“And the people at Muchos Nombres were coming to find you,” Harry said. “That was yesterday, before noon.”
“Never got here,” Jellison said. “Maybe they’re in town. Good land there? Anything planted?”
“Not much. Weeds, mostly,” Harry said. “But I have chickens. Got any chicken feed?”
“Chickens?” This guy was a gold mine of information!
Harry told him about the Sinanians and the Chicken Ranch. “Lots of chickens left there, and I guess they’ll starve or the coyotes will get them, so you might as well help yourself,” Harry said. “I want to keep a few. There was one rooster, and I hope he lives. If not, maybe I’ll have to borrow one…”
“You’re taking up farming?” Jellison asked.
Harry shuddered. “Good God, no! But I thought it’d be nice to have a few chickens running around the place.”
“So you’ll go back there—”
“When I finish my route,” Harry said. “I’ll stop at other places on the way back.”
“And then what?” Jellison asked, but he already knew.
“I’ll start over again, of course. What else?”
That figures. “Mrs. Cox, who’s available as a runner?”
“Mark,” she said. Her voice was disapproving; she hadn’t made up her mind about Mark.
“Send him to town to find out about these tourists from Muchos Nombres. They were supposed to have come looking for me.”
“All right,” she said. She went off muttering. They needed the telephones working again. Her daughter was talking about a telegraph line last night. There were plans in one of her books, and of course the wires were still around, the old telephone lines.
After she sent Mark off she made lunch. There was plenty of food just now: scraps from what they were canning, gleanings from the garden patches. It wouldn’t test long, though…
Harry had even been out of the valley. He traced the road on the map. “Deke Wilson’s on my route,” Harry said. “He’s organized about the way you are. About thirty miles southwest.”
“So how did you get back in?” Jellison demanded.
“County road—”
“That’s blocked.”
“Oh, sure. Mr. Christopher was there.”
“So how in hell did you get past him?” Jellison asked. Nothing would surprise him now.
“I waved at him, and he waved at me,” Harry said. “Shouldn’t he have let me by?”
“Of course he should have.” But I didn’t think he had that much sense. “Did you tell him all this?”
“Not yet,” Harry said. “There were some other people trying to talk to him. And he had his rifle, and four other big guys with him. It didn’t seem the proper time for a friendly chat.”
There was more. The flood. Harry’s story confirmed what Jellison already knew, the San Joaquin was a big inland sea, a hundred and more feet deep in places, water lapping to the edges of the hills. Almond groves torn to shreds by hurricanes People dead and dying everywhere. There would be a typhoid epidemic for damned sure if something wasn’t done, but what?
Mark Czescu came in. “Yes, sir, the people from Muchos Nombres came into town yesterday,” he said. “Tried to buy food. Didn’t get much. I guess they went back to their own place.”
“Where they’ll starve,” Harry said.
“Invite them to the town meeting,” Jellison said. “They’ve got land—”
“But they don’t know anything about farming,” Harry said. “I thought I’d mention that. Willing to work, but don’t know what they’re doing.”
Arthur Jellison made another note. Harry’s tales filled in a lot of missing information. “And you say Deke Wilson has things organized,” he said. That was news, too, about an area outside the valley itself. Jellison decided to send Al Hardy down to see Wilson. Best to stay on good terms with neighbors. Hardy, and… well, Mark could take him on the motorcycle.
And there were four million other things to do; and deep down inside, Arthur Jellison was tired in a way that Washington had never tired him. Have to take it easier, he thought.
Cubic miles of water have been vaporized, and the rain clouds encircle the Earth. Cold fronts form along the base of the Himalaya massif, and rainstorms sweep through northeastern India, northern Burma, and China’s Yunan and Szechwan provinces. The great rivers of eastern Asia, the Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yang-tze and Yellow rivers, all begin along the Himalaya foothills. Floods pour down across the fertile valleys of Asia, and still the rains fall in the highlands. Dams burst and the waters move on until finally they meet the storm-lashed salt water driven inland by waves and typhoons.
As the rains fall across the Earth, more steam rises from the hot seas near Hammerstrikes; with the water go salt, soil, rock dust, vaporized elements of the Earth’s crust. Volcanoes send more billions of tons of smoke and dust rising into the stratosphere.
As Hamner-Brown Comet retreats into deep space, Earth resembles a brilliant pearl with shimmering highlights. The Earth’s albedo has changed. More of the Sun’s heat and light are reflected back to space, away from the Earth. Hamner-Brown has passed, but the effects remain, some temporary like the tsunamis which still surge through the ocean basins, some on their third journey; hurricanes and typhoons that lash land and sea, the planetwide rainstorms that engulf the Earth.
Some effects are more permanent. In the Arctic the water falls as snow that will not melt for hundreds of years.
4
AFTER DOOMSDAY
Behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
First Week: The Princess
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
Maureen Jellison stood at the top of the ridge. Warm rain poured over her. Lightning flared in the mountains above. She stepped closer to the deep cleft in the granite knob. The surface was slippery. She smiled slightly, thinking of how her father had told her not to come up here alone even before…
It was difficult to finish that thought. She could not put a name to what had happened. The End of the World sounded trite, and for a little while it wasn’t even true. Not yet. The world hadn’t ended here at the ranch they now called the Stronghold. She couldn’t see into the valley below because of the rain, but she knew what was there. A bustle of activity; inventory of everything — gasoline, cartridges, needles and pins, plastic bags, cooking oil, aspirin, firearms, baby bottles, pots and pans, cement — anything that might help keep them alive through the winter. Al Hardy was going about it systematically, using Maureen and Eileen Hamner and Marie Vance as agents to call on every house in the valley.
“Snoopers. That’s what we are,” Maureen shouted to the wind and the rain. Her voice fell. “And it’s all so damned useless.”
The snooping didn’t bother her. If anything was necessary, if anything could save them, it would be Al Hardy’s careful work. It wasn’t the snooping, or those who tried to hide their possessions. They were fools, but that was a folly that did not disturb her. It was the others; the ones who welcomed her. They believed. They were utterly certain that Senator Jellison would keep them alive, and they were pathetically happy to see his daughter. They didn’t care that she had come to pry and snoop and perhaps take their possessions. They were only too glad to offer everything they had, freely, in exchange for a protection that did not exist.