by Larry Niven
Mark took the shovel. Joanna took the shotgun. Mark shoveled steadily. Squish. Plop. Harvey tried to think of something to say, but there weren’t any words. Finally, “Thanks.”
“Yeah. You want to read any words?”
“I ought to,” Harvey said. He started toward the house, but he couldn’t go in.
“Here. This was in the bedroom,” Joanna said. She took a small book out of her pocket.
It was Andy’s confirmation prayer book; Loretta must have included that in her survival kit. She would have. Harvey opened it to the prayers for the dead. Rain soaked the page before he could read it, but he found a line, half read and half remembered. “Eternal rest grant her, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon her.” He couldn’t see any more. After a long time Mark and Joanna led Harvey into the house.
They sat at the kitchen table. “We don’t have long,” Mark said. “I think we saw your raiders.”
“They killed Frank Stoner,” Joanna added.
“Who?” Harvey demanded. “What did they look like? Can we track the bastards?”
“Tell you later,” Mark said. “First we get packed up and moving.”
“You’ll tell me now.”
“No.”
Joanna had rested the shotgun against the table. Harvey picked it up, calmly, and checked the loads. He pulled one outside hammer back. His firearms training was excellent: He didn’t point it at anyone. “I want to know,” Harvey Randall said.
“They were bikers,” Joanna said quickly. “Half a dozen of them riding escort with a big blue van. We saw them turn out of Fox Lane.”
“Those bastards,” Harvey said. “I know where they live. Short side street, half a mile from here. The street’s half a block long. They repainted the sign to read ‘Snow Mountain.’ ” He stood.
“They won’t be there now,” Mark said. “They went north, toward Mulholland.”
“Frank and Mark and I,” Joanna said. “We had our bikes.”
“They were coming out of your street,” Mark said. “I wanted to know what was happening in there. I stopped and held up my hand, you know, the way bikers stop each other for a friendly talk. And one of the sons of bitches blasted at me with a shotgun!”
“And they missed Mark and hit Frank,” Joanna said. “Frank went right over the edge. If the shotgun didn’t kill him, the fall did. The bikers kept on going. We didn’t know what to do, so we came here as fast as we could.”
“Jesus,” Harvey said. “I got here half an hour before you. They were here, somewhere. Right near here, while I was… while…”
“Yeah,” Joanna said. “We’ll know them if we see them again. Big bikes. Chopped, but not much. And murals on the van. We’ll know them.”
“Never saw that gang before,” Mark added. “No way we can catch up with them just now. Harv, we can’t stay here. The L.A. basin’s flooded, everybody down there is dead from the tsunami, but there must be a million people in the hills around here, and there sure ain’t enough for a million people to eat. There’s got to be a better place to go.”
“Frank wanted to head for the Mojave,” Joanna said. “But Mark thought we ought to look in on you…”
Harvey said nothing. He put the shotgun down and stared at the wall. They were right. He couldn’t catch the bike crew, not now, and he was very tired.
“They leave anything at all?” Mark demanded.
Harvey didn’t answer.
“We’ll do a search anyway,” Mark said. “Jo, you take the house. I’ll go the rounds outside, garage, everything. Only, we can’t leave the TravelAII by itself. Come on, Harv.” He took Harvey’s arm and pulled him to his feet. Mark was surprisingly strong. Harvey made no resistance. Mark led him to the TravelAII and put him in the passenger seat. He put the Olympic target pistol in Harvey’s lap. Then he locked all the doors, leaving Harvey sitting inside, still staring at the rain.
“He going to be all right?” Joanna asked.
“Don’t know. But he’s ours,” Mark said. “Come on, let’s see what we can find.”
Mark found Harvey’s Chlorox bottles of water in the garage. There were other things. Sleeping bags, wet, but serviceable; evidently the bikers had their own and didn’t bother. Stupid, Mark thought. Harv’s Army Arctic was better than any the bikers would have.
