The Stormriders Page 3

  Meg pushed through the swinging door that led to the corridor of offices, and Dancer followed. "So," she said. "Looks like you're going to be stuck here for a while. Tough break."

  "You're telling me."

  ' 'Hubby's back, too. Cozy.''

  "Right. Cozy as two snakes in a sleeping bag."

  Dancer giggled. "You're really crazy about him, aren't you?"

  Meg chose not to reply. She pushed open another swinging door, turned left and reached into her pocket for the key that unlocked the big metal door at the end of the hall. Turning in her office keys had been last on her list of things to do—fortunately, as it turned out.

  The overhead fluorescent lights came on automatically when the door opened, and Meg descended a flight of metal stairs into the heart of the complex. Sterile light gleamed off the network of pipes and tubes, engines throbbed like a warm heartbeat, and almost immediately Meg felt a calm steal over her.

  "Wow," Dancer's voice echoed behind her. "Kind of spooky, isn't it? Am I allowed to be down here?"

  Meg crossed to a control panel, her heels making a satisfying click-click on the concrete floor, and checked a series of gauges. "It's not top secret. I'm surprised one of your boyfriends hasn't brought you down here before.''

  "Yeah." Dancer still sounded a little awed. "Me, too. What is all this, anyway?"

  Meg could not prevent an almost maternal smile as she looked out over the vast, machinery-filled enclosure. Everything in its place, everything serving its purpose, working in perfect synchronization, nothing wasted, nothing lost. Dancer thought it was spooky. Meg thought it was beautiful.

  "This," she told her, "is what heats and cools and brings electrical power to every building in this town. What's more, it's only working at a fraction of its capacity right now. It could power up a town ten times this size without even blowing a fuse."

  Dancer tilted back her head to examine the web of pipework overhead. "So that's what you guys do here."

  Meg laughed.

  Dancer looked at her, obviously impressed. "And you designed all this?"

  Meg shook her head regretfully, making notations of the gauge readings on the clipboard that was always left nearby. "No, not entirely. This project had been going on ten years before I joined it." She copied down the final reading, which she would compare with others when the storm was at its height and the town's demands for energy rose, and set the clipboard aside. "This," she said, leading the way across the room, "is what I designed. Or part of it, anyway."

  She laid her hand on a compact metal box, about three feet by four feet, with its own series of gauges, wires and tubes that was connected to various pieces of other equipment throughout the room.

  "Oh." Dancer tried to look appreciative, but fell a little short. "It's nice. What is it?"

  "It's..." Meg struggled to put it into words for a layman. "Well, it's kind of a solar battery, I suppose you might say."

  "Like the kind they put in calculators?"

  "Sort of." Meg hated to hear her darling described in such mundane terms. "Not really. For one thing, it can collect energy even on cloudy days, which is a big advantage up here. For another, it's a lot more efficient and powerful than your average photovoltaic converter, and it's really more of a generator. Most of what all the rest of this does—" she waved her hand around the room, her voice gathering enthusiasm as she explained "—starts right here. There are two of them, actually, but it only takes one to run this complex. One can stay in the collecting mode while the other is on output. But I'm already working to modify that, so that it would only take one to run the average household—much smaller, of course. That's the whole point, you see. If we could put one of these in every household in America, we could be energy independent in a generation—and it would cost practically nothing!"

  It was clear that all of this went over Dancer's head, and she grinned. "You sure get turned on by the weirdest things."

  Meg shrugged, a little embarrassed. She did have a tendency to get carried away by her work, and she kept forgetting that most people weren't in the least interested.

  "So why don't you?" Dancer inquired.

  "What?"

  "Put one in every household."

  "Well," she admitted, "right now it's too expensive. And the initial switch-over costs would be astronomical. And there are political reasons, I suppose, and we don't really know what problems might develop down the line, which is one reason Carstone will keep the project going until somebody figures out a way to do it cheaper and easier. Of course—" the regret in her voice surprised her "—that somebody won't be me."

