Aftermath (6 page)

"Hey, something has to." Ed chimed in across the bar that separated them from the kitchen. "I don't see you refusing to drink it. Bambi burgers all right, Art?"

"Fine. Unless you have salmon?"

"Saint's days and bonfire nights only."

Art took his cue from the conversation. Clearly, no one wanted to talk about personal worries. Ed had grown kids and a brother in Idaho. Joe had two sisters and their children in Atlanta. There could have been no contact with any of them since March 14. Ed and Joe were making a deliberate assumption: no news was good news. Let's hope they were right.

"So what the hell's going on with you." Joe Vanetti rubbed his scarred and swollen knee and turned to Art. "Figured things out yet?"

"I don't know. But I was lying awake thinking about it last night. I got another idea."

"A new one."

"More like an old one. You know that blue sky flash seven days ago, when all the power went out?"

"I didn't see it."

"You know him," Ed called from the kitchen. "Nine o'clock, and he's asleep."

"Well, it happened all right. I saw it, Joe. It seemed to be in the upper atmosphere, way above the clouds. At the time I wondered if it had anything to do with the supernova."

"We asked you that," Joe protested. "And you told us it couldn't have. You told us that the supernova can't ever be seen from here."

"It can't. But it might still have an effect. I remembered something from forty years back. You would still have been in the Air Force, Joe, you might recall it better than I do. Do you remember when everybody worried about a nuclear war between the United States and Russia?"

"The Soviet Union it was, back in those days. God, do I remember." Joe, close to eighty, had entered the Air Force at eighteen. "We used to have these nuclear war drills, 'In the event of a nuclear attack, descend into the basement. Place your head between your legs, and kiss your ass good-bye.' I was scared shitless, I just knew we were going to blow each other to hell. We were so on edge, we'd start a war by accident."

"Then maybe you remember something called EMP."

Joe scowled. "Something technical. And it came later. That's all I remember."

"He's a mine of information," Ed said from the kitchen. "Thank God we never had a war with him running it."

"Do you remember EMP, Ed?"

"Hey, Art, be reasonable. I was a software developer."

"Which means he don't know shit about anything," Joe said. "So what's EMP, Art?"

"If you had a big nuclear war, all this radiation would hit the atmosphere, and it would cause a great pulse of electricity and magnetism—an electromagnetic pulse. And that would play havoc with electronic equipment down here on Earth."

Ed was carrying in three loaded plates. "Here we go. Venisonburger medium with bun and no onion. Venisonburger rare with bun
and
onion. And venisonburger medium with onion and open top. You're on your own for helping yourselves to drinks." He set the plates on the table. "But there was no nuclear war."

"Right. But there was a supernova."

"Are you telling me that's like a nuclear war?"

"Not really. But an EMP was supposed to make a big blue flicker in the sky, like the one we saw. If the supernova caused an EMP . . ."

Joe had taken a big bite, and he spoke with his mouth full. "I thought radio waves and things like that traveled at the same speed as light."

"They do."

"So how come we had the supernova a month and a half ago, but the electricity and television and everything else only went haywire last week? Wouldn't the radiation get here at the same time as the light?"

"Ought to. I don't know why it wouldn't."

"And if what you say is true, how come everybody else hasn't figured this EMP thing out?"

"I feel sure a lot of people have. But how could they spread the word? You said it, radio's gone and TV's gone, and the web is down. There's no way to tell anybody anything."

It seemed like a good time to stop talking and start eating. Art bit into a piece of onion, one of those homegrown in Ed's kitchen garden and hanging in strings on the kitchen wall. It was as hot as any he had ever tasted, and he took a drink to help it down. The combination of hot onion and moonshine took his breath away. His idea had seemed brilliant when it came to him late the previous evening. Now the others were pointing out that it raised more questions than it answered.

After a few minutes of silent chewing, Ed wandered through to the kitchen again to put a pan of water on the old stove. It occurred to Art that although Ed would never describe himself as a survivalist, most things in the house worked just fine without utilities piped in from outside. There were advantages to buying a place nearly eighty years old and not bothering to replace fixtures as long as they still worked halfway decent.

