Lucifer's Hammer

by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle

  The wind howled like demons breaking through from Hell. The sky had gone from ugly to hideous. Harry had never seen anything like these roiling black clouds sputtering with lightning. It would have served Mrs. Adams right, he thought vindictively, if he had left her mail in the box outside the gate.

  But it might be Donna who would have to make the soggy trip. Harry drove up and parked under the porch overhang. As he got out the rain came, and the overhang was almost no protection; the wind whipped rain in all directions.

  And it might have been Donna who answered the door, but it wasn’t. Mrs. Adams showed no sign of pleasure at seeing him. Harry raised his voice above the storm—“Your mail, Mrs. Adams”—his voice as cold as her face.

  “Thank you,” she said, and closed the door firmly.

  The rain poured from the sky like a thousand bathtubs emptying, and washed from the truck in filthy brown streams. It shamed Harry. He hadn’t guessed that the truck was that dirty. He climbed in, half soaked already, and drove off.

  Was weather like this common in the valley? Harry had been here just over a year, and he’d seen nothing remotely like this. Noah’s Flood! He badly wanted to ask someone about it.

  Anyone but Mrs. Adams.

  This had been the dry season in the valley. Carper Creek had been way down, a mere ripple of water wetting the bottoms of the smooth white boulders that formed its bed, as late as this morning. But when Harry Newcombe drove across the wooden bridge, the creek was beating against the bottom and washing over the upstream edge. The rain still fell with frantic urgency.

  Harry pulled way over to put two envelopes in Gentry’s mailbox. The only time he had ever seen Gentry, the farmer had been pointing a shotgun at him. Gentry was a hermit, and his need for up-to-the-minute mail was not urgent, and Harry didn’t like him.

  His wheels spun disconcertingly before they caught and pulled him back on the road. Sooner or later he would get stuck. He had given up hope of finishing his route today. Maybe he could beg a meal and a couch from the Millers.

  Now the road led steeply uphill. Harry drove in low gear, half blind in the rain and the lightning and the blackness between. Presently there was empty space on his left, a hillside on his right, trees covering both. Harry hugged the hillside. The cab was thoroughly wet, the air warm and 110 percent humid.

  Harry braked sharply.

  The hillside had slipped. It ran right across the road and on down, studded with broken and unbroken trees.

  Briefly Harry considered going back. But it was back toward Gentry’s and then the Adamses’, and the hell with it: The rain had already washed part of the mudslide away; what was left wasn’t all that steep. Harry drove up the mud lip. First gear and keep it moving. If he bogged down, it would be a wet walk home.

  The truck lurched. Harry used wheel and accelerator, biting his lower lip. No use; the mud itself was sliding, he had to get off! He floored the accelerator. The wheels spun futilely, the truck tilted. Harry turned off the ignition and dove for the floorboards and covered his face with his arms.

  The truck gently rocked and swung like a small boat at anchor; swung too far and turned on its side. Then it smashed into something massive, wheeled around and struck something else, and stopped moving.

  Harry lifted his head.

  A tree trunk had smashed the windshield. The frosted safety glass bowed inward before it. That tree and another now wedged the truck in place. It lay on the passenger side, and it wasn’t coming out without a lot of help, at least a tow truck and men with chain saws.

  Harry was hanging from the seat belt. Gingerly he unfastened it, decided he wasn’t hurt.

  And now what? He wasn’t supposed to leave the mail unguarded, but he couldn’t sit here all day! “How am I going to finish the route?” he asked himself, and giggled, because it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t going to get that done today. He would have to let the mail pile up until tomorrow. The Wolf would be furious…and Harry couldn’t help that.

  He took the registered letter for Senator Jellison and slipped it into his pocket. There were a couple of small packets that Harry thought might be valuable, and he put them in another pocket. The big stuff, books, and the rest of the mail would just have to take care of itself.

  He started out into the rain. It drove into his face, blinding him, soaking him in an instant. The mud slipped beneath his feet, and in seconds he was clutching wildly at a small tree to keep from falling into the rapidly rising creek far below. He stood there a long moment.

