Part 4

They didn't even look overwhelmingly urgent. Government had not broken down: if anything, it was working abnormally hard. News came through--ferocious air battles over the Canadian tundras; the Soviet armies rolling westward into Europe and southward into Asia, then pushed back with surprising ease and surrendering en masse as their own states collapsed behind them--it was turning out to be a war as remote and half-forgotten as Korea, and a much easier one, which lasted a few months and then faded into a multi-cornered struggle between communists, neo-czarists, and a dozen other elements. By Christmas time, a shaky democratic confederation in Moscow was negotiating with Ukrainia, the Siberian Convict Republic, and the Tartar Alliance. China was in chaos and eastern Europe was free.

And while the great powers were realizing that they were no longer great, now that a vast capital investment in armament had stopped paying off; and while they sought to forestall world upheaval by setting up a genuine international army with strength to enforce the peace--life went on. People still had to eat.

Arch stood by Hinkel's watermill in the early spring. The ground glistened and steamed with wetness underfoot, sunlit clouds raced through a pale windy sky, and a mist of green was on the trees. Near him the swollen millstream roared and brawled, the wheel flashed with its own swiftness, and a stack of capacitors lay awaiting their charges.

"All right," he said. "We've got your generator going. But it isn't enough, you know. It can't supply the whole country; and power lines to the outside are down."

"So what do we do?" asked Hinkel. He felt too proud of his new enterprise to care much about larger issues at the moment.

"We find other sources to supplement," said Arch. "Sunlight, now. Approximately one horse-power per square yard, if you could only get at it." He raised a face grown thin with overwork and with the guilt that always haunted him these days, up to the sky. The sun felt warm and live on his skin. "Trouble is, the potential's so low. You've got to find a way to get a high voltage out of it before you can charge a capacitor decently. Now let me think--"

He spent most of his waking hours thinking. It helped hold off the memory of men lying dead on a muddy hillside.

When power was short, you couldn't go back to oxcarts and kerosene lamps. There weren't enough of either. The local machine shop made and sold quantities of home charging units, small primitive generators which could be turned by any mechanical source, and treadmills were built to drive them. But this was only an unsatisfactory expedient. Accompanied by several armed guards, Arch made a trip to Boston.

The city looked much quieter than he remembered, some of the streets deserted even at midday, but a subdued business went on. Food was still coming in to the towns, and manufactured goods flowing out; there was still trade, mail, transportation. They were merely irregular and slightly dangerous.

Stopping at M.I.T. Arch gave certain of his problems to the big computer, and then proceeded to an industrial supply house. The amount of selenium he ordered brought a gasp and a hurried conference.

"It will take some time to get all this together," said a vice-president. "Especially with conditions as they are."

"I know," said Arch. "We're prepared to make up truck convoys and furnish guards; what we want you for is negotiation."

The vice-president blinked. "But ... good heavens, man! Is your whole community in on this?"

"Just about. We have to be. There's little help coming in from outside, so our area is thrown back on itself."

"Ah--the cost of this operation--"

"Oh, we can meet that. Special assessment, voted at the last town meeting. They don't care very much, because money has little value when you can't buy more than the rationed necessities. And they're getting tired of going on short rations of power."

"I shouldn't say this, because your proposal is a fine deal for us, but have you stopped to think? Both the REA and the private power concerns will be restoring service eventually, just as soon as civil order has been recreated."

Arch nodded. "I know. But there are two answers to that. In the first place, we don't know when that'll be, and if we don't have adequate energy sources by winter we'll be up the creek. Also, we're building a sun-power plant which will cost almost nothing to operate. In the long run, and not so terribly long at that, it'll pay off."

Bob Culquhoun, who went on the selenium convoy, reported an adventurous journey through hundreds of miles where gangs of extremists still ruled. "But they seem to be settling down," he added. "Nobody likes to be a bandit, and anyhow the state militias are gradually subduing 'em. Most of the rural communities, though, are striking out on their own like us. There's going to be a big demand for selenium." Wistfulness flickered in his eyes. "Wonder if I can raise enough money to buy some stock?"

"It'll take time," said Elizabeth. "I know the sun-power generator is simple, but you still can't design and build one overnight."

As a matter of fact, fall had come again before Westfield's plant was in full operation. It didn't look impressive: great flat screens on top of hastily constructed buildings, and inside these the apparatus to raise voltage and charge capacitors. But in conjunction with the watermill, it furnished more than enough electricity to run the county's machines.

Arch was kept busy all that summer, directing, advising, helping. It seemed that everybody had some scheme of his own for using capacitite. Energy cost nothing, and machinery could be built from junkyard scrap if nothing else. Westfield was suddenly acquiring her own looms, mills, even a small foundry. Bob led a gang of young hellions who made an airplane and kept it aloft for days at a time. His father promptly confiscated it for the use of the civic guard, and after that there were no more surprise brushes with roving outlaws.

An eyewitness report was brought in from the air--a clash between state troops and one of the robber bands which still existed to the north. The gangmen had their own trucks and jeeps, their own guns, all operating off accumulators which could be charged at any of a thousand watermills. A rifleman could stop a tank, and aircraft were of limited value against guerrillas who crouched in brush and weeds. The battle was a draw, with both sides finally retreating.

