Overload

The general counsel moodily ate some of his lunch, then continued, "When you’re in there at those hearings, listening to testimony and the same old rehashed arguments about procedure, you’d think no one knows or cares what’s going on in the real world outside. Oh, by the way, we have a new group fighting us on Tunipah. They call themselves CANED, which, if I remember it right, means Crusaders Against Needless Energy Development.

And compared with CANED’s accusations about Golden State Power & Light, Davey Birdsong was a friend and ally."

"Opposition is a hydra-headed monster," Eric Humphrey mused, then added, “The Governor’s support of Tunipah seems to have made little, if any, difference."

"That’s because bureaucracy is stronger than governors, presidents, or any of us," O’Brien said. "Fighting bureaucracy nowadays is like wrestling a sea of mud while you’re in it up to your armpits. I’ll make a prediction: When the blackouts hit the Energy Commission building, the hearings on Tunipah will continue by candlelight-with nothing else changed."

As to the Fincastle geothermal, and Devil’s Gate pumped storage plant proposals, the general counsel reported that dates to begin public hearings had still had not been set by the responsible state agencies.

Oscar O’Brien’s general disenchantment, as well as Nim’s, extended to the bogus Consumer Survey distributed in the city’s North Castle district. It was almost three weeks since the carefully planned questionnaire had gone out and it now appeared as if the attempt to entrap the terrorist leader, Georgos Archambault, had been abortive, a waste of time and money.

Within a few days after the bulk mailing, hundreds of replies poured in, and continued to do so through the following weeks. A large basement room at GSP & L headquarters was set aside to deal with the influx and a staff of eight clerks installed there. Six were borrowed from various departments, the other two recruited from the District Attorney’s office.

Between them, they painstakingly examined every completed questionnaire.

The D.A.’s office also sent photographic blowups of handwriting samples from Georgos Archambault’s journal, and the clerks worked with these in view. To guard against error, each questionnaire was examined separately by three people. The result was definite: Nothing had come in which matched the handwriting samples. Now, the special staff was down to two, the remainder having returned to their regular duties. A few replies were still trickling in and being routinely examined. But it seemed unlikely, at this stage, that Georgos Archambault would be heard from. To Nim, in any case, the project had become a lot less important than the critical oil supply problem which occupied his working days and nights.

It was during a late evening work session about oil-a meeting in Nim’s office with the company’s Director of Fuel Supply, the Chief of Load Forecasting and two other department beads-that be received a telephone call having nothing to do with the subject under discussion, but which disturbed him greatly.

Victoria Davis, Nim’s secretary, was also working late and buzzed from outside while the meeting was in progress.

Annoyed at the interruption, Nim picked up the telephone and answered curtly, "Yes?"

"Miss Karen Sloan is calling on line one," Vicki informed him. "I wouldn’t have disturbed you, but she insisted it was important."

"Tell her . . ." Nim was about to say he would return the call later, or in the morning, then changed his mind. "Okay, I’ll take it."

With an "Excuse me" to the others, he depressed a lighted button on the telephone. "Hello, Karen."

"Nimrod," Karen said without preliminaries, her voice sounding strained, "my father is in serious trouble. I’m calling to see if you can help."

"What kind of trouble?" Nim remembered that the night be and Karen went to the symphony she had said much the same thing, but without being specific.

"I made my mother tell me. Daddy wouldn’t." Karen stopped; he sensed she was making an effort to regain composure, then she went on, "You know that my father has a small plumbing business."

"Yes." Nim recalled that Luther Sloan had talked about his business the day they all met in Karen’s apartment. It was the day on which both parents later confided in Nim their burden of guilt about their quadriplegic daughter.

"Well," Karen said, "Daddy has been questioned several times by people from your company, Nimrod, and now by police detectives."

"Questioned about what?"

Again Karen hesitated before answering. "According to Mother, Daddy has been doing quite a lot of subcontracting for a company called Quayle Electrical and Gas. The work was on gas lines, something to do with lines going to meters."

Nim told her, "Tell me that company’s name again."

"It’s Quayle.’ Does that mean something to you?"

"Yes, it means something," Nim said slowly as he thought: It looked, almost certainly, as if Luther Sloan was into theft of gas. Though Karen didn’t know it, her phrase "lines going to meters" was a giveaway. That and the reference to Quayle Electrical and Gas Contracting, the big-scale power thieves already exposed and still being investigated by Harry London. What was it Harry reported only recently? “There’s a bunch of new cases, as well as others developing from the Quayle inquiry." It sounded to Nim as if Luther Sloan might be among the "others."

The sudden news, the realization of what it implied, depressed him.

Assuming his guess to be correct, why had Karen’s father done it? Probably for the usual reason, Nim thought: Money. Then it occurred to him that he could probably guess, too, what the money had been used for.

"Karen," he said, "if this is what I think, it is serious for your father and I’m not sure there’s anything I’ll be able to do." He was conscious of his subordinates in the room, waiting while he talked, trying to appear as if they were not listening.

"In any event, there’s nothing I can do tonight," Nim said into the telephone. "But in the morning I’ll find out what I can, then call you."

Realizing he might have sounded unusually formal, he went on to explain about the meeting in his office.

Karen was contrite. "Oh, I’m sorry, Nimrod! I shouldn’t have bothered you."

"No," be assured her. "You can bother me anytime. And I’ll do what I can tomorrow,"

As the discussion on oil supplies resumed, Nim attempted to concentrate on what was being said, but several times his thoughts wandered. He asked himself silently: Was life, which had thrown so many foul balls at Karen, in the process of delivering still one more?

13

Again and again, sometimes while sleeping, sometimes while awake, a memory haunted Georgos Winslow Archambault.

It was a memory from a long-ago summer’s day in Minnesota, soon after Georgos’ tenth birthday, During school holidays he I-lad gone to stay with a farming family-he had forgotten exactly why or bow-and a young son of the house and Georgos had gone ratting in an old barn. They killed several rats cruelly, using rakes with sharp prongs to spear them, and then one large rat became cornered. Georgos remembered the creature’s gleaming, beady eyes as the two boys closed in. Then, in desperation, the rat sprang, leaping, sinking its teeth into the other boy’s hand. The boy screamed. But the rat survived only seconds because Georgos swung his rake, knocking the creature to the floor, then slammed the prongs through its body.

For some reason, though, Georgos always remembered that rat’s defiant gesture before its inevitable end. Now, in his North Castle hideaway, be felt a kinship with the rat.

It was almost eight weeks since Georgos had gone into hiding. In retrospect, the length of time surprised him. He had not expected to survive so long, especially after the outpouring of publicity, about himself and Friends of Freedom, which followed the Christopher Columbus Hotel bombing. Descriptions of Georgos had been widely circulated, and photos of him, found in the Crocker Street house, appeared in newspapers and on TV. He knew, from news reports, that a massive manhunt with himself as the objective had been mounted in the North Castle district and elsewhere. Daily since going underground Georgos had expected to be discovered, the apartment hideaway surrounded and invaded.

It hadn’t happened.

At first, as the hours and days went by, Georgos’ principal emotion was relief. Then, as the days extended into weeks, he began wondering if a rebirth of Friends of Freedom might be possible. Could be recruit more followers to replace the dead Wayde, Ute and Felix? Could be obtain money, locate an outside liaison who would become another Birdsong? Could they resume, once more, Georgos’ war against the hated establishment enemy?