Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [237]
Tim spotted two deer and a coyote, five jackrabbits and a lot of birds. Meat, if hunters could be spared. Nothing else in the pass. He swept the glasses on around, over the tops of the skylines and along the barren hillsides. It wasn't too different from looking for comets: You remember what things ought to look like, and search for anything different. Tim knew every rock on the hillsides by now. There was one shaped like a miniature Easter Island statue, and another that looked like a Cadillac. Nothing was on the hillsides that shouldn't be there.
He turned and looked down into the valley behind, and grinned again at his good fortune: better to be a guard on top of the ridge than down there breaking up rocks. "I expect the guards at San Quentin thought that, too," Tim said aloud. He'd taken to talking to himself lately.
The Stronghold looked good. Secure, safe, with greenhouses, and grazing herds and flocks; and there was going to be enough to eat. "I am one lucky son of a bitch," Tim said.
It came to him, as it often did, that he was far luckier than he deserved. He had Eileen, and he had friends. He had a secure place to sleep, and enough to eat. He had work to do, although his first scheme, to rebuild the dams above the Stronghold, hadn't worked out—no fault of his. He and Brad Wagoner had worked out new ways to generate electricity—always assuming they could get Outside and find the wire and bearings and other tools and equipment they'd need.
And books. Tim had a whole list of books that he wished for. He'd owned nearly all of them, back in a time that he barely remembered, a time when all he had to do if he wanted anything was to let someone know it, and let money do the rest. When he thought about books and how easy it had been to get them, his thoughts sometimes strayed further, to hot towels and the sauna and swimming pool, Tanqueray gin and Irish coffee and clean clothes whenever he wanted them … But those times were hard to remember. They were times before Eileen, and she was worth a lot. If it took the end of the world to bring them together, then maybe it was worth it.
Tim was sad only when he thought of life Outside, when he remembered the dead baby and the police and nurses working at the Burbank hospital. Those memories of driving past helpless people sometimes rose to haunt him, and he couldn't help wondering why he'd survived—more than survived; lived to find security and a lot more happiness than he'd ever expected …
Movement caught his eye. A truck was coming up the road. It was full of men, and Tim almost leaped down into the hut to call a warning. The air was clear of lightning except for the constant flashes up in the High Sierra; the little CB radio would work, but he wasn't supposed to use it more than necessary. It was damned tough hauling batteries up and down this hill, and it took precious gasoline to recharge them. He let the impulse pass. The truck had a way to go, there was time to examine it through the binoculars.
He didn't doubt that it was Deke Wilson's truck. He looked anyway. A single truck could carry considerable firepower, and a single such mistake could cost a score of lives and put the poor stuttering sentry back on the road without his balls.
It looked like Deke's truck, more crowded than usual; the truck bed was jammed with standing men. You wouldn't crowd an attack force together like that. One was a woman …
Those four: Why did they leap to the eye like that? One was a woman, and one was black, and two were white men. But the four seemed clumped together as if … as if in mutual distaste for the mortals around them. No, they didn't look like mortals. Tim shifted his elbows on the rock and studied elusively familiar faces through the binoculars …
But the truck was coming too close. Tim