by Larry Niven
“No further donations will be needed. The hour comes and is now at hand.”
It was a bright, cloudless summer day. A brisk wind blew in from the sea, and the Los Angeles basin was clear and lovely.
Bloody good thing, Tim Hamner thought.
He’d been faced with a terrible problem. The spectacular night skies could best be seen from the mountains, and Tim had stayed at his Angeles Forest observatory for most of the week before; but the best view of Hamner-Brown’s closest approach would be from space. Since he couldn’t be in space, Tim wanted the next best thing: to watch all of it on color television. It hadn’t been hard to persuade Charlie Sharps to invite him out to JPL.
But he was supposed to be there by nine-thirty, and the clear skies with their bright velvet ribbons of light had kept him up until dawn. He’d stretched out on the couch, careful not to go to bed, but a few minutes’ rest wouldn’t hurt…
Of course he’d overslept. Now, muzzy-headed and wateryeyed, Tim aimed rather than drove his Grand Prix down the Ventura Freeway toward Pasadena. Despite his late start he expected to be on time. There wasn’t much traffic.
“Fools,” Tim muttered. Hammer Fever. Thousands of Angelenos taking to the hills. Harvey Randall had told him that freeway traffic would be light all week, and he’d been right. Light traffic for — in Mark Czescu’s brilliant phrasing — Hot Fudge Sundae (which fell on a Tuesdae this week).
There was a flare of red ahead, a ripple of red lights. Traffic slowed. Tim cursed. There was a truck just ahead of him, so he couldn’t see what was fouling things up. Automatically he cut over into the right-hand lane, acing out a sweet little old lady in a green Ford. She cursed horribly as Tim cut in front of her.
“Probably wears her tennis shoes to bed,” Tim muttered. Just what was happening ahead? The traffic seemed to have stopped entirely. He saw a parking lot that stretched away before him as far as he could see. All the way to the Golden State interchange, Tim thought. “Damn.” He glanced over his shoulder. No highway patrolmen in sight. He cut onto the shoulder and drove forward, passing stopped cars, until he came to an off-ramp.
To his right was Forest Lawn Cemetery. Not the original one, fabled in song and story, but the Hollywood Hills colony. The streets were thick with traffic too. Tim turned left and went under the freeway. His face was a grim mask of worry and hate. Bad enough not to be in his observatory on Hot Fudge Sundae Tuesdae, but this! He was in beautiful downtown Burbank, and his comet was approaching perigee. “It’s not fair!” Tim shouted. Pedestrians glanced at him, then looked away, but Tim didn’t care. “Not fair!”
The air was electric with storm and disaster. Eileen Hancock felt it as ghostly fingers brushing her neck hairs. She saw it in more concrete form while driving to work. Despite the light traffic, people drove badly. They fought for dominance at the wrong times, and they reacted late, then overreacted. There were many U-Haul trailers piled high with household possessions, reminding Eileen of newsclips from the war: refugees, only no refugees in Asia or Africa ever carried birdcages, Beautyrest mattresses, and stereo sets.
One of the trailers had overturned on the eastbound Ventura, blocking all three lanes. A few cars squeezed past on the shoulder, but the others were immobile behind a tumbled mass of furniture. The light pickup that had pulled the trailer was angled across the fast lane with a VW embedded in its side.
Thank God I came up the Golden State, Eileen thought. She felt a moment of pity for anyone trying to get to Pasadena this morning, and she cursed the trailer and its owner. People on her side of the freeway slowed to gawk at it, and it took five minutes to get the hundred yards to her off-ramp into Burbank. She drove viciously on the surface streets and pulled into her parking space — with her name on it, Corrigan kept his word about that — with a feeling of relief that the Burbank police seemed to be elsewhere.
Corrigan’s was a storefront office near a supermarket, deceptively small because the warehouses were across an alley behind. The entry room was finished in blue nylon, brown Naugahyde, and chrome, and the chrome needed polishing. It always did; Eileen believed that wholesale customers ought to get the impression of a sound business able to keep its commitments, but not of opulence which might tempt them to dicker too hard on prices. The front door was already unlocked. “What ho?” Eileen called.
