by Larry Niven
“Bullshit. She’s like a tigress. It was all we could do to keep her from coming up with Mark and me.”
“Yeah? Maybe. When she knows he’s safe, she won’t care.” Gordie stared into the fire. “So what happens now?”
“We take you back with us—”
“So the Senator can look at me funny and maybe try enforcing statutory rape laws? So he can split Andy away from his girl?”
“It won’t be that way.”
“Yeah? Get some sleep, Harv. I’ll go change the guard. My turn on watch.”
“I’ll take—”
“No.”
“But—”
“Don’t make me say it, Harvey. Just get some sleep.” Harvey nodded and stretched out in the sleeping bag. Don’t make him say it. Don’t make him say I’m not one of them, they wouldn’t trust me to be on guard for them…
Breakfast was fried fish and several vegetables that Harvey didn’t recognize. It was good. Harvey was just finishin’ when Gordie came over and sat next to him.
“We’ve talked it over, Harv. We’re not going back with you.”
“None of you?” Harvey demanded.
“That’s right. We’re staying together.”
“Gordie, you’re crazy. It’s going to get cold up here. It’ll be snowing in a couple of weeks—”
“We’ll make out,” Gordie said.
“Andy!” Harvey called.
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re coming with me.”
“No, sir.” Andy wasn’t arguing. He wasn’t demanding. He was just saying what would happen. He got up and walked out into the rain. Janie followed closely. She had still not spoken a word to Harvey Randall since she had challenged him on the trail.
“You could stay with us,” Gordie said.
“I’d like that. I’d like it better if Andy asked me,” Harvey said.
“What do you expect?” Gordie asked. “Look, you made your choice. You stayed in the city. You had a job, and you stayed for it and sent Andy up into the hills—”
“Where he’d be safer”
“And alone.”
“He wasn’t alone,” Harvey insisted. “He—”
“Don’t tell me,” Gordie said. “Argue with Andy. Look, we put it to a vote this morning. Nobody objected. You can stay with us.”
“That’s silly. What’s up here?”
“What’s down there?”
“Safety.”
Gordie shrugged. “What’s that worth? Look, man.” Gordie wasn’t quite pleading, because he had nothing to plead. He was straining to make Harvey understand, knowing that Harvey never would. And Gordie didn’t really care, except that he owed this much to his friend. “Look, Harv. If he goes with you, he’s a kid again. Up here he’s second in command—”
“Of what?”
“Of whatever we are. He’s a man up here, Harv. He wouldn’t be, down there. I saw the way you looked at him and Janie. They’re still children to you. Down there you’d make them into children again. You’d make them feel like kids, useless. Well, up here Andy knows he’s not useless. We all depend on him. Up here he’s doing something important, he’s not just a cog in a survival machine.”
“Survival machine.” Yeah, Harvey thought. That’s what we’ve got at the Senator’s Stronghold. A survival machine and a damned good one. “At least it’s a pretty good chance at survival.”
“Sure,” Gordie said. “Think about it, Harvey. The world ends. Hammerfall. Shouldn’t things be different after that?”
“Things are different. Lord God, how different do you want? We just took four kids and strung them up in front of City Hall. We’re busting our balls to stay alive through winter, and it’s a chancy thing, but we’ll make it—”
“And what would we do down there?” Gordie asked.
Harvey thought that one over. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t know if Hardy would let that many into the Stronghold. A troop of Boy Scouts, yes; but this warrior band? Maybe they belonged up here: a new breed of mountain dwellers. “Dammit, that’s my son, and he’s coming with me.”
“No, he’s not, Harv. He’s not your anything. He’s his own man, and you haven’t got any way to make him come with you. We’re not going back, Harv. None of us. But you can stay.”
“Stay and be what?”
“Whatever you like.”
The offer wasn’t even tempting. What would he do up here? And who would he be? Harvey got up and lifted his pack. “No. Mark?”
“Yeah, Boss.”
“You coming or staying?”
