Lucifer's Hammer

4

AFTER DOOMSDAY

Behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

First Week: The Princess

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Maureen Jellison stood at the top of the ridge. Warm rain poured over her. Lightning flared in the mountains above. She stepped closer to the deep cleft in the granite knob. The surface was slippery. She smiled slightly, thinking of how her father had told her not to come up here alone even before…

It was difficult to finish that thought. She could not put a name to what had happened. The End of the World sounded trite, and for a little while it wasn’t even true. Not yet. The world hadn’t ended here at the ranch they now called the Stronghold. She couldn’t see into the valley below because of the rain, but she knew what was there. A bustle of activity; inventory of everything — gasoline, cartridges, needles and pins, plastic bags, cooking oil, aspirin, firearms, baby bottles, pots and pans, cement — anything that might help keep them alive through the winter. Al Hardy was going about it systematically, using Maureen and Eileen Hamner and Marie Vance as agents to call on every house in the valley.

“Snoopers. That’s what we are,” Maureen shouted to the wind and the rain. Her voice fell. “And it’s all so damned useless.”

The snooping didn’t bother her. If anything was necessary, if anything could save them, it would be Al Hardy’s careful work. It wasn’t the snooping, or those who tried to hide their possessions. They were fools, but that was a folly that did not disturb her. It was the others; the ones who welcomed her. They believed. They were utterly certain that Senator Jellison would keep them alive, and they were pathetically happy to see his daughter. They didn’t care that she had come to pry and snoop and perhaps take their possessions. They were only too glad to offer everything they had, freely, in exchange for a protection that did not exist.

Some farmers and ranchers had pride and independence. They understood the need for organization, but they weren’t servile about it. But the others — the pathetic refugees who had somehow got past the roadblocks; the city people who owned houses in the valley, who had fled here to avoid Hammerfall, who had no idea what to do next; even rural people whose life-styles depended on feed trucks and refrigerated railroad cars and California weather — for them the Jellisons were “the government” which would care for them, as it always had.

Maureen couldn’t bear the responsibility. She told them lies. She told them they would live, and she knew better. There would be no crops this year, here or anywhere. How long could the loot from flooded stores keep them alive? How many more refugees were there in the San Joaquin basin, and what right did she have to live when the world was dying?

Lightning flared nearby. She did not move. She stood on the bare granite, near the edge. I wanted goals. Now I have them. And it’s too much. Her life didn’t revolve around Washington parties and who was speaking to whom. You couldn’t say that surviving the end of the world was trivial. But it is. If there’s not more to life than just existing, how is it different? It was more comfortable in Washington. It was easier to hide the suffering. That’s the only difference.

She heard footsteps behind her. Someone was coming along the ridgetop. She had no weapons, and she was afraid. She could laugh at that. She stood at the edge of a cliff, on a bare granite knob as lightning flashed, and she was afraid; but it was the first time she had felt fear of an approaching stranger in this valley, and that made it more terrifying. The Hammer had destroyed everything. It had taken her place of refuge. She looked toward the edge and slightly shifted her weight. It would be so easy.

The man came closer. He wore a poncho and a widebrimmed hat, and carried a rifle under the poncho. “Maureen?” he called.

Relief washed over her in waves. There was an edge of hysterical laughter in her voice as she said, “Harvey? What are you doing up here?”

Harvey Randall came to the edge of the rock. He stood uncertainly. She remembered that he was afraid of heights, and she stepped carefully toward him, away from the cleft.

“I’m supposed to be up here,” he said. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.” She summoned up a reserve of strength she hadn’t known she had. “Getting wet, I suppose.” Now that she’d said it she realized it was true. Despite the raincoat, she was soaked. Her low boots were filled with water. The rain was just cool enough to feel clammy on her back where it had come down inside her jacket. “Why are you supposed to be here?”

“Guard duty. I have a shelter over there. Come on, let’s get in out of the wet.”

“All right.” She followed him along the ridge. He didn’t turn back to look at her, and she followed passively.

Fifty yards away were boulders leaning against each other. A crude framework of wood and polyethylene garbage bags had been built under their partial shelter. There was no source of light inside except the afternoon gloom. The furniture was an air mattress and sleeping bag on the floor and a wooden box to sit on. A post had been driven into the ground and pegs stuck into it; from them hung a bugle, a plastic bag of paperback books, binoculars, a canteen and lunch.

“Welcome to the palace,” Harvey said. “Here, get that jacket off and let yourself dry out a bit.” He spoke calmly and naturally, as if there were nothing strange about finding her alone on a bare rock knob in a lightning storm.

The shelter was large; there was room to stand. Harvey shrugged himself out of the rainhat and poncho, then helped her with the jacket. He hung the wet clothes on pegs near the open entrance.

“What are you guarding?” Maureen asked.

“The back way in.” He shrugged. “In this rain it’s not likely that anyone will come or that I’d see them if they did, but we have to get the shelter built.”

“Do you live here?”

“No. We take turns. Me, Tim Hamner, Brad Wagoner and Mark. Sometimes Joa

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen you since we got here,” Harvey said. “I came looking a couple of times, but I got the impression you wouldn’t ever be at home for me. And I wasn’t all that welcome around the big house. Thanks for voting for me, anyway.”

“Voting?”

“The Senator said you’d asked to have me let in.”

“You’re welcome.” That had been easy enough to decide. I don’t sleep with every man I meet. Even if you got terminal guilt and went off to another room, it was nice, and I don’t really regret it. There’s an honest thought. If I thought enough of you to sleep with you, I sure as hell had to save your life, didn’t I?

“Have a seat.” He waved toward the wooden box. “Eventually there’ll be furniture. Nothing else to do up here but work on the place.”

“I don’t see what good you’re doing here,” Maureen said.

“Nor I. But try to explain that to Hardy. The maps show this as a good place for a guard post. When the visibility is more than fifty yards it will be, too, but right now it’s a waste of manpower.”

“We’ve got plenty of manpower,” Maureen said. She sat gingerly on the box and leaned back against the hard boulder. The plastic liner between her back and the boulder was damp from water condensing on its inside surface. “You’re going to have to insulate this,” she said. She ran a finger along the wet plastic.