Lucifer's Hammer

“Shouldn’t you be drawing blood for Darden?” Maureen tried to remember him; he’d come to the Stronghold late, and was let in because his mother lived here. He’d been in Chief Hartman’s group in the battle.

“I gave him a pint already,” Leonilla said. “Rick Delanty. We have no way to store whole blood, except as now — in the donor. When Darden requires more, I will send for you. Now I must go back to the ward. If you truly wish to help, you may continue with the cross matching.”

Maureen spoiled the first test, but when she was careful she found it wasn’t difficult, merely tedious. The work wasn’t made easier by the smells from the sewage works nearby, but there wasn’t much choice about that. They needed the heat from the fermenting boilers; by ru

Once Leonilla came in and removed a patient sample and card. She didn’t explain; it wasn’t needed. Maureen reached for the card and looked at the name. One of the Aramson girls, age sixteen, wounded while throwing a dynamite bomb.

“With penicillin I might have saved her,” Leonilla said. “But there is none, and there will never be any.”

“We can’t make it?” Maureen demanded.

Leonilla shook her head. “Sulfa, perhaps. But not the other antibiotics. That would require more equipment than we will have for years. Precise temperature regulation. High-speed centrifuges. No, we must learn to live without penicillin.” She grimaced. “Which means that a simple cut untreated can be a death sentence. People must be made to understand that We ca

The crossbow was large, and wound with a wheel. Harvey Randall turned it with effort, then laid the long, thin shaft into the weapon. He looked up at Brad Wagoner. “I feel like I ought to have on a black mask.”

Wagoner shuddered. “Get it over,” he said.

Harvey took careful aim. The crossbow was set on a large tripod, and the sights were good. He stood on the ridge above Battle Valley. That name would stick, he thought. He aimed the crossbow at a still figure down below. The figure moved slightly. Harvey checked the sights again, then stood aside. “Okay,” he said. He gently pulled the lanyard.

The steel springs of the bow gave a humming sound, and the traveler block clattered. The shaft flew out, over a yard long, a thin steel rod with metal feathering at the end; it went in a flat trajectory and imbedded itself in the figure below. The hands jerked convulsively, then were still. They hadn’t seen the face. At least this one hadn’t screamed.

“There’s another. About forty yards to the left,” Wagoner said. “I’ll take that one.”

“Thanks.” Harvey turned away. It was too damned personal. Rifles would be better. Or machine guns. A machine gun was very impersonal. If you shot someone with a machine gun, you could persuade yourself that the gun had done it. But the crossbow had to be wound with your own musclepower. Personal.

There was nothing else to do. The valley was death to enter. In the cold night the mustard had condensed, and now small streamers of the yellow gas were sometimes visible. No one could enter that valley. They could leave the enemy — thank God all the Stronghold wounded had been taken out before the gas attack, although Harvey knew that Al Hardy would have ordered the attack even if they hadn’t been — they could leave the enemy wounded, or they could kill them. And they couldn’t spare rifle or machine-gun ammunition for the purpose. The crossbow bolts were recoverable. After the first good rain, or after a few days of warmth, the gas would be dispersed.

It made good fertilizer. So would the dead. Battle Valley would be good cropland next spring. Now it was a slaughterhouse.

We won. Victory. Harvey tried to recall the elation he’d felt the night before, the sense of life he’d had when he woke in the morning, and he knew he’d be able to. This was horrible work, but it was needed. They couldn’t leave the Brotherhood’s wounded to suffer. They’d die soon enough anyway; better to kill them cleanly.

And it was the last. No more wars. Now they could build a civilization. The Brotherhood had done the Stronghold’s work: They had cleared out much of the area near the Stronghold. It wouldn’t take a big expedition to go looking for salvage. Harvey kept his thoughts on that: on what they could find, on the wonders out there that they could search for and bring home.

When he heard the bow, Harvey turned back. His turn. Let Brad be alone for a moment.

The blood typing was done, and she’d visited the wounded. That had been tough, but not as bad as she’d thought. She knew why, but she didn’t think about it.

It wasn’t too bad in the hospital, because the worst cases had already died. Maureen wondered if they’d been… helped. Leonilla and Doc Valdemar and his psychiatrist wife, Ruth, knew their limits, knew that many who had inhaled mustard or taken gut shots were finished because they didn’t have the drugs and equipment it would take to save them, and the mustard cases would end up blind anyway, most of them. Had the doctors been more than choosers of the slain? Maureen didn’t want to ask.

She left the hospital.

In City Hall they were preparing for a party. A victory celebration. And we damned well deserve it, Maureen thought. We can mourn the dead, but we have to go on living, and these people have worked and bled and died for this moment: for the celebration that said the fighting was over, that the Hammer had done its worst and now it was time to rebuild.

Joa

It didn’t give off much light, but it would do. At the end of the big central book-lined room some of the children were setting up punch bowls. Mulberry wine, really quite good (well, not too bad); a case of Cokes someone had saved. And there would be food, mostly stew, and you didn’t want to know what was in it. Rats and squirrels weren’t really very different kinds of animals, nor did cat taste much different from rabbit. There wouldn’t be many vegetables in the stew. Potatoes were scarce and terribly valuable. There were oats, though. Two of Gordie Vance’s scouts had come down with oats, carefully separated: the scrawny ones for eating, and the best separated out to be kept as seed. The Sierra was full of wild oats.

And Scotland had built a national cuisine on oats. Tonight they’d find out what haggis tasted like…

She went through the main hall, where women and children were putting up decorations, bright-colored drapes now used as wall hangings, whatever might add a festive air. The Mayor’s office was through a door at the far end.

Her father, Al Hardy, Mayor Seitz and George Christopher were in there with Eileen Hamner. Their conversation stopped abruptly as she entered. Maureen greeted George and got an answer, but he seemed slightly nervous, somehow made to feel guilty in her presence. Or was she imagining it? She wasn’t imagining the silence in the room.

“Go on with what you were doing,” she said.

“We were just talking about… things,” Al Hardy said. “I don’t know if you’d be interested…”

Maureen laughed. “Don’t worry about it. Go on.” Because if you’re going to treat me like a goddam princess, she thought, I can sure as hell learn what’s going on.

“Yes. Well, it’s a bit of an ugly subject,” Al Hardy said.

“So?” She took a seat next to her father. He didn’t look good. He didn’t look good at all, and Maureen knew he wouldn’t live through the winter. The doctors at Bethesda had told her he would have to take things a lot easier — and there was no way he could do that. She put her hand on his arm and smiled, and he returned it. “Tell Al I’ll be all right,” she said.