Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [173]
The black man said nothing. He seemed to shrink away from the group, and he sat very quietly with his son.
"Lucius Carter's all right," George Christopher said. "But Frank's right about the others. City people. Tourists. Hippies. Be here in droves pretty soon. We have to stop them."
I'm losing it, Jellison thought. Too much fear here, and Christopher's put his finger on it. He shuddered. A lot of people were going to die in the next months. A lot. How do you select the ones to live, the ones to die? How do you be the Chooser of the Slain? God knows I don't want the job.
"George, what do you suggest?" Jellison asked.
"Roadblock on the county road. We don't want to close it, we may need it. So we put up a roadblock and we turn people away."
"Not everyone," Mayor Seitz said. "Women and children—"
"Everybody," Christopher shouted. "Women? We have women. And kids. Plenty of our own to worry about. We start takin' in other people's kids and women, where do we stop? When our own are starving come winter?"
"Just who is going to man this roadblock?" Chief Hartman asked. "Who's tough enough to look at a car full of people and tell a man he can't even leave his kids with us? You're not, George. None of us are."
"The hell I'm not."
"And there are special skills," Senator Jellison said. "Engineers. We could use several good engineers. Doctors, veterinarians. Brewers. A good blacksmith, if there is any such thing in this modern world—"
"Used to be a fair hand at that," Ray Christopher said. "Shod horses for the county fair."
"All right," Jellison said. "But there are plenty of skills we don't have, and don't think we won't need them."
"Okay, okay," George Christopher said. "But dammit, we can't take in everybody—"
"And yet we must." The voice was very low, not really loud enough to carry through the babble and the thunder, but everyone heard it anyway. A professionally trained voice. "I was a stranger, and ye took me not in. I was hungry, and ye fed me not. Is that what you want to hear at Judgment?"
The room was still for a moment. Everyone turned to look at the Reverend Thomas Varley. Most of them attended his community church, had called him to their homes to sit with them when relatives died, sent their children with him on picnics and camping trips. Tom Varley was one of them, bred in the valley and lived there all his life except for the years at college in San Francisco. He stood tall, a bit thinner since his sixtieth birthday a year before, but strong enough to help get a neighbor's cow out of a ditch.
George Christopher faced him defiantly. "Brother Varley, we just can't do it! Some of us are likely to starve this winter. There's just not enough here."
"Then why don't you send some away?" Reverend Varley asked.
"It might come to that," George muttered. His voice rose. "I've seen it, I tell you. People with not enough to eat, not even enough strength to come get chow when it's offered. Brother Varley, you want us to wait until we got no more choices than the Donner party had? If we send people away now, they might find someplace they can make it. If we take them in, we'll all be looking next winter. It's that simple."
"Tell 'em, George," someone shouted from the far end of the meeting room.
George looked around at the sea of faces. They were not hostile. Most were filled with shame—fear and shame. George thought that would be the way he'd look to them, too. He went on doggedly. "We do something, and we do it right now, or I'll be damned if I'm going to cooperate! I'll take everything I have, all the stuff I brought up from Porterville today, too, and go home, and I can damned well shoot anybody who comes onto my place."
There were more murmurs. Reverend Varley tried to speak, but he was shouted down. "Damned right!" "We're with you, George."
Jellison's voice cut through. "I didn't say we shouldn't try to put up a roadblock. We were discussing