"How's it going, Andrew?"
Symington sat back, massaged his eyes for a moment before replying. He looked exhausted and ashen faced, but managed a thin smile.
"Well, chief, I guess we can start getting ready to surrender. Looks to me as if the war's over."
Marshall laughed. "I was just thinking the place feels as if the Russians are two hundred yards away. How are the PM and the Chief of Staff?"
"They reached Leytonheath a couple of hours ago. The mine at Sutton Coldfield had been flooded by underground springs-water must have driven through a fault leading in from the North Sea -so they've been forced to dig into the shelters at the airfield. They're O.K. there for three weeks, but after that there'll have to be a general election."
A wry smile crossed Marshall 's face. For a moment he looked reflectively at Symington, then said: "What's the latest from the Met people? Any hope of a breakthrough on the weather front?"
Symington shrugged. "They went off the air about an hour ago. Pulled out to Duiwich. I don't think they've known any more for the last week than you or I. Just about all they've done is lick their fingers and hold them over their heads. The latest wind speed is 255. That's an increase of 4.7 over 11 A.M. yesterday."
"An effective drop, though," Marshall said hopefully.
"Yes, but it's accounted for by the tremendous mass of soil particles being carried. The sky's jet black now."
"What about overseas?"
"Had a signal in from a USAF field in New Jersey. Apparently New York is a total write-off. Manhattan 's under hundred-foot waves, most of the big skyscrapers and office blocks are down. Empire State Building toppled like a falling chimney stack. Same story everywhere else. Casualty lists in the millions. Paris, Berlin, Rome -nothing but rubble, people hanging on in cellars."
The bunker shuddered under the impact of a building falling above, like a depth charge shaking a submarine. The light bulbs danced on the ends of their flexes. Dust filtered down from the ceiling. Involuntarily Marshall 's eyes moved to the mouth of the ventilator shaft, his mind crossing the interval of compacted clay up to the garage in the basement above where the big supertractor waited to take him to safety.
The corporal by the TV screens spoke up. "When do we pack this lot in, sir?" he asked anxiously. "Seems to me we're cutting it a bit fine."
"Don't worry," Marshall told him. "We'll get out safely enough. Let's try to hang on here as long as we can. You three are just about the only intact intelligence outfit still operating in the whole of Europe." There was a hint of pride in Marshall 's voice, the pride of a man who has created a perfect team and hates to see it disbanded even after it's outlived its purpose. He gave them all a wide encouraging grin. "You never know, Crighton; you may be the first person to see the wind reach its peak and slack off."
Symington shifted a stack of teletype memos, spread them out on his desk, anchoring them from the draught with a stack of pennies.
"This is the provincial set-up. Birmingham: an estimated 300,000 people are sheltering in the coal mines around the city. Ninety-nine per cent of the city is down. Tremendous fires from the refineries at West Bromwich swept across the ruins yesterday, finished off what little the wind had left. Estimated casualties: 200,000."
"Sounds low," Marshall commented dourly.
"Probably is. Homo sapiens is pretty tenacious, but if London is any guide most people went down into their basements with -one packet of sandwiches and a thermos of cocoa." He went on, " Manchester: heavy casualties were caused yesterday when the roof of London Road station caved in. For some reason the authorities have been concentrating people there, there were something like 20,000 packed between the platforms."
Marshall nodded while Symington continued in a low steady voice. There seemed to be a depressing uniformity about the reports. When he had heard one he had heard them all. The same picture emerged; the entire population of one of the world's most highly industrialized nations, equipped with an elaborate communications and transport system, huge stores of fuel and food, large armed services, yet caught completely unprepared by a comparatively slight increase in one of the oldest constants of its natural environment.
On the whole, people had shown less resourcefulness and flexibility, less foresight, than a wild bird or animal would. Their basic survival instincts had been so dulled, so overlaid by mechanisms designed to serve secondary appetites, that they were totally unable to protect themselves. As Symington had implied, they were the helpless victims of a deep-rooted optimism about their right to survival, their dominance of the natural order which would guarantee them against everything but their own folly, that they had made gross assumptions about their own superiority.
Now they were paying the price for this, in truth reaping the whirlwind!
He listened to Symington complete the picture.
"A few navy units are operating bases around the Portsmouth and Plymouth areas-the defenses and arsenals there are tunneled deep underground, but in general military control is breaking down. Rescue operations are virtually over. There are a few army patrols with the crowds in the London Underground system, but how long they can keep command is anybody's guess."
Marshall nodded. He moved across to the bank of TV receivers. There were six of them, relaying pictures transmitted from automatic cameras mounted in sealed concrete towers that Marshall had had built at points all over London. The sets were labeled: Camden Hill, Westminster, Hampstead, Mile End Road, Battersea, Waterloo. The pictures flickered and were lashed with interference patterns, but the scenes they revealed were plain enough. The right-hand screen, labeled Mile End Road, was blank, and the corporal was adjusting the controls in an effort to get a picture.
Marshall studied one of the other screens, then tapped Crighton on the shoulder.
"I shouldn't bother." He indicated the Hampstead screen, pointed through the blur of dust swept off the shattered rooftops. The camera was traversing automatically from left to right in three-second sweeps; as it neared its leftward stop Marshall put his finger on the screen, pointing to a stub of gray concrete sticking up above the desolation several miles away on the horizon. As the duststorm cleared for a moment, revealing the rectangular outlines of the Mile End tower, they could see that a pile of debris lay across its waist, the remains of a ten-story building that had been carried bodily across the ground. The tower was still standing, but the camera turret, 50 feet above ground, had been snapped off.
Marshall switched off the set, then sat down in front of the screen covering the Westminster area. Its transmitting tower was mounted on a traffic island at the bottom of Whitehall only a few hundred yards from where they were sitting. It had been fitted with a 180° traverse, and was pointing up Whitehall toward Trafalgar Square. The road had disappeared below enormous mounds of rubble driven across the pavement from the shells of the ministries on the eastern side. The War Office and Ministry of Agriculture were down. Beyond them, the spires of Whitehall Court had vanished; only spurs of masonry were sticking up against the backdrop of the blackened sky.
The camera swung, following the battered remains of a doubledecker bus rolling across the rubble. Tossed over the ruins of the Foreign Office and Downing Street, it bounced off the remains of the Home Office portico and then was carried away across St. James's Park. Along the horizon were the low ragged outlines of the National Gallery and the clubs down Pall Mall, with here and there the gaunt rectangular outline of a hotel or office block.