by Larry Niven
“And he say I’m his chief angel?” Hooker demanded.
“Yeah, Sarge,” Jackie said. “Didn’t you listen to him?”
“Not really.” Hooker stood. “But I’m sure as hell going to listen to him now.”
Sixth Week: The High Justice
No proposition is likelier to scandalise our contemporaries than this one: it is impossible to establish a just social order.
Bertrand de Jouvenal, Sovereignty
Alvin Hardy made a final check. Everything was ready. The library, the great book-lined room where the Senator held court, had been arranged and everything was in its place. Al went to tell the Senator.
Jellison was in the front room. He didn’t look well. There was nothing Al could put his finger on, but the boss looked tired, overworked. Of course he was. Everyone worked too hard. But the Senator had kept long hours in Washington, and he’d never looked this bad.
“All set,” Hardy said.
“Right. Start,” Jellison ordered.
Al went outside. It wasn’t raining. There was bright sunshine. Sometimes there were two hours of sunshine a day. The air was clear, and Hardy could see the snow on the peaks of the High Sierra. Snow in August. It seemed to be down to the six-thousand-foot level yesterday; today it was lower, after last night’s storm. The snow was inexorably creeping toward the Stronghold.
But we’re getting ready for it, Hardy thought. From the porch of the big house he could see a dozen greenhouses, wood frames covered with plastic drop cloths found in a hardware store, each greenhouse covered with a web of nylon cord to keep the thin plastic from billowing in the wind. They wouldn’t last more than one season, Al thought, but it’s one season we’re worried about.
The area around the house was a beehive of activity. Men pushed wheelbarrows of manure which was shoveled into pits in the greenhouses. As it rotted it would give off heat, keeping the greenhouses warm in winter — they hoped. People would sleep in them, too, adding their own body heat to the rotting manure and grass clippings, anything to keep the growing plants warm enough, which seemed silly today, in bright August sunshine — except that already there was a tinge of cold to the air, as breezes came down from the mountains.
And a lot of it was going to be wasted effort. They weren’t used to hurricanes and tornadoes here in the valley, and no matter how hard they tried to place the greenhouses where they’d be sheltered from high winds, yet get enough sunshine, some of them would be blown down. “We’re doing all we can,” Hardy muttered. There was always more to do, and there were always things they hadn’t thought of until too late, but it might be enough. It would be close, but they were going to live.
“That’s the good news,” Hardy said to himself. “Now for the bad.”
A ragged group stood near the porch. Farmers with petitions. Refugees who’d managed to get inside the Stronghold and wanted to plead for permanent status and had managed to talk Al — or Maureen, or Charlotte — into getting them an appointment with the Senator. Another group stood well apart from the petitioners. Armed farmhands, guarding prisoners. Only two prisoners today.
Al Hardy waved them all inside. They took their places in chairs set well away from the Senator’s desk. They left their weapons outside the room, all but Al Hardy and the ranchers Al knew were trustworthy. Al would have liked to search everyone who came to see the Senator, and one day he’d do that. It would cause too much trouble just now. Which meant that two men with rifles, men Al completely trusted, stood in the next room and stared through small holes hidden among the bookshelves, rifles ready. Waste of good manpower, Al thought. And for what? Who cared what the others thought? Anybody in his right mind would know it was important to protect the Senator.
When they were all seated, Al went back to the living room. “Okay,” he said. Then he went quickly to the kitchen.
It was George Christopher himself today. One of the Christopher clan always attended. The others would go in and take the seat reserved for the Christopher representative, and stand when the Senator came into the room, but not George. George went in with the Senator. Not quite as an equal, but not as someone who’d stand up when the Senator came in…
Al Hardy didn’t speak to George. He didn’t have to. The ritual was well established now. George followed Al out into the hall, his bull neck flaming red… well, not really, Al admitted, but it ought to have been. George fell in with the Senator and they walked in together, just after Al. Everyone stood; Al didn’t have to say anything, which pleased him. He liked things to run the way they ought to, precisely, smoothly, without it seeming that Al Hardy had to do anything at all.
