Lucifer's Hammer

They heard the plop! from in front of them, then a faint whistle. Something exploded twenty yards to their left. Another plop!

“The car! Now, dammit!” Harvey shouted.

“Yes, I think it’s time.” Marie followed. The second mortar round went off somewhere behind them. They leaped into the TravelAII and drove off laughing and shouting like children.

“Son of a bitch, it worked!” Harvey shouted. He looked over at Marie and her eyes shone with triumph to match his own. We make a great team, he thought.

“’Run away!’” cried Harvey.

Marie looked at him strangely.

“Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Harvey said. “Didn’t you see it?”

“No.”

They drove on, still laughing with excitement. Inside, Harvey knew it wasn’t really much of a victory, but it was better than the rest of the day. There was no question of stopping now, not until they reached the next large barrier, which was a fork of the Tule River. That would be a formidable barrier once its bridge was blown; surely it would stop the New Brotherhood. It had to; beyond was the ridgeline that marked the entrance to the Stronghold itself. The Tule was their most important defense line.

They came around a curve and started down into the Tule Valley — and there was no bridge. It had already been blown.

Harvey drove up to the wrecked bridge and stared at the swollen river. A hundred feet wide, and deep, and swiftly flowing. “Hey!” he shouted.

Across the river, one of Hartman’s constables rose from hiding behind a log bunker. “They said you’d had it,” he called.

“What do I do now?” Harvey shouted.

“Whatever it is, do it quick,” Marie said. “They won’t be far behind us—”

“Go upstream,” the constable yelled. “We’ve got troops up there. Make sure you radio ahead that you’re coming.”

“All right.” Harvey turned the TravelAII and started up the county road toward the Tule Indian Reservation. “Get on that CB,” he told Marie. “Tell ’em the reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated.”

A mile and a half upstream the road crossed the Tule. A dozen men were working with shovels at the bridge foundations. Harvey drove up warily, but they waved him on. He drove across and stopped.

They looked like ranchers, but they were darker and did not show the effects of months without sunlight. Harvey wondered if lack of vitamin D would affect them; pale faces were evolved for life in a cold, cloudy environment.

One of the work crew left off digging and came over to the TravelAII. “Randall?”

“Yes. Look, the New Brotherhood must be right behind us—”

“We know where they are,” the man said. “Alice can see them, and we’ve got a radio. You’re supposed to go on up there onto Turtle Mountain and help her observe. Find a place where you can see the valley and still get her on the CB.”

“All right. Thanks. And we’re glad to have you on our side.”

The Indian gri

Their earlier mood of elation had vanished now. They drove on along an increasingly difficult road: mud, fallen rocks, deep ruts. Harvey put the TravelAII into four-wheel drive. As they climbed higher the entire valley came into view. To the southwest was the south fork of the Tule, and the road junction and bridge they’d just left. The fork ran northwest to the remains of Lake Success, where it joined the Tule itself.

A ridge separated the forks of the Tule; the ridge that guarded the Stronghold. From their vantage point Harvey and Marie could see the defense line of Police Chief Hartman’s troops — trenches and foxholes and log bunkers. There were less elaborate defenses thrown forward into the south fork valley; they didn’t look adequate to hold. Only the high ridgelines seemed well defended. A classic crust defense, Harvey thought; the enemy need only punch through, and there was nothing to stop them from overru

At dusk it was clear what the enemy’s plan was. He brought up his trucks, dug in his troops and lit large campfires in plain sight of the Stronghold. They looked relaxed, confident, and Harvey knew they’d be working on bridges during the night. Finally dark came, and the hills were silent.

“Well, we can’t see anything more,” Harvey said. “Now we really don’t have anything to do.”

Marie moved restlessly beside him. In the dark she was only a presence, her very shape indeterminate; but Harvey grew itchingly aware that Marie Vance was only inches away, and that they were cut off from the universe until sunrise. His memory played him a dirty trick. It showed him Marie Vance some weeks before Hammerfall, as she met Harvey and Loretta at her front door. She wore emeralds and a vividly green evening gown cut nearly to the navel; her hair was set in fantastic convolutions; she smiled graciously and hugged him and welcomed them in. His mind superimposed that image on the dark blur next to him, and the silence grew really uncomfortable.

“I can think of something,” she said softly.

Harvey found his voice. “If it isn’t sex, you’d better tell me now.”

She said nothing. He slid toward her and pulled her against him. Things crunched and crackled; not one of the dozen pockets in that jacket was empty. She chuckled and took it off while he doffed his own jacket with its own lumpy pockets.

Then the terror of the day and the danger of tomorrow, the slow, agonizing death of a world and the coming end of the Stronghold, could be forgotten in the frantic importance of each other. The passenger foot-well grew cluttered with clothing until Harvey broke off and dumped the whole armful behind the steering wheel. The passenger seat wasn’t shaped for this, but they coupled with care and ingenuity, and maintained the position afterward: he half reclining in the passenger seat, she kneeling before him, her face above his. Their breath fell each on the other’s cheek.

“I’m glad you thought of something,” he said presently. (He couldn’t say he loved her.)

“Ever screwed in a car before?”

He thought back. “Sure. I was more limber then.”

“I never did.”

“Well, generally you use the back seat, but…”

“The back seat’s covered with broken glass,” Marie finished, and they felt each other’s tension as they remembered: a .50-caliber bullet, glass showering everywhere, Marie brushing the tiny splinters off him while he drove. But there was a way to forget.

And again, later, there was a way to forget, the same way repeated, with the same frantic urgency. They were not drawn to each other, he thought; they were thrust against each other in their fear of what was outside them. They made love with their ears cocked for gunfire; but they made love. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.

Harvey woke before dawn. He was covered with the blanket from the back seat, but he couldn’t remember getting it. He lay awake, not moving, his thoughts confused.

“Hi,” Marie said softly.

“Hi yourself. I thought you’d be asleep.”

“Not for a while. You get some rest.”

Harvey tried. But there were twinges from muscles he’d overused last night, and twinges from his conscience, which apparently hadn’t been informed that he was a widower whose new girl had dropped him for an astronaut. To hell with that. But he still wasn’t sleeping. “Oh, well,” he said, and sat up. “We seem to have survived the night.”

“I didn’t work you that hard.”

There might have been something false in his own laugh, or… she’d known him a long time. She turned toward him in the dark. “You’re not worried about Gordie, are you? That’s all over. He’s got his new girl, and it doesn’t need a judge to say a marriage is over. We didn’t really need one before.”

Harvey hadn’t been thinking of Gordie. “What will you do now?” he asked. “When this is over? If?”

She laughed. “I won’t stay a cook. But thank you for bringing me to this valley. It’s been much better than anything I could have found for myself.” She was quiet for a moment, and they heard a sound outside: an owl, and the squeal of the rabbit it had caught. “It’s a man’s world now,” Marie said. “So I guess I’ll just have to marry an important one. I’ve always been a status-conscious bitch, and I don’t see any reason to change now. In fact, there’s more reason than ever. Muscle counts. I’ll find me a leader and marry him.”