Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [86]
Maybe it wouldn't, and all the honkies would come home. "Won't they be surprised," Alim murmured.
"Huh?"
"The honkies. Won't they be surprised when they get home?"
"Yeah. Why just these places? If we hit just the richest houses in a lot bigger territory, we—"
"Shut up."
"Sure."
"I want us close to each other. If one of these places turns out to be full of pigs, we can call for help on the CB."
"Okay, sure."
Hammer of God. What if it was real? Where could they go? Not south, that was for sure. Politicians could talk about black-brown unity, but that was jive. Chicanos didn't like blacks, blacks hated chicanos. There were clubs where you had to kill a black to join down there in chicano turf, and they were tough mothers, and the further south you went the more there were.
"We take guns tonight," he said. "We take all the guns."
Harold flinched, and the truck swerved a little. "You think we'll get trouble?"
"I just want to be ready," Alim said. And if that fucking comet … Better to have guns and bullets, tonight and tomorrow. And take some food. He'd stash it himself, so as not to upset the brothers.
At least they'd be high up, if it came.
Patrolman Eric Larsen had come to Los Angeles from Topeka with a university degree in English and an urgent impulse to write for television and the movies. The need to support himself and a chance opportunity led him to the Burbank Police Department. He told himself it would be valuable experience. Look what Joseph Wambaugh had managed from a police career! And Eric could write; at least, he had a degree that said he could.
Three years later he still hadn't sold a script, but he had confidence, strange tales to tell and a considerably better understanding of both human nature and the entertainment industry. He'd also done a lot of growing up. He'd lived with a woman, been engaged twice and got over his inability to have casual friendships with girls, even though he hadn't lost a strong tendency to idealize women. It hurt Eric to see young runaways exploited by the street people. He kept thinking of what they might have become.
He'd also learned the police view of the world: All humanity is divided into three parts—cops, scumbags and civilians. He hadn't yet adopted an attitude of contempt toward civilians. They were the people he was supposed to protect, and perhaps because he was not a career policeman (although Burbank didn't know that) he could take his job seriously. The civilians paid him. One day he would be one of them.
He'd learned to curse the judicial system, while keeping enough literary objectivity to admit that he didn't know what to replace it with. There were people who could be "rehabilitated." Not many. Most scumbags were just that, and the best thing to do with them would be to take them out to San Nicholas Island and put them ashore. Let them victimize each other. The trouble was, you couldn't always tell which ones should be put away forever and which could fit back into the real world. He often got into arguments with his partners over that. His buddies on the force called him "Professor" and kidded his literary ambitions, and the diary he kept; but Eric got along with nearly everyone, and his sergeant had recommended him for promotion to Investigator.
The comet fascinated Eric, and he'd read all he could about it. Now it dominated the skies above. Tomorrow it would be past. Eric drove with his partner through strangely active Burbank streets. People were moving about, piling goods into trailers, doing things inside their houses. There was a lot of traffic.
"Be glad when that thing's