The Lightning Keeper (49 page)

“No arc to main cable at 24 inches,” he wrote. The smell of singed insulation drifted up from below, a failed connection or blown panel that he would check later. The circuits in the cables were intact; another strike would come at any time. Stefan would be better off down below where there were no windows. He made another note, and with his left hand spun the wooden wheel below his port to narrow the gap between the transmission cables and the aerial. Eighteen inches. This was an odd business, inviting disaster…like being a bullfighter with a cape but no sword. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to turn the tables in his mind: What if I were the lightning?

 

I
T IS A FACT,
though Toma did not report it, that the second recorded strike at the fully operational General Electric Lightning Research Facility at Beecher's Bridge occurred in that moment when his eyes were closed. No matter: Stefan's were wide open, as wide as could be, and in his state of mortal terror he saw the sudden sword leap from the aerial to the nearest transmission line, saw the incandescent cable burst through its vaporized sheathing, the arresters showering sparks, the air around them glowing like the halo of a saint.

“Mother of God!”

Toma cranked the cable trolley away from the aerial. The arresters had failed to tame the ambient surge and now the lines were dead, which meant that the fuses had done their job. There was nothing more to be done here until the storm passed. He knew he should go downstairs and begin collecting data on the two strikes, but he yawned and thought again about what he had seen with his eyes closed.

It was early evening by the time they had everything ready for shipment to Schenectady: the readings and their observations along with the damaged equipment, which Steinmetz would want to see for himself. The storm had scoured the air, and a cool, scented draft worked its way around the half-open door. He had noticed the delicate white bloom of the bush by the steps, and wondered now if she had planted it for her father. His mind was suddenly full of her.

He sat at his desk and riffled through the envelopes there. A plain hand-written one caught his attention. There was no return address. This was the one he had been waiting for.

He turned the envelope toward the window to squint at the carelessly struck postmark. Schenectady, New York. Well, what else would a former patent inspector be doing in Schenectady? Poor, fond little Flaten with those sad eyes, he really would have been wiser to ignore the inquiry altogether; but Toma must be grateful for his foolishness, for nobody else, it seemed, wanted to tell him anything at all.

He took a card and wrote to Piccolomini a brief, formal note making an appointment for the next day to discuss security and other urgent matters at the Beecher's Bridge facilities. He signed it, then for emphasis wrote out his title, which took another two lines, and gave the envelope to Stefan, slumped and speechless in a chair by the cold stove.

“End of a long day. If you would be kind enough to deliver this to Signor Piccolomini, or to the night watchman, I'll buy you dinner at McCreedy's and all you can drink. Half an hour?”

Alone now, unsettled by the letter he had read and the letter he had written, he was in no mood to write to her. Gone were the phrases, the waterfall of tender feeling provoked by that scent just minutes ago. Tongue-tied by circumstance but clear-eyed in his anger, he had this chilling glimpse of enduring isolation: with all the time in the world he would never be able to explain to her his labyrinths. The only useful knowledge was love, bare, unadorned, unexplicated, and its price would be silence.

The letter he finally wrote was a model of compression. He put the date, then her name. He apologized for his uncouth behavior three days earlier. In another sentence he told her that he had survived the first test of the lightning. He signed it “Love, Toma,” and left the unmarked envelope where she would find it when she next came to the office.

 

P
ICCOLOMINI WAS SWEATING.
He was wearing the heavy black suit that served him in every weather, but the evening was not warm, and Toma's hand was dry, dangerous, chilled. Piccolomini did not meet his eye when they spoke.

They stood in the cavernous space of the old silk mill, which no amount of partitioning could domesticate. While Piccolomini waited and sweated, Toma walked an erratic circuit, trying to recall vanished landmarks on the stained concrete floor.

“What exactly is it you wish?”

“I saw on the way in that the substation, the transformers, and so on have been encased in some sort of…”

“Concertina wire.”

“How very military.”

“Yes, and the perimeter fence has been reinforced with interior bracing of heavy angle iron and an application of ten-gauge barbed wire along the top.”

“And if one were to cut the wire?”

“The lights, the watchman, and the electrical circuit in the penultimate strand of barbed wire.”

