Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  “I want to buy one,” Tim said. “We’re not robbers. I can pay.” Tim’s voice was filled with angry indignation.

  The man stared for a moment. Then he lowered the shotgun. His head tilted back. Peal after peal of laughter came from his mouth. “Pay with what?” he demanded. He could hardly speak for laughing. “With what?”

  Tim swallowed the automatic answer. He looked at Eileen, and fear came to him. Money wasn’t any good — and he didn’t have any money to begin with. He had checks, and plastic credit cards, and what were they? “I don’t know,” Tim said finally. “Yes I do. Maybe. I have a place up in the hills. Stocked with food and supplies. Big enough for a lot of people. I’ll take you and your family, and let you stay there…”

  The man stopped laughing. “Nice offer. Don’t need it, but nice. I’m Harry Stimms. I own this place.”

  “My name is—”

  “Timothy Hamner,” Stimms said. “I watch TV.”

  “And you’re not interested in my offer?”

  “No,” Stimms said. “Actually, I don’t suppose these cars belong to me anymore. Expect the National Guard johnnies will take them over pretty quick now. And I’ve got a place to go.” He looked thoughtful. “You know, Mr. Hamner, maybe things aren’t as bad as they say. You want one of these?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. I’ll sell you one. The price is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Eileen’s jaw dropped. Tim’s eyes narrowed a second. Talk about being rolled . … “Done. How do I pay?”

  “You sign a note for it,” Stimms said. “Doubt it’ll be any good, ever. But just in case…” He picked up the shotgun and kept it cradled in his arms. “Come on into the office. I’ve got the note forms. Never made one out for quite that much before…”

  “I can write small.”

  They drove through inches-deep water on side streets. The wind howled. On either side the old houses, built long before the Long Beach quake and still standing, were islands of light in the drizzle. Tim’s watch said 4 P.M., but outside it was dark, with only a dingy gray except in the headlights. There were no sidewalks, and mud as well as water flowed across the blacktop road. Eileen drove carefully, eyes ahead on the road. The radio gave nothing but static.

  “Nice car,” Eileen said. “Glad it has power steering.”

  “For a quarter of a million bucks it ought to have,” Tim said. “Damn, that frosts me—”

  Eileen giggled. “Best deal you ever made in your life.” Or ever will make, she thought.

  “It isn’t the car.” Tim’s voice held hurt indignation. “It was the extra fifty thousand bucks he charged for gas and oil and a jack!” Then he laughed. “And the rope. Mustn’t forget the rope. I’m glad he had extra. I wonder where he’s going?”

  Eileen didn’t answer. They crested a hill and started down, around a bend. There were no more houses. Thick mud covered the road and she shifted into four-wheel drive. “I’ve never been in a car like this before.”

  “Me neither. Want me to drive?”

  “No.”

  There was water at the bottom of the hill. It came up to the hubcaps, then up to the doors, and Eileen backed away. She drove carefully off the road and onto the embankment beside it. The car tilted dangerously toward the swirling dark water to their left. They went on, carefully and slowly. On their right were the ruins of new houses and condominiums, just far enough away so that they couldn’t see any details. A few lights, flashlights and lanterns, moved among the wreckage. Tim wished he’d got a flashlight from the car dealer. They had a spotlight, but it needed to be mounted on the car, and wouldn’t be any good until it was.

  They went around the valley, staying just above the water, and eventually found the road again where it rose out of the flood. Eileen gratefully shifted gears.

  The road twisted up into the mountains. They passed stopped cars. Someone darted out in front of the Blazer and gestured them to halt. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he held a pistol in his hand. Eileen gunned the car toward him, making him dive off to the side, then she accelerated.

  There were gunshots, and a crash of glass. Tim looked back in amazement at the neat round hole through the rear window, then above at the exit hole angling up through the roof. Rainwater ran in through the hole and dripped between them. Eileen floorboarded the car, roaring around the curve without braking, and the car had the feathery feeling of an imminent skid. She got around, braked for the next curve, then accelerated again.

  Tim tried to laugh. “My new car.”

