Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Borglum pauses, and Paha Sapa does not know if he’s become self-conscious about the length of his speech or has simply run out of breath. He suspects the latter. But he doesn’t really care. He just wanted the sculptor to go on babbling for a few minutes so that he could keep looking down into the now shadow-filled canyon and see the solution to his problem.

The test bore shaft for the Hall of Records. Only five feet high by six feet wide and twenty feet deep, but plenty of room in which to store his twenty crates of unstable dynamite tonight. And then, on Saturday night and into the wee hours of Sunday morning—with the help of just one winch operator, the dim-witted ex–Rushmore worker named Mune Mercer, already warned to be ready for some “special night work Mr. Borglum wants”—Paha Sapa will winch those twenty crates up here to the ridgetop, right here almost within touching distance of his Vision Pit, and then Mune will handle the winches on this side as Paha Sapa drops down on his cable, dancing in that unearthly gravity he’s grown to dream about, the toes of his boots touching the faces only every twenty feet or so, as he places the twenty crates of dynamite in his pre-prepared spots and rigs the detonation wires that will blow the three existing Heads and the rock for the fourth waiting Head right off the side of this mountain forever. As Mr. Borglum has just said—there’s no more good rock here to carve from, forevermore.

He turns and looks at the fiercely squinting sculptor.

— It’s an incredible and wonderful vision, Mr. Borglum. A truly wonderful vision.

PAHA SAPA RISES HIGH INTO THE AIR.

This does not alarm him. He’s flown before. And this time he is being borne aloft in a device made up of more than 100,000 precisely machined parts, mostly of steel, including the largest axle in the world, which weighs—according to the Fair brochures—142,031 pounds. Paha Sapa believed it when he read that no single man-made item of that weight had ever been lifted before. And certainly not to its middle-of-the-wheel height of 148 feet.

The price of a ticket for a ride on Mr. Ferris’s Wheel was the same as the price for entry to the Fair—fifty cents. But this time, forewarned, Paha Sapa had his dollar out and ready to pay for his and Miss de Plachette’s tickets.

The Wheel, which opened for business fifty-one days later than promised just two weeks ago on June 21, is by far the most popular attraction at the Fair, but by some stroke of clever timing or pure luck, there are only five other people—an older couple who look like grandparents to the three nicely dressed children—in this car that can hold sixty people and which has swiveling seats for thirty-eight. And there is also one mustached, gaudily uniformed guard, sometimes called a conductor, who stands at either the south or north bolted door, both locks and guard there presumably to prevent suicide attempts, but who’s also there to soothe those who discover their fear of heights during the ride.

Paha Sapa has heard through some of the Wild West Show’s cowboys that these conductor-guards, each in his absurd uniform that looks to be part lion tamer’s and part orchestra conductor’s, have had to take instruction in boxing and wrestling and each also carries a three-pound bag of shot—a sap—in his pocket under that heavy tunic. Just in case fear drives a passenger insane.

Miss de Plachette—Rain—obviously has no such fear. Rather than sit on one of the thirty-eight round, tufted velvet chairs, the lady rushes to the almost floor-to-ceiling windows (each with its own wire mesh, also to prevent suicides, Paha Sapa assumes) and exclaims as the car begins to move slowly. Paha Sapa thinks he has seen the huge Wheel revolving in both directions, and today it is revolving east to west over the top. They are facing east as the car rises—the loading platforms are so cleverly arranged below that six cars can be emptied and loaded at the same time—and as they rise, Miss de Plachette watches the Midway Plaisance recede in size and the view of the White City beyond appear.

Her voice is sincerely and joyously breathless.

— Incredible!

Thinking— This from the lady who has been up in the far taller Eiffel Tower —Paha Sapa joins her at the window wall. He holds on to the gleaming brass railing, even though there is very little swaying. As if by instinct, the two of them have moved to the farthest corner on the eastern side of the mostly empty car, away from the quiet family and the conductor. The car, with its opposing north and south doors, each locked (the guard-conductor carries the key in his pocket), seems quite homey. There is a floral-pattern carpet and, in a corner, a huge brass cuspidor that is emptied regularly. The wire mesh in the large windows and door glass is so fine that it does not obstruct the view. Paha Sapa glances up and sees the glass-shaded rows of electric lights running around the perimeter of the ceiling and over both doors. He realizes that the lights are probably very dim so that they do not ruin the view at night and thinks that the view of the White City at night—with all of its searchlights and spotlights and thousands of electric bulbs illuminating the larger buildings and domes—must be as spectacular as Miss de Plachette had described. The lighted Ferris Wheel cars must also be a sight at night, seen from the Midway, with the bright carbide lights illuminating them from below and each carriage lighted from within by its own internal electric lights.

They continue rising.

One glance back over his shoulder toward the east through the opposite wall of windows makes him blink with vertigo. Looking into the spidery maze of spokes and steel girders at thirty-five other moving cars like their own, at the silhouettes of many hundreds of other people in those thirty-five cars, and at the giant turning axle with the truly gigantic support towers on either side makes Paha Sapa dizzy. The height is somehow magnified by looking through the giant wheel toward the more western exhibits along the Midway Plaisance so far below. And everything is turning, revolving, falling, and spinning at once. It is like being an insect caught inside a huge, revolving bicycle wheel.

Paha Sapa closes his eyes.

Miss de Plachette shakes his arm and laughs in delight.

The first of the two revolutions they are to receive for the price of their tickets is the slower one—their twenty-four-foot-long by thirteen-foot-wide car will stop at six different altitudes and positions on the wheel as more cars are loaded below. Their first loading stop is a quarter of the way up and when the car stops, it rocks ever so slightly back and forth on the horizontal bar that holds it, bearings and brakes below making the softest of sounds. Both Miss de Plachette and the grandmother at the opposite end of the car are also make squeaking noises—the older lady in terror, and Miss de Plachette, he is certain, in pure delight.

The conductor, who Paha Sapa heard introduce himself to the grandparent couple as being named Kovacs, clears his throat and gives a superior chuckle.

— Nothin’ to worry about, ladies and gents… and little ones. Nothing at all. These here steel posts we’re hangin’ from—trunnions, they’re called—could hold ten times the weight of this fine car, even if we were fully loaded.

The seven passengers watch silently as the car begins rising again and the eastern end of the Midway Plaisance and the domes of the White City appear. Beyond the domes, sunlight makes the band of Lake Michigan glow bright and visible above the trees and giant buildings. They see a cluster of ships in the harbor—mere masted points of horizontal blackness from their exhalted position—and a ferry bringing more Fair visitors to the end of the long arrival pier.