  No. He wasn’t going to get to a telephone. Not through that. Better to wait it out. Luckily he was back on his charted route again; the Wolf would know where to look for him—only Harry couldn’t think of any vehicle that could reach him, not through that.

  Lightning flared above him, a double flash, blinkblink. Thunder exploded instantly. He felt a distinct tingle in his wet feet. Close!

  Painfully he made his way back to the truck and got inside. It wasn’t insulated from the ground, but it seemed the safest place to wait out the lightning storm…and at least he hadn’t left the mail unguarded. That had worried him. Better to deliver it late than let it be stolen.

  Definitely better, he decided, and tried to make himself comfortable. The hours wore on and there was no sign of the storm letting up.

  Harry slept badly. He made a nest back in the cargo compartment, sacrificing some shopping circulars and his morning newspaper. He woke often, always hearing the endless drumming of rain on metal. When earth and sky turned from lightning-lit black to dull gray with less lightning, Harry squirmed around and searched out yesterday’s carton of milk. A premonition of need had made him leave it until now. It wasn’t enough; he was famished. And he missed his morning coffee.

  “Next place,” he told himself, and imagined a big mug of hot steaming coffee, perhaps with a bit of brandy in it (although no one but Gillcuddy was going to offer him that).

  The rain had slackened off a bit, and so had the howling wind. “Or else I’m going deaf,” he said. “GOING DEAF! Well, maybe not.” Cheerful by nature, he was quick to find the one bright point in a gloomy situation. “Good thing it isn’t Trash Day,” he told himself.

  He took his feet out of the leather mailbag, where they’d stayed nearby during the long night, and put his boots back on. Then he looked at the mail. There was barely enough light.

  “First class only,” he told himself. “Leave the books.” He wondered about Senator Jellison’s Congressional Record, and the magazines. He decided to take them. Eventually he had stuffed his bag with everything except the largest packages. He stood and wrestled the driver’s door open, trapdoor fashion, and pushed the mailbag out onto the side—now the top—of the truck. Then he climbed out after it. The rain was still falling, and he spread a piece of plastic over the top of the mailbag.

  The truck shifted uneasily.

  Mud had piled along the high side of the truck, level with the wheels. Harry shouldered the bag and started uphill. He felt his footing shift, and he sprinted uphill.

  Behind him the trees bowed before the weight of truck and shifting mud. Their roots pulled free, and the truck rolled, gathering speed.

  Harry shook his head. This was probably his last circuit; Wolfe wouldn’t like losing a truck. Harry started up the uneasy mud slope, looking about him as he went. He needed a walking stick. Presently he found a tilted sapling, five feet long and supple, that came out of the mud by its loosened roots.

  Marching was easier after he reached the road. He was going downhill, back from the long detour to the Adamses’. The heavy mud washed off his boots and his feet grew lighter. The rain fell steadily. He kept looking upslope, alert for more mudslides.

  “Five pounds of water in my hair alone,” he groused. “Keeps my neck warm, though.” The pack was heavy. A hip belt would have made carrying it easier.

  Presently he began to sing.

  I went out to take a friggin’ walk by the friggin’ reservoir

  a-wi
shin’ for a friggin’ quid to pay my friggin’ score,

  my head it was a-achin’ and my throat was parched and dry,

  and so I sent a little prayer, a-wingin’ to the sky…

  He topped the slight rise and saw a blasted transmission tower. High-tension wires lay across the road. The steel tower had been struck by lightning, perhaps several times, and seemed twisted at the top.

  How long ago? And why weren’t the Edison people out to fix it? Harry shrugged. Then he noticed the telephone lines. They were down too. He wouldn’t be calling in from his next stop.

  And there came a friggin’ falcon and he walked upon the waves,

  and I said, “A friggin’ miracle!” and sang a couple staves,

  of a friggin’ churchy ballad I learned when I was young.

  The friggin’ bird took to the air, and spattered me with dung.

