Drop by Drop

9

Contrary to his son’s prediction Robert Bennett did not give his wife hell the evening after her walk to Daggett’s Woods. He had stayed at RobBenn until what would have been his usual departure time, then drove home in a sour mood. He was relieved to see that the antique copper carriage lamps on either side of the front doors were lit, a sure sign that his wife was home and expecting him. She would have some excuse for her erratic behavior earlier in the day, but he did not want to hear it. Let the woman dither; he had real problems on his mind.

He found Nell in the dining room, setting the table, and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Expecting trouble, she stiffened, but he did not notice. Nor did he observe the looks of anticipation on the faces of his children as they came in for dinner.

Bennett’s face was a blank wall with turmoil behind it.

Napkins were unfolded; a basket of hot Parker House rolls was proffered, a platter of sliced ham and bowls of freshly steamed vegetables were passed. Conversation was sporadic, and mostly involved Jess and Colin insulting each other.

Nell ate only enough food to make it look like she was eating. Then she waited. The children waited.

When Rob finished wiping up the last of the ham gravy with the last bit of his roll he said, “Anything for dessert?”

“Is that all?”

“More coffee?”

“I mean is that all you have to say to me?”

“Don’t start on me, Cookie, I’ve had a hard day…”

“You’ve had a hard day!”

“… and when I came home this morning I found my house abandoned.”

“You were here this morning?”

“And you weren’t. Damn it, you shouldn’t go off like that without telling me first. The light switches and the—”

“That’s all you were worried about? The house?”

Rob leaned toward her. “I’ve invested a lot of money in this place, in case you’re forgotten. You blithely waltzed out the door and left it to fall apart. Or be burgled. And that’s not all; now the lunatic fringe is making threats against me. They even set up an altar in Daggett’s Woods and burned me in effigy. Some of my employees took me out to see it: a scorched doll hanging from a tree branch. I tore it down and threw it away, but I got a letter saying they would burn the whole complex to the ground if I didn’t restore the nature reserve to the way it was intended.”

The color drained from Nell’s face. “The children and I saw that altar, Rob. I had no idea…”

“Of course you didn’t, you’ve never taken an interest in my business. This is just a small part of what I have to deal with. If I don’t get a handle on things PDQ you can wave good-bye to RobBenn and the lifestyle you enjoy so much. But I’m not going to roll over and play dead for anybody, believe me.”

The momentum of the Change was increasing. Reports of it came from every direction. Concluding an edited report of one day’s events in America, the commentator on the wallscreen reported, “In Maine the mannequins in a shop window dissolved, seeping out of their clothes; vinyl records in the collection of a symphony conductor in Seattle disintegrated; and at a Hollywood premiere the red carpet stuck to the soles of celebrity shoes and had to be scraped off.”

“And your wallscreen’s about to fail,” Jack informed his aunt.

He called Gerry to relay the latest developments, concluding with, “The space agency’s reporting massive solar flares.”

“They couldn’t be causing the Change, Jack. Solar flares are highly charged particles of energy that’re carried to the Earth by solar winds, captured by our planet’s magnetic field and safely conducted toward the poles. That’s what causes the northern lights. But… wait a minute. There is something that might be related. Absorbing high-energy electromagnetic radiation can cause the nucleus of something to change by ejecting a subatomic particle. It’s called photodisintegration. That could be another way of describing the destabilization of plastic. But why should it only happen to plastic?”

Before Jack could reply Gerry said, “And frankly, buddy, I have a more pressing question. D’you think the Change could hurt a pregnant woman?”

“Gloria’s pregnant!”

“Not yet, but…”

“Don’t worry, the Change isn’t hitting anything organic.”

“Maybe not, but the psych department in the hospital is overrun with people on the verge of panic. I’m worried about my wife being in there.”

“Doesn’t the hospital have adequate security?”

“For normal situations, but not this. Have you been to the bathroom recently?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Toilet seats. South of the river they’re mostly wood to be fashionable, but in businesses and on the north side most of them are plastic. I’d guess the ratio is about thirty-seventy.”

“You don’t mean…”

“Yeah. First thing this morning most of the seventy percentile sat down on their toilets and stuck to the seats. It hurt like hell to rip their buttocks free, and the longer anyone sat the worse it hurt. People are flooding into the hospital. They called my wife to come in early.”

Two faces on two AllCom screens gravely regarded one another.

“This could be a helluva time to have a baby.”

“Yeah.”

Pandemonium descended on the Nyeberger household when the boys had problems with their computers. They were taking too long to come on and arbitrarily turning themselves off again. One was emitting a thread of noxious smoke.

Amid howls of protest, the boys’ mother banished the machines to the garage. She could not placate her sons with replacements. When she called the local supplier she was told, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Nyeberger, but we can’t guarantee any of our PCs right now. Try us again in… six weeks, maybe?”