"Where's Helen?" he asked.

"Down the hill, at Dr. Dennison's place." Ed brought a jar of brandied plums through and set it on the table. "She says once a year's enough to sit and listen to three old farts going on at the world."

"She said 'old farts'?"

"If you'd heard her, you'd know that's what she meant."

"She sick?"

"Just the usual. Arthritis. At least old Dennison's honest, he told Helen that her arthritis is general wear and tear, and there's not a lot he can do."

"There's not a lot any of 'em can do." Joe cracked the top of the jar and spooned plums and brandy on the same plate that had held his venisonburger. "Goddam quacks. Remember what they told you three years ago, Art, that you had only a few months to live?"

"I'm not likely to forget it."

"But you're alive. How many of them are dead?"

"I wish I knew." There was a long pause. Joe's question had, almost by accident, forced them to consider the outside world. None of them looked at the others. Then Art said, "Give medicine credit, Joe. The telomod treatment saved my life."

"Ah, they just feed you that scientific bullshit so they can increase the bill. You'd have got better anyway."

There was no point in arguing with Joe. He was past the age where you could hope to change his mind. But he was wrong. Art knew, without a shred of doubt, that the treatment at the Institute for Probatory Therapies was the reason he was alive to eat lunch today. He had seen the scans. His body had been riddled with metastatic carcinomas before the telomods went to work.

"Doctors, they're no different from other scientists." Ed picked a plum out of the jar with his fingers, transferred it to his mouth, and spoke indistinctly around it. "Take the supernova. All the theories, and the government making statements about what was supposed to happen. The weather after the supernova didn't match any of 'em."

"A couple of people's predictions came close."

"A couple, out of hundreds. So why do we pay taxes, to get rubbish like that?"

"You don't pay taxes, Ed. You boast about that."

"Why should I, when the country's going to hell?"

"Of course it is," Joe said darkly. "With that Jew in the White House, what do you expect?"

Art shook his head. Joe was an old friend, but on certain subjects you had to ignore him.

"He was your choice, Joe," Ed said. "You voted for him."

"I know I did. But look at the choice I had. Either that Heebie, or that
woman
."

"He's not biased, you see. No, not him." Ed addressed Art as though Joe Vanetti were not present. "You'd never guess his second wife was Jewish."

Art did not bother to reply. He didn't need to, because the line of conversation was on a well-worn track. On cue, Joe said, "She certainly was, the bitch. Hey, do you know why Jewish divorces cost more?"

He looked at them expectantly. Art had heard the joke a hundred times, but it was Joe's punch line. He and Ed remained silent.

"Because they're worth it," Joe went on. "But I don't think I'll marry again."

"No?" Ed poured brandy from the jar into his glass, drank some, and pulled a face. "Phew. I was in rare form when I made that lot. So what will you do, Joe?"

Within two years of buying the place on the mountain and meeting neighbors Ed and Joe, Art had learned the rules. If you wanted to be accepted you didn't step on someone else's joke, no matter how often you had heard it. The other two had been playing the game forever, and for this bit he was a member of the audience.

"I won't marry," Joe said. "I'll just find a woman I don't like, and give her a house."

"Does Anne-Marie know that?"

"Not from me she don't."

"I can't see why that woman puts up with you." Ed turned to Art. "She's twenty-five years younger than he is, she's good-looking, and she has her own place. She doesn't need an old wreck like him. She could get somebody handsome, like me, only I'm married. Why does she bother?"

Art had been asked the question, so he was now in the game. "You have to know how it works, Ed. As far as you and I are concerned, Joe here is a poor old crock with hardly enough strength to stagger from his place to yours. He'd never get back home from here without your brew. But as far as older women are concerned, any single male under ninety who's not actually terminal is an eligible bachelor. They outlive us, so there's not enough of us to go around."

"It's not like that with me and Annie." Joe was complacent. Among male friends, insult was the only acceptable expression of affection. "She says I'm dynamite."

"She means you're always going off at the wrong time, I'll bet. I don't see you walking over to her place, now that the truck don't work." Ed had the bottle in his hand. "Another? One for the road."

