“I forgot who said it,” Jellison said. “It’s true enough. No country is more than three meals away from a revolution. Hear that rain? It’s all over the country. Lowlands, river bottoms, little creeks, any low places in the roads, they’ll be underwater, just like the whole San Joaquin Valley’s going to be underwater. Highways, railroads, river travel, it’s all gone. There’s no transportation and not much communication. Which means the United States has ceased to exist. So have most other countries.”
“But…” She shivered, although it wasn’t cold in the room. “There have to be places that aren’t damaged. Cities not on the coast. Mountain areas that don’t have earthquake faults. They’ll still be organized—”
“Will they? How many places can you think of that have food enough to last for weeks?”
“I never thought about it—”
“Right. And it isn’t weeks, it’s months,” Jellison said. “Kitten, what do people eat? The United States has about thirty days’ food at any given time. That’s everything — warehouses, supermarkets, grain elevators, ships in harbor. A lot of it was lost. A lot more is perishable. And there isn’t going to be diddly for a crop this fall. Do you expect anybody who’s got barely enough to eat to come out and help anybody else?”
“Oh—”
“And it’s worse than that.” His voice was brutal now, almost as if he were trying to frighten her. “Refugees everywhere. Anyplace there’s enough to eat, there’ll be people after food. Don’t blame them. We could have a million refugees on the way here right now! Maybe here and there the police and local governments try to survive. How do they manage when the locusts come? Only they’re not locusts, they’re people.”
“But… what do we do?” Maureen cried.
“We survive. We live through it. And we build a new civilization. Somebody’s got to.” His voice rose. “We can do it. How soon depends on how far we get knocked down. All the way to savagery? Bows and arrows and stone clubs? I’ll be damned if we can’t do better than that!”
“Yes, of course—”
“No ‘of course’ about it, Kitten.” Jellison sounded very old, but his voice held determination and strength. “It depends on what we can keep. Keep right here. We don’t know what’s left anywhere else, but here we’re in pretty good shape if we can just hang on. Here we’ve got a chance, and by God we’re going to take it.”
“You’ll do it,” Maureen said. “It’s your job.”
“Think of anybody else who can?”
“I wasn’t asking a question, Dad.”
“Then remember that, when I’ve got to do something I don’t much like.” He set his jaw hard. “We’re going to make it, Kitten. I promise you, the people of this valley are going to live through this and come out civilized.” Then he laughed. “I do go on. It’s time for bed. Lot of work to do tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“You don’t need to wait for me. I’ll be along. Git.”
She kissed him and left. Arthur Jellison drained the whiskey glass and set it down with a long look at the bottle. He sat staring into the empty fireplace.
He could see how a civilization could be built from the wreckage Lucifer’s Hammer had left. Salvage work. Plenty to salvage in the old seacoast cities. The water hadn’t destroyed everything. New oil wells could be drilled. The railroads could be repaired. These rains wouldn’t last forever.
We can rebuild it, and this time we’ll do it right. We’ll spread beyond this one damned little ball, get human civilization out all through the solar system, to other stars even, so no one thing can knock us out again.
Sure we can. But how do we live long enough to start rebuilding? First things first, and right now the problem is getting this valley organized. Nobody’s going to help. We have to do it ourselves. The only law and order will be what we can make, and the only safety Maureen and Charlotte and Jennifer will have is what we can put together. I used to be responsible to the people of the United States, and particularly to the people of California. Not anymore. Now it’s my family, and how can I protect them?
That boils down to how do I keep this ranch? and maybe I can’t do that, not without help. Whose help? George Christopher for one. George has a lot of friends. Between us we can do all right.
Arthur Jellison got wearily to his feet and blew out the kerosene lamp. In the sudden dark the pounding rain and crashing thunder sounded even louder. He could see his way to the bedroom through lightning flashes.
There was a light under Al Hardy’s door; It went out after Hardy heard the Senator get into bed.
Sanctuary
Harvey Randall woke to strident sounds. Someone was screaming at him.
“Harvey! Help!”
Loretta? He sat up suddenly, and banged his head on something. He’d been asleep in the TravelAII, and the voice wasn’t Loretta’s. For a moment he was bewildered. What was nightmare, what was real?
“Harvey!” The shouting voice was real. And, oh, God, Loretta was dead.
It was raining, but there was no rain around the TravelAII. He opened the door and blinked in the dim light. His watch said 6:00. Morning or evening?
The TravelAII was parked under a rickety shed, no more than a roof with posts to hold it up. Marie Vance stood at the far end. Joanna was holding the shotgun on her. Mark was shouting and Marie was screaming for Harvey.
None of it made sense. Half-light, driving rain and howling wind, lightning and thunder, the screaming woman and Mark shouting and Joanna with the shotgun — dream or real? He made himself move toward the others. “What is this, Mark?”
Mark turned and saw him. His face lighted with a smile. That faded too, like Harvey’s dream that it was a dream, like—
“Harvey! Tell him!” Marie shouted.
He shook the cobwebs from his head. They wouldn’t go. “Mark?” he said.
Marie jerked like a puppet. Harvey stared in astonishment as she did it again. She seemed to be fighting an invisible enemy. Then, suddenly, she relaxed and her voice was calm, or nearly so. “Harvey Randall, it’s time you woke up,” she said. “Or don’t you care about your son? You’ve buried Loretta, now think about Andy.”
He heard himself speak. “What is all this?”
They both talked at once. The need for understanding, rather than any other emotion, made Harvey speak sharply. “One at a time! Mark, please. Let her talk.”
“This — man wants to abandon our boys,” Marie said.
“I don’t. I’m trying to tell you—”
She cut Mark off. “The boys are in Sequoia. I told him that. Sequoia. But he keeps taking us west, and that’s not the right way.”
“All of you shut up!” Joanna shouted. There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and it stopped Mark before he could say anything else. He’d never heard Joanna shout before. Not like that.
And she had the shotgun.
“Where are we going, Mark?” Harvey asked.
“To Sequoia,” Mark said. “That’s a big place, and she doesn’t know where—”
“I do,” Harvey said. “Where are we?”
“Simi Valley,” Mark said. “Will you listen to me?”
“Yes. Talk.”