Larry Niven - Lucifer's Hammer

Again she led the way, going through a hall to the front room of the house. The wide verandah was just beyond it. A pleasant room, Harvey decided. It was paneled in light-colored wood, with ranch-style furniture, not really very appropriate for such a massive house as this. There were photographs of dogs and horses on most of the walls, and a case of ribbons and trophies. mostly for horses, but some for cattle. “Where is everybody?” Harvey asked.

“I’m the only one here just now,” Maureen said.

Harvey pushed the thought firmly down into his unconscious, and tried to laugh at himself.

“The Senator got caught by a vote,” Maureen was saying. “He’ll catch the red-eye out of Washington tonight and get here in the morning. Dad says I’m to show you around. Want another drink?”

“No, thank you. One’s enough.” He put the glass down, then picked it up again when he realized he’d set it on a highly polished wood lamp-table. He wiped the water ring off with his hand. “Good thing the crew didn’t come up with me. Actually they’ve got some work to finish up, and I’d hoped we could get the footage on Senator Jellison tomorrow morning, but if he couldn’t be available tomorrow I’ve got the gear in the car. I used to be a fair cameraman. They’ll be here in the morning, and I thought I would use the evening to get acquainted with the Senator, find out what he’d like to talk about for the camera…” And I’m chattering, Harvey thought. Which is stupid.

“Care for the grand tour?” Maureen asked. She glanced at Harvey’s Roughrider trousers and walking shoes. “You won’t need to change. If you’re up to a tough walk, I’ll show you the best view in the valley.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

They went out through the kitchen and cut across the orange groves. A stream bubbled off to their left.

“That’s good swimming down there,” Maureen said. “Maybe we’ll have a dip if we get back early enough.”

They went through a fence. She parted the barbed wire and climbed through effortlessly, then turned to watch Harvey. She grinned when he came through just behind her, obviously pleased at his competence.

The other side of the fence was weeds and shrubs, never plowed or grazed. The way was steep here. There were small trails, made by rabbits or goats. They weren’t really suited for humans at all. They climbed several hundred feet until they got to the base of a great granite cliff. It rose sheer at least two hundred feet above them. “We have to go around to the left here,” Maureen said. “It gets tough from here on.”

Much tougher and I won’t make it, Harvey thought. But I will be damned if I’ll have a Washington socialite show me up. I’m supposed to be an outdoorsman.

He hadn’t been hiking with a girl since Maggie Thompkins blew herself up on a land mine in Vietnam. Maggie had been a go-get-’em reporter, always out looking for a story. She had no interest in sitting around in the Caravelle Bar and getting her material third- or fourth-hand. Harvey had gone with her to the front, and once they’d had to walk out from behind Cong lines together. If she hadn’t been killed… Harvey put that thought away, too. It was a long time ago.

They scrambled up through a cleft in the rocks. “Do you come up here often?” Harvey asked. He tried to keep the strain out of his voice.

“Only once before,” Maureen said. “Dad told me not to do it alone.”

Eventually they reached the top. They were not, Harvey saw, on a peak at all. They were at one end of a ridge that stretched southeastward into the High Sierra. A narrow path led up into the rock cliff itself; they’d come all the way behind it, so that when they got to its top they faced the ranch.

“You’re right,” Harvey said. “The view’s worth it.” He stood on a monolith several stories high, feeling the pleasant breeze blowing across the valley. Everywhere he looked there were more of the huge white rocks. A glacier must have passed through here and scattered the land with these monoliths.

The Senator’s ranch was laid out below. The small valley carved by the stream ran for several miles to the west; then there were more hills, still dotted with bungalow-size white stones. Far beyond the hills, and far below the level of the ranch, was the broad expanse of the San Joaquin. It was hazy out there, but Harvey thought he could make out the dark shape of the Temblor Range on the western edge of California’s central valley.

“Silver Valley,” Maureen announced. “That’s our place there, and beyond is George Christopher’s ranch. I almost married him, once — ” She broke off, laughing.

Now why do I feel a twinge of jealousy? Harvey wondered. “Why is it so funny?”

“We were all of fourteen at the time he proposed,” Maureen said. “Almost sixteen years ago. Dad had just been elected, and we were going to Washington, and George and I schemed to find a way so I could stay.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. Sometimes I wish I had,” she said. “Especially when I’m standing here.” She waved expressively.

Harvey turned, and there were more hills, rising higher and higher until they blended into the Sierra Nevada range. The big mountains looked untouched, never climbed by human. Harvey knew that was an illusion. If you stooped to tie your bootlaces on the John Muir Trail, you were likely to be trampled by backpackers.

The great rock they stood on was cloven toward the edge of the cliff. The cleft was no more than a yard wide, but deep, so deep that Harvey couldn’t see the bottom. The top of the rock slanted toward the cleft, and toward the edge beyond it, so that Harvey wasn’t even tempted to go near it.

Maureen strolled over there, and without a thought stepped across the cleft. She stood on a narrow strip of rock two feet wide, a three-hundred-foot drop in front of her, the unknown depth of the cleft behind. She looked out in satisfaction, then turned.

She saw Harvey Randall standing grimly, trying to move forward and not able to do it. She gave him a puzzled look; then her face showed concern. She stepped back onto the main rock. “I’m sorry. Do heights bother you?”

“Some,” Harvey admitted.

“I should never have done that — what were you thinking of, anyway?”

“How I could get out there if something happened. If I could make myself crawl across that crack—”

“That wasn’t nice of me at all,” she said. “Anyway, let me show you the ranch. You can see most of it from here.”

Afterward, Harvey couldn’t remember what they’d talked about. It was nothing important, but it had been a pleasant hour. He couldn’t remember a nicer one.

“We ought to be getting back down,” Maureen said.

“Yeah. Is there an easier way than the one we came up?”

“Don’t know. We can look,” she said. She led the way off to their left, around the opposite side of the rock face. They picked their way through scrub brush and along narrow goat trails. There were piles of goat and sheep droppings. Deer too, Harvey thought, although he couldn’t be sure. The ground was too hard for tracks.

“It’s like nobody was ever here before,” Harvey said, but he said it under his breath, and Maureen didn’t hear. They were in a narrow gully, nothing more than a gash in the side of the steep hill, and the ranch had vanished.

There was a sound behind them. Harvey turned, startled. A horse was coming down the draw.

Not just a horse. The rider was a little blonde girl, a child not more than twelve. She rode without a saddle, and she looked like a part of the huge animal, fitted so well onto him that it might have been an undergrown centaur. “Hi,” she called.

“Hi yourself,” Maureen said. “Harvey, this is Alice Cox. The Coxes work the ranch. Alice, what are you doing up here?”