“Huh?”
“Diapers, dear, diapers. Might last us past the fallout. I hope. And I grabbed two packs of playing cards, too. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“Don’t be hypocritical, my love. Hang onto the kids and be sure that door is locked.” He drove for several hundred yards, with his head hanging out. “Here!”
The going got very rough. Hugh drove in low gear and very carefully.
A black hole in the side of the mountain loomed up suddenly as he turned. “Good, we’ve made it! And we drive straight inside.” He started in and tromped on the brake. “Good Lord! A cow.”
“And a calf,” Barbara added, leaning out her side.
“I’ll have to back out.”
“Hugh. A cow. With a calf.”
“Uh…how the hell would we feed her?”
“Hugh, it may not burn here at all. And that’s a real live cow.”
“Uh…all right, all right. We’ll eat them if we have to.” There was a wooden wall and a stout door about thirty feet inside the mouth of the mine tunnel. Hugh eased the car forward, forcing the reluctant cow ahead of him, and at last crunched his side of the car against the rock wall to allow the other door to open.
The cow immediately made a break for freedom; Barbara opened her door and thereby stopped her. The calf bawled, the twins echoed him.
Hugh squeezed out past Barbara and the babies, got past the cow and unfastened the door, which was secured by a padlock passed through a hasp but not closed. He shoved the cow’s rump aside and braced the door open. “Kick on the ‘up’ lights. Let it shine in.”
Barbara did, then insisted that cow and calf be taken inside. Hugh muttered something about, “Noah’s bloody ark!” but agreed, largely because the cow was so very much in the way. The door, though wide, was about one inch narrower than bossie; she did not want to go through it. But Hugh got her headed that way, then kicked her emphatically. She went through. The calf followed his mother.
At which point Hugh discovered why the cow was in the tunnel. Someone—presumably someone nearby—had converted the mine to use as a cow barn; there were a dozen or so bales of hay inside. The cow showed no wish to leave once she was at this treasure.
Cartons were carried in, two cartons were dumped and a twin placed in each, with a carton of cat and kittens just beyond and all three weighted down to insure temporary captivity.
While they were unloading Barbara’s survival gear from the trunk, everything suddenly became noonday bright. Barbara said, “Oh, heavens! We aren’t through.”
“We go on unloading. Maybe ten minutes till the sound wave. I don’t know about the shock wave. Here, take the rifle.”
They had the car empty with jeep cans of water and gasoline out but not yet inside when the ground began to tremble and noise of giant subways started. Hugh put the cans inside, yelled, “Move these!”
“Hugh! Come in!”
“Soon.” There was loose hay he had driven over just back of the car. He gathered it up, stuffed it through the door, went back and scavenged, not to save the hay but to reduce fire hazard to gasoline in the car’s tank. He considered backing the car out and letting it plunge down the hill. He decided not to risk it. If it got hot enough to set fire to the car’s gas tank—well, there were side tunnels, deep inside. “Barbara! Do you have a light yet?”
“Yes! Please come inside. Please!”
He went in, barred the door. “Now we move these bales of hay, far back. You carry the light, I carry the hay. And mind your feet. It is wet a bit farther back. That’s why we shut down. Too much pumping.”
They moved groceries, livestock (human, bovine, and feline) and gear into a side tunnel a hundred yards inside the mountain. They had to wade through several inches of water on the way but the side tunnel was slightly higher and dry. Once Barbara lost a moccasin. “Sorry,” said Hugh. “This mountain is a sponge. Almost every bore struck water.”
“I,” said Barbara, “am a woman who appreciates water. I have had reason to.”
Hugh did not answer as the flash of the second bomb suddenly brightened everything even that deep inside—just through cracks of a wooden wall. He looked at his watch. “Right on time. We’re sitting through a second show of the same movie, Barb. This time I hope it will be cooler.”
“I wonder.”
“If it will be cooler? Sure, it will. Even if it burns outside. I think I know a place where we can go down, and save us, and maybe the cats but not the cow and calf, even if smoke gets pulled in.”
