Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [302]
"Another of the power workers spliced live wires. Thousands of volts, and he worked on it hot while mortar bombs fell around him. Baker's dead. They're still alive. And they need help. We need help. I'm going back." He couldn't look at Eileen as he said that.
He felt someone behind him. Al Hardy had climbed onto the podium. He came to the left side of the lectern and stood there with his hand held up for attention. When he spoke, it was with an orator's voice that rolled about the large room. "Thank you, Tim," he said. "You are persuasive. Of course you want to go back. But the question is, have we anything to gain? How many people are there at the nuclear plant? Because we have boats, and now we have food, and we can bring all of them here. It will not be hard to evacuate that plant, and I'm sure we will have no trouble getting volunteers for the job."
Harvey Randall came in from the hospital in time to hear Tim's report begin. He'd come in the back way, through the Mayor's office, and he found himself next to Maureen. When Tim told of what had happened to Baker, he was there, with his hand on her arm, but lightly. She wasn't going to faint or scream; she may have been crying, but even that wasn't obvious. And Harvey didn't want to be obtrusively present, not now.
He was thinking: Son of a bitch! Maureen was taking it better than Delanty. The black astronaut seemed ready to murder. Well, that figured. Baker's other two companions weren't in the room. Leonilla was operating on the gut-shot policeman, with Comrade helping her.
(They called him Comrade now. Brigadier Pieter Jakov was the last Communist, and proud of it, and it avoided the difficulty of his name.)
The Senator's face was ashen gray and his hands were clasped tightly in his lap. There went one of his plans, Harvey thought. It struck him, then: One prince was dead, and one was enthralled by a witch.
George Christopher wasn't alone. Marie stood with him: Marie, the only woman in the room in stockings and heels as well as skirt and sweater and simple jewelry; and she and George stood as a couple, not as two single people. Whenever anyone got too close to Marie or ogled her too suggestively, George's face clouded.
Three princes. One was killed by ogres. One was spellbound by a witch. The third was standing beside the princess, and the enemy had been defeated. The need for fighting men was not over, but it was no longer critical. Now the Stronghold needed builders—and that Harvey Randall could do. I'm crown prince now, he thought. Son of a bitch.
But Tim Hamner was calling for a new battle!
Harvey, fresh from his work with the crossbow, was thinking helplessly: Shut up, shut up! When Al Hardy came up to offer the power-plant personnel refuge at the Stronghold, Harvey wanted to cheer, and some of Hardy's audience did cheer. But Rick Delanty still looked like murder, and Tim Hamner …
"We won't leave," Tim said. "Use your boats to bring us men and guns and ammunition! Not for us to run away. We're not leaving."
"Be reasonable," Al Hardy said. His voice projected; it reached all corners of the hall. It projected warmth, friendliness, understanding: a politician's basic skill, and Al Hardy was well trained. Tim was outclassed. "We can feed everyone. We can use engineers and technical people. We lost people to the New Brotherhood, but we lost none of our food; we