Damon Knight - Orbit 14

“Lew! Damn it, wait a minute!” It is Jake Pulaski, with his rifle. Jake hurries to him. “Wait a minute until Harry has time to get to the other side of the bridge, to head them off.”

The old man stares at Jake in perplexity; he has forgotten what it was he meant to do. He sees the rifle in Jake’s hands and without thinking he swings his shotgun hard, catches Jake in the stomach and knocks him down. And he steps into the open and walks toward the children.

They jump up wildly. Their faces are pinched with cold.

“You get to the hospital and wait for me,” the old man says in his hardest voice. “Or you will be killed.”

They don’t move. Behind him the old man hears Jake advancing, and he hears the click of a safety being released.

“There are many men who are coming to kill you!” the old man thunders. “Run to the hospital and wait for me there!” He whirls around and sees Jake at the alley mouth now, the rifle rising, pointing past him at the group. The old man raises his shotgun and pulls both triggers together, and the shocking noise of his gun drowns out the sound of the rifle. At the noise the children scatter like leaves in a whirlwind.

For hours the old man stumbles in the ruins. He weeps and his tears freeze in his beard. Sometimes he can hear voices close by and he reaches for them, tries to find them, and even as he does so, he knows the voices are in his head. The voices of his mother and father. Monica’s voice. Sid’s voice. Sometimes he sees Boy ahead and he finds strength to walk on when he would rather sit down and sleep. And finally he comes back to the hospital when the day is finished and the shadows fill all open spaces.

Numbly he lights the stove and then he falls to the floor and sleeps. When he awakens the children are there. The old man sits up, suffering, and he finds his shotgun on his legs. He lifts it and the children cringe away from him.

“You are filth and scum,” he says savagely at them. “And I shall punish you. And your punishment will be life, life for your children, for their children.” And he laughs.

He drags himself to his feet, each new motion a new agony. He raises his shotgun and the children cover their faces in terror, and bow before him and his terrible wrath.

The grave itself is but a covered bridge

Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness.

I find a lousy coat of particulate muck right near Portland, but a coupla swipes with my Freon rag, I clean it all off my bridge like a dream.

Lemme tell you a story on myself. I think it’s kinda funny. I built this bridge once, started in Sioux City, went south-southwest for ... oh ... I don’t know. Not too far. Wasn’t a long bridge as bridges go. To Greenville, I think it went. Yeah, to Greenville, I’m sure. Anyways, ’bout a month before I built it, these mass transit planner types hauled me up in an airplane cause they thought I ought to see where it was gonna go, that bridge of mine, exactly from where to where. So, here I am, see, I’m sitting there right in the middle of all these high level big shots. So what happens? Well, we no sooner get up in the sky than I take one look out that airplane window, and barf all over my lap. You see, heights make me sick. Always have.

I got to yank out a mica in Concord. I replace it with a 4X950. It’s a tricky operation, but when I run it through test, it shows right on the money. I could kiss it, it’s working so good.

I heard about poor old Tiny Hammond the other day. Tough luck. Had a coupla kids, too. I worked with old Tiny once. He reamed out the suspension on that Ocala-Natchez bridge of mine. A ballsy guy, Tiny. Kind of a daredevil, but I guess that’s what it takes to ream a suspension, what with the way you never know if the end’ll be there when you are. Too risky for me. Far as I’m concerned, let somebody else ream out the suspensions. I’ll stick to building bridges. I ain’t no hero.

There’s a metallic discontinuity just this side of Greenfield. I catch it on meter just in time to keep it from slicing off my head. I trace out its limits. Just a little fellow, it turns out. Easy as pie, I straighten it out, bend it back around, and rivet it down good. When I get done with it, I know one thing for sure. The bastard ain’t gonna pop loose again.

