Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  If he thought about Jeanine’s husband, it was with friendly amusement. He was no threat to the man. He wanted nothing permanent. She could be making out with some guy who’d want her money on a permanent basis…

  He squinted against the brilliance. It flared and he closed his eyes. That was a reflex; wave reflections were a common thing out here. The flare died against his closed eyelids, and he looked out to sea. Wave coming?

  He saw a fiery cloud lift beyond the horizon. He studied it, squinting, making himself believe…

  “Big wave coming,” he called, and rose to his knees.

  Corey called, “Where?”

  “You’ll see it,” Gil called confidently. He turned his board and paddled out to sea, bending almost until his cheek touched the board, using long, deep sweeps of his long arms. He was scared shitless, but nobody would ever know it.

  “Wait for me!” Jeanine called.

  Gil continued paddling. Others followed, but only the strongest could keep up. Corey pulled abreast of him.

  “I saw the fireball!” he shouted. He panted with effort. “It’s Lucifer’s Hammer! Tidal wave!”

  Gil said nothing. Talk was discouraged out here, but the others jabbered among themselves, and Gil paddled even faster, leaving them. A man ought to be alone during a thing like this. He was beginning to grasp the fact of death.

  Rain came, and he paddled on. He glanced back to see the houses and bluff receding, going uphill, leaving an enormous stretch of new beach, gleaming wet. Lightning flared along the hills above Malibu.

  The hills had changed. The orderly buildings of Santa Monica had tumbled into heaps.

  The horizon went up.

  Death. Inevitable. If death was inevitable, what was left? Style, only style. Gil went on paddling, riding the receding waters until motion was gone. He was a long way out now. He turned his board, and waited.

  Others caught up and turned, spread across hundreds of yards in the rainy waters. If they spoke, Gil couldn’t hear them. There was a terrifying rumble behind him. Gil waited a moment longer, then paddled like mad, sure deep strokes, doing it well and truly.

  He was sliding downhill, down the big green wall, and the water was lifting hard beneath him, so that he rested on knees and elbows with the blood pouring into his face, bugging his eyes, starting a nosebleed. The pressure was enormous, unhearable, then it eased. With the speed he’d gained he turned the board, scooting down and sideways along the nearly vertical wall, balancing on knees…

  He stood up. He needed more angle, more. If he could reach the peak of the wave he’d be out of it, he could actually live through this! Ride it out, ride it out, and do it well…

  Other boards had turned too. He saw them ahead of him above and below on the green wall. Corey had turned the wrong way. He shot beneath Gil’s feet, moving faster than hell and looking terrified.

  They swept toward the bluff. They were higher than the bluff. The beach house and the Santa Monica pier with its carousel and all the yachts anchored nearby slid beneath the waters. Then they were looking down on streets and cars. Gil had a momentary glimpse of a bearded man kneeling with others; then the waters swept on past. The base of the wall was churning chaos, white foam and swirling debris and thrashing bodies and tumbling cars.

  Below him now was Santa Monica Boulevard. The wave swept over the Mall, adding the wreckage of shops and shoppers and potted trees and bicycles to the crashing foam below. As the wave engulfed each low building he braced himself for the shock, squatting low. The board slammed against his feet and he nearly lost it; he saw Tommy Schumacher engulfed, gone, his board bounding high and whirling crazily. Only two boards left now.

  The wave’s frothing peak was far, far above him; the churning base was much too close. His legs shrieked in the agony of exhaustion. One board left ahead of him, ahead and below. Who? It didn’t matter; he saw it dip into chaos, gone. Gil risked a quick look back: nobody there. He was alone on the ultimate wave.

  Oh, God, if he lived to tell this tale, what a movie it would make! Bigger than The Endless Summer, bigger than The Towering Inferno: a stirring movie with ten million in special effects! If only his legs would hold! He already had a world record, he must be at least a mile inland, no one had ever ridden a wave for a mile! But the frothing, purling peak was miles overhead and the Barrington Apartments, thirty stories tall, was coming at him like a flyswatter.

