4

His substantial frame jammed into his Fiat X19 two-seater, Nim Goldman 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 Nun—had 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, was dead.

A resurgence of his grief swept over Nim. Earlier, he had held back tears. Now, in the privacy of the moving car, he let them come; twin rivulets coursed down his face. With anguish he wished he 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.

There had been moments in his life—this was one—when Nim sensed instincts deep within him yearning for religious faith, for identification, personally, with his heritage. But religion, or at least the practice of it, was a closed door. It was slammed shut before Nun’s birth by his father, Isaac Goldman, who came to America from Eastern Europe as a young, penniless immigrant and ardent socialist. The son of a rabbi, Isaac found socialism and Judaism incompatible. He thereupon rejected the religion of his forebears, leaving his own parents heartbroken. Even now, old Isaac, at eighty-two, still mocked the basic tenets of Jewish faith, describing them as “banal chitchat between God and Abraham, and the fatuous fairy tale of a chosen people.”

Nim had grown up accepting his father’s choice. The festival of Passover and the High Holy Days—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur—passed unobserved by the Goldman family and now, as an outcropping of Isaac’s personal rebellion, a third generation—Nim’s own children Leah and Benjy—were removed from Jewish heritage and identity. No bar mitzvah for Benjy had been planned, an omission which occasionally troubled Nim and prompted the question: Despite decisions he had made about himself, did he have the right to separate his children from five thousand years of Jewish history? It was not too late, he knew, but so far Nim had not resolved the issue.

As he thought of his family, Nim realized he had neglected to call Ruth to tell her he would not be home until late. He reached for the mobile phone to his right below the instrument panel—a convenience which GSP & L supplied and paid for. An operator answered and he gave her his home number. Moments later he heard a ringing tone, then a small voice. “Goldman residence. Benjy Goldman speaking.” Nim smiled. That was Benjy all right—even at ten, precise and systematized, in contrast to his sister Leah, four years older, perennially disorganized and who answered phones with a casual, “Hi!”

“It’s Dad,” Nim said. “I’m on mobile.” He had taught the family to wait when they heard that because on a radiotelephone conversations couldn’t overlap. He added, “Is everything all right at home?”

“Yes, Dad, it is now. But the electricity went off.” Benjy gave a little chuckle. “I guess you knew. And, Dad, I reset all the clocks.”

“That’s good, and yes, I knew. Let me talk to your mother.”

“Leah wants …”

Nim heard a scuffling, then the voice of his daughter. “Hi! We watched the TV news. You weren’t on.” Leah sounded accusing. The children had become used to seeing Nim on television as spokesman for GSP & L. Perhaps Nim’s absence from the screen today would lower Leah’s status among her friends.

“Sorry about that, Leah. There were too many other things happening. May I talk to your mother?”

Another pause. Then, “Nim?” Ruth’s soft voice.

He pressed the push-to-talk bar. “That’s who it is. And getting to talk to you is like elbowing through a crowd.”

While talking, he changed freeway lanes, maneuvering the Fiat with one hand. A sign announced the San Roque turnofi was a mile and a half ahead.

“Because the children want to talk, too? Maybe it’s because they don’t see much of you at home.” Ruth never raised her voice, always sounding gentle, even when administering a rebuke. It was a justified rebuke, he admitted silently, wishing he hadn’t raised the subject.

“Nim, we heard about Walter. And the others. It was on the news; it’s terrible. I’m truly sorry.”

He knew that she meant it, and that Ruth was aware how close he and the chief had been.

