Lucifer's Hammer

Rich Man. Poor Man

Tim led Eileen over the slippery crest. They stopped to gape down at Tujunga.

Tujunga still lived! There was electricity: yellow lights shining from houses that still stood; bright bluish-white fluorescent light from stores with unbroken glass in their windows.

Cars moved down Foothill Boulevard. They drove with their lights on in the afternoon gloom, through the windy, rainswept streets, across foot-thick mud that ran in rivulets across the road. Not many, but they were cars, and they moved. There were police cars in the supermarket parking lot across from Tim and Eileen.

There were also armed men, in uniform. When Tim and Eileen got closer they saw that the uniforms were of all styles and ages, and many didn’t fit any longer. It was as if everyone who had a uniform had gone home and put it on. The weapons were random: pistols, shotguns, .22 rifles, Mauser hunting pieces, a few military rifles carried by men in National Guard fatigues.

“Food!” Tim shouted. He took Eileen’s hand and they ran toward the shopping center with a new spring in their walk. “I told you,” Tim cried. “Civilization!”

Two men in outdated Army uniforms blocked the supermarket door. They didn’t stand aside as Tim and Eileen tried to go in. One of the men had sergeant’s stripes. He said, “Yeah?”

“We need to buy something to eat,” said Tim.

“Sorry,” the sergeant said. “All confiscated.”

“But we’re hungry.” Eileen sounded plaintive, even to herself. “We haven’t eaten all day.”

The other uniformed man spoke. He didn’t talk like a soldier. He sounded like an insurance salesman. “There’ll be ration cards issued at the old City Hall. You’ll have to go there to register. I understand they’ll be setting up a soup line too.”

“But who’s inside the store?” Eileen pointed an accusing finger at aisles bathed in electric light, where people were piling goods into shopping carts. Some wore uniforms, some didn’t.

“Our officers. The supply crew,” the sergeant said. He had been a clerk in a hardware store until that morning. “They’ll tell you all about it at City Hall.” He looked at their muddy clothes, and something dawned on him. “You come from over the hills?”

Tim said, “Yes.”

“Jesus,” the sergeant said.

“Many more make it out?” the other man asked.

“I don’t know.” Tim took Eileen’s hand again, holding it as if she might vanish into smoke the way his dream of normal civilization had vanished. “We’re about dead on our feet,” he said. “Where can… what should we do?”

“Beats me,” the sergeant said. “You want my advice, you figure on getting out of here. We’re not turning out strangers. Not yet. But it stands to reason there’s only so much to go around. At least until we can get back over the hills and see what’s out in the valley. They tell me…” His voice trailed off.

“Did you see it happen?” the private asked.

“No. The water came pretty high, I guess,” Tim said. “But we couldn’t see. We just heard it.”

“I’ll hear it the rest of my life,” Eileen said. “It… There must be a lot of people alive, though. In Burbank, maybe. And the Hollywood Hills.”

“Yeah,” the private growled.

“Too many for us to take care of.” The sergeant peered out into the rain as if trying to see through the Verdugo Hills beyond the parking lot. “Way too many. You better register at City Hall while they’re still taking in strangers. Maybe we won’t be, if too many come. Over that way.” He pointed.

“Thanks.” Tim turned away. They started across the parking lot.

“Hey.” The sergeant came toward them. He held the rifle carelessly. Tim kept watching it. The sergeant reached into his pocket. “I guess I can spare this. You look like you can use it.” He held out a cellophane-wrapped packet, very small, and turned away before Tim could thank him. As if he didn’t want to be thanked.

“What did we get?” Eileen asked.

“Cheese and crackers. About one bite each.” He opened the package and used the little plastic stick to dig out cheese from the plastic container. He spread half of it onto crackers. “Here’s your share.”

They munched on the way. “Never thought this stuff would taste so good,” Eileen said. “And it’s only been a few hours. Tim, I don’t think we ought to stay here. We should get to your observatory if we can.” She remembered what she had seen Patrolman Eric Larsen do. And she’d known him. She didn’t know these men in their too-small uniforms. “But I don’t think I can walk that far.”

“Why walk?” Tim pointed to a lighted building. “We’ll buy a car.”

The lot held used pickup trucks. Inside the showroom there were three GMC Blazers, four-wheel-drive station wagons. They went in, and saw no one. Tim went over to one of the cars. “Perfect,” he said. “Just what we want.”

“Tim—”

He turned at the alarm in her voice. There was a man in the doorway to the shop area. He held a large shotgun. At first Tim Hamner saw only the gun, barrels pointed toward his head, each as large as a cave. Then he noticed the fat man behind it. Large, not really fat — yes he was. Fat. Also beefy, with red face. Expensive clothes. Western string tie with a silver device on it. And a big shotgun.

“You want one of those, do you?” the man said.

“I want to buy one,” Tim said. “We’re not robbers. I can pay.” Tim’s voice was filled with angry indignation.

The man stared for a moment. Then he lowered the shotgun. His head tilted back. Peal after peal of laughter came from his mouth. “Pay with what?” he demanded. He could hardly speak for laughing. “With what?”

Tim swallowed the automatic answer. He looked at Eileen, and fear came to him. Money wasn’t any good — and he didn’t have any money to begin with. He had checks, and plastic credit cards, and what were they? “I don’t know,” Tim said finally. “Yes I do. Maybe. I have a place up in the hills. Stocked with food and supplies. Big enough for a lot of people. I’ll take you and your family, and let you stay there…”

The man stopped laughing. “Nice offer. Don’t need it, but nice. I’m Harry Stimms. I own this place.”

“My name is—”

“Timothy Hamner,” Stimms said. “I watch TV.”

“And you’re not interested in my offer?”

“No,” Stimms said. “Actually, I don’t suppose these cars belong to me anymore. Expect the National Guard johnnies will take them over pretty quick now. And I’ve got a place to go.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, Mr. Hamner, maybe things aren’t as bad as they say. You want one of these?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll sell you one. The price is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

Eileen’s jaw dropped. Tim’s eyes narrowed a second. Talk about being rolled . … “Done. How do I pay?”

“You sign a note for it,” Stimms said. “Doubt it’ll be any good, ever. But just in case…” He picked up the shotgun and kept it cradled in his arms. “Come on into the office. I’ve got the note forms. Never made one out for quite that much before…”

“I can write small.”

They drove through inches-deep water on side streets. The wind howled. On either side the old houses, built long before the Long Beach quake and still standing, were islands of light in the drizzle. Tim’s watch said 4 P.M., but outside it was dark, with only a dingy gray except in the headlights. There were no sidewalks, and mud as well as water flowed across the blacktop road. Eileen drove carefully, eyes ahead on the road. The radio gave nothing but static.

“Nice car,” Eileen said. “Glad it has power steering.”

“For a quarter of a million bucks it ought to have,” Tim said. “Damn, that frosts me—”

Eileen giggled. “Best deal you ever made in your life.” Or ever will make, she thought.

“It isn’t the car.” Tim’s voice held hurt indignation. “It was the extra fifty thousand bucks he charged for gas and oil and a jack!” Then he laughed. “And the rope. Mustn’t forget the rope. I’m glad he had extra. I wonder where he’s going?”

Eileen didn’t answer. They crested a hill and started down, around a bend. There were no more houses. Thick mud covered the road and she shifted into four-wheel drive. “I’ve never been in a car like this before.”

“Me neither. Want me to drive?”

“No.”

There was water at the bottom of the hill. It came up to the hubcaps, then up to the doors, and Eileen backed away. She drove carefully off the road and onto the embankment beside it. The car tilted dangerously toward the swirling dark water to their left. They went on, carefully and slowly. On their right were the ruins of new houses and condominiums, just far enough away so that they couldn’t see any details. A few lights, flashlights and lanterns, moved among the wreckage. Tim wished he’d got a flashlight from the car dealer. They had a spotlight, but it needed to be mounted on the car, and wouldn’t be any good until it was.

They went around the valley, staying just above the water, and eventually found the road again where it rose out of the flood. Eileen gratefully shifted gears.

The road twisted up into the mountains. They passed stopped cars. Someone darted out in front of the Blazer and gestured them to halt. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he held a pistol in his hand. Eileen gunned the car toward him, making him dive off to the side, then she accelerated.

There were gunshots, and a crash of glass. Tim looked back in amazement at the neat round hole through the rear window, then above at the exit hole angling up through the roof. Rainwater ran in through the hole and dripped between them. Eileen floorboarded the car, roaring around the curve without braking, and the car had the feathery feeling of an imminent skid. She got around, braked for the next curve, then accelerated again.

Tim tried to laugh. “My new car.”

“Shut up.” She was leaning forward against the wheel. “You all right?’,

“No.”

“Eileen!”

“I’m not hit. I’m scared. I’ve got the shakes.”

“Me too,” he said, but he felt waves of relief wash over him. There had been that tiny moment, only an instant really, when he thought she’d been hit. It had been the most terrifying moment of his life. Now that struck him as strange; because he hadn’t seen her since she turned down his proposal. Of course not. He had his pride—

“Tim, there are bridges ahead, and we’re getting closer to the Fault! The road may be gone!” She was shouting.

“Not much we can do about it.”

“No, we can’t go back.” She slowed for another curve, then accelerated again. She was still strangling the wheel. She was going to wreck them if she didn’t calm down, and he couldn’t think of a thing to do about it.

The road was often blocked by mudslides, and Eileen, finally, had slowed to a crawl. Once they took half an hour to get fifty feet. Now, whenever they came to a clear section of road, Tim wished that she would drive faster. But she didn’t; she kept the car in first or second gear, and never drove faster than twenty miles an hour, even when the headlights showed long clear stretches.

They drove on interminably. Eventually Tim stuffed his handkerchief into the hole in the roof.

Tim’s watch showed 8 P.M., twilight time for Los Angeles June, but it was as black as ink outside. Rain fell intermittently. The windshield wipers in the Blazer were very good, and Stimms had showed them how to fill the washers. Eileen used them often.

As they rounded a sharp curve, the headlights showed empty space in front of them. Eileen braked, hard, and brought the car to a stop. The headlights bored small holes in the rainy dark, but there was enough light to show a jagged end to the road.

Tim got out in the rain and went toward the edge. When he saw where he stood he gulped, hard, and went back to the driver’s side. “Back up, slow,” he commanded.

She started to ask why, but the urgent fear in his voice stopped her. Carefully she put the car into reverse and crawled back. “Get back there and guide me, damn you!” she shouted.

“Sorry.” Tim walked back behind the car and guided her with gestures. Finally he made chopping motions.

She switched off the ignition and got out to see where they’d been. The bridge had been a slender concrete arch spanning a deep gorge. The bridge had fallen in the center, and they’d been well onto it before she stopped. Now they were back on solid ground.

They could see nothing. To the left they felt the loom of a flint-and-granite cliff rising high above them. On the right, beyond a broad earth hump, was a steep drop into nothing. Ahead was the ruined bridge.

There were no lights anywhere, and no sounds except howling wind driving the rain, and far below, sounds of rushing water.

“End of the line?” Eileen said.

“I don’t know. It’s a cinch we can’t do anything about it tonight. I guess we stay here until daylight.”

“If there’s ever any daylight again,” she said. She frowned, and began walking up the road. Tim didn’t follow. He stood, exhausted, wanting to get back into the car, but reluctant to do it until she came back. Somehow it would have been cowardly to sit in the car out of the rain while she tramped up the road, looking for… for what? Tim wondered. Finally she came back and got in. Tim went around and joined her.

She began backing up, slowly, this time without his help. She went on and on, and Tim wanted to ask what she was doing, but he was too tired. She had made a decision, and that was good, because he didn’t have to. Eventually she came to a wide gravel patch to the left side of the road and carefully backed into it so that the car was off the pavement entirely. “I don’t like it,” she said. “There might be a mudslide. But I’d rather be here than on the road. Suppose someone else comes.”

“No one will.”

“Probably. Anyway, we’re here.”

“Beer?” Tim asked.

“Sure.”

He took two cans from the six-pack the car salesman had thrown in. He opened one and started to throw the pull tab away.

“Save that.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Save everything,” Eileen said. “We don’t have much. I don’t know what we can use those for, but we’ll never get more of them. Save it. Cans, too. Don’t crush them.”

“Okay. Here.”

The beer was lukewarm, like the rain outside. They had nothing else. Nothing to eat, and the rain outside was mildly salty. Tim wondered if they could drink it safely. Pretty soon they’d have to.

“At least it’s warm,” Tim said. “We won’t freeze, even at this altitude.” His clothes were damp, and it wasn’t really very warm. He wished they’d saved the old raincoat from the first car. For a moment Tim thought about the Chrysler’s owner. Had they killed him by taking his car? That wasn’t something to think about. What was?

“Do we save this or drink it up and be done with it?” Tim asked.

“Better save at least two,” Eileen said. Her voice was wooden and emotionless, and Tim wondered if he sounded that way to her. Wordlessly he opened another pair of cans and they drank that.

Two cans of beer, on an empty stomach, after the day’s excitement: Tim found that it had more effect than he could have believed. He almost felt human again. He knew it wouldn’t last, but for the moment there was a warm feeling in his stomach and a lightness in his head. He looked toward Eileen. He couldn’t see her in the dark. She was only a shape on the seat beside him. He listened to the rain for a few moments longer, then reached for her.

She sat stiffly, not moving, neither pushing him away nor responding. Tim moved against her on the seat. His hand went to her shoulder, then down to her breast. Her blouse was damp, but her flesh was warm when he put his hand under the blouse. She still hadn’t moved. He moved closer, putting his head to her breasts.

“Is this appropriate?” Her voice might have been a stranger’s. It was Eileen, but detached, from a long way away.

“What is?” Tim said. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry.” The glow from the beer was gone now.

“Don’t be. I’ll sleep with you, if that’s what you want. I’d rather not. Not now…”

“Yeah, there have to be better times.”

“Not if that’s what you really want,” she said. “I’ve been thinking. Were we ever really in love?”

“I asked you to marry me…”

“And I wanted to, only I didn’t want to marry anybody. Well, we’re married now.”

Tim was silent in the darkness. He felt an insane urge to giggle. Mother will be pleased, he thought. Little Timmy’s married now. He wondered where his mother was, and the rest of his family. Could I have done anything? Should I have tried? I didn’t try. I didn’t do anything but run for my life.

“Sure you want me?” he asked.

“Tim, when I came out of Corrigan’s and saw you I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. Yes.”

Was she putting him on? And what was the point of worrying about it?

“We’ll learn to love each other,” she was saying. “We’ve been learning it all day. So if” — she patted his hand that still lay passively on her breast — “this is what you want, I’m willing.”

He sat up and moved away from her.

“Tim, please don’t be angry.”

“No, that’s okay. You’re right, it feels wrong. The whole car is wet, and our clothes stick to us, and if you’re not tired half to death, I am. Jesus, we came close to driving off that bridge!”

She reached to squeeze his hand.

“Wrong time, wrong place. Hey, how about the Savoy Hotel?”

“Huh?”

“Savoy Hotel in London. Elegance. Incredible room service. Huge bathtubs. If this is the wrong place for a love affair, the right place is the Savoy Hotel. Only, it’s probably underwater.” He was babbling. “Sure, there’s a right place somewhere, but what if we never reach it? Eileen, I damned near didn’t get that fence down, and it had to be done. You don’t need me, you need Conan the Barbarian! Him for brawn and you for brains.”

“Will you stop that?”

“I can’t. You’re the one who kept us going. If you want manly strength, I don’t think I have it. I don’t have the skills either. I used to know how to hire skills.”

“You carried me down the hill,” she said, exaggerating for effect. “You knew where to go. You’ve done all right.”

He couldn’t see her in the dark. But he knew she wasn’t laughing at him, because she had a death grip on his hand. He moved toward her again, and she came to him, holding him desperately. He had no sexual urge now, only a feeling of innate protectiveness. Part of his mind knew this was silly; knew that Tim Hamner, however much he might share the ages-old instincts of male Homo sapiens, had neither the training nor the muscles to give them reality. But it was very pleasant to hold Eileen and have her go quietly to sleep with her head in his lap, and after a while he slept too.

The sea is withdrawing from England.

Sluggish with debris, the water that has conquered London flows back toward the Channel. Glutted with human bodies and the lighter cars, and the wooden walls of older buildings and the sea-bottom debris that came inland in three monstrous tidal waves, the water must force its way between and around and through mountainous chunks that were tall buildings yesterday. Windows that survived the wave break now to let the water through. It sifts the interiors as it goes, and carries away furniture, bedding, whole department stores full of clothing.

Buildings along the Thames have been smashed to their foundations, and even those are being torn loose. Tremendous pressures pry the concrete away in pieces and send them, with megatons of mud from the banks, down into the river bed.

Tomorrow and forever after, there will be no way to tell where the Savoy Hotel once stood.

They woke with cramps, tingling limbs and the shivers.

“What time is it?” Eileen asked.

Tim pushed the button on his watch. “One-fifty.” He shifted uncomfortably. “The stuff we read in Lit classes made it sound romantic, this business of sleeping in each other’s arms, but it’s damned uncomfortable.”

She laughed in the dark. Lovely, Tim thought. It was Eileen again, her laugh, and he could imagine her sunburst smile although he couldn’t see it. “Do these seats do anything?” she asked.

“Dunno.”

The car had a divided bench seat. Tim reached down, feeling for controls. He found a lever and pulled. The seat back collapsed against the seat behind, not quite horizontal but a great deal more comfortable than it had been. He told her what he’d done and she flopped hers back as well. Now they were not quite lying side by side. She moved against him. “I’m freezing.”

“Me too.”

They huddled together, seeking each other’s warmth. They were not very comfortable. Arms got in the way. She put her arm over him, and they lay still for a moment. Then she drew him tightly against her body, pushing her legs against his. She felt warm along her whole length. Suddenly her mouth found his and she kissed him. That went on for a moment and she drew away, and laughed, very softly. “Still in the mood?” she asked.

“Back in the mood,” Tim said, and he gave up on speaking.

They kept most of their clothes on, peeling back shirt and blouse and skirt and pants, giggling, reaching under cloth that was needed for warmth; and they coupled suddenly, with a fervor that left no room for laughter. It felt right, now. Even the flavor of insanity matched what was happening to the world around them. Afterward they rested in each other’s arms, and Eileen said, “Shoes.”

So they curled around each other, maintaining contact, to wrestle their shoes off; they caressed each other with their toes; they coupled again. Tim felt the wiry strength of Eileen’s legs and arms, caging him. She relaxed slowly, and sighed, and was out like a light.

He pulled her skirt down as far as it would go. She slept soundly, stirring only slightly when he moved. Tim lay awake in the dark, wishing for dawn, wishing for sleep.

Why did we do that? he wondered. The night the world ended, and we screw like mad minks, here at the end of nowhere on the Big Tujunga Canyon Road, with a dead bridge in front of us and ten million dead behind… In a car seat, yet, like a couple of teen-agers.

She moved slightly, and he put his arm across her, protectively, without volition. He realized he had done that. Reflex. Protective reflex, he thought.

Suddenly Tim Hamner grinned in the dark. “Why the hell not?” he said aloud, and went to sleep.

There was a gray tinge to the sky when they both woke. They sat up together, wrapped in thoughts and memories, wondering what had wakened them. Then they heard it over the drumming of rain on metal a motor, a car or truck coming very fast up the highway. Presently there were lights behind them.

Tim felt a terrible sense of urgency. He ought to be doing something. Warning. He ought to warn that car. He shook his head violently, trying to shake himself awake. It must have worked. He reached past Eileen for the steering wheel. The horn shrieked in mechanical terror.

The car went past them like a bat out of hell, followed by the terror-sound. Tim released the horn and heard real mechanical terror: a long scream of brakes, and then nothing, no sound at all for crawling eons. Then metal smashed rock, and light flared ahead of them.

They got out and ran toward half of a bridge. Below the bridge’s twisted end was fire. Fire crawled away from the greater blaze, stopped, convulsed, then fell still. The car burned, casting its bonfire light on the canyon and the stream at its bottom.

Tim felt Eileen’s hand seeking his. He took her hand and held it tightly.

“Poor bastards,” she muttered. She shivered in the dawn cold. The rain had eased, but the wind was cold. It blew the fire. They could feel warmth from the blazing car fighting the wind’s chill.

Eileen let go of Tim’s hand and moved out onto the ruined bridge. She looked back at the walls of the gorge on the side where Tim still stood. Then she pointed. “We can get across, I think,” she said. “Come look.” Her voice was calm and detached now.

Tim went out to her, walking gingerly, afraid the rest of the bridge would collapse. He looked where she was pointing. There was a gravel road, barely a car’s width wide, carved out of the side of the gorge and switchbacking down into the canyon. “Must be the old road,” Eileen said. “I thought there might be one.”

It didn’t look adequate at all. Not even to walk on, but Eileen went back and started the engine.

“Shouldn’t we wait for more light?” Tim asked.

“Probably, but I don’t want to,” she said.

“Okay. But let me drive. You get out and walk.”

There was just light enough to see her face. She leaned over and kissed him, lightly, on the cheek. “You’re sweet. But I’m a better driver than you. And you’ll walk, because somebody has to go ahead and be sure I can drive down the trail.”