  What was once a comet is a pitiful remnant, a double handful of flying hills and boulders of dirty ice. Earth’s gravitational field has spread them across the sky. They may still reach the halo, but they can never rejoin.

  Craters glow across the face of the Earth. The sea strikes glow as brightly as the land strikes; but the sea strikes are growing smaller. Walls of water hover around them, edging inward.

  The water hovers two miles high around the Pacific strike. Its edges boil frantically. The pressure of expanding live steam holds back the walls of water.

  And the hot vapor goes up in a column clear as glass, carrying salt from vaporized seawater, and silt from the sea bottom, and recondensed rock from the strike itself. At the limits of Earth’s atmosphere it begins to spread in an expanding whirlpool.

  Megatons of live steam begin to cool. Water condenses first around dust and larger particles. What falls out of the pattern are the heavier globules of mud. Some join as they fall. They are still hot. In the drier air below, some water evaporates.

  Hammerfall: Two

  O! Sinner man, where you going to run to?

  O, sinner man, where you going to run to?

  O, sinner man, where you going to run to?

  All on that day.

  The TV store was closed. It wouldn’t open for an hour. Tim Hamner searched frantically — a bar, a barbershop, anyplace that might have TV — but he saw nothing.

  He thought fleetingly of taxis, but that was silly. Los Angeles taxis didn’t cruise. They’d come if you called them, but it might be forever. No. He wasn’t going to get to JPL — and Hamner-Brown’s nucleus must be passing right now! The astronauts would see it all, and send their films down to Earth, and Tim Hamner wouldn’t see any of it.

  The police had removed some of the Wardens, but that had no effect on the traffic jam. Too many abandoned cars. And now what? Tim thought. Maybe I can…

  It was as if a flashbulb had gone off behind him: blink and gone. Tim blinked. What exactly had he seen? There was nothing to the south but the green-brown hills of Griffith Park, with two horseback riders trotting along the trail.

  Tim frowned, then thoughtfully walked back toward his car. There was a telephone in it, and he might as well summon a taxi.

  Two white-robed Wardens, one with red trim on a tailormade robe, came toward him. Tim avoided them. They stopped another pedestrian. “Pray, ye people! It is even now the hour, but it is not yet too late …”

  The horns and shouts of anger had reached a crescendo when he got to his car—

  The earth moved. A sudden, sharp motion, then something more gentle. Buildings shook. A plate-glass window crashed somewhere nearby. There were more sounds of falling glass. Tim could hear them because the car horns were suddenly quiet. It was as if everyone were frozen in place. A few people came out of the supermarket. Others stood in doorways, ready to get outside if it continued.

  Then nothing. The horns began. People were yelling and screaming. Tim unlocked the car and reached inside for the radiophone—

  The earth moved again. There were more sounds of falling glass, and someone screamed. Then, once again, silence. A flight of crows came winging out of the wooded patch at the corner of the Disney lot. They screamed at the people below, but no one paid any attention. The seconds stretched on, and the horns were once again beginning to sound when Tim was thrown violently to the asphalt parking lot.

  This time it didn’t stop. The ground shook and rolled and shook again, and whenever Tim tried to get up he was thrown down again, and it seemed that it would never stop.

&n
bsp; The chair was on its back under a pile of catalogs, and Eileen was in it. Her head hurt. Her skirt was around her hips.

  She rolled out of the chair very slowly and carefully, because there was shattered glass all the hell over the place, and pulled her skirt down. Her nylons were in ruins. There was a long, thin smear of blood along her left calf, and she watched afraid to touch the spot, until she was certain there was no more blood coming out of her leg.

  The front office was a chaos of catalogs, broken glass coffee table, tumbled shelving and the remains of the big plate-glass window. She shook her head dizzily. Silly thoughts boiled in her head. How could one window have had so much glass? Then, as her head cleared, she realized that each of those heavy shelves and their books had missed her head as it fell. She sagged against the receptionist’s desk, dizzy.

  She saw Joe Corrigan.

