Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [140]
"I care both less and more than you think," she said. "It was my homeland, but it was not my country. Stalin killed my country. In any event we cannot go there now. We would land in the middle of a war, if we could find a place to land at all."
"We are officers of the Soviet Union, and this war is not over," Jakov said.
"Balls." They all turned toward Rick Delanty. "Balls," he said again. "You know damn well there's nothing you can do down there. Where would you go? Into China to wait for the Red Army? Or down into the fallout to wait for glaciers? For Christ's sake, Pieter, that war's not your war, even if you're crazy enough to believe it's still going on. It's over for you."
"So where do we go?" Jakov demanded.
"Southern Hemisphere," Leonilla said. "Weather patterns do not usually cross the equator, and most of the strikes were in the Northern Hemisphere. I believe we will find that Australia and South Africa are undamaged industrial societies. Australia would be difficult to achieve from this orbit. We would have little control over where we landed, and we would starve if we came down in the outback. South Africa—"
Johnny's laugh was bitter. Rick said, "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather stay here."
They all laughed. Baker felt the tension easing slightly. "Look," he said, "we could probably manage South America, and we wouldn't find much damage there, but why bother? We'd be four strangers, and none of us speaks the language. I suggest we go home. Our home. We can set down pretty close to where we aim for, and you'll be two strangers with native guides. And you know English."
"Things are pretty bad," Delanty said.
"Sure."
"So where?"
"California. High farming country in California. There won't be glaciers there for a long time."
Leonilla said nothing. Pieter said, "Earthquakes."
"You know it, but they'll be over before we can land. The shock waves must have triggered every fault there is. There won't be another earthquake in California for a hundred years."
"Whatever we do, it must be quickly," Pieter said. He pointed to the status board. "We are losing air and we are losing power. If we do not act quickly we will be unable to act at all. You say California. Will two Communists be welcome there?"
Leonilla looked at him strangely, as if she were about to say something, but she didn't.
"Better there than other places," Baker said. "We wouldn't want the South or the Midwest—"
"Johnny, there's going to be people down there who think this was all a Russki plot," Rick Delanty said.
"Yes. Again, more in the Midwest and South than in California. And the East is gone. What else is left? Besides, look, we're heroes, all of us. The last men in space." If he was trying to convince himself, it wasn't working.
Leonilla and Pieter exchanged glances. They spoke softly in Russian. "Can you imagine what the KGB would do if we came down in an American space capsule?" Leonilla asked. "Are the Americans such fools as well?"
Rick Delanty's reply was a soft, sad chuckle. "We're not in quite the same boat," he said. "I wouldn't worry about the FBI. It's the righteous patriotic citizens … "
Leonilla frowned the question.
"Well," Rick said, "what's to worry? We're coming down in a Soviet spacecraft plainly marked with a hammer and sickle and that big CCCP … "
"Better that than a Mars symbol," Johnny Baker said.
No one laughed.
"Hell," Rick said. "If we had any choice, that wouldn't be the world we'd land on. You'd think people would get together after this. But I doubt they will."
"Some will," Baker said.
"Sure. Look, Johnny, half the people are dead, and the rest will be fighting over what's left of the food. Strange weather ruins crops. You know that. A lot of the survivors won't get through another winter."
Leonilla shivered. She had known people who lived—barely—through the great famine in the Ukraine that followed Stalin's ascension to the throne of the czars.
"But if there's any civilization left down there, anybody who cares about what we've done, it'll be in California," Rick Delanty