Steel (10 page)

“It won't be the same,” she said, “will it, Les?”

“How could it be?”

“I wonder,” she murmured, “what it will be really like.”

“A lot of people would like to know,” he said.

They sat in silence watching the sun go down. It's funny he thought, you try to get underneath to the real meaning of a moment like this but you can't. It passes and when it's over you don't know or feel any more than you did before. It's just one more moment added to the past. You
don't
appreciate what you have until it's taken away.

He looked over at Ruth and saw her looking solemnly and strangely at the ocean.

“Honey,” he said quietly and gave her, with the word, his love.

She looked at him and tried to smile.

“We'll still be together,” he told her.

“I know,” she said. “Don't pay any attention to me.”

“But I will,” he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “I'll look after you. Over the earth—”

“Or under it,” she said.

*   *   *

Bill came out of the house to meet them. Les looked at his friend as he steered the car into the open concrete space by the garage. He wondered how Bill felt about leaving the house he'd just finished paying for. Free and clear, after eighteen years of payments, and tomorrow it would be rubble. Life is a bastard, he thought, switching off the engine.

“Hello, kid,” Bill said to him. “Hi, beautiful,” to Ruth.

“Hello, handsome,” Ruth said.

They got out of the car and Ruth took the package off the front seat. Bill's daughter Jeannie came running out of the house. “Hi, Les! Hi, Ruth!”

“Say, Bill, whose car are we going to take tomorrow?” Les asked him.

“I don't know, kid,” Bill said. “We'll talk it over when Fred and Grace get here.”

“Carry me piggy-back, Les,” Jeannie demanded.

He swung her up.
I'm glad we don't have a child, I'd hate to take a child down there tomorrow.

Mary looked up from the stove as they moved in. They all said hello and Ruth put the package on the table.

“What's that?” Mary asked.

“I baked a pie,” Ruth told her.

“Oh, you didn't have to do that,” Mary said.

“Why not? It may be the last one I'll ever bake.”

“It's not that bad,” Bill said. “They'll have stoves down there.”

“There'll be so much rationing it won't be worth the effort,” Ruth said.

“The way my true love bakes that'll be good fortune,” Bill said.

“Is
that
so!” Mary glared at her grinning husband, who patted her behind and moved into the living room with Les. Ruth stayed in the kitchen to help.

Les put down Bill's daughter.

Jeannie ran out. “Mama, I'm gonna help you make dinner!”

“How nice,” they heard Mary say.

Les sank down on the big cherry-colored couch and Bill took the chair across the room by the window.

“You come up through Santa Monica?” he asked.

“No, we came along the Coast Highway,” Les said. “Why?”

“Jesus, you should have gone through Santa Monica,” Bill said. “Everybody's going crazy—breaking store windows, turning cars upside down, setting fire to everything. I was down there this morning. I'm lucky I got the car back. Some jokers wanted to roll it down Wilshire Boulevard.”

“What's the matter, are they crazy?” Les said. “You'd think this was the end of the world.”

“For some people it is,” Bill said. “What do you think MGM is going to do down there, make cartoons?”

“Sure,” said Les. “
Tom and Jerry in the Middle of the Earth.
”

Bill shook his head. “Business is going out of its mind,” he said. “There's no place to set up everything down there. Everybody's flipping. Look at that paper.”

Les leaned forward and took the newspaper off the coffee table. It was three days old. The main stories, of course, covered the details of the descent—the entry schedules at the various entrances: the one in Hollywood, the one in Reseda, the one in downtown Los Angeles. In large type across eight columns, the frontpage headline read:
REMEMBER! THE BOMB FALLS AT SUNSET!
Newspapers had been carrying the warning for a week. And tomorrow was the day.

The rest of the stories were about robbery, rape, arson, and murder.

“People just can't take it,” Bill said. “They have to flip.”

“Sometimes I feel like flipping myself,” said Les.

“Why?” Bill said with a shrug. “So we live under the ground instead of over it. What the hell will change? Television will still be lousy.”

“Don't tell me we aren't even leaving that above ground?”

“No, didn't you see?” Bill said. He pushed up and walked over to the coffee table. He picked up the paper Les had dropped. “Where the hell is it?” he muttered to himself, ruffling through the pages.

“There.” Bill held out the paper.

TELEVISION TO GO ON

SCIENTISTS PROMISE

“Consolation?” Les said.

“Sure,” Bill said, tossing down the paper. “Now we'll be able to watch the bomb smear us.”

He went back to his chair.

Les shook his head. “Who's going to build television sets down there?”

“Kid, there'll be everything down—what's up, beautiful?”

Ruth stood in the archway that opened on the living room.

“Anybody want wine?” she asked. “Beer?”

Bill said beer and Les said wine, then Bill went on.

“Maybe that promise of television is a little far-fetched,” he said. “But, otherwise, there'll be business as usual. Oh, maybe it'll be on a different level, but it'll be there. Christ, somebody's gonna want something for all the money they've invested in the Tunnels.”

“Isn't their life enough?”

Bill went on talking about what he'd read concerning life in the Tunnel—the exchange set-up, the transportation system, the plans for substitute food production and all the endless skein of details that went into the creation of a new society in a new world.

Les didn't listen. He sat looking past his friend at the purple and red sky that topped the shifting dark blue of the ocean. He heard the steady flow of Bill's words without their content; he heard the women moving in the kitchen. What
would
it be like?—he wondered. Nothing like this. No aquamarine broadloom, wall to wall, no vivid colors, no fireplace with copper screening, most of all no picture windows with the beautiful world outside for them to watch. He felt his throat tighten slowly. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow—

Ruth came in with the glasses and handed Bill his beer and Les his wine. Her eyes met those of her husband for a moment and she smiled. He wanted to pull her down suddenly and bury his face in her hair. He wanted to forget. But she returned to the kitchen and he said “What?” to Bill's question.

