Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven

  The problem had been to hold along the high ground, so that the Brotherhood would stay down in the valley; to give way along the valley floor until enough of the Brotherhood had crossed the bridge. How could they get the ranchers to fight and not run until the signal? Hardy had chosen the simplest solution to that. “If you’re out there,” he’d said, “if you stand, some of them will stay with you. They’re men.”

  She had resented that, but it had been no time to give Al Hardy a lecture; and he’d been right. All she’d had to do was hold on to her own courage. For someone who wasn’t sure she wanted to live, that had seemed a simple job. It wasn’t until she was actually under fire that she began to have doubts.

  Something unseen had ripped Roy Miller’s side. He tried to block the wound with his forearm. His forearm nestled neatly in the great gap of torn ribs. Maureen’s breakfast rose in her throat… and in his last moment Roy looked around and caught her expression.

  A mortar shell had exploded behind Deke Wilson and two of his men. The others rolled over and over and lay sprawled in positions that would have been hideously uncomfortable if they hadn’t been dead; but Deke flew forward and upward, his arms flapping frantically, and fluttered downhill like a fledgling just learning to fly, down into the yellow murk.

  Joanna MacPherson turned to yell at Maureen. A bullet whispered through her hair, through the space where her skull had been only a moment before, and Joanna’s message became frantically obscene.

  A fragment of metal from a mortar blast shattered Jack Turner’s mustard bomb as he was winding up for the throw. His friends ran from him, and his sister-in-law ran too, and Jack Turner staggered and thrashed within the yellow cloud, drowning.

  Pudgy Galadriel from the Shire swung her sling round and round, stepped forward and sent a bottle of nerve gas flying far down the hill. A moment too long on the follow-through, and Galadriel stood poised like Winged Victory, with her head gone. Maureen saw black spots before her eyes. She leaned against a boulder and managed to stay upright.

  It was one thing to stand on a clifftop and contemplate (at her leisure) jumping off (but would she have had the nerve? or was it all an act? Now she’d never know). It was quite another to watch poor, homely Galadriel crumple with the stump of her neck spitting blood, and then, without looking to see if anyone was actually watching her, to pick up her sling and a bottle of nerve gas and swing the deadly, evil thing round and round her head and, remembering at the last second that the damn thing would fly at a tangent and not in the direction the sling was pointing when she let go, sling it down into the cannibal horde that was still coming up at them. Suddenly Maureen Jellison had found quite a lot to live for. The gray skies, cold winds, brief snow flurries, the prospect of hunger in winter; all of that faded away. First there was a simple realization: If you could feel terror, you wanted to live. Strange that she’d never understood that before.

  She dressed quickly and went outside. The bright sun was gone. She could not see the sun at all, but the sky overhead was bright, and the clouds seemed much thinner than usual. Had the sunlight been a final dream? It didn’t matter. The air was warm, and there was no rain. The small creek below the house was very high, and the water gurgled happily. It would be cold water, just right for trout. Birds dipped low into the stream and cried loudly. She walked down the drive to the highway.

  There was no traffic. There had been, earlier, when the Stronghold’s wounded had been taken to the former county convalescent home that served as the valley’s hospital, and later there would be more when the less critically injured were brought in horse-drawn wagons, but for now the road was clear. She walked steadily on, aware of every sight and sound: the ring of an ax in the hills above; the flash of red as a red-winged blackbird darted into the brush nearby; the shouts of children herding the Stronghold’s pigs through the woods.

  The children had adjusted quickly to the new conditions.

  One elderly adult as teacher, a dozen or more children, two working dogs and a herd of swine school and work. A different sort of school with different lessons. Reading and arithmetic, certainly, but also other knowledge: to lead the pigs to dog droppings (the dogs in turn ate part of the human sewage); and always to carry a bucket to collect the pig manure, which must be brought back at night. Other lessons: how to trap rats and squirrels. Rats were important to the new ecology. They had to be kept out of the Stronghold’s barns (cats did most of that), but the rats were themselves useful: They found their own food, they could be eaten, their fur made clothing and shoes, and their small bones made needles. There were prizes for the children who caught the most rats.

  Closer to town was the sewage works, where the animal and human wastes were shoveled into boilers with wood chips and sawdust. The heat of fermentation sterilized everything, and the hot gases were led out through pipes that ran under City Hall and the hospital to form part of the heating system, then condensed. The resulting methanol, wood alcohol, ran the trucks that collected the wastes, with some left over for other work. The system wasn’t complete — they needed more boilers, and more pipes and condensers, and the work absorbed too much skilled labor — but Hardy could be deservedly proud of the start they had made. By spring they’d have a lot of high-nitrogen fertilizer from the residue in the boilers, all sterilized and ready for the crops they’d plant — and there should be enough methanol to run tractors for the initial heavy work of plowing.

