by Larry Niven
The room was still for a moment. Everyone turned to look at the Reverend Thomas Varley. Most of them attended his community church, had called him to their homes to sit with them when relatives died, sent their children with him on picnics and camping trips. Tom Varley was one of them, bred in the valley and lived there all his life except for the years at college in San Francisco. He stood tall, a bit thinner since his sixtieth birthday a year before, but strong enough to help get a neighbor’s cow out of a ditch.
George Christopher faced him defiantly. “Brother Varley, we just can’t do it! Some of us are likely to starve this winter. There’s just not enough here.”
“Then why don’t you send some away?” Reverend Varley asked.
“It might come to that,” George muttered. His voice rose. “I’ve seen it, I tell you. People with not enough to eat, not even enough strength to come get chow when it’s offered. Brother Varley, you want us to wait until we got no more choices than the Donner party had? If we send people away now, they might find someplace they can make it. If we take them in, we’ll all be looking next winter. It’s that simple.”
“Tell ’em, George,” someone shouted from the far end of the meeting room.
George looked around at the sea of faces. They were not hostile. Most were filled with shame — fear and shame. George thought that would be the way he’d look to them, too. He went on doggedly. “We do something, and we do it right now, or I’ll be damned if I’m going to cooperate! I’ll take everything I have, all the stuff I brought up from Porterville today, too, and go home, and I can damned well shoot anybody who comes onto my place.”
There were more murmurs. Reverend Varley tried to speak, but he was shouted down. “Damned right!” “We’re with you, George.”
Jellison’s voice cut through. “I didn’t say we shouldn’t try to put up a roadblock. We were discussing practical difficulties.” Arthur Jellison couldn’t look the clergyman in the face.
“Good. Then we do it,” George Christopher said. “Ray, you stay here and tell me what happens in this meeting. Carl, Jake, rest of you, come with me. There’ll be another thousand people here by morning if we don’t stop them.”
And besides, Jellison thought, it will be easier at night when you can’t see their faces. Maybe by morning you’ll be used to it.
And if you truly get used to sending people off to die, will anyone want to know you?
The worst of it was, George Christopher was right; but that didn’t make it any easier. “I’ll have some of my people come with you, George. And we’ll have a relief crew out in the morning.”
“Good.” Christopher went to the door. On the way he stopped for a moment to smile at Maureen. “Good-night, Melisande,” he said.
One kerosene lamp burned in the living room of the Jellison house. Arthur Jellison sprawled in an easy chair, shoes off, shirt partly unbuttoned. “Al, leave those lists until tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Can I get you anything?” Al Hardy glanced at his watch: 2 A.M.
“No. Maureen can take care of me. Good-night.”
Hardy pointedly looked at his watch again. “Getting late, Senator. And you’re supposed to be up in the morning…”
“I’ll turn in shortly. Good-night.” This time the dismissal was pointed. Jellison watched his assistant leave, noted Hardy’s determined look. It confirmed a guess Arthur Jellison had made earlier. That damned doctor at Bethesda Naval Hospital had told Hardy about the abnormal electrocardiograms, and Hardy was making like a mother hen. Had Al told Maureen? It didn’t matter.
“Want a drink, Dad?” Maureen asked.
“Water. We ought to save the bourbon,” Jellison said. “Sit down, please.” The tone was polite, but it wasn’t exactly a request. Not really an order, either. A worried man.
“Yes?” she said. She took a chair near his.
“What did George Christopher mean? Who’s ‘Melisande’ or whatever he said?”
“It’s a long story—”
“I want to hear it. Anything about the Christophers I want to hear,” Jellison said.
“Why?”
“Because they’re the other power in this valley and we’ve got to work together and not against each other. I need to know just who’s giving in to what,” Jellison said. “Now tell me.”
“Well, you know George and I practically grew up together,” Maureen said. “We’re the same age—”
“Sure.”
