by Larry Niven
But all four companies sold you the same outfit whether you lived on a mountain or a seashore or the High Plains. Harvey grinned. Caveat emptor. The stuff was all overpriced, too. Lord, what fools these mortals be…
The traffic was very light. He’d reached Mulholland already. The San Fernando Valley spread out below him. The wind had been strong today and there was no smog.
The valley stretched on for miles. Row after row of California suburban houses, rich areas and poor areas, stucco subdevelopments and old wooden frame homes, here and there a magnificent Monterey style, ancient, the only remnants of the time when the valley had been orange groves — and every one of them built in a flood basin. The neat squares of the valley were cut through by freeways — and there weren’t many cars out there.
All over the basin, on four successive midmornings, the outbound freeways were more crowded than the inbound. Cars, trucks and rented trailers loaded with a lifetime of clutter, all moving out of the basin toward the hills beyond, or over the passes into the San Joaquin. All over the L.A. basin, stores had closed for the week, or for the month, or forever; and the remaining businesses were suffering badly from absenteeism. Hammer Fever.
There was almost no traffic on Benedict Canyon. Harvey chuckled. Here were the people coming home from work… but the ones with Hammer Fever were elsewhere. Hammer Fever had sent the mountain resort business to an all-time high, all across the country. The Treasury Department was worried: Consumer credit levels had broken all records; people were buying survival gear on credit cards. Employment up, economy up, inflation up, all because of the comet.
It’s going to make one hell of a story.
Unless the damned thing does fall. It hit him, just then: If the Hammer fell, nobody was going to give a damn about the story. There’d be no programs. No TV. Nothing.
Harvey shook his head. His smile faded as he glanced at the package in the passenger seat. His compromise with Hammer Fever: an Olympic target pistol, .22 caliber, with a sculpted wooden grip that wrapped fully around the hand, steadying and bracing the wrist. It would be inhumanly accurate, but it was nothing anyone could point to while bellowing, “Look, Old Harv’s got Hammer Fever!”
Only maybe I wasn’t so damned smart after all, Harvey thought. He began to take inventory in his head.
He had a shotgun. Backpacking gear too, but only for himself. The idea of Loretta carrying a backpack was ludicrous. He had taken her on a hike, just once. Did she still have the shoes? Probably not. She couldn’t exist at distances greater than five miles from a beauty shop.
And I love her, he reminded himself firmly. I can play rugged outdoorsman whenever I want to, and have elegance to come back to. Unwanted there came to him the memory of Maureen Jellison standing high on a split rock, her long red hair blowing in the wind. He pushed the memory very firmly back down into his mind and left it there.
So what can I do to prepare? Harvey wondered. Not a lot of time left. Supplies. Well, I can compromise. Canned goods. Good hedge against inflation anyway. They’ll get us through a disaster, if any, and we can still eat them when the damned thing’s gone past. And bottled water… No. Neither one. There’s been a run on both. I’d be lucky to find much this week, and I’ll pay a premium.
He turned into the driveway and braked sharply. Loretta had stopped the station wagon in the drive and was carrying packages into the house. He got out and started helping her, automatically, and only gradually realized that he was carrying bag after bag of frozen food. He asked, “What is this?”
Puffing slightly, Loretta set her load on the kitchen table. “Don’t be angry, Harv. I couldn’t help it. Everyone says — well, says that comet may hit us. So I got some food, just in case.”
“Frozen food.”
“Yes. They were nearly out of cans. I hope we can get it all in the freezer.” She surveyed the bags doubtfully. “I don’t know. We may have to eat Stouffer stuff for a couple of days.”
“Uh-huh.” Frozen food. Good God. Did she expect power lines to survive Hammerfall? But of course she did. He said nothing. She meant well; and while Loretta had been out getting useless supplies, Harvey Randall had been dithering and doing nothing; it came down to the same thing, except for the money, and she’d probably saved them money if the Hammer didn’t fall. Which it wouldn’t. And if it did — why, money wouldn’t be important anyway. “You done good,” Harvey said. He kissed her and went out for another load.
