Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [242]
"Where does that leave us time to fight the New Brotherhood Army, Senator?"
Jellison sighed. "It doesn't, of course. And I don't suppose that Governor Montross—or whoever is controlling him—will be interested in sharing your salvage with us. It sounds as if he intends to take control of the whole state."
"Including our valley," George Christopher said.
"Yes, I expect so," Jellison said. "Well. Two governments we've discovered today. Colorado Springs, and the New Brotherhood Army. Plus the possibility of angels."
"So what the hell do I do?" Deke demanded.
"Be patient. We don't know enough," Jellison said. "Let's get some more data. General Baker, what can you tell us about the rest of the United States? The rest of the world for that matter?"
Johnny Baker nodded and leaned back to organize his thoughts. "We never did have much for communications," he said. "We lost Houston right after Hammerfall. Colonel Delanty's family was killed in that, by the way. I'd go easy on asking him about Texas."
Baker was pleased to see that the others still had enough sensitivity to show sympathy for Rick. From what he had seen out there, most of the world couldn't find tears to shed for a few individuals. There was too much death. "My Russian friends also lost their families," Johnny said. "The war started less than an hour after the Hammer struck. China hit Russia. Russia hit China. A few of our missile bases launched at China, too."
"Jesus," Al Hardy said. "Harvey, have you got anything that would measure radiation?"
"No."
They all looked alarmed. Harvey nodded agreement. "We're right in the fallout pattern," he said. "But I don't know what we should do about it."
"Is there anything we can do about it?" Hardy asked.
"I think it's safe," Johnny Baker said. "Rain settles fallout. And there's plenty of rain. The whole world looks like a big ball of cotton. We hardly ever saw the ground after the Hammer fell."
"You mentioned communications," Jellison prompted.
"Yes. Sorry. Well, we talked to Colorado Springs, but it was very short, not much more than exchanging IDs. We got a SAC base, once. In Montana. They hadn't any communications with anyone. And that's all in the U.S." He paused to let that sink in.
"As for the rest of the world, South Africa and Australia are probably in good shape. We don't know about Latin America. None of us knew enough Spanish, and when we did get contact with somebody down there, it didn't last long. We got some commercial radio broadcasts, though, and as near as we can make out they're having a revolution a week in Venezuela, and the rest of the continent's got political problems too."
Jellison nodded. "Hardly surprising. And of course their most important cities were on the coasts. I don't suppose you know how high the tsunamis got in the Southern Hemisphere?"
"No, sir, but I'd guess they were big," Johnny Baker said. "The one that hit North Africa was over five hundred meters high. We saw that, just before the clouds covered everything. Five hundred meters of water sweeping across Morocco … " He shuddered. "Europe's gone. Completely. Oh, and all the volcanoes in Central and South America let go. The smoke came right up through the clouds. The whole Ring of Fire has let go. You've got volcanoes east of you, somewhere out in Nevada, I think, and up north of here Mount Lassen and Mount Hood and maybe Rainier, a lot of them in northern California and Oregon and Washington."
He went on, and as he spoke they realized just how alone they were. The Imperial Valley of California: gone, with a Hammerstrike in the Sea of Cortez that sent, had to have sent, waves washing clear up to the Joshua Tree National Monument in the mountains west of Los Angeles. Scratch Palm Springs and Palm Desert and Indio and Twenty-nine Palms, forget about the valley of the Colorado River.
"And something must have hit in Lake Huron," Baker said. "We saw the usual spiral pattern of cloud with a hole in the center, just before everything turned