Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [160]
Harry shrugged. "Got my route to finish."
The others looked guilty. "Reckon we can run you down to where the road's out," Jack Miller said. "Maybe a work crew got in already."
"Thanks."
There wasn't any work crew. More mud had slid off the hillside during the night.
"Wish you'd stay," Jack said. "Can use the help."
"Thanks. I'll let people in town know how it is with you."
"Right. Thanks. Good luck."
"Yeah."
It was just possible to pick his way across the crack, over the mudslide. The heavy mailbag dragged at his shoulder. It was leather, waterproof, with the plastic over the top. Just as well, Harry thought. All that paper could soak up twenty or thirty pounds of water. It would make it much harder. "Make it hard to read the mail, too," Harry said aloud.
He trudged on down the road, slipping and sliding, until he found another sapling to replace the one he'd left at the Millers' place. It had too many roots at the bottom, but it kept him upright.
"This is the pits," Harry shouted into the rain-laden wind Then he laughed and added, "But it's got to beat farm work."
The rain had stopped Harry's watch. He thought it was just past eleven when he reached the gate of the Shire. It was almost two.
He was back in flat country now, out of the hills. There had been no more breaks in the road. But there was always the water and the mud. He couldn't see the road anywhere he had to infer it from the shape of the glistening mud-covered landscape. Soggy everywhere, dimly aware of the chafe spots developing beneath his clinging uniform, moving against the resistance of his uniform and the mud that clung to his boots, Harry thought he had made good time, considering.
He still hoped to finish his route in somebody's car. It wasn't likely he'd find a ride at the Shire, though.
He had seen nobody while he walked along the Shire's split-log fence. Nobody in the fields, nobody trying to save whatever crops the Shire was growing. Were they growing anything? Nothing Harry recognized; but Harry wasn't a farmer.
The gate was sturdy. The padlock on it was new and shiny and big. Harry found the mailbox bent back at forty-five degrees, as if a car had hit it. The box was full of water.
Harry was annoyed. He carried eight letters for the Shire and a thick, lumpy manila envelope. He threw back his head and hollered, "Hey in there! Mail call!"
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 usual: 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