“Hey, Harvey.”
“Yo, Gordie,” Harvey said. He went over to the fence.
Gordie Vance held out a beer. “Brought you one,” he said. “Saw you drive up.”
“Thanks. You want to talk about something?” He hoped Gordie did. Vance hadn’t been himself the last few weeks. There was something bothering him. Harvey could sense it without knowing what it was, and without Gordie knowing that Harvey knew.
“Where you going to be next Tuesday?” Gordie asked.
Harvey shrugged. “L.A. somewhere, I guess. I’ve got crews for the national stuff.”
“But working,” Gordie said. “Sure you don’t want to come hiking? Good weather in the mountains. I get some time off next week.”
“Good Lord,” Harvey said. “I can’t—”
“Why not? You really want to stick here for the end of the world?”
“It won’t be the end of the world,” Harvey said automatically. He caught the gleam in Vance’s eye. “And anyway, if that Hammer doesn’t fall and I haven’t been busy covering it, it’s the end of my world. No can do, Gordie. God. I’d like to get away, but no.”
“Figures,” Vance said. “Loan me your kid.”
“What?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Vance said. “Suppose that thing does hit. Andy’d have a much better chance up in the hills with me. And if it doesn’t — well, you wouldn’t want him to miss a good hike just to hang around in the L.A. smog, would you?”
“You make plenty of sense,” Harvey said. “But… where’ll you be? I mean, in case something does happen, how do I find you and Andy.”
Vance’s face took on a serious look. “You know damned well what your chances of living through it are if it does hit and you’re in L.A…”
“Yeah. Slim and none,” Harvey said.
“…and besides, I’ll be just about where you’d want to go. Out of Quaking Aspen. The old Silver Knapsack area. Low enough to get out of in bad weather, high enough to be safe no matter what happens. Unless we’re under it, and that’s a random chance, isn’t it?”
“Sure. You ask Andy about this?”
“Yeah. He said he’d like to go, if it’s okay with you.”
“Who all’s going?”
“Just me and seven boys,” Gordie said. “Marie’s got charity work to do, so she can’t come…”
Harvey envied Gordie Vance just one thing: Marie Vance went on hikes. On the other hand, she wasn’t very easy to live with in town.
“…which means under scout rules the girls can’t come,” Gordie was saying. “And some of the others — well, they’re just not available. Hell, Harvey, you know the area. We’ll be fine.”
Harvey nodded. It was safe trail and a good area. “Right,” he said. He drank most of the beer. “You all right, Gordie?” he asked suddenly.
Vance’s face changed, subtly, and he was trying to hide the change. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just don’t seem yourself lately.”
“Work,” Vance said. “Too much work lately. This hike will fix everything.”
“Good,” Harvey said.
The shower felt good. He let hot water pound on his neck and he thought: Too late. The sensible, phlegmatic ones would stick it out, with the odds still hundreds, maybe thousands, to one in their favor. The panicky ones had already bought supplies and struck for the hills. There were also the sensible, cautious ones like Gordie Vance, who’d planned his hike months before, and who could say he wasn’t letting a comet spoil his vacation — but who
’d be in the hills anyway.
Then there were the ones in between. There must be tens of millions, and Harv Randall was one of them, and look at him now: scared too late, and nothing to do but wait it out. In five days the nucleus of Hamner-Brown would be past, on its way to that strange, cold region beyond the planets…
Or it wouldn’t be.
“There must be something.” Harvey said, talking to himself in the privacy of a roaring shower. “Something I can do. What do I want out of this? If that damned dirty snowball ends the blessings of civilization and the advertising industry… okay, back to the basics. Eat, sleep, fight, drink and run. Not necessarily in that order. Right?”
Right.
Harvey Randall took Friday off. He called in sick, and by sheer bad luck Mark Czescu was in and took the call.
Mark got obvious pleasure out of asking it. “Hammer Fever, Harv?”
“Knock it off.”
“Okay. Making a few plans myself. Meeting a couple of friends, getting to a nice safe place. Forgot to tell you. I won’t be around on Hot Fudge Sundae, which falls on a Tuesdae next week. Want we should swing by your place after — if, as and when?”