  "Got canned, huh?" Dancer said sympathetically.

  Meg looked at her in surprised amusement. "Who told you that?"

  "Well, nobody ever said why you were leaving. I just figured..."

  "That since I was such a bitch to work for the guys upstairs decided to pull my ticket," she supplied dryly. She could well imagine how a rumor like that could get started, and it annoyed her that she hadn't heard it before now. "No, I didn't get fired. I only signed a two-year contract for frontier duty, and now it's up. I'm leaving of my own free will.''

  "What’s going to happen to your thingamabob?" Dancer gestured toward the generator.

  "I'll leave it here."

  "I thought you were still working on it."

  The lump of regret that came into Meg's throat caught her completely off guard and took a moment to overcome. "Somebody else will get the assignment, I guess."

  "You don't look like somebody that's leaving of her own free will," Dancer commented shrewdly.

  Meg scowled. "Look, I hate this place. I've always hated it. It's cold and ugly and the people here hate me as much as I hate them, and I'm glad to be getting out."

  ''Not everybody hates you," Dancer corrected easily. "I like you. Sometimes. Most of the time. But then—" she grinned "—I like most everybody."

  Dancer's humor was infectious, and Meg lost the battle with her own grin. "Well, everybody knows you're strange."

  Dancer lifted herself up onto a metal worktable, swinging her long legs. "Anyway, I think the real reason you want out of here is sitting upstairs in the radio room right now."

  "Refusing to do his job," agreed Meg, ''and making my life miserable as always."

  "So why did you marry him, anyway?"

  Meg gave an unladylike grunt. "Cabin fever. It had to be. Temporary insanity. Why else would I marry a man I'd only known six weeks and live with him for eighteen whole months before I finally figured out he was a certifiable maniac?"

  "Well, you're both maniacs if you ask me," Dancer said frankly, examining a minute chip in the fuchsia-colored polish that adorned her index fingernail. "I mean, I never saw two people who belonged together less than you two. Talk about your cats and dogs..."

  "Temporary insanity." Meg caressed a length of eight-inch piping absently, enjoying the soft purr of energy coursing through it. Then she said thoughtfully, "I don't know. It was all so strange, and so sudden—like a whirlwind, almost, or one of these crazy Alaskan blizzards that sweep in from the coast."

  She turned around to look at Dancer, leaning back against a support post. She was aware that she was speaking as much for her own edification as for her friend's, and putting her feelings into words was not something that came easily for Meg. But that was probably the main reason she and Dancer got along so well; Dancer would listen to anything, and she never made Meg feel sorry afterward for what she had said.

  "I never expected to get married, you know," she went on. "I never pictured myself doing it, I never even wanted to. Most women do, no matter how much they say they like being single and aren't looking for a man, deep inside they're really just waiting to get married. But not me. I always used to say that when I found a man who was stronger than I was and smarter than I was, I'd marry him. I knew I never would, so that was just fine. It made me feel secure, in a way, because I didn't have to worry about it anymore. Then I met Red."

&nb
sp; "Hoist with your own petard," Dancer commented, and Meg looked at her in surprise.

  "Hey, I read," Dancer protested.

  Meg chuckled, but the amusement faded into a smile that was choked with pathos. "He was... something else," she said softly. "He's the only man I've ever known, except maybe my dad, who wasn't afraid of me. The only man who could ever stand up to me in a fight. And, God, was he sexy."

  "Yeah, tell me about it," Dancer murmured.

  Meg looked at her sharply, caught off guard by the knife point of jealousy that went through her.

  "No way." Dancer quickly held up her hand in self-defense. "I never slept with Red, I swear on my life. Not," she added with her typical do-or-die honesty, "that I wouldn't have if he'd so much as ever even hinted he might be interested, and not," she confessed further, "that I didn't try once or twice. Before you came, of course. But a funny thing about Red, he was always real choosy. He's the only man who ever turned me down. That's why you could've knocked me over with a feather when he married you. No offense, of course. I just never figured him for the marrying kind."

