The house was dark. Power out here, too? Or had Hugo Beck and his score of strange guests all tired of country life and gone away?
The Shire was a commune. Everyone in the valley knew that, and few knew more. The Shire let the valley people alone. Harry, in his privileged occupation, had met Hugo Beck and a few of the others.
Hugo had inherited the spread from his aunt and uncle three years ago, when they racked up their car on a Mexico vacation. It had been called something else then: Inverted Fork Ranch, some such name, probably named after a branding iron. Hugo Beck had arrived for the funeral. a pudgy boy of eighteen who wore his straight black hair at shoulder length and a kind of beard with the chin bared. He’d looked the place over, and stayed to sell the cattle and most of the horses, and left. A month later he’d returned, followed by (the number varied according to who was talking) a score of hippies. There was enough money, somehow, to keep them alive and fairly comfortable. Certainly the Shire was not a successful business. It exported nothing. But they must be growing some food; they didn’t import enough from town.
Harry hollered again. The front door opened and a human shape strolled down to the gate.
It was Tony. Harry knew him. Scrawny and sun-darkened, grinning to show teeth that had been straightened in youth, Tony was dressed as usuaclass="underline" jeans, wool vest, no shirt, digger hat, sandals. He looked at Harry through the gate. “Hey, man, what’s happenin’?” The rain affected him not at all.
“The picnic’s been called off. I came to tell you.”
Tony looked blank, then laughed. “The picnic! Hey, that’s funny. I’ll tell them. They’re all huddling in the house. Maybe they think they’ll melt.”
“I’m half melted already. Here’s your mail.” Harry handed it over. “Your mailbox is wrecked.”
“It won’t matter.” Tony seemed to be grinning at some private joke.
Harry skipped it. “Can you spare someone to run me into town? I wrecked my truck.”
“Sorry. We want to save the gas for emergencies.”
What did he think this was? Harry held his temper. “Such is life. Can you spare me a sandwich?”
“Nope. Famine coming. We got to think of ourselves.”
“I don’t get you.” Harry was beginning to dislike Tony’s grin.
“The Hammer has fallen,” said Tony. “The Establishment is dead. No more draft. No more taxes. No more wars. No more going to jail for smoking pot. No more having to pick between a crook and an idiot for President.” Tony grinned beneath the shapeless, soggy hat. “No more Trash Day either. I thought I’d flipped when I saw a mailman at the gate!”
Tony really had flipped, Harry realized. He tried to sidestep the issue. “Can you get Hugo Beck down here?”
“Maybe.’’
Harry watched Tony reenter the farmhouse. Was there anyone alive in there? Tony had never struck him as dangerous, but… if he stepped out with anything remotely like a rifle, Harry was going to run like a deer.
Half a dozen of them came out. One girl was in rain gear; the rest seemed to be dressed for swimming. Maybe that made a kind of sense. You couldn’t hope to stay dry in this weather. Harry recognized Tony, and Hugo Beck, and the broad-shouldered, broad-hipped girl who called herself Galadriel, and a silent giant whose name he’d never learned. They clustered at the gate, hugely amused.
Harry asked, “What’s it all about?”
Much of Hugo Beck’s fat had turned to muscle in the past three years, but he still didn’t look like a farmer. Maybe it was the expensive sandals and worn swim trunks; or maybe it was the way he lounged against the gate, exactly as Jason Gillcuddy the writer would lounge against his bar, leaving one hand free to gesture.
“Hammerfall,” said Hugo. “You could be the last mailman we ever see. Consider the implications. No more ads to buy things you can’t afford. No more friendly reminders from the collection agency. You should throw away that uniform, Harry. The Establishment’s dead.”
“The comet hit us?”
“Right.”
“Huh.” Harry didn’t know whether to believe it or not. There had been talk… but a comet was nothing. Dirty vacuum, lit by unfiltered sunlight, very pretty when seen from a hilltop with the right girl beside you. This rain, though What about the rain?
“Huh. So I’m a member of the Establishment?”
“That’s a uniform, isn’t it?” said Beck, and the others laughed.
Harry looked down. “Somebody should have told me. All right, you can’t feed me and you can’t transport me—”
“No more gas, maybe forever. The rain is going to wipe out most of the crops. You can see that, Harry.”
“Yeah. Can you loan me a hatchet for fifteen minutes?”
“Tony, get the hatchet.”
Tony jogged up to the farmhouse. Hugo asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
“Trim the roots off my walking stick.”
“What then?”
He didn’t have to answer, because Tony was back with the hatchet. Harry went to work. The Shire people watched. Presently Hugo asked again. “What do you do now?”
“Deliver the mail,” said Harry.
“Why?” A frail and pretty blonde girl cried, “It’s all over, man. No more letters to your congressman. No more PLAYBOY, No more tax forms or… or voting instructions. You’re free! Take off the uniform and dance!”
“I’m already cold. My feet hurt.”
“Have a hit.” The silent giant was handing a generously fat homemade cigarette through the gate, shielding it with Tony’s digger hat. Harry saw the others’ disapproval, but they said nothing, so he took the toke. He held his own hat over it while he lit it and drew.
Were they growing the weed here? Harry didn’t ask. But… “You’ll have trouble getting papers.”
They looked at each other. That hadn’t occurred to them.
“Better save that last batch of letters. No more Trash Day.” Harry passed the hatchet back through the bars. “Thanks. Thanks for the toke, too.” He picked up the trimmed sapling. It felt lighter, better balanced. He got his arm through the mailbag strap.
“Anyway, it’s the mail. ‘Neither rain, nor sleet, nor heat of day, nor gloom of night,’ et cetera.”
“What does it say,” Hugo Beck asked, “about the end of the world?”
“I think it’s optional. I’m going to deliver the mail.”
The Mailman: Two
Among the deficiencies common to the Italian and the U.S. postal systems are:
• inefficiency, and delays in deliveries,
• old-fashioned organization
• low efficiency and low salaries of personnel
• high frequency of strikes
• very high operational deficit
Carrie Roman was a middle-aged widow with two big sons who were Harry’s age and twice Harry’s size. Carrie was almost as big as they were. Three jovial giants, they formed one of Harry’s coffee stops. Once before, they had given Harry a lift to town to report a breakdown of the mail truck.
Harry reached their gate in a mood of bright optimism.
The gate was padlocked, of course, but Jack Roman had rigged a buzzer to the house. Harry pushed it and waited.
The rain poured over him, gentle, inexorable. If it had started raining up from the ground, Harry doubted he would notice. It was all of his environment, the rain.
Where were the Romans? Hell, of course they had no electricity. Harry pushed the buzzer again, experimentally.
From the corner of his eye he saw someone crouched low, sprinting from behind a tree. The figure was only visible for an instant; then bushes hid it. But it carried something the shape of a shovel, or a rifle, and it was too small to be one of the Romans.