Free Fixing the Sky by James Rodger Fleming Page A

billion— the whole world! ... It’s mine—I own it— all, all mine! ” (326–327)
    With a final burst of energy, “his heart flailing itself to death under the pitiless urge of the oxygen,” Flint runs across the tank screaming blasphemies and slams into the opposite wall, where he falls sprawling, stone dead. Tiger Waldron attempts a final dash up the ladder to reach the door at the top of the tank. “Fifty feet he made, seventy-five, ninety”—until his overtaxed heart too bursts and he falls to his death. “And still the rushing oxygen, with which they two had hoped to dominate the world, poured [in]—senseless matter, blindly avenging itself upon the rash and evil men who impiously had sought to cage and master it!” (328).
    As the plant goes up in flames, the oxygen tank explodes in a huge ball of fire. Thus the socialists foil the attempt to control the air supply of the world—and thus the world itself—and inaugurate the “Great Emancipation” of humanity from the clutches of greedy capitalists. In the words of the protagonist Armstrong, “Academic discussion becomes absurd in the face of plutocratic savagery” that seeks a “complete monopoly of the air, with an absolute suppression of all political rights.” Slavery and violent revolution are the only options.

Tales of the Rainmakers
    â€œThe Rain-Maker,” by Margaret Adelaide Wilson, a short story that appeared in Scribner ’ s Magazine in 1917, recounts the hopes and dreams of William Converse, who operates, like the real Charles Hatfield at the time (chapter 3), by mixing and evaporating chemicals on a high tower: “The chemicals are holding the storm-centre right overhead, and the evaporation is tremendous. The rain will come this time if it holds off, the wind holds off—if only it holds off.” 15

    Converse is a true believer in his rainmaking process. He came to the desert on a mission: to use his skills to atone for the death of his father, who died of thirst near this very spot some thirty years before. But Converse has much more to confront than just the desiccated sky. His wife, Linda, who thought she was marrying a prosperous entrepreneur, has become super-critical of his idealistic quest, which keeps her cooped up in a tent with a smoky stove, frying bacon and potatoes: “You’ve gone and thrown up a perfectly good contract in Grass Valley, a thousand sure, and more if your luck held, and you’ve dragged me off to this God-forsaken spot, with not a soul in thirty miles to know whether it rains or not. I want to know what you mean by it” (503–504). The high-minded Converse, like a modern-day Job, is seeking “to bring rain in the wilderness” by lifting his voice to the heavens as his father did on the night of his death. He receives no support from the vulgar, vain, and greedy Linda, though. She drives him from the tent into the night with her cutting remarks about how she no longer believes in him, and perhaps never did.
    â€œDriven by an animal’s blind desire to escape its tormentor, Converse stumble[s] down the rocky path toward the tower” (506). Devastated by her verbal assaults, he realizes that Linda has managed to shatter his faith in himself. He trips over something in the sand, and “a hot pain dart[s] through his ankle ... it must have been a snake” (507). Pitiful and increasingly delirious, he collapses in the dry waterhole where his father met his demise. Even as he nears death, his gaze is fixed on the black and brooding sky, with its great masses of clouds sinking lower until a soft hiss, a pitter-pat of rain on the sand, informs him of “his” success: “Rain!... Rain in the wilderness.... I’ve not failed, after all.... I must find father and tell him” (509)—an impossible quest for his paralyzed body but not for his triumphant spirit.
    Jingling in the