Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [307]
"Yes, sir." Hardy's voice was choked, almost inaudible. He bent closer.
"Al. Give my children the lightning again." The voice was clear, projecting through the hall, and for a moment Jellison's eyes were bright, but then he slumped into the chair, and they heard only a thin whisper that faded to nothing. "Give them the lightning again."
Epilogue
The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
Robert A. Heinlein
Tim Hamner stood at the top of a low hill. Paper crackled in his breast pocket when he shifted weight.
The long slope behind him buzzed with activity. Animal teams dragged harrows through the hard soil, while methanol-powered tractors worked with deep plows in adjacent fields. Myriads of white flecks gleamed in the soil behind the harrows. Enriched by mustard gas and the defeat of the New Brotherhood Army, this land would produce in abundance.
Three electric carts hummed along the road below. Another stood beside Tim Hamner, ready for his use. It was time to get back down the hill and go to work, but he stood a few moments longer, enjoying bright sunshine and the clear blue sky of spring. It was a glorious day.
Before him was the San Joaquin Sea. Much of what had been underwater was now a vast swampland. Directly ahead was a low island in the sea: the prisoner colony, where those of the Brotherhood who hadn't wanted to go into permanent exile worked to grow crops. Jakov's preserve. They called him "Comrade" now … and Comrade hadn't given up communism. But Marxist theory said that history followed definite stages, slave society to feudal, feudal to capitalist—and the Valley was barely past the slave stage of history. The earth would not be ready for communism for a long time. Meanwhile Comrade was willing to re-educate the prisoners.
Tim shrugged. Comrade and Hooker kept them organized, and they grew their own crops, and if they escaped nobody cared.
Further to his left, distant in the south, he saw the rising plumes of steam from the nuclear power plant. Closer, the work crews stringing power lines. In another two weeks they would have electricity in the Stronghold. Tim tried to imagine what that new life would be like, but it was difficult. The winter had been hard. Damned hard. Eileen's baby had almost died, and was still in the hospital. The infant mortality rate was above fifty percent, but it was slowly falling now; and Forrester's notes showed that when they recovered his books from Tujunga they would know how to make penicillin.
Forrester's notes. That was Tim's job, to transcribe the reels and reels of tape Dan Forrester had dictated before he died. They could have made insulin, maybe, if they hadn't committed themselves to saving the power plant; and of course Forrester had known that. The winter had cost them the life of their magician, as it had so many other lives. To learn that a friend had survived, that was always good. Tim patted his pocket.
The past could hit you across the back of the head, no warning, Whap! Tim Hamner patted the telegram in his pocket. Half of a comet! Kitt Peak had confirmed his sighting. He shook his head violently and laughed at himself. It was only the rain-wrinkled scrap of paper Harry the Mailman had brought yesterday, an IOU for $250,000.
Harry Stimms was alive! Now, what would he take for that IOU? A job at the power plant? Stimms must have mechanical skills, and the power plant boys owed Tim. Failing that … could he promote a pregnant cow? That'd be worth $250,000 easy. Tim gazed into the sky, enjoying himself.
A clear thin line crossed the sky, the tip of it moving forward even as he watched. For a second he still did not know what it was. Shout a warning! But what did we used to call that?
"C-contrail! Jet plane!"
They'd heard something from Colorado Springs that some of the aircraft had survived. Harvey and Maureen would have to come to terms with Colorado Springs when they got back from visiting a septic tank in Tujunga. But though they'd heard it on the radio, it was not the same as seeing