Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [204]
"Of what?"
"Of whatever we are. He's a man up here, Harv. He wouldn't be, down there. I saw the way you looked at him and Janie. They're still children to you. Down there you'd make them into children again. You'd make them feel like kids, useless. Well, up here Andy knows he's not useless. We all depend on him. Up here he's doing something important, he's not just a cog in a survival machine."
"Survival machine." Yeah, Harvey thought. That's what we've got at the Senator's Stronghold. A survival machine and a damned good one. "At least it's a pretty good chance at survival."
"Sure," Gordie said. "Think about it, Harvey. The world ends. Hammerfall. Shouldn't things be different after that?"
"Things are different. Lord God, how different do you want? We just took four kids and strung them up in front of City Hall. We're busting our balls to stay alive through winter, and it's a chancy thing, but we'll make it—"
"And what would we do down there?" Gordie asked.
Harvey thought that one over. He wasn't sure. He didn't know if Hardy would let that many into the Stronghold. A troop of Boy Scouts, yes; but this warrior band? Maybe they belonged up here: a new breed of mountain dwellers. "Dammit, that's my son, and he's coming with me."
"No, he's not, Harv. He's not your anything. He's his own man, and you haven't got any way to make him come with you. We're not going back, Harv. None of us. But you can stay."
"Stay and be what?"
"Whatever you like."
The offer wasn't even tempting. What would he do up here? And who would he be? Harvey got up and lifted his pack. "No. Mark?"
"Yeah, Boss."
"You coming or staying?"
Mark had been unnaturally quiet since they arrived. "Going back, Harv. Joanna's down there, and I don't think she'd care much for this. Me neither. It can get pretty old, camping out all the time. You?"
"Let's go," Harvey said. He looked around sadly. There wasn't anything up here that belonged to Harvey Randall.
The tsunamis have done their work. Around the shores of the Atlantic there is no trace of the works of man. The very shorelines have been changed. The Gulf of Mexico is a third larger than before; Florida is a chain of islands, Chesapeake Bay has become a gulf. Deep bays indent the western coast of Africa.
On land the craters no longer glow visibly but they continue to change the weather. Volcanoes pour out lava and smoke. Hurricanes lash the seas.
Rain falls everywhere. The work of the Hammer is not yet completed.
Fourth Week: The Wanderers
There is one fact that will bring notable relief to many survivors: the grim problems facing them will at least be completely different from those that have been tormenting them in past years. The problems of an advanced civilization will be replaced by those proper to a primitive civilization, and it is probable that a majority of survivors may be made up of people particularly adapted to passing quickly from a sophisticated to a primitive type of existence …
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age
The woods were lovely, dark and deep, but they dripped. Dan Forrester sighed for a warm, dry world now lost, and he kept moving. His five layers of clothing ran water in pulses as he moved. It was no drier under the trees. It was no wetter, either, and not much darker; and here the infrequent snow flurries never got through. Dan did not really expect to live long enough to see the Sun again.
As he walked he munched on a bit of not-quite-spoiled fish. One of his books had told how to tease fish from deep holes in streams, and to Dan's surprise it had worked. So had the snares he painstakingly set for rabbits. He had never had enough to eat since leaving Tujunga, but he hadn't starved, and that, he reflected, was something to set him apart from a lot of others.
Four weeks since Hammerfall. Four weeks of moving steadily northward. He had lost his car hours after