  The plate-glass window had fallen inward, and Corrigan had been sitting next to it. Pieces of glass lay all about him. Eileen staggered to him and knelt, cutting her knee on a glass sliver. A-dagger-size glass lance had gouged his cheek and bitten deep into his throat. Blood pooled beneath the wound but there was no more flowing out. His eyes and mouth were wide open.

  Eileen pulled the glass splinter free. She covered the wound with her palm, surprised that it wasn’t bleeding more. What do you do about a throat wound? There were police outside, one of them would know. She took a deep breath, made ready to scream. Then she listened.

  There were plenty of people screaming. Others were shouting. The noises from outside were chaotic. People, and rumbling sounds, as if buildings were still falling. Automobile horns, at least two, jammed on, not quite steady, wavering in mechanical agony. Nobody was going to hear Eileen call for help.

  She looked down at Corrigan. She couldn’t feel a pulse. She probed at the other side of his neck. No pulse there. She found a tuft of fuzz from the rug and put it on his nostrils. It didn’t even quiver. But that’s crazy, she thought. The neck wound couldn’t have killed him, not yet! He was dead, though. Heart attack?

  She got up slowly. Salt tears rolled down her cheek. They had the taste of dust. Automatically she brushed at her hair and her skirt before going outside, and she felt an impulse to laugh. She choked it down. If she started that, she wouldn’t stop.

  There were more sounds from out there. Ugly sounds, but she had to get outside. There were police outside, and one was Eric Larsen. She started to call to him, then she saw what was happening and she stood quietly in the ruined doorway.

  Patrolman Eric Larsen was from Kansas. To him the earthquake was completely disorienting, completely terrifying. His urge was to run in circles, flapping his arms and squawking. He couldn’t even get to his feet. He tried, and was thrown down each time, and presently decided to stay there. He put his head in his arms and closed his eyes. He tried to think of the TV script he could write when this was over, but he couldn’t concentrate.

  There was noise. The Earth groaned like an angry bull. That’s a poetic image, where did I hear it? But there was more, cars crashing, buildings crashing, concrete falling, and everywhere people screaming, some in fear, some in rage, some just screaming. Eventually the ground stopped moving. Eric Larsen opened his eyes.

  His world had come apart. Buildings were broken or tilted, cars wrecked, the street itself buckled and crumpled. The parking lot was a jigsaw of asphalt at crazy angles. The supermarket across the street had fallen in on itself, walls collapsing, roof tumbled. People dragged themselves out of it. Still Eric waited, willing to take his lead from the natives. Tornadoes in Kansas, earthquakes in California: The natives would know what to do.

  But they didn’t. They stood, those few remaining, blinking in the bright, cloudless summer day, or they lay on the ground in bloody heaps, or they screamed and ran in circles.

  Eric looked for his partner. Regulation blue trousers and black shoes protruded from under a load of plumbing supplies fallen from a truck. A crate labeled “Silent Plush” stood where the head should have been. The crate was very flat on the ground. Eric shuddered and got to his feet. He couldn’t go near that crate. Not just yet. He started toward the supermarket, wondering when the ambulances would come, looking for a senior officer to tell him what to do.

  Three burly men in flannel shirts stood near a station wagon. One walked completely around it, inspecting for damage. The wagon was heavily loaded. A porch with a railing of ornamental iron scrollwork had dropped through the back end. The men cursed loudly. One dug into the back of the wagon. He took out shotguns and handed them to his friends. “We won’t get out of here because of those motherfuckers.” The man’s voice was quiet and strangely calm. Eric could barely hear him.

  The others nodded and began thrusting shells into their guns. They didn’t look back at Eric Larsen. When the guns were loaded, the three raised them to their shoulders and aimed at a dozen Wardens. The white-robed preachers screamed and pulled at their chains. Then the shotguns went off in volley.

  Eric put his hand to his pistol, then drew it away quickly. Hell! He walked toward the men, his knees unsteady. They were reloading.

  “Don’t do that,” Eric said.

