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He got Spider and Peter to help pull up the six-foot planks, told them to be careful, they needed the planks intact.

“What for?” Spider asked.

“We're going to try for the ceiling,” Brydon said.

“Don't you think we ought to wait to be rescued?” Peter said.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Let's go for the ceiling.”

The idea hadn't just come to Brydon. It was one of the first things he'd thought of — and rejected because it was practically impossible. Thinking it out thoroughly hadn't made it any less so, but Brydon had decided it was as good a chance as anything else and the time had come to take it.

The activity on Island Eight attracted the other survivors there, except, of course, Warren.

Judith and Marion wanted to help.

Phil Kemp said he didn't think Brydon's idea would work, and he wouldn't waste any of his energy on it.

Brydon told Kemp he didn't need him or his comments.

Elliot Janick volunteered to do whatever he was told. Marsha avoided him. Each time Elliot tried to be near her she moved away.

Dan Mandel said he was willing to try anything.

Lois Stevens tried to stand still, and just watch.

Brydon stacked the shorter planks that had been gathered from this island and from others, to make sure they were all of equal length. Six feet. Two were a few inches too long, two more as much too short. Brydon discarded those. That left him eleven planks. He needed ten.

First, from a mark he made on the island surface, he measured off twenty feet, again using his hand span. That twenty would be the base. He divided it into thirds, making marks six feet, eight inches apart.

At each end of the base, perpendicular to it, he placed an eight-foot plank. He told Amy, Gloria and Judith to stand on one of the planks, Elliot, Marsha and Marion to stand on the other. Marsha exchanged places with Gloria. Brydon told them that from then on they must remain where they were. Their weight was vital. Those end planks had to stay put.

Next Brydon put the six-foot planks to use. He butted one tight against the perpendicular edge of an end plank, raised it diagonally until it seemed right. Meanwhile Spider placed another six-footer upright on the nearest third-way mark and lowered it diagonally until it met Brydon's plank at an equal angle. Spider held his plank at its base to keep it from sliding down.

The opposing weight, the lean, of the two planks kept them together at their apex.

With Peter's help, Brydon repeated that procedure exactly at the other end of the base. Then he added two more planks, simultaneously butting them at the bottom, one against Spider's plank, the other against Peter's.

So far, good.

What they had formed were three triangular supports of equal height. By adding two eight-foot boards across the peaks of the triangles, they had a tier five feet high — for the most part holding itself up, like a house of cards.

And like a house of cards it seemed a mere blow of breath would bring it down.

Brydon was pleased, somewhat excited, a spark of what he usually felt whenever he saw the materialization of a concept.

Kemp scoffed, shook his head and said: “What a piece of shit.”

Brydon almost took time to punch his fat face.

The second tier was more difficult. They had to be just as exact and extra careful not to cause the whole thing to collapse. The main problem was what would serve as resistance at each end of the tier, as the perpendicular planks did the base.

Brydon could have used Kemp's cooperation at this point, but he didn't ask for it. Instead he decided to chance reducing the weight on the base. He had Elliot Janick step off. Peter and Elliot each took up an eight-foot plank. From opposite ends they lowered their planks onto the top of the first tier. Not perpendicular, but with the grain so to speak, so that the thickness of their planks provided a perpendicular resistance at each end. Brydon guided, measured and made sure they allowed just enough distance, thirteen feet, four inches between the two. He reminded Peter and Elliot that they would have to hold their positions. It seemed they would be able to, by resting the planks on their shoulders while maintaining their grips.

Now Brydon and Spider would construct the second tier upon the first by snugly butting planks and making a pair of supports of equal height in the same triangular manner as before. And topping them horizontally, apex to apex, with an eight-foot plank.

Finally, it was done.

A double-tiered scaffold ten feet high.

Without a single nail.

Not because Brydon wanted to prove anything. They simply had no way of driving nails through the boards firmly enough, and Brydon had decided it was better, at least psychologically, to know there were no nails rather than possibly depend on them too much.

As precarious as the scaffold appeared, Brydon was reasonably confident it would support the weight of a man. As a matter of fact, the more weight put upon it the stronger it would become. That was the structural system Brydon had put to use. Resistance and opposing pressures. If the scaffold collapsed it probably wouldn't be because of weight upon it but because it was not properly aligned or balanced. Well, they'd done, by eye, the best they could.

The island was six feet high. The scaffold was ten. That left seven from the top of the scaffold to the ceiling. A man could reach it easily.

Dan Mandel told Brydon: “I used to be a gymnast. Really. I was all conference for two years at Oregon State.”

Brydon hadn't even considered that anyone other than himself should climb up there and try.

“My specialty was the horse and the parallel bars,” Dan said. “I still work out now and then.”

“Mostly then?”

“It's been a while,” Dan admitted.

Brydon appreciated Dan's willingness to put himself on the line, told him that, told him: “Thanks anyway.”

“I've got better balance than you,” Dan contended.

He went to the next island, to the end of it, got a short running start, performed a couple of front flips and, for good measure, a hand stand. He even walked on his hands a ways. By no means were the flips snappy perfect, and Dan wavered some during the hand stand.

He looked to Brydon for approval.

Brydon decided anyone who wanted to do it that badly had a need to do it. And more to the point — however imperfect, Dan's demonstration had been impressive.

The idea was for Dan to get up there, use the gardening claw to remove one or more of the acoustical panels and climb up into the space above the ceiling. That accomplished, strips of clothing would be knotted together to make a rope that Dan would secure to a cross beam or whatever, so that other survivors could climb or be hoisted up.

Dan removed his shoes.

Spider squatted.

