Overload

Knowing that the practice was growing as increasing numbers of people shared the discovery, Nim wondered how long it would be before it affected TV network revenues. Perhaps it had already. In a way, Nim thought, the TV networks and stations were going through the same shoal waters power companies like GSP & L had already navigated. The TV people had abused their public privileges by flooding the airwaves with a vulgar excess of advertising and low-grade programming. Now, Betamax and comparable systems were giving the public a chance to strike back by being selective, and eliminating advertising from their viewing. In time, perhaps, the development would cause those in charge of TV to grasp the need for public responsibility.

The two-hour play on the borrowed cassette was Mary White, a tragic, moving story about the family of a loved teenager who had died. Perhaps because he had seldom been more aware of his own family, yet realized how little time was left in which it was likely to remain a unit, Nim was glad the lights were low, his sadness and his tears unobserved by the other three.

2

On a dark, lonely hill above the suburban community of Millfield, Georgos Winslow Archambault crawled on his belly toward a chain link fence protecting a GSP&L substation. The precaution-against being observed-was probably unneeded, he reasoned; the substation was unattended, also there was no moon tonight and the nearest main road, which carried traffic over the sparsely inhabited hill, was half a mile away. But recently, Golden State Piss & Lickspittle had hired more security pigs and set up mobile night patrols which varied their operating hours and routes-clearly so they would not create a pattern. So it made sense to be cagey, even though crawling while carrying tools and explosives was awkward and uncomfortable.

Georgos shivered. The October night was cold and a strong wind knifed around crags and boulders of the rocky hill, making him wish he had worn two sweaters beneath his dark blue denim jumpsuit instead of one.

Glancing back the way he had come, he saw that his woman, Yvette, was just a few yards behind, and keeping up. It was important that she did.

For one thing she had the wire and detonators; for another, Georgos was running behind schedule due to a traffic delay in getting out here from the city, a journey of twenty miles. Now he wanted to make up time because tonight's operation intervened the destruction of three substations by the entire Friends of Freedom force. At one of the other sites Ute and Felix were working together; at the third Wayde was operating alone.

Their plan called for all three explosions to occur simultaneously.

When he reached the fence, Georgos detached a pair of heavy wire shears from his belt and began cutting. All be Deeded was a small hole, close to the ground. Then if a patrol came around, after the two of them had gone and before the explosion, the cut fence might escape attention.

While Georgos worked he could see the widespread, shimmering lights of Millfield below him. Well, all of them would be out soon; so would a lot of others further south. He knew about Millfield and the other townships nearby. They were bourgeois communities, peopled mainly by commuters-more capitalists and lackeys!-and he was glad to be causing them trouble.

The hole in the fence was almost complete. In a minute or so Georgos and Yvette could wiggle through. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Time was tight! Once inside, they would have to work fast.

The targets of tonight's triple strike had been chosen carefully. There used to be a time when Friends of Freedom bombed transmission towers, toppling two or three at once in an attempt to knock out service over a wide area. But not anymore, Georgos and others had discovered that when towers were toppled, power companies rerouted their power, so that service was restored quickly, often within minutes. Also, fallen towers were immediately replaced by temporary poles, so even that power highway was soon in use again.

Large substations, though, were something else. They were vulnerable, critical installations and could take weeks to repair or replace completely.

The damage which would be done tonight, if all went well, would cause a widespread blackout, extending far beyond Millfield, and it could be days, perhaps a lot longer, before everything was switched back on.

Meanwhile the disruption would be tremendous, the cost enormous. Georgos gloated at the thought. Maybe, after this, more people would take the Friends of Freedom seriously.

Georgos thought: His small but glorious army had learned a lot since their early attacks on the despicable enemy. Nowadays, well ahead of any operation, they studied GSP&L's layout and working methods, seeking areas of vulnerability, situations where the greatest havoc could be caused.

This aspect had been helped recently by an ex-GSP & L engineer, dismissed for stealing, who now nursed a hatred of the company. While not an active member of Friends of Freedom, the former employee had been bought with some of the fresh money supplied by Birdsong. Other money from the same source had been used to buy more and better explosives.

Birdsong had let slip one day where the cash was coming from-the Sequoia Club, which believed it was financing p & lfp. It greatly aniused Georgos that a fat-cat, establishment outfit was unknowingly footing the bill for revolution. In a way it was a pity that the dim-witted Sequoia crowd would never find out.

Click! The last strand of wire was severed and the cut portion of the fence fell away. Georgos pushed it inside the substation enclosure so it would be less noticeable, then followed it with three packets of plastic explosive, after which he wriggled through himself.

Yvette was still close behind. Her hand had healed-after a fashion -since her loss of two fingers when a blasting cap exploded prematurely a couple of months ago. The stumps of the fingers were ugly and not sewn up neatly as would have happened if a surgeon had attended her. But Georgos had done his best to keep the wounds clean and, largely through luck, infection was avoided. Also avoided were the dangerous questions certain to have been asked at a hospital or doctor's office.

Damn! His jumpsuit had caught on an end of wire. Georgos heard the denim rip and felt a sharp pain as the wire penetrated his undershorts and sliced into his thigh. In being cautious, he had made the aperture too small. He reached back, felt for the wire and managed to dislodge it, then continued through the fence with no further trouble. Yvette, who was smaller, followed without difficulty.

No talk was necessary. They had practiced beforehand and knew exactly what to do. Cautiously, Georgos taped plastic explosive to the three large transformers the substation housed. Yvette handed him detonators and played out wire to be connected to timing devices.

Ten minutes later all three charges were in place. Yvette passed him, one by one, the clockwork fuse mechanisms with attached batteries which he had carefully assembled yesterday for himself and the other two teams. Handling each one gingerly, making sure there would be no premature explosion, Georgos connected the wires from the detonators.

Again he checked his watch. By working fast they had made up some, but not all, of the lost time.

Ile three explosions would occur, more or less together, eleven minutes from now. It barely gave Georgos and his woman time to make it back down the bill to where their car was hidden, off the road, in a stand of trees. But if they hurried-ran most of the way-they would be safely en route to the city before a response to the massive power failure could be mounted. He commanded Yvette, "Get going! Move it!" This time she preceded him through the fence.

It was while Georgos himself was crawling out that he heard the sound of a car, not far away and ascending the hill. He paused to listen.

Unmistakably it was using the private gravel road, owned by GSP & L, which provided access to the substation.

A security patrol! It had to be. This late at night no one else would come here. As Georgos finished scrambling through and stood upright, he could see the reflection of headlights on some trees below. The road was winding, which explained why the car was not yet in sight.

Yvette had beard and seen too. As she started to say something, be motioned her to silence and snarled, "Over here!" He began running toward the gravel road, then across it to a clump of bushes on the far side. In the bushes he dropped and flattened himself, Yvette beside him doing the same. He sensed her trembling. He was reminded of what he forgot sometimes-that she was little more than a child in many ways; also, she had never been quite the same, despite her devotion to him, since the incident of the hand.

Now the headlights were in sight as the car rounded the last bend before the substation. It was approaching slowly. Probably the driver was being careful because the service road had no reflective markers and the edges were hard to see. As the headlights came nearer, the entire area was illuminated brightly. Georgos pressed down, raising his bead only slightly. Their chances of remaining concealed, he calculated, were good.