After awhile he brought his salvage to the TravelAII and opened the back. Then he got the small dirt bikes he and Joanna had ridden and brought them around. He started to ask Harvey to help, but instead found a heavy two-by-eight and used it as a ramp. With Joanna’s help he wrestled one of the bikes into the back, and piled stuff in on top of it.
“Harv, where’s Andy?” Mark said finally.
“Safe. Up in the mountains. With Gordie Vance… Marie!” Harvey shouted. He jumped out of the car and ran toward Gordie’s house. Then he stopped. The front door was open. Harvey stood there, afraid to go in. What if… what if they’d been in Gordie’s place while Harvey was mooning over Loretta? Jesus, what a goddam useless bastard I am…
Mark went into the Vance house. He came out a few minutes later. “Looted. But nobody home. No blood. Nothing.” He went to the garage and tried to open the door. It came open easily; the lock was broken. When it swung up, the garage was empty. “Harv, what kind of car did your buddy have?”
“Caddy,” Harvey said.
“Then she left, ’cause there’s no car here and no Caddy with the bikers. You get back and watch the TravelAll. There’s more of your stuff we’ll need. Or come help carry.”
“In a minute.” Harvey went back to the car and stood, thinking. Where would Marie Vance go? She was his responsibility; Gordie was taking care of Harvey’s boy, Gordie’s wife would be Harvey’s lookout. Only Harvey didn’t have a clue as to where Marie might be—
Yes he did. Los Angeles Country Club. Governor’s fundraising thingy. Crippled children. Marie was on the board. She’d have been there for Hammerfall.
And if she hadn’t got back here by now, she wasn’t coming back. Marie wasn’t Harvey’s responsibility anymore.
Mark came out of the house, and Harvey was finally startled. Mark was carrying something… OhmyGod. Carrying five thousand dollars’ worth of Steuben crystal whale, Loretta’s wedding present from her family. A couple of years ago Loretta had thrown Mark out of the house for picking it up.
Mark got the whale to the van without dropping it. He wrapped it in sheets and pillowcases and spare blankets.
“What’s all that for?” Harvey asked. He pointed to the whale, and the skin cream, and Kleenex, and the remains of Loretta’s survival kit. And other things.
“Trade goods,” Mark said. “Your paintings. Some luxury items. If we find something better, we dump the lot, but we might as well be carrying something. Jesus, Harv, I’m glad your head’s working again. We’re about loaded up. Want to get in, or do you want to take another look through the house?”
“I can’t go back in there—”
“Right. Okay.” He raised his voice. “Jo, let’s move it.”
“Right.” She appeared from out of a hedge, soaking wet, still holding the shotgun.
“You up to driving, Harv?” Mark demanded. “It’s a big car for Joanna to handle.”
“I can drive.”
“Fine. I’ll be outrider with the bike. Give me the pistol, and Jo keeps the shotgun. One thing, Harv. Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Harvey said. “North. I’ll think of something once we get started.”
“Right.”
The motorcycle could hardly be heard over the roar of the thunder. They drove out, north toward Mulholland, along the same route the bikers had taken, and Harvey kept hoping…
It rained. Dan Forrester saw his path in split-second flashes when the frenetic wipers disturbed the flood of water across his windshield. The rain ate the light of his headlamps before the light could reach the road. Continuous lightning gave more light, but the rain scattered it into flashing white murk.
Rivers ran across the twisting mountain road. The car plowed through them.
In the valleys it must be… well, he would learn soon enough. There were preparations he must make first.
Charlie Sharps would know sooner.
Dan worried for Charlie. Charlie’s chances weren’t poor, but he should not have been traveling with that loaded station wagon. It was too obviously worth stealing. But Masterson might have packed guns, too.
Even if they reached the ranch, would Senator Jellison let them in? Ranch country, high above the floods. If they accepted everyone who came, their food would be gone in a day, their livestock the next. They might let Charlie Sharps in, alone. They probably would not require the services of Dan Forrester, Ph.D., ax-astrophysicist. Who would?