“So if the lights go out and the circuit fails in the same incident, you have an old chap fumbling around wondering if perhaps the enemy is jumping over his fence. A perfectly nice man, old Collins. I remember him from the forge and I had a word with him just a minute ago. But not much of an obstacle, on his own and in the dark.”

Piccolomini bent over his pocket notebook, muttering as he wrote. “There will be more men. There will be a backup generator.”

Toma made a show of inspecting the tall windows, now barred, and when he came to the private offices of the engineers he did not bother trying the door but hoisted himself up by the post and pegs of the side
wall and peered over the top of the partition. “You have a window open in there. No bars.”

They came last to the new stone construction of the turbine house. The heavy oak door was locked. Toma struggled to keep his voice from rising.

“Would you open this for me, please?”

“I cannot. Only authorized personnel are allowed to enter.”

“Yes. The famous security clearances. But that is my wheel, my name is on the patent, and I ask you again to open the door.”

“I have no authority,” said Piccolomini, as if reading from a prepared text. “This is a matter for Schenectady to decide. You must take it up with them.”

“You refuse, then?” Toma dropped his eyes to Piccolomini's neck, thin and invitingly frail. “My wheel?”

“I do.”

Toma turned to the door, laid his hand on the wood, first at the lock, then at the frame.

“There is someone in there now?”

“Always.”

Toma struck the door with the flat of his hand and called out: “Hola! Open up in there.”

“He will not open it. He has his orders, a strict protocol.”

Toma patted the door as he would a dog, then drove the full force of his shoulder into its center. Nothing gave. A tool he needed, a pry bar, anything. When he turned around there was Piccolomini holding a small, bright pistol. Angry red patches in his cheeks had sucked all color from the pale, glistening face. “I am prepared to shoot.”

“Don't be an ass. Just open it.”

“I will not. Stand back from the door.”

“Have you ever shot anyone?” Piccolomini did not answer.

“It's a messy business, and you would have to kill me.” Piccolomini raised the pistol, which had been pointed more or less in Toma's direction, to aim at his chest.

“That's better. Still, you would have to make certain. A little to the left, I think, or your right.” The muzzle swung in obedience to this suggestion.

“Hard to hold it steady if you haven't practiced, isn't it? I might be moving just as you pull the trigger, and then there are consequences to consider. There was a man once, an officer, who left me for dead. But I was not dead, and I found him. I killed him with a piece of broken stick no bigger than a wheel spoke. Not a fair fight, I am sorry to say, for he was already wounded; but I was angry, and it took him a long time to die.”

Piccolomini did not answer; all his attention was focused on keeping his hand still.

“Put it down before somebody gets hurt.” The engineer's face relaxed into an impassive, vacant stare as the aim of his weapon sank to the floor. Toma took it from his hand and put it in his own pocket.

“I shall report this.”

“As you wish. Now the key.”

“Where is that fool Collins?” snarled Piccolomini as he retreated crab-fashion until he was wedged into a stone angle.

“He is otherwise occupied out front. I told him to expect Stefan with a heavy package.” Piccolomini looked hard at Toma's face, then his hand went to his waistcoat pocket. He held the key out as if he would put it into Toma's hand, but at the last moment he dropped it, then scuffed it with his boot into one of the covered drains carrying water from the turbine house.

“You may go fish for your key, Mr. Peacock, or go to Hell.”

Toma looked upon his antagonist with bemused admiration. Suddenly he smiled, which offended Piccolomini.

“What?” He might be beaten, but he would not be mocked.

“You are no coward, I give you that, but your defense of the turbine has a flaw, and I was too angry to find it.”

“The wheel is safe. You cannot open the door, and Collins will get here sooner or later. What flaw?”

“Listen.”

“I hear nothing, only the sound of the wheel.”

“Exactly so. The sound of the wheel. You are a fool, Piccolomini. You shouldn't play with guns, and still less should you tamper with a patent, my patent, even if it is at someone else's say-so. When this goes wrong you will take the blame.”

“You are talking nonsense now. Nothing will go wrong. The patent is secure.”

“I'm sure you were just following orders. Steinmetz, no doubt. A quarter inch here, another degree or so in the angle of the escape water. Isn't that how it went?”

“You know nothing, and I will tell you nothing. These are guesses, contemptible fantasies.”

