“Is there going to be trouble, Bent?”
“We’ll try to anticipate it.”
“How?”
“Like this.” The governor picked up the phone and spoke into it. Nat’s voice answered instantly. “Everything,” the governor said, “is going beautifully, young man. You and the Coast Guard have my thanks.”
Beth smiled. It was lordly of him to make it his thanks; and yet it was also fitting, because from the beginning of the problems, it was one man. Bent Armitage, who had automatically taken charge and spoken for all. And so the imperiousness lacked arrogance and was thereby acceptable. More than acceptable. Beth’s smile turned fond and gentle.
“Everything is orderly now,” the governor was saying, “but when the pressure starts to build, and people begin to understand that maybe there isn’t going to be time for everybody—” He left the sentence hanging, implications plain.
“Yes, sir,” Nat’s voice said. “I’ve been thinking about that too.”
“Good man.” The governor waited.
Nat said slowly, “We have the leverage, or the chief on the roof has, and maybe he’ll do what I say.”
The governor was nodding. “Which is?”
“We can issue an ultimatum,” Nat said. “At the first sign of trouble we can put it that unless the process stays orderly, as you’ve planned it, we’ll shut the entire operation down, because slow and easy, one person at a time, is the only way it can work. It may look simple, but it’s touchy, and one mistake can spoil it for everybody.” The governor was nodding again. “And can you make the ultimatum stick?”
“If we have to,” Nat said, “we will.”
For the third time the governor nodded. “You may have to,” he said. And then, “For the moment, that’s all.” He paused. “Bless you for standing by.” He leaned back in his chair again and closed his eyes.
“Bent,” Beth said. She hesitated. “Oh, Bent, why does it have to be like this?”
“I wish I knew.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Beth said, “and I know it, but I can’t help asking the big question: Why me? Why any of us individually, but most particularly why me? What have I done to be here, to meet you and then have it—like this?”
The governor was smiling faintly. “I’ve asked the same question many times. He paused. “And, you know, I’ve never yet found the answer?”
The senator walked in. “I’ve just come to make a report, Bent. Bob is having tables moved into place around the buoy-loading area. Your idea, no doubt. And all is more or less quiet.” He smiled. “So far.” The smile spread. “Bob said you asked his lottery number.” He took his time. “Well, I’ll watch you both go. Mine is one hundred and one.”
Beth closed her eyes.
“I’ve also been thinking,” the senator said, “and lo and behold, a limerick came to mind fullblown:
“I leave you with that thought.” He was gone.
Beth was shaking her head, even smiling. “It isn’t real,” she said. “He isn’t real. People don’t behave that way at a—time like this. They don’t.”
“I don’t think you have any idea how you’ll behave,” the governor said, “until you’re there.” He spread his hands. “And then it’s too late to change.”
Cary Wycoff had a glass of plain soda in hand. He sipped it slowly while he watched the heavy tables being maneuvered into position around the area where the breeches buoy came in through the window.
It was perfectly obvious what the purpose of the tables was. It was simply more of the same: entrenched privilege throwing up barricades to keep out the barbarians. Himself. And he resented it with fierceness and, at the moment, impotence, which made it even worse.
The lottery slip in his pocket was number sixty-five, which meant that fifteen males would go before him to safety. Bent Armitage, Bob Ramsay, and Jake Peters, he was willing to bet, would be among them. Oh, they would not be the first three; they were too canny for that. But they would have seen to it that they were close enough to the beginning of the line to be safe without being obvious in the bargain.
Cary resented the women’s going first too. He had fought as hard as the next man, harder, for women’s lights, but he did not really believe in them. Women were created weaker, usually less intelligent, altogether less useful members of the community except for the one function which they never let you forget they, and they alone, could carry out. And in Cary’s view there were too many births anyway.
From a purely objective viewpoint, he, Cary Wycoff, was a far more valuable member of society than any of the women who had gathered in the Tower Room. He should, therefore, have preceded all of them across the chasm to the Trade Center roof and safety.
But to have gone first, even if he had been allowed, would have been to demean himself in the eyes of the stupid world, which thought with its stomach, more especially in the eyes of the stupid electorate, who kept sending him back to a very pleasant life in Washington. So there it was. Let the women go.
But the men, that was something different, and he was not going to stand idly by and watch fifteen—fifteen!—others go ahead of himself.
Bent Armitage and Jake Peters, those two in particular, had always treated him at less than his real worth; there was no denying that. Cary had another sip of soda while he thought about it. Then, “I’ll show you bastards,” he said softly. “You can’t get away with it this time.”
Nat put down the phone after his conversation with the governor. He was conscious that Patty watched him, frowning. “You heard what I said?” he asked.
Patty nodded. She kept her voice expressionless. “Would you do it? Stop the whole—operation just as a threat?”
“I don’t believe in threats.”
“I don’t—understand.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.” There was that bulldog quality again; total refusal to sidestep unpleasantness.
Nat said merely, “We’ll see what the chief says.” He picked up the walkie-talkie. “Trailer to Trade Center roof.”
“Roof here.” The chiefs voice. “The naked chick’s name is Barber, Josephine Barber. And after her came Mrs. Robert Ramsay.”
Nat watched Patty pick up her pencil and start searching the list. “Got it,” he said. And then, “How’s it going, Chief?”
“Slow. Steady. What we could expect. Twenty-two across in”—he paused—“twenty-three minutes flat. Best we could hope for.” Was there faint belligerence underlying the words?
“Better than I was afraid of,” Nat said. He paused again. “I doubt if it will happen before you have the women across. I hope it won’t. But when the pressure really begins—”
“Trouble you mean?” Pause. “Important people, aren’t they?” The chief’s voice was unexcited.
“That,” Nat said, “doesn’t mean that some of them won’t—panic.”
Patty had found the two names and crossed them off. She sat now, pencil still in her small hand, watching Nat and listening.
“Yeah,” the chief said, unexcited still. “Stripes on a man’s sleeve don’t necessarily mean too much.” He paused. “You’re getting at what?”
Nat told him what he had said to the governor. There was silence.
Then, “The way I see it,” the chief said slowly, still unexcited, merely stating facts, “when you’ve got a command situation, men obey or they mutiny. If it’s mutiny, you stop it right at the beginning or it gets out of hand. First sign of trouble, you let me know and we hold the breeches buoy right here until they line up again and stay in line. That way we may not get them all out, but we’ll get some. Let them fall to squabbling and there won’t be a manjack get out of there alive.”