“You don’t understand. I thought I’d found something. Life consists of doing one’s job. I could believe that. I really could. But I don’t have a job. I am thoroughly and utterly useless.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is true. It always was true. Even before… before. I was just existing. Sometimes I could be happy being a part of someone else’s life. I could fool myself, but that wasn’t any good either, not really. I was just drifting along, and I didn’t see much point in it, but it wasn’t too bad. Not then. But the Hammer came and took even that way. It took everything away.”
“But you’re needed here,” Varley said. “Many of these people depend on you. They need you—”
She laughed. “For what? Al Hardy and Eileen do the work. Dad makes the decisions. And Maureen?” She laughed again. “Maureen makes people unhappy, Maureen has fits of black depression that spread like the plague. Maureen sneaks around to see her lover and then destroys the poor son of a bitch by not speaking to him in public because she’s afraid she’ll get him killed, but Maureen doesn’t even have the guts to stop fucking. How’s that for worse than useless?”
There was no reaction to her language, and she was ashamed of herself for trying to… to what? It didn’t matter.
“Isn’t it true that you do care for something?” Varley asked. “This lover. He is someone whose life you want to share.”
Her smile was bitter. “Don’t you understand? I don’t know! And I’m afraid to find out. I want to be in love, but I don’t think I can be, and I’m afraid even that’s gone. And I can’t find out because my job is to be the crown princess. Maybe I ought to marry George and be done with it.”
This time he did react. He seemed surprised. “George Christopher is your lover?”
“Good God, no! He’s the one who’ll do the killing.”
“I doubt that. George is a pretty good man.”
“I wish… I’d like to be sure of that. Then I could find out. I could find out if I can still love anyone. And I want to know, I want to know if the Hammer took that, too. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you. There’s nothing you can do.”
“I can listen. And I can tell you that I see a purpose to life. This vast universe wasn’t created for nothing. And it was created. It didn’t just happen.”
“Did the Hammer just happen?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Then why?”
Varley shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps to shock a Washington socialite enough to make her take a strong look at her life. Maybe only that. For you.”
“That’s crazy. You don’t believe that.”
“I believe it has a purpose, but that purpose will be different for each of us.”
“We’d better go in. I’m freezing.” She turned and walked rapidly past him to the stone ranch house. I’ll see Harvey tonight, she thought. And I’ll tell him. Everything. I have to. I can’t stand this any longer.
Journey’s End
In the imminent dark age people will endure hardship, and for the greater part of their time they will be laboring to satisfy primitive needs. A few will have positions of privilege, and their work will not consist in… cultivating the soil or in building shelters with their own hands. It will consist in schemes and intrigues, grimmer and more violent than anything we know today, in order to maintain their personal privileges…
Ding!
The kitchen timer went off, and Tim Hamner put down his book and picked up the binoculars. He had two sets of binoculars in the guard shack: the very powerful day glasses he now carried, and a much larger night glass that didn’t magnify so much, but gathered a lot of light. They’d have been perfect field-viewing astronomical glasses, except that there were always clouds and Tim rarely saw the stars.
The hut had been vastly improved. Now there was insulation, and more wood frame; it could even be heated. It contained a bed, a chair, a table and some bookshelves — and a rifle rack at the door. Tim slung the Winchester 30/06 over his shoulder on the way out, and only momentarily felt amusement at the thought: Tim Hamner, playboy and amateur astronomer, armed to the teeth as he ventured forth to search out the ungodly!
He climbed up onto the boulder. A tree grew next to it. From any distance away he’d be invisible in the foliage. When he reached the top he braced himself against the tree and began his careful scan of the terrain below him.
Trouble Pass appeared on no maps. It was Harvey Randall’s name for the low spot in the ridges surrounding the Stronghold. Trouble Pass was the most likely route for any one invading on foot, and Tim scanned it first. He’d looked into it no more than fifteen minutes before; the timer was set for fifteen-minute intervals on the theory that nobody, on foot or horseback, could get over the pass and out of sight in less than fifteen minutes.
There was nobody there. There never was, these days. In the first weeks, walkers had tried to come in that way, and they’d be spotted, and Tim would use the bugle to sound an alarm; ranchers on horseback would go out to meet the intruders and turn them away. Now the pass was always clear. Still, it had to be watched.
Tim spotted two deer and a coyote, five jackrabbits and a lot of birds. Meat, if hunters could be spared. Nothing else in the pass. He swept the glasses on around, over the tops of the skylines and along the barren hillsides. It wasn’t too different from looking for comets: You remember what things ought to look like, and search for anything different. Tim knew every rock on the hillsides by now. There was one shaped like a miniature Easter Island statue, and another that looked like a Cadillac. Nothing was on the hillsides that shouldn’t be there.
He turned and looked down into the valley behind, and grinned again at his good fortune: better to be a guard on top of the ridge than down there breaking up rocks. “I expect the guards at San Quentin thought that, too,” Tim said aloud. He’d taken to talking to himself lately.
The Stronghold looked good. Secure, safe, with greenhouses, and grazing herds and flocks; and there was going to be enough to eat. “I am one lucky son of a bitch,” Tim said.
It came to him, as it often did, that he was far luckier than he deserved. He had Eileen, and he had friends. He had a secure place to sleep, and enough to eat. He had work to do, although his first scheme, to rebuild the dams above the Stronghold, hadn’t worked out — no fault of his. He and Brad Wagoner had worked out new ways to generate electricity — always assuming they could get Outside and find the wire and bearings and other tools and equipment they’d need.
And books. Tim had a whole list of books that he wished for. He’d owned nearly all of them, back in a time that he barely remembered, a time when all he had to do if he wanted anything was to let someone know it, and let money do the rest. When he thought about books and how easy it had been to get them, his thoughts sometimes strayed further, to hot towels and the sauna and swimming pool, Tanqueray gin and Irish coffee and clean clothes whenever he wanted them… But those times were hard to remember. They were times before Eileen, and she was worth a lot. If it took the end of the world to bring them together, then maybe it was worth it.
Tim was sad only when he thought of life Outside, when he remembered the dead baby and the police and nurses working at the Burbank hospital. Those memories of driving past helpless people sometimes rose to haunt him, and he couldn’t help wondering why he’d survived — more than survived; lived to find security and a lot more happiness than he’d ever expected…
Movement caught his eye. A truck was coming up the road. It was full of men, and Tim almost leaped down into the hut to call a warning. The air was clear of lightning except for the constant flashes up in the High Sierra; the little CB radio would work, but he wasn’t supposed to use it more than necessary. It was damned tough hauling batteries up and down this hill, and it took precious gasoline to recharge them. He let the impulse pass. The truck had a way to go, there was time to examine it through the binoculars.