“And before you went to Washington, when you were a state senator, George and I were in love. Well, we were only fourteen, but it felt like love.” And, she didn’t say, I haven’t really felt like that about anybody since. “He wanted me to stay here. With him. I would have, too, if there’d been any way to do it. I didn’t want to go to Washington.”
Jellison looked older in the yellow kerosene light. “I didn’t know that. I was busy just then—”
“It’s all right, Dad,” Maureen said.
“All right or not, it’s done,” Jellison said. “What’s with Melisande?”
“Remember the play The Rainmaker? The confidence man plays up to the old-maid farm girl. Tells her to stop calling herself ‘Lizzie,’ to come with him and she’ll be Melisande and they’ll live a glamorous life… Well, George and I saw it that summer, and it was a switch, that’s all. Instead of going off to the glamorous life in Washington, I should stay here with him. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“You had, huh? You remember it now, though.”
“Dad…”
“What did he mean, calling you that?” Jellison asked.
“Well, I — ” She stopped herself and didn’t say anything else.
“Yeah. I figure it that way too,” Jellison said. “He’s telling you something, isn’t he? How much have you seen of him since we went to Washington?”
“Not much.”
“Have you slept with him?”
“That’s none of your business,” Maureen flared.
“The hell it’s not. Anything and everything around this valley is my business just now. Especially if it’s got Christophers mixed up in it. Did you?”
“No.”
“Did he try?”
“Nothing serious,” she said. “I think he’s too religious. And we didn’t really have many opportunities, not after I’d moved to Washington.”
“And he’s never married,” Jellison said.
“Dad, that’s silly! He hasn’t been pining away for me for sixteen years!”
“No, I don’t suppose so. But that was a pretty definite message tonight. Okay, let’s get to bed—”
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Can we talk? I’m scared.” She took the chair next to his. He thought she looked much younger just then, and remembered her when she was a little girl, when her mother was still alive. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“About as bad as it gets,” Jellison said. He reached for the whiskey and poured himself two fingers. “May as well. We know how to make whiskey. If there’s grain, we’ll have booze. If there’s grain.”
“What’s going to happen?” Maureen asked.
“I don’t know. I can make some guesses.” He stared at the empty fireplace. It was damp from rain coming down the chimney. “Hammerfall. By now the tidal waves have swept around the world. Seacoast cities are all gone. Washington’s gone. I hope the Capitol survived — I like that old granite pile.” He fell silent for a moment, and they listened to the steady pounding rain and rolling thunder.
“I forgot who said it,” Jellison said. “It’s true enough. No country is more than three meals away from a revolution. Hear that rain? It’s all over the country. Lowlands, river bottoms, little creeks, any low places in the roads, they’ll be underwater, just like the whole San Joaquin Valley’s going to be underwater. Highways, railroads, river travel, it’s all gone. There’s no transportation and not much communication. Which means the United States has ceased to exist. So have most other countries.”
/> “But…” She shivered, although it wasn’t cold in the room. “There have to be places that aren’t damaged. Cities not on the coast. Mountain areas that don’t have earthquake faults. They’ll still be organized—”
“Will they? How many places can you think of that have food enough to last for weeks?”
“I never thought about it—”
“Right. And it isn’t weeks, it’s months,” Jellison said. “Kitten, what do people eat? The United States has about thirty days’ food at any given time. That’s everything — warehouses, supermarkets, grain elevators, ships in harbor. A lot of it was lost. A lot more is perishable. And there isn’t going to be diddly for a crop this fall. Do you expect anybody who’s got barely enough to eat to come out and help anybody else?”
“Oh—”
“And it’s worse than that.” His voice was brutal now, almost as if he were trying to frighten her. “Refugees everywhere. Anyplace there’s enough to eat, there’ll be people after food. Don’t blame them. We could have a million refugees on the way here right now! Maybe here and there the police and local governments try to survive. How do they manage when the locusts come? Only they’re not locusts, they’re people.”