“No. We’ll do it together.” He knew he wasn’t making much sense, and he wondered if he would have said that if he hadn’t known she would make him get out and walk.

“We both have a better chance if you scout,” she said. “Now get to it.”

The old road was a nightmare. Sometimes it tilted horribly toward the canyon below. At least, Tim thought, we’re out of sight of the burning car. He could still see some light from the dying blaze.

At the switchbacks she had to go around in short segments, backing up and turning, again and again, with the wheels only inches from the edge. Tim felt terror at every turn. She had only to make one mistake: The wrong gear, or too much pressure on the accelerator, and she would be down there, burning alive, and Tim would be alone. He was barely able to walk when they reached the bottom.

“How deep is it?” Eileen asked.

“I…” Tim came back to the car and got in. “I’ll find out in a minute.” He reached for her, desperately.

She pushed him away. “Sweetheart, look.” She pointed to her left.

There was just enough light to see. Beyond the ruins of the burned car rose a massive concrete wall, rising high above them. A dam. Tim shuddered. Then he got out and waded into the stream, fighting the current. It was only up to his knees, and he staggered across, then beckoned for her to follow.

The Landlord

At noon Tim and Eileen reached the top of the gorge. When they were a third of the way up, another car had come to the other side and begun working its way down. It was an ordinary car without four-wheel drive, and Tim did not understand how they had got that far up the canyon. The other car held two men, a woman and many children. It was still clinging to the side of the gorge when Tim and Eileen reached the top on the other side. They drove away, leaving the others perched on the side of the cliff, wondering if they should have spoken to them, but not knowing what they could have done to help.

Tim felt more helpless than ever. He was prepared for the end of civilization: to be nearly alone, to find human beings few and far between. He was not prepared to watch it die, and he wondered what he should do about that, but he could think of nothing.

The next bridge was mercifully intact, and the one after that. They were only a few miles from the observatory.

They rounded a bend, to find four cars in the road. There were a lot of people standing there. These were the first people Tim and Eileen had seen since they left the gorge.

The road ran through a tunnel here, and the tunnel had collapsed. The cars were parked while men with shovels worked to prepare a way over the top of the rocky spur the tunnel had pierced. They had dug out part of a road, and were taking turns, since there were more men than shovels.

Six women and many children were gathered around the cars. Eileen looked hesitantly at the group, then drove up to them.

The children stared with big eyes. One of the women came over to the car. She seemed ancient, although she couldn’t have been more than forty. She looked at the Blazer, noting the starred bullet hole in the rear windshield. She didn’t say anything.

“Hello,” Tim said.

“Hi.”

“Have you been here long?”

“Got here just after dawn,” the woman said.

“Did you come from town?” Eileen asked.

“No. We were camped up here. Tried to get back to Glendale, but the road’s blocked. How’d you get up here? Could we go back the way you came?” Once she had found her voice, the woman talked rapidly.

“We came up Big Tujunga,” Tim said.

The woman looked surprised, and turned to the hill. “Hey, Freddie. They came up Big Tujunga.”

“It’s blocked,” the man called. He handed the shovel to another man and started down the hill toward them. Tim saw that he wore a pistol on his belt.

Their cars were not very new. A battered pickup truck, loaded with camping goods; a station wagon on sagging springs; an ancient Dodge Dart.

“We tried to get out Big Tujunga,” the man was saying as he came closer. He wore typical camping clothing, wool shirt and twill trousers. A Sierra cup dangled from one side of his belt. The pistol hung in its holster on the other. He didn’t seem to be aware of the gun. “I’m Fred Haskins. Reckon you came across the gorge by the old switchbacks?”

“Yes,” Eileen said.

“What’s it like back in L.A.?” Haskins asked.

“Bad,” Tim said.

“Yeah. Earthquake shook the place pretty good, huh?” Haskins looked at Tim carefully. He looked at the bullet hole too. “How’d you get that?”

“Someone tried to stop us-”

“Where?”

“Just as we started up into the mountains,” Tim said.

“Sheriff’s honor farm,” Haskins muttered. “All them prisoners loose, then?”

“What did you mean, ‘bad’?” the woman asked. “What did you mean?”

Suddenly Tim couldn’t stand it any longer. “It’s all gone. The San Fernando Valley, everything south of the Hollywood Hills, drowned in a tidal wave. What wasn’t drowned is burned. Tujunga looked pretty good, but the rest of the L.A. basin is finished.”

Fred Haskins stared uncomprehendingly. “Finished? All those people dead? All of them?”

“Just about,” Tim said.

“There are probably a lot of people still alive in the hills,” Eileen said. “But — if the road’s blocked, then they can’t come up here.”

“Jeez,” Haskins said. “That comet hit us, right? I knew it was going to hit. Martha, I told you we’d be better up here. How long… ? I guess they’ll send the Army to get us, but we may as well dig our way over,” Haskins said. “Road on the other side looks in good shape. Far as we can see, anyway. Martha, you got anything on the radio yet?”

“Nothing. Static. Sometimes I think I hear a few words, but they don’t make sense.”

“Yeah.”

“You folks had anything to eat?” Martha Haskins asked.

“No.”

“You look starved. Here, I’ll get you something, Mister—”

“Tim.”

“Tim. And you’re—”

“Eileen. Thank you.”

“Yeah. Tim, you go with Fred there and help dig while I get lunch together.”

As they climbed up the steep trail, Fred said, “Glad you came along. Not sure we could have got all the cars over. With that rig you can pull ’em over for sure. Then we’ll go look for the Army people.”

The road heaved and shifted and moved out from under the lead truck.

Corporal Gillings, dozing in his seat, was jarred nastily awake. Swearing, he looked out through the canvas. The convoy was trapped. The earth heaved like a sea—

“Hammerfall,” he said.

The troops were muttering. Johnson asked, “What’s that?”

“The end of the fucking world, you dumb motherfucker. Don’t you read anything?” Gillings had read it all: the National Enquirer, articles in Time, the interviews with Sharps and others. He had planned it all a thousand times, daydreaming in his bunk, adding loving details to the scenario. Gillings knew what would happen when Lucifer’s Hammer fell. End of civilization. And the end of the goddam Army, too. It would be every man for himself, and the right man could be a fucking king if he played his cards right.

Johnson was staring, bewildered and lost, waiting to hear more. Gillings felt light-headed, disoriented. He was not used to seeing his daydreams turn real.

Captain Hora called, “Out of the trucks. Everybody out!”

Gillings’s head cleared. Right, it was all falling into place, and that was the first problem: Fucking officers! Hora wasn’t bad, as officers went, and the men liked him. Something had to be done about that, and quick. Otherwise the RA son of a bitch would have them out working like slaves, trying to save the civilians’ arses until fire and tidal waves took them all.

“We’re trapped good, Captain,” Sergeant Hooker shouted. “Landslides in front and behind. Don’t think we can get the trucks out of here.”

“Saddle ’em up, Sarge,” Captain Hora called. “We’ll hike it. Plenty of people up in these hills. We’ll go see what we can do.”

“Sir,” Hooker said. His voice lacked enthusiasm. “What do we eat, Captain?”

“Time enough to worry about that when we get hungry,” Hora said. “Go have a look up ahead. Maybe we can get through the mud.”

“Sir.”

“Rest of you, out of the trucks,” Hora called.

Gillings grinned. Damned lucky we didn’t get back to camp before Hammerfall. He smiled again and fingered the hard objects in his pocket. The troops hadn’t been given ammunition, but it wasn’t hard to come by, and he had a dozen rounds. There was plenty more ammo in the trucks.

Would the men follow him? Maybe not. Not at first. Maybe it would be better to let Hooker live. The troops would follow Hooker, and Hooker wasn’t smart, but he was smart enough to know there wasn’t any point in arresting Gillings after the Captain bought it. No more courts-martial. No more courts. Sure, Hooker was that smart.

Gillings slipped three rounds into his rifle.

It took most of the day. Tim had never worked so hard in his life. He’d paid for his lunch. They dug out the steep parts, then used the Blazer to break trail, used it again to pull the other cars up the muddy road they’d built. The rain continued, although it was now not much more than a heavy drizzle.

Every muscle in Tim’s body ached before they were over the ridge. The temporary road didn’t have to climb more than a hundred feet, but the road they built switchbacked five times that in length.

When they reached the pavement on the other side of the ruined tunnel, they went in caravan. Four miles beyond the ruined tunnel they came to a ranger station. There were hundreds of people there. A church group, with ninety children and a few college students as counselors and one elderly preacher. Campers and fishing parties had come out of the fire trails and backwoods areas. A bicycling party of French coeds, only one with any English at all, and nobody else spoke French. One large camper which held a writer, his wife and an unbelievable number of children.

The rangers had set up a temporary camp. When Tim’s party drove up, they were directed off to one side. Tim wanted to go on, but a green Forest Service truck blocked the way. Eileen stopped and they got out. A uniformed ranger had been talking with Fred Haskins. Now he came over to Tim and Eileen.

The ranger was in his middle twenties, a lanky well-muscled man. His uniform gave him a look of authority, but he didn’t seem very confident. “They say you came up the Big Tujunga Road,” he said. He stared at Tim. “You’re Hamner.”

“I’m not advertising it,” Tim said.

“No. I don’t suppose you are,” the ranger said. “Can we get down the Big Tujunga Road?”

“Don’t you know?” Tim asked.

“Look, mister, there are four of us here, and no more. We’re trying to take care of these kids, we’ve got parties out getting people in from dangerous campsites, there are mudslides all over, and most of the bridges are out. We didn’t try to get beyond the tunnel when we saw it was down.”

“And there’s nothing on the radio?” Eileen asked.

“Nothing from the Big Tujunga station,” the ranger admitted. “Don’t know why. We did get something on CB from some people over at Trail Canyon. They say the big bridge is out and some people are trapped in the canyon.”

“The bridge is out,” Eileen said. “We got across on the old road. There were some people behind us trying to do the same thing when we left.”

“You didn’t stay to help?” the ranger demanded.

“There were more of them than us,” Tim said. “And what good could we do? You can’t pull cars on that road. Too many turns. It’s not really a road anyway.”

“Yeah, I know. We keep it as a foot trail,” the ranger said absently. “Look, you’re an expert on comets. Just what has happened? What should we do with these people?”

Tim was ready to laugh at the question, but the ranger’s face stopped him. The young man looked too strained, too close to panic, and much too glad to see Tim Hamner. He wanted an expert to give him instructions.

Some expert.

“You can’t go back to Los Angeles,” Tim said. “There’s nothing there. Tidal waves took out most of the city—”

“Jesus, we got something from Mount Wilson on that, but I didn’t believe it—”

“And a lot of the rest of it was on fire. Tujunga’s got some kind of vigilante group organized. I don’t know if they’d be glad to see you or not. The road back to Tujunga’s not too bad, but I don’t think ordinary cars can get over parts of it even if you get past the gorge.”

“Yeah, but where’s the Army?” the ranger demanded. “The National Guard. Somebody! You say we shouldn’t go back to Tujunga, but what do we do with these kids? We’ll run out of food in another day, and we’ve got a couple of hundred kids to take care of!”

Hell, Tim thought, I am the expert. The knowledge produced elation and depression, oddly mixed. “Okay. I didn’t get out to JPL, so I don’t know, but… I know the comet calved a number of times. It—”

“Calved?”

“Broke up. Came on like a swarm of flying mountains, you understand? It must have hit us in pieces. No telling how many, but… it was morning in California, and the comet came out of the sun, so the main target area was the Atlantic.

Probably. If the East Coast got tidal waves as big as the one we got, they wiped out everything east of the Catskills, and most of the Mississippi Valley. No more national government. Maybe no more Army.”

“Jesus Christ! You mean the whole country’s gone?”

“Maybe the whole world,” Tim said.

It was too much. The ranger sat down on the ground next to Tim’s car. He stared into space. “My girl lives in Long Beach. …”

Tim didn’t say anything.

“And my mother. She was in Brooklyn. Visiting my sister. You say that’s all gone.”

“Probably,” Tim said. “I wish I knew more. But probably.”

“So what do I do with all the kids, and all the campers? With all these people? How do I feed them?”

You don’t, Tim thought, but he didn’t say that. “Food warehouses. Cattle ranches. Anyplace there’s food, until you can plant more crops. It’s June. Some of the crops should have survived.”

“North,” the ranger said to himself. “There are ranches in the hills above Grapevine. North.” He looked up at Tim. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. North, I guess.”

“Can you take some of the kids?”

“I suppose so, but we don’t have anything to eat—”

“Who does?” the ranger demanded. “Maybe you ought to stay with us. We can all move out together.”

“There’s probably a better chance for small groups than large ones. And we don’t want to stay with you,” Tim said. He didn’t want to be bothered with kids, either, but there was no way to refuse.

Besides, it was the right thing to do. He’d read it somewhere: In any ethical situation, the thing you want least to do is probably the right action. Or something like that.

The ranger went off and came back a few minutes later with four young children, ages six and under. They were clean and well dressed, and very frightened. Eileen packed them into the back of the Blazer, then got in the back seat, where she’d be close to them.

The ranger gave Tim a page torn from his notebook. There were names and addresses on it. “This is who the kids are.” His voice fell. “If you can find their parents…”

“Yeah,” Tim said. He started the Blazer. It was the first time he’d ever driven it. The clutch was very stiff.

“My name’s Eileen,” she was saying in the back. “And that’s Tim.”

“Where are we going?” the girl asked. She seemed very small and helpless, but she wasn’t crying. The boys were. “Are you taking us to my mommy?”

Tim glanced at the paper. Laurie Malcolm, sent to a church camp by her mother. No father mentioned. Mother’s address: Long Beach. Lord, what could they tell her?

“Can we go home?” one of the boys asked before Eileen could say anything.

How do you tell a six-year-old that his home has been washed away? Or a little girl that her mommy is—

“We’re going up that hill,” Eileen said. She pointed toward the mountain nearby. “When we get there, we’ll wait for your mommy—”

“But what happened?” the boy asked. “Everybody was so scared. Reverend Tilly didn’t want us to know it, but he was.”

“It was the comet,” Laurie told him solemnly. “Did it hit Long Beach, Eileen? Can I call you Eileen? Reverend Tilly says you aren’t supposed to call grown people by their first names. Ever.”

Tim turned off onto the side road leading up to the observatory. Long ago he’d had the old dirt road improved with logs and gravel and concrete in the worst places. The mud was thick, but the Blazer had no trouble. It wouldn’t be long now. Then they’d have food, and they could stop running. For a while, anyway. The food wouldn’t last forever, but it would be time enough to worry about that when they got there. Just now the observatory was home, a haven, a familiar place, with heat and dry clothes and a shower. A safe place to hide while the world ended.

The Blazer was no longer new and shiny. It was scratched along the sides from rockslides, and there was mud everywhere. It took the muddy road like a freeway, climbing over fallen rock, wading through deep pools. Tim had never had a car like this. It made him feel he could go anywhere.

And it had taken them home. Around one more bend. One more bend and they’d be safe…

The concrete building stood unharmed. So did the wooden garage outside it. The shed roof of the garage sagged, leaning at an angle, but not so much that anyone but Tim would notice. The telescope dome was closed, and the shutters were in place on all the windows of the main building.

“We’re here!” Tim shouted. He had to shout. Eileen had the children singing in the back seat. “There’s a hair on the wart on the…”

“There it is! Safe! At least for a while.”

The song cut off raggedly. “It looks all right,” Eileen said. There was wonder in her voice. She hadn’t expected to see the place intact. Somewhere after Tujunga she’d given up hoping for anything at all.

“Sure, Marty’s competent,” Tim said. “He’s got the shutters up, and the…” His voice trailed off.

Eileen followed Tim’s look. There were two men coming out of the observatory. Older men, about fifty. They carried rifles. They watched as Tim brought the Blazer to a halt in front of the big concrete porch. The rifles were held cradled in their arms, not quite pointing at the Blazer, not pointed away either.

“Sorry, chum, no room,” one of the men called. “Best move on. Sorry.”

Tim stared at the strangers, letting his rage gather strength. He let them have it between the eyes. “I’m Tim Hamner. I own this place. Now who’re you?”

They didn’t react at all.

A younger man came out onto the porch.

“Marty!” Tim screamed. “Marty, tell them who I am!” And when I learn what these strangers are doing here (he didn’t say) I’ll have words with you, Marty.

Marty smiled broadly. “Larry, Fritz, this is Mr. Timothy Gardner Allington Hamner, playboy, millionaire — oh, yes, and amateur astronomer. He owns this place.”

“Think of that,” Fritz said. The rifle didn’t waver.

One of the boys began to cry. Eileen pulled him toward herself and hugged him. The other children watched with big eyes.

Tim opened the door of the Blazer. The rifles moved fractionally. Tim ignored them and got out. He stood in the dusky twilight. Rain soaked his clothing and ran down the back of his neck. He walked toward the porch.

“Better not,” one of the riflemen, the one called Larry, said.

“The hell with you,” Tim said. He climbed the steps onto the porch. “I am not going to shout at you and scare the children.”

The men did nothing, and for a moment Tim felt courage. Maybe… was it all a joke? He looked at Marty Robbins. “What’s happening here?”

“Not here,” Marty said. “Everywhere.”

“I know about Hammerfall. What are these people doing at my place?” A mistake, Tim realized instantly. Too late.

“It’s not your place,” Marty Robbins said.

“You can’t get away with this! There are rangers down there. They’ll be here as soon as they can get—”

“No they won’t,” Robbins said. “No rangers, no Army, no National Guard, no police. You’ve got good radio equipment here, Mr. Hamner.” He said the “Mister” contemptuously. “I heard the last Apollo messages, and the rest of it, too. I heard what the rangers told each other. You don’t own this place, because nobody owns anything anymore. And we don’t need you.”

“But…” Tim examined the other two men. They didn’t look like criminals. How the hell do you know what a criminal looks like? Tim wondered. But they didn’t. Their hands were clean, rough, like workmen’s hands, not like Marty Robbins’s hands. Or Tim’s. One of the men had broken a nail off close and it was just growing back.

They wore gray trousers, work clothes. There was a label on Fritz’s pants. “Big Smith.” “Why are you doing this?” Tim asked them. He ignored Robbins now.

“What else can we do?” Larry asked. There was pleading in his voice, but the rifle was held steady, pointing somewhere between Tim and the Blazer. “There’s not a lot of food here, but some. Enough for awhile. We have families here, Mr. Hamner. What can we do?”

“You can stay. Just let us—”

“But don’t you see, we can’t let you stay,” Larry said. “What can you do here, Mr. Hamner? What are you good for now?”

“How the hell do you know what I can—”

“We discussed this before,” Fritz growled. “Didn’t think you’d get here, but we talked about what to do if you did. And this is it. Get out. You’re not needed.”

Marty Robbins couldn’t meet Tim’s eye. Tim nodded bleakly. He understood. There wasn’t a lot more to say, either. Any equipment — radios, even astronomical and meteorological gear — Robbins knew how to work as well as Tim did. Better. And Robbins had lived here for over a year. If there was anything special to know about these mountains, he’d know more of it than Tim.

“Who’s the chick?” Robbins demanded. He took a large flashlight from his pocket and shined it toward the Blazer. It didn’t help the visibility much. It showed raindrops falling, and the muddy car, and a glint of Eileen’s hair. “One of your relatives? Rich bitch?”

You little bastard. Tim tried to remember his assistant as he’d known him. They’d quarreled when Marty lived in Bel Air with Tim, but it hadn’t been serious, and Robbins was excellent at the observatory. Not a month ago, three weeks ago, Tim had written a letter recommending Robbins to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. I guess I really never knew…

“She can stay,” Robbins was saying. “We’re a woman short. She can stay. Not you. I’ll go tell her—”

“You’ll ask her,” Larry said. “Ask. She can stay if she wants to.”

“And me?”

“We’re going to watch you drive away,” Larry said. “Don’t come back.”

“There are some rangers out there,” Marty Robbins said. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea. Maybe we shouldn’t let him have the car. That’s a good car. Better than anything we have here—”

“Don’t talk like that.” Larry’s voice dropped and he glanced behind at the door into the observatory.

Tim frowned. Something was happening here, and he didn’t understand it.

Eileen got out of the Blazer and came up onto the porch Her voice was wooden, exhausted. “What’s wrong, Tim?”

“They say this isn’t my place anymore. They’re sending us away.”

“You can stay,” Marty said.

“You can’t do this!” Eileen screamed.

“Shut up!” Larry shouted.

An ample woman came out of the observatory. She looked at Larry with a frown. “What is this?”

“Keep out of this,” Larry said.

“Larry Kelly, what are you doing?” the woman demanded. “Who are these people? I know him! He was on the ‘Tonight Show.’ Timothy Hamner. This was your place, wasn’t it?”

“It is my place.”

“No,” Fritz said. “We agreed. No.”

“Thieves. Thieves and murderers,” Eileen said. “Why don’t you just shoot us and be done with it?”

Tim wanted to shout to her, to tell her to shut up. Suppose they did it? Robbins would.

“There’s no call to say things like that,” the woman said. “It’s simple. There’s not enough here for all of us. Not for long. More people there are, the less there is, and we don’t need Mr. Hamner giving orders, and I don’t reckon he’s good for a lot else. Not anymore. You go find another place, Mr. Hamner. There’s other places to go.” She looked to Larry for confirmation. “We’ll have to move on pretty soon ourselves. You’ll just have a head start.”