“Me.” Corrigan stumped out of his office. A smell of coffee followed him; Eileen had long ago installed an automatic Silex system with a timer, and she set it up last thing before she left in the evenings. It had improved Corrigan’s morning disposition wonderfully; but not this morning. “What kept you?” he demanded.
“Traffic. Wreck on the eastbound Ventura.”
“Umph.”
“You feel it too, huh?” Eileen said.
Corrigan frowned, then grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. I guess so. I was afraid you wouldn’t show up. There’s nobody in the front office, and only three back in the warehouse. Radio says half the shops in the city are missing half their people.”
“And the rest of us are scared.” She went past Corrigan to her own office. The clean glass surface of her desk shone like a mirror. She put her tape recorder down on it and took out her keys, but she didn’t open the desk yet. Instead she went back out into the reception area. “I’ll take the front office,” she said.
Corrigan shrugged. He was looking out through the big plate-glass window. “Nobody’s coming in today.”
“Sabrini’s due at ten,” Eileen said. “Forty bathrooms and kitchens, if we can get the decor he wants at the right price.”
Corrigan nodded. He didn’t seem to be listening. “What the hell’s that?” He pointed out the window.
There was a line of people, all dressed in white robes, all singing hymns. They seemed to be marching in step. Eileen looked closer and saw why. They were chained together. She shrugged. The Disney Studios were a few blocks away, and NBC not much further; they often used Burbank for city location shots. “Probably contestants for ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’ Group effort.”
“Too early,” Corrigan said.
“Then it’s Disney. Silly way to make a living.”
“Don’t see any camera trucks,” Corrigan said. He didn’t sound very interested. He watched for a few moments longer. “Heard from that rich boy friend of yours? This is his big day.”
For just a moment Eileen felt terribly lonely. “Not for awhile.” Then she began pulling out folders of color pictures and arranged them to show attractive combinations of accessories: the bathroom your clients dream of.
Alameda was fairly speedy. Tim Hamner tried to remember the connections to the arroyo north of Pasadena. There were high hills just in front of him, the Verdugo Hills that cut through the San Fernando Valley and divided the foothill cities from Burbank. He knew there was a new freeway in there somewhere, but he didn’t know how to find it.
“Goddammit!” he shouted. Months to prepare, months waiting for his comet, and now it was approaching at fifty miles a second and he was driving past the Walt Disney Studios. Part of his mind told him that was funny, but Tim didn’t appreciate the humor in the situation.
Take Alameda to the Golden State, Tim thought. If that’s moving, I’ll get on it and back onto the Ventura. If it isn’t, I’ll just go on surface streets all the way and the hell with tickets… and what was that ahead?
Not just cars jammed across an intersection, motionless under a string of green lights. This was more, cars jockeying for room, cars pulling into driveways and through them to the alley beyond. More cars, stopped, and people on foot moving among the swarm. There was just time to get over into the right-hand lane. Tim turned hard into a parking lot, hoping to follow the moving cars into an alley.
Dead end! He was in a large parking lot, and the way was completely blocked by a delivery truck. Tim braked viciously and slammed the shift lever into PARK. Carefully he turned the key off. Then he pounded the dash and swore, using words he hadn’t remembered for years. There was no place to
go; more cars had come in behind him. The lot was jammed.
I’m in trouble, Tim thought. He abandoned the car to walk toward Alameda. TV store, he thought. If they don’t have the comet on, I’ll buy a set on the spot.
Alameda was jammed with cars. Bumper-to-bumper, and none of them moving at all. And they were screaming up ahead, at the intersection where the focus of action seemed to be. Robbery? A sniper? Tim wanted no part of that. But no, those were screams of rage, not fear. And the intersection swarmed with blue-uniformed policemen. There was something else, too. White robes? Someone in a white robe was coming toward him now. Hamner tried to avoid him, but the man planted himself in Tim’s path.
It wasn’t much of a costume, that robe; probably a bedsheet, and there was certainly conventional clothing under it. The fuzzy-bearded young man was smiling, but insistent. “Sir! Pray! Pray for the safe passage of Lucifer’s Hammer! There is so little time!”