The Sycamore and Staunton Mercantile Bank was in a similar position. Their computers were becoming unreliable, beginning with the newest. Against his every instinct, O. M. Staunton was forced to close the bank while his staff tried to manage the accounts the old-fashioned way.

Which hardly anyone knew how to do anymore.

What the Old Man disliked most was any departure from routine. His longtime housekeeper, Haydon Leveritt, was under strict orders to serve roast chicken every Sunday, chicken croquettes on Monday, Swiss steak on Tuesday, spaghetti and meatballs on Wednesday, broiled fish on Thursday, Manhattan chowder on Friday, and ham on Saturday. She allowed nothing to alter this schedule.

Staunton could cope with the dissolution of toilet seats; when he was growing up his grandfather still used an outhouse. Shortly after the incident with the bank cards and pens he had arrived at the S&S with boxes of old-fashioned ledgers, reams of paper and scores of freshly sharpened pencils. The routines of business must be reestablished and maintained.

But sheer determination was not enough.

“Wall Street’s got jittery,” the Old Man confided to Bea Fontaine. “According to the news, fanatics are claiming to see visions ranging from choirs of angels to the end of the world.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she advised him.

“Hell, I don’t believe anything I hear; not since the last election.”

The first thing Edgar Tilbury did every morning was check his personal outposts for further signs of decay. Eyes. Hands. Shoulders. Hips and knees. Everything still work? What about his back? Sunnavabitch was the worst. The most difficult action he performed was sitting up in bed. Get that far and he could make it the rest of the way, even with a brain still cobwebbed by sleep. The fuzziness would not begin to dissipate until after the second cup of coffee. Jamaican Blue Mountain as strong as a mother-in-law’s tongue. Then he could organize. What to do and in what order.

Hardest things first.

While he drank the coffee he repeated the lecture he gave himself daily. Not going to put up with any nonsense. Everything has to keep on keeping on. No future in getting old. No future in not getting old either, but I’ve got some good years left.

Let Ollie Staunton sock his money away in bank vaults. Putting machines in charge; machines don’t care. When we were growing up I thought he was a damned fool and I still do. When things go wrong—and every damn thing goes wrong sooner or later—I’ll be just fine. Had better sense than to connect myself up to something called the World Wide Web. That name alone should have been an indication of what could come down the road.

Maybe I ought to pay a personal call on Ollie, give him a bit of friendly advice.

Or maybe not. Ollie never took anyone’s advice.

When Jack Reece said it was good to be home, his aunt remarked, “If you married and settled down here you could have a home of your own.”

“That’s not in the cards, so why keep bringing it up?”

“What have you got against marriage, anyway?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he assured her, “it’s a noble institution. Don’t laugh. You may not believe this, but I’m really an old-fashioned guy. I believe marriage should include a commitment to monogamy. But monogamy is only three letters away from monotony. I won’t marry because I have too much respect for the institution.”

“If you ever did marry, would you honor your vows?”

“All of them,” he said solemnly.

Bea knew Jack kept his promises—which was why he rarely made one. He was a rogue, but he was her rogue. She was quietly proud of his success with women. His virility reflected well on the family genes.

“You went out to RobBenn the other day and came back looking like the cat that swallowed the canary,” she said. “Is there a new girl in the office?”

“Nothing like that; Robert Bennett is what put a smile on my face. It did me good to see that pompous bastard brought down a peg or two. People everywhere are having problems, but he thought he was exempt. Now he wants me to help pull his irons out of the fire.”

“I didn’t know you had business dealings with him.”

“Not business: I don’t ‘do business.’ I’ve acted as an agent for him on some deals, that’s all. Things I could do as a freelancer. You’d be surprised how many freelancers—some call them rogue agents—there are in the world. They’re involved in everything from import/export to equipping professional mercenaries. The days of having a pensionable job are long over, Aunt Bea. It’s more profitable to float free if you’re not averse to a bit of risk.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Jack. Is Robert Bennett doing something illegal?”

“A lot of business is illegal one way or another.”

“You think I don’t know that? I work in a bank, remember? Long before the internet came along, banks kept the most astonishing secrets.”

That evening Jack took his favorite suitcase off the top shelf in his closet and set it on his bed. One piece of luggage represented years of his life; years spent gaining the trust of strangers, acting on hunches, taking risks. The custom-made case contained those basics without which he never traveled; he could walk out the door with nothing else and go anywhere. The frame was steel, the covering was leather, lovingly burnished to a mellow glow. Subtle modifications had been made to the basic piece over the years, invisible to the casual observer. But no part of it was plastic.

Jack stroked the leather with a touch of nostalgia. “Good times,” he remarked aloud. Then he hoisted it back to the top shelf.

If I’m going to stay here for a while I better find another way to make a living.