“The fishermen feel the same way.”
“Who doesn’t? Can you believe you’ll never taste a banana again? We could use some orange juice, for that matter. We’re worried about scurvy.”
“The orange tree is extinct in California. Sometimes we can dig some Tang out of a market.” The longer Tim looked at that wall of earth between him and the San Joaquin Sea, the bigger it got. “Doff, how could you have put that up while the valley was flooding?”
“We couldn’t have. It’s a crazy story. The original idea was to put the plant over nearer to Wasco. Mr. Price wanted it up here, on the ridge, because the blowdown from the cooling towers would drain better, we wouldn’t have to dig the ponds as deep. The Department’s managers didn’t like that. Made the plant more visible.”
“Oh, but it’s beautiful! It’s like a 1930s Amazing Stories cover. The future!”
“That’s what Mr. Price said. Anyway, they did put the plant up here on the ridge.”
It wasn’t much of a ridge, of course; no more than a low rolling hill. The plant wasn’t more than twenty feet higher than the surrounding valley.
“And after they did the work, the Department got scared and they built the levees,” Weigley said. “Not for any real reason. Just to hide the plant so the environmentalists wouldn’t think about it when they drove along Interstate Five.” Weigley’s lips tightened. “And then some of the bastards who tried to kill the plant raised hell because we spent the extra money on the levee! But it came in handy. All we had to do was bulldoze up enough dirt to fill the gaps, the places where the roads and railway came in through the screening banks, and a good thing, too. That water rose fast after Hammerfall.”
“I’ll bet. I drove over that sea,” Tim said.
“How’s that?”
Tim explained. “Heard any stories about Flying Dutchmen?”
Weigley shook his head. “But we haven’t had much contact with outsiders. Mayor Allen didn’t think it would be a good idea.”
“Allen. I saw him. How’d he get here?”
“Showed up just before the water got too deep. He was in City Hall when the tidal wave came through Los Angeles. Man, has he got a story to tell! Anyway, he showed up the next day with a dozen cops and City Hall people. You know, Los Angeles owned the plant, before Hammerfall—”
“So Mayor Allen is the boss here.”
“No! Mr. Price is in charge. The mayor’s a guest. Just like you. What does he know about power plants?”
Tim didn’t point out that it was Weigley who’d told him the mayor was the one who discouraged outside contacts. “So you’ve ridden out the end of the world,” Tim said. “By keeping the plant going. What are you planning to do with it?”
Weigley shrugged. “That’s up to Mr. Price. And don’t think it’s been any soft job keeping things running. Everything’s got to work, all the time. We can put out a thousand megawatts.”
“That sounds like a lot of—”
“Ten million light bulbs.” Weigley grinned.
“A lot, yeah. How long can you keep that up?”
“At full capacity, about a year. But we’re not running full, and we won’t ever be. It takes about ten megawatts to operate the plant. Cooling pumps, control equipment, the lights… you know. That’s one percent of capacity, so we could keep that up for a hundred years. But then we’ve got another set of fuel elements, over in Number Two.”
Tim looked back at the plant. Two enormous concrete domes, which contained the nuclear reactors. Each had a series of rectangular buildings attached that contained the turbines and control equipment.
“Number Two’s not operational,” Weigley said. “Getting her up will be our first job once the water’s gone down. And then we’ll be able to put twenty megawatts on line for somebody else to use. We can keep that up for fifty years.”
“Fifty years.” Tim thought about that. In fifty years the United States had gone from a horse-and-buggy to an automobile civilization; had opened mines, built cities, built industries; discovered electronics and computers, taken space flight from comic books to the Moon. And this one plant could put out more power than the whole United States generated in the Twenties… “That’s exciting. My God, it was worth coming here! Forrester was right, letting anything happen to this plant wouldn’t be an optimum solution.”
“Uh?” Weigley gave Tim a puzzled look.
Tim grinned. “Nothing. Time to try the radio out.”
To enter the conference room was like walking into the past, straight into a Board of Directors meeting. It was all there, the long table with comfortable chairs, pads of paper, blackboards, chalk and erasers, even wooden pointers. Tim was jolted. He wondered what Al Hardy would give for a well-equipped conference room, and bulletin boards to hang maps and lists on, file cabinets…
There was an argument in progress. Johnny Baker waved Tim to a seat on his left. Tim whispered rapidly: The radio gave mostly static, but it worked; they had communications with the Stronghold. No further news. Baker whispered thanks and turned back to listen.
They looked like human scarecrows, diversely dressed, most of them armed, pale as ghosts except for Mayor Allen and a black Detective-Investigator. Their clothes were old, their shoes were worn. A few months ago they would have looked wildly out of place here. Now it was the room that was strange. The people were normal, except that they were so clean.
Tim wriggled inside his clothes. His hand patted his smoothshaven cheek. Clean! There was hot water for bathing, and working electric razors. The washer-dryer hadn’t stopped since the Stronghold party arrived. His shirt and shorts and socks were clean and dry. Tim wriggled and tried to listen. He was hearing the same sentence over and over again: “I didn’t know there was going to be a goddam army after us.”
Barry Price wasn’t as large as the construction crew chief who confronted him, but there was no question who was in charge. Price wore khaki field clothing, bush jacket and a shirt bulging with pens; a pocket calculator hung from his belt; an assistant with a clipboard hovered nearby. His brush haircut and precisely trimmed pencil mustache made him look almost finicky. He said, “So what’s changed? We were never popular.”
“No, dammit, but a cannibal army?” It wasn’t heat that made the crew chief sweat inside his hard hat. “Barry, we got to get out of here.”
“There’s nowhere to go.”
“Nuts. West side of the sea. Anyplace. But we can’t stay here! We cannot fight a whole army.”
“We have to,” Price said. “How can we let all this go down the drain? Robin, you worked as hard as anybody! We’ve got allies now—”
“Some allies. A dozen men.” Robin Laumer leaned across the table toward Barry Price. They might have been alone in the room; certainly nobody was interrupting. “Look. Everything’s got to work or nothing does, right?”
“Right.”
“So they get one hit on the turbines, the switchyard, the cable rooms, the control rooms, and that’s it! We’re underwater, and nothing ever works again!”
“I know all that,” Price said. “So we don’t let them get one hit.”
“Bullshit. Barry, I’m pulling out. Any of my people want to come with me, I’ll take. We’ll give ’em back, but we’re borrowing your boats—”
“Not mine you don’t,” Johnny Baker said. He sat at Barry Price’s left, just across the table from Mayor Allen. “I did not bring boats to help evacuate this plant.”
Laumer seemed about to argue; then he shrugged. “So I take the boats that were already here. One of ’em’s mine anyway, that one I keep. But we’re leaving.”
He stalked out of the room. As he passed Tim Hamner, Tim told him, “You’ll never be clean again.” Laumer broke stride, then kept going.