“I know that,” Tim said. He tried to dodge past, but the man moved with him.
“Pray! The Wrath of God is upon us. Yea, the hour is approaching and is now here, but God will spare the city for ten just men. Repent and be saved, and save our city.”
“How many of you are there?” Tim demanded.
“There are a hundred Wardens,” the man said.
“That’s more than ten. Now let me go.”
“But you don’t understand — we will save the city, we Wardens. We have been praying for months. We have promised God the repentance of thousands.” The intense brown eyes stared into Hamner’s. Then recognition came. “You’re him! You’re Timothy Hamner! I saw you on TV. Pray, brother. Join us in prayer, and the world will know!”
“It sure will. NBC is just down the road.” Tim frowned. There were two Burbank policemen coming up behind the Comet Warden, and they weren’t smiling at all.
“Is this man annoying you, sir?” the larger cop asked.
“Yes,” Tim said.
The policeman smiled. “Gotcha!” He took the robed man by the arm. “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up—”
“I know all that crap,” the Warden said. “Look at him! He’s the man who invented the comet!”
“Nobody invents a comet, you idiot,” Tim said. “Officer, do you know where there’s a TV store? I want to see the comet pictures from space.”
“Down that way. Could we have your name and address—”
Tim took out a card and thrust it at the policeman. Then he scurried toward the intersection beyond.
Eileen had an excellent view through the storefront window. She sat with Joe Corrigan and sipped coffee; it was obvious that their architect wasn’t going to get through that traffic jam. They brought over big chrome chairs and the glass coffee table, making a picnic out of watching a lot of angry people.
The cause of it all was diagonally across from them. Twenty or thirty men and women in white robes — not all of them bedsheets — had chained themselves across Alameda from lamppost to telephone pole. They sang hymns. The quality of singing had been pretty good for awhile, but the police soon led away their white-bearded leader, and now they were discordant.
On either side of the human chain an infinite variety of cars were packed like sardines. Old Ford station wagons, for grocery shopping; chauffeured Mercedeses — stars or studio executives; campers, pickup trucks, new Japanese imports, Chevies and Plymouth Dusters, all packed together, and all immobile. A few drivers were still trying to get out, but most had given up. A horde of robed preachers moved through the matrix of cars. They stopped to speak with each driver, and they preached. Some of the drivers were screaming at them. A few listened. One or two even got out and knelt in prayer.
“Some show, eh?” Corrigan said. “Why the hell didn’t they pick some place else?”
“With NBC practically next door? If the comet goes past without smashing anything, they’ll take credit for saving the world. Haven’t we seen a few of those nuts on TV for years?”
Corrigan nodded. “Looks like they hit the big time with this one. Here come the TV cameras.”
The preachers redoubled their efforts when they saw the cameramen. The hymn stopped for a moment, then began again: “Nearer My God to Thee.” The preachers had to talk fast, and sometimes they broke off in midspeech to avoid the police. Blue uniforms chased white robes through the honking cars and screaming drivers.
“A day to remember,” Corrigan said.
“They may just have to pave the whole thing over.”
“Yep.” For a fact that traffic jam was going to be there a long time. Too many cars had been abandoned. He could see more civilians darting among the cars, flowered sports shirts and gray flannel suits among the white robes and blue uniforms. And coveralled drivers. Many were bent on murder. More had locked their cars and gone looking for a coffee shop. The supermarket next door was doing a land-office business in Coors beer. Even so, a fair number were clustered oh the sidewalks, praying.
Two policemen came into the store. Eileen and Corrigan greeted them. Both had regular beats in the neighborhood, and the younger, Eric Larsen, often joined Eileen for coffee at the local Orange Julius. He reminded Eileen of her younger brother.
“Got any bolt cutters?” Investigator Harris was all business. “Big heavy jobs.”
“Think so,” Corrigan said. He lifted a phone and pushed a button. He waited. Nothing happened. “Goddam warehouse crew’s out watching the show. I’ll get them.” He went back through the office.
“No keys?” Eileen asked.
