Charlton hung up.
'Damn.'
He was hoping it had been someone from Dispatch. At least then it would have been traceable. There would be a record of where the break -- or shutdown, or overload -- in the main was. A record of where the work had been done.
Now there was no knowing where the break was. Other shorts could be detected with Con Ed's computers, tracing every line. But for that you needed the main to be on-line.
But with the main down in a particular grid, that grid became a black hole as far as computer tracing was concerned. And the break lay somewhere within that black hole.
Now it was guesswork.
Charlton swore. The first thing to do was call the police. See if they had pulled in someone in the last twenty-four hours hacking at the cables somewhere. Anything like that.
He sighed. It was going to be a long night. He picked up the phone and dialled.
'Good evening, this is Bob Charlton, I'm the evening watch supervisor down here at Consolidated Edison. I'd like to speak with Lieutenant Peters, please. Yes, I'll hold.'
As he waited on hold, Charlton looked idly back at the map of Manhattan Island. Soon his call was put through and he turned away from the map altogether.
All the while the computer screen on his desk remained on.
And for the whole time he was on the phone, Bob Charlton never noticed the last line of the list of historic buildings on the screen. The line read:
GRID 212: LISTING No. 5
NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY (1897)
CONNECTED TO NETWORK: 17 FEBRUARY 1995
After a few moments, Charlton said excitedly, 'You
A few seconds later, he returned and leaned across his desk.
And switched off his computer.
----ooo0ooo------
Swain pressed the red emergency stop button and the elevator creaked loudly to a halt. He reached up for the hatch in the ceiling.
Balthazar, his energy now completely spent after repairing the elevator doors, sat propped up against the corner of the lift, his head bowed, groaning. His guide stood unsympathetically beside him, glaring at Selexin.
Swain was opening the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator when the other guide spoke. 'Come on, Selexin, get on with it.' He nodded at Balthazar. 'Finish it.'
Swain stopped what he was doing and turned to face the others.
Selexin said, 'That is not for me to decide. You of all people know that.'
The other guide spun to face Swain. '
Swain swallowed. The little guide possessed an unusual strength in his defiance -- the strength of a man who knows he is about to die.
'Yes,' Swain said slowly to himself. 'Yes.'
He looked again at Balthazar. It was only then that he noticed just how big the bearded man was. Not six foot. More like six-eight. But that didn't seem to matter now.
Balthazar lifted his head and stared up at Swain. His eyes were severely bloodshot, red-rimmed; his chest ripped to shreds.
Swain took a slow step forward and stood over him.
Selexin must have noticed his hesitation. 'You must,' he said, softly. 'You have to.'
Balthazar never took his eyes off Swain. The big bearded man took a deep breath as Swain reached down and slowly -- very slowly -- unsheathed one of the long daggers from the baldric draped across his chest. The dagger hissed against the sheath as Swain pulled it out.
Balthazar shut his eyes, resigned to his fate, unable to offer any defence.
Knife in hand, Swain shot a final questioning glance at Selexin. The little man nodded solemnly.
Swain turned back to Balthazar, lowered the knife, pointed it at the big man's heart. And then he did it.
He slid the blade gently back into its sheath.
And then he stepped away, back toward the hatch in the ceiling of the elevator, back to what he'd been doing.
Balthazar's eyes opened, puzzled.
Selexin rolled his eyes.
The other guide was simply thunderstruck. He said to Selexin, 'He can't do that.' Then to Swain, who was back at the ceiling, tossing open the hatch, 'You can't do that.'
'I just did,' Swain said. The hatch banged open.
He turned, not looking at the other guide, but rather, straight at Selexin. 'Because that's not what I do.'
With that, Swain grabbed Hawkins' police flashlight and poked his head up through the open hatch. He had something else on his mind.
He peered up into the dark elevator shaft, flicking on the flashlight. He was hoping that Hawkins had done what he had told him to do.
He had.
The other elevator lay right there, only a few feet away, right alongside Swain's elevator, halted halfway between this floor and the one above. Swain aimed the beam of the flashlight up into the shaft. Greasy cables stretched up into the darkness. The doors to the next floor were about eight feet above him. On them were written the black-painted words: ground floor.
The shaft was silent.
The other elevator sat still, perhaps a foot above Swain's, a small slit of yellow light betraying a crack in its side panelling.
'Holly? Hawkins?' Swain whispered.
He heard Holly's voice -- 'Daddy!' -- and he felt a wave of relief wash over him.
'We're here, sir,' Hawkins' voice said. 'Are you all right?'
'We're fine here. How about you two?'
'We're okay. Want us to come over?'
'No. You stay where you are,' Swain said. 'Our elevator has taken a beating, the doors are busted. They probably won't open again, so we'll come over there. See if you can open the hatch in the roof.'
'Okay.'
Swain dropped back into his elevator and surveyed the group around him -- Balthazar and the two guides. Hmmm.
'All right, everyone, listen up. We're all going over to the other elevator. I want you two little guys to go first. I'll handle the big fella. Got it?'
Selexin nodded. The other guide just stood there, his arms folded defiantly.
Swain scooped up Selexin and held him up to the hatch. The little man disappeared into the darkness.
Swain poked his head up through the hatch after him and saw Selexin step up onto the roof of the other elevator. A weak haze of yellow light appeared above the other lift. Hawkins must have opened the hatch.
Swain motioned to the other guide. 'Your turn.'
The guide looked cautiously at Balthazar, then said something in a grunting guttural language.
Balthazar responded with a dismissive wave and grunt.
As a result, the guide reluctantly offered his arms to Swain, who duly lifted him up through the hatch. The