  We’ve done well, she thought. There’s a lot more to do, all kinds of work. Windmills to build. Waterwheels. Crops to plant. A forge to set up. Hardy had found an old book on working bronze and methods of casting it in sand, but they hadn’t had time to do much about it yet. Now they’d have the time, now that there was no threat of war hanging over them. Harvey Randall had been singing when he came into the ranch house after the battle. “Ain’t gonna study war no more!”

  It wasn’t going to be easy. She looked up at the clouds; they were turning dark. She wished the sunlight would break through, not because she wanted to see the sun again, although she certainly did, but because it would be so appropriate: a symbol of their eventual success. Instead there were only the darkening clouds, but she refused to let them depress her. It would be so easy to fall back into her black mood of despair.

  Harvey Randall had been right about that: It was worth almost anything to spare people that feeling of helplessness and doom. But first you had to conquer it in yourself. You had to look squarely at this new and terrible world, know what it could and would do to you — and shout defiance. Then you could get to work.

  The thought of Harvey reminded her of Johnny Baker, and she wondered what had happened to the expedition to the power plant. They should be all right now. With the New Brotherhood defeated, the power plant should be all right, now that they’d repelled that first, tentative attack. But…

  Their last message had come three days ago.

  Maybe there had been a second attack. Certainly the radio was out. Maureen shivered. Maybe a damn transistor had given up the ghost, or maybe everybody was dead. There was just no way to tell. Johnny would have been in the thick of things … he was too damn visible…

  So let it be a transistor, she told herself, and keep busy. She turned downhill toward the hospital.

  Alim Nassor gasped for breath and couldn’t find it. He sat propped up in the truck bed; if he lay down, he would drown. His lungs were filling anyway, and it wouldn’t be long. They had failed. The Brotherhood was defeated, and Alim Nassor was a dead man.

  Swan was dead. Jackie was dead. Most of his band, dead in the valley of the Tule River, killed by choking clouds of yellow gas that stung like fire. He felt Erika’s hands moving a cloth over his face, but he couldn’t focus his eyes on her. She was a good woman. White woman, but she stayed with Alim, got him out when the others ran away. He wanted to tell her so. If he could speak…

  He felt the truck slow, and heard someone call a challenge. They had reached the new camp, and somebody had organize
d sentries. Hooker? Alim thought the Hook had lived. He hadn’t crossed the river; he was directing the mortars, and that should have been safe unless he was caught by the pursuit. Alim wondered if he wanted Hooker to have lived. Nothing really mattered anymore. The Hammer had killed Alim Nassor.

  The truck stopped near a campfire, and he felt himself being lifted out. They put him near the fire, and that felt good.

  Erika stayed by him, and someone brought him a cup of hot soup. It was too much trouble to tell them they were wasting good broth; that he wouldn’t live past the next time he fell asleep. He’d drown in his own phlegm. He coughed, hard, to try to clear his lungs so he could talk, but that hurt too bad, and he stopped.

  Gradually he heard a voice.

  “And ye have defied the Lord God of Hosts! Ye placed your faith in armies, ye Angels of the Lord. Strategy! What do the Angels need of strategy! Place your trust in the Lord God Jehovah! Do His work! Work His will, o my people. Destroy the Citadel of Satan as God wills it, and then can ye conquer!”

  The voice of the prophet lashed over him. “Weep not for the fallen, for they have fallen in the service of the Lord! Great shall be their reward. O ye Angels and Archangels, hear me! This is no time for sorrow! This is a time to go forth in the Name of the Lord!”

  “No,” Alim gasped, but no one heard.

  “We can do it,” a voice said nearby. It took Alim a moment to recognize it. Jerry Owen. “They don’t have any poison gas in the power plant. Even if they do, it won’t matter. We take all the mortars and recoilless rifles out on the barge and blow up the turbines. That’ll end that power plant.”

  “Strike in the Name of God!” Armitage was shouting. There were some answers now. “Hallelujah!” someone called. “Amen!” another said. Tentative at first, but as Armitage continued, the responses became more enthusiastic.

  “Shee-it.” That had to be Sergeant Hooker. Alim couldn’t turn his head to look at him. “Alim, you hear me?”

  Alim nodded slightly.

  “He says he hears,” Erika said. “Leave him alone. He’s got to rest. I wish he’d get some sleep.”

  Sleep! That would kill him for sure. Every breath was a fight, something to struggle for, an effort of will. If he relaxed for a moment he’d stop breathing.

