Arthur Hailey - Overload

Nim was moved by the simple statement. He asked, "Do you think about that one year much?"

"I used to-a lot. For a while I cried over that one-year difference. I'd ask: Why did I have to be one of the last few? And I'd think: If only the vaccine had come lust a little sooner, everything would have been different. I'd have walked, danced, been able to write, use my bands . . ."

She stopped, and in the silence Nim could hear the ticking of a clock and the soft purr of Karen's respirator. After a moment she went on, “Then I got to telling myself: Wishing won't change anything. What happened, happened. It can't be undone, ever. So I started making the best of what there was, living a day at a time, and when you do that, if something unexpected happens, you're grateful. Today you came." She switched on her radiant smile. "I don't even know your name."

When he told her, she asked, "Is Nim for Nimrod?"

"Yes."

"Isn't there something in the Bible . . . ?"

"In Genesis." Nim quoted, "'Cush also begat Nimrod who was the first man of might on earth. He was a mighty hunter by the grace of the Lord."' He remembered hearing the words from his grandfather, Rabbi Goldman. Ile old man had chosen his grandson's name-one of the few concessions to the past that Nim's father, Isaac, had allowed.

"Are you a hunter, Nim?"

On the point of answering negatively, he remembered what Teresa Van Buren had said not long ago: "You're a hunter of women, aren't you?" Perhaps, he thought, if circumstances had been different, he would have hunted this beautiful woman, Karen. Selfishly be, too, felt sad about that year-too-late vaccine.

He shook his head. "I'm no hunter."

Later, Karen told him that for twelve years she had been cared for in hospitals, much of that time in an old-fashioned iron lung. Then, more modem, portable equipment was developed, making it possible for patients like herself to live away from institutions. At first she had gone back to live with her parents, but that hadn't worked. "It was too much of a strain on all of us." then she moved to this apartment where she had been for nearly eleven years.

“There are government allowances which pay the costs. Sometimes it's tight financially, but mostly I manage." Her father had a small plumbing business and her mother was a salesclerk in a department store, she explained. At the moment they were trying to accumulate money to buy Karen a small van which would increase her mobility. The van, which Josie or someone from Karen's family would drive, would be adapted to contain the wheelchair.

Although Karen could do almost nothing for herself, and had to be washed, fed, and put to bed by someone else, she told Nim she had learned to paint, holding a brush in her mouth. "And I can use a type writer," she told Nim. "It's electric and I work it with a stick in my teeth. Sometimes I write poetry. Would you like me to send you some?"

"Yes, please. I'd like that." He got up to go and was amazed to discover lie had been with Karen more than an hour.

She asked him, "Will you come again?"

"If you'd like me to."

"Of course I would-Nimrod." Once more the warm, bewitching smile. "I'd like to have you as a friend."

Josie showed him out.

* * *

The image of Karen, her breathtaking beauty, warm smile and gentle voice, stayed with Nim through the remainder of the drive downtown. He had, lie thought, never met anyone quite like her. He was still thinking of her as be left his car in the parking garage of Golden State Power & Light's headquarters building, three floors down from street level.

An express elevator, accessible only with a key, operated from the parking garage to the senior executive offices on the twenty-second floor. Nim used his key-a status symbol at GSP & L-and rode up alone. On the way, he remembered his decision to make a personal appeal to the Sequoia Club chairman.

His secretary, Victoria Davis, a young, competent black woman, looked up as lie entered his two-room office. "Hi, Vicki," he said. "Is there much in the mail?"

"Nothing that's urgent. There are some messages, though-including several saying you were good on TV last night. I thought so, too."

"Thanks." He grinned. "Welcome to my fan club."

"Oh, there's a 'private and confidential' on Your desk; it just come. And I have some things for you to sign." She followed him into his inner office. At the same moment a dull, heavy thud occurred some distance away. A water carafe and drinking glasses rattled; so did the window which overlooked an interior Courtyard.

Nim halted, listening. "What's that?"

"I've no idea. There was the same kind of noise a few minutes ago. Just before you got here."

Nim shrugged. It could be anything from an earthquake tremor to the effect of some heavy construction going on nearby. At his desk be riffled through the messages and glanced at the envelope which Vicki had referred to, marked "private and confidential." It was a buff manila envelope with a dab of sealing wax on the back. Absently be began to Opel-,

"Vicki, before we do anything else, see if you can get Mrs. Carmichael on the phone."

"At the Sequoia Club?"

"Right."

She put the papers she was carrying in a tray marked "signature" and turned to go. As she did, the outer office door flew open and Harry London raced in. His hair was disordered, his face red from exertion.

London saw Nim.

"No!" he screamed. "No!"

As Nim stood still in bewilderment, London flew across the room and hurled himself across the desk. He seized the manila envelope and put it down.

"Out of here! Fast! All of us!"

London grabbed Nim's arm and pulled, at the same time pushing Victoria Davis roughly ahead. They went through the outer office to the corridor outside, London pausing only long enough to slam both doors behind them.

Nim began an angry protest. "What the hell .

He didn't finish. From the inner office came the boom of an explosion. The corridor walls shook. A framed picture nearby fell to the floor, its glass shattering.

A second later another thud, like the earlier one Nim had beard but this time louder and clearly an explosion, came from somewhere beneath their feet. It was unmistakably within the building. Down the corridor, figures were running out of other doors.

"Oh Christ!" Harry London said. His voice was despairing.

Nim exclaimed urgently, "Dammit! What is it?"

Now they could hear excited shouting, telephones ringing stridently, the sound of approaching sirens in the street below.

"Letter bombs," London said. “They're not big, but enough to kill anybody close. That last one was the fourth. Fraser Fenton's dead, others injured.

Everyone in the building's being warned, and if you feel like praying, ask that there aren't anymore."

With a short stub of pencil, Georgos Winslow Archambault (Yale, class of'72) wrote in his journal:

Yesterday, a successful foray against the fascist-capitalistic forces of oppression!

An enemy leader-Fenton, president of Golden State Piss & Lickspittle-is dead. Good riddance!

In the honored name of Friends of Freedom, the headquarters bastion of the ruthless exploiters of the people's energy resources was successfully attacked. Out of ten F-of-F weapons directed at target, five scored direct hits. Not bad!

The true score of hits may be even greater since the establishment-muzzled press has, as usual, minimized this important people's victory.

Georgos repositioned the pencil stub. Even though it was uncomfortable, he invariably wrote with a stub, having once read that Mohandas K. Gandhi did so, holding that to discard a partially used pencil would be to denigrate the humble labor which created it.

Gandhi was one of Georges Archambault's heroes, as were Lenin, Marx, Engels, Mao Tse-tung, Renato Curcio, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Cesar Chavez and assorted others. (the anomaly that Mohandas Gandhi was an apostle of non-violence seemed not to bother him.) Georgos went on writing.