“I know this for certain: whatever you have locked up in there, it is not the Peacock Turbine.”

“My friends, you have heard the introductory remarks from our distinguished guests Mr. Coffin and Dr. Steinmetz, and I am hard put to find the right words to thank them for coming all this way to celebrate our great national holiday here in Beecher's Bridge. But my gratitude goes deeper than that, and in my remarks, which I hope will not try your patience on this very warm afternoon, I shall endeavor to explain just how fortunate we are that the great General Electric Company has chosen Beecher's Bridge as the center of its most important research, and we thank them because we have benefited in so many ways, material and intangible, from the benevolent industry they have brought to this grand little town.

“Today we are all proud to be Americans. [Applause] And tomorrow, as soon as we have cleaned up this mess over in Europe, we will be prouder still of who we are, because we will not only have won the war, but won the peace that will follow it.”

Senator Truscott paused to take a sip of water and to pat his forehead with a snowy handkerchief that fell open to magnificent proportions. He turned his head to smile at the setting sun, a noble adversary, then his appreciative gaze traversed the arc of his audience, left to right, with seeming acknowledgement of many individuals there. The red, white, and blue fans beat in rough unison, the pulse of the crowd.

“I'm a simple man, my friends,” said the senator, putting the handkerchief away. “If only I could talk and fan myself at the same time, I'd
sure do it today. What we need is a little cooling shower, something to break this heat and humidity that makes me feel as if I've been for a dip in the lake with all my clothes on. Now, it may sound odd for a fellow in politics to go around wishing for rain on the Fourth of July. I see you nodding your head there, Mr. Curtis. Is that what you were thinking?”

“Yes, sir, it was,” barked Mr. Curtis, and a ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

“You be quiet now, Fred,” warned his wife.

“I'm afraid I put him up to it, ma'am. You all know Fred Curtis. Farmed here for thirty years at least, like his father before him. So if anyone knows what the weather here is likely to do, he'd be your man. I asked him this morning if we'd have rain before the day is out. And knowing what was planned, he said to me, ‘Well, if you march quick and talk fast, you might get it all in.'”

Again the audience laughed, and the senator held up his hand. “We marched just fine, didn't we?”

“Yes.”

“I can't hear you.”

“
Yes!
”

“And now I want a round of applause for the Elks and the Royal Arcanum Society, who combined to provide us with such stirring martial music, and for the Volunteer Fire Department, who all but rubbed the paint off our fine new Ahrens-Fox fire engine, getting it ready to lead such a parade.”

The applause was less vigorous than it might have been, as there were a good many in the audience who tried to clap and fan themselves in the same motion.

“Thank you, thank you all. Well, as Fred Curtis has pretty well promised us some rain, I want to assure you that we have taken precautions that it won't spoil our celebration, least of all the magnificent picnic supper that is waiting for us under those tents. You can see what fine big tents they are, more than enough room for everyone here on the green to get in out of the rain without being crowded. And you can see there is a kind of tent on the ground here behind us, waiting to be pulled up in just a few seconds if we get a shower, because we wouldn't want Mr. Coffin and Dr. Steinmetz to take a soaking, nor our other
distinguished guests, and certainly not my wife, on whose head I will not suffer a single drop to fall.”

The crowd cheered this gallantry, and the senator made a half turn to acknowledge Harriet Truscott. Seated at one end of the gentle arc of seats on the platform, Toma seemed to pay dutiful attention to the speaker, but behind the blank gaze his mind played with the puzzle of the hidden wheel, taking it apart and putting it back together over and over, an endless, fruitless exercise tainted with madness. He did not hear Truscott's gallant remark but saw him turn and bow. Now Harriet's face swam into focus—she was already in his line of sight—and he was lost in the dazzling display of expressions there: becoming pride, happiness, the momentary embarrassment yielding to affectionate gratitude. Of course these emotions were shaped to the occasion and to the public eye, but here too he sifted for evidence, for some acknowledgement, however subtle, of his rapt attention.

