Footfall by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle Page B

group of middleclass survivalists unwilling to break away from Los Angeles and their not inconsiderable incomes.
    All this time they had been meeting, every Thursday night after the dinner hour, like clockwork. Tonight was Monday; they had left work early, and Isadore was getting hungry; the dinner hour should have been just beginning. But the terrible strangeness of this night did not derive from that. Isadore Leiber sought for what it was that was bothering him, and it came, not in strangeness but in familiarity, as he reached for a cigarette.
    Four years ago he’d given up smoking for the last time. He’d given it up, but he borrowed from his friends at every opportunity. Giving up smoking became his lifestyle. It got to where his friends couldn’t stand him: the sight of a familiar face triggered his urge to smoke; he would roll pipe tobacco in toilet paper if he had to. But he was giving up smoking, yes indeed. And he was getting ready for the end of civilization, yes indeed. But he’d been doing it for well over a decade, and that had become his lifestyle. Tonight was weird. No laughter, no complaining about fools in Congress.
    Tonight they meant it.
    “I hate the timing,” George said. “Corliss is about to graduate, and the rest of the kids won’t like missing the tail end of the school year, and if they do, I don’t.”
    There were echoes of agreement. “I can’t go,” Isadore said.
    The noise stopped. Jack McCauley said, “What do you mean, can’t?”
    “I can’t quit my job. I can’t take leave, either. George said it, it’s timing. Travel agencies get hectic with summer coming on.”
    Jack made a sound of disgust. George asked, “Sick leave?”
    “Mmm … a couple of weeks.”
    “Wait till, oh, the tenth of June. Jack, this makes sense.” George jumped the gun on an automatic protest. “We’re bound to forget something. We’ll keep Ia posted. Ia, you take your two weeks sick leave just before the ETI’s reach Earth. You come up then. Two weeks later you’ll damn well know whether you want to go back to the city.”
    “It’s still costing us a pair of strong arms,” Jack groused.
    Isadore decided he liked the idea. “I’ll ask Clara if she wants to take the kids up early. Maybe we’ll want to keep them in school as long as we can.”
    “All right, it can’t be helped,” Jack said. “But the rest of us are going, right?” He snowballed on before there could be an answer. “Bill and Gwen are already up at the Enclave. We’ve got the second cistern system running, and he’s got the top deck poured on the shelter. Bill says the well has to be cleaned out, but we can do that with muscle when we get there.” He pursed his lips in a familiar gesture. “One thing, Ia. You come up a full week before the ETI’s get here. Cut it any finer, and you may not make it at all. When people really believe in that ship, God knows what they’ll do.”
    “If the Soviets give us that long,” George said.
    Jack frowned. “For that matter, if there’s any alien ship at all. Maybe this is something the Russians cooked up.”
    They all shrugged. “No data,” Isadore said. “But you’d think the President would know.”
    “And he’d sure tell us, right?” Jack said. “Ia, are you sure you want to wait?”
    “Yeah, I have to.” Christ, he’s right, Isadore thought. Who the flick knows what’s happening? Aliens, Russians — a nuclear war could ruin your whole day. “I think Clara will go up early,” he said. “I’ll have to ask her.”
    The others nodded understanding.
    When they’d first started the Enclave, they made a decision. One vote per adult, but all the votes of a family would be cast by one person. The theory was simple. If a family couldn’t even agree on who represented it, what could they agree on?
    There’d been a problem at first, because Isadore thought Clara ought to vote rather than him, but she didn’t get along with Jack, or maybe Jack didn’t get along