.”
Bea replied, “Money’s just one way of representing value. The monetary quantity theory recognizes a distinction between nominal money and real money. ‘Nominal’ refers to a unit of currency, like dollars. ‘Real’ refers to the goods and services the dollars will buy.” She did not realize she had fallen into Jack’s lecturing mode, or that Martha was struggling to keep up. “We assume that what ultimately matters to purchasers is not the nominal but the real, so in the bank we’ve become brokers. We take a portion for our services.”
“Oh my,” said Martha Frobisher. “Does that mean I can pay off my loan in flowers?”
“Part of it, at least, as long as we need flowers or have a customer who does. It’s different from the banking we used to do.”
Martha was still nervous. “Are you sure everything’s all right? I mean, is there anyone else who—”
Bea gave her a sad smile. “I’m it. There’s no one left to ask.”
Jack Reece was not the only person cursed with intuition. In Sycamore River as in communities around the world, anxiety was reaching a new level. Supplies of tranquilizers and sleeping pills had long since been exhausted. Patients suffering from hysteria and nervous exhaustion were sleeping on the floors in the hospital. The only questions were what, when and where catastrophe would strike. But it all came back to the Change.
The Wednesday Club discussed little else.
“As far as we know,” Jack reminded them, “the Change still hasn’t affected any living organism. Whatever damage is being done, we’re doing to ourselves.”
Gerry said, “If there’s global war that’ll be more than enough.”
“Edgar Tilbury thinks humans have a biological need to cull themselves every few generations like lemmings,” said Lila. “He says that may explain why we keep going to war: to kill off the breeding-age males.”
“Why didn’t he come with you tonight?” Bill Burdick asked as he set down a fresh pitcher of beer.
“He has a lot of things to get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“I wish I knew.”
Within the tunnels the smell of the earth was sweet and strong, the way he liked it. Better than coffee, even. Or at least as good as. Except for Jamaican Blue Mountain. Edgar Tilbury wondered if he should start weaning himself off from Jamaican Blue Mountain. Not only had it become nearly impossible to obtain, but luxury coffees were part of the world Up There.
Down Here was sanity.
He was carrying a heavy-duty flashlight as he made his way down the sloping tunnel, but he hardly needed its light; his feet knew every inch of the passage. Or so he thought until he tripped and fell to his knees. He made a mental note to smooth out the footing.
At the end of the passage a right turn gave way to another tunnel lined with wooden shelves holding several years’ worth of dried legumes, rice and oatmeal in sturdy cotton sacks. An angle to the left led to the pasta stores—Tilbury was particularly fond of pasta—and tightly sealed cellophane bags of cookies and crackers. Beyond these were the fruits and vegetables. He loathed prunes only slightly less than he despised dried apricots, but healthy bowels and an adequate supply of vitamin C were necessities.
On other shelves hundreds of glass jars gleamed like jewels with the gold and red of canned peaches and strawberries and rhubarb, the dull green of runner beans and the fleshy hues of pickled mushrooms. Row upon row of cans held more soups and stews than a man could consume in a lifetime. Fruit cocktail and dill pickles, tomato paste and powdered milk, bottled lemon juice and packaged spices, salmon and mackerel and sardines and herring—it was all there, everything Edgar Tilbury liked to eat and a few things he was prepared to tolerate for the good of his health.
Deep in the ground below the barn, sound from Up There was muffled. Tilbury had taken the precaution of equipping his property with a highly sensitive alarm system that worked on sound vibrations and would warn him of any visitors. It was connected to the house, the barn and the cattle guard at the end of the lane. Whenever he entered the tunnels it was turned on.
The cattle guard was the first line of defense. Its warning was a shrill whistle that would galvanize Edgar Tilbury.
Finding himself confined to a hospital bed—and the suddenness with which the event took place—had unnerved O. M. Staunton. He issued the staff at the Hilda Staunton Memorial Hospital specific orders that he was to have no visitors. He did not want anyone to see him in his present condition.
Almost at once he rescinded the order and demanded to see Bea Fontaine.
The chief of the cardiac unit came in person to tell Staunton, “I’m sorry, sir, but we haven’t been able to contact Miss Fontaine by AllCom. At this hour the bank is closed, of course. We dispatched an orderly to her house, but he reports no one home. Do you have another address for her?”
The once-sturdy frame beneath the bedcovers was hardly enough to lift the sheets. With a trembling hand Staunton shoved the oxygen mask aside. He regarded the doctor with baleful eyes. Every word was an effort. “Am I going to die? Or not?”
“We all die sometime, but—”
“Today!” Staunton rasped. “Am I dying today?”
The doctor was acutely aware of the money the Stauntons had pumped into the hospital over the years, and reluctant to do anything that might damage the relationship. The Old Man was going to die, and soon. Was it better to tell him the truth? Or to mollify him—at least until the next shift came on duty?