Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  “Baker has instructions on that,” Jellison said. “Warn them about the cannibals and leave them alone.”

  “And see what you can salvage out in the valley,” Hardy said. “We can’t let all this manpower and gasoline go to waste.”

  A rancher put his head in the door. “Scouts are back,” he said. “It’s okay. We have the boats.”

  Hardy nodded. “All right. Hamner, get your goodbyes said. Now I’ll go find out exactly what all this cost us,” he said, with distaste. He went.

  Under the black beard Dan Forrester’s lips were a hard, thin line. Forrester didn’t always show his anger. It showed now only in the way he fumbled for words before saying, “Giving up the power plant would not turn out to be an optimum solution.”

  “We’ll save it. You guard the home front.” Tim went back out into the cold night. Four hours until dawn.

  Maureen blinked back tears as the truck drove away. She watched the taillight dwindle and vanish on the highway south, and stood in the cold wind long after she couldn’t see it any longer.

  It all made sense. If they had to send off an expedition, Johnny Baker was the logical man to lead it. People knew who he was. They’d recognize him, or at least know of him, and nobody else in the Stronghold qualified that way. George Christopher and the others on horses could move down the east side of the valley, staying up in the hills, looking for ranchers, organized valleys, anyone to recruit for the attack on the cannibals, but no one across the Sea would have heard of the Christophers, and everyone knew Johnny Baker. Johnny was a hero.

  She didn’t want to go inside. In there Al Hardy and Harvey Randall would be working with Dr. Forrester, planning tomorrow’s work, locating supplies and chemicals that Forrester could use. Her father might be there, too. She didn’t want to see Harv just then, and she didn’t want to see her father.

  “I’m a goddam prize in a goddam contest,” she said aloud, “in a goddam fairy tale. Why doesn’t anyone ever speak for the princess?” She could hardly blame her father for the symmetry of it all, though she was tempted. But it was all so pat, it made so much sense.

  The Stronghold had to have allies. People who might join to fight the cannibals were in the hills, where men could go only on foot or horseback. They would be locals, most of them. It made good sense to send twenty locals into the hills on horseback, led by a local, a farmer, a fine horseman: George Christopher.

  And the power plant had to be saved, thanks to Forrester’s gentle extortion. But, cut off from events by the sea around them, how were the defenders to know their friends from their enemies? Best to send a man with some military authority, a man any adult American would recognize in a fog on a moonless night: General Johnny Baker.

  Which left Harvey Randall free to work with Dr. Forrester, whom he had known in a previous life, on the weapons to defend the Stronghold.

  So the knights were riding off in three directions, and he who came back with the prize — his life — would inherit the princess and half the kingdom. They could all come back. It could happen. But when did the princess ever get her choice?

  “Hello.”

  She didn’t turn to look. “He’s so damn visible.”

  “Yeah,” Harv said. He wondered, but in silence, how the Angels who hated the atomic plant so much would feel about the space program. Someone like Jerry Owen would recognize Baker as fast as any power-plant operator would. “That’s why he’s there,” he said. When she didn’t answer, didn’t even turn, he went back inside.

  There were four boats for twenty men. Two were cabin cruisers, small fiberglass boats used in inland lakes, powered by outboards. There was a twenty-foot open dory, also with an outboard; and there was the Cindy Lu. She was a bomb. Twenty feet long, and only wide enough for two people to sit in the tiny cockpit. The rest of the boat was an enormous inboard engine covered with bright chrome.

  Cindy Lu had lost most of her bright tangerine metallicflake paint. The chrome didn’t glow when Johnny Baker played a flashlight across her. She was a nautical drag-racer, but she wouldn’t go very fast with an oil-drum barge hooked behind her and loaded with supplies.

  “This was quite a find,” said Horrie Jackson. “We can use her to—”

  “She’s gorgeous! Who cares what she’s for?”

  The fishing-camp leader chortled. “Isn’t she just? But the Senator wanted something that could tow a load. And since I’m comin’ along I’d as soon have something fast. Just in case we have to run away from anything.”

  “Were not going there to run away,” Baker told him.