“Hugh, I didn’t mean that.”
“What did you mean?”
“Hugh, I didn’t tell you this at the time. I was too upset by it and didn’t want you to get upset. But I don’t own a manual gear shift car.”
“Huh? Then whose car is that outside?”
“Mine. I mean my keys were in it—and it certainly had my stuff in the trunk. But mine had automatic shift.”
“Honey,” he said slowly, “I think you’ve flipped your lid a little.”
“I thought you would think so and that’s why I didn’t say anything until we were safe. But Hugh—listen to me, dear!—I have never owned a manual shift car. I didn’t learn to drive that far back. I don’t know how to drive manual shift.”
He stared thoughtfully. “I don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I. Darling, when you came away from your house, you said, ‘She’s in there. Grace.’ Did you mean you saw her?”
“Why, yes. She was nodding over the television, half passed out.”
“But, dearest, Grace had been nodding over the television. But you put her to bed while I was making crêpes Suzettes. Don’t you remember? When the alert came, you went and got her and carried her down—in her nightgown.”
Hugh Farnham stood quite still for several moments. “So I did,” he agreed. “So I had. Well, let’s get the rest of this gear moved. The big one will be along in about an hour and a half.”
“But will it be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hugh, I don’t know what has happened. Maybe this is a different world. Or maybe it’s the same one but just a tiny bit changed by—well, by us coming back, perhaps.”
“I don’t know. But right now we go on, moving this stuff.”
The big one came on time. It shook them up, did not hurt them. When the air wave hit, it shook them up again. But without casualties other than to the nerves of some very nervous animals—the twins by now seemed to enjoy rough stuff.
Hugh noted the time, then said thoughtfully, “If it is a different world, it is not so very different. And yet—”
“Yet what, dear?”
“Well, it is some different. You wouldn’t forget that about your own car. And I do remember putting Grace to bed early; Duke and I had a talk afterwards. So, it’s different.” Suddenly he grinned. “It could be importantly different. If the future can change the past, or whatever, maybe the past can change the future, too. Maybe the United States won’t be wholly destroyed. Maybe neither side will be so suicidal as to use plague bombs. Maybe—Hell, maybe Ponse will never get a chance to have teen-age girls for dinner!” He added, “I’m damn’ well going to make a try! To see that he doesn’t.”
“We’ll try! And our boys will try.”
“Yes. But that’s tomorrow. I think the fireworks are over for tonight. Madame, do you think you can sleep on a pile of hay?”
“Just sleep?”
“You’re too eager. I’ve had a long hard day.”
“You had had a long hard day the other time, too.”
“We’ll see.”
23
They lived through the missiles, they lived through the bombs, they lived through the fires, they lived through the epidemics—which were not extreme and may not have been weapons; both sides disclaimed them—and they lived through the long period of disorders while civil government writhed like a snake with a broken back. They lived. They went on.
Their sign reads:
FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD
TRADING POST & RESTAURANT
BAR
American Vodka
Corn Liquor
Applejack
Pure Spring Water
Grade “A” Milk
Corned Beef & Potatoes
Steak & Fried Potatoes
Butter & some days Bread
Smoked Bear Meat
Jerked Quisling
(by the neck)
Crêpes Suzettes to order.
!!!!Any BOOK Accepted as Cash!!!!
DAY NURSERY
!!FREE KITTENS!!
Blacksmithing, Machine Shop, Sheet Metal Work—
You Supply the Metal
FARNHAM SCHOOL OF CONTRACT BRIDGE
Lessons by Arrangement
Social Evening Every Wednesday
WARNING!!!
Ring Bell. Wait. Advance with your Hands Up. Stay on path, avoid mines. We lost three customers last week. We can’t afford to lose YOU. No sales tax.
Hugh & Barbara Farnham & Family
Freeholders
High above their sign their homemade starry flag is flying—and they are still going on.
Robert A. Heinlein, Farnham's Freehold
(Series: # )
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