Arch shuddered, alone with Elizabeth, and crept into her arms. "Did I do that?" he asked through his tears. "Did I do it?"

"No, darling," she said. One hand ruffled his disordered hair. "Can't you forget that side of it? Think of what you have done, with your own hands--built this town up again, given its people more than they ever had before."

He set his teeth. "I'll try," he said.

Somewhat later, the government offered amnesty to those outlaws who would lay down their arms and come home. It had the desired effect; they had had enough of warring and insecurity. But Culquhoun scowled. "'Tis a vurra bad precedent," he said. "Only a weak government makes such a move."

Oddly, Arch felt a lightening within himself. "Maybe a weak government is what we need," he answered.

* * * * *

News: Several southern states threaten secession unless court decisions concerning racial equality are withdrawn.

News: Uprisings in these same states. The Negro has had enough.

News: Capitulation of state governments. Constitutional conventions, transfer of power from state to local authorities.

News: The depression is not ending, but transforming itself: out-of-work men are starting to produce things for themselves with the help of capacitite-driven machinery often made at home, trading their surplus for whatever else they need. A mobile reclamation unit appears, costing little to operate, and families begin to irrigate and colonize desert areas. Big business, big labor, big government talk much and do nothing effective--their day is past, but they simply cannot understand the new forces at work.

News: More and more city areas are becoming empty as their inhabitants take advantage of cheap, fast transportation and move into the rapidly expanding suburbs and even into the country. This migration is possible because with present energy sources, plastic board for home construction can be manufactured at very low cost.

News: There is a great deal of debate in Washington about redistricting to meet the new population pattern. It doesn't seem too important, though, because a land of nearly self-sufficient communities, such as this is becoming, is much less dependent on central government.

News: Experiment and innovation in dress, work habits, manners and morals, grows ever more common. The basic cause of this is that few men need now be afraid of what the neighbors or the boss thinks. If you don't like it where you are, you can easily go elsewhere and start over.

None of this happened at once. It would take a century or more for the change to complete itself. But even in the second year, the trend was obvious.

* * * * *

Snow whirled against the house, blindingly, as if the world drew into itself and nothing lay beyond these walls. The muted skirl of wind came through, lonesome and shivering. But inside, there was warmth and a calm light.

Arch sat with a whiskey and soda in his hand, looking across the floor at his wife. He felt tired, but there was a relaxation in him, a sense of labor finished.

Not fully--there would be much to do yet. But power was there, machinery was there, food stored away; they would last the winter, and there would be another springtime.

"It's settling down," Elizabeth told him, putting her news magazine aside. "For once, I agree with the editor of this rag. The crisis is over, and now it's a matter of readjustment. The world is never going to be the same, but it'll be a better one ... cleaner."

"Perhaps," said Arch. He didn't feel so sharply the horror of guilt, not any more.

"Look around you," she invited. "Look what you've done. I'm afraid, dear, that you're going to be rediscovered. It won't take long before people suddenly wake up to the fact that your invention did all this for them. Brace yourself--you're going to be famous for life."

Arch winced. "But I didn't!" he protested. "They did it for themselves. One man never could--"

"I quite agree," she smiled. "One man can neither make nor destroy a society. So why not give that conscience of yours a rest?"

"There's been suffering," he said, enough alcohol in him to break down his reserve. "People have died."

"A lot of them needed killing," she said earnestly. "Look what we've got. An end to dictatorship. Removal of the atomic-war threat. Cheap energy for a million new projects. A four-hour work day in prospect. Government, which was getting too big and officious in all countries, cut down to size again. The plain man standing on his own feet and working for himself. Natural resources conserved. If you must take either credit or blame, Si, then balance your books!"

"I know," he said. "I know all that, up in my conscious mind. But down underneath--I'll always see those houses burning, and those men shooting at each other."

"You--" She hesitated. "I know what you need. Your trouble, my boy, is that underneath that Yankee conservatism, you're a hopeless romantic. Your mind dwells on the sudden and dramatic. Now the positive benefits of capacitite aren't anywhere near as quick and spectacular as the temporary evils were. What you have to do, to satisfy those Puritan chromosomes, is to produce something really big and fancy, something of immediate, large value."

He chuckled, lifted out of his dark mood in spite of himself. "I imagine you're right, Dr. Freud," he said. "But what?"

"I don't know." She frowned with worry for him. "But think, man. We have leisure now--in another year or so, well, we won't be the millionaires we once dreamed of, but like everybody else we'll have real security and real time to ourselves. You could use that time to work on _something_."

"Hm--" Automatically, his brain turned to practicalities. "Let's see, now. Capacitite offers a way of concentrating energy enormously ... a very small packet will hold a hell of a lot--_My God!_" His yell shook the windows as he leaped to his feet.

"What the devil--something wrong?" Elizabeth got up too.

"No!" He was running toward the phone. "Got to get hold of Colin--M.I.T.--don't you see, darling?" His hands trembled as he dialed, but there was laughter in his voice. "Don't you see it? Spaceships!"