Lucifer's Hammer

“Hey, you can’t… what the hell, Betty don’t figure in this!”

“She knew it was there,” Jellison said.

“Well, the kids—”

“Yeah. The kids.”

“Second offense, Senator,” Hardy said. “Gasoline last time.” “My gasoline on my land—”

“You talk a lot,” Jellison said. “Too damned much. Hoarding. Last time we let you off easy. Goddammit, there’s only one way to convince people I mean what I say! George, you got anything to say?”

“No,” Christopher said.

“The road,” Jellison said. “By noon today. I’ll leave it to Hardy to decide what you can take with you. Peter Bonar, you’re for the road.”

“Jesus, you got no right to throw me off my own land!” Bonar shouted. “You leave me alone, we’ll leave you alone! We don’t need anything from you—”

“The hell you say,” George Christopher shouted. “You already took our help! Food, greenhouses, we even gave you gasoline while you were holding out on us. The gasoline we gave you ran the truck that got that stuff for you!”

“I think Brother Varley will look after the kids,” one of the women said. “Mrs. Bonar too, if she can stay.”

“She’ll come with me!” Bonar shouted. “And the kids tool You got no right to take my kids away from me!”

Jellison sighed. Bonar was trying for sympathy, gambling that they wouldn’t send his wife and kids out on the road, and since they couldn’t take the kids away from Bonar… Could he? Jellison wondered. And leave a festering sore inside the Stronghold? The kids would hate everyone here. And besides, family responsibility was important. “As you will,” Jellison said. “Let them go with him, Al.”

“Jesus, have mercy,” Bonar yelled. “Please! For God’s sake—”

Jellison sounded very tired when he said, “See to it, Al. Please. And we’ll discuss who can be settled on that farm.”

“Yes, sir.” The boss hates this, Hardy thought. But what can he do? We can’t jail people. We can’t even feed what we have.

“You rotten bastard!” Peter Bonar shouted. “You fat son of a bitch, I’ll see you in hell!”

“Take him out,” Al Hardy ordered. Two of the armed ranch-hands pushed Bonar out. The farmer was still cursing when he left. Hardy thought he heard blows when they got to the hall. He wasn’t sure, but the curses stopped abruptly. “I’ll see to the sentence, sir,” Hardy said.

“Thank you. Next?”

“Mrs. Darden. Her son arrived. From Los Angeles. Wants to stay.”

Senator Jellison saw the tight line that formed where George Christopher’s mouth had been. The Senator sat straight in his high-backed chair and he looked alert. Inside he felt tired, and defeated, but he couldn’t give up. Not until next fall, he thought. Next fall I can rest. There’ll be a good harvest next fall. There has to be. One more year, it’s all I ask. Please, Lord.

At least this next one is simple. Old lady, no one to look after her, relative arrives. Her son is one of us, and George can’t say different. That’s in the rules.

I wonder if we can feed him through the winter?

The Senator looked at the old lady, and he knew that whatever happened to her son, she would not survive until spring, and Arthur Jellison hated her for what she would eat before she died.

Ninth Week: The Organization Man

One must point out, however, that many who now deplore the oppression, injustice, and intrinsic ugliness of life in a technically advanced and congested society will decide that things were better when they were worse; and they will discover that to do without the functions proper to the great systems — without telephone, electric light, car, letters, telegrams — is all very well for a week or so, but that it is not amusing as a way of life.

Harvey Randall had never worked so hard in his life. The field was filled with rocks, and they had to be moved. Some could be picked up and carried by one, or two, or a dozen men. Others had to be split apart with sledges. Then the pieces were carried away to be built into low stone walls.

The crisscross pattern of low walls in New England and Southern Europe had always seemed charming and handsome. Until now Harvey Randall hadn’t realized just how much human misery each of those walls represented. They weren’t built to be pretty, or to mark boundaries, or even to keep cattle and swine out of the fields. They were there because it was too much work to haul those stones completely out of the fields, and the fields had to be cleared.

Most of the pastureland would be plowed for crops. Any crops, anything they had to plant. Barley, onions, wild grains that grew in ditches along the sides of the roads, anything at all. Seeds were scarce — and worse, there was the decision to be made: plant for later, or eat it now?

“Like a goddam prison,” Mark grumbled.

Harvey swung the sledge. It rang against the steel wedge, and the rock split nicely. That felt good, and Harvey almost forgot the rumbling in his stomach. Heavy work, and not enough to eat; how long could they keep it up? The Senator’s people had worked out diet schedules, so many calories for so many hours of heavy work, and all the books said they had figured correctly, but Harvey’s stomach didn’t think so.

“Making little ones out of big ones,” Mark said. “A hell of a job for an associate producer.” He grabbed an end of the piece they’d split off the rock as Harvey lifted the other end. They worked well together, no need for talk. They carried the rock to the wall. Harvey ran a practiced eye along the wall and pointed. The rock fit perfectly into the place he’d selected. Then they went for another.

They stood idle for a few seconds, and Harvey looked across the field where a dozen others were splitting and carrying rocks to the low wall. It could have been a scene from hundreds of years before. “John Adams,” Harvey said.

“Eh?” Mark made encouraging noises. Stories made the work go easier.

“Our second President of the United States.” Harvey forced the wedge into a tiny crack in the rock. “He went to Harvard. His father sold a field they called ‘The Stony Acres’ to get up the tuition. Adams would rather be a lawyer than clear the stones out.”

“Smart man,” Mark said. He held the wedge in place as Harvey lifted the sledge. “Not much left of Harvard now.”

“No.” Harvard was gone, and Braintree, Massachusetts, was gone, and the United States of America was gone, along with most of England. Would kids learn history now? But they have to, Harvey thought. One day we’ll dig out of this and there’ll be a time when it’s important whether we have a king or a president, and we’ll have to do it right this time so we can get off this goddam planet before another Hammer falls. Someday we’ll be able to afford history. Until then we’ll think of England the way they used to think of Atlantis…

“Hey,” Mark said. “Look at that.”

Harvey turned in time to see Alice Cox jump the big stallion over one of the low walls. She moved with the horse as a part of him, and again the impression of a centaur was very strong. It reminded Harvey of the first time he’d come to this ranch, a lifetime ago, a time when he could stand at the top of the big snailhead rock and at night talk about interstellar empires.

That had been a long time ago in another world. But this one wasn’t so bad. They were clearing the fields, and they controlled their boundaries. No one was raped or murdered here, and if there wasn’t as much to eat as Harvey would have liked, there was enough. Breaking rocks and building walls was hard work, but it was honest work. There weren’t endless conferences on unimportant matters. There weren’t deliberate frustrations, traffic jams, newspapers full of crime stories. This new and simpler world had its compensations.