Sceptical of Halloway’s ambitious scheme, Stillman wandered through the densely forested park with his rifle, killing the birds. Meanwhile Olds fitted the apartment house with its own electricity supply. A gasolenedriven generator in the entrance hail was soon pounding away, its power supply plugged into the mains. Even this small step immediately brought the building alive. Halloway moved from one apartment to the next, flicking lights on and off, working the appliances in the kitchens. Mixers chattered, toasters and refrigerators hummed, warning lights glowed in control panels. Most of the equipment, barely used during the long period of power cuts twenty-five years earlier, was still in functioning order. Television sets came on, radios emitted a ghostly tonelessness interrupted now and then by static from the remotecontrolled switching units of the tidal pumps twenty miles away along the Sound.
However, in the tape-recorders, stereo-systems and telephone answering machines Halloway at last found the noise he needed to break the silence of the city. At first, playing through these tapes of conversations recorded by husbands and wives in the last years of the Twentieth Century, Halloway was disturbed by the anxious queries and despairing messages that described the slow collapse of an entire world. The sense of gloom and psychic entropy that came through these reminders to queue for gasolene and cooking oil were the absolute opposite of the vigour and dynamism he had expected.
But the music was different. Almost every apartment seemed to be a broadcasting station of its own. Bursting with crude confidence, the music transformed these ghost-filled rooms into a battery of nightclubs. He moved from floor to floor, blowing the dust from records and cassettes, switching on each of the apartments in turn. Rock-and-roll, big band, jazz and pop boomed through the open windows at the silent park. Even Stiliman was impressed, looking up in surprise from the waist-high grass, shotgun raised hesitantly to the air as if thinking twice about trying to make an equal noise.
‘Olds, it works!’ Halloway found him resting by the generator in the lobby. ‘If we can switch on this building we can switch on the whole city! Take off that flying cap and we’ll start now.’
Reluctantly, Olds peeled off his helmet. He smiled ungrudgingly at Halloway, clearly admiring the energy and enthusiasm of this excited young man, but at the, same time he seemed to be estimating his degree of involvement with Halloway. Although surrounded by his tools and cables, ammeters and transformers, his mind was clearly miles away, in the cockpit of the glider on the roof of the car park. He looked bored by what he was doing, hardly the mechanic to the world whom Halloway needed.
Halloway noticed that Olds had found a second calculator. The two instruments lay side by side on the floor, the fragments of an extended private dialogue flicking to and fro under the Negro’s fingers. For the first time Halloway felt impatient.
‘Olds — do you want flying lessons or not? If you can’t help me I’ll find someone else.’ Enjoying his aggressive manner, he added, ‘Old Buckmaster will know someone.’
I’ll help you, Halloway.
For one flying lesson.
So Olds joined Halloway in his grand design. While Halloway drove over to the airport to collect the generators stored in the basement of the car park, Olds worked away at the apartment block, repairing the elevator and airconditioning units. With almost magical ease he moved around the building, opening fuse-boxes, trailing cable from a second generator to the motors in the elevator head. When Halloway returned he found Olds serenely raising the elevator like a moody but elegant trapeze artist.
‘Olds — it’s unbelievable…’ Halloway congratulated him, careful to add, ‘Wait until you repair the jet planes at the airport.’
Olds shook his head, watching Halloway reflectively, not taken in by him for a moment.
A little too much — even for me.
‘Nothing is — now, we’ll help Mr Buckmaster.’
Leaving a dozen stereograms to blare their music into the empty streets, Halloway and Olds set off for the mausoleum. Buckrnaster was resting in his bedroom. Flattered by Halloway’s concern, he watched with approval from his balcony as Olds manhandled a generator into the lobby and ran the cables up to his suite.
From the breakdown truck Halloway unloaded a battery of six arc-lights he had removed from the faade of the airport terminal building.
‘We’ll set them up around the square, sir,’ Halloway explained. ‘At night you’ll be able to see the whole monument floodlit.’