  "He wasn't, believe me."

  "I think he was really crazy about you."

  Meg was ashamed of that childish part of her that leapt at that small reassurance, like a puppy begging for scraps. "Do you?"

  Dancer nodded wisely. "I think a lot of things. Like your biggest mistake was getting married. You'd've been just fine if you'd just kept on sleeping together. What did you want to go messing it up with all that legal mumbo-jumbo for? And then when you broke up, you wouldn't have to go back home and Red wouldn't have had to spend the past six months flying a route he doesn't even like just to keep from bumping into you. You really screwed up. And if you'd asked me before you did it I could've saved you both a lot of trouble."

  Meg chuckled. "I'll remember that next time. What else do you think?"

  Dancer jumped down from the table and dusted off her hands, despite the fact that every inch of the room was as spotless as the inside of an operating room. "I think you're not over it yet, either one of you. And I think you got luckier than you deserve with this storm, and if you don't take advantage of it you'll hate yourself the rest of your life."

  Meg stared at her. "Take advantage of it? What in the world are you talking about?"

  Dancer rolled her eyes in a display of impatience. "Well, if you don't know, you're in worse shape than I thought. Can we get out of here? This place is giving me the creeps."

  Meg followed her toward the door.''Dancer, I know we don't always see eye to eye, but until now I always thought we were at least having the same conversation. First you tell me nobody ever belonged together less than Red and me, that we made a big mistake by getting married, and now you want me to make up with him? Are you crazy?"

  Dancer cast her another one of those impatient, condescending looks. "Not make up with him, bird-brain. Have sex with him. That s the only way to get a man out of your system. Didn't your mama teach you anything?"

  For a moment Meg was so stunned she actually stopped in her steps, staring at Dancer. Fortunately, however, Dancer didn't notice and kept on walking, because in the next moment Meg's cheeks were flame red—not with embarrassment, but with the kind of guilt that comes when a secret truth is exposed when one least expects it.

  From the moment Red had kissed her—no, even before—hadn't she been thinking the same thing? It was ridiculous of course. If she did a thing like that there would no longer be any doubts about her sanity; she could skip lunch with her father when she got to the mainland and proceed directly to Bellevue for intensive psychiatric treatment. She had spent six of the most agonizing months of her life trying to get over him and now had she actually considered—even for one desperate, hormone-induced moment—really considered starting it all over again? It was crazy.

  "I'd rather take a screeching, hairy, flea-infested baboon to my bed," she muttered, following Dancer up the stairs.

  "Suit yourself," Dancer replied good-naturedly. "But you'll be sorry." She pushed open the door. "I guess if you're going to be staying, there's no point in me taking your car.''

  "No, that's okay," Meg replied distractedly. "Just let me get my bags out."

  ''How are you going to get home?"

  "I turned in the key to my apartment. I don't have a home."

  "Say, that's too bad. You need a place to crash?"

  Meg smiled at her as she locked the door. "Thanks, Dancer, but I'll just sleep on the couch in my office tonight. That way I can leave as soon as we get clear sky."

  "Okay, sure. But take my advice." She winked at Meg. "Don't sleep alone. Who knows when you'll have another chance?"

  Three

  Meg spent the next hour in her office, trying to rearrange her travel plans. The Adinorack telephone system was temperamental at best—unsurprising, considering the fact that until Carstone had moved in, there had been no telephone system at all—and it would have been faster to use the radio. But not on penalty of her life would Meg have gone back into the radio room.

  The next available flight to Washington, D.C. was three days hence, and that was assuming the storm lifted by then. Meg spent a good five minutes cursing Red, his airplane, the pilot who had switched routes with him, the mother who had birthed him and anyone else she could think of who could in any remote way possibly be construed to have a hand in her present predicament.