Mark had been unnaturally quiet since they arrived. “Going back, Harv. Joanna’s down there, and I don’t think she’d care much for this. Me neither. It can get pretty old, camping out all the time. You?”
“Let’s go,” Harvey said. He looked around sadly. There wasn’t anything up here that belonged to Harvey Randall.
The tsunamis have done their work. Around the shores of the Atlantic there is no trace of the works of man. The very shorelines have been changed. The Gulf of Mexico is a third larger than before; Florida is a chain of islands, Chesapeake Bay has become a gulf. Deep bays indent the western coast of Africa.
On land the craters no longer glow visibly but they continue to change the weather. Volcanoes pour out lava and smoke. Hurricanes lash the seas.
Rain falls everywhere. The work of the Hammer is not yet completed.
Fourth Week: The Wanderers
There is one fact that will bring notable relief to many survivors: the grim problems facing them will at least be completely different from those that have been tormenting them in past years. The problems of an advanced civilization will be replaced by those proper to a primitive civilization, and it is probable that a majority of survivors may be made up of people particularly adapted to passing quickly from a sophisticated to a primitive type of existence…
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age
The woods were lovely, dark and deep, but they dripped. Dan Forrester sighed for a warm, dry world now lost, and he kept moving. His five layers of clothing ran water in pulses as he moved. It was no drier under the trees. It was no wetter, either, and not much darker; and here the infrequent snow flurries never got through. Dan did not really expect to live long enough to see the Sun again.
As he walked he munched on a bit of not-quite-spoiled fish. One of his books had told how to tease fish from deep holes in streams, and to Dan’s surprise it had worked. So had the snares he painstakingly set for rabbits. He had never had enough to eat since leaving Tujunga, but he hadn’t starved, and that, he reflected, was something to set him apart from a lot of others.
Four weeks since Hammerfall. Four weeks of moving steadily northward. He had lost his car hours after leaving his home. Two men and their women and children had simply taken it away from him. They had left him his backpack and much of his equipment, because in the first days after Hammerfall people hadn’t known just how bad things were going to be, or maybe they were just decent people whose need was greater than his. They’d said that, anyway. It hardly mattered.
Now, leaner and — he had to admit to himself — healthier than he’d ever been (except for his feet, which had blisters that wouldn’t heal; diabetes interferes with circulation, which was why he could only make a few miles a day), Dan Forrester, Ph.D., astronomer without sight of stars or employer or possibility of employment, hiked on because there wasn’t anything else to do.
The winds were no longer ferocious, except during hurricanes, and those were less frequent. The rain had settled to a steady pattering, or a drizzle, or, sometimes, blessedly, no rain at all. The rain had also turned cool, and sometimes there were snow flurries. Snow in July at four thousand feet elevation. That was much sooner than Dan had expected. The cloud cover over Earth was reflecting back a lot of sunlight, and Earth was cooling. Dan could imagine the beginnings of glaciers in the north. Now they were no more than mountainsides and high valleys covered lightly with snow; but it was snow that wou
ld never melt in his lifetime.
After awhile he rested, leaning against a tree, backpack caught on the rough bark so that he was not quite sitting. It took weight off his feet, and it was easier than taking off his pack and lifting it onto his back again. Four weeks, and the beginnings of snow. It would be a very hard winter…
“Don’t move.”
“Right,” said Dan. Where had the voice come from? He moved only his eyes. Dan was used to thinking of himself as harmless, in appearance and in reality, but he was thinner now, and his beard was scraggly, and no one looked harmless in this world of fear. A man in an Army uniform stepped from behind a tree. The rifle in his hands looked light; the hole in the end looked as big as Death.
The man’s eyes flickered left and right. “You alone? You armed? Got any food?”
“Yes, and no, and not much.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me. Spill your pack.” Behind that gun was a very nervous fellow, a man who kept trying to see through the back of his head. His skin was very pale. Surprisingly, the man had almost no beard, only stubble. He had shaved in the past week. Why? Dan wondered.