Dan was surprised to find that he’d driven home. He zapped the garage door and it opened. Huh! He still had electricity. That wouldn’t last. He left the door open. Inside, he turned on some lights, then set out a great many candles. He lit two.
The house was small. There was one big room, and the walls of that room were bookshelves, floor to ceiling. Dan’s dining table was piled high with his equipment. He had bought his fair share of freeze-dried foods while they existed, but Dan had thought further than that. He had carried home far more than his share of Ziploc Bags and salad-size Baggies, insect spray and mothballs. The table was full. He set to work on the floor.
He whistled as he worked. Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. Presently he got up to put on some gloves. He came back with a fan and set it blowing past his ears from behind. That ought to keep the insecticide off his hands and out of his lungs.
When the pile on the floor got too big, he moved. And when the second pile was as high as the first, he stood up carefully. His joints were stiff. His feet hurt. He moved his legs to build circulation. He started coffee in the kitchen. The radio gave him nothing but static, so he started a stack of records going. There was now room at the kitchen table. He resumed work there.
The two piles merged into one.
The lights went out, the Beatles’ voices deepened and slowed and stopped. Dan was suddenly immersed in darkness and sounds he’d been ignoring: rolling thunder, the scream of wind and the roar of rain attacking the house. Water had begun to drip from a corner of the ceiling.
He got coffee in the kitchen, then moved around the library lighting candles. Hours had passed. The forgotten coffee had already been heated too long. Four-fifths of the shelves were still full, but most of the right books were in bags.
Dan walked along the bookshelves. Weariness reinforced his deep melancholy. He had lived in this house for twelve years, but it was twice that long since he’d read Alice in Wonderland and The Water Babies and Gulliver’s Travels. These books would rot in an abandoned house: Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat’s Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon’s Day; The Red Right Hand, The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife, Rosemary’s Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He’d packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization. Even Dole’s Habitable Planets for Man…
Dammit, no! Dan tossed Habitable Planets for Man on the table. Fat chance that the next incarnation of NASA would need it before it turned to dust, but so what? He added more: Future Shock; Cults of Unreason; Dante’s Inferno; Tau Zero… stop. Fifteen minutes later he had finished. There were no more bags.
He drank coffee that was still warm, and forced himself to rest before he tackled the heavy work. His watch said it was ten at night. He couldn’t tell.
He wheeled a wheelbarrow in from the garage. It was brand-new, the labels still on it. He resisted the temptation to overload it. He donned raincoat, boots, hat. He wheeled the books out through the garage.
Tujunga’s modern sewage system was relatively new. The territory was dotted with abandoned septic tanks, and one of these was behind Dan Forrester’s house. It was uphill. You can’t have everything.
The wind screamed. The rain tasted both salty and gritty. The lightning guided him, but badly. Dan wrestled the wheelbarrow uphill, looking for the septic tank. He finally found it, full of rain because he’d removed the lid yesterday evening.
The books went in in handfuls. He pushed them into the aged sewage with a plumber’s helper, gently. Before he left he broke open an emergency flare and left it on the upended lid.
He made his second trip in a bathing suit. The warm lashing rain was less unpleasant than soaked and sticky clothes. The third trip he wore the hat. He almost fainted coming back. That wouldn’t do. He’d better have a rest. He took off the wet suit and stretched out on the couch, pulled a blanket over himself… and fell deeply asleep.
He woke in a pandemonium of thunder and wind and rain. He was horribly stiff. He got to his feet an inch at a time, and kept moving toward the kitchen, talking encouragement to himself. Breakfast first, then back to work. His watch had stopped. He didn’t know if it was day or night.