  Jackson’s grin was wide. He was missing a tooth. “General, I’m going because they hired me. Some of my boys are going because the Senator’s man said he’d take their women up into that valley and keep ’em there for the winter. I don’t know what the last astronaut is doing here.”

  “Don’t you care?” Baker demanded. “Isn’t it worth saving? It could be the last nuclear power plant on Earth!”

  Jackson shook his head. “General, after what I’ve seen T can’t think more than a day ahead. and right now all I know is you’re going to feed me awhile. I remember…” His brow furrowed. “Seems so long ago. The papers were screaming about how the gov’mint was putting an atomic plant right next to us and if a melt-down happened… I don’t remember. But I can’t get excited about saving an atomic plant.”

  “Or anything else,” Jason Gillcuddy said. “Disaster syndrome.”

  “Let’s board,” Horrie Jackson said coldly.

  Tim Hammer made his choice: One of the boats had an awning, protection from the drizzle. He sat next to Hugo Beck. The man must have had enough of being avoided. Mark and Gillcuddy boarded the same boat. Horrie Jackson took the pilot’s chair. then looked around to find that Johnny Baker was in command of Cindy Lu.

  “I don’t suppose she’ll be too fast for an astronaut,” he called “but you won’t get so wet under the awning.”

  Baker laughed. “What’s a little rain to a man in love?” He activated Cindy Lu with a marrow-freezing, mind-numbing roar.

  The small fleet moved cautiously out from shore, out into the inland sea. The water was dangerous with treetops, floating debris, telephone poles. Horrie Jackson led the way in the cabin boat, going very slowly. The top of a silo marked where a submerged barn must be; he steered wide. He seemed to know exactly where to turn to find the channel among the islands and obstructions.

  The night was not quite pitch black. A dull glow beyond the drizzle marked where the moon was hidden by the constant cloud cover.

  Mark fished out corn dodgers and passed them around. They had bags of cornmeal with them, and enough of the round cornmeal cakes to feed them while they crossed the water. Enough, until Hugo Beck put one in Horrie Jackson’s hand.

  “Hey!” Horrie cried. He bit it, then stuffed it whole in his mouth and tried to talk around it. “Dried fish just by my foot. Pass it around. It’s all yours. I want as much of these things as you can spare, and all for me.”

  Mark was stunned. “Just what is so extra special about corn dodgers?”

  Horrie got his mouth clear. “They aren’t fish, that’s what! Look, for all of me the whole world is starving except us. We aren’t starving. For a couple of months we were, then all of a sudden there was fish everywhere, but only two kinds. Catfish and goldfish. The only problem is cooking them. We—”

  “Hold up!” That was Mark. “You didn’t really say goldfish, did you?”

  “They look like goldfish, but big. That’s what you’re eating now. Gary Fisher says goldfish can grow to any size. The catfish were always there, in the streams. You want me to shut up? Pass me that bag of corn dodgers.”

  They passed Horrie the bag. Tim ate with enthusiasm. He hadn’t tasted fish in a long time, and it was good, even dried. He wondered why there were suddenly so many fish, then considered how their food supply had exploded. All those dead things floating in the water. It only bothered him for a moment.

  “But why
goldfish?” Mark Czescu wondered.

  Gillcuddy laughed at him. “Easy to picture. Here’s a rising freshwater sea, and here’s a living room with a goldfish bowl in it. The water rises, breaks through the picture window, and suddenly the most docile of household pets is whirled out of his cage into the great wide world. ‘Free at last!’ he cries.” Gillcuddy bit into a filet of goldfish and added, “Freedom has its price, of course.”

  Horrie ate corn dodgers in single-minded silence.

  Mark rummaged through his pockets and came up with a tiny scrap of cigar. He popped it into his mouth and chewed. “I would kill for a Lucky Strike,” he said.

  “You may well have the opportunity,” Jason Gillcuddy said.

  Mark grinned in the dark. “I can hope. That’s why I volunteered.”

  “Really?” said Tim.

  “Not really. Anything beats breaking rocks.”

  Jason Gillcuddy laughed at a private thought. “Let’s see,” he said. “You’d kill for a Lucky Strike. I suppose you’d maim for a Tareyton?”