“But… what do we do?” Maureen cried.
“We survive. We live through it. And we build a new civilization. Somebody’s got to.” His voice rose. “We can do it. How soon depends on how far we get knocked down. All the way to savagery? Bows and arrows and stone clubs? I’ll be damned if we can’t do better than that!”
“Yes, of course—”
“No ‘of course’ about it, Kitten.” Jellison sounded very old, but his voice held determination and strength. “It depends on what we can keep. Keep right here. We don’t know what’s left anywhere else, but here we’re in pretty good shape if we can just hang on. Here we’ve got a chance, and by God we’re going to take it.”
“You’ll do it,” Maureen said. “It’s your job.”
“Think of anybody else who can?”
“I wasn’t asking a question, Dad.”
“Then remember that, when I’ve got to do something I don’t much like.” He set his jaw hard. “We’re going to make it, Kitten. I promise you, the people of this valley are going to live through this and come out civilized.” Then he laughed. “I do go on. It’s time for bed. Lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“You don’t need to wait for me. I’ll be along. Git.”
She kissed him and left. Arthur Jellison drained the whiskey glass and set it down with a long look at the bottle. He sat staring into the empty fireplace.
He could see how a civilization could be built from the wreckage Lucifer’s Hammer had left. Salvage work. Plenty to salvage in the old seacoast cities. The water hadn’t destroyed everything. New oil wells could be drilled. The railroads could be repaired. These rains wouldn’t last forever.
We can rebuild it, and this time we’ll do it right. We’ll spread beyond this one damned little ball, get human civilization out all through the solar system, to other stars even, so no one thing can knock us out again.
Sure we can. But how do we live long enough to start rebuilding? First things first, and right now the problem is getting this valley organized. Nobody’s going to help. We have to do it ourselves. The only law and order will be what we can make, and the only safety Maureen and Charlotte and Jennifer will have is what we can put together. I used to be responsible to the people of the United States, and particularly to the people of California. Not anymore. Now it’s my family, and how can I protect them?
That boils down to how do I keep this ranch? and maybe I can’t do that, not without help. Whose help? George Christopher for one. George has a lot of friends. Between us we can do all right.
Arthur Jellison got wearily to his feet and blew out the kerosene lamp. In the sudden dark the pounding rain and crashing thunder sounded even louder. He could see his way to the bedroom through lightning flashes.
There was a light under Al Hardy’s door; It went out after Hardy heard the Senator get into bed.
Sanctuary
God gives all men all earth to love,
But, since man’s heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove,
Beloved over all.
Rudyard Kipling
Harvey Randall woke to strident sounds. Someone was screaming at him.
“Harvey! Help!”
Loretta? He sat up suddenly, and banged his head on something. He’d been asleep in the TravelAII, and the voice wasn’t Loretta’s. For a moment he was bewildered. What was nightmare, what was real?
“Harvey!” The shouting voice was real. And, oh, God, Loretta was dead.
It was raining, but there was no rain around the TravelAII. He opened the door and blinked in the dim light. His watch said 6:00. Morning or evening?
The TravelAII was parked under a rickety shed, no more than a roof with posts to hold it up. Marie Vance stood at the far end. Joanna was holding the shotgun on her. Mark was shouting and Marie was screaming for Harvey.
None of it made sense. Half-light, driving rain and howling wind, lightning and thunder, the screaming woman and Mark shouting and Joanna with the shotgun — dream or real? He made himself move toward the others. “What is this, Mark?”
Mark turned and saw him. His face lighted with a smile. That faded too, like Harvey’s dream that it was a dream, like—
“Harvey! Tell him!” Marie shouted.
He shook the cobwebs from his head. They wouldn’t go. “Mark?” he said.