“I said I guess we'll go to the Reseda entrance.”

“I guess it's as good as any other,” Les said.

“Well, I figure the Hollywood and the downtown entrances will be jammed,” Bill said. “Christ, you really threw down that wine.”

Les felt the slow warmth run down into his stomach as he put down the glass.

“This thing getting you, kid?” Bill asked.

“Isn't it getting you?”

“Oh…” Bill shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe I just make noise to hide what it's doing to me. I guess. I feel it for Jeannie more than anything else. She's only five.”

Outside they heard a car pull up in front of the house and Mary called to say that Fred and Grace were there. Bill pressed palms on his knees and pushed up.

“Don't let it get you,” he said with a grin. “You're from New York. It won't be any different from the subway.”

Les made a sound of disgruntled amusement.

“Forty years in the subway,” he said.

“It's not that bad,” Bill said, starting out of the room. “The scientists claim they'll find some way to de-radiate the country and get things growing again.”

“When?”

“Maybe twenty years,” Bill said, and then he went out to welcome his guests.

“But how do we know what they
really
look like?” Grace said. “All the pictures they print are only artist's
conceptions
of what the living quarters are like down there. They may be
holes
in the wall for all we know.”

“Don't be a knocker, kid, be a booster,” Bill told her.

“Uh!” Grace grunted. “I think you're oblivious to the—
terror
of this horrible descent into the ground.”

They were all in the living room full of steak and salad and biscuits and pie and coffee. Les sat on the cherry-colored couch, his arm round Ruth's slender waist. Grace and Fred sat on the yellow studio couch, Mary and Bill in separate chairs. Jeannie was in bed. Warmth filtered from the fireplace where a low, steady log fire burned. Fred and Bill drank beer from cans and the rest drank wine.

“Not oblivious, kid,” Bill said. “Just adjusting. We have to do it. We might as well make the best of it.”

“Easily said, easily said,” Grace repeated. “But I for one
certainly
don't look forward to living in those tunnels. I expect to be miserable. I don't know how Fred feels, but those are
my
sentiments. I don't think it really
matters
to Fred.”

“Fred is an adjuster,” Bill said. “Fred is not a knocker.”

Fred smiled a little and said nothing. He was a small man sitting by his wife like a patient boy with his mother in the dentist's office.

“Oh!” Grace again. “How can you be so blasé about it is beyond me. How can it be
anything
but bad? No theatres, no restaurants, no travelling—”

“No beauty parlors,” said Bill with a short laugh.

“
Yes
, no beauty parlors,” said Grace. “If you don't think
that's
important to a woman—
well.
”

“We'll have our loved ones,” Mary said. “I think that's most important. And we'll be alive.”

Grace shrugged. “All right we'll be alive, we'll be together,” she said. “But I'm afraid I just can't call that life—living in a
cellar
the rest of my life.”

“Don't go,” Bill said. “Show 'em how tough you are.”

“
Very
funny,” Grace said.

“I bet some people
will
decide not to go down there,” Les said.

“If they're
crazy
,” said Grace. “Uh! What a
hideous
way to die.”

“Maybe it's better than going underground,” Bill said. “Who knows? Maybe a lot of people will spend a quiet day at home tomorrow.”

“
Quiet?
” said Grace. “Don't worry, Fred and I will be down in those tunnels bright and early tomorrow.”

“I'm not worried,” said Bill.

They were quiet for a moment, then Bill said, “The Reseda entrance all right with everybody? We might as well decide now.”

Fred made a small palms-up gesture with his hands.

“All right with me,” he said. “Whatever the majority decides.”

“Kid, let's face it,” Bill said. “You're the most important person we've got here. An electrician's going to be a big man down there.”

Fred smiled. “That's okay,” he said. “Anything you decide.”

“You know,” Bill said. “I wonder what the hell we mailmen are going to do down there.”

“And we bank tellers,” Les said.

“Oh, there'll be money down there,” Bill said. “Where America goes, money goes. Now what about the car? We can only take one for six. Shall we take mine? It's the biggest.”

“Why not
ours?
” Grace said.

“Doesn't matter a damn to me,” Bill said. “We can't take them down with us anyway.”

Grace stared bitterly at the fire, her frail hands opening and closing in her lap.

“Oh, why don't we
stop
the bomb! Why don't we attack
first?
”

“We can't stop it now,” Les said.

“I wonder if they have tunnels too,” said Mary.

“Sure,” Bill said. “They're probably sitting in their houses right now just like us, drinking wine and wondering what'll it be like to go underground.”

“Not
them
,” Grace said, bitterly. “What do
they
care?”

Bill smiled dryly. “They care.”

“There doesn't seem any point,” Ruth said.

Then they all at in silence watching their last fire of a cool California evening. Ruth rested her head on Les's shoulder as he slowly stroked her blonde hair. Bill and Mary caught each other's eye and smiled a little. Fred sat and stared with gentle, melancholy eyes at the glowing logs while Grace opened up and closed her hands and looked very old.

And, outside, the stars shone down for a million times the millionth year.

*   *   *

Ruth and Les were sitting on their living room floor listening to records when Bill sounded his horn. For a moment they looked at each other without a word, a little frightened, the sunlight filtering between the blinds and falling like golden ladders across their legs. What can I say?—he wondered suddenly—Are there any words in the world that can make this minute easier for her?

Ruth moved against him quickly and they clung together as hard as they could. Outside the horn blew again.

“We'd better go,” Les said quietly.

“All right,” she said.

They stood up and Les went to the front door.

“We'll be right out!” he called.