  The men jumped at the voice. They turned to see police blue. They frowned, their eyes wide, their expressions uncertain. Eric stared back. He had already noticed the “SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL POLICE” bumper sticker on the station wagon.

  The oldest of the three men snorted. “It’s over! That was the end of civilization you just saw, don’t you understand?”

  And suddenly Eric did understand. There weren’t going to be any ambulances to take the injured to hospitals. Startled, Eric looked back down Alameda, toward the place where St. Joseph’s was. He saw nothing but buckled streets and collapsed houses. Had St. Joseph’s been visible from here? Eric couldn’t remember.

  The spokesman for the men was still shouting. “Those motherfuckers kept us from getting up into the hills! What use are they?” He looked down at his empty shotgun. It lay open in his hand. His other hand held two shells, and kept straying toward the breech of the gun, not quite inserting them.

  “I don’t know,” Eric said. “Are you going to be the first man to start shooting policemen?” He let his eyes go to the bumper sticker. The burly man’s followed, then looked down at the street. “Are you?” Eric repeated.

  “No.”

  “Good. Now give me the shotgun.”

  “I need it—”

  “So do I,” Eric said. “Your friends have others.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Where would I take you? I need your shotgun. That’s all.”

  The man nodded. “Okay.”

  “The shells, too,” Eric said. His voice took on a note of urgency.

  “All right.”

  “Now get out of here,” Eric said. He held the shotgun without loading it. The Wardens, the few that survived, watched in silent horror. “Thank you,” Eric said. He turned away, not caring where the burly men went.

  I’ve just watched Murder One and done nothing about it, he told himself. He walked briskly away from the traffic jam. It was as if his mind were no longer connected to his body, and his body knew where it was going.

  The sky to the southwest was strange. Clouds flew overhead, formed and vanished as in a speeded-up film. It was all familiar to Eric Larsen, as familiar as the way the air felt in his sinuses. Anyone from Topeka would know. Tornado weather. When the air feels like this, and the sky looks that way, you head for the nearest basement, taking a radio and a canteen of water.

  It’s a good mile to the Burbank City Jail, Eric thought. He studied the sky judiciously. I can make it. He walked briskly toward the jail. Eric Larsen was still a civilized man.

  Eileen watched the incident in horror. She hadn’t heard the conversation, but what happened was plain enough. The police… weren’t police any longer.

  Two of the Wardens were messily dead, five more writhed in the agony of mortal wounds, and the rest were writhing
to free themselves from the chains. One of the Wardens had a pair of bolt cutters. Eileen recognized them. Joe Corrigan had given them to the police only minutes, or lifetimes, before.

  The scene outside was incomprehensible. People lay in heaps, or dragged themselves from ruined shops. One man had climbed on top of a wrecked truck. He sat on the cab, feet dangling over the windshield, and drank deeply from a bottle of whiskey. Every now and again he looked up and laughed.

  Anyone wearing a white robe was in danger. For the Wardens in chains it was a nightmare. Hundreds of enraged drivers, more hundreds of passengers, many fleeing the city, not really expecting Hammerfall but heading out just in case — and the Wardens had stopped them. Most of the people in the street were still lying flat on their backs, or wandering aimlessly, but there were enough men and women converging on the robed and chained Wardens, and each carrying something heavy — tire irons, tire chains, jack handles, a baseball bat…

  Eileen stood in the doorway. She glanced back at Corrigan’s body. Two vertical lines deepened between her eyes as she watched Patrolman Larsen’s retreating back. A riot was starting out there, and the only cop was walking away, fast, after calmly watching murder. It wasn’t a world Eileen understood.

  World. What had happened to the world? Gingerly she picked her way back through the broken glass toward her office. Thank God for medium heels, she thought. Glass crunched underfoot. She moved as quickly as she could, without a glance at the smashed goods and broken shelves and sagging walls.

  A length of pipe, torn loose from the ceiling, had half crushed her desk, smashing the glass top. The pipe was heavier than anything she had ever lifted before, and she grunted with the effort, but it moved. She pulled her purse from underneath, then scrambled about looking for the portable radio. It seemed undamaged.