That kind of understanding was typical of Ruth, even though in other ways she and Nim seemed to have less and less rapport nowadays, compared with how it used to be. Not that there was any open hostility. There wasn’t. Ruth, with her quiet imperturbability, would never let it come to that, Nim reasoned. He could visualize her now—composed and competent, her soft gray eyes sympathetic. She had a Madonna quality, he had often thought; even without the good looks she possessed in abundance, character alone would have made her beautiful. He knew, too, she would be sharing this moment with Leah and Benjy, explaining, treating them as equals in that easy way she always had. Nim never ceased to respect Ruth, especially as a mother. It was simply that their marriage had become uninteresting, even dull; in his own mind he characterized it as “a bumpless road to nowhere.” There was something else—perhaps an outgrowth of their mutual malaise. Recently Ruth seemed to have developed interests of her own, interests she wouldn’t talk about. Several times Nim called home when normally she would have been there; instead, she appeared to have been out all day and later dodged explaining, which was unlike her. Had Ruth taken a lover? It was possible, he supposed. In any case, Nim wondered how long and how far they would drift before something definite, a confrontation, had to happen.

“We’re all shaken up,” he acknowledged. “Eric has asked me to go to Ardythe and I’m on my way there now. I expect I’ll be late. Probably very late. Don’t wait up.”

That was nothing new, of course. More evenings than not, Nim worked late. The result: Dinner at home was either delayed or he missed it entirely. It also meant he saw little of Leah and Benjy, who were often in bed, sometimes asleep, when Nim arrived. Sometimes Nim had guilt feelings about the meager amount of time he spent with the children and he knew it troubled Ruth, though it was a rare occasion when she said so. Sometimes he wished she complained more.

But tonight’s absence was different. It needed no further explanations or excuses, even to himself.

“Poor Ardythe,” Ruth said. “Just as Walter was getting near retirement. And that announcement just now makes it even worse.”

“What announcement?”

“Oh, I thought you’d know. It was on the news. The people who planted the bomb sent—a communiqué I think they called it—to a radio station. They were boasting about what they’d done. Can you imagine? What kind of people must they be?”

“Which radio station?” As he spoke, Nim put down the phone with a swift movement, snapped the car radio to “on,” then scooped up the phone again in time to hear Ruth say, “I don’t know.”

“Listen,” he told her, “it’s important I hear. So I’m going to hang up now and, if I can, I’ll call you from Ardythe’s.”

Nim replaced the phone. The radio was already tuned to an all-news station and a glance at his watch showed a minute to the half hour when he knew there would be a news summary.

The San Roque off-ramp was in sight and he swung the Fiat onto it. The Talbots’ home was just a mile or so away.

On the radio, a trumpet blast punctuated by Morse code announced a news bulletin. The item Nim had been waiting for was at the top.

“A group calling itself Friends of Freedom has claimed responsibility for an explosion today at a Golden State Power & Light generating plant. The blast claimed four lives and caused a widespread failure of electric power.”

“The disclosure was in a tape recording delivered to a local radio station late this afternoon. Police have said that information on the tape points to its authenticity. They are examining the recording for possible clues.”

Obviously, Nim thought, the station he was listening to was not the one which received the tape. Broadcasters didn’t like to acknowledge a competitor’s existence and, even though news like this was too important to be ignored, the other radio station wasn’t being named.

“According to reports, a man’s voice on the tape recording—so far unidentified—stated, quote, ‘Friends of Freedom are dedicated to a people’s revolution and protest against the greedy capitalist monopoly of power which belongs rightfully to the people.’ End quote.

“Commenting on the deaths which occurred, the recording says, quote, ‘Killing was not intended, but in the people’s revolution now beginning, capitalists and their lackeys will be casualties, suffering for their crimes against humanity.’ End quote.

“An official of Golden State Power & Light has confirmed that sabotage was the cause of today’s explosion, but would make no other comment.

“Retail meat prices are likely to be higher soon. In Washington today the Secretary of Agriculture told a consumers …”

Nim reached out, snapping off the radio. The news depressed him with its sickening futility. He wondered about its effect on Ardythe Talbot, whom he was soon to see.

In the growing dusk he saw that several cars were parked outside the Talbots’ modest, neat two-story house with its profusion of flower beds—a lifelong hobby of Walter’s. Lights were on in the lower rooms.

Nim found a spot for the Fiat, locked it, and walked up the driveway.