Speaking of bridges, that one I built from Eau Claire to Colter Bay was quite the project. I remember, the suspension’s all reamed out, I’m ready to get to work, when along comes this corporate guy who wastes a whole day running something he calls a “mathematically simulated construction analysis.” Oh, he don’t go through the suspension or nothing. He just pretends to. Anyway, I, he announces waving around a big sheet of numbers after he’s all done, have got only a fifty-four percent something or other of building this bridge and staying alive. Do tell, I say (as if this was something new). Thank you very much for that tidbit of information, I say. That throws a whole different slant on things, I say. I’m gonna have to talk to some people about this, I say.

So I shake his hand, and I wait till he’s gone, and I hop in the wire, and I build me a bridge.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, but what kind of horseshit is this? The tracking is way under spec, I find bad tolerances bouncing me around like a basketball, and to top it all off, there’s a dead zone in the junction. I tear everything all the way down, strap it back together right, and make Albany feeling like a million bucks.

I been building bridges since I was eighteen.

The bridges I built were a lot shorter in those days. Four, five miles long, max. Nothing like some of the ones you see going up today. My first bridge went from downtown Larchmont to a shopping center just north of New Rochelle. Shopper’s Special, the transit guys called it. It was one of the first bridges in the whole goddamned world. Still carrying traffic, too. When I build ’em, I build ’em to last.

My longest bridge came six years ago. Pittsburgh to Reno through Columbus, Kansas City, Arvata, and Provo. I was the proudest man alive when I finished that one.

I had enough time chalked up in the wire after that Pittsburgh to Reno to retire at full pay. Wouldn’t have been a bad deal, looking back on it. I was only forty-two. Making eighty-six K a year. Course, I didn’t take it.

I love building bridges.

I pick up a degradation in edge speed, some overshoot, and a small ringing just outside Cleveland. Nothing I can’t handle. After I retune the Q channel and polish the link coupler, the signal profile shows good and flat. Just like it should.

For me, building bridges comes easy. I got what they call a natural feel for it, you understand? Guys nowadays go to college to learn how to build bridges. To college, for Christ’s sake. Know how I learned how to build bridges? By God, I just jumped in a wire and built one, that’s how. Or did I tell you already? Too bad if I did, ’cause you’re gonna hear it again.

I was eighteen. Just out of high school. Had a double E degree, but you know where that gets you nowadays. So I was looking through the paper one night, scoping the wants, when I see this one reads “Wanted. Bridge installation engineer. Double E preferred. Small mass essential.” Seeing’s how I measured only five feet two on tiptoes, I hauled my ass down there straightaway yelling “Take me, take me.”

Course, they did.

I didn’t find out until after that Larchmont to New Rochelle that nobody else had applied.

Right before Indianapolis, I get a foul VSAT on a triple-diffused Darlington. But the Darlington’s redundant, so I leave it for maintenance.

I got a wife and four kids. Got a house overlooks Mount Ranier. A cabin on Lake Mead. A dog. A cat. Two block rounders, both Fords. I guess I’m what you might call your typical family man. Now I don’t mean to sound sarcastic when I say that. Don’t get the idea I don’t enjoy my family. I do. Just that sometimes they get on my nerves. Take my wife. For the longest time she’s been after me to hang it up, you know, knock it off, throw it the hell in. Gets dreadful monotonous, all that harping, after a while. What do you wanna keep building bridges for, she says, when it’s so dangerous, she says. You could retire, she says. She leaves me travel brochures under my goddamned pillow at night, for Christ’s sake. She sics the kids on my ass. She’s even got our family doctor stopping in once a month on his way home from his office in Wichita. You oughta think about retiring, he says staring at his beer can like this is just something he’s reading off of the label. I say, no, thanks, I’m happy building bridges, and he says that’s just fine, but I’ve got to think of my family, too, as he starts quoting me all sorts of facts and figures. The mortality rates and stuff, which, if you believe that crap, means I should have been dead and buried five years ago. For good measure, he rattles off a few of the standard horror stories. The bridge builders who come out missing arms. The bridge builders who come out missing legs. All the shitload of bridge builders who never come out, period. I thank him kindly, and tell him I’ll give it some serious thought so he’ll go home happy.