Marie jerked like a puppet. Harvey stared in astonishment as she did it again. She seemed to be fighting an invisible enemy. Then, suddenly, she relaxed and her voice was calm, or nearly so. “Harvey Randall, it’s time you woke up,” she said. “Or don’t you care about your son? You’ve buried Loretta, now think about Andy.”
He heard himself speak. “What is all this?”
They both talked at once. The need for understanding, rather than any other emotion, made Harvey speak sharply. “One at a time! Mark, please. Let her talk.”
“This — man wants to abandon our boys,” Marie said.
“I don’t. I’m trying to tell you—”
She cut Mark off. “The boys are in Sequoia. I told him that. Sequoia. But he keeps taking us west, and that’s not the right way.”
“All of you shut up!” Joanna shouted. There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and it stopped Mark before he could say anything else. He’d never heard Joanna shout before. Not like that.
And she had the shotgun.
“Where are we going, Mark?” Harvey asked.
“To Sequoia,” Mark said. “That’s a big place, and she doesn’t know where—”
“I do,” Harvey said. “Where are we?”
“Simi Valley,” Mark said. “Will you listen to me?”
“Yes. Talk.”
“Harvey, he’s—”
“Shut up, Marie! Harvey made his voice deliberately brutal. It stopped her.
“Harv, there’s people all over,” Mark said. “Roads were gettin’ jammed. So I cut off onto a fire trail I know about. Bikers use it. It’ll lead us through the condor reservation. Sure, it goes west awhile, but we stay off the goddam freeways! You stop to think how many people are trying to get out of L.A. right now? Not many know about this road. And it stays on high ground. It wasn’t much of a road to begin with, less to go wrong with it.” He turned to Marie. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. We have to get over the mountains, all the way over. Then we get to the San Joaquin and we’re on level ground, and we can cut over to Sequoia—”
“Let’s get a map,” Harvey suggested.
“It doesn’t show on a map,” Mark protested. “If it did, everybody—”
“I believe your road,” Harvey said. “I want to see what happens after that. I’ve got maps in the TravelAII.” He started to turn, but Joanna went to the motorcycle. She reached into a saddleb
ag.
“Frank Stoner made us take three copies. One for each bike,” she said. She held up a big aeronautical chart. It showed terrain features in colors. “There are Auto Club maps, too.”
It was too dark to read the map properly. Mark went to the TravelAII and came back with a flashlight. Marie was standing stiffly aloof, silent, her eyes still accusing.
“See?” Mark said. “Right across here. The highway goes past lakes. With dams. That sit on top of the San Andreas. You really think the big highway’s still usable?”
Harvey shook his head. It wouldn’t matter. If the highway could be used, a million people would be trying to use it. If not… “So we come out through Frazier Park.”
“Right! Then down in the valley and it’s a straight shot north,” Mark said. “I was thinking of getting to the Mojave ’cause that’s where Frank said we should be, but it’s no good. Can’t get to Sequoia that way.” He pointed. “All the eastside routes lead past Lake Isabella. Follow the Kern River. Harv, with all this rain, how many bridges will there be over the Kern?”
“None. Marie, he’s right. If we went the direct route we’d never get there.”
Mark looked pleased. Joanna leaned the shotgun against the bike and collapsed onto the seat, sidesaddle.
“If you had explained before…” Marie began.
“Jesus, I tried!” Mark shouted.
“Not you.”
She meant me, Harvey thought. And she’s right. I can’t curl up and die, I’ve got a boy up in those hills and I’ve got to go get him, and thank God for Marie. “How’s our gas?” Harvey asked.
“Pretty good. We’ve made about fifty miles—”
“No more than that,” Harvey muttered. Of course it was true, he could see it on the map. It seemed like much further. They couldn’t have been going very fast. “Mark, how sure are you of this fire trail? Won’t it wash out?”
“Probably,” Mark said. He pointed silently to the dams poised above Interstate 5. “Rather risk that?”
“No. If we’re going, we’d better do it. I’ll drive,” Harvey said.
