“So,” Nat said, and his smile was without amusement, “nobody else had any good reason to issue change authorizations—and my name is on them. Dandy. Will you have that list made out for me? First things first, no matter how deep we have to go. It’s got to be right.”
Again he walked; it was the automatic reaction. Up Park to Forty-second, across to Fifth, and again uptown. He saw none of those who passed him; he saw only traffic lights and automobiles that might threaten. And he saw his thoughts.
The change orders were real. That was point one.
Either they had been acted upon—substitutions had been made and work avoided, with substandard performance’ the result—or they had to be ignored. That was point two.
Computers, using binary numbers, break a problem down tilt same way—either/or, yes/no—at each step. The method is almost foolproof—assuming that the right questions are asked, the right steps taken—but the difficulty that the steps multiply exponentially, and the simple harmless-looking 1,2,4, series rapidly turns into a horror whose possibilities run into the millions.
And that, he thought almost angrily, is precisely why they have computers, which did him no good at all. It was the kind of random thinking that frequently interfered when you tried to concentrate.
He crossed Fifty-ninth Street into the park, and at once for him everything changed. His pace slowed and lengthened, his mind seemed to ease, and he began to notice his surroundings. Here there were trees and grass and bare rock and even the sky seemed different, bluer, less tortured by civilization. Oh, there were no vistas such as he had once known, no distant mountains perpetually snow-capped no clear dry air to breathe, no real silence. But it was better, and his thoughts ran more easily.
If the change orders had never been acted upon, then there was no reason for their existence—true or false?
Not necessarily true, because they could have been issued, could they not, for a different purpose from the obvious one of cutting comers? Such as? Such as pointing a finger of suspicion at one Nat Wilson. How about that?
Why Nat had no idea. As far as he knew, nobody would want to go to that length merely to discredit him.
Was he so sure of that?
He stopped at a vending wagon and bought a bag of peanuts then he walked on, away from the zoo area, into the depths of the park. He sat down on a rock and waited with a mountain man’s patience until one of the park squirrels came over to check him out. “Here you are,” Nat said and tossed a peanut. “You’re welcome,” he added as the squirrel dashed off with his loot.
Was he so sure that nobody would try to booby-trap him? It was, he told himself, a pretty damn big assumption.
He had come, in effect, out of nowhere, the mountain West, with no friends here in the big time, no letters of introduction, no handles to grasp for leverage. And he had walked in with his portfolio and waited until he could see Ben Caldwell—it took four days—and had walked out with a job any number of young brushed-up well-recommended architects would have given their eyeteeth for. Seven years ago, the preliminary thinking just beginning on the World Tower.
The squirrel was back. He sat up and studied Nat. Nothing happened. Cautiously, he lowered his forepaws, rushed forward eighteen inches, and sat up again.
“Okay,” Nat said, “it’s a good act. Here.” Another peanut.
“Did I step on toes then?” Nat asked aloud. “Have I stepped on toes since?” And the answer, was probably, even if he hadn’t realized it. So the possibility existed that the change orders had been issued merely to point a finger at him. Uncomfortable thought.
But suppose they had been acted upon, something he could not know until work of investigation actually began.
Then, of course, the immediate inference was the profit motive: reducing the quality of material and workmanship, thus increasing the profit margin between cost and payment for someone. Who? Paul Simmons was still the obvious candidate. But if Simmons had all going for him that Joe Lewis had mentioned, why would he take the chance of exposure? Nat had no answer.
There was a third possibility. Suppose the orders had been issued (by whom?) and acted upon, but innocently? What if Paul Simmons or his people had thought that these change orders represented an actual change in thinking on the part of the architects and engineers, and, theirs not to question why, they had gone ahead without any taint of avarice? That kind of thinking led in different directions.
Nat cracked, opened, and ate a peanut. It tasted good. It occurred to him that he had had no lunch. He ate another peanut and then was aware that the squirrel was back, with a friend, and both were sitting almost at his feet, watching, waiting, “Sorry, fellows,” Nat said, and tossed down two peanuts, left and right.
One more possibility, he told himself, and this one he had apparently tried to push down into the ooze of his subconscious in order to forget it, but here it came bubbling to the surface. What if the changes were aimed not at him and not at profit, but at the building itself? Did that make any kind of sense? Unfortunately, nauseatingly, it did. Or could.
Without calculations, which Nat could make but Joe Lewis and his people, the experts, could make faster, there was no telling how vital, or lethal, the changes were.
Buildings were not designed, as aircraft or space vehicles were, right down to the ultimate tolerances of their materials. Rather, because weight was not the basic problem, there was a safety factor calculated into every structural member, every cable, every wiring specification. Programmed right into the design calculations were remote contingencies such as winds of 150 miles an hour, far in excess of anything the city had ever known, or massive surges of electrical power almost impossible to conceive.
Because of the Tower’s height, lightning strikes were accepted as normal; the mammoth steel skeleton would carry the charge harmlessly into the ground, as it had already done often enough during construction.
Earthquakes were the remotest of possibilities: no fault area lay nearby. Nevertheless, the foundations of the building went down to bedrock, that tortured schist that is the city’s backbone, and with its firm grip on the solid base and its strong flexible structure, the building could ride out a quake of more than moderate intensity without damage.
In short, every menace that could be imagined had been anticipated, and defenses prepared. Computerized calculations had been made. Models had been built and tested. The great building, as designed, was as durable as man’s ingenuity could make it.
AS DESIGNED.
But change a little here, a little there in the wrong places—and durability, function, even safety can become mere illusion.
Why would anyone threaten a building’s integrity in that fashion? Nat had no idea, but in a world where violence seems to be the norm and irresponsibility is exalted, mere sabotage of a building seems far from impossible.
The two squirrels were back again, and here came a third, zeroing in on the easy human mark. “There are times.” Nat said, “when I think we ought to give the world back to you fellows. Like lemmings, we could walk into the sea. Here.” He emptied the bag of peanuts at his feet and stood up.
4
Bert McGraw was in his office high above the street with all those windows looking out at the city’s buildings, a number of which he had had a hand in constructing. Usually he enjoyed the view. Right now he was not sure, because sticking up in the center of the skyline was the World Tower, and what Giddings had been telling him and showing him about that structure was enough to curdle a man’s enthusiasm even on as bright and shining a late-spring day as this.