Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

“If I hadn’t⁠—Colin, it’s enough to make a man believe in demoniac possession.”

“Nonsense!” snorted the other. “I told you before, if you hadn’t invented this stuff, somebody else would have. It wasn’t you that made it by the ton, all over the country. It wasn’t you that thought up this notion of finishing the Iron Curtain governments⁠—a brilliant scheme, I might add, well worth whatever price we have to pay at home.

“But it is you, my boy, who’s going to have to get us tooled up to last the transition. Can you do it?”

Fundamental changes are seldom made consciously. Doubtless the man in the fifth-century Roman street grumbled about all these barbarian immigrants, but he did not visualize the end of an empire. The Lancashire industrialist who fired his craftsmen and installed mechanical looms was simply making a profitable investment. And Westfield, Massachusetts, was only adopting temporary survival measures.

They didn’t even look overwhelmingly urgent. Government had not broken down: if anything, it was working abnormally hard. News came through⁠—ferocious air battles over the Canadian tundras; the Soviet armies rolling westward into Europe and southward into Asia, then pushed back with surprising ease and surrendering en masse as their own states collapsed behind them⁠—it was turning out to be a war as remote and half-forgotten as Korea, and a much easier one, which lasted a few months and then faded into a multi-cornered struggle between communists, neo-czarists, and a dozen other elements. By Christmas time, a shaky democratic confederation in Moscow was negotiating with Ukrainia, the Siberian Convict Republic, and the Tartar Alliance. China was in chaos and eastern Europe was free.

And while the great powers were realizing that they were no longer great, now that a vast capital investment in armament had stopped paying off; and while they sought to forestall world upheaval by setting up a genuine international army with strength to enforce the peace⁠—life went on. People still had to eat.

Arch stood by Hinkel’s watermill in the early spring. The ground glistened and steamed with wetness underfoot, sunlit clouds raced through a pale windy sky, and a mist of green was on the trees. Near him the swollen millstream roared and brawled, the wheel flashed with its own swiftness, and a stack of capacitors lay awaiting their charges.

“All right,” he said. “We’ve got your generator going. But it isn’t enough, you know. It can’t supply the whole country; and power lines to the outside are down.”

“So what do we do?” asked Hinkel. He felt too proud of his new enterprise to care much about larger issues at the moment.

“We find other sources to supplement,” said Arch. “Sunlight, now. Approximately one horsepower per square yard, if you could only get at it.” He raised a face grown thin with overwork and with the guilt that always haunted him these days, up to the sky. The sun felt warm and live on his skin. “Trouble is, the potential’s so low. You’ve got to find a way to get a high voltage out of it before you can charge a capacitor decently. Now let me think⁠—”

He spent most of his waking hours thinking. It helped hold off the memory of men lying dead on a muddy hillside.

When power was short, you couldn’t go back to oxcarts and kerosene lamps. There weren’t enough of either. The local machine shop made and sold quantities of home charging units, small primitive generators which could be turned by any mechanical source, and treadmills were built to drive them. But this was only an unsatisfactory expedient. Accompanied by several armed guards, Arch made a trip to Boston.

The city looked much quieter than he remembered, some of the streets deserted even at midday, but a subdued business went on. Food was still coming in to the towns, and manufactured goods flowing out; there was still trade, mail, transportation. They were merely irregular and slightly dangerous.

Stopping at M.I.T. Arch gave certain of his problems to the big computer, and then proceeded to an industrial supply house. The amount of selenium he ordered brought a gasp and a hurried conference.

“It will take some time to get all this together,” said a vice-president. “Especially with conditions as they are.”

“I know,” said Arch. “We’re prepared to make up truck convoys and furnish guards; what we want you for is negotiation.”

The vice-president blinked. “But⁠ ⁠… good heavens, man! Is your whole community in on this?”

“Just about. We have to be. There’s little help coming in from outside, so our area is thrown back on itself.”

“Ah⁠—the cost of this operation⁠—”

“Oh, we can meet that. Special assessment, voted at the last town meeting. They don’t care very much, because money has little value when you can’t buy more than the rationed necessities. And they’re getting tired of going on short rations of power.”

“I shouldn’t say this, because your proposal is a fine deal for us, but have you stopped to think? Both the REA and the private power concerns will be restoring service eventually, just as soon as civil order has been recreated.”

Arch nodded. “I know. But there are two answers to that. In the first place, we don’t know when that’ll be, and if we don’t have adequate energy sources by winter we’ll be up the creek. Also, we’re building a sun-power plant which will cost almost nothing to operate. In the long run, and not so terribly long at that, it’ll pay off.”

Bob Culquhoun, who went on the selenium convoy, reported an adventurous journey through hundreds of miles where gangs of extremists still ruled. “But they seem to be settling down,” he added. “Nobody likes to be a bandit, and anyhow the state militias are gradually subduing ’em. Most of the rural communities, though, are striking out on their own like us. There’s going to be a big demand for selenium.” Wistfulness flickered in his eyes. “Wonder if I can raise enough money to buy some stock?”

“It’ll take time,” said Elizabeth. “I know the sun-power generator