  “Right!” Mark roared approval.

  “And shout insults for a Carlton,” Hugo Beck said. They all laughed, but it died quickly; they were still nervous around Hugo Beck.

  “Now you know why I’m here,” Mark said. “But why you, Tim?”

  Tim shook his head. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. No, forget I said that. It feels like I owe somebody something…” The people he’d driven past. The cops working to unearth a hospital while a tidal wave marched toward them. “…and Eileen’s pregnant.”

  When he didn’t go on, Horrie Jackson called without looking back. “So?”

  “So I’ll have children. Don’t you see?”

  “I’m here,” Hugo Beck said without being asked, “because nobody at the Stronghold would look at me.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Tim said. “If anyone wants to surrender, you tell ’em what it means.”

  Beck chewed that. “They don’t have to know about me, do they?”

  A look passed among them. “Not till they have to,” Tim said quickly, and he turned to Jason. “You’re the one I don’t understand. You’re Harry’s friend. They couldn’t possibly make you volunteer.”

  Jason chuckled. “No, I’m a genuine volunteer, all right. Had to. You ever read my books?” He went on before any of them could answer. “Full of the marvels of civilization, what great things science does for us. Now how could I not volunteer for this crazy mission?” Gillcuddy looked out at the dark night and darker water. “But there’s places I’d rather be.”

  “Sure,” Tim said. “The Savoy Hotel in London. With Eileen. That’s what I want.”

  “And Hugo wants the Shire back,” Mark said.

  “No.” Hugo Beck’s voice was firm. “No, I want civilization.” When nobody stopped him he went on, eagerly. “I want a hot car and some practice talking a cop out of giving me a ticket. I want Gone With The Wind on a noncommercial channel, no interruptions. I want dinner at Mon Grenier restaurant with a woman who can’t spell ‘ecology’ but she’s read the Kama Sutra.”

  “And spotted the mistakes,” Mark said.

  “You knew Mon Grenier?” Gillcuddy demanded.

  “Sure. I lived in Tarzana. You’ve been there?”

  “Mushroom salad.” said Gillcuddy.

  “Bouillabaisse. With a chilled Moselle,” Tim said. They talked of meals they’d never eaten and now never would.

  “And I missed most of my chances,” Hugo Beck said. “I had to start a goddam commune. Fellows, let me tell you, it doesn’t work.”

  “I’d never have guessed,” Jason said. Hugo Beck retreated from the irony in Gillcuddy’s voice, and the writer said quickly, “Anyway, we carry miracles. I think.” He kicked a large sack that lay in the bottom of the boat. “Will this stuff work?”

  “Forrester says it will,” Mark said, “especially if you give it a good kick. But we don’t have much with us. Hardy bargains hard.”

  Horrie Jackson looked back from his place at the wheel “Jesus, I’ll say he does. I’m here.”

  The drizzle turned gray and lighter gray. Ninety-three million miles eastward, the Sun must be placidly unaffected by the greatest disaster in written history. The boats floated on an endless sea dotted with debris. The corpses of men and animals were gone now. Horrie Jackson increased speed, but not by a lot. There were logs and bits of houses, inflated tires, the jetsam of civilization. Treetops showed like rectangular arrays of puffy bushes; but there were single trees, and some were just submerged. Any of that could tear the bottom out of their boat.

  Hugo Beck called across the boat, “Hey, Mark. What would you do for a Silva Thin?”

  “Get your hand off my knee and I’ll tell you.”

  Jackson steered by compass through the gloomy dawn. There was no one else on the lake, only the small flotilla. Cindy Lu labored in the rear, a big motor with a tiny boat molded around her, roaring her frustration at the weight she must pull. Horrie bellowed above the sound of his own motor, “I’ll come back with a boatload of fish, enough to feed everyone in that power plant. What I want in return is enough of those corn things to fill that gunnysack the fish was in. Now, it’s not that big a sack…”

  Tim Hamner peered ahead into the rain. Something ahead? At first he saw an island with rectangular shapes jutting upward. Not unusual… but as they got closer he saw that some of the shapes were cylinders, and big. He looked for motion, human shapes. They had to have heard Cindy Lu’s roar.