Dan opened his hip belt and shrugged out of the pack. He upended it. The Army man watched as he opened zippered pockets. “Insulin,” he said, laying out the medical packet. “I’m a diabetic. I carry two,” and he set out the other, and the wrapped book beside them.
“Open it,” the man said, meaning the book. Dan did.
“Where is your food?”
Dan opened a Ziploc plastic bag. The smell was terrible. He handed the fish to the man. “Nothing to preserve it with,” Dan said. “I’m sorry. But I think it’s edible, if you don’t wait too long.”
The man wolfed down the handful of stinking raw fish as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. “What else?” he demanded.
“Chocolate,” Dan said. His voice was full of resignation. It was the last chocolate in the world, and Dan had saved it for days, waiting for something to celebrate. He watched the uniformed man eat it — no ceremony, not savoring it, just eating.
“Open those.” The man pointed to the cooking pots. Dan took the lid off the largest; there was another pot inside it, and a small stove inside that. “No gasoline for the stove,” Dan said. “Don’t know why I go on carrying it, but I do. The pots aren’t much use without something to cook.” Dan tried not to look at the pieces of thin copper wire that had spilled from the pack. Snare wire. Without it Dan Forrester would probably starve.
“I’ll have one of your pots,” the man said.
“Sure. Big or little?”
“Big.”
“Here.”
“Thanks.” The man seemed more relaxed now, although his eyes still darted about and he jumped at slight noises. “Where were you when it all… ?” The man gestured vaguely.
“Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Pasadena. I saw it all. We had live TV pictures from the Hammerlab satellite.”
“All. What does that mean?”
“There were a lot of strikes. Mostly east of here, Europe the Atlantic, but some close, some south of us. So I drove north until I lost my car. Do you know if the San Joaquin Nuclear Plant is working?”
“No. There’s an ocean where the San Joaquin Valley used to be.”
“What about Sacramento?”
“Don’t know.” The man seemed indecisive, but his rifle still looked Dan steadily in the eye. An ounce of pressure and Dan Forrester would not exist. Dan was surprised to learn just how much he cared, just how much he wanted to live, even though he knew he had no real chance, if he lived until winter he’d die then. He estimated that many more than half those who lived until winter would not see the spring.
“We were on a training run,” the man said. “Army. When the trucks went into a ditch, some of us shot the officer and went into business for ourselves. Way Gillings told it, that would be a good idea. I went along. I mean, it was all dead anyway, you know?” The man poured out words in a rush. He needed to justify himself before he killed Dan Forrester. “But then we had to walk and walk and walk and we couldn’t find any food, and — ” The words cut off, suddenly, with a dark shadow of hate that crossed the soldier’s face. Then, “I wish you had more food. I’m taking your jacket.”
“Just like that?”
“Take it off. We didn’t have rain gear.”
“You’re too big. It won’t fit,” Dan said.
“I’ll tough it out somehow.” The bandit was shivering, and of course he was as wet as Dan himself. He wasn’t carrying much fat for insulation, either.
“It’s just a windbreaker. Not waterproof.”
“A windbreaker is fine. I can take it off you, you know.”
Sure, with a hole in it. Or maybe not. A head shot doesn’t put holes in jackets. Dan took off the jacket. He was about to throw it to the bandit when he thought of something. “Watch,” he said. He stuffed the hood into the narrow pocket in the collar and zipped it up. Then he turned the big pocket inside out and stuffed the entire jacket into it. The package was now the size of two fists. Dan zipped it closed and tossed it.
“Huh,” said the bandit.
“Do you know what you’re stealing?” Dan’s bitter sense of loss went deeper than his common sense. “They can’t make the materials anymore. They can’t make the machines to shape it. There was a company in New Jersey, and it made that jacket in five sizes and sold it so cheap you could toss one in your car trunk and forget it for ten years. You didn’t even have to go looking for it. The company hunted you down and sent you thick packets of advertisements. How long will it be before anyone can do that again?”
