Морган Лливелин - Drop by Drop

Bill’s customers agreed to participate, but the results were inconclusive. Like Jack, most had stopped paying attention to what had become a commonplace event. Art Hannisch, the jeweler, told a different story. “A few months ago I bought a porcelain tea set to display in my front window. Quality merchandise; you could almost read a newspaper through one of the saucers. Several customers came into the shop to inquire about it, but I’d marked it at the price the sales rep recommended, which was pretty stiff. Sooner or later someone would buy it, though, and I’d make a good profit. I was sort of counting on the mayor’s wife, in fact.

“Then one day that damned tea set… slumped. Not exactly melted, you understand; it sort of collapsed. Stuck fast to the expensive silver tray it was on. I had to scrape the stuff off, which ruined the tray too. If I ever get my hands on that sales rep again I’ll break his damned neck.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Three weeks, Jack, give or take a day or two.”

“And nothing like that’s happened since?”

“No. Wasn’t that bad enough?”

When Shay and Evan arrived they had Edgar Tilbury with them. He glanced around the room. “Is Lila here?”

“Lila Ragland?” Bill called from behind the bar. “I imagine she’ll be along as soon as she gets off work.”

Tilbury’s shaggy eyebrows rose in surprise. “Lila has a job?”

“Didn’t she tell you? She’s working for The Sycamore Seed. ”

“That girl’s just one surprise after another,” Edgar remarked.

The first topic of the evening was Nell’s theory. Laying her spiral notebook on the table, she invited the others to have a look. “You’ll notice that the meltings—dissolutions, whatever you want to call them—appear to be tapering off.”

“Martha Frobisher in the florist shop told me their artificial flowers used to melt,” Shay said, “but they don’t anymore.”

“You sure this isn’t wishful thinking?”

“I’m not sure of anything, but can’t it be a possibility?”

“Anything can be a possibility,” said Gerry, “ if you have the science to back it up.”

“I’m not a scientist, but you are. Could the Change be reversed?”

“Well…” Gerry considered while the others watched him eagerly. “Look at it this way. Plastics are organic compounds that’re held together by the polarization of the electronic charge cloud on each molecule. If they’re being destroyed on a molecular level, as I believe they are, then when the molecular destruction stops the destruction of plastic stops. Would the Change be reversed? No, but it could be over. And we would have dodged a very large bullet.”

Jack said, “You’re leaving out the most important part: what caused it in the first place. You talked about tracking the cause of the Change ‘to its lair,’ but are we any closer than we were?”

“Maybe we don’t have to be… not if it’s stopping on its own, the way it started.”

Jack shook his head. “Nothing in the universe starts or stops spontaneously.”

“Now, wait a minute here!” Morris Saddlethwaite interjected. “What about that Big Bang you talked about? Wasn’t that spontaneous?”

“They’re still trying to determine—”

“Aha! So you don’t know!”

Edgar Tilbury gave a snort. “We don’t know anything, Morris, until we admit how much we don’t know.”

“You’re one of those folks who talk in riddles, you are. I don’t like that; I like black or white, yes or no.”

“In this world there are no absolutes,” Jack stated emphatically.

Nell’s shoulders drooped. “And there may be no end to the Change.”

“Don’t take it like that,” Jack said to her. “People everywhere will be working to find substitutes for what they’ve lost, same as we are. The world is going to go on. Different, maybe, but it will go on, and who’s to say it won’t be better?”

Something was being born, something so fragile they dare not expose it to the light. A nascent hope.

When Lila entered Bill’s Bar and Grill she was carrying the latest edition of The Sycamore Seed . The headlines were enough to crush hope.

She laid the newspaper on top of Nell’s notebook. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Frank Auerbach was monitoring the shortwave this morning and it’s pretty certain. We’ve got more hard copy, we’ll use it in the next edition.” Lila gave a self-conscious smile. “He’s letting me try my hand at writing.”

Nell was puzzled. “What do they mean by ‘conventional’ warfare?”

“It means no nukes,” said Jack. “Looks like neither side has any computers left.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Depends on your point of view, I guess. Dead is dead, whether it’s ten people killed or a hundred thousand. No matter what weapons they use, there’s no way America can stay out of it. Because of our international treaty commitments we’ll have to support one side or the other. Hobson’s choice.”

“In spite of all we can do,” Gloria mourned.

Tilbury’s response was acerbic. “Just exactly what did we do? Like lambs to the slaughter we’ve allowed a few power-mad individuals to gain control of the world. We’ve been led to the edge of a cliff and—”

“And we have to turn around and run like hell in the opposite direction!” Jack slammed his fist onto the table so hard he knocked off the newspaper and notebook.

“What else can we do?” said Gerry. “Stage a coup in every belligerent country? Convert all the soldiers into farmers? Even if it were possible, and it damned sure isn’t, we don’t have enough time. And World War One didn’t use nukes.”

Tilbury exchanged glances with Lila Ragland. She was standing straight with her shoulders back and her chin lifted. Life had pummeled her until she was no longer afraid of anything. There was an admantine quality in the woman.

He could almost feel the levers shift inside himself.

If the bombs came he would not go into the tunnels either.

Nell bent down to retrieve the papers from the floor. She gazed at the Seed for a moment, then held it up. “Look, everyone. The newsprint isn’t blurred!”

Although it was very late, Bea was waiting for Jack when he came home that night. “How did the meeting go?” she asked as she always did.

“I keep saying you should join us.”

She pursed her lips. “You young people don’t want me.”

“Hooper Watson and Morris Saddlethwaite aren’t young, Aunt Bea. And Edgar Tilbury certainly isn’t.”

“Edgar Tilbury? What does he have to do with it?”

“He’s the newest member of the Wednesday Club; didn’t I mention that?”

“I would have remembered,” said Bea. “I’ve known him all my life; we went out together before he met Veronica. Nothing serious, at least on my part; he was too intense for me. Then he met her and that was a perfect match. It doesn’t always happen.”

“You liked him.”

For a moment she had a faraway look in her eyes. “Edgar was smart and clever and we had a lot of fun. But I knew other men who were smart and clever and fun.”

“You were looking for more than that?”

“It was a long time ago, Jack. I don’t remember what I was looking for.”

“Aunt Bea, I don’t often lay down the law to you, but you’re going to come to the next meeting of the Wednesday Club if I have to sling you over my shoulder and throw you into my car.”

Tyler Whittaker resented the Change as a personal affront to him. It made his job as sheriff of Sycamore River infinitely more difficult than he had anticipated. Since he took over the office once occupied by Hooper Watson a kind of craziness had set in. In what had been a pleasant, easygoing town, the citizens had become edgy and suspicious. People who had been honest were now devious. And the devious had begun deliberately breaking the law.