She sounded thoroughly sane and reasonable. It was a nightmare for Tim: She sounded calm and reasonable, and her tone indicated that she was sure Tim would agree.

“But the girl can stay,” Robbins said again.

“Do you want to?” Tim asked.

Eileen laughed. It was a bitter laugh, full of contempt. She looked at Marty Robbins and laughed again.

“There are children in that car,” the woman said.

“Mary Sue, they’re no business of ours,” Fritz said.

She ignored him. She looked to Larry. “Who are those children?”

“From the camp,” Eileen said. “They lived in Los Angeles. The rangers didn’t have anything to feed them. We brought them. We thought—”

The woman left the porch and went down to the Blazer.

“You tell her no,” Fritz said. “You make her—”

“I haven’t been able to make her do anything for fifteen years,” Larry said. “You know that.”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t need kids here!” Marty Robbins shouted.

“Don’t reckon they’ll eat as much between them as this lady would,” Larry said. He turned to Tim and Eileen. “Look Mr. Hamner, you see how it is? We got nothing against you, but-”

“But you’re leaving,” Marty Robbins said. There was satisfaction in his voice. He let it drop so that the woman couldn’t hear. She had gotten into the car and was sitting in the back seat talking with the children. “I still say there are rangers out there. Hamner might find one. Tell you what, I’ll go along with him when he leaves—”

“No.” Larry was clearly disgusted.

“Maybe he should,” Fritz said. “Way he thinks, I’m not sure we ever want to have him behind us. Maybe he should go and not come back. We could tough it out without him.”

“We made a deal!” Marty cried. “When you came here! I let you in! We made a deal—”

“Sure we did,” Fritz said. “But you better shut up about murder or we may forget that deal. I see Mary Sue’s bringing the kids. You want us to keep ’em, Mr. Hamner?”

So damned calm, Tim thought. Fritz and Larry. Two… two what? Carpenters? Landscape gardeners? Survivors now, convincing themselves they were still civilized people. “Since there’s no gas left in the car, and Eileen and I aren’t likely to get out of the mountains alive, it would be a good idea. Eileen, staying here might be your—”

“Not with that.” She was looking at Robbins.

Fritz looked at Larry. They stared at each other for a moment. “I guess we’ve got a little gas,” Fritz said. “Ten-gallon can, anyway. You can have that. Ten gallons of gas and a couple cans of soup. Now get back in that car before we change our minds about the gas.”

Tim got back in the car, pulling Eileen along before she could make any more suggestions. The children were clustered around Mary Sue, but they were looking toward the car, and that scared look was going to be on their faces a lot from now on. Tim dredged up a reassuring smile and a wave. His fingers twitched with the need to get going, get away from those guns! But he waited.

Larry filled their tank.

Tim backed out of the drive and drove off into the rain.

The Mailman: One

Harry Newcombe saw nothing of Hammerfall, and it was Jason Gillcuddy’s fault. Gillcuddy had imprisoned himself in the wilderness (he said) to diet and to write a novel. He had dropped twelve pounds in six months, but he could afford more. As for his isolation, it was certain that he would rather talk to a passing postman than write.

As the best coffee cup was to be found at the Silver Valley Ranch, so Gillcuddy, on the other side of the valley, made the best coffee. “But,” Harry told him, smiling, “I’d slosh if I let everyone feed me two cups. I’m popular, I am.”

“Kid, you’d better take it. My lease is up come Thursday, and Ballad’s finished. Next Trash Day I’ll be gone.”

“Finished. Hey, beautiful! Am I in it?”

“No, I’m sorry, Harry, but the damn thing was getting too big. You know how it is; what you like best is usually what has to go. But the coffee’s Jamaica Blue Mountain. When I celebrate—”

“Yeah. Pour.”

“Shot of brandy?”

“Have some respect for the uniform, if you… Well, hell, I can’t pour it out, can I.”

“To my publisher.” Gillcuddy raised his cup, carefully. “He said if I didn’t fulfill his contract he’d put out a contract on me.”

“Tough business.”

“Well, but the money’s good.”

A distant thunderclap registered at the back of Harry’s mind. Summer storm coming? He sipped at his coffee. It really was something special.

But there were no thunderclouds when he walked outside. Harry had been up before dawn; the valley farmers kept strange hours, and so did postmen. He had seen the pearly glow of the comet’s tail wrapping the Earth. Some of that glory still clung, softening the direct sunlight and whiting the blue of the sky. Like smog, but clean. There was a strange stillness, as if the day were waiting for something.

So it was back to Chicago for Jason Gillcuddy, until the next time he had to imprison himself to diet and write a novel. Harry would miss him. Jason was the most literate man in the valley, possibly excepting the Senator — who was real. Harry had seen him from a distance yesterday, arriving in a vehicle the size of a bus. Maybe they’d meet today.

He was driving briskly along toward the Adams place when the truck began to shake. He braked. Flat tire? Damage to a wheel? The road shuddered and seemed to twist, the truck was trying to shake his brains out. He got it stopped. It was still shaking! He turned off the ignition. Still shaking?

“I should have looked at that brandy bottle. Huh. Earthquake?” The tremors died away. “There aren’t any fault lines around here. I thought.”

He drove on, more slowly. The Adams farm was a long jog on the new route he’d planned to get him there early. He didn’t dare go up to the house… and that would save him a couple of minutes. There had been no new complaints from Mrs. Adams. But he hadn’t seen Donna in weeks.

Harry took off his sunglasses. The day had darkened without his noticing. It was still darkening: clouds streaming across the sky like a speeded-up movie, lightning flashing in their dark bellies. Harry had never seen anything like it. Summer storm, right; it was going to rain.

The wind howled like demons breaking through from Hell. The sky had gone from ugly to hideous. Harry had never seen anything like these roiling black clouds sputtering with lightning. It would have served Mrs. Adams right, he thought vindictively, if he had left her mail in the box outside the gate.

But it might be Donna who would have to make the soggy trip. Harry drove up and parked under the porch overhang. As he got out the rain came, and the overhang was almost no protection; the wind whipped rain in all directions.

And it might have been Donna who answered the door, but it wasn’t. Mrs. Adams showed no sign of pleasure at seeing him. Harry raised his voice above the storm — “Your mail, Mrs. Adams” — his voice as cold as her face.

“Thank you,” she said, and closed the door firmly.

The rain poured from the sky like a thousand bathtubs emptying, and washed from the truck in filthy brown streams. It shamed Harry. He hadn’t guessed that the truck was that dirty. He climbed in, half soaked already, and drove off.

Was weather like this common in the valley? Harry had been here just over a year, and he’d seen nothing remotely like this. Noah’s Flood! He badly wanted to ask someone about it.

Anyone but Mrs. Adams.

This had been the dry season in the valley. Carper Creek had been way down, a mere ripple of water wetting the bottoms of the smooth white boulders that formed its bed, as late as this morning. But when Harry Newcombe drove across the wooden bridge, the creek was beating against the bottom and washing over the upstream edge. The rain still fell with frantic urgency.

Harry pulled way over to put two envelopes in Gentry’s mailbox. The only time he had ever seen Gentry, the farmer had been pointing a shotgun at him. Gentry was a hermit, and his need for up-to-the-minute mail was not urgent, and Harry didn’t like him.

His wheels spun disconcertingly before they caught and pulled him back on the road. Sooner or later he would get stuck. He had given up hope of finishing his route today. Maybe he could beg a meal and a couch from the Millers.

Now the road led steeply uphill. Harry drove in low gear, half blind in the rain and the lightning and the blackness between. Presently there was empty space on his left, a hillside on his right, trees covering both. Harry hugged the hillside. The cab was thoroughly wet, the air warm and 110 percent humid.

Harry braked sharply.

The hillside had slipped. It ran right across the road and on down, studded with broken and unbroken trees.

Briefly Harry considered going back. But it was back toward Gentry’s and then the Adamses’, and the hell with it: The rain had already washed part of the mudslide away; what was left wasn’t all that steep. Harry drove up the mud lip. First gear and keep it moving. If he bogged down, it would be a wet walk home.

The truck lurched. Harry used wheel and accelerator, biting his lower lip. No use; the mud itself was sliding, he had to get off! He floored the accelerator. The wheels spun futilely, the truck tilted. Harry turned off the ignition and dove for the floorboards and covered his face with his arms.

The truck gently rocked and swung like a small boat at anchor; swung too far and turned on its side. Then it smashed into something massive, wheeled around and struck something else, and stopped moving.

Harry lifted his head.

A tree trunk had smashed the windshield. The frosted safety glass bowed inward before it. That tree and another now wedged the truck in place. It lay on the passenger side, and it wasn’t coming out without a lot of help, at least a tow truck and men with chain saws.

Harry was hanging from the seat belt. Gingerly he unfastened it, decided he wasn’t hurt.

And now what? He wasn’t supposed to leave the mail unguarded, but he couldn’t sit here all day! “How am I going to finish the route?” he asked himself, and giggled, because it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t going to get that done today. He would have to let the mail pile up until tomorrow. The Wolf would be furious… and Harry couldn’t help that.

He took the registered letter for Senator Jellison and slipped it into his pocket. There were a couple of small packets that Harry thought might be valuable, and he put them in another pocket. The big stuff, books, and the rest of the mail would just have to take care of itself.

He started out into the rain.

It drove into his face, blinding him, soaking him in an instant. The mud slipped beneath his feet, and in seconds he was clutching wildly at a small tree to keep from falling into the rapidly rising creek far below. He stood there a long moment.

No. He wasn’t going to get to a telephone. Not through that. Better to wait it out. Luckily he was back on his charted route again; the Wolf would know where to look for him — only Harry couldn’t think of any vehicle that could reach him, not through that.

Lightning flared above him, a double flash, blinkblink. Thunder exploded instantly. He felt a distinct tingle in his wet feet. Close!

Painfully he made his way back to the truck and got inside. It wasn’t insulated from the ground, but it seemed the safest place to wait out the lightning storm… and at least he hadn’t left the mail unguarded. That had worried him. Better to deliver it late than let it be stolen.

Definitely better, he decided, and tried to make himself comfortable. The hours wore on and there was no sign of the storm letting up.

Harry slept badly. He made a nest back in the cargo compartment, sacrificing some shopping circulars and his morning newspaper. He woke often, always hearing the endless drumming of rain on metal. When earth and sky turned from lightning-lit black to dull gray with less lightning, Harry squirmed around and searched out yesterday’s carton of milk. A premonition of need had made him leave it until now. It wasn’t enough; he was famished. And he missed his morning coffee.

“Next place,” he told himself, and imagined a big mug of hot steaming coffee, perhaps with a bit of brandy in it (although no one but Gillcuddy was going to offer him that).

The rain had slackened off a bit, and so had the howling wind. “Or else I’m going deaf,” he said. “GOING DEAF! Well, maybe not.” Cheerful by nature, he was quick to find the one bright point in a gloomy situation. “Good thing it isn’t Trash Day,” he told himself.

He took his feet out of the leather mailbag, where they’d stayed near-dry during the long night, and put his boots back on. Then he looked at the mail. There was barely enough light.

“First class only,” he told himself. “Leave the books.” He wondered about Senator Jellison’s Congressional Record, and the magazines. He decided to take them. Eventually he had stuffed his bag with everything except the largest packages. He stood and wrestled the driver’s door open, trapdoor fashion, and pushed the mailbag out onto the side — now the top — of the truck. Then he climbed out after it. The rain was still falling, and he spread a piece of plastic over the top of the mailbag. The truck shifted uneasily.

Mud had piled along the high side of the truck, level with the wheels. Harry shouldered the bag and started uphill. He felt his footing shift, and he sprinted uphill.

Behind him the trees bowed before the weight of truck and shifting mud. Their roots pulled free, and the truck rolled, gathering speed.

Harry shook his head. This was probably his last circuit; Wolfe wouldn’t like losing a truck. Harry started up the uneasy mud slope, looking about him as he went. He needed a walking stick. Presently he found a tilted sapling, five feet long and supple, that came out of the mud by its loosened roots.

Marching was easier after he reached the road. He was going downhill, back from the long detour to the Adamses’. The heavy mud washed off his boots and his feet grew lighter. The rain fell steadily. He kept looking upslope, alert for more mudslides.

“Five pounds of water in my hair alone,” he groused. “Keeps my neck warm, though.” The pack was heavy. A hip belt would have made carrying it easier.

Presently he began to sing.

I went out to take a friggin’ walk by the friggin’ reservoir, a-wishin’ for a friggin’ quid to pay my friggin’ score, my head it was a-achin’ and my throat was parched and dry, and so I sent a little prayer, a-wingin’ to the sky.

He topped the slight rise and saw a blasted transmission tower. High-tension wires lay across the road. The steel tower had been struck by lightning, perhaps several times, and seemed twisted at the top.

How long ago? And why weren’t the Edison people out to fix it? Harry shrugged. Then he noticed the telephone lines. They were down too. He wouldn’t be calling in from his next stop.

There was the Millers’ gate. He couldn’t see anyone. There were no fresh ruts in their drive. Harry wondered if they’d gone out last night. They certainly hadn’t made it out today. He sank into deep mud as he went up the long drive toward the house. They wouldn’t have a phone, but maybe he could bum a cup of coffee, even a ride into town.

No one answered his knock at the Millers’ front door. The door stood slightly ajar. Harry called in, loudly, and there was still no answer. He smelled coffee.

He stood a moment, then fished out two letters and a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, pushed the door open and went inside, mail held like an ambassador’s passport. He sang loudly:

He left the mail on the front-room table where he usually piled stuff on Trash Day, then wandered toward the kitchen, led by the smell of coffee. He continued to sing loudly, lest he be shot as an intruder.

There was coffee! The gas stove was working, and there was a big pot of coffee on it, and three cups set out. Harry poured one full. He sang in triumph:

He found a bowl of oranges, resisted temptation for a full ten seconds, then took one. He peeled it as he walked on through the kitchen to the back door, out into the orange groves behind. The Millers were natives. They’d know what was happening. And they had to be around somewhere.

“Ho, Harry!” a voice called. Somewhere to his right. Harry went through heavy mud and orange trees.

Jack Miller and his son Roy and daughter-in-law Cicelia were harvesting tomatoes in full panic. They’d spread a large tarp on the ground and were covering it with everything they could pick, ripe and half green. “They’ll rot on the ground,” Roy puffed. “Got to get them inside. Quick. Could sure use help.”

Harry looked at his muddy boots, mailbag, sodden uniform. “You’re not supposed to stay me,” he said. “It’s against government regulations…”

“Yeah. Say, Harry, what’s going on out there?” Roy demanded.

“You don’t know?” Harry was appalled.

“How could we? Phone’s been out since yesterday afternoon. Power out. No TV. Can’t get a damned thing — sorry, Cissy. Get nothing but static on the transistor radio. What’s it like in town?”

“Haven’t been to town,” Harry confessed. “Truck’s dead, couple miles toward the Gentry place. Since yesterday. Spent the night in the truck.”

“Hmm.” Roy stopped his frantic picking for a moment. “sissy, better get in and get to canning. Just the ripe ones. Harry, I’ll make you a deal. Breakfast, lunch, a ride into town, and I don’t tell nobody about what you were singing inside my house. You help us the rest of the day.”

“Well…”

“I’ll drive you and put in a good word,” Cissy said.

The Millers carried some weight in the valley. The Wolf might not fire him for losing the truck if he had a good word. “I can’t get in any quicker by walking,” Harry said. “It’s a deal.” He set to work.

They didn’t talk much, they needed their breath. Presently Cissy brought out sandwiches. The Millers hardly stopped long enough to eat. Then they went back to it.

When they did talk, it was about the weather. Jack Miller had seen nothing like it in his fifty-two years in the valley.

“Comet,” Cissy said. “It did this.”

“Nonsense,” Roy said. “You heard the TV. It missed us by thousands of miles.”

“It did? Good,” Harry said.

“We didn’t hear that it missed. Heard it was going to miss,” Jack Miller said. He went back to harvesting tomatoes. When they got those picked, there were beans and squashes.

Harry had never worked so hard in his life. He realized suddenly it was getting late afternoon. “Hey, I have got to get to town!” he insisted.

“Yeah. Okay, Cissy,” Jack Miller called. “Take the pickup. Get by the feedstore, we’re going to need lots of cattle and hog feed. Damned rain’s battered down most of the fodder. Better get feed before everybody else thinks of it. Price’ll be sky-high in a week.”

“If there’s anyplace to buy it in a week,” Cissy said.

“What do you mean by that?” her husband demanded.

“Nothing.” She went off to the barn, tight jeans bulging, water dripping from her hat. She came out with the Dodge pickup. Harry squeezed into the seat, mailbag on his lap to protect it from the rain. He’d left it in the barn while he worked.

The truck had no trouble with the muddy drive. When they got to the gate, Cissy got out; Harry couldn’t move with the big mailbag. She laughed at him when she got back in.

They hadn’t gone half a mile when the road ended in a gigantic crack. The road had pulled apart, and the hillside with it, and tons of sloppy mud had come off the hillside to cover the road beyond the crack.

Harry studied it carefully. Cicelia backed and twisted to turn the truck around. Harry started toward the ruined road.

“You’re not going to walk!” she said.

“Mail must go through,” Harry muttered. He laughed. “Didn’t finish the route yesterday—”

“Harry, don’t be silly! There will be a road crew out today, tomorrow for sure. Wait for that! You won’t get to town before dark, maybe not at all in this rain. Come back to the house.”

He thought about that. What she said made sense. Power lines down, roads out, telephone lines out; somebody would come through here. The mailbag seemed terribly heavy. “All right.”

They put him back to work, of course. He’d expected that. They didn’t eat until after dark, but it was an enormous meal, suitable for farmhand appetites. Harry couldn’t stay awake, and collapsed on the couch. He didn’t even notice when Jack and Roy took his uniform off him and covered him with a blanket.

Harry woke to find the house empty. His uniform, hung to dry, was still soggy. Rain pounded relentlessly at the farm house. He dressed and found coffee. While he was drinking it, the others came in.

Cicelia made a breakfast of ham and pancakes and more coffee. She was strong and tall, but she looked tired now. Roy kept eying her anxiously.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Not used to doing men’s work and my own too.”

“We got most of it in,” Jack Miller said. “Never saw rain like this, though.” There was a softness, a wondering in Jack Miller’s voice that might have been superstitious fear. “Those bastards at the Weather Bureau never gave us a minute’s warning. What are they doing with all those shiny weather satellites ?”

“Maybe the comet knocked them out,” Harry said.

Jack Miller glared. “Comet. Humph. Comets are things in the sky! Live in the twentieth century, Harry!”

“I tried it once. I like it better here.”

He got a soft smile from Cissy. He liked it. “I’d best be on my way,” he said.

“In this?” Roy Miller was incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”

Harry shrugged. “Got my route to finish.”

The others looked guilty. “Reckon we can run you down to where the road’s out,” Jack Miller said. “Maybe a work crew got in already.”

“Thanks.”

There wasn’t any work crew. More mud had slid off the hillside during the night.

“Wish you’d stay,” Jack said. “Can use the help.”

“Thanks. I’ll let people in town know how it is with you.”

“Right. Thanks. Good luck.”

“Yeah.”

It was just possible to pick his way across the crack, over the mudslide. The heavy mailbag dragged at his shoulder. It was leather, waterproof, with the plastic over the top. Just as well, Harry thought. All that paper could soak up twenty or thirty pounds of water. It would make it much harder. “Make it hard to read the mail, too,” Harry said aloud.

He trudged on down the road, slipping and sliding, until he found another sapling to replace the one he’d left at the Millers’ place. It had too many roots at the bottom, but it kept him upright.

“This is the pits,” Harry shouted into the rain-laden wind Then he laughed and added, “But it’s got to beat farm work.”

The rain had stopped Harry’s watch. He thought it was just past eleven when he reached the gate of the Shire. It was almost two.

He was back in flat country now, out of the hills. There had been no more breaks in the road. But there was always the water and the mud. He couldn’t see the road anywhere he had to infer it from the shape of the glistening mud-covered landscape. Soggy everywhere, dimly aware of the chafe spots developing beneath his clinging uniform, moving against the resistance of his uniform and the mud that clung to his boots, Harry thought he had made good time, considering.

He still hoped to finish his route in somebody’s car. It wasn’t likely he’d find a ride at the Shire, though.

He had seen nobody while he walked along the Shire’s splitlog fence. Nobody in the fields, nobody trying to save whatever crops the Shire was growing. Were they growing anything? Nothing Harry recognized; but Harry wasn’t a farmer.

The gate was sturdy. The padlock on it was new and shiny and big. Harry found the mailbox bent back at forty-five degrees, as if a car had hit it. The box was full of water.

Harry was annoyed. He carried eight letters for the Shire and a thick, lumpy manila envelope. He threw back his head and hollered, “Hey in there! Mail call!”

The house was dark. Power out here, too? Or had Hugo Beck and his score of strange guests all tired of country life and gone away?

The Shire was a commune. Everyone in the valley knew that, and few knew more. The Shire let the valley people alone. Harry, in his privileged occupation, had met Hugo Beck and a few of the others.