“No.” Larsen smiled at her. “They chucked them before they came here.” Then he shook his head sadly. “If we don’t get those crazies out of here pretty soon, there’ll be a riot. No way to protect them.”
The other cop snorted. “You can tell Joe to take his time for all I care,” he said. “They’re stupid. Sometimes I think the stupid will inherit the Earth.”
“Sure.” Eric Larsen stood at the window watching the Wardens. Idly he whistled “Onward Christian Soldiers” through his teeth.
Eileen giggled. “What are you thinking about, Eric?”
“Huh?” He looked sheepish.
“The Professor’s writing a movie script,” Harris said.
Eric shrugged. “TV. Imagine James Garner marooned out there. He’s looking for a killer. One of the drivers is out to commit murder. He does it, pulls out a sheet and a chain, and we come take him away before Garner can find him…”
“Jesus,” Harris said.
“I thought it was pretty good,” Eileen said. “Who does he kill?”
“Uh, actually, you.”
“Oh.”
“I saw enough pretty girls killed last night to last me twenty years,” Harris muttered. For a moment Eric looked like he’d been rabbit-punched.
Joe Corrigan came back with four pairs of long-handled bolt cutters. The policemen thanked him. Harris scribbled his name and badge number on a receipt, and handed two pairs to Eric Larsen. They carried them out to distribute to the other policemen, and blue uniforms moved along the chain, cutting the white robes free, then chaining them again with handcuffs. They jostled the Wardens toward the sidewalk. Few of the robed ones fought, but a good many went limp.
Corrigan looked up in surprise. “What was… ?”
“Huh?” Eileen looked vaguely around the office.
“I don’t know.” He frowned, trying to remember, but it had been too vague. As if clouds had parted to reveal the sun for a few moments, then closed again. But there were no clouds. It was a bright, cloudless summer day.
It was a nice house, well laid out, with bedrooms sprawling out like an arm, away from the huge central living room. Alim Nassor had always wanted a fireplace. He could imagine parties here, brothers and sisters splashing in the swimming pool, roar of conversation, smell of pot thick enough to get you high all by itself, a van delivering a great cartwheel of a pizza… Someday he would own such a house. He was robbing this one.
Harold and Hannib
al were scooping silverware into a sheet. Gay was searching for the safe, in his own peculiar fashion: Stand in the middle of a room, look slowly around… then look behind paintings, or pull up rug… move to another room, stand in the middle and look around, and open closets… until he found the safe sunk in concrete beneath the rug in a hall closet. He pulled the drill out of his case and said, “Plug this in.”
Alim did it. Even he followed orders when the need came. “If we don’t find nothing this time, no more safes,” he ordered.
Gay nodded. They’d opened four safes in four houses and found nothing. It looked like everyone in Bel Air had stashed their jewels in banks or taken them along.
Alim returned to the living room to look through the gauze curtains. It was a bright, cloudless summer day, and dead quiet, with nobody in sight. Half the families had fled to the hills, and the rest of the men were doing whatever they did to have houses like this, and anyone who stayed home must be inside watching TV to see if they’d made a mistake. It was people like this who were afraid of the comet. People like Alim, or Alim’s mother with her job scrubbing floors and her ruined knees, or even the storekeeper he’d shot — people with something real to be afraid of didn’t worry about no damn light in the sky.
So: The street was empty. No sweat, and the pickings were good. Fuck the jewels. There was silver, paintings, TV sets from tiny to tremendous, two or three or four to a house. Under the tarps in the truck bed they had a home computer and a big telescope — strange things, hard to fence — and a dozen typewriters. Generally they’d pick up some guns, too, but not this trip. The guns had gone with the running honkies.
“Shit! Hey, brothers—”
Alim went, fast. He and Hannibal almost jammed in the doorway. Gay had the safe open and was hauling out plastic sandwich bags. It was stuff that couldn’t be stashed in no bank vault. Three bags of good golden weed; oh, Mr. White, do your neighbors know about this? Smaller amounts of heavier stuff: coke, and dark hashish, and a small bottle of what might be hash oil, but you’d be crazy to try it without seeing a label. Gay and Harold and Hannibal whooped and hollered. Gay fished around and found papers; he started to roll a joint.