He got no answer, because Harvey Randall had already hung up.
Randall went to a shopping center. He made his purchases carefully, and all on credit cards, or with checks.
At a supermarket he bought six big round roasts weighing twenty-eight pounds, and half their stock of vitamins, and half their stock of spices and considerable baking soda.
At a health-food store two doors down he bought more vitamins and more bottled spices. He bought a respectable amount of salt and pepper, and three pepper grinders.
Next door, a set of good carving knives. They’d needed new kitchen knives for a year. He also bought a sharpening stone and a hand-operated knife sharpener.
There was a tool kit he’d been wanting for years, and this was the time, he decided. While he was in the hardware store he picked up other odds and ends. Plastic plumbing parts, cheap stuff, that would thread onto iron pipe. There might be a use for it one day, if; and it would be handy around the house if not. There wasn’t a camp stove to be had, but the clerk knew Harvey and obligingly fetched out four hand-pumped flashlights and two Coleman lanterns that had just come in, along with four gallons of Coleman fuel. He also gave Harvey a knowing look that Randall was coming to recognize.
At the liquor store he bought a hundred and ninety-three dollars’ worth of everything in sight: gallons of vodka and bourbon and scotch; fifths of Grand Marnier, Drambuie and other esoteric and expensive liqueurs. He loaded everything into the wagon and then went back for bottles of Perrier water. He paid by credit card — and got another knowing look from the clerk.
“I’m ready to throw one hell of a party,” he told Kipling. The dog thumped his tail on the seat. He liked to go places with Harvey, although he didn’t get the chance as often as he wanted. He watched as his master went from store to store; to drugstores for sleeping pills and more vitamins, iodine, first-aid cream, the last box of bandages; back to the grocery for dog food; back to the drugstore for soap, shampoo, toothpaste, new toothbrushes, skin cream, calamine lotion, suntan lotion…
“Where do we stop?” Harvey asked. The dog licked his face. “We have to stop somewhere. Good Lord, I never thought much about the blessings of civilization before, but there are just a lot of things I wouldn’t want to live without.”
Harvey took his purchases home, then went back down the hill to collect the TravelAII from the mechanic who usually worked on it. If Harvey hadn’t been a very old and valued customer, he’d never have got squeezed in for tuneup, oil change, grease job, and general before-trip checkup; the garage wasn’t taking on new jobs for a week, and there were dozens of cars waiting for rush jobs.
But he got the TravelAII, and filled both tanks with gas. He filled the strap-on tanks for good measure, but he had to go to three service stations to do it; there was unofficial gas rationing in the L.A. basin.
After lunch it was bloody work. Twenty-eight pounds of beef had to be sliced into thin strips — thin! The new knives helped, but his arms were cramped by dinner time, and the job still wasn’t done. “I’ll need the bottom oven for the next three days,” he told Loretta.
“It is going to hit us,” Loretta said firmly. “I knew it.”
“No. Odds are hundreds, thousands, to one against it.”
“Then why that?” she asked. It was a good question. “My kitchen is just covered with little slices of raw meat.”
“Just in case,” Harvey said. “And it keeps. Andy can use it for hikes, if we don’t.” He got back to work.
The easy way to make beef jerky is not the way the Indians used. They employed a slow fire, or a summer sun, and their quality control was poor. Far better to set a modern oven at 100° to 120° and leave the thin strips of beef in for twenty-four hours. The meat isn’t supposed to cook; it’s supposed to dry. A good strip of beef jerky is bone-dry, and hard enough to kill you if you file the end to a point. It will also keep practically forever.
Beef jerky is too limited a diet to keep a human being alive forever. The time can be greatly extended with vitamin supplements, but it’s still dull. So? If the Hammer fell, boredom would not be the major cause of death…
For bulk and carbohydrates, Harvey had grits. Nobody else in Beverly Hills, it seemed, had thought of them, and yet several of the stores carried them. He’d also found a sack of cornmeal, although there’d been no wheat or rye flour.