  “Shut up.” She was leaning forward against the wheel. “You all right?’,

  “No.”

  “Eileen!”

  “I’m not hit. I’m scared. I’ve got the shakes.”

  “Me too,” he said, but he felt waves of relief wash over him. There had been that tiny moment, only an instant really, when he thought she’d been hit. It had been the most terrifying moment of his life. Now that struck him as strange; because he hadn’t seen her since she turned down his proposal. Of course not. He had his pride—

  “Tim, there are bridges ahead, and we’re getting closer to the Fault! The road may be gone!” She was shouting.

  “Not much we can do about it.”

  “No, we can’t go back.” She slowed for another curve, then accelerated again. She was still strangling the wheel. She was going to wreck them if she didn’t calm down, and he couldn’t think of a thing to do about it.

  The road was often blocked by mudslides, and Eileen, finally, had slowed to a crawl. Once they took half an hour to get fifty feet. Now, whenever they came to a clear section of road, Tim wished that she would drive faster. But she didn’t; she kept the car in first or second gear, and never drove faster than twenty miles an hour, even when the headlights showed long clear stretches.

  They drove on interminably. Eventually Tim stuffed his handkerchief into the hole in the roof.

  Tim’s watch showed 8 P.M., twilight time for Los Angeles June, but it was as black as ink outside. Rain fell intermittently. The windshield wipers in the Blazer were very good, and Stimms had showed them how to fill the washers. Eileen used them often.

  As they rounded a sharp curve, the headlights showed empty space in front of them. Eileen braked, hard, and brought the car to a stop. The headlights bored small holes in the rainy dark, but there was enough light to show a jagged end to the road.

  Tim got out in the rain and went toward the edge. When he saw where he stood he gulped, hard, and went back to the driver’s side. “Back up, slow,” he commanded.

  She started to ask why, but the urgent fear in his voice stopped her. Carefully she put the car into reverse and crawled back. “Get back there and guide me, damn you!” she shouted.

  “Sorry.” Tim walked back behind the car and guided her with gestures. Finally he made chopping motions.

  She switched off the ignition and got out to see where they’d been. The bridge had been a slender concrete arch spanning a deep gorge. The bridge had fallen in the center, and they’d been well onto it before she stopped. Now they were back on solid ground.

  They could see nothing. To the left they felt the loom of a flint-and-granite cliff rising high above them. On the right, beyond a broad earth hump, was a steep drop into nothing. Ahead was the ruined bridge.

  There were no lights anywhere, and no sounds except howling wind driving the rain, and far below, sounds of rushing water.

  “End of the line?” Eileen said.

  “I don’t know. It’s a cinch we can’t do anything about it tonight. I guess we stay here until daylight.”

  “If there’s ever any daylight again,” she said. She frowned, and began walking up the road. Tim didn’t follow. He stood, exhausted, wanting to get back into the car, but reluctant to do it until she came back. Somehow it would have been cowardly to sit in the car out of the rain while she tramped up the road, looking for… for what? Tim wondered. Finally she came back and got in. Tim went around and joined
her.

  She began backing up, slowly, this time without his help. She went on and on, and Tim wanted to ask what she was doing, but he was too tired. She had made a decision, and that was good, because he didn’t have to. Eventually she came to a wide gravel patch to the left side of the road and carefully backed into it so that the car was off the pavement entirely. “I don’t like it,” she said. “There might be a mudslide. But I’d rather be here than on the road. Suppose someone else comes.”

  “No one will.”

  “Probably. Anyway, we’re here.”

  “Beer?” Tim asked.

  “Sure.”

  He took two cans from the six-pack the car salesman had thrown in. He opened one and started to throw the pull tab away.

  “Save that.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Save everything,” Eileen said. “We don’t have much. I don’t know what we can use those for, but we’ll never get more of them. Save it. Cans, too. Don’t crush them.”

  “Okay. Here.”

  The beer was lukewarm, like the rain outside. They had nothing else. Nothing to eat, and the rain outside was mildly salty. Tim wondered if they could drink it safely. Pretty soon they’d have to.