  “What the hell do I do now?” Hooker was asking. “You the only brother left I can rap with.”

  Words formed on Alim’s lips. Erika translated. “He asks how many brothers are left.”

  “Ten,” Hooker said.

  Ten blacks. Were they the last blacks in the world? Of course not. Africa was still there. Wasn’t it? They hadn’t seen any black faces among their enemies, though. Maybe there weren’t any more in California. He whispered again. “He says ten is not enough,” Erika said.

  “Yeah.” Hooker bent low, to speak into Alim’s ear. No one else could hear. “I got to stay with this preacher,” he said. “Alim, is he crazy? Is he right? I can’t think no more.”

  Alim shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about that. Armitage was speaking again, of the paradise that waited for the fallen. The words blended into the vague, slow thoughts that crept into Alim’s consciousness. Paradise. Maybe it was true. Maybe that crazy preacher was right. It was better to think so. “He knows the truth,” Alim gasped.

  The fire’s warmth was almost pleasant. Darkness gathered in his head despite the glimpses of morning sunshine he thought he’d seen earlier. The preacher’s words sank through the dark. “Strike now, ye Angels! This very day, this very hour! It is the will of God!”

  The last thing Alim heard was Sergeant Hooker shouting “Amen!”

  When Maureen reached the hospital, Leonilla Malik took her and led her firmly into a front room.

  “I came to help,” Maureen said. “But I wanted to talk to the wounded. One of the Tallifsen boys was in my group, and he—”

  “He’s dead,” Leonilla said. There was no emotion in her voice. “I could use some help. Did you ever use a microscope?”

  “Not since college biology class.”

  “You don’t forget how,” Leonilla said. “First I want a blood sample. Please sit down here.” She took a hypodermic needle from a pressure cooker. “My autoclave,” she said. “Not very pretty, but it works.”

  Maureen had wondered what happened to the pressure cookers from the ranch house. She winced as the needle went into her arm. It was dull. Leonilla drew out the blood sample and carefully squirted it into a test tube that had come from a child’s chemistry set.

  The tube went into a sock; a piece of parachute cord was attached to the sock, and Leonilla used that to whirl the test tube around and around her head. “Centrifuging,” she said. “I show you how to do this, and then you can do some of the work. We need more help in the lab.” She continued to swing the test tube.

  “There,” she said. “We have separated the cells from the fluid. Now we draw off the fluid, so, and wash the cells with saline.” She worked rapidly. “Here on the shelf we have cells and fluid from the patients who need blood. I will test yours against theirs.”

  “Don’t you want to know my blood type?” Maureen asked.

  “Yes. In a moment. But I must make the tests anyway. I do not know the patient blood types and I have no way to find out, and this is more certain. It is merely very inconvenient.”

  The room had been an office. The walls had been painted not long ago and were well scrubbed. The office table where Leonilla worked was Formica, and very clean. “Now,” Leonilla said, “I put samples of your cells into a sample of the patient’s serum, and the patient’s cells in yours, so, and we look in the microscope.”

  The microscope had also come from a child’s collection. Someone had burned the local high school before Hardy had thought to send an expedition for its science equipment.

  “This is very difficult to work with,” Leonilla said. “But it will work. You must be very careful with the focus.” She peered into the microscope. “Ah. Rouleaux cells. You cannot be a donor for this patient. Look, so that you will know.”

  Maureen looked into the microscope. At first she saw nothing, but she worked the focus, the feel of it coming back to her fingers… Leonilla was right, she thought. You don’t really forget how. She remembered that you weren’t supposed to close the other eye, but she did anyway. When the instrument was properly focused she saw blood cells. “You mean the little stacks like poker chips?” she asked.

  “Poker chips?”

  “Like saucers—”

  “Yes. Those are rouleaux formations. They indicate clumping. Now, what was your blood type?”

  “A,” Maureen said.

  “Good. I will mark that down. We must use these file cards, one for every person. I note on your card that your blood clumps that of Jacob Vinge, and note the same on his card. Now we try yours with others.” She went through the procedure again, and once more. “Ah. You can be a donor for Bill Darden. I will note that on your card and his. Now. You know the procedure. Here are the samples, clearly labeled. Each must be tested against the others, donors against patients. When that is done we must test donors against each other, although this is not so critical; then we will know, in case we must someday give one of you a transfusion…”

  “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 running the extr
action through City Hall and the hospital they got that heat free, but at the cost of the ripe smells…

  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 cannot ignore hygiene and first aid. Wash all cuts. And we will soon be out of tetanus vaccine, although perhaps that can be made. Perhaps.”

  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.”