Damon Knight - Orbit 14

See, he means well. He just don’t know what it’s like to build a bridge.

I find a real bungle in Vandalia. Low-duty cycle on a digital signal, and a weird cross modulation in an MET. I replace all four klystrons, adjust the timing, and give the whole shebang a pat on the fanny for luck.

Never have been very handy with my hands when it comes to woodworking or putting up storm windows, or fixing broken toys or unstopping drains. Suppose that’s why I like building bridges so much. Like I mighta mentioned, I got this knack for building bridges. The only way I can explain it is to say that when I hit that wire, it’s nothing more than a little, tiny, reamed-out hole, and it’s all rough, like fishhooks poked into sandpaper. But when I leave, it’s as big around as a freeway, and that wire is glass.

The nice thing about building bridges is that it never gets routine. I liked building my last one every inch as much as my Larchmont to New Rochelle. Course, like I said, I kinda got this way when it comes to building bridges. Hit me right off. First time I climbed in the wire. I was only eighteen, like I said. I knew there were goddamned nay-sayers saying the bridges oughta be outlawed on account of them being so different, but, hell, I thought, there was people said that about airplanes, for Christ’s sake, and look how many airplanes we used to have flying around. Damn weeping willies didn’t spook me. I was a hell of a feisty kid. I just hopped in the wire, and I built the son of a bitch.

I strip a line in East St. Louis, gate a conversion, wire it to a PIN, and I’m back on my way.

I know how much a fancy vacation would mean to my old lady, but it just don’t appeal much to me. When I got some time off, I like to ride the wires. See what the competition’s up to. You wouldn’t believe the boners I catch. If you only knew how some of those so-called bridge builders clank up their bridges, you’d never ride wire again.

That’s the trouble with people today. Just out to get the job done any old way they can and that’s it. Got no pride in their work, no sense of craftsmanship. To them, a bridge is a bridge. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, can’t nobody say that about me.

Right outside St. Louis, I stumble across a feeble Δφ. Funny, since the timing input’s great and so’s the monolithic amp. I bypass the sync amp mainly to give me some time to figure out what’s really screwing up.

After you been around bridges long as I have, you find there ain’t no two the same. There are good ones and bad ones, like people. There are bridges give you the kind of nice, mushy feeling you got when your girl used to kiss you good night even though she wasn’t supposed to, ’cause the neighbors could see. They shape up easy. And there are the bastards. Oh, I should hope to tell you. The rowdies, the hoodlums, the foul balls. You whip one of those SOBs into shape, man, you will know you have built you a bridge.

It gets to be more. A low ΔN. I start to pick up all kinds of glitches, the worst being a nasty power leakage that starts licking around my ankles, but whatever’s causing it all, I can’t track it down. The parametric amplifier, the microwave filters, the ruby crystals all check out fine. I am really stumped. Must be getting old, hah, hah.

People got no idea what it’s like to go across slow. Zipping through like they do, in one end, bingo, out the other, they never get to see it the way I do. My God, but it’s pretty in here. All the colors kinda light up your eyebalk and you’re everyplace at once except you’re not, whichever way you want it. It’s kinda like almost a religious thing. You can say whatever you want to and you don’t have to feel embarrassed, ’cause nobody’s around, but still, you just know that there’s somebody listening. But the best part of all is how your brain works like the good Lord meant for it to. I mean, in here, you can figure out all kinds of stuff you ain’t never even thought about before, and when you have, you say, Jeez, but ain’t that the truth. While I don’t like to spread this around ’cause I’d take a lot of ribbing from the guys, in here, it’s sometimes so good that I cry.

Damn it, the leakage gets bigger. It creeps up around my waist so I can hardly move. And it starts to hurt a little. My right hand ain’t working so good, it turns stiff, and the next thing I know, it falls off. Why, I don’t know, but it strikes me as being a kind of a joke that’s so bad you just got to laugh at it. So I chuckle while I one-handed feel my way along a reflector.

There was a war, once, where there was a whole bunch of underground tunnels had to be cleaned out. Little guys like me used to have to go down in them tunnels with only a hunting knife ’cause the bang from a gun would blow out your eardrums. And the guys who built them tunnels used to hang ’em full of snakes so these little guys crawling through, if they weren’t careful, would get bit smack in the face and die. Tunnel rats, they called these little guys. So, when I was growing up, and these other kids and me used to play war, and nobody ever used to want me on their side ’cause I was so little, I got to telling the other kids I was being brought up special to be a tunnel rat. One day, over at my house, they called me a liar, so to show ’em, I slipped the grating off one of our hot air registers, and I hopped right on down into the heating duct system. I must have been in there for hours, really loving it. Shining my flashlight around on the lookout for snakes. They didn’t have to go and call the fire department. I would have come out when I was ready.

I laugh so hard when my leg disappears, I got all I can do to decouple the quadraxial cabling, especially since I only got one hand to work with.

Know how many bridges I built? Take a guess. Go ahead. Yeah, that’s right. I already told you before, ain’t I. Well, here’s something I never told you. Right after I built my fiftieth bridge, they went and offered me a job at the head office in Albuquerque. Can’t you just see me getting all gussied up in a suit every morning so I can go sit behind some desk, shuffling papers around and being worthless. «

Piss on that. I’ll stick to building bridges.

My other leg disappears, and I stop laughing. For the first time it dawns on me that this ain’t no laughing matter. Unless I get cracking, this bridge ain’t gonna get built. I slip through multilayer capacitors and liquefied feed-thrus like a crazy man, trying to pinpoint the problem. For my trouble, I lose an ear and half of my only remaining hand.

Once I went to San Francisco. They got a bridge there, one of the old iron kind, lot of people told me I ought to go see. So I went and had me a look. Know what? It was nice, sure, real picturesque, but in all modesty, I got a coupla mine I like a whole lot better.

I feel a strong output signal choking me off. I’m a goddamned half-handed broomstick, and I can’t swallow air. Then I do an open-loop check straight into the Gunn amplifier.

Being honest, I suppose I’d have to say I am slowing down a little. But, Jesus H. Christ, don’t you think I’d be the first one to knock it off if I really thought I couldn’t hack it anymore?

The goddamn signal level! It’s higher at the input than at the first stage. I got me an oscillating Gunn amp, by Jesus! So I cut back on the accelerating voltage, which stabilizes the signal and sets everything up hunky-dory, except I get caught on the last bad pulse ripple, and I pick up a whole lot of steam.

You know, there are only six hundred and thirty-two qualified bridge builders. Six hundred and thirty-two in the whole frigging world.

I pass Rolla, Carthage, and Joplin, and I’m really rolling.

You should of heard ’em cheer when I came out of the wire that time after three guys before me got creamed.