Hugo had inherited the spread from his aunt and uncle three years ago, when they racked up their car on a Mexico vacation. It had been called something else then: Inverted Fork Ranch, some such name, probably named after a branding iron. Hugo Beck had arrived for the funeral. a pudgy boy of eighteen who wore his straight black hair at shoulder length and a kind of beard with the chin bared. He’d looked the place over, and stayed to sell the cattle and most of the horses, and left. A month later he’d returned, followed by (the number varied according to who was talking) a score of hippies. There was enough money, somehow, to keep them alive and fairly comfortable. Certainly the Shire was not a successful business. It exported nothing. But they must be growing some food; they didn’t import enough from town.

Harry hollered again. The front door opened and a human shape strolled down to the gate.

It was Tony. Harry knew him. Scrawny and sun-darkened, grinning to show teeth that had been straightened in youth, Tony was dressed as usual: jeans, wool vest, no shirt, digger hat, sandals. He looked at Harry through the gate. “Hey, man, what’s happenin’?” The rain affected him not at all.

“The picnic’s been called off. I came to tell you.”

Tony looked blank, then laughed. “The picnic! Hey, that’s funny. I’ll tell them. They’re all huddling in the house. Maybe they think they’ll melt.”

“I’m half melted already. Here’s your mail.” Harry handed it over. “Your mailbox is wrecked.”

“It won’t matter.” Tony seemed to be grinning at some private joke.

Harry skipped it. “Can you spare someone to run me into town? I wrecked my truck.”

“Sorry. We want to save the gas for emergencies.”

What did he think this was? Harry held his temper. “Such is life. Can you spare me a sandwich?”

“Nope. Famine coming. We got to think of ourselves.”

“I don’t get you.” Harry was beginning to dislike Tony’s grin.

“The Hammer has fallen,” said Tony. “The Establishment is dead. No more draft. No more taxes. No more wars. No more going to jail for smoking pot. No more having to pick between a crook and an idiot for President.” Tony grinned beneath the shapeless, soggy hat. “No more Trash Day either. I thought I’d flipped when I saw a mailman at the gate!”

Tony really had flipped, Harry realized. He tried to sidestep the issue. “Can you get Hugo Beck down here?”

“Maybe.’’

Harry watched Tony reenter the farmhouse. Was there anyone alive in there? Tony had never struck him as dangerous, but… if he stepped out with anything remotely like a rifle, Harry was going to run like a deer.

Half a dozen of them came out. One girl was in rain gear; the rest seemed to be dressed for swimming. Maybe that made a kind of sense. You couldn’t hope to stay dry in this weather. Harry recognized Tony, and Hugo Beck, and the broad-shouldered, broad-hipped girl who called herself Galadriel, and a silent giant whose name he’d never learned. They clustered at the gate, hugely amused.

Harry asked, “What’s it all about?”

Much of Hugo Beck’s fat had turned to muscle in the past three years, but he still didn’t look like a farmer. Maybe it was the expensive sandals and worn swim trunks; or maybe it was the way he lounged against the gate, exactly as Jason Gillcuddy the writer would lounge against his bar, leaving one hand free to gesture.

“Hammerfall,” said Hugo. “You could be the last mailman we ever see. Consider the implications. No more ads to buy things you can’t afford. No more friendly reminders from the collection agency. You should throw away that uniform, Harry. The Establishment’s dead.”

“The comet hit us?”

“Right.”

“Huh.” Harry didn’t know whether to believe it or not. There had been talk… but a comet was nothing. Dirty vacuum, lit by unfiltered sunlight, very pretty when seen from a hilltop with the right girl beside you. This rain, though What about the rain?

“Huh. So I’m a member of the Establishment?”

“That’s a uniform, isn’t it?” said Beck, and the others laughed.

Harry looked down. “Somebody should have told me. All right, you can’t feed me and you can’t transport me—”

“No more gas, maybe forever. The rain is going to wipe out most of the crops. You can see that, Harry.”

“Yeah. Can you loan me a hatchet for fifteen minutes?”

“Tony, get the hatchet.”

Tony jogged up to the farmhouse. Hugo asked, “What are you going to do with it?”

“Trim the roots off my walking stick.”

“What then?”

He didn’t have to answer, because Tony was back with the hatchet. Harry went to work. The Shire people watched. Presently Hugo asked again. “What do you do now?”

“Deliver the mail,” said Harry.

“Why?” A frail and pretty blonde girl cried, “It’s all over, man. No more letters to your congressman. No more PLAYBOY, No more tax forms or… or voting instructions. You’re free! Take off the uniform and dance!”

“I’m already cold. My feet hurt.”

“Have a hit.” The silent giant was handing a generously fat homemade cigarette through the gate, shielding it with Tony’s digger hat. Harry saw the others’ disapproval, but they said nothing, so he took the toke. He held his own hat over it while he lit it and drew.

Were they growing the weed here? Harry didn’t ask. But… “You’ll have trouble getting papers.”

They looked at each other. That hadn’t occurred to them.

“Better save that last batch of letters. No more Trash Day.” Harry passed the hatchet back through the bars. “Thanks. Thanks for the toke, too.” He picked up the trimmed sapling. It felt lighter, better balanced. He got his arm through the mailbag strap.

“Anyway, it’s the mail. ‘Neither rain, nor sleet, nor heat of day, nor gloom of night,’ et cetera.”

“What does it say,” Hugo Beck asked, “about the end of the world?”

“I think it’s optional. I’m going to deliver the mail.”

The Mailman: Two

Carrie Roman was a middle-aged widow with two big sons who were Harry’s age and twice Harry’s size. Carrie was almost as big as they were. Three jovial giants, they formed one of Harry’s coffee stops. Once before, they had given Harry a lift to town to report a breakdown of the mail truck.

Harry reached their gate in a mood of bright optimism.

The gate was padlocked, of course, but Jack Roman had rigged a buzzer to the house. Harry pushed it and waited.

The rain poured over him, gentle, inexorable. If it had started raining up from the ground, Harry doubted he would notice. It was all of his environment, the rain.

Where were the Romans? Hell, of course they had no electricity. Harry pushed the buzzer again, experimentally.

From the corner of his eye he saw someone crouched low, sprinting from behind a tree. The figure was only visible for an instant; then bushes hid it. But it carried something the shape of a shovel, or a rifle, and it was too small to be one of the Romans.

“Mail call!” Harry cried cheerily. What the hell was going on here?

The sound of a gunshot matched the gentle tugging at the edge of his mailbag. Harry threw himself flat. The bag was higher than he was as he crawled for cover, and it jerked once, coinciding with another gunshot. A .22, he thought. Not much rifle. Certainly not much for the valley. He pulled himself behind a tree, his breath raspy and very loud in his own ears.

He wriggled the bag off his shoulder and set it down. He squatted and selected four envelopes tied with a rubber band. Crouched. Then, all in an instant, he sprinted for the Roman mailbox, slid the packet into it, and was running for cover again when the first shot came. He lay panting beside his mailbag, trying to think.

Harry wasn’t a policeman, he wasn’t armed, and there wasn’t anything he could do to help the Romans. No way!

And he couldn’t use the road. No cover.

The gully on the other side? It would be full of water, but it was the best he could do. Sprint across the road, then crawl on hands and knees…

But he’d have to leave the mailbag.

Why not? Who am I kidding? Hammerfall has come, and there’s no need for mail carriers. None. What does that make me?

He didn’t care much for the question.

“It makes me,” he said aloud, “a turkey who got good grades in high school by working his arse off, flunked out of college, got fired from every job he ever had…”

It makes me a mailman, goddammit! He lifted the heavy bag and crouched again. Things were quiet up there. Maybe they’d been shooting to keep him away? But what for?

He took in a deep breath. Do it now, he told himself. Before you’re too scared to do it at all. He dashed into the road, across, and dived toward the gulley. There was another shot, but he didn’t think the bullet had come anywhere close. Harry scuttled down the gulley, half crawling, half swimming mailbag shoved around onto his back to keep it out of the water.

There were no more shots. Thank God! The Many Names Ranch was only half a mile down the road. Maybe they had guns, or a telephone that worked… Did any telephones work? The Shire wasn’t precisely an official information source, but they’d been so sure.

“Never find a cop when you need one,” Harry muttered.

He’d have to be careful showing himself at Many Names. The owners might be a bit nervous. And if they weren’t, they damned well should be!

It was dusk when Harry reached Muchos Nombres Ranch. The rain had increased and was falling slantwise, and lightning played across the nearly black sky.

Muchos Nombres was thirty acres of hilly pastureland dotted with the usual great white boulders. Of the four families who jointly owned it, two would sometimes invite Harry in for coffee. The result was diffidence on Harry’s part. He never knew whose turn it was. The families each owned one week in four, and they treated the ranch as a vacation spot. Sometimes they traded off; sometimes they brought guests. The oversupply of owners had been unable to agree on a name, and had finally settled for Muchos Nombres. The Spanish fooled nobody.

Today Harry was fresh out of diffidence. He yelled his “Mail call!” and waited, expecting no answer. Presently he opened the gate and went on in.

He reached the front door like something dragged from an old grave. He knocked.

The door opened.

“Mail,” said Harry. “Hullo, Mr. Freehafer. Sorry to be so late, but there are some emergencies going.”

Freehafer had an automatic pistol. He looked Harry over with some care. Behind him the living room danced with candlelight, and it looked crowded with wary people. Doris Lilly said, “Why, it’s Harry! It’s all right, Bill. It’s Harry the mailman.”

Freehafer lowered the gun. “All right, pleased to meet you, Harry. Come on in. What emergencies?”

Harry stepped inside, out of the rain. Now he saw the third man, stepping around a doorjamb, laying a shotgun aside. “Mail,” said Harry, and he set down two magazines, the usual haul for Many Names. “Somebody shot at me from Carrie Roman’s place. It wasn’t anyone I know. I think the Romans are in trouble. Is your phone working?”

“No,” said Freehafer. “We can’t go out there tonight.”

“Okay. And my mail truck went off a hill, and I don’t know what the roads are like. Can you let me have a couch, or a stretch of rug, and something to eat?”

The hesitation was marked. “It’s the rug, I’m afraid,” Freehafer said. “Soup and a sandwich do you? We’re a little short.”

“I’d eat your old shoes,” said Harry.

It was canned tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, and it tasted like heaven. Between bites he got the story: how the Freehafers had started to leave on Tuesday, and seen the sky going crazy, and turned back. How the Lillys had arrived (it being their turn now) with the Rodenberries as guests, and their own two children. The end of the world had come and gone, the Rodenberries were on the couches, and nobody had yet tried to reach the supermarket in town.

“What is this with the end of the world?” Harry asked.

They told him. They showed him, in the magazines he’d brought. The magazines were damp but still readable. Harry read interviews with Sagan and Asimov and Sharps. He stared at artists’ conceptions of major meteor impacts. “They all think it’ll miss,” he said.

“It didn’t,” said Norman Lilly. He was a football player turned insurance executive, a broad-shouldered wall of a man who should have kept up his exercises. “Now what? We brought some seeds and farm stuff, just in case, but we didn’t bring any books. Do you know anything about farming, Harry?”

“No. People, I’ve had a rough day—”

“Right. No sense wasting candles,” said Norman.

All of the beds, blankets and couches were in use. Harry spent the night on a thick rug, swathed in three of Norman Lilly’s enormous bathrobes, his head on a chair pillow. He was comfortable enough, but he kept twitching himself awake.

Lucifer’s Hammer? End of the world? Crawling through mud while bullets punched into his mailbag and the letters inside. He kept waking with the memory of a nightmare, and always the nightmare was real.

Harry woke and counted days. First night he slept in the truck. Second with the Millers. Last night was the third. Three days since he’d reported in.

It was definitely the end of the world. The Wolf should have come looking for him with blood in his eye. He hadn’t. The power lines were still down. The phones weren’t working. No county road crews. Ergo, Hammerfall. The end of the world. It had really happened.

“Rise and shine!” Doris Lilly’s cheer was artificial. She tried to keep it up anyway. “Rise and shine! Come and get it or we throw it out.”

Breakfast wasn’t much. They shared with Harry, which was pretty damned generous of them. The Lilly children, eight and ten, stared at the adults. One of them complained that the TV wasn’t working. No one paid any attention.

“Now what?” Freehafer asked.

“We get food,” Doris Lilly said. “We have to find something to eat.”

“Where do you suggest we look?” Bill Freehafer asked. He wasn’t being sarcastic.

Doris shrugged. “In town? Maybe things aren’t as bad as… maybe they’re not so bad.”

“I want to watch TV,” Phil Lilly said.

“Not working,” Doris said absently. “I vote we go to town and see how things are. We can give Harry a ride—”

“TV now!” Phil screamed.

“Shut up,” his father said.

“Now!” the boy repeated.

Smack! Norman Lilly’s huge hand swept against the boy’s face.

“Norm!” his wife cried. The child screamed, more in surprise than pain. “You never hit the children before—”

“Phil,” Lilly said. His voice was calm and determined. “It’s all different now. You better understand that. When we tell you to be quiet, you’ll be quiet. You and your sister both, you’ve got a lot of learning to do, and quick. Now go in the other room.”

The children hesitated for a moment. Norman raised his hand. They looked at him, startled, then ran.

“Little drastic,” Bill Freehafer said.

“Yeah,” Norm said absently. “Bill, don’t you think we better look in on our neighbors?”

“Let the police — ” Bill Freehafer stopped himself. “Well there might still be police.”

“Yeah. Who’ll they take orders from, now?” Lilly asked. He looked at Harry.

Harry shrugged. There was a local mayor. The Sheriff was out in the San Joaquin, and with this rain that could be under water. “Maybe the Senator?” Harry said.

“Hey, yeah, Jellison lives over the hill there,” Freehafer said. “Maybe we should… Jesus, I don’t know, Norm. What can we do?”

Lilly shrugged. “We can look, anyway. Harry, you know those people?”

“Yes…”

“We have two cars. Bill, you take everybody else into town. Harry and I’ll have a look. Right?”

Harry looked dubious. “I’ve already left their mail—”

“Jesus,” Bill Freehafer said.

Norman Lilly held up an immense hand. “He’s right, you know. But look at it this way, Harry. You’re a mailman.”

“Yes-”

“Which can be damned valuable. Only there won’t be any mail. Not letters and magazines, anyway. But there’s still a need for message carriers. Somebody to keep communications going. Right?”

“Something like that,” Harry agreed.

“Good. You’ll be needed. More than ever. But here’s your first post-comet message. To the Romans, from us. We’re willing to help, if we can. They’re our neighbors. But we don’t know them, and they don’t know us. If they’ve had trouble they’ll be watching for strangers. Somebody’s got to introduce us. That’s a worthwhile message, isn’t it?”

Harry thought it over. It made sense. “You’ll give me a ride after—”

“Sure. Let’s go.” Norm Lilly went out. He came back with a deer rifle, and the automatic pistol. “Ever use one of these, Harry?”

“No. And I don’t want one. Wrong image.”

Lilly nodded and laid the pistol on the table.

Bill Freehafer started to say something, but Lilly’s look cut it off. “Okay, Harry, let’s go,” Norm said. He didn’t comment when Harry carried his mailbag to the car.

They got in. They’d gone halfway when Harry patted his bag and, half laughing himself, said, “You’re not laughing at me.”

“How can I laugh at a man who’s got a purpose in life?”

They pulled up at the gate. The letters were gone from the mailbox. The padlock was still in place. “Now what?” Harry asked.

“Good questi—”

The shotgun caught Norm Lilly full in the chest. Lilly kicked once and died. Harry stood in shock, then dashed across the road for the ditch. He sprawled into it, headfirst into the muddy water, careless of the mailbag, of getting wet, of anything. He began to run toward Many Names again.

There were sounds ahead of him. Right around that bend — and there was someone coming behind, too. They weren’t going to let him get away this time. In desperation he crawled up the bank, away from the road, and began scrambling up the steep hillside. The mailbag dragged at him. His boots dug into mud, slipping and sliding. He clawed at the ground and pulled himself upward.

SPANG! The shot sounded very loud. Much louder than the .22 yesterday. Maybe the shotgun? Harry kept on. He reached the top of the first rise and began to run.

He couldn’t tell if they were still behind him. He didn’t care. He wasn’t going back down there. He kept remembering the look of surprise on Norman Lilly’s face. The big man folding up, dying before he hit the ground. Who were these people who shot without warning?

The hill became steeper again, but the ground was harder, more rock than mud. The mailbag seemed heavy. Water in it? Probably. So why carry it?

Because it’s the mail, you stupid SOB, Harry told himself.

The Chicken Ranch was owned by an elderly couple, retired L.A. business people. It was fully automated. The chickens stood in small pens not much bigger than an individual chicken. Eggs rolled out of the cage onto a conveyor belt. Food came around on another belt. Water was continuously supplied. It was not a ranch but a factory.

And it might have been heaven, for chickens. All problems were solved, all struggling ended. Chickens weren’t very bright, and they got all they could eat, were protected from coyotes, had clean cages — another automated system—

But it had to be a damned dull existence.

The Chicken Ranch was over the next hill. Before Harry got there he saw chickens. Through the rain and the wet weeds they wandered, bewildered, pecking at the ground and the limbs of bushes and Harry’s boots, squawking plaintively at Harry, demanding instructions.

Harry stopped walking. Something must be terribly wrong. The Sinanians would never have let the chickens run loose.

Here too? Those bastards, had they come here too? Harry stood on the hillside and dithered, and the chickens huddled around him.

He had to know what had happened. It was part of the job. Reporter, mailman, town crier, message carrier; if he wasn’t that, he wasn’t anything. He stood among the chickens, nerving himself, and eventually he went down.

All the chicken feed had been spilled out onto the floor of the barn. There was little left. Every cage was open. This was no accident. Harry waded through squawking chickens the full length of the building. Nothing there. He went out and down the path to the house.

The farmhouse door stood open. He called. No one answered. Finally he went inside. It was dimly lit; the shades and curtains were drawn and there was no artificial light. His way led him to the living room.

The Sinanians were there. They sat in big overstuffed chairs. Their eyes were open. They did not move.

Amos Sinanian had a bullet hole in his temple. His eyes bulged. There was a small pistol in his hand.

Mrs. Sinanian had not a mark on her. Heart attack? Whatever it was, it had been peaceful; her features were not contorted, and her clothing was carefully arranged. She stared at a blank TV screen. She looked to have been dead two days, possibly more. The blood on Amos’s head was not quite dry. This morning at the latest.

There wasn’t any note, no sign of explanation. There hadn’t been anyone Amos had cared to explain it to. He’d released the chickens and shot himself.

It took Harry a long time to make up his mind. Finally he took the pistol from Amos’s hand. It wasn’t as hard to do as he’d thought it would be. He put the pistol in his pocket and searched until he found a box of bullets for it. He pocketed those, too.

“The mail goes through, dammit,” he said. Then he found a cold roast in the refrigerator. It wouldn’t keep anyway, so Harry ate it. The oven was working. Harry had no idea how much propane there might be in the tank, but it didn’t matter. The Sinanians weren’t going to be using it.

He took the mail out of his bag and put it carefully into the oven to dry. Circulars and shopping newspapers were a problem. Their information wasn’t any use, but might people want them for paper? Harry compromised, throwing out the ones that were thin and flimsy and soaked, keeping the others.

He found a supply of Baggies in the kitchen and carefully enclosed each packet of mail in one. Last Baggies on Earth, a small voice told him. “Right,” he said, and went on stuffing. “Have to keep the Baggies. You can have your mail, but the Baggies belong to the Service.”

After that was done he thought about his next move. This house might be useful. It was a good house, stone and concrete, not wood. The barn was concrete too. The land wasn’t much good — at least Amos had said it wasn’t — but somebody might make use of the buildings. “Even me,” Harry said to himself. He had to have some place to stay between rounds.

Which meant something had to be done about the bodies. Harry wasn’t up to digging two graves. He sure as hell wasn’t going to drag them out for the coyotes and buzzards. There wasn’t enough dry wood to cremate a mouse.

Finally he went out again. He found an old pickup truck. The keys were in the ignition, and it started instantly. It sounded smooth, in good tune. There was a drum of gasoline in the shed, and Harry thoughtfully filled the tank of the truck, filled two gas cans, then stacked junk against the drum to hide it.

He went back into the house and got old bedclothes to wrap the bodies, then drove the truck around to the front of the house. The chickens swarmed around his feet, demanding attention, while he wrestled the corpses onto the truck bed. Finished, Harry stooped and quickly wrung six chickens’ necks before the rest of the chickens got the idea. He tossed the birds into the truck with the Sinanians.

He went around carefully locking doors and windows, put Amos’s keys in his pockets and drove away.

He still had his route to finish. But there were things he must do first, not the least of which was burying the Sinanians.

The Stronghold: One

Senator Arthur Jellison was in a foul mood on Hammerfall Morning. The only people he could get at JPL were PR flacks who didn’t know anything that wasn’t being reported on radio and TV. There was no way to reach Charlie Sharps. It made sense, but Senator Jellison wasn’t used to having people too busy to talk to him. Finally he settled for a phone patch into the space communications network, so he could hear what the astronauts were saying.

That didn’t help much because of the static. The live TV shots were bad, too. Was the damned thing going to hit or not?