  “At least it’s warm,” Tim said. “We won’t freeze, even at this altitude.” His clothes were damp, and it wasn’t really very warm. He wished they’d saved the old raincoat from the first car. For a moment Tim thought about the Chrysler’s owner. Had they killed him by taking his car? That wasn’t something to think about. What was?

  “Do we save this or drink it up and be done with it?” Tim asked.

  “Better save at least two,” Eileen said. Her voice was wooden and emotionless, and Tim wondered if he sounded that way to her. Wordlessly he opened another pair of cans and they drank that.

  Two cans of beer, on an empty stomach, after the day’s excitement: Tim found that it had more effect than he could have believed. He almost felt human again. He knew it wouldn’t last, but for the moment there was a warm feeling in his stomach and a lightness in his head. He looked toward Eileen. He couldn’t see her in the dark. She was only a shape on the seat beside him. He listened to the rain for a few moments longer, then reached for her.

  She sat stiffly, not moving, neither pushing him away nor responding. Tim moved against her on the seat. His hand went to her shoulder, then down to her breast. Her blouse was damp, but her flesh was warm when he put his hand under the blouse. She still hadn’t moved. He moved closer, putting his head to her breasts.

  “Is this appropriate?” Her voice might have been a stranger’s. It was Eileen, but detached, from a long way away.

  “What is?” Tim said. He felt vaguely ashamed of himself. “I’m sorry.” The glow from the beer was gone now.

  “Don’t be. I’ll sleep with you, if that’s what you want. I’d rather not. Not now…”

  “Yeah, there have to be better times.”

  “Not if that’s what you really want,” she said. “I’ve been thinking. Were we ever really in love?”

  “I asked you to marry me…”

  “And I wanted to, only I didn’t want to marry anybody. Well, we’re married now.”

  Tim was silent in the darkness. He felt an insane urge to giggle. Mother will be pleased, he thought. Little Timmy’s married now. He wondered where his mother was, and the rest of his family. Could I have done anything? Should I have tried? I didn’t try. I didn’t do anything but run for my life.

  “Sure you want me?” he asked.

  “Tim, when I came out of Corrigan’s and saw you I was never so glad to see anyone in my life. Yes.”

  Was she putting him on? And what was the point of worrying about it?

  “We’ll learn to love each other,” she was saying. “We’ve been learning it all day. So if” — she patted his hand that still lay passively on her breast — “this is what you want, I’m willing.”

  He sat up and moved away from her.

  “Tim, please don’t be angry.”

  “No, that’s okay. You’re right, it feels wrong. The whole car is wet, and our clothes stick to us, and if you’re not tired half to death, I am. Jesus, we came close to driving off that bridge!”

  She reached to squeeze his hand.

  “Wrong time, wrong place. Hey, how about the Savoy Hotel?”

  “Huh?”

  “Savoy Hotel in London. Elegance. Incredible room service. Huge bathtubs. If this is the wrong place for a love affair, the right place is the Savoy Hotel. Only, it’s probably underwater.” He was babbling. “Sure, there’s a right place somewhere, but what if we never reach it? Eileen, I damned near didn’t get that fence down, and it had to be done. You don’t need me, you need Conan the Barbarian! Him for brawn and you for brains.”

  “Will you stop that?”

  “I can’t. You’re the one who kept us going. If you want manly strength, I don’t think I have it. I don’t have the skills either. I used to know how to hire skills.”

  “You carried me down the hill,” she said, exaggerating for effect. “You knew where to go. You’ve done all right.”

  He couldn’t see her in the dark. But he knew she wasn’t laughing at him, because she had a death grip on his hand. He moved toward her again, and she came to him, holding him desperately. He had no sexual urge now, only a feeling of innate protectiveness. Part of his mind knew this was silly; knew that Tim Hamner, however much he might share the ages-old instincts of male Homo sapiens, had neither the training nor the muscles to give them reality. But it was very pleasant to hold Eileen and have her go quietly to sleep with her head in his lap, and after a while he slept too.

  The sea is withdrawing from England.

