“I don’t know.”
“Nor do I. Maybe the sleepers all starve an’ die. Maybe they wake up and head for the hills. Neither one’s any good for us. If Ollie turns to spoiled beef we’re out of luck. And if he’s awake and out of there before we’re in, you can bet your ass and hat we’ll never find him.”
“Seth’s right.” Art warmed his hands at the little stove. “We can’t afford to wait, Dana. We have too much at stake. Oliver Guest is our only shot at continued treatment.”
“So we’re all agreed.” Seth stood up. “We gotta go, and soon. But how?”
“If we can’t go by road,” Dana said slowly, “what else is there? The monorail? I know the service is dead, but the tracks may be clear.”
“Even if they are,” Art said, “they won’t help much. They run southeast from here, straight into the middle of Washington. We have to reach a lot farther south.”
“On the river,” said Seth thoughtfully. “Maryland Point is on the Potomac. How far are we from the river? If only we had a map of the area.”
“I have maps.”
“You do?” Seth Parsigian raised his eyebrows at Art. “You really planned ahead. You got precognition?”
“No. But I’ve got friends who must have.” Art didn’t try to explain. He said, “Wait a minute,” and headed back upstairs. When he returned holding Ed O’Donnell’s old maps, Seth and Dana were arguing, crouched together across the portable stove.
“South,” Dana said. “No more than five miles.”
“I don’t think so. Five miles may be right, but you go west.” Seth glanced at the three maps that Art held out. “The question is, what direction leads you fastest to the Potomac? If we can reach it, we may be able to run along it all the way to the syncope facility.”
“If we had a boat.”
“We get to the river, you let me worry about that. I’m a top scavenger.” Seth opened one of the maps. “This should tell us. Except it looks like it came out of the Ark.”
“The land/river boundary hasn’t changed in fifty years.” Dana leaned over so that she and Seth could study the map together. She touched one location with her finger. “Here we are, west of the freeway. And there’s the river.”
“Then we’re both right.” Seth was measuring using his index finger as a rule. “The Potomac is just about as far away to the south as it is to the west. Say, five or six miles.”
“That’s beeline distance.” Dana ran her finger straight across the map. “We’d never make it crosscountry. It’s more by road. But there are no roads to the west. We have a good road south, the one we are on. We can follow Seven Locks just about all the way to the river.”
“If it weren’t for the snow, we could.” Seth sat back on his haunches. “You saw what it was like yesterday. If, anything, the going will be worse today. If nobody took a mind to stop us — and I’m not comfortable with that assumption — you’re talkin’ about a full day’s trek. And that’s just to get us to the river. We have to go a lot farther. All right, folks, who has a better idea?”
He didn’t speak like a man expecting an answer. But he offered no resistance when Art said, “Let me see,” and took the map from his hands.
“You think you got better eyes than us?” Seth said, when Art followed an invisible line with his finger. “You see a road where we don’t?”
“I think so. A sort of road.” Art wasn’t one to play word games, but he needed to be sure. He traced Seven Locks Road with his finger. It ran south in almost a straight line and ended just short of the river. He examined it in more detail, and shook his head.
“We already looked at that, Art,” Dana said. “The snow is the problem.”
“Not for us, it won’t be.” Art was sure. “The way we go won’t be easy, but we’ll have no trouble with snow.”
Seth showed his teeth, though it was hard to call it a smile. “You plannin’ to fly, baby?”
“No. There’s more routes in the world than you’ll find on a map like this. We’ll use the storm drains. And though a road can go up and down, water only runs downhill. That’s why you have to look at the contour lines.”
“The sewers,” Seth said. “You want to run through the sewers and be knee-deep in shit? Do you know what you’re suggesting?”
“Sewers and storm drainage systems aren’t the same thing at all. They use the same underground paths a lot of the time, but you keep them apart when you can. As for knowing about them, I’d say I do. It’s one way I make my living.”
“Eh?” Dana stared. “Have you been lying to me? You told me you were a network and feedback analyst.”
“I am. What do you think a storm drainage system is? It’s nothing but a big, complicated flow network. It happens to work with water, not electricity, but the basic principles are the same. You have line-carrying capacities, and variable loads, and peak load shunting. If you want to you can even make switches and amplifiers, through a thing called the Coanga Effect. But I won’t get into that.” Art spoke to Dana. “I admit I may have misled you a bit. I work with both electrical and water networks — and others, too, like oil and gas pipelines. But don’t you think ’telecommunications network specialist’ has a nicer ring to it than ’water and sewage network specialist’?”
“You just didn’t want to tell me you worked in the sewers.” Dana smiled at Art. “But is it safe to go into the storm drains now, after the supernova? How can you be sure that everything is still working? I mean, the whole power system is down, and I’d think the storm drains would be dependent on it.”
“Not in this universe. You won’t find electricity used, except here and there for maintenance. Think of it, Dana. In normal times, when is the electrical power in an area most likely to fail?”
“When you have high winds and a bad storm.”
“Right. The last thing you want is a storm drain system most likely to fail when you need it most. The engineers don’t assume electrical power is available when they design flood control and storm drainage networks. They assume the opposite — that no one will have power when the storms and floods are at their worst. Everything is controlled by the water loads themselves, through volumes and pressures and feedback to spillways and control gates.”
“You’re dead serious, aren’t you?” Seth had become very still. “You think we can do it this way.”
“I know we can. But if you have a better idea, I’ll take it. I don’t want to be Harry Lime any more than you do.”
Art didn’t expect the others to catch the reference, but Dana smiled and said, “Great movie. Maybe we’ll go see it when this is all over. I’m persuaded. Now tell us the snags.”
“The main thing that worries me is finding a good entry point to the storm drain system. We’re not water, we need a hole big enough for us to get through. There has to be one within half a mile at the most, for service access, but it might be hidden by snow. I’ll go out now and search.”
“Us, too?” Dana asked.
“Waste of time. You wouldn’t know where to look. You stay here and get things together. Once we’re in the storm drains, the underground part shouldn’t be hard. There are walkways — narrow and low, but big enough for a person. All we do is follow the direction of flow, and that takes us to a river discharge point.”
“After you find the entry point, how soon can we leave?” Seth stood up.