Eileen brought in a full bottle of Old Fedcal and poured for everyone. No one refused. She filled Hugo Beck’s glass and he gulped it eagerly.
And he’ll stay drunk the rest of his life if he can find booze, Harry thought.
“Are they starving or just hungry?” Christopher asked.
“Not even hungry,” Hugo said. “Their doctor — the rabbity guy — says they find enough vitamin pills, and I ate well myself.” He saw their faces close up and cried, “No! I only ate human meat twice! At the rituals! Most of what they fed us came from supermarkets, but there were some animals, too. They don’t need cannibalism. They only do it when there’s new recruits. It’s a ritual.”
“A damn useful ritual,” said Harvey Randall. Heads turned toward him. “Look at Hugo. They’ve circumcised his soul. It’s a mark on him that anyone can recognize. That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it, Hugo?”
Hugo nodded.
“Suppose I told you it isn’t visible at all?” Hugo looked puzzled. Harvey said, “Right. You know it’s there.”
“Some of them like the taste,” Hugo whispered, but they heard him.
Deke Wilson spoke in a voice filled with terror. “And I’m next! They’re coming for me in four days!”
“Perhaps we can stall them.” Jellison looked up from the letter. “This is an interesting document. There is a proclamation of authority by Acting Governor Montross. Then there is a letter to me, inviting me to discuss the terms under which my organization can be integrated into his own. It’s politely worded, but quite peremptory, and although he doesn’t threaten us directly, there is discussion of unfortunate incidents in which various groups refused to recognize his authority, and had to be treated as rebels.” Jellison shrugged. “But there’s no mention of cannibals or Angels of the Lord.”
“You don’t mean… don’t you believe me, Senator?” Hugo Beck asked in despair.
“I believe you,” Jellison said. “We all do.” He looked around the room and got nods from the others. “Incidentally, this gives us two weeks, and mentions Deke’s White River area as well as our own. That may be simply to get Deke off his guard, but it may also mean they’ve delayed their attack—”
“I think they won’t fight you just yet,” Hugo Beck said. “They’d just found out about… another place. I think they’ll go there first.”
“Where?” Hardy demanded.
Visibly, Hugo considered trying to bargain, and decided against it. “The San Joaquin Nuclear Project. They just found out the plant’s still operating. It set them crazy.”
Johnny Baker spoke for the first time. “I didn’t know there was a nuclear plant in the San Joaquin Valley.”
“It wasn’t on line yet,” Harvey Randall said. “It’s still under construction. I think they got it to the testing stage before Hammerfall. There wasn’t much publicity, because of the environmentalists.”
The kosmonauts spoke in excited Russian. Baker and Delanty joined in, speaking much more slowly. Then Baker said, “We were looking for an operating power plant. We thought Sacramento might have survived. Where is this San Joaquin plant? We’ve got to save it.”
“Save it?” George Christopher’s face was gray. “Can we save ourselves? Dammit, I don’t believe it! How could that cannibal army grow so fast?”
“Mohammed,” Harvey Randall said.
“What?”
“When Mohammed began he had five followers. In four months he controlled Arabia. In a couple of years he controlled half the world. And the New Brotherhood has the same kind of growth incentive.”
Mayor Seitz shook his head. “Senator… I just don’t know. Can we stop that outfit? Maybe we ought to head for the High Sierra while we’ve got the chance.”
There was a long silence.
The Magician
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Dan Forrester dozed in front of the woodburning kitchen stove. His feet had been washed and bandaged. He’d taken a shot of insulin, hoping that it was still good, fearing that it wasn’t. It was very hard to stay awake.
Maureen Jellison and Mrs. Cox fussed over him, bringing him clean clothes — dry clothes! — and pouring him hot tea. It was very pleasant to sit and feel safe. He could hear voices from the other room. Dan tried to follow the conversation, but he kept falling asleep, then jerking himself awake.
Dan Forrester had spent his life working out the rules of the universe. He had never tried to personalize it. Yet when the Hammer fell, a small bright core of anger had burned in Dan Forrester.
He had forgotten that anger, the anger he felt when he first learned what it meant to be a diabetic. The rules of the universe had never favored diabetics. Dan had long since accepted that. Methodically he set out to survive anyway.
Every day he was still alive. Tired to death, hiding from cannibals, hungrier every day, fully aware of what was happening to his insulin and to his feet, he had kept moving. The steady warmth of anger had never relaxed… but something within him had relaxed now. Physical comfort and the comfort of friendship let him remember that he was tired, and ill, and his feet had turned to broken wood. He fought it because of what he could hear from the next room:
Cannibals. New Brotherhood Army. An ultimatum for the Senator. Thousand men… they’ve taken Bakersfield, could double their numbers… Dan Forrester sighed deeply. He looked up at Maureen. “It sounds like a war is coming. Is there a paint store here?”
She frowned down at him. Others had gone mad after less than Dan Forrester had faced. “Paint store?”
“Yes.”
“I think so. There was a Standard Brands at the edge of Porterville. It was flooded, I think.”
Dan tried to discipline his thoughts. “Perhaps they kept things in plastic bags. What about fertilizer? You have that? Ammonia, for instance. They use it for—”
“I know what they use it for,” Maureen said. “Yes, we have some. Not enough for the crops.”
Forrester sighed again. “It may not get to the crops. Or maybe we can use it where we’ll be able to grow crops later. Were there many swimming pools? A swimming-pool supply store?”
“Yes, there was one of those. It’s underwater now—”
“How deep?”
She looked at him sharply. He looked terrible, but his eyes were quite sane. He knew what he was asking. “I don’t know. It will be on Al Hardy’s maps. Is it important?”
“I think so — ” He stopped abruptly. He was listening. In the other room they were talking about a nuclear power plant. Forrester stood up. He had to hold onto the chair. “Would you help me go in there, please?” His voice was apologetic, but somehow there was no way to refuse him. “Oh — one more thing. A filling station. I’ll need some drums of grease solvent.”
Maureen, mystified, helped Forrester down the hall toward the living room. “I don’t know. We have a filling station here, but it was very small. There were bigger ones in Porterville, of course, but they were under the dam and were flooded pretty badly. Why? What can you make with all that?”
Forrester had reached the living room and went in hanging on Maureen’s arm. Johnny Baker stopped talking and stared at him. So did the others. “Sorry to interrupt,” Forrester said. He looked around helplessly for a chair.
Mayor Seitz was nearest to him and got up from the couch. He went back to the library for a folding chair while Forrester took the Mayor’s place on the couch. Forrester blinked rapidly at the others. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Did someone ask where the San Joaquin Nuclear Plant is?”