Lucifer's Hammer

Gordie Vance was glad to see him. Harvey was even happier to see Gordie. Gordie had built a large shelter, logs and thatched roof that shed rain, and he had dry wood, and there were fish and birds hanging under the shelter. A pot of stew bubbled on the fire.

“Harv! I knew you’d get here. Been waiting,” Gordie said.

Harvey looked puzzled. “How did you expect me to find you?”

“Hell, this is the jump-off place, isn’t it? Where we always parked.”

There wasn’t enough light to be sure, but the place didn’t look any different from any other clearing near the road, and Harvey knew he’d never have recognized it. “I’d have gone right past—”

“You’d have come back when you got to the lodge,” Gordie said. “What’s left of the lodge.”

There were a dozen under the shelter. They were mostly in pairs, sleeping bags zipped together.

Boys and girls. One of each, in pairs. Boy Scouts and…

“Girl Scouts?” Harvey asked.

Gordie nodded. “I’ll tell you about it later. We had some trouble up here last week. It’s okay now. You… you met Janie, didn’t you?”

“The girl with Andy?” Harvey looked around. Andy wasn’t there any longer. He’d led Harvey and Mark to the shelter, and he’d left without saying a word.

“Sure. Janie Somers. She and Andy…” Gordie shrugged.

“I see,” Harvey said, but he didn’t see. Andy was a boy, a child…

At fourteen a Roman boy was given a sword and shield and enrolled in a legion, and could legally become head of a household, a property owner. But that was Rome and this is…

This is the world after Hammerfall. And Andy has a family and he’s an adult.

The other children — weren’t children. They were watching Harvey very closely. Not the way children watch an adult. Suspicion, maybe. But neither anger nor respect nor . … They were children who’d grown up a lot.

And there was a girl in Gordie’s sleeping bag. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.

It was dry and warm. Harvey’s clothes hung near the fire, and he sat in Gordie’s sleeping bag, the bag’s luxurious dryness wrapped around him, his feet and legs dry for the first time in days.

The tea was bark, not real tea, but it tasted good, and so had the bowl of stew Gordie served earlier. Mark slept, a smile on his face, very near to the campfire. The others were asleep too, or acted as if they were. Andy and Janie, clinging to each other in their sleeping bag, nestled together; others, Gordie’s boy Bert with another girl. And Stacey, the girl Gordie slept with, was curled against Gordie’s knees, dozing a little.

Old home week in the deep woods.

“Yeah, it got rough at first,” Gordie was saying. “I took the crew back to Soda Springs after we saw the Hammer fall. We rode out the rain and the hurricanes there. Fourth day we started back this way. Hiked four days. When we got here, there were some bikers. They’d found the girls camping up here. Took over.”

“Took over. You mean—”

“Christ, Harvey, you know what I mean. They’d raped one of the kids to death, and the lady who’d brought the kids up got herself killed trying to fight them.”

“Jesus,” Harvey said. “Gordie, you didn’t have any guns—”

“Had a twenty-two pistol,” Gordie said. “Just in case. But it didn’t figure in what happened.”

This was a new Gordie. Harvey wasn’t sure how, because he made the same jokes, and in some ways he was a lot like the Gordie Vance Harvey had known, but he wasn’t, not really. He wasn’t a man you could imagine as a banker, to begin with. He seemed to belong up here, with a two-week beard, and no gut but not hungry. Comfortable and dry and very much in charge and at ease…

“They were stupid,” Gordie was saying. “Didn’t want to be wet. They’d rigged some tents up, store-bought tents, along with their camper. We’ve still got their gear. Used some of it putting this shelter together.” He waved to indicate the logs-and-boulder structure, a shed roof with walls and fire pit. “They were all inside, even the ones they thought were on guard. So we knocked them in the head.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Gordie said. “Then we cut their throats. Andy killed two.”

Gordie let that sink in for awhile. Harvey sat, motionless, then deliberately looked across the fire to where his son lay sleeping with his… his woman. A woman he’d won by conquest, rescued…

“And after that the girls just hopped into bed with you?” Harvey demanded.

“Ask them. You see how it is,” Gordie said. “We didn’t rape anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

“Only technically,” Harvey said. He wished he hadn’t said it, but the words were out.

Gordie wasn’t angry. He laughed. “Statutory rape. Who’s to enforce that? Who cares, Harvey?”

“I don’t know. The Senator might. Gordie, Marie came with me. She’s at the Senator’s ranch—”

“Marie? I figured she’d be dead,” Gordie said. “She really came looking for Bert, of course. She wouldn’t have cared about me.”

Harvey didn’t say anything. It was true enough.

“She doesn’t really care about Bert either,” Gordie was saying.

“Bullshit. She’s like a tigress. It was all we could do to keep her from coming up with Mark and me.”

“Yeah? Maybe. When she knows he’s safe, she won’t care.” Gordie stared into the fire. “So what happens now?”

“We take you back with us—”

“So the Senator can look at me fu

“It won’t be that way.”

“Yeah? Get some sleep, Harv. I’ll go change the guard. My turn on watch.”

“I’ll take—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Don’t make me say it, Harvey. Just get some sleep.” Harvey nodded and stretched out in the sleeping bag. Don’t make him say it. Don’t make him say I’m not one of them, they wouldn’t trust me to be on guard for them…

Breakfast was fried fish and several vegetables that Harvey didn’t recognize. It was good. Harvey was just finishin’ when Gordie came over and sat next to him.

“We’ve talked it over, Harv. We’re not going back with you.”

“None of you?” Harvey demanded.

“That’s right. We’re staying together.”

“Gordie, you’re crazy. It’s going to get cold up here. It’ll be snowing in a couple of weeks—”

“We’ll make out,” Gordie said.

“Andy!” Harvey called.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re coming with me.”

“No, sir.” Andy wasn’t arguing. He wasn’t demanding. He was just saying what would happen. He got up and walked out into the rain. Janie followed closely. She had still not spoken a word to Harvey Randall since she had challenged him on the trail.

“You could stay with us,” Gordie said.

“I’d like that. I’d like it better if Andy asked me,” Harvey said.

“What do you expect?” Gordie asked. “Look, you made your choice. You stayed in the city. You had a job, and you stayed for it and sent Andy up into the hills—”

“Where he’d be safer”

“And alone.”

“He wasn’t alone,” Harvey insisted. “He—”

“Don’t tell me,” Gordie said. “Argue with Andy. Look, we put it to a vote this morning. Nobody objected. You can stay with us.”

“That’s silly. What’s up here?”

“What’s down there?”

“Safety.”

Gordie shrugged. “What’s that worth? Look, man.” Gordie wasn’t quite pleading, because he had nothing to plead. He was straining to make Harvey understand, knowing that Harvey never would. And Gordie didn’t really care, except that he owed this much to his friend. “Look, Harv. If he goes with you, he’s a kid again. Up here he’s second in command—”

“Of what?”

“Of whatever we are. He’s a man up here, Harv. He wouldn’t be, down there. I saw the way you looked at him and Janie. They’re still children to you. Down there you’d make them into children again. You’d make them feel like kids, useless. Well, up here Andy knows he’s not useless. We all depend on him. Up here he’s doing something important, he’s not just a cog in a survival machine.”