If it did hit, there were a lot of moves Jellison should have made but hadn’t, because he couldn’t afford to look like a fool to his constituents, not even here in the valley, where he routinely got eighty percent of the vote. He’d brought his family and a couple of assistants and as much gear as he could buy without attracting a lot of attention, and that was about all he could do. Now they were all gathered in the house, most of them sitting with him in the big living room.

The phone speaker squawked. Johnny Baker’s voice, and Maureen came unnaturally alert. Jellison had known about that for a long time, but he didn’t think Maureen knew he was aware. Now Baker had his divorce, and his Hammerlab mission. Maybe, when he got down… That would be a good thing. Maureen needed somebody.

So did Charlotte, but she thought she had him. Jellison didn’t care for Jack Turner. His son-in-law was too handsome, too quick to talk about his tennis medals, and not quick at all to pay back the sizable “loans” he asked for when his investments didn’t turn out so well — as they almost never did. But Charlotte seemed happy enough with him, and the kids were being well brought up, and Maureen was getting old enough that maybe Charlotte’s would be the only grandchildren he’d ever have. Jellison rather hoped not.

“Crummy pictures,” Jack Turner said.

“Grandpa will get us good ones,” Jennifer Turner, nine, told her father. She’d found that her grandfather could get photographs and pins and things that made a big hit in her school classes, and she’d read all about comets.

“Hammerlab, this is Houston, we do not copy,” the telephone speaker said.

“Grandpa—”

“Hush, Jenny,” Maureen said. The tension in her voice quieted the room. The TV picture became a crazy pattern of blurs, then sharpened to show a myriad of rocks enveloped in vapor and fog rushing toward them out of the screen.

“Jesus, it’s coming closer”

“That’s Johnny—”

“Like it’s going to hit—”

The TV image vanished. The phone line continued to chatter. “FIREBALL OVERHEAD!” “HOUSTON, HOUSTON, THERE IS A LARGE STRIKE IN THE GULF OF MEXICO…”

“Good Lord!”

“Shut up, Jack,” Jellison said quietly.

“…REQUEST YOU SEND A HELICOPTER FOR OUR FAMILIES… THE HAMMER HAS FALLEN.”

“You shouldn’t talk to Jack that way—”

Jellison ignored Charlotte. “Al!” he shouted.

“Yes, sir,” Hardy answered from the next room. He came in quickly.

“Round up all the ranch-hands. Quick. Any that have trucks should bring them. And rifles. Get moving.”

“Right.” Hardy vanished.

The others seemed stunned. Jennifer asked, plaintively, “What happened, Grandpa?”

“Don’t know,” Jellison said. “Don’t know how bad it was. Damned phone’s dead. Maureen, see if you can get anything, anybody, at JPL on that phone. Move.”

“Right.”

Then he looked at Jack Turner. Turner wasn’t known in the valley. No one would take orders from him. And what use was he? “Jack, get one of the Scouts started. You’ll drive me into town. I want to see the Chief of Police. And the Mayor.”

Turner almost said something, but the look on Jellison’s face stopped that.

“Can’t get through to L.A. at all, Dad,” Maureen said. “The phone’s working but—”

She was interrupted by the earthquake. It wasn’t very strong, this far from California’s major faults, but it was enough to shake the house. The children looked afraid, and Charlotte gathered them to her and took them to a bedroom.

“I can get the local phone numbers,” Maureen finished.

“Good. Get the local police and tell them I’m coming to town to talk to their Chief, and the Mayor. It’s important, and tell them I’m already on the way. Let’s go, Jack. Maureen, when Al gets the ranch-hands together, you and Al talk to them. What we’ll need is every friend they’ve got, all their trucks, rifles, everything. There’s a lot to do. Send about half the troops into town to find me, and have the rest secure for rainstorms, mudslides…” He thought for a moment. “And snow, if Charlie Sharps knows what he’s talking about. Snow within a week.”

“Snow? That’s stupid,” Jack Turner protested.

“Right,” Maureen said. “Anything else, Dad?”

The City Hall doubled as library, jail and police station. The local Chief commanded two full-time patrolmen and several unpaid volunteer auxiliaries. The Mayor owned the local feedstore. Government in Silver Valley was not a large or important activity.

The rain started before Jellison arrived at City Hall. Sheet lightning played over the High Sierra to the east. Rain fell like the outpouring of a warm bathtub, filling the streets and running over the low bridges over the creeks. Mayor Gil Seitz looked worried. He seemed very glad to see Senator Jellison.

There were a dozen others in the large library room. Chief of Police Randy Hartman, a retired cop from one of the large eastern cities; three city councilmen; a couple of local store owners. Jellison recognized the bullnecked man sitting toward the rear of the group, and waved. He didn’t see his neighbor George Christopher very often.

Jellison introduced his son-in-law and shook hands around. The room fell silent.

“What’s happened, Senator?” the Mayor asked. “Did… that thing really did hit us, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I saw magazine articles about it,” Mayor Seitz mused. “Glaciers. East Coast wiped out.” There was a crash of thunder and Gil Seitz waved toward the windows. “Didn’t believe it before. Now I guess I have to. How long does that rain go on?”

“Weeks,” Jellison said.

That sobered them all. They were all farmers, or lived in a community where farming — and farming weather — was the most important topic of conversation. They all knew what weeks of pounding rain would do.

“Animals will starve,” Seitz said. There was a momentary smile as he thought of the prices his feedstore inventory would bring; then a frown as he thought it through. “Just how much damage did that do? Will there be trucks left? Trains? Feed deliveries?”

Jellison didn’t say anything for a moment. “The science people tell me it’ll be raining like this all across the country,” he said slowly.

“Jesus Christ,” the Mayor said. “Nobody gets in a crop this year. Nobody. What’s in the elevators and granaries is it.”

“And I don’t reckon anybody’s going to send much to us,” George Christopher observed. Everyone nodded agreement. “If it’s that bad… Is it?”

“Don’t know,” Jellison said. “Good chance it’s worse.”

Seitz turned to study the big contour map of Tulare and adjacent counties that hung on the library wall. “Jesus, Senator, what do we do? The San Joaquin’s going to fill up, rain like this. Fill right up. And there’s a lot of people out there. A lot.”

“And they’ll all head this way, looking for high ground,” George Christopher added. “Where’ll we put ’em? How can we feed them all? We can’t.”

Jellison sat on the edge of a library table. “Gil, George, I’ve always suspected you both had more sense than you let on. That’s the problem, no doubt about it. Half a million, maybe more people in the San Joaquin, and they’ll all be looking for high ground. More people up in the Sierra, went up to get away from the comet, and they’ll be coming down here now. People from as far as L.A. will come here. What do we do with them all?”

“Let’s get this straight,” one of the councilmen said. “It’s a disaster, but you’re saying…” He broke down, unable to finish for a moment. “You’re saying that the Army, the President, Sacramento, everybody’s knocked out? We’re on our own forever?”

“We may be,” Jellison said. “Maybe not, too.”

“It makes a difference,” George Christopher said. “We can take care of all those people for a week. Maybe two. Not longer. Longer than that, somebody’s got to starve. Who’ll it be? All of us because we tried to keep a hundred times too many alive for a couple of weeks?”

“That’s the problem, all right,” Mayor Seitz agreed.

“I’m not feeding any of them,” George Christopher said. His voice was like granite. “I have my own to take care of.”

“You can’t… you can’t just abandon all your responsibilities,” Jack Turner said.

“Don’t think I have any to outsiders,” Christopher said. “Not if they’re going to die anyway.”

“Some of them won’t make it,” Chief Hartman said. He pointed to the big map. “Porterville and Visalia are both in old river bottoms. Flood basins. Rain like this, I doubt those flood-control dams will hold very long.”

They all looked at the maps. It was true. Lake Success hung over Porterville, billions of gallons of water poised to plunge down on the city. Visalia to the north was no better off.

“Not just the rain,” Mayor Seitz said thoughtfully. “Warm rain, while there’s still some snow in the high country. Expect that’s all melted by now, sure by this afternoon—”

“We have to warn those people!” Jack Turner said.

“Do we?” asked a councilman.

“Sure we do,” Chief Hartman said. “And then what do we feed them with when they all come here? The stock out of Granny Mason’s store?”

There was a babble of talk in the room.

“How long will those dams last?” Jellison asked. “All day?”

No one knew for sure. The telephone wasn’t working, so they couldn’t call the county engineers.

“What did you have in mind, Senator?” Chief Hartman asked.

“Is there time to get trucks down in that area? Strip the supermarkets, feedstores, hardware stores, whatever, before the dams go?”

There was a long silence. Then one of the councilmen got up. “I reckon that dam will hold the day out. If the water don’t come too fast it can’t stop my truck anyway. I got a big ten-wheeler. I’ll go.”

“Not alone,” Jellison warned. “And not unarmed.”

“I’ll send my constables down with him,” Hartman said.

“What happens to the stuff?” George Christopher demanded.

“We share,” Jellison said.

“Share. If you share with me, it means you expect me to share with you,” Christopher said. “Not sure I like that.”

“Dammit, George, we’re in this together,” Mayor Seitz said.

“Are we? Who’s we?” Christopher demanded.

“Us. Your neighbors. Your friends,” one of the councilmen said.

“That I’ll go along with,” Christopher told them. “My neighbors. My friends. But I won’t put myself out for a lot of flatlanders. Not if they’re finished anyway.” The big man seemed to have trouble expressing himself. “Look, I got as much Christian charity as anybody here, but I won’t starve my own people to help them.” He started to leave.

“Where are you going, George?” Chief Hartman demanded.

“Senator’s got a good idea. I’m getting my brother and heading for the flats with my truck. Lots of stuff down there we’re going to need. No sense in letting the dam break on it.” He went out before anyone could say more to him.

“You’re going to have trouble with him,” Mayor Seitz said.

“I am?” Jellison said.

“Sure, who else? I’m a feedstore owner, Senator. I can call myself Mayor, but I’m not ready for this. I expect you’re in charge here. Right?”

There was a chorus of agreement from the others. It surprised no one.

George Christopher and his brother Ray drove down the highway toward Porterville. Lake Success lay on their right high banks rose to the top of the ridgeline on their left. Rain fell steadily. Already the lake had risen nearly to the bridge where the highway crossed. Chunks of mud washed down from the ridge above and covered the road. The big farm truck went through the mud patches without slowing.

“Not much traffic,” Ray said.

“Not yet.” George drove grimly, his mouth a set line, his bull neck arched toward the steering wheel. “But it won’t be long. All those people. They’ll come up the road looking for high ground—”

“Most’ll stop in Porterville,” Ray said. “It’s a couple of hundred feet higher than the San Joaquin.”

“Was,” George said. “With those quakes you can’t tell. Land shifts, raises up and down. Anyway, when the dam goes, Porterville goes. They won’t stay there.”

Ray didn’t say anything. He never argued with George. George was the only one in the family who’d gone to college. GI Bill. He hadn’t finished, but he’d learned something while he was there.

“Ray, what do they eat?” George asked suddenly.

“I don’t know—”

“You ready to see your kids starve?” George demanded.

“It won’t come to that.”

“Won’t it? People all over the place. Salt rain running out in the San Joaquin. Lower San Joaquin fills up. Porterville washes out when the dam goes. People headed for high ground, and that’s us. We’ll have ’em everywhere, camped on the roads, stuffed into the schoolhouse, in barns, everywhere. All hungry. Plenty of food at first. Enough for everybody for awhile. Ray, you can’t look at a hungry kid and not feed him.”

Ray didn’t say anything.

“Think about it. While there’s food, we’ll feed people. Would you turn people away while you’ve still got livestock? Ready to stew your dogs to feed a bunch of Porterville hippies?”

“There aren’t any hippies in Porterville.”

“You know what I mean.”

Ray thought it through. They would come through Porterville. To the north and south were cities of ten million each, and if only one in ten thousand of them lived long enough to reach Porterville and turn east…

Now Ray’s mouth formed a grim line like his brother’s. Muscles stood out of his neck like thick cords. They were both big; the whole family ran big. When they were younger, George and Ray sometimes went to the tough bars looking for fights. The only time they’d ever been beaten, they’d gone home and come back with their two younger brothers. After that it was almost impossible to find a fight.

And they thought alike, though Ray thought more slowly. Now he saw it: thousands of strangers spread across the land like a locust plague, in all sizes and shapes and ages — college professors, social workers, television actors and game-show moderators and writers, brain surgeons, architects of condominiums, fashion designers, and the teeming hordes of the forever unemployed… all landless people without jobs or skills or tools or homes. Like locusts, and locusts could be fought. But what about the children? Strangers could be turned away, but children?

“So what do we do?” Ray asked finally.

“If they don’t get here, they can’t cause problems,” George said. He eyed the hills above the road. “If about a hundred tons of rock and mud came down on the road just up ahead, nobody’d get into the valley. Not easy, anyway.”

“Maybe we should pray for a hard rain,” Ray said. He looked out at the driving rain pouring from the sky.

George gripped the wheel tightly. He believed in prayer and he didn’t like hearing his brother’s mocking tone. Not that Ray meant anything. Ray went to church too, sometimes. About as often as George did. But you couldn’t pray for something like that.

All those people. And they’d all die, and dying they’d take George’s people with them. He pictured his little sister, thin, belly protruding, last stages of starvation, the way those kids had looked in ’Nam. A whole village of kids trapped in the combat zone, nobody to look out for them, no place to go until the ranger patrol came looking for Cong and found the kids. Suddenly he knew he couldn’t see that again. He couldn’t think about it.

“How long you reckon that dam will last?” Ray asked. “Uh — why are you stopping?”

“I brought a couple of sticks of forty percent,” George said. “Right up there.” He pointed to a steep slope above the road. “Two sticks there, and nobody’ll use this road for awhile.”

Ray thought about it. There was another road up from the San Joaquin, but it didn’t show on gas station maps. A lot of people wouldn’t know about it. With the main highway out, maybe they’d go somewhere else.

The truck came to a complete stop and George opened the door. “Coming?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ray said. He usually went along with George. He had since their father had died. The other two brothers, and their cousins and nephews, usually did too. George had made a big success out of his ranch. He’d brought in a lot of new ideas and equipment from that agricultural college. George usually knew what he was doing.

Only I don’t like this, Ray thought. Don’t like it at all. Don’t guess George does much either, but what can we do? Wait until we have to look ’em in the eye and turn them away?

They climbed the steep bank behind the truck. Rain poured onto them, finding its way inside their slickers, under the brims of their hats and down their necks. It was warm rain. It drove hard, and Ray thought about the hay crop. That timothy was ruined already. What the hell would they feed the stock, come winter?

“About here, I think,” George said. He scrabbled at the base of a medium-size rock. “Bring this down, it ought to drop a lot of the mud above it onto the road.”

“What about Chief Hartman? And Dink Latham’s already gone down to Porterville…”

“So they find the road’s out when they come back,” George said. “They know the other way.” He reached into his pocket and took out a bulky styrofoam case. It held five detonators, each in its own fitted compartment. George took one out, put it onto the end of a fuse, crimped it with his teeth and used his penknife to poke a hole in a dynamite stick. He pushed the detonator into the stick and shoved it into the hole. “No primacord,” he said. “Have to put both sticks in the same hole. I think this’ll do it.” He tamped wet mud down into the hole he’d scooped, covering the dynamite. Only the fuse end protruded.

Ray turned his back to the wind and hunched low over a cigarette. He flicked the wheel of his Zippo until it caught and got the cigarette burning. Then, carefully, shielding the burning tobacco with his hat brim, he brought it down to the fuse end. The fuse sputtered once, then caught. It hissed softly in the rain.

“Let’s go,” Ray said. He scrambled down the bank, George behind him. They had many minutes before the fuse burned down, but they ran as if pursued by furies.

They were around the bend when they heard the explosion. It wasn’t very loud. The rain dulled all sounds. George carefully backed the truck around until they could see.

The road was covered with four feet of mud and boulders. More had tumbled across the road and down into the river valley below.

“Man might get over that with a four-wheel,” George said. “Nothing else.”

“What the hell are you sitting here for? Let’s go!” Ray’s enraged bellow was too loud for the truck cab, but he knew his brother wouldn’t say anything about it.

There was water standing in the streets when they reached Porterville. It wasn’t more than hubcap deep. The dam still held.

The City Hall meeting room smelled of kerosene lamps and damp bodies. There was also the faint odor of books and library paste. There weren’t many books in the library, and they took up space around the walls but not in the center of the room.

Senator Jellison looked at his electric watch and grimaced. It was good for another year, but then… Why the hell didn’t he have an old-fashioned windup? The watch told him it was 10:38 and 35 seconds, and it wouldn’t be off by more than a second until the battery ran out.

The room was nearly full. All the library tables had been moved to make room for more folding chairs. A few women, mostly men, mostly in farm clothes and rain gear, mostly unarmed. They smelled of sweat and they were soaked and tired. Three whiskey bottles moved rhythmically from hand to hand, and there were a lot of cans of beer. There wasn’t much talk as they waited for the meeting to start.

There were three distinct groups in the room. Senator Jellison dominated one of them. He sat with Mayor Seitz, Chief Hartman and the constables. Maureen Jellison was part of the group, and in the front rows, right up front, were their close friends. A solid bloc of support for the Jellison party.

Beyond them was the largest group, neutrals waiting for the Senator and the Mayor to tell them what to do. They wouldn’t have put it that way, and the Senator would never have dreamed of saying it flat out. They were farmers and merchants who needed help, and they weren’t used to asking for advice. Jellison knew them all Not well, but well enough to know that he could count on them, up to a point. Some of them had brought their wives.

At the back, off in one corner, were George Christopher and his clan. “Clan” is the right word, Arthur Jellison thought. A dozen. All men, all armed. You’d know they were relatives just to look at them (although, Jellison knew, it wasn’t strictly true: Two were brothers-in-law. But they looked like Christophers — heavyset, red of face and strong enough to lift jeeps in their spare time). The Christophers didn’t precisely sit apart from everyone else; but they sat together, and they talked together, and they had few words for their neighbors.

Steve Cox came in with two of Jellison’s ranch-hands. “Dam’s still holding,” he shouted above rain and thunder and muted conversation. “Don’t know what’s keeping it together. There’s water higher than the spillway behind it. It’s eating out the banks at the sides.”

“Won’t be long now,” one of the farmers said. “Did we warn the people down in Porterville?”

“Yes,” Chief Hartman said. “Constable Mosey told the Porterville police. They’ll get people out of the flood area.”

“What’s the flood area?” Steve Cox asked. “Whole damn valley’s filling up. And the highway’s out, they can’t come up here—”

“Some have,” Mayor Seitz said. “Three hundred, more or less. Up the county road. Expect there’ll be more tomorrow.”

“Too damn many,” Ray Christopher said.

There was a babble of voices, some agreeing, some arguing. Mayor Seitz pounded for order. “Let’s find out what we’re facing,” Seitz said. “Senator, what have you learned?”

“Enough.” Jellison got up from his seat at the table and went around in front of it. He perched his buttocks on the table in an informal pose that he knew was effective. “I’ve got pretty good shortwave radio gear. I know there are amateurs trying to communicate. And I get nothing but static. Not just on amateur bands, on CB, commercial, even military. That tells me the atmosphere is all fouled up. Electrical storms. I don’t need to guess about those,” he said with a grin. He waved expressively toward the windows, and as if on cue lightning flared. There wasn’t quite so much thunder and lightning as there’d been earlier in the day, but there was so much that no one noticed unless they were thinking about it.

“And salt rain,” Jellison said. “And the earthquake. The last words I heard out of JPL were ‘The Hammer has fallen.’ I’d like to talk to somebody who was in the hills above L.A. when it happened, but what I’ve got adds up. The Hammer hit us, and bad. We can be sure of it.”

No one said anything. They’d all known it. They’d hoped to find out something different, but they knew better. They were farmers and businessmen, tied closely to the land and the weather, and they lived in the foothills of the High Sierra. They’d known disaster before, and they’d done their crying and cursing at home. Now they were worried about what to do next.

“We got five truckloads of feed and hardware and two of groceries out of Porterville today,” Jellison said. “And there’s the stock in our local stores. And what you have in your barns. I doubt there’ll be much else that we don’t make or grow ourselves.”

There were murmurs. One of the farmers said, “Not ever, Senator?”

“Might as well be never,” Jellison said. “Years, I think. We’re on our own.”

He paused to let that sink in. Most of these people prided themselves on being on their own. Of course that wasn’t true, hadn’t been true for generations, and they were smart enough to know it, but it would take them time to realize just how dependent they’d been on civilization.

Fertilizers. Breeding stock. Vitamins. Gasoline and propane. Electricity. Water — well, that wouldn’t be much of a problem for awhile. Medicines, drugs, razor blades, weather forecasts, seeds, animal feed, clothes, ammunition… the list was endless. Even needles and pins and thread.

“We won’t grow much this year,” Stretch Tallifsen said. “My crops are in bad shape already.”

Jellison nodded. Tallifsen had gone down the road to help his neighbors harvest tomatoes, and his wife was working to can as many as she could. Tallifsen grew barley, and it wouldn’t last the summer.

“Question is, do we pull together?” Jellison said.

“What do you mean, ‘pull together’?” Ray Christopher asked.