Al went to his own desk. The papers were spread there. Across from Al’s desk was an empty seat. It was reserved for the Mayor, but he never came anymore. Got tired of the farce, Al thought. Hardy couldn’t blame the man. At first these trials were held in City Hall, which lent credibility to the pretense that the Mayor and the Chief of Police were important, but now that the Senator had given up wasting time going into town…
“You may begin,” Jellison said.
The first part was easy. Rewards first. Two of Stretch Tallifsen’s kids had devised a new kind of rat trap and caught three dozen of the little marauders, as well as a dozen ground squirrels. There were weekly prizes for the best rat catchers: some of the last candy bars in the world.
Hardy looked at his papers. Then he grimaced. The next case was going to be tougher. “Peter Bonar. Hoarding,” Al said.
Bonar stood. He was about thirty, maybe a little older. Thin blond beard. Bonar’s eyes were dulled. Hunger, probably.
“Hoarding, eh?” Senator Jellison said. “Hoarding what?”
“All kinds of stuff, Senator. Four hundred pounds of chicken feed. Twenty bushels of seed corn. Batteries. Two cases of rifle cartridges. Probably other stuff that I don’t know about.”
Jellison looked grim. “You do it?” he demanded.
Bonar didn’t answer.
“Did he?” Jellison asked Hardy.
“Yes, sir.”
“Any point in a trial?” Jellison asked. He looked directly at Bonar. “Well?”
“Hell, he’s got no call to come out and search my place! He had no warrant!”
Jellison laughed.
“What beats me is how the hell they found out.”
Al Hardy knew that. He had agents everywhere. Hardy spent a lot of time talking to people, and it wasn’t hard. You catch someone and don’t turn him in, send him out looking, and pretty soon you get more information.
“That all you’re worried about?” Jellison demanded. “How we found out?”
“It’s my feed,” Bonar said. “All that stuff is mine. We found it, my wife and I. Found it and carried it in, in my truck, and what the hell right do you have to it? My stuff on my land.”
“Got any chickens?” Jellison asked.
“Yeah.”
“How many?” When Bonar didn’t answer, Jellison looked to the others in the room. “Well?”
“Maybe a few, Senator,” one of those waiting said. She was a forty-year-old woman who looked sixty. “Four or five hens and a rooster.”
“You don’t need any four hundred pounds of feed,” Jellison said reasonably.
“It’s my feed,” Bonar insisted.
“And seed corn. Here we’ll have people starve so we can keep enough seed corn to get in a crop next year, and you’ve got twenty bushels hidden away. That’s murder, Bonar. Murder.”
“Hey—”
“You know the rules. You make a find, you report it. Hell, we won’t take it all. We don’t discourage enterprise. But you sure as hell report it so we can plan.”
“And you grab half. Or more.”
“Sure. Hell, there’s no point in talk,” Jellison said. “Anybody want to speak for him?” There was silence. “Al?”
Hardy shrugged. “He’s got a wife and two kids, ages eleven and thirteen.”
“That complicates things,” Jellison said’ “
Anybody want to speak up for them?… No?” There was an edge to his voice now.
“Hey, you can’t… what the hell, Betty don’t figure in this!”
“She knew it was there,” Jellison said.
“Well, the kids—”
“Yeah. The kids.”
“Second offense, Senator,” Hardy said. “Gasoline last time.” “My gasoline on my land—”
“You talk a lot,” Jellison said. “Too damned much. Hoarding. Last time we let you off easy. Goddammit, there’s only one way to convince people I mean what I say! George, you got anything to say?”
“No,” Christopher said.
“The road,” Jellison said. “By noon today. I’ll leave it to Hardy to decide what you can take with you. Peter Bonar, you’re for the road.”
“Jesus, you got no right to throw me off my own land!” Bonar shouted. “You leave me alone, we’ll leave you alone! We don’t need anything from you—”
“The hell you say,” George Christopher shouted. “You already took our help! Food, greenhouses, we even gave you gasoline while you were holding out on us. The gasoline we gave you ran the truck that got that stuff for you!”
