Complete Short Fiction, page 43
Watching from Air Force One, President O’Connell slapped Happy Jack on the back and chuckled. “Look at that, Jack. Our boys can outfly, outshoot, and outfuck the Russkies anytime!”
“There are damn few political problems that are solved by flying, shooting, and fucking,” said Jack irritably.
“Professor Busy-Nasty wouldn’t agree with that, Jack. His whole idea is to roll your eyes, grit your teeth, then drop your pants.”
Jack snorted. “Busy-Nasty! A fuck would turn him into a pumpkin, all right! Shamus, if they had queers on Mars, they’d have to look like the professor.”
“Steady, Jack,” said O’Connell, looking furtively around the big central cabin. “The gays vote . . . like the eco-weirdos, remember?”
“It’s all the same bunch,” said Jack. “What this administration needs is a federally supported public-rest-room program, warm places where people can make friends unmolested . . . and that use recycled toilet paper and towels plus soap made from vegetable fats.”
“Sotto voce, Jack!” said O’Connell again, darting glances around. “They’re everywhere, you know. Waiting to catch us using words like fag and fruit. . . . Ah, the navy boys are all done, and off we go to Moosefoot.”
“Dinner with the Muths,” said Happy Jack with a twisted smile. “Dinner with the P.L.O. and the Provo I.R.A.‘s would make more sense, and probably be safer.”
President OConnell gave Jack a grin. “Jack, the Muths are international celebrities, as well as being the most down-home folks since Harry and Bess Truman. Colonel Muth has already been awarded more decorations from countries he’s gone past than anyone else, including three from Iron Curtain air forces.”
“You agoing to let him take those?”
“You bet we are, Jack. This is a goodwill flight to knit us all together, remember? And I understand that we’ll have a chance to see and even operate Colonel Muth’s remarkable railroad, one the most electronically advanced in the country—anyway, according to Alice Muth, who talked to Dave this morning.”
“Railroad?” said Happy Jack incredulously. “The son of a bitch owns a . . . oh, you mean the hobby toys?”
“No, no, Jack,” said Shamus O’Connell. “A model. It works exactly like the real thing. The electronics make the little engines run exactly like the real ones—at least that’s what the child told Dave.”
“Well, if you try something like that, you’ll just make a damn fool of yourself in front of the press.”
O’Connell shrugged. “If a twelveyear-old can do it, and Nate Hazelton can do it, I sure as hell can do it, too.”
The press was excluded from the actual spaghetti dinner at the Muths, so that the president could speak frankly with these typical citizens without fear of instant quoting. Extra leaves had been put in the dining room table and extra tables put in the closed-off living room for the press and Secret Service people. In spite of some White House press output, very little—in fact, nothing at all—was said at dinner about the debt, abortion, Washington’s insensitivity or Proposition Thirteen. Instead, things seemed to center about what General Beardsley had earlier called “the world of steam.”
After a brief grace and prayer for the Langley by Betty Lou, the president lifted his head and blinked, for he was seated across from Nate and Emmeline, once again resplendent in her Tidewater Northern driver’s uniform. He cleared his throat. “Well, Nate, it certainly looks like Miss Pangini is ready to drive a train.”
Congressman Hazelton shot out his most genial smile. “Emmeline is a recent convert to railways, Shamus. Melissa showed her how to run the peddler and drill the Beaver Dam branch, and she’s been at it ever since. A rail nut if I ever saw one.”
“Ah,” said Shamus O’Connell, radiating cheefulness in every direction and focusing his gaze on Emmeline’s bursting pockets. “Well, I can see there’s much more to this steam business than I imagined.”
“Drill the Beaver branch?” said Happy Jack absently, his eyes also riveted on Emmeline.
Nate Hazelton chuckled. “Emmeline drove a freight train up the branch line to the Beaver Dam end, Mr. Hanrahan. In fact, that would be a good way for you to start, Mr. President.”
“You’ve got to do it,” said Alice positively to O’Connell. “The man on the phone said you would.”