“I welcome the rain, my friends, and when it comes I tell you that I intend to talk straight through it. We all know what rain at this time of year might mean, and we even heard a little thunder, far off, as we were gathering for the march, so some of you might be feeling uneasy about being out here in the open during a lightning storm. But standing here today I have no fear of the lightning bolt, and neither should you, for that awful phenomenon of nature, the scourge of enterprise and domestic tranquility throughout the history of Beecher's Bridge, has been tamed by the bold genius of Dr. Steinmetz. May I draw your attention now to Lightning Knob, and to the structure there that protects us from our ancient enemy?”

The grandstand had been placed on the town green in such a position that the spectators' view embraced both the face of Great Mountain and the stark, lesser eminence of Lightning Knob. An old elm standing on the side of the green near the Congregational Church had been cut down; too hastily, some said, for though it had been attacked by the elm blight, it was still alive and might have survived. But there was no question that its removal improved this panorama.

“It looks a little like a church standing up there, doesn't it, and like the two churches we have down here in the town it protects us all, turns the wrath of the Almighty into a blessing. I'd like Mr. Peacock to stand for a moment. He is the director of the Beecher's Bridge Light
ning Research Facility, and of the Experimental Site down at the falls. It was his waterwheel, the Peacock Turbine, that brought General Electric to us in the first place, and he is the fellow who took Dr. Steinmetz's ideas about lightning and put the nuts and bolts to them. Now, it's true he didn't invent the Fourth of July, but without him we'd have only half as much to celebrate here today. Mr. Peacock, will you please?”

Toma stood, blushed, and sat down before the clapping ended.

“I'll be telling you a little later about that building up there on the Knob and what it is going to mean, not just to us here in Beecher's Bridge, but to America; and not just to America, but to the whole world. What you are looking at, folks, is a very important piece in the great engine of prosperity that connects us all and will kick into high gear just as soon as we've settled the Kaiser's hash. The real business of the General Electric Company, my friends, is not electricity, but prosperity.

“But before I get into that, before I tell you how the protection of electrical lines from lightning is one of the great strides in national prosperity, I've arranged a little something to get you thinking along the right lines. Are you ready? Here we go.”

Senator Truscott's hand was already poised on the nearer of two bunting-draped levers that projected from the side of the lectern, and when he thrust it down there was a moment of perfect, awed silence just long enough to entertain the thought that something had gone wrong. The familiar hiss of a fireworks fuse somewhere behind the dais was reassuring to those with good hearing, but nothing could have prepared them for the ensuing roar, not a detonation proper but a release of energy hinting at some fantastic ambition: perhaps the platform itself, guests and all, would levitate off the ground? Instead, a rocket rose through the pungent cloud of its own generation and screamed off in the direction of Great Mountain, its girth and length, so briefly glimpsed, of mythic proportions.

The launch alone would have provided a month's worth of reminiscence and debate to the adolescent males of Beecher's Bridge, but it was subsumed and obliterated by what happened next, which might be described as a dozen Fourths rolled into one. But not, mercifully, a single explosion, because after the initial report at the height of the rocket's trajectory—blinding and deafening even at such a distance and
against the hazy sky—there followed a cascading series of lesser explosions and whistling effects, each announced by a metamorphosis: swarming sulphur-green bees became white phosphorus stars begat zigzagging missiles of crimson strontium, down and down until the last lilac showers, like falls of wisteria, grazed the bare rock of Great Mountain and expired there. And even this was not all, for when the pyrotechnic display had exhausted itself, another light bloomed on high, as if the mountain had caught fire, and the words “God Bless America” were spelled out boldly in alternating points of red and white.

“Them's lightbulbs now, Muriel,” explained Fred Curtis to his wife. “No need to be afraid.”

Toma craned his neck to see the display behind him, but it was an unwilling courtesy, for he knew in intimate detail, having supervised the preparations, the sequence of fireworks and lights to come, and he had never felt less like an American, nor so unblessed. He settled in to watch and listen, glad to have put away his barren thinking on the wheel, and diverted himself with the shallow drama of Senator Truscott's waiting game. He would talk until the lightning came, which would ignite the surprising grand finale of the celebration and co-opt the need for further speechifying. But if it did not come there must be a limit, not to his powers of expression but to the tolerance of his audience. No politician can afford to let his listeners fall asleep or go hungry. Sooner or later he would have to pull that second lever.