Art shook his head. "Not me," Joe said. "Your liver will be in a museum when you die, Ed. It won't need to be pickled, neither. And I don't need to walk to Annie's place. She knows I've got the gammy leg. She'll be up here about five."

"How would you be knowing that? You using telepathy?"

"No. Telcom." Joe took the bottle. "Maybe just a drop after all. I think this batch is better than the usual bat piss."

Neither he nor Ed seemed to realize the significance of what he was saying, but the words jolted Art's nervous system into overdrive. He could feel his heart racing.

"You made a telcom call
today
?"

"Sure." Joe was pouring a closely calculated measure of liquor, and he did not look up. "Tried this morning before I came over, and got a dial tone. First time for a week. So I talked to Annie, and she said she'd be over. Stands to reason, things had to come back to normal before too long."

"Ed?"

O'Donnell went across to the chest where the communications unit was sitting and pressed a button. He shook his head. "Not my telcom. Dead as Lincoln. Never a light on the board."

"Told you that was a piece of junk when you bought it." Joe stood up and went over to stare at the unit. "You had a perfectly good phone already."

"Couldn't get a replacement when part of it busted. You know that. Goddam companies, always pushing what you don't want." Ed lifted the headphone. "Got a tone, though. Sounds funny. Here." He held the set out to Art. "You're the communications wizard."

Art took the headset and listened. It was a dial tone all right, but behind the rhythmic pulse was a strange and distant singing, the sound you might get if you had no in-line amplification and were placing a call to the Mars expedition. He performed the standard repertoire of tests and obtained no response. He examined the program board more closely. The unit was relatively new, certainly no more than three years old.

"I think you're out of luck, Ed. The control chips are blown."

"Figures. The warranty ended in January. The bastards."

"I don't think you can blame the company." Art turned to Joe. "My unit's newer than this one, and it's dead, too. Could I make a call on yours?"

"Out of region?"

"Yes."

"Sure you can." The question had been automatic—Joe would have been outraged if Art made any move to pay. "Now?"

"Anytime that's convenient."

"Now's as good as any." Joe stood up heavily, favoring his leg. "Otherwise this old bugger will want us to help him with the clearing up."

Ed said nothing, until the other two were at the door. Then he shook Art's hand, ignored Joe, and said, "Help the poor man, will you, in case he falls over. When Annie says she's coming over, all the blood runs from his brain down into his pecker. I'm still not sure it's enough for action." And when the other two were twenty paces away, "Hey, Joe. Helen's been telling me to ask you this. Do you love Anne-Marie?"

Joe turned and gave him the single sideways glare that said no sane male ever asked another man a question like that. O'Donnell laughed and retreated into the house. Joe and Art continued their slow progress, limited by two bad right knees.

If it had been up to Art he'd have walked faster, no matter how much it hurt. He was desperate to try that call. It was pointless to explain why to Joe. A lot more depended on it than his friends would be willing to believe.

2

The dogs came to meet them midway between the two houses, wagging their tails wildly and rearing up on Joe with their muddy paws while he cursed and tried to push them away.

"Down, Rush," he said to a large white mutt. "I've got nothing for you out here, you silly bugger.
Down,
I said, until we get home."

It was the best diversion that Art could have hoped for. While Joe was feeding the dogs in the back of the tidy and well-organized house—whatever Anne-Marie was coming over for it wasn't to do cleaning—Art went straight to the telcom set. It wasn't merely old, it was antique. An actual telephone. There was no store-forward, no video plugs, no conferencing, no min-rate path finder, and pathetic internal storage. A bit more primitive, and you'd be back in the era of analog signals and rotary dials. But when Art picked up the handset he heard a treasured pulse tone, though again it was overlaid on a background hiss like interstellar space. Another side effect of Supernova Alpha? A dial pulse was a good start, but no more than that. Art held his breath and hit buttons.

He had spent a lot of time in the past week, trying to remember and write down the thirty-odd numbers that he needed. In the past he had relied on his personal secretary to store them, despite his preaching to others —"We've become too dependent on interconnected technologies. One day the information system will be hit and come down like a house of cards. We'll have a devil of a time putting it back together."