But Shamus O’Connell had no intention of not running the Muths’ toy trains. “Can I wear a hat like that, Alice?” asked O’Connell, pointing at Emmeline’s head. “And can Miss Pangini . . . May I call you Emmeline, dear, since we’re going to be engineers together? . . . run the other train with me?”
“We’ll get you dressed up right, Shamus,” said Nate at once. “You’re big. You can get into Bob’s outfit. How about it, Emmeline? Want to doublehead the peddler with the president?”
Emmeline colored prettily and nodded, smiling sweetly and tilting her head. Shamus O’Connell beamed some more and helped himself to spaghetti. When the conversation shifted briefly away from him, he leaned over to whisper in Jack’s ear. “Jack, is our photo man here with the wire-service people?”
Happy Jack nodded. “Right. There’s Fogarty and the two pool men. We’re limited by the Muths to three photo people down cellar, what with the Secret Service and the rest.”
“O.K.,” said O’Connell, “see if Fogarty can possibly get me and Emmeline playing trains together, from at least the waist up—Emmeline in front, my profile just behind. You see it, Jack?”
Happy Jack’s wrinkles transmuted into his best leprechaun grin. “Four by six feet I see it, on the walls of the labor precincts I see it . . . you bet I see it, Shamus!”
O’Connell beamed and beamed as he let his eyes linger on Emmeline. “It won’t matter what we write underneath. They can cut that off. But I’ll be right up there next to Emmeline. Be sure we both have those hats on. And Jack, tell Fogarty that the picture has to clearly show Emmeline instructing me in running the thing, right? Young railroad enthusiast shows the president how to run her advanced electronic train set is the message. We don’t want any flat-chested, and possibly militant, ladies to think we’re exploiting any particular physical portion of Emmeline for some nefarious male purpose.” O’Connell chuckled quietly.
The operating session was a great success, even though the narrow-gauge roundhouse did get scrunched by a clambering photographer. Emmeline guided the president with her pink, gentle fingertips through his first drilling of the Beaver Dam branch, and the resulting pictures became, two years later, a sensation in the reelection campaign.
It wasn’t long before President O’Connell was driving the Dixie Flyer at over ninety, and he and Alice were deterred from having a final try with one of the big coal drags up Sherman Hill only by an aide’s whispering in the president’s ear, “Sir, if we’re going to get to the pole with the Langley, we’ve got to go at once.”
O’Connell sighed. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said loudly. “We must adjourn to Air Force One. The Langley will be reaching the pole in the morning.”
The layout was shut down, and everybody went clumping up the wide stairs, Alice and the president chatting amiably as they climbed.
“And you say the Morning Hi went between Chicago and the Twin Cities at over eighty, Alice?” asked recent convert to steam, Shamus O’Connell.
“The fastest steam-hauled service in the world,” answered Alice positively. “President O’Connell, why can’t the railroads do things like that now?”
The president turned his head and saw Jack coming up behind them. “Why is it we can’t build and run decent railroads anymore, Jack?” he said in a plaintive voice.
“Why should the railroads be any exception?” answered Jack, shrugging in surprise?
“If we went back to steamers,” said Alice excitedly, “we could use American coal, and everybody who wanted could learn to drive or fire, and. . . .”
The president sadly shook his head, then took Alice’s hand and squeezed it. “They’d never let us do it, Alice: EPA, NOAH, NIOSH, NIH, Commerce, Labor, the clean-air societies, the UAW, the noise-pollution people, the Teamsters, the Railway Brotherhoods, Exxon, the. . . .”
“But, you’re the president?” said a bewildered Alice. “If you can’t do anything. . . .”
The child and the man stared at each other for an instant in a kind of complete and shared comprehension, and Alice shivered.
“Alice,” said Shamus O’Connell, warmly putting a hand to her cheek, “you see, dear, we have to get through each day. . . .” But then he stopped and gave her a large smile. “It isn’t a compartment on the Broadway Limited, but you can sleep in a berth on Air Force One, and then, tomorrow, your dad will be back on the ground. Think of that!”