Fill the wheelbarrow half full, no more. Wheel it through slippery mud, uphill. Next trip, remember to take another flare. Dump the books by armfuls, then push them down into the old sewage. Unlikely that anyone, moron or genius, would look for such a treasure here, even if he knew it existed. The smell hardly bothered him; but these hurricane winds couldn’t last forever, and then the trove would be doubly safe. Back for another load…
Once he slipped, and slid a fair distance downhill through the mud with the empty wheelbarrow tugging him along. He crossed just enough sharp rocks to dissuade him from trying it again.
Then: last load. Finished. He wrestled with the lid, rested, tried again. He’d had a hell of a time getting it off, and he had a hell of a time getting it back on. Then downhill with the empty barrow. In a day his tracks would be flooded away. He thought of burying the last evidence of his project — the wheelbarrow — but just the thought of all that work made him hurt all over.
He dried himself with all the towels in the bathroom. Why not? He used the same towels to dry the rain gear. He got more from the linen closet. He stuffed hand towels into the boots before he put them in the car, with the raincoat and the hat and more dry towels. The old house leaked now; he wondered if the old car would too. Ultimately it wouldn’t matter. Ultimately he would have to abandon the car and set out on foot, in the rain, carrying a backpack for the first time in his life. He’d be safe, or dead, long before this rain began to think about stopping.
Into the car went the new backpack he’d packed day before yesterday, including a hypo and some insulin. There were two more such medical packages elsewhere in the car, because someone might steal the whole backpack. Or someone might steal the hypos… but surely they would leave him one.
The car was an ancient heap, and nothing in it would attract thieves. He’d included a few items to buy his life, if and when it could be bought. There was one really valuable item; it would look like trash to the average looter, but it might get him to safety.
Daniel Forrester, Ph.D., was a middle-aged man with no useful profession. His doctorate would never again be worth as much as a cup of coffee. His hands were soft, he weighed too much, he was a diabetic. Friends had told him that he often underestimated his own worth; well, that was bad too, because it restricted his bargaining ability. He knew how to make insulin. It took a laboratory and the killing of one sheep per month.
Yesterday Dan Forrester had become an expensive luxury.
What was in his backpack was something else again. It was a book, wrapped like the others: Volume Two of The Way Things Work. Volume One was in the septic tank.
Harvey Randall saw the white Cadillac coming toward him. For a moment it didn’t register. Then he jammed on the brakes so hard that Joanna was thrown forward against the restraining belts. The shotgun clattered hard against the dash. “You go
ne crazy?” she yelled, but Harvey had already opened the door and was running out into the street.
He waved his arms frantically. God! She had to see him! “Marie!” he shouted.
The Cadillac slowed, halted. Harvey ran up to it.
Incredibly, Marie Vance was unruffled. She wore a Gernreich original, a simple low-cut summer dress of white linen with a golden thread woven into it. Gold earrings and a small diamond pendant on a gold chain set it off perfectly. Her dark hair was coming out of place from the damp, but it wasn’t long hair and had never been fully curled; even now she looked as if she’d merely been at the Country Club all day and was going home to change into evening clothes.
Harvey looked at her in astonishment. She eyed him calmly. His dislike of her boiled up inside him. He wanted to scream at her, to ruffle her. Didn’t she realize… ?
“How did you get here?” he demanded.
When she answered, he was ashamed of himself. Marie Vance spoke calmly; too calmly. There was an undertone of unnatural effort in her voice. “I came up the ridge. There were cars in the way, but some men moved them. I went — Why do you want to know how I got here, Harvey?”
He laughed, at himself, at the world, and she was frightened at his laughter. He could see the fear come into her eyes.
Mark drove up on the motorcycle. He looked at the Cadillac, then at Marie. He didn’t whistle. “Your neighbor?” he asked.
“Yes. Marie, you’ll have to come with us. You can’t stay at your place—”
“I’ve no intention of staying at my place,” she said. “I’m going to find my son. And Gordie,” she added, after a tiny pause. She looked down at her gold-colored sandals. “When I get some clothes… Harvey, where is… ?” Before she could finish she saw the pain, then the numbness in Harvey’s eyes. “Loretta?” she said, her voice low and wondering.
