Lou Storr opened his mouth, and closed it again carefully.
Denis Howard said, “Nothing at all, Governor. Just a stroll up a few stairs.” He waved his hand in a grand gesture. “‘Theirs not to question why.’”
A male voice said, “Can we use the stairs? If we can, let’s get at it.”
There was silence. Howard, no longer grandstanding, looked at the governor, question plain.
“Tell them,” the governor said.
Howard took his time. “You can use them,” he said at last. “But you won’t reach the bottom or anywhere near the bottom.” He held out his hand. It trembled. “See that? There used to be hair.” He ran his hand wearily over his face. “And I used to have eyebrows too, so I did.” He nodded then. “You can use the stairs. You might even be alive all the way down to the hundredth floor—if you run fast enough.”
The room was still.
“I promised you both a drink,” the governor said. He looked at a nearby waiter: “See that they have them. Then bring them into the office.” He looked around at his audience. “It is not good,” he said. “But neither is it hopeless. We are exploring every possibility. I can’t tell you more than that.”
Cary Wycoff raised his voice. “What I want to know,” he said, “no, correct that: what I demand to know is how did all this happen? Who is responsible?”
The governor waited motionless on the chair while the low murmur of agreement ran its course. Then, in the silence, “I suggest, Cary, that you appoint a Congressional committee to look into the matter. I will be happy to tell it all I know.” He stepped down from the chair, offered Beth his arm, and walked neither slow nor fast back to the office.
Inside he dropped into the desk chair. “I think of myself,” he said, “as a fairly patient man and a reasonable one. I even consider myself compassionate.” He looked up at Beth and smiled without amusement. “Right now,” he said, “I would cheerfully strangle Cary Wycoff. And my one great hope is that I will live long enough to spit on Paul Norris’s grave.” He paused. “If those sentiments are ignoble, then so am I.”
Beth said, “If Mr. Norris had not stolen the elevator—” She left the sentence unfinished.
“True,” the governor said. “None of you would have reached the bottom alive. And so I am glad it happened the way it did. But that changes nothing.”
“I understand, Bent.”
He caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “Little men,” he said, “in scribes’ caps and long pointed slippers.
They write in the big book and then pull strings to see that everything works out as they have planned it.” He shook his head. “I wonder sometimes if their motives aren’t basically malicious. Do you believe in an afterlife, my dear?”
“I think so.”
“I’ve never found it necessary,” the governor said. “I’ve never found it necessary to believe in a deity either.” He paused. “But I have gone through the motions of worship just as I have gone through the other forms of conventional behavior. And for the same reason: because it was expected of me. I wonder how many others do the same, but won’t admit it.” He paused. “If I could pray and mean it, I would pray to believe that you and I will meet again somewhere.”
“We will, Bent.”
“Beside a celestial trout stream? I think that would be my choice. Just in time for the evening rise.” He dropped Beth’s hand and sat up straight as the two firemen and the fire commissioner appeared in the doorway. “Come in,” the governor said. “Sit down. Let’s consider possibilities”—he paused—“as gloomy as some of them may be.”
23
It was almost schizophrenia that had overtaken her, Patty thought, because one part of her mind had retreated into its own secret place to mourn; while the rest of her mind insisted on concentrating on the here and now, the tension that filled the trailer.
After talking to Ben Caldwell, Nat had walked back from the telephone to stand near Patty and stare unseeing out at the plaza and the tormented building. He said slowly, “The way they used to design them, the big buildings, they were so fire-resistant that the city actually reduced fire department coverage in high-rise areas.” He turned then to look at Patty. “Did you know that?”
Patty made herself smile and shake her head.
“Thick walls,” Nat said, “thick floors, windows that opened—you could get in and out. A fire could be contained. Now—” He shook his head. “Core construction is more economicaclass="underline" you can concentrate elevators, escalators, pipes, ducts, wiring, all the unproductive items, in a central shaft. That leaves more rental space. But when a fire breaks out, a big one like this—” He shook his head again.
“That blowtorch effect you talked about on the phone?” Patty said. “Like a chimney?”
One of the battalion chiefs standing nearby said, “Times, on a fire like this, temperatures in the core can be so high that firemen can only work for five minutes at a time, maybe less.” He looked at Nat. “Blowtorch, you call it. More like a blast furnace.” He pointed up toward the building’s top. “If we get anybody out of there alive, it’s going to be a bloody miracle.”
Brown’s voice angry on the telephone said, “Yes, goddammit, we want them in here! On the double! You think this is some kind of charade?” He slammed down the telephone and waved his bony fists in helpless rage. “The cops couldn’t see what the Coast Guard had to do with a fire in a building. Seemed screwy to them, they said, so they took their time and then decided to check before they let them through the lines.” He was glaring at Nat. “Do you think it’ll work? Do you? That breeches buoy idea?”
Nat raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of disclaimer. “Do you have any better ideas?”
“Those choppers,” Brown said. “They’re still sailing around, not doing a damn bit of good. That was your idea too.”
“So was the elevator,” Nat said, “and it could have killed fifty people instead of one.” It would be a long time, if ever, before he forgot that.
Once in his fire-jumping days he had been dropped into an area where a forest fire, wind-driven, had altered direction without warning and trapped nineteen men in a fatal pocket. Their bodies lay stiffly in the fetal position, curled like snails, burned almost beyond recognition. That was a thing you remembered too. “What else can we do but try everything we can think of?” Nat said. “Because if we don’t—” He spread his hands.
There was silence.
“Let’s look at the possibilities,” Nat said. “You can’t reach them with anything. And they can’t get down by themselves. Even if they had ropes, what good would they do? Middle-aged men and women trying to rappel fifteen hundred feet?” His voice was low-pitched, almost savage.
“Can the choppers do anything?” he said then. “The answer is no, not by themselves. You might be able to break some windows up there and transfer an acrobat to a ladder swinging from one of the choppers, but none of those people who went up there to drink champagne could make it. So what is left? That’s the answer to your question. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego made it in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, but it isn’t going to happen here.”
“Okay,” Brown said, calmer now. “Don’t get in an uproar. We’ll see what the Coast Guard has to say.”
“If it doesn’t work,” Nat said, “it doesn’t work.” He stared out the window again.
Patty touched his arm. “Is all this really Paul’s doing?” Her voice was quiet. “Daddy said he wasn’t sure and wouldn’t badmouth a man until he was.”
The envelope of change-order copies was still in his pocket. He took it out, shook the orders free on the drafting board. He watched Patty pick them up one by one, glance at them, drop them as if they were unclean. She said at last, “I’m not an engineer, but I do know a little.” She was watching Nat’s face. “Your name on all of these, but you didn’t sign them, did you?”