“I think Brother Varley will look after the kids,” one of the women said. “Mrs. Bonar too, if she can stay.”
“She’ll come with me!” Bonar shouted. “And the kids tool You got no right to take my kids away from me!”
Jellison sighed. Bonar was trying for sympathy, gambling that they wouldn’t send his wife and kids out on the road, and since they couldn’t take the kids away from Bonar… Could he? Jellison wondered. And leave a festering sore inside the Stronghold? The kids would hate everyone here. And besides, family responsibility was important. “As you will,” Jellison said. “Let them go with him, Al.”
“Jesus, have mercy,” Bonar yelled. “Please! For God’s sake—”
Jellison sounded very tired when he said, “See to it, Al. Please. And we’ll discuss who can be settled on that farm.”
“Yes, sir.” The boss hates this, Hardy thought. But what can he do? We can’t jail people. We can’t even feed what we have.
“You rotten bastard!” Peter Bonar shouted. “You fat son of a bitch, I’ll see you in hell!”
“Take him out,” Al Hardy ordered. Two of the armed ranch-hands pushed Bonar out. The farmer was still cursing when he left. Hardy thought he heard blows when they got to the hall. He wasn’t sure, but the curses stopped abruptly. “I’ll see to the sentence, sir,” Hardy said.
“Thank you. Next?”
“Mrs. Darden. Her son arrived. From Los Angeles. Wants to stay.”
Senator Jellison saw the tight line that formed where George Christopher’s mouth had been. The Senator sat straight in his high-backed chair and he looked alert. Inside he felt tired, and defeated, but he couldn’t give up. Not until next fall, he thought. Next fall I can rest. There’ll be a good harvest next fall. There has to be. One more year, it’s all I ask. Please, Lord.
At least this next one is simple. Old lady, no one to look after her, relative arrives. Her son is one of us, and George can’t say different. That’s in the rules.
I wonder if we can feed him through the winter?
The Senator looked at the old lady, and he knew that whatever happened to her son, she would not survive until spring, and Arthur Jellison hated her for what she would eat before she died.
Ninth Week: The Organization Man
One must point out, however, that many who now deplore the oppression, injustice, and intrinsic ugliness of life in a technically advanced and congested society will decide that things were better when they were worse; and they will discover that to do without the functions proper to the great systems — without telephone, electric light, car, letters, telegrams — is all very well for a week or so, but that it is not amusing as a way of life.
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age
Harvey Randall had never worked so hard in his life. The field was filled with rocks, and they had to be moved. Some could be picked up and carried by one, or two, or a dozen men. Others had to be split apart with sledges. Then the pieces were carried away to be built into low stone walls.
The crisscross pattern of low walls in New England and Southern Europe had always seemed charming and handsome. Until now Harvey Randall hadn’t realized just how much human misery each of those walls represented. They weren’t built to be pretty, or to mark boundaries, or even to keep cattle and swine out of the fields. They were there because it was too much work to haul those stones completely out of the fields, and the fields had to be cleared.
Most of the pastureland would be plowed for crops. Any crops, anything they had to plant. Barley, onions, wild grains that grew in ditches along the sides of the roads, anything at all. Seeds were scarce — and worse, there was the decision to be made: plant for later, or eat it now?
“Like a goddam prison,” Mark grumbled.
Harvey swung the sledge. It rang against the steel wedge, and the rock split nicely. That felt good, and Harvey almost forgot the rumbling in his stomach. Heavy work, and not enough to eat; how long could they keep it up? The Senator’s people had worked out diet schedules, so many calories for so many hours of heavy work, and all the books said they had figured correctly, but Harvey’s stomach didn’t think so.
“Making little ones out of big ones,” Mark said. “A hell of a job for an associate producer.” He grabbed an end of the piece they’d split off the rock as Harvey lifted the other end. They worked well together, no need for talk. They carried the rock to the wall. Harvey ran a practiced eye along the wall and pointed. The rock fit perfectly into the place he’d selected. Then they went for another.