Alice cheered up at once. “And then, after you boot Dad and the rest out of the Air Force, we’ll get Uncle Nate’s shay fixed up and in steam.” She clapped her hands. “And it has the loveliest whistle!”
The Langley crossed over the North Pole for the second time just a few minutes less than eighty hours after the first crossing, to the accolades of the world, then headed south again to her landing at the ice island. Air Force One left the pole and scooted on ahead to the island so as to disembark her passengers and get back into the air before the Langley showed up.
Halfway down the runway were a series of slit trenches, set well back, and leading down to rapidly assembled blast and fallout shelters in case the landing turned sour.
In fact, the only things visible on the gigantic platter of ice were the few, now-empty Quonset huts for the permanent Staff, a small, prefab control tower, and the two shielded crash trucks that had been flown up from Moosefoot in two straining Hercules cargo jets.
The Muths and President O’Connell’s party were all bundled up in army-issue fur parkas and O.D. wool mittens, but the day was calm and bright, a modest north wind blowing almost along the runway, and the temperature only at about zero. They all stood, stamping and beating their hands and peeking nervously over the edge of the ice, when a cry went up from the adjacent TV and reporter trench: “She’s coming!”
Sure enough, way out to the south they could see the gigantic and distant Langley making a wide turn to start her downwind leg. She flew parallel to them, then banked and turned again, still miles away, lining up for her final landing run. As she came ever closer, her black shape grew, but the day was still quiet. The Langley’s engine noise was no more than that of a steady gale flowing through a forest of hissing trees.
The wire-service and pool men watched with growing apprehension as the gigantic wings thickened and spread. “Damn! It looks like the Hindenburg,” said the A.P. stringer, an older man, “but going sideways!”
The young fellow from Reuters turned and grinned. “Have you by any chance heard of the phenomenon of ‘roll-up’ ?” he asked innocently.
“Very funny,” grumbled the older man. “You don’t have a wife and kids to worry about.”
“At least you’ve got kids, my friend,” said the other. “If this thing blows up dirty. . . . Hey, look at that!”
Everyone stared through their binoculars as Sergeant Stewart began to lower the acres of undercarriage spiders, wheel-tier by wheel-tier.
Colonel Muth, now carefully watching both the flight and reactor instruments, began to break his glide. “O.K., Harry,” he said to Major Fisk. “Stage Two. Reverse the fans, now!” Fisk pressed the transfer switches to send steam through the ten alternate turbine runners, set to drive the fans in the opposite direction. At first these machines fought the steam, for they had to dissipate the huge rotary momentum of the big fan blades. Fisk watched the condenser temperatures rising like a rocket, but he continued to cram steam through the reactor.
“Blades are coming up to stop, Bob,” said Major Fisk. The long white runway now stretched ahead, and they were still doing well over a hundred miles an hour. Colonel Muth watched the condenser steam pressure indications shooting up, for now the air to cool the steam came entirely from the Langley’s forward motion.
“We’ve got to start the bleed, Bob. She’s gonna pop!” said Fisk in a tense voice.
“Do it now!” said Muth, and the Langley went onto open cycle, the steam blowing back out of the aircraft in spectacular giant plumes that deflected off the nearby runway and produced instant pools of water wherever they touched the ground.
“Bob, we’re not getting enough reverse fan acceleration! We’re going to run out of water!” hissed Gaby Jackson, whose landing responsibilities included projecting condenser activity, fan reversal, and water loss, moment to moment.
“Major Fisk,” said a grim Bob Muth at once, “windmill turbines one, three, five, six, eight, and ten! Give the other four absolute full reverse! Let’s see if we can use parts of the condensers to feed them!”
“Right!” said Fisk, busily cross-connecting condenser and turbine systems. Now four of the turbines received plenty of steam and spun more rapidly toward full reverse.