The fat from the beef he pounded into pemmican, mixing it with the little sugar they had around the house, with salt, with pepper, and some Worcestershire sauce for a bit of flavor. That he’d partly cook, keeping the fat that melted out for more pemmican, and to store bacon in. Bacon covered with fat and kept protected from air will keep a long time before going rancid.
So much for food, he decided. Now for water. He went out to the swimming pool. He’d started emptying it last night. It had almost drained, and he began filling it again. This time it wouldn’t get chlorine. When it was filling well he put the cover over it to keep leaves and dirt out.
Take a long time to drink all that, he thought. And there’s the contents of the hot-water heater at any given time. And… He rooted around in the garage until he found a number of old plastic bottles. Several had held bleach and still smelled of it. Perfect. He filled them without rinsing. The others he washed out carefully. Now, even if the pool went, there’d be some water.
Eat, drink. What’s next? Sleep. That one was easy. Harvey Randall never threw anything away, and he had, in addition to his regular backpacking bag, a U.S. Army Arctic sleeping bag, a summer-weight bag, bag liners, Andy’s discarded bag, and even the one he’d bought that only time Loretta had tried a hike. He took them all out and hung them on the back clothesline. Solar heat. The simplest and most efficient solar power system known to man: Hang your clothes out to dry, rather than use an electric or gas dryer. Of course not many “conservationists” did it; they were too busy preaching conservation. And I’m being unfair, and why?
Because I’ve got Hammer Fever, and my wife knows it. Loretta thinks I’ve gone crazy — and I’m scaring her, too. She’s convinced I think it’s going to hit.
And the more he did to prepare for Hammerfall, the more real it became. I’m even scaring myself, he thought. Have to remember that for the book. Hammer Fever. “Hey, hon…”
“Yes, darling?”
“Don’t look so worried. I’m doing research.”
“On what?” She brought him a beer.
“Hammer Fever. I’m going to write a book on it, once the comet’s gone past. I’ve done all the work. It might even be a best seller.”
“Oh. I’d love it if you had a book. People look up to an author.”
Which, Harv thought, they do. Sometimes. Okay. Now we can eat, drink and sleep. That leaves fight and run.
Fight. Not so good. He had no faith in his skill with guns; eith
er the shotgun or the target pistol. No gun would have given him real confidence. There was no limit to how good a weapon the other guy might have, or how skillful he might be with it, and Harvey Randall had spent the war as a correspondent, not as a soldier.
But there’s also bribe. The liquor and spices might buy my way out of trouble. And if I can hang on to them, in a few years they’ll be literally priceless, providing there’s any surplus food left for luxuries, and there usually is, for someone. For centuries the price of black pepper was fixed, all across Europe, at its own weight in gold, ounce for ounce, and not everybody’s going to have thought of hoarding pepper.
Harvey was proud of that idea.
So. That leaves running, and the TravelAll’s in as good a shape as I can get it. Bicycles will fit on top, if, as and when. And there’s Sunday to go for things I haven’t thought of.
Harvey went in, exhausted, but with a feeling of satisfaction. He wasn’t exactly ready, but at least he could pretend to be prepared. And a lot better than most. Loretta had waited up for him, and she had the Ben-Gay out. She didn’t bug him with a lot of questions; she just rubbed him down good, decided he wasn’t interested in anything more intimate and let him get to sleep.
As he dropped off he thought about how much he loved her.
June: Four
The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
Robert A. Heinlein
It was night below on Earth. Every ninety minutes Hammerlab passed through day and night; time aboard was kept by a clock, not by light and dark outside.
Cities glowed across Europe at the world’s edge, but the black face of the Atlantic covered half the sky, hiding nucleus and coma of Hamner-Brown. In the other direction stars blazed through thin mist. The comet’s tail streamed up from the horizon on all sides, doming the black Earth with luminous blues and oranges and greens streaming upward to the dome’s star-pierced dark apex. Far off to the side the half-moon floated in a matrix of shock waves, like diamond patterns in a still photograph of rocket flame. It was a sight that no one could tire of.
