Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [194]
There was more. The flood. Harry's story confirmed what Jellison already knew, the San Joaquin was a big inland sea, a hundred and more feet deep in places, water lapping to the edges of the hills. Almond groves torn to shreds by hurricanes. People dead and dying everywhere. There would be a typhoid epidemic for damned sure if something wasn't done, but what?
Mark Czescu came in. "Yes, sir, the people from Muchos Nombres came into town yesterday," he said. "Tried to buy food. Didn't get much. I guess they went back to their own place."
"Where they'll starve," Harry said.
"Invite them to the town meeting," Jellison said. "They've got land—"
"But they don't know anything about farming," Harry said. "I thought I'd mention that. Willing to work, but don't know what they're doing."
Arthur Jellison made another note. Harry's tales filled in a lot of missing information. "And you say Deke Wilson has things organized," he said. That was news, too, about an area outside the valley itself. Jellison decided to send Al Hardy down to see Wilson. Best to stay on good terms with neighbors. Hardy, and … well, Mark could take him on the motorcycle.
And there were four million other things to do; and deep down inside, Arthur Jellison was tired in a way that Washington had never tired him. Have to take it easier, he thought.
Cubic miles of water have been vaporized, and the rain clouds encircle the Earth. Cold fronts form along the base of the Himalaya massif, and rainstorms sweep through northeastern India, northern Burma, and China's Yunan and Szechwan provinces. The great rivers of eastern Asia, the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yang-tze and Yellow rivers, all begin along the Himalaya foothills. Floods pour down across the fertile valleys of Asia, and still the rains fall in the highlands. Dams burst and the waters move on until finally they meet the storm-lashed salt water driven inland by waves and typhoons.
As the rains fall across the Earth, more steam rises from the hot seas near Hammerstrikes; with the water go salt, soil, rock dust, vaporized elements of the Earth's crust. Volcanoes send more billions of tons of smoke and dust rising into the stratosphere.
As Hamner-Brown Comet retreats into deep space, Earth resembles a brilliant pearl with shimmering highlights. The Earth's albedo has changed. More of the Sun's heat and light are reflected back to space, away from the Earth. Hamner-Brown has passed, but the effects remain, some temporary like the tsunamis which still surge through the ocean basins, some on their third journey; hurricanes and typhoons that lash land and sea, the planetwide rainstorms that engulf the Earth.
Some effects are more permanent. In the Arctic the water falls as snow that will not melt for hundreds of years.
4: AFTER DOOMSDAY
Behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
And there went out another horse that was red; and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
The Revelation of Saint John the Divine
First Week: The Princess
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
H. Poincare
Maureen Jellison stood at the top of the ridge. Warm rain poured over her. Lightning flared in the mountains above. She stepped closer to the deep cleft in the granite knob. The surface was slippery. She smiled slightly, thinking of how her father had told her not to come up here alone even before …
It was difficult to finish that thought. She could not put a name to what had happened. The End of the World sounded trite, and for a little while it wasn't even true. Not yet. The world hadn't ended here at the ranch they now called the Stronghold. She couldn't see into the valley below because of the rain, but she knew what was there. A bustle of activity;