“Share. Pool what we’ve got,” Jellison answered.

“You mean communism,” Ray Christopher said. This time the hostility showed through in his voice.

“No, I mean cooperation. Charity, if you like. More than that. Intelligent management of what little we have, so we avoid waste.”

“Sounds like communism—”

“Shut up, Ray.” George Christopher stood. “Senator, I can see how that makes sense. No point in using the last of the gasoline to plant something that won’t grow. Or feeding the last of the soybeans to cattle that won’t last the winter anyway. Question is, who decides? You?”

“Somebody has to,” Tallifsen said.

“Not alone,” Jellison said. “We elect a council. I will point out that I’m probably in better shape than anybody else here, and I’m willing to share—”

“Sure,” Christopher said. “But share with who, Senator? That’s the big question. How far do we go? We try to feed Los Angeles?”

“That’s absurd,” Jack Turner said.

“Why? They’ll all be here, all that can get here,” Christopher shouted. “Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin, and what’s left of San Francisco… not all of ’em, maybe, but plenty. Three hundred last night, and that’s just for starters. How long can we keep it up, lettin’ those people come here?”

“Be niggers too,” someone shouted from the floor. He looked self-consciously at two black faces at the end of the room. “Okay, sorry — no. I’m not sorry. Lucius, you own land. You work it. But city niggers, whining about equality — you don’t want ’em either!”

The black man said nothing. He seemed to shrink away from the group, and he sat very quietly with his son.

“Lucius Carter’s all right,” George Christopher said. “But Frank’s right about the others. City people. Tourists. Hippies. Be here in droves pretty soon. We have to stop them.”

I’m losing it, Jellison thought. Too much fear here, and Christopher’s put his finger on it. He shuddered. A lot of people were going to die in the next months. A lot. How do you select the ones to live, the ones to die? How do you be the Chooser of the Slain? God knows I don’t want the job.

“George, what do you suggest?” Jellison asked.

“Roadblock on the county road. We don’t want to close it, we may need it. So we put up a roadblock and we turn people away.”

“Not everyone,” Mayor Seitz said. “Women and children—”

“Everybody,” Christopher shouted. “Women? We have women. And kids. Plenty of our own to worry about. We start takin’ in other people’s kids and women, where do we stop? When our own are starving come winter?”

“Just who is going to man this roadblock?” Chief Hartman asked. “Who’s tough enough to look at a car full of people and tell a man he can’t even leave his kids with us? You’re not, George. None of us are.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“And there are special skills,” Senator Jellison said. “Engineers. We could use several good engineers. Doctors, veterinarians. Brewers. A good blacksmith, if there is any such thing in this modern world—”

“Used to be a fair hand at that,” Ray Christopher said. “Shod horses for the county fair.”

“All right,” Jellison said. “But there are plenty of skills we don’t have, and don’t think we won’t need them.”

“Okay, okay,” George Christopher said. “But dammit, we can’t take in everybody—”

“And yet we must.” The voice was very low, not really loud enough to carry through the babble and the thunder, but everyone heard it anyway. A professionally trained voice. “I was a stranger, and ye took me not in. I was hungry, and ye fed me not. Is that what you want to hear at Judgment?”

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

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 saddlebag.

“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.

“And I’ll scout ahead. Joanna can ride shotgun with you.” Mark didn’t mention Marie. He wasn’t speaking to her.

It felt good to be doing something. Anything. He had a throbbing headache, the beginning of a migraine, and his shoulders and neck were so tense he could feel knots in them, but it was better than curling up in the seat.

“Let’s go,” Harvey said.

The road ran along ridgelines, curled around hills, boring north and west. It stayed on high ground. Rock and mudslides spilled across it, but being high, the debris wasn’t deep; and being almost untraveled, the road wasn’t cut away at the edges.

The mountains had shifted. The road might have ended anywhere. Like Mark Czescu’s judgment, it was nothing you could count on absolutely; but neither had failed them this time. Eventually they came to paved road, and Harvey could increase his speed.

He liked driving. He drove with single-minded determination, with no room for other thoughts. Watch for rocks. Ease around curves. Keep going, rack up the miles, on and on and never look back and never think about what’s behind you.

Down and down now, into the San Joaquin. Water standing everywhere. That was frightening. Harvey stopped and looked at the map. Their way ran directly to a dry lake bed. It wouldn’t be dry now. So cross the Kern River on the freeway, then get off and cut northeast…

Would their gas hold? They had plenty so far. Harvey thought of the extra gas he’d stored, and of thieves and killers in a blue van. Wherever they hid, someday he would track them down. But they hadn’t taken this road. He’d have noticed. So far they’d had the road almost to themselves.

Dawn found them north and east of Bakersfield. They’d made effective progress. Thirty miles an hour, and now they were on high ground, skirting the eastern edge of the San Joaquin, with nothing to stop them.

Harvey realized where they were heading. Their route would take them right past the Jellison ranch.

The Tule River was too deep, way too deep. Nobody had dared to use the road that ran alongside. By the time Harvey realized this, it was too late. He could see the dam ahead.

Water streamed around one side and all along the top. He could just tell where the spillway was: a surging current in the river that poured over the face of the dam. He sounded the horn and waved Mark ahead. He clenched his fist and moved it vigorously up and down, the Army signal for double time. He pointed at the dam.

Mark got the message; he gunned the bike. Harvey slammed down the accelerator and roared after him. They were almost to the dam, then—

A river of mud submerged the road. A dozen people and half that many cars were mired in the mud. They’d tried to get past the slide and got stuck.

Harvey levered the TravelAII into four-wheel drive and went on without stopping. One man stepped forth to bar their way with spread arms. Harvey came close enough to see wide eyes and bared teeth, a rictus of terror and determination… and he saw Harvey’s face. The TravelAll’s headlight ticked his heel as he leaped away.

The mud was sliding and the TravelAII slid with it. Harvey turned hard, gunned the engine and fought a frantic race between his traction on the mud and the mud’s adherence to the road. Rocks in the road tipped the TravelAII sickeningly. Then there was road under them again. Harvey heard Marie’s gasp of relief.

There was a bridge ahead. It crossed an arm of the lake… and it was under water. Harvey couldn’t tell how deep. He slowed.

Suddenly there were other sounds embedded in the sounds of river and rain and thunder. Screams. Joanna looked back. “Jesus!” she shouted.

Harvey stopped the TravelAII.

The dam was going. One whole side of it crumbled, all in a moment, and the lake went forth in a wall of water. The screams were drowned in its thunder.

“Our timing was s-superb,” Joanna said.

“All those people,” Harvey muttered. All the travelers in cars not as good as the TravelAII. All the farmers who thought they’d wait it out. People on foot, people already marooned on roofs and high points in the new shallow lakes, would look up to see the wall of water marching toward them.

It would be worse when the other dams went. The whole valley would be flooded. No dam would hold against this relentless rain. Harvey took a deep breath.

“Okay, it’s over. We made it. Quaking Aspen is only thirty miles from here. Gordie’ll bring them out there.” He summoned up a mental picture of the road north of Springville. It crossed many streams, and the map showed small power stations and dams on some of them. Dams above the road.

Had they failed? Would they fail? It would be foolish, even insane, to charge up the road just in time to be washed down again.

“Let’s go,” Marie said.

Harvey drove on. There was no water above the bridge now. That water was on its way into the San Joaquin Valley. He drove across the bridge, and was surprised to see a big truck coming toward him. It stopped just at the far end of the bridge. Two big men got out. They stared as Harvey drove past them. One started to shout something, then shrugged.

Up ahead there was another bridge out. That decided it: Harvey had to detour past the entrance to Senator Jellison’s place.

And where better to learn what was happening in the mountains? For that matter, where would they go once they found the boys? Marie hadn’t thought past the moment of finding Bert and Andy. Neither had Harvey until now, but…

But this was perfect. The scout troop would have to come past the Jellison place.

And Maureen would be there.

Harvey despised himself for thinking of her. Loretta’s face swam in front of him, and the vision of a body wrapped in an electric blanket. He slowed to a stop.

“Why are we — ” Before Marie could finish there was an explosion behind them, then another.

“What the hell” Harvey started the car again. Remorse was replaced by fear. Explosions? Had they wandered into a range war or something? He drove ahead, while Joanna and Marie craned to look back.

Mark whipped the bike into a U-turn and drove back the way they’d come. He waved as he went past.

“Damn fool curiosity will kill him yet,” Joanna said.

Harvey shrugged. He could stand not knowing, but it would be nice to find out. Up ahead, a couple of miles, not far at all, was the turnoff. Then safety, refuge, rest.

He drove slowly, and he’d just reached the Senator’s drive when he saw Mark coming up behind him. He pulled to a stop.

“That bridge,” Mark said.

“Yeah?”

“The one we came over,” Mark said. “Those two dudes just blew it. Dynamite, I think. They dropped it at both ends. Harvey, a half-hour later and we’d be stranded back there.”

“Two minutes later,” Joanna said, “and we’d have been looking up at a million tons of water. We — Harv, we can’t keep lucking out like this.”

“It takes luck,” Harvey said. “In combat, here, luck’s as important as brains. But we won’t need any more for awhile. I’m going in there.” He waved toward the Senator’s drive.

“Why?” Marie demanded, ready for war.

“Road conditions. Information.” Harvey drove on to the gate. It was only just coming to him — it had never occurred to him, not for an instant — that a master of television documentaries might not be welcome at a politician’s home.

He got out to open the gate.

There was a car parked inside. A young man got out and wearily came to the TravelAII. “Your business?” he inquired. He eyed Joanna and the shotgun, showed his empty hands. “Me, I’m not armed. But my partner’s where you can’t see him, and he’s got a scope-sighted rifle.”

“We’ll be no trouble,” Harvey said. The man had seen the NBS markings on the TravelAII — and he hadn’t been impressed. “Can you get a message up to the big house?”

“Depends on the message. Might.”

Harvey had thought it through. “Tell Maureen Jellison that Harvey Randall is here with three dependents.”

The man looked thoughtful. “Well, you got the names right. She expecting you?”

Harvey laughed. It struck him as insanely funny. He leaned against the fender and chortled, he put a hand on the man’s arm and got control of his voice and said, “From Los Angeles?” and lost it again.

The man withdrew a little. His large red face blanked out. There were things he didn’t want to know. But — the Senator had told the meeting he’d like to talk to someone who’d seen what happened to L.A. And this city man did know the Senator’s name, and Maureen’s as well.

As suddenly as it had been funny, suddenly it wasn’t. Harvey stopped laughing. “Maureen must think I’m dead. She’ll be glad to know different.” Or will she? Shazam! “I know she’ll want to talk to me. Tell her I want to… never mind.” He’d been about to say he wanted to talk about galactic empires, and that wasn’t the right thing to say at all.

The man looked thoughtful. Finally he nodded. “Okay, I guess I can do that. But you wait right here. I mean right here, understand? And don’t get gay with that shotgun.”

“We don’t want to shoot anybody. I just want to talk to Maureen.”

“Okay. Right there. I’ll be a while.” He went to the car, locked it and walked up the driveway.

Walked. Saving gasoline already. Yes, the Senator had his place organized. Harvey went back to the TravelAII. Marie tried to say something; he cut through her voice with practiced ease. “Spread the map.”

She thought it over, then did it. Harvey let his forefinger do the talking. “The scouts are in this area. The only route out is right past here. They don’t have to worry about these dams — here, and here — because they don’t have to stay on the road. We do, or else we walk. We’re not equipped to walk it.”

Marie thought that over. She glanced at her boots and fingered her jacket. She was ready to walk, and so was Harvey, but it made sense. Certainly if they had to walk, a few hours wouldn’t make any difference.

“So we wait here?” Joanna asked.

Mark stuck his head in at the window. “Sure, this is Senator Jellison’s place. Thought I recognized it. Harv, that was smart, sending a message to the Senator’s daughter instead of him.”

“Wait,” Marie said. “How long?”

“Christ, how the hell do I know?” Harvey exploded. “As long as they’ll let us. This ranch is organized, have you noticed? And they’ve got food; that guard wasn’t hungry. We’d like to feed the boys when they get here. Not to mention ourselves.”

Marie nodded in submission.

“The trouble is,” Harvey continued, “how do we get them to let us in? Blowing up that bridge might have been a subtle hint that they aren’t welcoming refugees in this valley. We have to be useful, which means we promise to do whatever they want us to do, and no goddam arguments about it. Marie, don’t blow this for us. We’re beggars here.”

He waited for that to sink in before turning to Joanna. “That applies to your shotgun. I don’t know if you noticed the subtle hand motions of that guy who stopped us, but he was doing strange things with his hand. His left hand. I expect sticking him up wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“I knew that,” Joanna said.

“Yes.” Harvey turned to Mark. “Let me do the talking.” Mark looked hurt. Who’d got Harvey out of his bedroom and across the state, all the way up here? But he stood in the rain, water running off his jacket and into his boots, and waited in silence.

“Company coming,” Mark said finally. He pointed up the drive.

Three men on horseback, wearing yellow slickers and rain hats. One didn’t ride very well. He clung grimly to the horse. When he came closer, Harvey recognized Al Hardy, Jellison’s administrative assistant and political hatchet man.

Hatchet man, Harvey thought. That might be more literally true here than it had been in Washington.

Hardy dismounted and handed the reins to one of the mounted men. He came over to the TravelAII and peered inside. “Hello, Mr. Randall,” he said.

“Hello.” Harvey waited tensely.

“Who are these people?” He looked closely at Marie, but didn’t say anything.

Hardy had met Loretta only once, months ago, Harvey thought. When? A long time, anyway. And Marie Vance never, but he knew she wasn’t Loretta. A good memory for names and faces goes with the job of political adviser…

“A neighbor,” Harvey said. “And two employees.”

“I see. And you came from Los Angeles. Do you know conditions in L.A.?”

“They do,” Harvey said. He indicated Mark and Joanna. “They saw the tidal wave come in.”

“I can let two of you come up,” Hardy said. “No more.”

“Then it’s none,” Harvey said. He said it quickly, before he could say something else. “Thanks, and we’ll be on our way—”

“Wait.” Hardy looked thoughtful. “Okay. Hand me the shotgun. Slow, and don’t point it at me.” He took the weapon and handed it to the original guard, who’d also dismounted. “Any more firearms?”

“This pistol.” Harvey showed the Olympic target gun.

“My, but that’s pretty. Give it to me, too. You’ll get them back if you’re not staying.” Hardy took the weapon and thrust it into his belt. “Now make room for me in the back seat.”

He climbed into the back seat, leaned out to speak so the others could hear. “You follow on that bike,” he told Mark. “Stay close. I’m taking them up, Gil. It’s all right.”

“If you say so,” the original guard said.

“Let’s go,” Hardy told Randall. “Drive carefully.”

The gate swung open and Harvey drove through, followed by Mark, then, further behind, by the third man on horseback leading the other two horses.

“Why not leave a horse for the guard?” Harvey asked.

“We have more cars than horses. Rather lose a car if some damn fool tries anything,” Hardy explained.

Harvey nodded. And the car was there, if anything urgent had to get up the hill. Obviously his message hadn’t been thought urgent enough to waste gasoline on.

The TravelAII walked through the thick mud, and Harvey wondered just how long this drive would last. He went past the foreman’s home and toward the big house at the top of the hill. The orange groves looked pitiful, many of the trees down from the high winds — but there was no fruit on the ground. Harvey approved.

Maureen wasn’t in the big front room. Senator Jellison was. He had maps spread across the big dining table, and lists and other papers covered card tables nearby. A bottle of bourbon stood on the table. It was nearly full.

They left their boots out on the porch and came into the big stone house. The Senator stood. He didn’t offer his hand. “I’ll give you a drink if you’ll recognize in advance that it’s not permanent,” Jellison said. “Long time ago, if you offered a man food and drink, that said you’d keep him as a guest. That’s not decided yet.”

“I understand,” Harvey said. “I could use a drink.”

“Right. Al, take the women back to the kitchen stove. They’ll appreciate a chance to dry off. Excuse my manners, ladies, I’m a bit rushed just now.” He waited until the girls were gone, then waved Harvey into a seat. Mark stood uncertainly at the door. “You too,” Jellison said. “Drink?”

“You know it,” Mark said. When the bottle was given to him, he poured an enormous drink into his glass. Harvey grimaced and examined the Senator’s face. There was no change of expression.

“Is Maureen all right?” Harvey asked.

“She’s here,” Jellison said. “Where’s your wife?”

Harvey felt himself flushing. “Dead. Murdered. She was in the house when some people decided to rob it. If you get word of a blue van escorted by chopped motorcycles…”

“Not on my list of priorities. Sorry about Mrs. Randall, though. So who’ve you got with you?”

“The tall woman is Marie Vance, my neighbor. Gordie Vance is at Quaking Aspen with a scout troop. He’s got my son, I’ve got his wife.”

“Uh-huh. She’s elegant. Can she hike, or are those boots for show?”

“She can hike. She can also cook. And I can’t leave her.”

“Cooks I have. The others?”

“They saved my ass. I was ready to lie down and die after I found Loretta.” The whiskey warmed him, and Harvey felt the intensity of the Senator’s questioning. The man was judge and jury, and he wasn’t going to take long to make his decision. “Mark and Joanna found me and carried me along till I came back to life. They brought Marie, too. They’re with me.”

“Sure. Okay, what are you trading?”

Harvey shrugged. “A TravelAII I know how to use. Some… hell, a lot of experience surviving — backpacking, war correspondent, helicopter pilot…”

“You were in L.A. You saw it?”

“Mark and Joanna did. We have information, if that’s useful.”

“Information is worth a meal and a drink. You’re telling me if I let you in, the others stay too.”

“Yes. I’m afraid that’s it. We’ll do our share, assuming you can feed us.”

Jellison looked thoughtful. “You’ve got one vote,” he said. “Maureen’s. But it’s mine that counts.”

“I figured that. I gather you aren’t exactly welcoming refugees. The bridge and all—”

“Bridge?”

’The big one over an arm of the lake. Just after the dam went—”

“Dam’s gone?” Jellison frowned. “Al!” he shouted.

“Yes, sir?” Hardy came in quickly. His hand was in his raincoat pocket. It bulged. He relaxed at the sight of the three men seated in chairs, drinking calmly.

“He says the dam’s gone,” Jellison said. “Any word brought in on that?”

“Not yet.”

“Yeah.” Jellison nodded significantly. Hardy seemed to understand what he meant. “Now tell me about the bridge,” Jellison said.

“Two men blew it up, just after the dam went. Dynamite, both ends.”

“I will be dipped in shit. Describe the men.” Jellison listened, then nodded. “Right. Christophers. We may have trouble with them.” He turned toward Mark. “Army?” he asked.

“Navy,” Mark said.

“Basic? Can you shoot?”

“Yes, sir.” Mark began one of his tales about ’Nam. It might or might not have been true, but Jellison wasn’t listening.

“Can he?” he asked Randall.

“Yes. I’ve seen him,” Harvey said. He began to relax, to feel the knots unwind in his neck. It looked good, it looked as if the Senator might want him…

“If you stay here, you’re on my team,” Jellison said. “Nobody else’s. Your loyalty is to me.”

“Understood,” Harvey said.

Jellison nodded. “We’ll give it a try.”

As the Mediterranean waters recede from the drowned cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, rainstorms lash the highlands of the Sudan and Ethiopia. Floodwaters cascade down the Nile to smash against the High Aswan Dam, already weakened by the earthquakes following Hammerfall. The dam bursts, joining 130 million acre-feet of water to the flooded river. The waters smash across the Nile Delta, through the ancient cities, across Cairo. The Great Pyramid is undermined and falls beneath the torrent.

Ten thousand years of civilization are scooped up and carried with the water. From the First Cataract to the Mediterranean Sea, nothing lives in the Delta of the Nile.

Beggar Man

Eileen slept with her seat tilted back to horizontal, her seat belt loose about her. She rolled with the motion of the car. Once Tim heard the beginnings of a snore. He reached over and tightened her belt when they started on the long downgrade. Then he switched the motor off.

He remembered his driver had done that in Greece. Everyone coasted down hills in Greece. Even down the twisted narrow road from Delphi across Parnassus to Thermopylae. That had been terrifying, but the driver insisted. Greece had the most expensive gasoline in the world.

Where was Thermopylae now? Had the waters washed away the grave of the Three Hundred? The waves wouldn’t have reached Delphi, or been as high as the Acropolis. Greece had lived through disasters before.

The road twisted and tilted and Tim eased the Blazer around the turn, using the brakes warily. A long straight stretch was ahead, down all the way, then more downhill on a wet and broken and twisting road, and riding with Eileen had made him realize just how good a driver he wasn’t.

The mountains had shifted.

Here the road ended in space. Tim braked sharply and came to a stop. He walked forward through the soft rain. It tasted sweet. No more salt rain, anyway. The road, and the steep bank of cut rock, and this part of the mountain itself had sheared and dropped twenty feet or more. Mud had piled up below, so that there were places where the drop was no more than four or five feet.

Cars went over longer drops than that in TV commercials. One pickup ad had shown clips from a movie with that truck jumping over ditches, flying over banks, and the announcer had said the truck wasn’t even especially modified…

Would the Blazer take it?