  Sluggish with debris, the water that has conquered London flows back toward the Channel. Glutted with human bodies and the lighter cars, and the wooden walls of older buildings and the sea-bottom debris that came inland in three monstrous tidal waves, the water must force its way between and around and through mountainous chunks that were tall buildings yesterday. Windows that survived the wave break now to let the water through. It sifts the interiors as it goes, and carries away furniture, bedding, whole department stores full of clothing.

  Buildings along the Thames have been smashed to their foundations, and even those are being torn loose. Tremendous pressures pry the concrete away in pieces and send them, with megatons of mud from the banks, down into the river bed.

  Tomorrow and forever after, there will be no way to tell where the Savoy Hotel once stood.

  They woke with cramps, tingling limbs and the shivers.

  “What time is it?” Eileen asked.

  Tim pushed the button on his watch. “One-fifty.” He shifted uncomfortably. “The stuff we read in Lit classes made it sound romantic, this business of sleeping in each other’s arms, but it’s damned uncomfortable.”

  She laughed in the dark. Lovely, Tim thought. It was Eileen again, her laugh, and he could imagine her sunburst smile although he couldn’t see it. “Do these seats do anything?” she asked.

  “Dunno.”

  The car had a divided bench seat. Tim reached down, feeling for controls. He found a lever and pulled. The seat back collapsed against the seat behind, not quite horizontal but a great deal more comfortable than it had been. He told her what he’d done and she flopped hers back as well. Now they were not quite lying side by side. She moved against him. “I’m freezing.”

  “Me too.”

  They huddled together, seeking each other’s warmth. They were not very comfortable. Arms got in the way. She put her arm over him, and they lay still for a moment. Then she drew him tightly against her body, pushing her legs against his. She felt warm along her whole length. Suddenly her mouth found his and she kissed him. That went on for a moment and she drew away, and laughed, very softly. “Still in the mood?” she asked.

  “Back in the mood,” Tim said, and he gave up on speaking.

  They kept most of their clothes on, peeling back shir
t and blouse and skirt and pants, giggling, reaching under cloth that was needed for warmth; and they coupled suddenly, with a fervor that left no room for laughter. It felt right, now. Even the flavor of insanity matched what was happening to the world around them. Afterward they rested in each other’s arms, and Eileen said, “Shoes.”

  So they curled around each other, maintaining contact, to wrestle their shoes off; they caressed each other with their toes; they coupled again. Tim felt the wiry strength of Eileen’s legs and arms, caging him. She relaxed slowly, and sighed, and was out like a light.

  He pulled her skirt down as far as it would go. She slept soundly, stirring only slightly when he moved. Tim lay awake in the dark, wishing for dawn, wishing for sleep.

  Why did we do that? he wondered. The night the world ended, and we screw like mad minks, here at the end of nowhere on the Big Tujunga Canyon Road, with a dead bridge in front of us and ten million dead behind… In a car seat, yet, like a couple of teen-agers.

  She moved slightly, and he put his arm across her, protectively, without volition. He realized he had done that. Reflex. Protective reflex, he thought.

  Suddenly Tim Hamner grinned in the dark. “Why the hell not?” he said aloud, and went to sleep.

  There was a gray tinge to the sky when they both woke. They sat up together, wrapped in thoughts and memories, wondering what had wakened them. Then they heard it over the drumming of rain on metal a motor, a car or truck coming very fast up the highway. Presently there were lights behind them.

  Tim felt a terrible sense of urgency. He ought to be doing something. Warning. He ought to warn that car. He shook his head violently, trying to shake himself awake. It must have worked. He reached past Eileen for the steering wheel. The horn shrieked in mechanical terror.

  The car went past them like a bat out of hell, followed by the terror-sound. Tim released the horn and heard real mechanical terror: a long scream of brakes, and then nothing, no sound at all for crawling eons. Then metal smashed rock, and light flared ahead of them.

  They got out and ran toward half of a bridge. Below the bridge’s twisted end was fire. Fire crawled away from the greater blaze, stopped, convulsed, then fell still. The car burned, casting its bonfire light on the canyon and the stream at its bottom.