Arthur Hailey: Overload

"You've just filled a gap in my education," Nim acknowledged. He continued to study the map, which fascinated him.

"Most people relying on life-sustaining equipment have the kind that switches over to batteries in emergency," the dispatcher continued. "Just the same, when outside power fails it's traumatic for them. So what we do, if there's a local outage, is check quickly. Then, if there's any doubt or problem, we rush in a portable generator."

"But we don't have that many portables-surely not enough for a widespread outage like today's."

"No, and there aren't many crews available either. But today we were lucky. Divisions have been checking. No users of life-sustaining equipment at home were in trouble." the dispatcher indicated the map. "Now, in all these spots we have power back on."

The knowledge that a human element so small in numbers was being watched and cared about amid vaster concerns was moving and reassuring. Nim studied the map, his eyes roving. He found a street intersection he knew well. Lakewood and Balboa. One of the red circles marked the site of an apartment house he had driven by many times. A name beside it read "Sloan"-presumably the iron lung user. Who was Sloan? Nim wondered. What was he like?

His musing was interrupted. "Mr. Goldman, the chairman wants to speak to you. He's calling from La Mission." Nim accepted a telephone which a control room assistant offered.

"Nim," Eric Humphrey said, "you knew Walter Talbot pretty well personally, didn't you?" Despite the crisis, the chairman's voice was urbane as usual. Immediately after first reports of the explosion, be had summoned his limousine and left, along with Ray Paulsen, for La Mission.

"Yes," Nim said, "Walter and I were good friends." He was conscious of a catch in his voice, with tears not far away. Almost since Nim's recruitment to Golden State Power & Light eleven years ago, he and the chief engineer had shared a mutual liking and habitually confided in each other. It seemed inconceivable there would be no more confidences ever again.

"And Walter's wife? How well do you know her?"

"Ardythe. Very well." Nim sensed the chairman hesitate, and asked, "How is it out there?"

"Grim. I never saw bodies of men burned by superheated steam before. I hope I never do again. There's virtually no skin left, just a mass of blisters with everything underneath exposed. Faces are unrecognizable."

For a moment Eric Humphrey's composure seemed to waver, then he recovered it. "That's why I'd like you to go to Mrs. Talbot as soon as possible.

I understand she's taken the news badly, which is not surprising. As a friend you may be able to help. I'd also like you to dissuade her, if you can, from viewing her husband's body."

"Oh Christ, Eric," Nim said. "Why me?"

"For the obvious reason. Someone has to do this, and you knew them both, apparently better than any of us. I'm also asking a friend of Danieli's to go to his wife for the same purpose."

Nin wanted to retort: Why don't you go to the wives of all four men killed? You're our commander-in-chief, paid a princely salary which ought to compensate for an unhappy, messy duty once in a while. Besides, doesn't dying in the service of the company merit a personal call from the man at the top? But lie didn't say it, knowing that J. Eric Humphrey, while a hard working administrator, purposely kept a low profile whenever he could, and this was clearly one more occasion, with Nim and some other unfortunates acting as his surrogates.

"All right," Nim conceded, "I'll do it."

"Thank you. And please convey to Mrs. Talbot my deep personal sympathy.'

Nim brooded unhappily as be returned the telephone. What he had been instructed to do was not the kind of thing be was good at handling. He had known he would see Ardythe Talbot eventually and would have to grope emotionally for words as best lie could. What he hadn't expected was to have to go to her so soon.

On the way out of Energy Control, Nim encountered Teresa Van Buren. She looked wrung out. Presumably her latest session with the reporters had contributed to that, and Teresa, too, had been a friend of Walter Talbot's. "Not a good day for any of us," she said.

"No," Nim agreed. He told her where he was going and about the instructions from Eric Humphrey.

The PR vice president grimaced, "I don't envy you. That's tough duty.

By the way, I hear you had a run-in with Nancy Molineaux."

He said feelingly, "That bitch!"

"Sure, she's a bitch, Nim. She's also one spunky newspaperwoman, a whole lot better than most of the incompetent clowns we see on this beat."

"I'm surprised you'd say that. She'd made up her mind to be critical hostile-before she even knew what the story was about."

Van Buren shrugged. "This pachyderm we work for can survive a few slings and arrows. Besides, hostility may be Nancy's way of making Nim, and others, say more than you intend. You've got a few things to learn about women, Nim-other than calisthenics in bed, and from rumors I hear, you're getting plenty of that."

"You're a hunter of women, aren't you?" then her motherly eyes softened. "Maybe I shouldn't have said that right now. Go, do the best you can for Walter's wife."

His substantial frame jammed into his Fiat Xig two-seater, Nim Coldman wove through downtown streets, heading northeast toward San Roque, the suburb where Walter and Ardythe Talbot lived. He knew the way well, having driven it many times.

By now it was early evening, an hour or so after the homebound rush hour, though traffic was still heavy. The heat of the day had diminished a little, but not much.

Nim shifted his body in the little car, straining to make himself comfortable, and was reminded he had put on weight lately and ought to take some off before he and the Fiat reached a point of impasse. He had no intention of changing the car. It represented his conviction that those who drove larger cars were blindly squandering precious oil while living in a fool's paradise which would shortly end, with accompanying disasters. One of the disasters would be a crippling shortage of electric power.

As Nim saw it, today's brief power curtailment was merely a preview -an unpalatable hors d'oeuvre-of far graver, dislocating shortages, perhaps only a year or two distant. The trouble was, almost no one seemed to care. Even within GSP&L, where plenty of others were privy to the same facts and overview as Nim, there existed a complacency, translatable as: Don't worry. Everything will come out all right. We shall manage.

Meanwhile, don't let's rock the boat by creating public alarm.

Within recent months only three people in the Golden State Power & Light hierarchy-Walter Talbot, Teresa Van Buren and Nim-bad pleaded for a change of stance. What they sought was less timidity, more directness.

They favored blunt, immediate warnings to the public, press and politicians that a calamitous electrical famine was ahead, that nothing could avert it totally, and only a crash program to build new generating plants, combined with massive, painful conservation measures, could lessen its effect. But conventional caution, the fear of offending those in authority in the state, had so far prevailed. No change had been sanctioned. Now, Walter, one of the crusading trio, as dead. A resurgence of his grief swept over Nim. Earlier, he had held back tears. Now, in the privacy of the moving car, be let them come; twin rivulets coursed down his face. With anguish he wished be could do something for Walter, even an intangible act like praying. He tried to recall the Mourner's Kaddish, the Jewish prayer he had heard occasionally at services for the dead, said traditionally by the closest male relative and in the presence of ten Jewish men. Nim's lips moved silently, stumbling over the ancient Aramaic words. Yisgadal veyiskadash sh'may rabbo be'olmo deevro chiroosey ve'yamlich malchoosey . . . He stopped, the remainder of the prayer eluding him, even while realizing that to pray at all was, for him, illogical.