  I fell upon my friggin’ knees and bowed my friggin’ head,

  and said three friggin’ Aves for all my friggin’ dead,

  and then I got upon my feet and said another ten.

  The friggin’ bird burst into flame—and spattered me again.

  There was the Millers’ gate. He couldn’t see anyone. There were no fresh ruts in their drive. Harry wondered if they’d gone out last night. They certainly hadn’t made it out today. He sank into deep mud as he went up the long drive toward the house. They wouldn’t have a phone, but maybe he could bum a cup of coffee, even a ride into town.

  The burnin’ bird hung in the sky just like a friggin’ sun.

  It seared my friggin’ eyelids shut, and when the job was done,

  the friggin’ bird flashed cross the sky just like a shootin’ star.

  I ran to tell the friggin’ priest—he bummed my last cigar.

  I told him of the miracle, he told me of the Rose,

  I showed him bird crap in my hair, the bastard held his nose.

  I went to see the bishop but the friggin’ bishop said,

  “Go home and sleep it off, you sod—and wash your friggin’ head!”

  No one answered his knock at the Millers’ front door. The door stood slightly ajar. Harry called in, loudly, and there was still no answer. He smelled coffee.

  He stood a moment, then fished out two letters and a copy of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, pushed the door open and went inside, mail held like an ambassador’s passport. He sang loudly:

  Then I came upon a friggin’ wake for a friggin’ rotten swine,

  by the name of Jock O’Leary and I touched his head with mine,

  and old Jock sat up in his box and raised his friggin’ head.

  His wife took out a forty-four, and shot the bastard dead.

  Again I touched his head with mine and brought him back to life.

  His smiling face rolled on the floor, this time she used a knife.

  And then she fell upon her knees, and started in to pray,

  “It’s forty years, O Lord,” she said, “I’ve waited for this day.”

  He left the mail on the front-room table where he usually piled stuff on Trash Day, then wandered toward the kitchen, led by the smell of coffee. He continued to sing loudly, lest he be shot as an intruder.

  So I walked the friggin’ city ’mongst the friggin’ halt and lame,

  and every time I raised ’em up, they got knocked down again,

  ’cause the love of God comes down to man in a friggin’ curious way,

  but when a man is marked for love, that love is here to stay.

  There was coffee! The gas stove was working, and there was a big pot of coffee on it, and three cups set out. Harry poured one full. He sang in triumph:

  And this I know because I’ve got a friggin’ curious sign;

  for every time I wash my head, the water turns to wine!

  And I gives it free to workin’ blokes to brighten up their lives,

  so they don’t kick no dogs around, nor beat up on their wives.

  He found a bowl of oranges, resisted temptation for a full ten seconds, then took one. He peeled it as he walked on through the kitchen to the back door, out into the orange groves behind. The Millers were natives. They’d know what was happening. And they had to be around somewhere.

  ’Cause there ain’t no use to miracles like walkin’ on the sea.

  They crucified the Son of God, but they don’t muck with me!

  ’Cause I leave the friggin’ blind alone, the dyin’ and the dead,

  but every day at four o’clock; I wash my friggin’ head!

  “Ho, Harry!” a voice called. Somewhere to his right. Harry went through heavy mud and orange trees.

  Jack Miller and his son Roy and daughter-in-law Cicelia were harvesting tomatoes in full panic. They’d spread a large tarp on the ground and were covering it with everything they could pick, ripe and half green. “They’ll rot on the ground,” Roy puffed. “Got to get them inside. Quick. Could sure use help.”

  Harry looked at his muddy boots, mailbag, sodden uniform. “You’re not supposed to stay me,” he said. “It’s against government regulations…”

  “Yeah. Say, Harry, what’s going on out there?” Roy demanded.

  “You don’t know?” Harry was appalled.

  “How could we? Phone’s been out since yesterday afternoon. Power out. No TV. Can’t get a damned thing—sorry, Cissy. Get nothing but static on the transistor radio. What’s it like in town?”

  “Haven’t been to town,” Harry confessed. “Truck’s dead, couple miles toward the Gentry place. Since yesterday. Spent the night in the truck.”