Was there any choice? The drop looked as if it ran for miles. Tim got back in and backed up fifty yards. He thought through the physics of the situation. If the car fell over the edge it would land on its nose, and they’d be dead. It had to go over horizontally, and that meant speed. Easing it over would kill them.

He set the brake and walked back to the edge again. Wake Eileen? She was dead out of it. Headlights behind him, dim in the rain, decided it for him. He didn’t know who that would be and he didn’t want to know. He walked back toward the Blazer. His mind worked the equation: Call the Blazer fifteen feet long; it would fall at one G. He got in and started the car. If the front end shouldn’t fall more than two feet before the rear left the pavement and also began to fall, then the whole car should be over in about a third of a second, which meant fifteen feet in a third of a second or forty-five feet per second, and forty-four feet per second was thirty miles per hour, so about thirty miles per hour ought to do it and here we GO…

The car fell about six feet all told. His instinct was to hit the brake but he didn’t.

They hit hard, landing on the mud, rolling down the-mud ramp onto the road itself. Amazingly that was all. They were rolling down the road as if nothing had ever happened.

Eileen bounced and rolled hard against the seat belt. She shook herself, sat partly upright and looked out. The wet countryside flowed past. She blinked, and then, satisfied, went back to sleep.

Slept right through the best driving I’ll ever do, Tim thought. He grinned at the rain and mud, then switched off the engine to coast downhill.

An hour later she was still asleep. He envied her. He’d heard of people who slept most of the time: shell-shocked, or bitterly disappointed in their waking lives. He could understand the temptation. But of course that wasn’t Eileen. She needed sleep. She’d be all the more alert when she was needed.

Here the road had shattered to discrete plates. Tim switched on the engine and kept the speed up, moving as if from island to concrete island. He remembered a TV program about the Baja race. One driver said the way to take a bad road was fast — that way you didn’t touch the bumps but flew over them. It hadn’t seemed like a very good idea when he heard it, but now there didn’t seem to be much else to do. The plates lurched under the car’s weight and impact. Tim’s knuckles were white on the wheel, but Eileen smiled in her sleep, as if rocked in a cradle.

Tim felt very lonely.

She had not deserted him. At the risk of her life she had stayed with him. But she was sleeping and he was driving, and the rain pounded constantly on metal an inch over his head, and the road kept doing strange things. Here it lifted in a graceful arc, like a futuristic bridge, and a new stream ran beneath it. The concrete ribbon hadn’t shattered under its own weight, not yet, but it for damn sure wouldn’t hold a car. Tim drove around it, through the flood. The wheels kept moving and the motor didn’t die, and he pulled back onto the road where he could.

He had been deserted by everything and everyone but Eileen. He could understand that money and credit cards were worthless; sure. A bullet through the windshield was something else. Driving across the green of a country club felt like vandalism! The observatory… but Tim didn’t want to think about that. He’d been thrown off his own land, and his ears burned with the memory. Cowardice. It felt like cowardice.

The road curled out of the mountains, widened and became a smooth straight line leading away. Where? No compass. Nothing to do but drive on. And the rain became a furious lashing attack. Tim started the motor and dared to increase speed to twenty mph.

Eileen asked, “How are we doing?”

“Out of the mountains. It’s a straightaway, no breaks visible. Go back to sleep.”

“Good.”

When he looked she was asleep again.

He saw a freeway ahead. A sign told him HIGHWAY 99, NORTH, He went up the ramp. Now he could go forty. He passed cars stalled in the rain, both on and off the highway. People, too. Tim hunched low whenever he saw anything that could be a gun. Once it was real: Two men stepped out from either side of the highway and raised a pair of shotguns. They gestured: Stop. Tim hunched low, stamped on the accelerator, aimed for one of the men. The man leaped unhesitatingly into the muddy darkness. Tim listened for the guns with every nerve, but they did not speak. Presently he straightened up.

Now, what was that about? Were they afraid to waste ammunition? Or were the guns too wet to fire? He said to himself, softly, “If you can’t stand not knowing…” Harv Randall’s words.

They still had gas, they were still moving. The highway was awash with water; it must have stopped lesser cars than this one. Tim grinned in the dark. Two hundred and fifty thou for a car? Well, it pays to buy the best.

The rain hurled a sea of water across the land in one ferocious blast, then stopped just as suddenly.

For a long moment Tim had an unbroken view ahead. He hit the brakes as the rain slashed down again. The car achieved a marvelous floating sensation before it coasted to a stop.

They had come to the end.

Eileen sat up. She pulled the seat back up behind her and smoothed her skirt with automatic gestures.

“We’ve hit an ocean,” said Tim.

She rubbed her eyes. “Where are we?”

Tim turned on the roof light. He spread the map across their laps. “I kept working north and west and downhill,” he said. “Until we got out of the mountains. There were a lot of them. After a while I couldn’t tell directions anymore, so I just went downhill. Eventually I came to Highway Ninetynine.” Tim spoke proudly: With his lousy sense of direction they might have ended up anywhere. “Ninety-nine’s been good. No more breaks. You missed a couple of guys with shotguns, and a lot of cars that weren’t running anymore, but no real trouble. Of course there was a lot of water on the road, but…”

She had raked the map with her eyes, once. Now she was peering ahead through the rain, along the beam of the headlamps, piecing out the view from subliminal cues and imagination. For as far as they both could see in the gray twilight there was nothing but a silver-gray expanse of rain-spattered water. No lights anywhere. Nothing.

“See if you can back up,” she said. She fell to studying the map. Tim inched backward, out of the water, until it was only hubcap-deep.

“We’re in trouble,” Eileen said. “Have we passed Bakersfield?”

“Yes.” There had been freeway signs, and the ghosts of dark buildings, a mountain range done all in right angles. “Not long ago.”

She frowned and squinted at tiny print. “It says Bakersfield is four hundred feet above sea level.”

Tim remembered the fallen mountains. “I wouldn’t rely on elevations any longer. I seem to remember the entire San Fernando Valley dropped thirty feet during the Sylmar quake. And that was a little one.”

“Well, everything gets lower and lower from here on. We’re in the lowlands.” And we’re sinking in the lowlands, lowlands, low… “Tim, no tidal wave could have gotten this far. Could it?”

“No. But it’s raining.”

“Raining. Ye gods, how it must have rained, and it’s still coming! This wasn’t all in the comet head, was it?” She shushed him when he started to explain. “Skip it. Let’s rethink from scratch. Where do we want to go?”

Back to high ground. “Well,” Tim said, “that’s a problem too. I know where we want to be. The high farming country, say around Sequoia National Forest. What I don’t know is why anyone would want us there.” He didn’t dare say anything else.

She didn’t say anything at all. She was waiting.

Tim worked on his nerve. “I did have one idea…”

She waited.

Damn, it was evaporating even as he tried to speak it! Like the restaurants and good hotels that waited in Tujunga: Speak your wish and they were gone. He said it anyway, a little desperately. “Senator Jellison’s ranch. I contributed a lot of money to his campaign. And I’ve been to his ranch. It’s perfect. If he’s there, he’ll let us in. And he’ll be there. He’s that smart.”

“And you contributed money to his campaign.” She chuckled.

“Money was worth good money then. And, honey, it’s all I’ve got.”

“Okay. I can’t think of a single farmer who owes me anything. And the farmers own it all now, don’t they? Just like Thomas Jefferson wanted it. Where is this ranch?”

Tim tapped the map between Springville and Lake Success, just below the mountainous Sequoia National Park. “Here. We go underwater for a way, then we turn right and resume breathing.”

“Maybe there’s a better way. Look to your left. Do you see a railroad embankment?”

He turned off the roof light, then the headlights. A little time for his eyes to adjust, and… “No.”

“Well, it’s there.” She was looking at the map. “Southern Pacific Railroad. Swing us around and point the headlights that way.”

Tim maneuvered the car around. “What are you thinking of? Catching a train?”

“Not exactly.”

The headlights didn’t reach far through the rain. They showed nothing but rain-stippled sea in all directions.

“We’ll have to take the embankment on faith,” Eileen said. “Slide over.” She climbed over him to reach the steering wheel. He couldn’t guess what she had in mind, but he strapped down while she started the motor. Eileen turned south, back the way they had come.

“There are people back there,” he said. “Two of them have shotguns. Also, I don’t think we’ve got a siphon, so we shouldn’t use up too much gas.”

“Good news from all over.”

“I’m just telling you,” said Tim. He noticed that the water was no longer hubcap-deep. Off to the west, higher ground made black humps in the shallow sea. Here was a grove of almond trees, there a farmhouse; and Eileen turned sharp right where there was no road. The car settled as it left 99, then shouldered forward through water and mud.

Tim was afraid to speak, almost afraid to breathe. Eileen wove a path that crossed one and another of the black humps of rising ground, but they weren’t continuous. It was an ocean with islands, and they drove through it in an endless rainstorm. Tim waited, with both hands braced on the dashboard, for the car to plunge into some two-foot dip and die.

“There,” Eileen muttered. “There.”

Was the horizon slightly higher ahead? Moments later Tim was sure: The land humped ahead of them. Five minutes later they were at the base of the railroad embankment.

The car wouldn’t climb it.

Tim was sent out into the rain with the tow rope. He looped it under a rail and pulled back on it, leaning his weight above the embankment, while Eileen tried to drive up sloping mud. The car kept sliding back. Tim looped the rope again around the other rail. He took in slack, inches at a time. The car would surge upward and start to fall back, and Tim would take up the slack and heave. One wrong move would cost him one finger. He had stopped thinking. It was easier that way, in the dull misery of rain and exhaustion and the impossible task. His earlier triumphs were forgotten, useless…

It came to him, slowly, that the car was up on the embankment, almost level, and Eileen was leaning on the horn. He detached the rope and coiled it and trudged back to the car.

“Well done,” Eileen said. He nodded. And waited.

If Tim’s energy and determination were burned out, she still had hers. “A lot of cops know this trick. Eric Larsen told me about it. I never tried it myself…” The car lurched up onto a rail; backed and turned, tilting on the embankment; lurched forward again, and was suddenly doing a balancing act on both rails. “Of course it takes the right car,” said Eileen, with less tension and more confidence now. “Off we go…”

Off they went, balanced on the rails. The wheels were just the right width. A new sea gleamed silver on both sides. The car moved slowly, tottering and recovering, balancing like a dancer, the steering wheel moving constantly, minutely. Eileen was wire-tense.

“If you had told me, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Tim said.

“I didn’t think you’d get us up.”

Tim didn’t answer. He saw very clearly that the tracks were dipping gradually toward the water; but whatever it was that he didn’t believe now, he kept it to himself.

Gliding, gliding over the sea. Eileen had been driving for hours over the water. Her slight frown, wide eyes, rigidly upright posture made her a closed universe. Tim dared not speak to her.

There was nobody to call on them for help now, and nobody to point guns. The headlights and an occasional lightning bolt showed them only water and the rails. In places the rails actually dipped below the water, and then Eileen slowed to a crawl and drove by feel. Once the lightning illuminated the roof of a large house, and six human forms on the peaked roof, all glistening in rain gear; twelve glinting eyes watching a phantom car drive across the water. And again there was a house, but it floated on its side, and nobody was near it. Once they drove for miles past a rectangular array of bushes, a drowned orchard with only the tops of the trees showing.

“I’m afraid to stop,” Eileen said.

“I gathered that. I’m afraid to distract you.”

“No, talk to me. Don’t let me get drowsy. Make me real, Tim. This is nightmarish.”

“God, yes. I’d know the surface of Mars at a glance, but this isn’t anyplace in the universe. Did you see those people watching us?”

“Where?”

Of course, she dared not take her eyes off the rails. He told her about the six people on the roof. “If they live,” he said, “they’ll start a legend about us. If anyone believes them.”

“I’d like that.”

“I don’t know. A Flying Dutchman legend?” But that was tactless. “We won’t be here forever, though. These tracks’ll take us as far as Porterville, and there won’t be anyone trying to stop us.”

“You think Senator Jellison will let you in, do you?”

“Sure.” Even if that hope failed them, they’d be in a safe area. What counted now was a magic trick: driving to Porterville on railroad tracks. He had to keep her mind on that.

He was not expecting her next remark.

“Will he let me in?”

“Are you crazy? You’re a lot more valuable than I am. Remember the observatory?”

“Sure. After all, I’m such a damn good accountant.”

“If they’re as organized around Springville as they were in Tujunga, they’ll need an accountant to take care of distributing goods. They may even have a barter system. That could get complicated, with money obsolete.”

“Now you’re the crazy one,” Eileen said. “Anyone who does his own income tax can keep accounts. That’s everyone but you, Tim. The accountants and the lawyers run this country, and they want everyone to be like them, and they’ve damn near succeeded.”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s my point. Accountants are a drug on the market now.”

“I don’t go in without you,” said Tim.

“Sure, I know that. The question is whether we go in or not. Are you hungry?”

“But of course I’m hungry, my child.” Tim reached into the back seat. “Fritz gave us tomato bisque and chicken with rice. Both concentrated. I could put them in front of the heater. Can you drive with one hand?”

“I guess not, not on this.”

“Oh, never mind. We don’t have a can opener.”

Our thanks God for small miracles; they’re easier to grasp.

One small miracle was a road humping out of the sea to cross the tracks. Suddenly the tracks were sunk in blacktop and Eileen stamped on the brake pedal almost hard enough to send Tim through the windshield.

They flopped their seats back, rolled into each other’s arms and slept.

Eileen’s sleep wasn’t calm. She jerked, she kicked, she cried out. Tim found that if he ran the palm of his hand down her spine, she would relax and fall back to sleep, and then he could sleep too, until next time.

He woke in black night to the scream of wind and the panicky pressure of Eileen’s fingernails and the perilous rocking of the car. Eileen’s eyes were wide, her mouth too firmly set. “Hurricanes,” he said. “The big ocean strikes’ll keep spinning them off. Be glad we found a safe place first.” She didn’t react. “We’re safe here,” he repeated. “We can sleep through it.”

She laughed then. “I dare you. What happens if one of these hits us while we’re on the tracks?”

“Then you’d better be as good as you think you are.”

“Oh, Jesus,” she said, and — incredibly — went back to sleep.

Tim lay beside her in the howling and the rocking. Did hurricanes overturn cars? You bet they did. When he tired of thinking about that, he thought about how hungry he was. Maybe he could use the bumper to pry open a soup can. After the hurricane passed.

He dozed… and woke in total silence. There wasn’t even rain. He located a soup can and stepped outside. He managed to bend the bumper a little, but he also tore the soup can open. He swallowed some of the condensed tomato bisque, and that was how he happened to look up.

He looked up into a wide patch of clear stars.

“Beautiful,” he said. But he entered the car in some haste.

Eileen was sitting up. He gave her the soup can. “I think we’re in the eye of the hurricane. If you want to see the stars, look quick and come back.”

“No, thanks.”

The soup was cold and gluey. It left them both thirsty. Eileen set the can on the roof to collect rainwater, and they lay down again to wait for morning.

The rain came again, in frantic violence. Tim reached through the window for the can, and found it gone. He found the abandoned beer can on the floor, pried it open, filled it twice in the rainwater streaming from the car roof.

Hours later, the rain settled down to a gentle drumming. By then it was full daylight: just enough dirty gray light to see that the sea around them was thick with floating things. There were corpses of dogs and rabbits and cattle, far outnumbered by the bodies of human beings. There was wood in all its forms, trees and furniture and the walls of houses. Tim got out and fielded some driftwood and set it in front of the car heater. “If we ever find shelter, we’ve still got that other can of soup,” he said.

“Good,” said Eileen. She sat bolt upright at the steering wheel, and the motor was going. Tim didn’t urge her. He knew better than to volunteer for the job, and he knew what it would cost her.

She shifted into gear.

“Hold it,” Tim said, and he put a hand on her shoulder and pointed. She nodded and put the car back in neutral.

A wave came toward them in a long thread of silver-gray. It wasn’t high. When it reached the car it was no more than two feet tall. But the sea had risen in the night until it stood around the tires. The wave slapped against the car and lifted them and carried them and set them down almost immediately with the motor still going.

Eileen sounded exhausted. “What was that, another earthquake?”

“I’d say a dam collapsed somewhere.”

“I see. Only that.” She tried to laugh. “The dam has broken! Run for your lives!”

“The Cherokees is escaped from Fort Mudge!”

“What?”

“Pogo. Skip it,” Tim said. “All that water out there… this won’t be the first dam that went. All of them, probably. Maybe here and there the engineers got spillways open in time. Maybe. But most of the dams are gone.” Which, he thought, means most of the electric power everywhere. Not even local pockets of electricity. He wondered if the power houses and generators had survived. Dams could be built again.

Eileen put the Blazer into gear and started forward, slowly.

The Southern Pacific tracks took them most of the way to Porterville. The tracks and embankment rose gradually until what surrounded them was no longer sea, but land that looked as if it had recently risen from the depths: Atlantis returned. Still Eileen kept to the tracks, though her shoulders were shivering with the strain.

“No people on the tracks, and no stalled cars,” she said. “We’re avoiding those, aren’t we?” They hadn’t, completely; sometimes forlorn groups of refugees, usually in families, trudged along the right-of-way.

“I hate to leave them,” Eileen said. “But — which ones should we take? The first ones we see? Be selective? No matter what we do, we’d have the car filled and people on top and there’d still be more—”

“It’s all right,” Tim said. “We don’t have anyplace to go either.” But he sat brooding, feeling her mood. What right did they have to expect anyone to help them? They weren’t helping anyone themselves…

South and east of Porterville they rolled down a wet embankment to resume their trek on 190. Tim took over the driving, and Eileen lay in the reclined passenger seat, exhausted but unable to sleep.

The land looked recently drowned. Studying the broken buildings and fences and uprooted trees, Tim became certain that a flood had come from the direction they were traveling. There was mud everywhere, and Tim had many occasions to feel proud of his judgment. He didn’t think any other car in the world could have got them over some places they passed.

“Lake Success,” Eileen said. “There was a big lake up there, and the dam must have gone. The road goes right past it…”

“Yeah?”

“I’m wondering if there’s any road there,” she said. They went on, until they reached the junction that should have taken them up into the hills.

The land was mud everywhere, studded with cars in every possible attitude. There were bodies, but no living human beings. They were glad for the rain. It kept them from seeing very far into the muddy ditch to their left. The road became worse, washed out in places, covered with mud in others.

Eileen took over driving again, guessing where the road had been and hoping it was still there under the mud. The Blazer kept moving, but more slowly…

Then they saw the campfire. A half-dozen cars, some as good as the Blazer. Here were people of all sexes and ages, a gathering of the hopeless. Somehow they’d started a fire, and there was a pile of wood under a plastic shelter. The people stayed in the rain; wood was kept near the fire to dry.

Tim brought in the dry wood from the Blazer. No one spoke to him. The children stared at him with hopeless eyes. Finally one of the men said, “You won’t make it.”

Tim wordlessly eyed the mudslide ahead. There were tracks in it. If any car could get through…

“This isn’t the problem,” the man said. “We got past that. But up ahead there’s a bridge out.”

“So walk—”

“And a man with a rifle. They don’t talk. First shot was between my wife and myself. I got the impression the second would finish the job. Never even saw the rifleman.”

So that was it. End of the line. Tim sat beside the fire and began to laugh, softly at first, then in rising hysteria. Two days. Two? Yes. This was Friday, Drowned Muddy Fridae after Hot Fudge Tuesdae and the roads to high ground were gone and you couldn’t get to the Senator’s place. More men with guns. The world belonged to men with guns. Maybe the Senator was shooting. The image was funny, Senator Jellison in full formals, striped trousers and morning coat and rifle, what the successful leader will wear…

“It works” Tim said. “Tell your dream and kill it. It works!” He laughed again.

“Here.” Another man, big, with thick hairy forearms, used a handkerchief to snatch a tin can from the fire. He poured into a styrofoam cup, then looked regretful and took a flat pint bottle from his jacket pocket. He splashed in rum, then handed Tim the cup. “Drink that, and don’t lose the cup. And stop it. You’re scaring the kids.”

So what? But it was natural for Tim to feel ashamed. “Don’t make a scene.” How often had his mother told him that? And told his father that, and told everyone else…?

The laced coffee tasted good and warmed him. It didn’t help much, though. Eileen brought their remaining can of soup and offered it. They sat in silence, sharing what there was: the soup, instant coffee, and a bit of drowned rabbit broiled on a stick.

There was very little talking. Finally the others got up. “We’ll strike for north,” one man said. He gathered his family. “Anybody with me?”

“Sure.” Others joined. Tim felt relieved. They were going away, leaving him with Eileen. Should he go with them? For what? They hadn’t anyplace to go either.

The others got up and went to their cars, all but the big man who’d offered the coffee. He sat with his wife and two children. “You too, Brad?” the new leader asked.

“Car’s not working.” He waved toward a Lincoln parked near the mudslide. “Broken axle, I think.”

“Any gas in it?” the leader asked.

“Not much.”

“We’ll try anyway. If you don’t mind.”

The big man shrugged. The others siphoned no more than a pint of gasoline out of the Lincoln. Their cars were already crowded. There was absolutely no room for anyone else. The expedition leader paused. He looked at them as one looks at the dead. “That’s your plastic tarp. And your instant coffee,” he said. He said it wistfully, but when he got no answer, turned away. They drove off, downhill into the rain.