President O’Connell, suddenly gaping and growing cold at the huge cloud appearing magically below the Langley, now saw this diminish. Yet the plane did not seem to be going much slower. “Well, General,” he said in a hard, tense voice, “Now what?”
General Beardsley peered through a set of huge binoculars and licked his dry lips. “He’s apparently decided to perform the reversal in groups, instead of all at once. That way, part of the condenser system can serve part of the turbine group.”
The air rushing past the windmilling fans condensed the steam for those now running in reverse. Bob Muth held his glide as long as he dared, then finally began to flare the Langley. He spoke grimly to Sergeant Stewart. “We’ve got to start touching here, Jim, fans or no. Talk me in, baby!”
In his undercarriage office, Sergeant Stewart watched the hydraulic gauges for the first sign of contact. “Hold her level, Bob. Steady . . . O.K., first touch aft. We’re talking about 2 percent now. She’s rocking a bit, Bob, watch it! Port wing is heavy.”
While they gradually dropped each set of wheels down on the ice, Major Fisk, his undershirt sopping wet under his coveralls, finally got the first four reverse turbines fully up to speed. “Bob, they’re in full reverse. Shall I try four more?”
“No time for that,” said Muth quickly. “Put the rest on line, now! If we pop a condenser seam or two at this point, it won’t matter!”
“Second tier bearing,” said Stewart. “Drop her nose a degree, Bob. The back wheels are a bit over 100 percent. Steady, down slow, Bob. . . .”
“Condenser is over twice its design pressure now,” said a tense Major Fisk. “Spin, you bastards!” he gritted.
And spin they did. The more rapidly the other six fans went into reverse, the more steam the condensers could handle. The condenser pressure-excursion peaked terrifyingly at over three times the maximum design pressure, but when Bob Muth saw that it was the peak and that all the condenser parts had begun to fully function in reverse, he knew they had finally mastered the beast and could stop her.
“Over 60 percent of load on the wheels now, Bob,” said Stewart. “She’s settling nice. One more degree now. Watch that starboard tilt . . . Steady. . . .”
Major Fisk ran the reactor back up to full power, and they could feel the reverse thrust now acting to slow the Langley.
“You want to park her any place special,” said Major Fisk, wiping his face and grinning at his assistants.
Colonel Muth looked out at the ice island ahead. “I think we should run her abreast of the hole they’re making, Harry,” he said. “No point in making them tow Steam Bird four miles.”
As the Langley gradually decelerated, she was accompanied by the two shielded crash trucks, one on each side, rumbling along with the people behind the thick lead glass excitedly waving and shoving their thumbs up.
They finally rolled quietly to a stop, and Colonel Muth took a deep breath. “Gentlemen, mission complete. Cold shutdown, if you please.” He felt suddenly drained and drawn-out, and he knew that if he were to take his hands off the wheel, they would shake. “Gaby,” he said with a sigh. “If I don’t have to do that again, I won’t miss it.”
Steam Bird had landed.
The crash trucks soon delivered the crew to the slit trenches, where a heartfelt reunion took place between Bob and Betty Lou. Bob Muth next kissed his older children and swept his younger daughter into the air.
“And here,” he said with a mighty grin, “is Cordelia herself, my very own tortient!”
Alice planted a heavy, wet smack on her father’s lips, then hugged him to whisper in his ear, “I didn’t really mean all that, Dad. It was just the part of the whole scam that I thought up.”
Her father set her back on the ice and waggled a finger. “Oh, no, you don’t get off that easy. You just fall down with consumption into that green grave and see what I do!”
Everybody laughed at that, and then the president let Alice pin the Distinguished Flying Cross on her father. Next, he pinned one on all the others, spending some time chatting with Captain Jackson to make sure the TV footage of that would be good.
By now, Air Force One had landed again, and Shamus O’Connell was about to make his statement about the canonization of the Langley and the neutralization of Ice Island Three, when a protocol person urgently whispered in his ear.
“What . . . more medals?”
The aide continued to whisper, thrusting a pile of metal boxes at the president.