Toma's eyelids seemed to have weights on them; the last few days were taking their toll. Keeping up with Steinmetz's demands at this peak period of lightning activity was difficult enough. Schenectady sent racks of devices for testing, including new combinations of cable alloy and sheathing, and three variant prototypes of the new oxide film arresters. And then there were the sudden calls to battle stations, day or night, when a storm threatened. Eight days ago an urgent telegram had arrived from the office of the chairman directing him, Toma, to give precedence to the plans for the July 4 celebration, specifics to be supplied by Senator Truscott. Steinmetz was predictably furious, and since it would be imprudent to quarrel with his patrons, that fury was directed at Toma.

Under no circumstances was he to take a week's vacation from the work of the lightning research station in order to arrange public spec
tacles. Senator Truscott's nonsense—the very word—could not be allowed to interfere, and Toma would have to see to that on his own time. As a grudging concession and preventive measure, he sent two cable technicians from Schenectady to help out. Truscott would have to supply the fireworks experts.

Senator Truscott's nonsense, it turned out, was of a scale to rival Steinmetz's own visionary schemes, and Toma was left to figure out how the lightning might serve two masters. What Truscott wanted, if only the weather and the lightning would cooperate, was a demonstration of the triumphant technology of peace. The bolt that struck the aerial must be channeled away from the usual equipment, so that the sign on the mountain opposite would not be affected by electrical failure. It was crucial, wrote Truscott, that God's blessings not be challenged by a mere thunderstorm. But the cable technicians had seen too much to give him absolute assurance. “This stuff has a mind of its own,” said one. “If you have to be sure, then you'll need a storage battery system as a backup.” The storage battery system was duly added to Toma's list.

The immediate effect of the lightning strike would be to ignite another round of fireworks. Bombardments of rockets from the heights of the mountain would rain down on Lightning Knob, to be answered by fiery diagonals aimed up at God's very sign. There would be whistling squibs that might be mistaken for the signal to attack, followed by a staccato of thousands of firecrackers to repulse the imagined onslaught of infantry. One last, tremendous starburst from the mountain would silence the Knob, and as the first rocket of the evening had illuminated God's Blessing on Great Mountain, so this last stroke of the entertainment would provoke an answer, graven in light on the Knob below the aerial and Peacock's Folly: “And Keep Her Safe.”

At two
A.M.
the night before there had been electrical activity over Lightning Knob, duly recorded, and the new series of oxide film arresters had performed almost according to expectations. At ten o'clock, just a few hours ago, Toma, Stefan, and the cable technicians had reconfigured the circuits to accommodate Truscott's extravaganza. It was hard, hot, hurried work. Frayed tempers led to an angry exchange between the Schenectady men and the crew sent by the Giambetti fire
works manufactory to install the display. The chief of these Neapolitans was outraged to learn that they were not permitted to light a single fuse: all must be done automatically and electrically. His injured dignity could only be expressed in the phrase: “No, no, I am the Giambetti,” by which he meant, Toma discovered, that he was the nephew of the Giambetti, and no one outside the family ever touched the fuses. It was a question of honor and long tradition. Toma eventually settled the matter with difficulty and in favor of General Electric, though he got little thanks for his diplomacy. “Foolishness,” was the way the taciturn fellow from Schenectady put it as he spliced and wrapped the connections with blinding dexterity. “Trying to make a million volts jump through a hoop.”

Truscott forged on, stopping more often now to deploy the handkerchief or to reach for his glass of water. Also, it seemed to Toma, to catch his breath. The sun had sunk into the haze, dusk deepened without relief, and gleams of heat lightning, far away and without sound, punctuated the twilight. In this awful heat the senator's linen coat was soaked to the waist, and Toma, knowing that the second lever would set off the fireworks in the absence of a lightning strike, grew impatient with Truscott's heroic obstinacy. There was not, after all, a cloud in sight, only this malevolent haze. Chairman Coffin rested his eyes and might even have been be sleeping. Harriet looked steadfastly at her husband, but the radiance of those earlier expressions was clouded with concern, for she too had noticed how he panted. Steinmetz, in his black suit, was oblivious to the heat and attentive to the speaker. He nodded approval at certain turns of phrase and applauded the patriotic references. At one point he took his pocket notebook and wrote something there. All the while he worried the stump of his dead cigar, and from time to time his eyes came to meditate upon Toma as if he were a problematic equation.