Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [215]
"I tried."
"You tryin' to get me killed?"
"I tried, Alim. I even went to that Mabe! She's got nothin' but a cunt, that woman, but I went to her, thinkin' I could ease my mind. She turned me down. Set Swan on me. Said it was his turn. She sleeps with three a night, any prick that asks, but she pushes me off. Me!"
"She wants your head fucked up." Alim began to see the right way to go. "She likes fights. She don't know who stuck that knife in James, so she's gonna get us all to kill each other. She fucks with Elliot and tells Rob she was raped. She don't spread her legs for you so you'll fight Chick. If I say so, she's got six men want my blood. Jackie, what do I do?" Get him to think with his brain now, instead of his dick.
"What we need," Jackie said, "is somethin' to take the brothers' minds off women." He said that as if he thought it was funny and sad at the same time.
"That'd take some doin'."
"Alim, where we going? What happens to us?"
"Hard to say." He could talk with Jackie, but he couldn't tell anybody that he didn't know what they'd do, where they'd go. And Jackie was smart. Jackie had been big in the Panthers once, political like Alim. They'd worked together, Jackie to stir up the ghetto until Alim got what he wanted from City Hall, then quiet things so it looked like Alim's doing. Get Jackie thinking, but don't tell him, don't tell anybody, that Alim Nassor was scared and wet and miserable and all fucked up and just about out of control …
"Black power's finished," Jackie was saying. "Not enough blacks, not enough power."
"Yeah, I'd got that figured out," Alim said.
"And there ain't enough of us," Jackie continued. "Not enough to hold on anywhere. Chick says it'll take a couple of acres each to live on. A hundred acres could keep us alive, but it won't. Not enough of us know farming. Need people to do some of the work. Two acres for each one of them, too. Takes a big spread, and we can't hold a big spread—"
"We can't hold a little one," Alim said.
"Right on. So what we have to do is link up, find a honky outfit we can work with. Politics, not blood." Jackie was staring off into the night, his voice quiet, but Alim could feel it, Jackie had been brooding about this a long time. "Damn system's been smashed," Jackie said. "What we always wanted, system's gone, got rid of the pigs and City Hall and the rich bastards … and it don't do us any good at all, 'cause there ain't enough of us."
"Shit. I brought out all I could," Alim said. "You sayin' I didn't?"
"Naw, you did all you could," Jackie said. "Not your fault it wasn't enough. Alim, step up here and look down."
Through the drizzle there was a blur of light. It had to be a campfire, somebody's campfire, glowing beside the shoreline to the north.
"I see better than you," Jackie said, "so maybe you don't see that it's two fires. Two. How many people does it take before it's worth making two fires?"
"A lot. Think they saw ours?"
"Naw. Nobody's come up this way. And they don't give a shit whether somebody sees them or not. Think about that."
Power. That group didn't have to hide. It had power. "A posse? After us? Naw, we haven't gone north of here, nobody up that way has any reason to be after us."
"Maybe this'll take Chick's mind off killin' me," Jackie said.
"How you gonna distract me? You saw those fires and didn't come tell me."
"I had to keep watch. And nobody's come up here. I watched."
He'd been scared of Chick. "All right You stay here. You watch. I'll send Gay back with the binoculars."
In gray morning light Jackie came down the south side of the hill. Alim already had his people up and their gear stowed, and the brothers stood around waiting with guns uncomfortable in their hands.
Jackie went first to Chick and Cassie. Alim didn't hear what they said, but Chick had a shotgun in his hand, and he didn't use it. Then Jackie turned aside and came to report.
"They're up. And they're organized.