  Of course Red wasn't responsible for the storm. Even if he had gotten her to Juneau, there was a strong possibility that she would have been stuck there indefinitely. But none of that mattered. Meg was a woman of strict routine, definite plans, concrete certainties. She did not like to have her plans thrown into disarray. And from the moment Red Worthington had entered her life he had shown an uncanny knack for doing just that.

  When her anger had worn itself out, she set about the complicated business of trying to send a cable to Washington. Three times Sadie interrupted her by buzzing the intercom, causing her to lose the connection. At last Meg punched the intercom button herself, snapped, "I'm on long distance, damn it!" and disconnected. Sadie didn't bother her again.

  When she had finally gotten a cable off to her father and another one to Carstone headquarters, advising them of the storm and her delay, there was nothing for her to do but look around the bleak little office and contemplate yet another night spent on the lumpy sofa listening to the wind howl. Alone.

  But she refused to brood about it. She had endured worse disappointments than this—in fact, one might say the entire past two years of her life had been a worse disappointment than this—and she was not going to be reduced to a sniveling pout just because her trip home had been delayed. Or because she had to spend the night on a sofa instead of a bed, or because Red would be only a few dozen feet away and she did not see how it was going to be possible to avoid him for the next twenty-four hours, or forty-eight, or seventy-two, or even longer....

  Impatiently, she punched the intercom button. A blast of wind screeched against the window and she shivered. "Sadie."

  No answer.

  She pushed the button again, then several times in succession. "Sadie, where are you?"

  A timid voice came back. "Ms. Forrest?"

  "Who else would it be?" Meg replied in exasperation. She rubbed her arms against a sudden chill as she spoke into the microphone. "Get Lewis or Reese to go out to my car and bring in my bags, will you? It's unlocked."

  "Urn... they're not here."

  Meg scowled. "Where are they?"

  "Over at the Blue Jay, I think."

  "What the hell are they doing there?" Despite her rising temper, Meg shivered again and it wasn't just in sympathy with her surroundings this time. There was a definite chill in the room.

  "Well, they didn't say but-"

  "Sadie, it's cold in here," Meg interrupted. "Why is it cold in here?"

  "Why, I don't know, Ms. Forrest—"

  "Where's Gilly?"

  A male voice drawled, "Right here, ma'am.
"

  "Gilly, it's like a refrigerator in my office! What are you guys doing, sleeping at the switch? Those of you who aren't at the Blue Jay, that is!"

  "No, ma'am. Just following your orders. Emergency preparedness, remember? Close off all unnecessary areas.. ."

  She stared at the intercom, hardly believing her ears. "What emergency? Who declared an emergency?"

  "Why, Red did. We tried to buzz you—"

  Meg burst through the swinging doors of the common room almost before he had finished speaking. Her eyes were blazing and her face was flaming and her hands were clenched into fists. Sadie immediately scurried into her chair and found something to type, and even Gilly, a two-hundred-pound ex-marine, took a startled step backward.

  "Who the hell," she demanded lowly, "gave Red Worthington the right to declare an emergency on my compound?"

  Gilly recovered himself in short order and picked up a sheet of teletype paper from the corner of Sadie's desk. "The National Weather Service, I reckon," he said, offering it to her.

  Meg snatched the report from him and scanned it quickly, fury warring with professional detachment, which warred with concern at what she read. The storm had indeed gathered sufficient strength and speed to meet her criteria for a Phase One Emergency. The worst of it was still more than an hour away, but she had to admit that if she had read this report she would have done exactly what Red had. And that was precisely what enraged her.

  "Why. wasn't I given this the minute it came in?" she demanded.

  "Mrs. Worthington," Gilly replied plainly, "you don't work here anymore. Red and Joe, they was in the radio room when it came in—"

  "Where is he?"

  "Joe?"

  "Red!" she practically roared.

  Gilly shrugged. "Seems I heard him say something about going over to the Blue Jay."

  Meg stalked across the room and grabbed her hat and coat from the rack, stuffing the crumpled report into her pocket as she donned her outer gear. She stopped only once, to consult briefly with Joe about further weather information, and then she plunged out into the storm.