  Alim Nassor found Hooker and Jerry Owen in the command post. Maps were spread across the table, and Hooker was moving small cardboard units on them. A voice cut through the fabric wall to thunder in Alim’s ear.

  “For their pride is the pride of the magicians of old, who thought to force all Nature to their bidding. But ours is the pride of those who trust in the Lord. Our need is not for the magicians’ weapons, but only for the Lord’s favor…”

  Hooker looked up in disgust. “Crazy bastard.”

  Alim shrugged.

  They needed Armitage, and despite the cynical talk they used when Armitage wasn’t around, most of them at least partly believed in the preacher’s message. “Well, I got nothing against wrecking the damn power plant,” Hooker said. “It’s got to go, I can see that. But it’s—”

  “Sure! It takes a lot of industry to support something like that.” Jerry Owen spoke with no idea that he was interrupting. “If we have that plant, we’ll want to use the electricity. First because it’s convenient, then because we need it, and then it’s too later Then we’ll need all the other industry to keep the nuclear plant running. Industrial society all over again, and that’s the end of freedom and brotherhood, because we’ll need wage slavery to—”

  “I said I believe you. Just for God’s sake stop with the fucking speeches.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Owen asked.

  “Well, the plant isn’t going anywhere, is it? It’ll wait till we’re ready. The question is when?” Hooker said. “Look, when we started off all we wanted was a place to hide. Like the goddam Senator has, someplace we can defend. Someplace ours. Well, we can’t do that.”

  “You gave that up the first time you stewed a man.”

  “Think I don’t know that, motherfucker?” Hooker’s voice had a tightly controlled edge to it. “So now we’re on a roller coaster. We can’t stop. We have to keep growing. Take the whole goddam state. Maybe more. But we sure as hell can’t stop now.”

  He pointed to the map. “And the Senator’s valley sits right here. We can’t go north of that till we take his place. Hell, we can’t even hold White River and those hills as long as the Senator’s people can come raiding our territory anytime they want to. One thing we learned in ’Nam: You leave the enemy a place to retreat and get organized, what they call a sanctuary, and you cannot beat him. And you know what that Senator is doing?” Hooker ran his finger along the line of hills to the east of the San Joaquin Sea. “He’s sent fi
fty men on horses up in there. They’re recruiting. On our flanks. Now I don’t know how many there are up in those hills, but if they all get together they can do us trouble. So. We don’t give ’em a chance to do it. We hit the Senator, and we do it now, before he gets organized.”

  “I see,” said Jerry Owen. He stroked his blond beard. “And the Prophet wants us to go after the power plant—”

  “Right,” Hooker said. “Pull the whole army south. You see what that does to us? But how the hell do I talk that crazy bastard into letting me finish off the Senator’s place before we go after that power plant?”

  Owen looked thoughtful. “Maybe you don’t. You know, I don’t think they’d have more than fifty, sixty people in that plant. Not fighting people. They could have a lot more women and kids, but they won’t have much of an army. And they’re on an island out there, they can’t have much food. Not much ammunition. No real defenses…”

  “You saying it will be easy to knock off?” Alim Nassor said.

  “How easy?” Hooker asked. “How many?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Give me a couple of hundred men. And some of the artillery. Mortars. Hit the turbines with mortars and that finishes the electricity. They can’t operate the nuclear reactor without electricity. They need it for the pumps. Hit the turbines, and the whole thing melts down—”

  “Will it blow up?” Alim asked. The idea excited him and scared him. “Big mushroom cloud? What about fallout? We’d have to get out from under that fast, wouldn’t we?”

  Jerry Owen looked at him with amusement. “Nope. No great white light. No big mushroom cloud. Sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Hooker said. “Once we get that place, can you make me some atom bombs?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know how?” Hooker showed his disappointment. Owen had been talking like he knew it all.

  And Owen was offended. “Nobody does. Look, you can’t make atom bombs out of nuclear fuel. Wrong stuff. It wasn’t designed for that. Wasn’t designed to blow up, either. Hell, we probably won’t get a real melt-down. They put safety precautions on their safety precautions.”