Dan stood on Spider's shoulders. Brydon helped Dan's balance while Spider came up slowly to a standing position. When Brydon let go, Dan was shaky, unsure, but soon he had the feel of it and was steady enough.

Spider moved to the scaffold, taking short steps, lifting his feet as little as possible so as not to jounce. He approached the scaffold from the side, at mid-point, got close up to it.

The top of the second tier was level with Dan's chin. He gripped the horizontal plank squarely, left and right. What he was about to do was something he'd done often in the gym — but years ago. He tensed his body, gradually took his weight off Spider's shoulders, pulled himself up by the arms to a vertical stiff-arm position. At once he transferred all his weight to his right hand. That allowed him to swing his left leg up and over, so he was then sitting astraddle the ten-inch-wide top plank.

The scaffold creaked, jammed itself against itself at every joint. It actually became a more solid structure.

Dan kept his concentration.

Brydon, watching him, now knew that he would surely have failed at it. Hell, by comparison Dan was a regular Olga Korbut.

Dan drew his legs up, placed his feet flat on the plank, one before the other, about seven inches apart. With arms out straight on each side for balance, in a single smooth motion he stood up.

It's going to work, Brydon thought.

Apparent success made Kemp decide it would be better for him if he participated. He added his weight to one of the perpendicular planks at the base.

The ceiling was now within reach for Dan. Brydon was shining the flashlight upward, and Dan saw where the acoustical panels joined, not fitted as well as they appeared from below. Dan got the gardening claw in the seam between two of the panels and dug and pried at various points along the seam. He managed to shred away the edges of the panels a little, but that was all.

“Maybe I can punch a hole through it,” he said.

To punch hard enough and keep balance would be difficult if not impossible, Brydon thought. He told Dan to keep at it with the gardening claw. “You'll find a loose spot.” Brydon was hoping for something he ordinarily detested: poor workmanship — a limit of two hits allotted to each nail and good luck if that just happened to drive it home.

Dan jangled his arms to revitalize them.

He was reaching to the ceiling again.

At that moment the whole building interfered. Not a sway or a roll or a settling, but a sudden snapping pitch, just one.

The scaffold fell apart.

Dan leaped for the spherical television fixture that was hung from the ceiling off to his left over the aisle.

He would have been better off if he'd taken the fall straight down with the scaffold, but he grabbed hold of the stem of the fixture and, simianlike, swung his feet up, locked them around the stem.

It seemed he hung there a long while, much longer than thirty seconds.

The fixture itself was heavy. Not installed to hold an extra one hundred and sixty-one pounds.

It ripped away from the ceiling.

Nothing anyone could do.

Dan hit the mud still holding on to the heavy black sphere. He and it quickly sank from sight.

21

Since then, for an hour, Brydon had said nothing.

He'd just sat there, unmoved by Gloria's sympathetic words and touches. No consolation for him that the scaffold attempt had
nearly
succeeded. And he should have foreseen, taken into account, how a failure would affect the others.

When the scaffold collapsed, so did the hope they had built, the faith in rescue they had used for spiritual support. It was as though invisible fingers had been snapped before their eyes, snapped them out of their wishful reasoning, made them see reality all the way to the evident end.

They had felt special. So many had died in this catastrophe, but they were still alive. It seemed they had been chosen to survive by whatever force determined such things, or, to take the other way of looking at it, that they had been rejected by death. As it turned out, neither was the case. They were merely the ones who would be taunted, tortured with a little additional time.

Should they pray?

Maybe, Brydon thought, they should offer supplications to this goddamned supermarket. Pardon the blasphemy, almighty check-out. He would, for minor atonement, make the sign of the dollar with his thumb on his forehead, a million million times. What tremendous values. Cash registers ringing beneath the mud, and over there was Kemp, wearing his money bags like a holy trapping.

Peter and Amy Javakian were on Island Four, lying side by side.

She said: “The air is getting close, isn't it?”

He didn't think so.

“I can't seem to get a deep breath. Are we running out of air?”

“No,” he assured her, after assessing his own easy breathing. Anyway, it was too soon for the air to be depleted in such a large place, and besides, there was the chance that some was getting in through an opening they couldn't see.

He sat up.

“Where you going?”

“Just here.” He kneeled above her head. His fingers found she was tense where her shoulders and neck joined. He massaged gently. She felt so delicate to him and yet substantial.

“I feel a tightness.” She indicated the middle of her chest.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not a regular kind of hurt, more like a knot.”

He kneaded the rounds of her shoulders. There was love in his hands.

She told him: “Know what I think it is, the knot?”

“What?”

“All the things I've left unsaid trying to get out at the same time.”

He bent over and worshipped her with his most tender kiss.

“Are you forgiving me?” she asked, slightly ironic.

“No.”

“You mean you won't?”

“Will you forgive me?”

“I can't blame you anymore.”

“That's what I mean.”

“But I was such a bitch, hassling you all the time.”

“Not all the time.”

“I never told you but when I was working in Sacramento I was awful lonely. That's the trouble with independence, it's lonely.”

He remembered how much he'd missed her when she was in Sacramento, and all the other times apart. He also recalled when he last told her that, just the day before yesterday. She hadn't wanted to hear it, as though it revealed weakness. He wondered about the difference between then and now.

“Don't let me do all the talking,” she said. “Anyway, at least say you love me.”

He decided to believe in now.

“Please?” she asked.

He said it. It wasn't difficult. It was true.

While she absorbed his words, the baby in her changed its position. It seemed settled but then it shifted again. Finally it became calm. Restless, Amy thought, but immediately she realized that probably wasn't what the baby was feeling, that was only what she thought it was feeling. Even though connected to her, symbiotic, it was already having its own experiences.

“What are you thinking?” Peter asked.

“That in a way we never could have gotten completely together anyway.”