  “Hmm.” Roy stopped his frantic picking for a moment. “Cissy, better get in and get to canning. Just the ripe ones. Harry, I’ll make you a deal. Breakfast, lunch, a ride into town, and I don’t tell nobody about what you were singing inside my house. You help us the rest of the day.”

  “Well…”

  “I’ll drive you and put in a good word,” Cissy said.

  The Millers carried some weight in the valley. The Wolf might not fire him for losing the truck if he had a good word. “I can’t get in any quicker by walking,” Harry said. “It’s a deal.” He set to work.

  They didn’t talk much; they needed their breath. Presently Cissy brought out sandwiches. The Millers hardly stopped long enough to eat. Then they went back to it.

  When they did talk, it was about the weather. Jack Miller had seen nothing like it in his fifty-two years in the valley.

  “Comet,” Cissy said. “It did this.”

  “Nonsense,” Roy said. “You heard the TV. It missed us by thousands of miles.”

  “It did? Good,” Harry said.

  “We didn’t hear that it missed. Heard it was going to miss,” Jack Miller said. He went back to harvesting tomatoes. When they got those picked, there were beans and squashes.

  Harry had never worked so hard in his life. He realized suddenly it was getting to be late afternoon. “Hey, I have got to get to town!” he insisted.

  “Yeah. Okay, Cissy,” Jack Miller called. “Take the pickup. Get by the feedstore; we’re going to need lots of cattle and hog feed. Damned rain’s battered down most of the fodder. Better get feed before everybody else thinks of it. Price’ll be sky-high in a week.”

  “If there’s anyplace to buy it in a week,” Cissy said.

  “What do you mean by that?” her husband demanded.

  “Nothing.” She went off to the barn, tight jeans bulging, water dripping from her hat. She came out with the Dodge pickup. Harry squeezed into the seat, mailbag on his lap to protect it from the rain. He’d left it in the barn while he worked.

  The truck had no trouble with the muddy drive. When they got to the gate, Cissy got out; Harry couldn’t move with the big mailbag. She laughed at him when she got back in.

  They hadn’t gone half a mile when the road ended in a gigantic crack. The road had pulled apart, and the hillside with it, and tons of sloppy mud had come off the hillside to cover the road beyond the crack.

  Harry
studied it carefully. Cicelia backed and twisted to turn the truck around. Harry started toward the ruined road.

  “You’re not going to walk!” she said.

  “Mail must go through,” Harry muttered. He laughed. “Didn’t finish the route yesterday—”

  “Harry, don’t be silly! There will be a road crew out today, tomorrow for sure. Wait for that! You won’t get to town before dark, maybe not at all in this rain. Come back to the house.”

  He thought about that. What she said made sense. Power lines down, roads out, telephone lines out; somebody would come through here. The mailbag seemed terribly heavy. “All right.”

  They put him back to work, of course. He’d expected that. They didn’t eat until after dark, but it was an enormous meal, suitable for farmhand appetites. Harry couldn’t stay awake, and collapsed on the couch. He didn’t even notice when Jack and Roy took his uniform off him and covered him with a blanket.

  Harry woke to find the house empty. His uniform, hung to dry, was still soggy. Rain pounded relentlessly at the farmhouse. He dressed and found coffee. While he was drinking it, the others came in.

  Cicelia made a breakfast of ham and pancakes and more coffee. She was strong and tall, but she looked tired now. Roy kept eyeing her anxiously.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Not used to doing men’s work and my own too.”

  “We got most of it in,” Jack Miller said. “Never saw rain like this, though.” There was a softness, a wondering in Jack Miller’s voice that might have been superstitious fear. “Those bastards at the Weather Bureau never gave us a minute’s warning. What are they doing with all those shiny weather satellites?”

  “Maybe the comet knocked them out,” Harry said.

  Jack Miller glared. “Comet. Humph. Comets are things in the sky! Live in the twentieth century, Harry!”

  “I tried it once. I like it better here.”