The man nodded. He began backing into the trees, but stopped. “Don’t go west,” he said. “We killed a man and a woman and ate them. We. I didn’t want anyone else to see how I felt. Next chance I got, I went off on my own. So don’t cry real tears over this jacket. Just be glad there ain’t no dry wood around.” The bandit laughed a funny, painful laugh, turned, and ran.
Dan shook his head. Cannibalism, so soon? But he still had the net undershirt and the T-shirt and a long-sleeved flannel shirt and the sweater. He’d been lucky, and he knew it. Presently he began putting the pack back together. He still had his snare wire, more precious than the jacket. A few feet of thin, strong wire, a spool of strong monofilament — life itself, for a little while. He put on his pack.
Don’t go west. The San Joaquin Nuclear Project was west, but the San Joaquin was filled with water. The plant couldn’t have survived that, and besides, it wasn’t finished. That left Sacramento. Dan called up a mental picture of California. He was in the hills that formed the eastern boundary of the flooded central valley. He’d intended to work his way down to lower ground, where the going wouldn’t be so rough.
But the low ground was to the west. The cannibals were between him and the spreading lake that the San Joaquin had become. Best to go north and stay in the foothills. Dan didn’t expect to live, but he had a violent antipathy to helping the cannibals.
Sergeant Hooker watched the sky as he marched.
The wind acted like a horde of catnip-maddened kittens. It slashed playfully under helmet rims, plucked at sleeves and pant legs, died for an instant, then whipped dust in the eye from a wholly different direction. The clouds, black and pregnant in the underbelly, shifted uneasily, promising violence. It hadn’t rained in hours. Even by post-Hammerfall standards, this weather could do anything.
The doctor marched in sullen silence, pushing himself to keep up. He didn’t have strength left over to run. At least Hooker didn’t have that worry. But he worried about the grumbling behind him. No words reached him, only the flavor of complaint and anger.
He thought: We wouldn’t eat each other, of course. There are limits. We don’t even eat our dead. Yet. Should I have pushed that? There were complaints. I may have to shoot Gillings.
He probably would have shot Gillings there at first, when he came back and found Captain Hora dead and Gillings in charge, but he hadn’t had any ammunition
then, and the way Gillings told it they’d set up in business for themselves, they’d be fucking kings now that the Hammer had finished civilization.
That was funny, but Sergeant Hooker wasn’t laughing. In random anger he told the doctor, “If we have to stop again, they’ll eat you.” His own belly rumbled.
“I know. I told you why you get sick,” said the doctor. He was short and harmless-looking, half chipmunk, the resemblance accented by a brush of mustache under his forward-thrusting nose. He was sticking close to Hooker, which was sensible.
“You eat steak rare,” he said. “There aren’t too many diseases you can catch from a steer. You eat pork well done, because pigs carry some diseases men catch too. Parasites and such.” He paused for breath, and to see if Hooker would backhand him to shut up, but Hooker didn’t. “But you can catch anything from a man, except maybe sickle-cell anemia. You’ve lost fifteen men since you turned cannibal—”
“Eight got shot. You saw it.”
“They were too sick to run.”
“Hell, they were the recruits. Didn’t know what they were doing.”
The doctor didn’t say anything for awhile. They trudged on, no sound but panting as they climbed the damp hillside. Eight men shot, four of them recruits. But seven of the Army men had died too, and not from bullets. “We’ve all been sick,” the doctor said. “We’re sick now.” His thoughts made him gag. “God, I wish I hadn’t—”
“You was just as hungry as us. What if you was too weak to walk?” Hooker wondered why he bothered; the doctor’s feelings were nothing to him. Vindictively he hugged his secret to him: When they found a place to settle, then they could lame the doctor, like the cavemen lamed their blacksmiths to keep them from running away. But the need hadn’t come yet.
Somewhere. Somewhere there had to be a place, small enough to defend, big enough to support Hooker’s company. A farm community, with enough people in it to work the land, and enough land to feed everybody. The company could set up there. Good troops had to be worth something. That goddam Gillings! The way he told it they could just walk in and take over. It hadn’t worked out that way.