Now there were six by the fire. Tim and Eileen, and — “Name’s Brad Wagoner,” the big man said. “That’s Rosa and Eric, and Concepcion. Named the boy for my side of the family, girl for Rosa’s. Thought we’d keep that up if we had any more.” He seemed glad of someone to talk with.

“I’m Eileen, and that’s Tim. We’re — ” She stopped herself. “Of course we’re not really pleased to meet you. But I guess I should say it anyway. And we’re very grateful for the coffee.”

The children were very quiet. Rosa Wagoner hugged them and spoke to them in soft Spanish. They were very young, five or six, not more, and they clung to her. They had on yellow nylon windbreakers and tennis shoes.

“You’re stranded,” Tim said.

Wagoner nodded. He still didn’t say anything.

He’d make two of me, Tim thought. And he’s got a wife and two kids. We better get out of here before he breaks my neck and takes the Blazer. Tim felt afraid, and was ashamed because the Wagoners hadn’t said or done anything to deserve suspicion. Just that they were here…

“No place to go anyway,” Brad Wagoner said. “We’re from Bakersfield. Not much left of Bakersfield. I guess we should have struck up into the hills right off, but we thought we’d try to find some supplies in town. We just missed getting washed away when the dam went.” He eyed the steep hill above him. “If this rain would stop, maybe we could see some place to walk to. You got any plans?” He couldn’t disguise the plea in his voice.

“Not really.” Tim stared into the dying fire. “I thought I knew somebody up there. Politician I gave a lot of money to. Senator Jellison.” There. That finished it for sure. And now what would they do?

“Jellison,” Wagoner mused. “I voted for him. Think that would count? Are you still going to try to get up there?”

“It’s all I can think of.” Tim’s voice held no hope at all.

“What will you do?” Eileen asked. Her eyes kept straying to the children.

Wagoner shrugged. “Find some place and start over, I guess.” He laughed. “I built high-rise apartments. Made a lot of money at it, but — I didn’t get as good a car as yours.”

“You’d be surprised what that one cost me,” Tim said.

The fire died away. It was time. Eileen went to the Blazer. Tim followed. Brad Wagoner sat with his wife and children.

“I can’t stand it,” Tim said.

“Me either.” Eileen took his hand and squeezed. “Mr. Wagoner. Brad…”

“Yeah?”

“Come on. Pile in.” Eileen waited until the Wagoners had got into the Blazer, adults in the back seat, children on the floor behind that. She turned and drove down the hill. “I wish we had a good map.”

“Maps I have,” Wagoner said. He took out a soggy paper from an inner pocket. “Careful, it tears easy when it’s wet.” It was an Auto Club map of Tulare County. Much better than the Chevron map they’d been using.

Eileen eased the Blazer to a stop and examined the map. “That bridge there, is that the one that’s out?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, Tim, if we backtrack and go south, there’s a road up into the hills—”

“Which beats hell out of spending more time on the Southern Pacific,” Tim said.

“Southern Pacific?” Rosa Wagoner asked.

Tim didn’t explain. They drove south until they found a sheltered place on the road, partway up a hill, and they pulled off to sleep. They took turns letting the Wagoners use the seats while they huddled under the plastic tarp.

“High ground,” Tim said. “It goes north. And east. And that road’s not on the map.” He pointed. The road was gravel, but it looked in good condition — and it looked traveled. It ran in the right direction.

Eileen was running out of hope, and the Blazer was running out of gas, but she took the road. It wound upward into the hills. It was luck that they’d found it, and more luck that the rain and mud and hurricanes hadn’t ruined it. But no luck could protect them from the roadblock.

There were four big men, big like football stars or TV mafia goons. Guns and size made them look unfriendly, and they weren’t smiling. Tim got out alone, wonderingly. One of the men came down to meet him. The others stood aloof. One of the men looked elusively familiar. Someone he’d seen on the Senator’s ranch? That wouldn’t help, and it was another of the armed men who had come to the barrier.

Tim told them, crisply (while very aware of how like a wandering tramp he looked ), “We’re on our way to visit Senator Jellison.” The imperious voice cost Tim most of his reserves of self-control.

It hadn’t impressed. “Name?”

“Tim Hamner.”

The man nodded. “Spelled how?”

Tim spelled it, and was somehow glad that the name was not known. The man called behind him, “Chuck, see if Hamner’s on the Senator’s list. H-A-M-N-E-R.”

One of the guards reacted to that. He came down toward the barricade. Tim was sure he’d seen him before.

“We’ve got a list of people to let through,” the first guard said. “And, buddy, it’s a short list. We’ve got another list of professions. Are you a doctor?”

“No—”

“Blacksmith? Machinist? Mechanic? Tool-and-die maker?”

“What have you got for playboy, retired? Or astronomer?” Tim remembered Brad Wagoner. “Or building contractor?” He had a thought as he said it, but he was interrupted.

A voice came from a parked truck. “No Hamner.”

“Sorry,” the guard said. “We don’t want you blocking the road, so we’d be obliged if you’d move that car to where we can’t see it. And don’t come back.”

If you tell your dreams, they won’t come true. Tim started to turn away. But—

But you don’t go off to die without even trying. He saw Eileen and Rosa Wagoner staring out at him from the car. Their faces said it all. They knew.

Other roads in? Nuts. The car was almost out of gas, and suppose they found one? These people knew the country. If there was a good way in, they had it covered.

Walk? Senator Jellison’s ranch ended at a great white monolith the size of an apartment building, and maybe they could get that far — and get shot—

And anyway, Tim thought, if I’m good for anything, it’s talking. No use at all creeping around in the bushes… He turned back to the barricade. The guard looked disappointed. His rifle wasn’t quite pointed at Tim. “Your car works fine, and you’re not hurt,” the man said. “I’d leave it at that—”

“Chescu,” Tim shouted. “Mark Chescu!”

“That’s Czescu,” one of the men answered. “Hello, Mr. Hamner.”

“You were going to let me leave? Without even talking to me?”

Mark shrugged. “I’m not really in charge here.”

“Fucking-A you’re not,” one of the big men said.

“But… Mark, can we talk?” Tim demanded. “I have an idea — ” He thought fast. There was something Wagoner had said. He built apartments. But…

“We can talk,” Mark told him. “It won’t do a lot of good.” He handed his rifle to one of the others and came around the barrier. “What’s to talk about?”

Tim led him to the Blazer. “Brad, you said you built apartments. Contractor or architect?”

“Both.”

“I thought so,” Tim said. He spoke quickly, words in a rush. “So you know concrete. And construction work. You could build a dam!”

Wagoner frowned. “I suppose—”

“See!” Tim was triumphant. “Dams.” He pointed to the Auto Club map. “See, there are powerhouses, dams, all along the road up from here, all the way up into the Sierra, and those dams will be gone, but some of the little powerhouses will still be there, and I know enough about electricity to get them running if somebody can build the dam. You have here a complete electrical contracting team. That ought to be worth something.” Tim was Lying through his teeth, but he didn’t think any of these people would know enough about electricity to trip him in an exam.

And he did know the theory, even if he was a bit hazy about the practical aspects of polyphase alternators.

Mark looked thoughtful.

“Goddammit,” Tim shouted. “I gave Jellison fifty thousand dollars back when that was real money! You can at least tell him I’m here!”

“Yeah. Let me think about it,” Mark said. The story made sense. And Tim Hamner had been a friend of Harvey Randall’s. If Hamner had gone off without recognizing him Mark could have forgotten that, but not now. Harv would find out, and Harv might not like it. And fifty big ones. Mark hadn’t spent much time with the Senator, but Jellison had this old-fashioned air and he might think that was important. And besides, that bit about dams and powerhouses — it added up. Mark would have let them in. Only he couldn’t. The Christophers wouldn’t let him. But they still listened to Jellison.

Mark eyed the other man in the car. A big man. “Army?” he asked.

“Marine Corps,” Wagoner said.

“Can you shoot?”

“All Marines are riflemen first. Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll give it a try.” Mark went back to the roadblock. “This guy seems to be an old friend of the Senator’s,” Mark said. “I’ll go tell him.”

The big guard looked thoughtful. Tim held his breath. “He can wait,” the man said finally. He raised his voice. “Pull off to the side. And stay in the car.”

“Right.” Tim got into the Blazer. They jockeyed it until it was almost in the ditch. “If somebody comes here in a fighting mood, we don’t want to get hit by stray bullets,” he said. He watched Mark kick a motorcycle to life and drive away.

“Is fighting likely?” Rosa Wagoner asked.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. He huddled in the seat. “Now we wait. And see.”

Eileen laughed. She pictured Tim trying to rewind a huge generator. “Cross your fingers,” she said.

“You knew him, I didn’t,” Senator Jellison said. “Any use?”

Harvey Randall looked thoughtful. “I honestly don’t know. He got here. That’s a lot in his favor. He’s a survivor.”

“Or lucky,” Jellison said. “Hamner, as in Hamner-Brown. He wasn’t lucky for the world. Yeah, I know, discovery isn’t invention. Mark, you say the other guy’s an ax-Marine?”

“Says he is. Looks it, Senator. That’s all I know.”

“Six more people. Two women and two kids.” Jellison looked thoughtful. “Harvey, you put any stock in this scheme to get the power plants working again?”

“The idea sounds useful—”

“Sure, but can Hamner do it?”

Harvey shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Senator. He’s a college man. He must know something besides astronomy.”

“And I owe him,” Jellison said. “Question is, do I owe him enough? It can get hungry here this winter.” He looked thoughtful again. “The guy who discovered the comet. That tells me one thing. He’s probably got patience. And we could sure as hell use a lookout up on top of the crag, somebody who’d really watch. Let Alice move around a bit instead of sticking in one place.

“And a Marine who may or may not be able to build dams. Officer or enlisted, Mark?”

“Don’t know, Senator. I’d guess officer, but I just don’t know.”

“Yeah. Well, I always did like the Marines. Mark, go tell Mr. Hamner this is his lucky day.”

Mark’s face said it all. Tim knew when Mark came to the car.

They were safe. After all of it, they were safe. Sometimes dreams do come true, even if you tell them.

The Stronghold: Two

Al Hardy didn’t like guard duty. It didn’t do him much good to dislike it. Somebody had to pull guard, and the ranchhands were more useful elsewhere. Besides, Hardy could make decisions for the Senator.

He looked forward to giving up the whole thing. Not too long, he thought. Not too long until we won’t need guards at the Senator’s gate. The roadblock stopped most intruders now; but it didn’t get them all. A few walked up from the flooded San Joaquin. Others came down from the High Sierra, and a lot of strangers had got into the valley before the Christophers began sealing it off. Most would be sent on their way, and they’d heard the Senator could let them stay on. It meant a lot, to be able to talk to the Senator.

And the Old Man didn’t like sending people away, which was why Al didn’t let many get up to see him. It was part of his job, and always had been: The Senator said yes to people, and Al Hardy said no.

There’d be a flood of them every hour if they weren’t stopped, and the Senator had important work to do. And Maureen and Charlotte would stand guard if Al didn’t, and to hell with that. The only good thing about Hammerfall, women’s lib was dead milliseconds after Hammerstrike…

Al had paper work to do He made lists of items they needed, jobs for people to do, worked out details of schemes the Senator thought up. He worked steadily at the clipboard in the car, pausing when anyone came to the drive.

You couldn’t tell. You just couldn’t tell. The refugees all looked alike: half-drowned and half-starved, and worse every day. Now it was Saturday, and they looked just awful. When he’d been Senator Jellison’s aide, Al Hardy had judged himself a good judge of men. But now there was nothing to judge. He had to fall back on routine.

These wandering scarecrows who came on foot, leading two children and carrying a third; but the man and woman both claimed to be doctors and knew the lingo… specialists, but even the woman psychiatrist had had GP training; they all did. And that surly giant was a CBS executive; he had to be turned back to the road, and he didn’t stop swearing until Hardy’s partner wasted a round through the side window of his car.

And the man in the remains of a good suit, polite and speaking good English, who’d been a city councilman out in the valley there, and who’d got out of his car, got close to Al and showed the pistol hidden in his raincoat pocket.

“Put your hands up.”

“Sure you want it this way?” Al had asked.

“Yes. You’re taking me inside.”

“Okay.” Al raised his hands. And the shot went through the city councilman’s head, neat and clean, because of course the signal was Al raising his right hand. Pity the councilman had never read his Kipling:

A truck came up to the drive. Small truck, thin hairy man with mustache drooping. Probably a local, Al thought. Everyone around here drove a small truck. By the same token he might have stolen it, but why drive to the Senator’s home with it? Al got out of the car and splashed through muddy water to the gate.

To all of them Alvin Hardy was the same: “Show your hands. I’m not armed. But there’s a man with a scopesighted rifle and you can’t see him.”

“Can he drive a truck?”

Al Hardy stared at the bearded man. “What?”

“First things first.” The bearded man reached into the bag on the seat beside him. “Mail. Only I’ve got a registered letter. Senator will have to sign for it. And there’s a dead bear—”

“What?” Al’s routine wasn’t working so well. “What?”

“A dead bear. I killed him early this morning. I didn’t have much choice. I was sleeping in the truck and this enormous black hairy arm smashed the window and reached inside. He was huge. I backed up as far as I could, but he kept coming in, so I took this Beretta I found at the Chicken Ranch and shot the bear through the eye. He dropped like so much meat. So—”

“Who are you?” Al asked.

“I’m the goddam mailman! Will you try to keep your mind on one thing at a time? There’s five hundred to a thousand pounds of bear meat, not to mention the fur, just waiting for four big men with a truck, and it’s starting to spoil right now! I couldn’t move him myself, but if you get a team out there you can maybe stop some people from starving. And now I’ve got to get the Senator’s signature for this registered letter, only you better send somebody for the bear right away.”

It was too much for Al Hardy. Far too much. The one thing he knew was the Beretta. “You’ll have to let me hold that weapon for you. And you drive me up the hill,” Al said.

“Hold my gun? Why the hell should you hold my gun?” Harry demanded. “Oh, hell, all right if it makes you happy. Here.”

He handed the pistol out. Al took it gingerly. Then he opened the gate.

“Good Lord, Senator, it’s Harry!” Mrs. Cox shouted.

“Harry? Who’s Harry?” Senator Jellison got up from the table with its maps and lists and diagrams and went to the windows. Sure enough, there was Al with somebody in a truck. A very bearded and mustachioed somebody, in gray clothes.

“Mail call!” Harry shouted as he came up onto the porch.

Mrs. Cox rushed to the door. “Harry, we never expected to see you again!”

“Hi,” Harry said. “Registered letter for Senator Jellison.”

Registered letter. Political secrets about a world dead and burying itself. Arthur Jellison went to the door. The mail carrier — yes, that was the remains of a Postal Service uniform — looked a bit worn. “Come in,” Jellison said. What the devil was this guy doing—

“Senator, Harry shot a bear this morning. I better get some ranch-hands out to get it before the buzzards do,” Al Hardy said.

“You don’t go off with my pistol,” Harry said indignantly.

“Oh.” Hardy produced the weapon from a pocket. He looked at it uncertainly. “Senator, this is his,” he said. Then he fled, leaving Jellison holding the weapon in still more confusion.

“I think you’re the first chap to fluster Hardy,” Jellison said. “Come in. Do you call on all the ranches?”

“Right,” Harry said.

“And who do you expect to pay you, now that—”

“People I bring messages to,” Harry said. “My customers.”

That hint couldn’t be ignored. “Mrs. Cox, see what you can find—”

“Coming up,” she called from the kitchen. She came in with a cup of coffee. A very nice cup, Jellison saw. One of his best. And some of the last coffee in the world. Mrs. Cox thought well of Harry.

That at least told him one thing. He handed over the pistol. “Sorry. Hardy’s got instructions—”

“Sure.” The mailman pocketed the weapon. He sipped the coffee and sighed.

“Have a seat,” Jellison said. “You’ve been all over the valley?”

“Most places.”

“So tell me what things are like—”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Harry had been nearly everywhere. He told his story simply, no embellishments. He’d decided on that style. Just the facts. Mail truck overturned. Power lines down. Telephone lines gone. Breaks in the road, here, and here, and ways around on driveways through here and across there. Millers okay, Shire still operating. Muchos Nombres deserted when he’d gone back with the truck, and the bodies — oops, getting ahead of himself.

He told of the murder at the Roman place. Jellison frowned, and Harry went to the table to show him on the big county engineer’s map.

“No sign of the owners, but somebody shot at you, and killed this other chap?” Jellison asked.

“Right.”

Jellison nodded. Have to do something there. But — first tell the Christophers. Let them share the risks of a police action.

“And the people at Muchos Nombres were coming to find you,” Harry said. “That was yesterday, before noon.”

“Never got here,” Jellison said. “Maybe they’re in town. Good land there? Anything planted?”

“Not much. Weeds, mostly,” Harry said. “But I have chickens. Got any chicken feed?”

“Chickens?” This guy was a gold mine of information!

Harry told him about the Sinanians and the Chicken Ranch. “Lots of chickens left there, and I guess they’ll starve or the coyotes will get them, so you might as well help yourself,” Harry said. “I want to keep a few. There was one rooster, and I hope he lives. If not, maybe I’ll have to borrow one…”

“You’re taking up farming?” Jellison asked.

Harry shuddered. “Good God, no! But I thought it’d be nice to have a few chickens running around the place.”

“So you’ll go back there—”

“When I finish my route,” Harry said. “I’ll stop at other places on the way back.”

“And then what?” Jellison asked, but he already knew.

“I’ll start over again, of course. What else?”

That figures. “Mrs. Cox, who’s available as a runner?”

“Mark,” she said. Her voice was disapproving; she hadn’t made up her mind about Mark.

“Send him to town to find out about these tourists from Muchos Nombres. They were supposed to have come looking for me.”

“All right,” she said. She went off muttering. They needed the telephones working again. Her daughter was talking about a telegraph line last night. There were plans in one of her books, and of course the wires were still around, the old telephone lines.

After she sent Mark off she made lunch. There was plenty of food just now: scraps from what they were canning, gleanings from the garden patches. It wouldn’t test long, though…

Harry had even been out of the valley. He traced the road on the map. “Deke Wilson’s on my route,” Harry said. “He’s organized about the way you are. About thirty miles southwest.”

“So how did you get back in?” Jellison demanded.

“County road—”

“That’s blocked.”

“Oh, sure. Mr. Christopher was there.”

“So how in hell did you get past him?” Jellison asked. Nothing would surprise him now.

“I waved at him, and he waved at me,” Harry said. “Shouldn’t he have let me by?”

“Of course he should have.” But I didn’t think he had that much sense. “Did you tell him all this?”

“Not yet,” Harry said. “There were some other people trying to talk to him. And he had his rifle, and four other big guys with him. It didn’t seem the proper time for a friendly chat.”

There was more. The flood. Harry’s story confirmed what Jellison already knew, the San Joaquin was a big inland sea, a hundred and more feet deep in places, water lapping to the edges of the hills. Almond groves torn to shreds by hurricanes People dead and dying everywhere. There would be a typhoid epidemic for damned sure if something wasn’t done, but what?

Mark Czescu came in. “Yes, sir, the people from Muchos Nombres came into town yesterday,” he said. “Tried to buy food. Didn’t get much. I guess they went back to their own place.”

“Where they’ll starve,” Harry said.

“Invite them to the town meeting,” Jellison said. “They’ve got land—”

“But they don’t know anything about farming,” Harry said. “I thought I’d mention that. Willing to work, but don’t know what they’re doing.”

Arthur Jellison made another note. Harry’s tales filled in a lot of missing information. “And you say Deke Wilson has things organized,” he said. That was news, too, about an area outside the valley itself. Jellison decided to send Al Hardy down to see Wilson. Best to stay on good terms with neighbors. Hardy, and… well, Mark could take him on the motorcycle.

And there were four million other things to do; and deep down inside, Arthur Jellison was tired in a way that Washington had never tired him. Have to take it easier, he thought.

Cubic miles of water have been vaporized, and the rain clouds encircle the Earth. Cold fronts form along the base of the Himalaya massif, and rainstorms sweep through northeastern India, northern Burma, and China’s Yunan and Szechwan provinces. The great rivers of eastern Asia, the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yang-tze and Yellow rivers, all begin along the Himalaya foothills. Floods pour down across the fertile valleys of Asia, and still the rains fall in the highlands. Dams burst and the waters move on until finally they meet the storm-lashed salt water driven inland by waves and typhoons.

As the rains fall across the Earth, more steam rises from the hot seas near Hammerstrikes; with the water go salt, soil, rock dust, vaporized elements of the Earth’s crust. Volcanoes send more billions of tons of smoke and dust rising into the stratosphere.

As Hamner-Brown Comet retreats into deep space, Earth resembles a brilliant pearl with shimmering highlights. The Earth’s albedo has changed. More of the Sun’s heat and light are reflected back to space, away from the Earth. Hamner-Brown has passed, but the effects remain, some temporary like the tsunamis which still surge through the ocean basins, some on their third journey; hurricanes and typhoons that lash land and sea, the planetwide rainstorms that engulf the Earth.

Some effects are more permanent. In the Arctic the water falls as snow that will not melt for hundreds of years.