Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [213]
Then things really went to hell. Nothing to eat, no place to go. Nobody wanted blacks. What were they supposed to do, starve?
Alim Nassor sat cross-legged in the rain, half dozing, remembering. There had been a crazy world, with laws drawn up by gibbering idiots, and unbelievable luxuries: hot coffee, steak dinners, dry towels. Alim wore a coat that fit him perfectly: a woman's mink coat, as wet as any sponge. None of the brothers had anything to say about that. Once again, Alim Nassor had power.
There were feet in his field of view: stolen boots burst at the seams, the soles worn thin by walking. Alim looked up.
Swan was a lightweight who carried all manner of sharp things on his person. He'd looked lean as a dancer, cool and dangerous, when Alim went to him with the burglary proposition. Now he looked half starved and diffident. He said, "Jackie been messing with Cassie again. Cassie don't like it. I think she told Chick."
"Shit." Alim stood up.
"We should kill that Chick," Swan said.
"Now you listen good." Alim was dismayed at the lack of force in his voice. He was tired, tired. He leaned close to Swan and spoke low, letting the threat show. "We need Chick. I'd kill Jackie before I killed Chick. And I'd kill you."
Swan backed up. "Okay, Alim."
Alim savored that. Swan hadn't gone for a blade. He'd backed off. Alim still had power. "Chick's the biggest, strongest brother we got, but that isn't the reason," Alim said. "Chick's a farmer. A farmer, you got that? You want to do this the rest of your life? Man, we were on foot for ten days, did you like that? There's gotta be a place for us somewhere, but it don't matter if we can't farm—"
"Let somebody else do the fucking work," Swan said.
"And how do you know if they do it right?" Alim demanded. "We ..." He was on the verge of letting desperation show. "Where's Chick?"
"By the fire. And Jackie isn't."
"Cassie?"
"With Chick."
"Good." Alim walked down toward the fire. It felt good, to know he could turn his back on Swan and nothing was going to happen. Swan needed him. They all needed him. None of the rest could have got them this far, and they all knew it.
The first week after Hammerfall it rained all the time. Then it dwindled off to a drizzle, and that went on and on until nobody could stand it and still it went on. Now, four weeks after the Hammer of God, it drizzled more often than not, and it always rained, hard, at least once every day.
Today it had rained three times, and the drizzle kept on. The rain was hard on everybody. It rasped nerves. It rotted feet in their boots. Everything was hopelessly wet, and people could be killed for a dry place. The drizzle stopped, almost, at midnight. Now everyone was huddled around the fire under a sheet-plastic lean-to. Tomorrow Alim might regret letting them use gas for a fire, but shit, they'd probably run out of road before the truck they'd ripped off in Oil City ran out of gas. Most roads ended at a low spot, underwater, and you had to backtrack for miles to find a way around a stretch only a few dozen yards across. Crazy.
Where the roads did get across low spots there was often a roadblock, farmers with guns.
And they needed a fire. The gasoline had dried out enough wood to make it burn, but it smoked horribly; twenty brothers and five sisters were all crouched in a crescent, upwind they hoped, under a billowing plastic sheet, while the smoke curled around and sometimes sought them out. Alim heard laughter and was glad.
It was bad to have women in a gang like this. Worse to have no women. Alim wondered if he'd made a mistake, but it was too late now. Shit. Alim Nassor's mistakes could kill them all, and that, if you liked, was power.
They'd come down into the valley with eighteen brothers, no women. The people they'd met had been mostly white, mostly starving, mostly unable to fight. Alim's band had looted for food and dry places, and killed where they had to. When they met blacks, they recruited. There were damn few blacks this far north, and most were farmers, and some didn't want