They stood idle for a few seconds, and Harvey looked across the field where a dozen others were splitting and carrying rocks to the low wall. It could have been a scene from hundreds of years before. “John Adams,” Harvey said.
“Eh?” Mark made encouraging noises. Stories made the work go easier.
“Our second President of the United States.” Harvey forced the wedge into a tiny crack in the rock. “He went to Harvard. His father sold a field they called ‘The Stony Acres’ to get up the tuition. Adams would rather be a lawyer than clear the stones out.”
“Smart man,” Mark said. He held the wedge in place as Harvey lifted the sledge. “Not much left of Harvard now.”
“No.” Harvard was gone, and Braintree, Massachusetts, was gone, and the United States of America was gone, along with most of England. Would kids learn history now? But they have to, Harvey thought. One day we’ll dig out of this and there’ll be a time when it’s important whether we have a king or a president, and we’ll have to do it right this time so we can get off this goddam planet before another Hammer falls. Someday we’ll be able to afford history. Until then we’ll think of England the way they used to think of Atlantis…
“Hey,” Mark said. “Look at that.”
Harvey turned in time to see Alice Cox jump the big stallion over one of the low walls. She moved with the horse as a part of him, and again the impression of a centaur was very strong. It reminded Harvey of the first time he’d come to this ranch, a lifetime ago, a time when he could stand at the top of the big snailhead rock and at night talk about interstellar empires.
That had been a long time ago in another world. But this one wasn’t so bad. They were clearing the fields, and they controlled their boundaries. No one was raped or murdered here, and if there wasn’t as much to eat as Harvey would have liked, there was enough. Breaking rocks and building walls was hard work, but it was honest work. There weren’t endless conferences on unimportant matters. There weren’t deliberate frustrations, traffic jams, newspapers full of crime stories. This new and simpler world had its compensations.
Alice Cox trotted up to them. “Senator wants to see you up at the big house, Mr. Randall.”
“Good.” Harvey gratefully carried the sledge over to the wall and left it for someone else to use. He squ
inted up at the sun to estimate how much daylight was left, then called to Mark. “You may as well go on back,” he said. “You can put in the rest of the day on the cabin.”
“Right.” Mark waved cheerfully and started up the hill toward the small house where Harvey, the Hamners, Mark and Joanna, and all four Wagoners lived. It was crowded, and they were building on extra rooms, but it was shelter, and there was enough to eat. It was survival.
Harvey went the other way, downhill toward the Senator’s stone ranch house. It had additions built onto it, too. In one of them Jellison kept the Stronghold’s armory: spare rifles, cartridges, two field-artillery pieces (but no ammunition) that had been part of a National Guard training center before it was flooded out, hand-loading equipment to reload shotgun shells and rifle cartridges, loot recovered from a gunsmith’s shop in Porterville. The dies had been underwater and were rusty, but they still worked. Powder and primers had been sealed in tins that hadn’t yet rusted through when they were recovered, although that had been a near thing too.
In another annex the Senator’s son-in-law sat with a telegraph and radio. The telegraph at present ran only to the roadblock on the county road, and there was nothing coming in on the radio, but they had hopes of extending the telegraph lines. Besides, it gave Jack Turner something to do. He wasn’t good for a lot else, and he did know Morse code. He might as well be a telephone orderly, Harvey thought. Turner’s only attempt to supervise a ranch project had been a disaster, with the men finally going to the Senator and demanding Turner’s replacement…
Turner hailed him as he went past. “Hey, Randalll”
“Hello, Jack. What’s new?”
“We’ve got another President. A Hector Shorey of Colorado Springs. He proclaims martial law.”
Jack Turner seemed to think that was funny, and so did Harvey. He said, “Everybody always proclaims martial law.”
“Littman didn’t.”
“Yeah, I liked Emperor Pro Tem Charles Avery Littman. Even if he was getting most of his material out of ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus.’ The others were too damn serious.”
