Baker asked, “Shouldn’t we stop him?”
“How?” Price demanded.
Baker dropped it. None of them were ready to use the only way they had of stopping Laumer. “So how many will go with him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty or thirty of the construction crew. Maybe not so many. We worked like slaves to save this plant. I don’t think any of my operating people will leave.”
“So you can still run the plant.”
“I’m sure of that much,” said Price.
Johnny turned to the Mayor. “How about your people? Especially your cops?”
“I doubt any will go,” Bentley Allen said. “We had too damned much trouble getting here.”
“That’s good,” Baker said. He saw the look on the Mayor’s face. “That they won’t run. And of course you’re staying, Barry…”
The effect on Price was disturbing. He didn’t look nonchalant, or proud; he looked like a man in agony. “I have to stay,” he said. “That ticket’s already been paid for. No, you wouldn’t know. When that goddam Hammer hit, I could go look for somebody in Los Angeles, or stay here and try to save the plant. I stayed.” His jaw clenched. “So what do we do now?”
“I can’t give you orders,” Johnny said.
Price shrugged. “By me you can.” He looked to Mayor Allen and got a nod. “Far as I’m concerned, Senator Jellison is in charge of this state. Maybe he’s President. Makes more sense than the others.”
“You too?” Johnny asked. “How many Presidents have you heard about?”
“Five. Colorado Springs; Moose Jaw, Montana; Casper, Wyoming… anyway, I’ll take the Senator. Give us all the orders you want.”
Johnny Baker spoke carefully. “You didn’t understand me. I’ve got orders not to give you orders. Suggestions only.”
Price looked uncomfortable and confused. Mayor Allen and an assistant whispered together, then Allen said, “Doesn’t want the obligation?”
“Precisely,” Baker said. “Look, I’m on your side. We’ve got to keep this plant going. But I don’t control the Stronghold.”
Mayor Allen said, “You may be the highest-ranking—”
“Try to give the Senator orders? Me? Bullshit!”
“Just a thought, General. All right, feudal obligations work both ways,” Mayor Allen said. “At least they do if the King is Senator Jellison. So he wants to limit his obligations to us. So what suggestions do you have for us, General Baker?”
“I’ve given you some. Ways to build exotic weapons…”
Price nodded. “We’re working on them. Actually, it only took thinking of them. You know, we’ve worked on defenses here, not enough, I guess, but none of us ever thought of poison gas. Incendiaries we knew about, but we didn’t make enough. Or enough muzzle-loader cannon, either. I’ve got a crew on that right now. What else?”
“Lay in supplies. No water shortage, and you’ve got the power to boil it. There’s dried fish coming, and you can catch more. Get set for a siege. Our information is that the New Brotherhood is serious about taking over all of California, and very serious about wrecking this plant.”
“If Alim Nassor is involved, they’re serious,” Mayor Allen said. “Brilliant man, and determined as hell. But I don’t see his motive. He was never involved in any of the anti-industrial movements. Quite the opposite. ‘We’re just getting into the game, and now you say you’re shutting it down’ — that approach.”
“You’re forgetting Armitage,” Baker said. “Nassor and Sergeant Hooker together probably couldn’t hold this army together. Armitage can. It’s Armitage who wants the plant destroyed.”
The Mayor pondered. “The Los Angeles area used to be famous for funny religions…”
Tim was still hoping they wouldn’t have to bring Hugo in. He spoke for Hugo: “If Islam was a funny religion, go ahead and laugh, Mayor. They’re expanding that way. Join or get eaten, they assimilate everybody, one way or the other.”
“If the plant goes, they’ll never have another one,” Barry Price said. “They must be crazy.” Was he talking about the New Brotherhood or the Stronghold? Nobody asked.
But Baker stood up suddenly. “All right. We’re here, with our guns and Dr. Forrester’s notes. Tim, you go try on that wet suit. Maybe we can dig up some of what we need to fight with. I wish I knew how much time we’ve got.”
The policeman went up the slanting ladder slowly, carefully, with a fat sandbag balanced on his shoulder. He was sandyhaired and square-jawed, and his uniform was wearing through. Mark followed him with another sandbag. They added the bags to the barricade atop the cooling tower. By now Tim’s radio was nearly walled in.
The man turned to confront Mark. He was Mark’s own size, and angry. “We did not desert our city,” he said.
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Mark resisted the urge to back up. “I only said most of us—”
“We were on duty,” the policeman said. “I know at least a couple of us were watching TV if we could get to one. The Mayor was. I wasn’t. First I knew, one of the girls was yelling that the comet had hit us. I stayed at my post. Then the Mayor came through collecting us. He herded us all into elevators and down to the parking garage and packed the women and some of the men into half a dozen station wagons that were already loaded with stuff. He put us cops on motorcycles for an escort and we headed for Griffith Park.”
“Did you have any—”
“I had no idea what was happening,” Patrolman Wingate said. “We got up into the hills, and the Mayor told us the comet had done some damage and we could ride it out here and go clean up the mess afterward. Oh, boy.”
“Did you see the tidal wave?”
“Oh, boy. Czescu, there just wasn’t anything left to clean up. It was all foam and mist down there, and some of the buildings were still sticking up, and Johnny Kim and the Mayor were yelling at each other and I was almost next to them, but what with the thunder and lightning and the tidal wave I couldn’t hear a word. Then they got us together and headed north.”
The policeman stopped. Mark Czescu respected his silence. They watched four boats leaving with Robin Laumer and part of his construction crew. There had been a shouting match when Laumer tried to claim some of the supplies, but the men with guns — including Mark and the Mayor’s police — had won their point.
“We went through the San Joaquin in four hours,” the policeman said, “and let me tell you, that was tricky driving.
We had the sirens, but we spent as much time off the road as on. We had to leave one of the wagons. We got here and it was already over the hubcaps, and that dike was a solid wall. We packed stuff from the wagons on our backs over the levees in the rain. When we’d done that, Price put us to work on the levees. He worked us like donkeys. Next morning it was an ocean out there, and it was six hours more before I got a shower.”
“Shower.”
The policeman turned to look at Mark. “What?”
“You said it so casually. Shower. A hot shower. Do you know how long… ? Skip it. All I ever said was, most of us had to do some running.”
The policeman’s nose almost touched Mark’s. It was narrow, prominently bridged, a classic Roman nose. “We did not run. We were in the right place to put the city back together again afterward. Goddammit, there wasn’t anything left! There’s nothing left but this power plant, which the Mayor says is officially part of Los Angeles. We’re here now. Nobody’s going to hurt it.”
“All right.”
The four boats were dwindling with distance. A few of the remaining construction men had climbed the levee to watch them go — wistfully, perhaps. “I expect they’ll be fishermen now,” Mark said.
“Try to imagine how little I care,” the policeman said. “Let’s get to work.”
Horrie Jackson cut the motor and let the boat drift to a stop. “Far as I can tell, Wasco is just under us,” he said. “If it’s not, there ain’t much I can do about it.”