Richter 10

Chapter 10 THE FAILED RIFT

“What do ya think, Doc?” Burt Hill asked as he guided the helo through the gloom up the steep side of Mendenhall to the shelf on which the Foundation stood. “Exactly like ya left it.”

“It’s the sweetest sight I’ve seen in two long weeks.” Crane drank in the sight of the grounds, the mosque. The ruby laser lines welcomed him back from a trip to hell in the outside world. It was Tuesday night, election night, the night that was supposed to have marked his triumph. Instead he’d had to sneak back into LA in disguise lest camheads recognize him and go on the attack. The first thing he’d done when the helo was far from the City and over open country was throw off that disguise.

He turned in his seat and looked full at Burt, whose face had a warm glow from the ruddy light rising from the Foundation. “How many have I lost?” he asked in little more than a whisper.

“A couple. Everybody else is hanging on. They feed you okay in that Tennessee jail?”

He waved the question away. The local police had stuck him in the Memphis city jail early on October 31 when the quake had failed to materialize on the previous day. He’d been transferred to the Shelby County jail two days later and held without bond on felony fraud, charged with reckless endangerment of millions of lives. He was only thankful that the FPF hadn’t gotten involved. He’d sat it out, all the charges miraculously disappearing this morning, election morning. He had apparently served Mr. Li’s purposes, so he could be set free.

“You look skinny to me, Doc. I’m gonna make sure you get something in you before the night’s over. And I don’t mean rum. Solid food.”

Food in jail? Crane didn’t remember eating … or not eating. “I was thinking in jail, Burt. Time passed.”

The helo rose over the shelf, then banked down toward the mosque through buffeting crosswinds. “Is Sumi here?” Crane asked.

“Nobody’s seen him since it all came apart,” Hill said, flashing a concerned glance at Crane.

“We hear he’s got a cushy administrative job with the National Academy of Science. Sounds like blood money to me, a payoff.”

“Give him the benefit of the doubt,” Crane said just as Hill set the helo down gently about thirty feet from the door of the mosque. “Sumi’s been a good friend.”

Hill only grunted.

Crane hated to think that any of the people near him had been treacherous, but his time in jail had given him opportunity to think, to put it all together. The paths along which his thoughts had led were thorny … his final destination a mean and barren place.

“Newcombe still here?” He was out of the helo, walking fast.

“Far as I know.” Hill hurried to catch up with Crane. “Wondered when you’d get around to asking.”

Crane hit the wristpad on the P fiber, his line to the tectonicist. “Where are you, Danny Boy?” he asked.

“Crane?” came the startled response. “Are you out?”

“I’m down,” Crane said, “but I’m not out. Where are you people hiding?”

“We’re in the briefing room watching election returns.”

“Well, I haven’t voted yet. I think I’ll join you.”

He padded out and walked into the mosque, his breath catching at the sight of the globe. God, it was good to be home. When he’d been in jail, he’d spent the first day or two contemplating suicide, but the Foundation and all its unfinished work pulled him back. He wasn’t through yet. Despite Mr. Li. Despite the other people who’d betrayed him and the cause. There was so much to do and he’d barely started. He might be broke, he might be a pariah, but he still had his brain and all that beautiful, beautiful data he’d collected. Besides, death wasn’t an option. It would end the pain that was his heritage and the sole origin of consciousness. His pain could be relieved only by experiencing his pain fully.

He’d lost everything, had taken the worst, and was still on his feet. He knew now that nothing could stop him or turn him aside. There was power in that insight.

He hurried through the globe room then, and hit the theaterlike briefing room at a trot. Fifty heads turned toward him; a hundred pairs of eyes focused exclusively on him. He’d either get them or lose them right here and now.

Smiling, Crane waved and hurried down the aisle to take the stage. The huge screen behind him ran a collage of coverage from twenty different sources, always changing, always devoted completely to the election.

A “Vote Now” light was flashing at the bottom of the screen. Crane logged on via the pad and entered his voter’s code. He accessed, pushed one button, then transmitted.

“Straight Yo-Yu ticket!” he announced loudly to the audience, scattered laughter coming back to him. He could see by the constantly tallying numbers on the board that Liang had won the major national races. Interestingly, though, Yo-Yu had made considerable inroads in local elections, which the teev analysts were downplaying as a fluke.

Crane held his arm high above his head, made a fist, and shook it. “I will fight anyone who has the guts to walk up here and tell me to my face that we’re through.” He looked around. “I’m still alive, so I’m not through. You’re still sitting here. If you’re through, get out. I don’t want to see you again.”

He waited. No one left. “Here’s what I can do: if we cut worldwide ops and hunker down, I can keep us going for about ten to twelve months with everyone at full salary. That gives us another year to get respectable again. We gathered a great deal of information before the government pulled the plug. Now we can put it to good use.

“My areas of interest are twofold: getting the globe online and getting a blanket reading on the tectonics of southern California. To that end I am reassigning all our field personnel to in-state sites.”

He walked toward the stairs at the end of the stage. “If you still work for me, get to it. Don’t sit around here.” He forked his thumb at the screen. “Somebody turn that damned thing off.”

He took the stairs down from the stage as almost everyone left the room. Lanie sat in the first row, smiling up at him, confidence still strong in her eyes. Newcombe was walking toward him from several rows back. Interesting, Crane thought, that the two hadn’t been sitting together.

Lanie came up and gave him a quick hug. “Welcome back,”

“I appreciate all you did in trying to get me out of jail,” he said. “I heard you were dogged.”

“I just hope it wasn’t too horrible for you.”

He smiled. “I had some very personable cellmates in the county jail,” he said, loving the liveliness in her eyes. “They taught me how to make a shiv out of a spoon.”

“I figured they’d throw away the key with you,” Newcombe said, moving closer and offering his hand.

Crane shook it. “I did a structural analysis of the building the first day I was there. On the second day I issued a report through the lawyer Lanie sent in saying the building was unsafe and should be condemned. The lawyer sent the report to every state agency in Tennessee, plus all the legit media. Then he filed a class action suit on behalf of the inmates. By the third day the cops were ready to get rid of me. Could you two join me for a few minutes? I want to talk about what happened.”

They nodded, Crane noticing that Lanie was carefully keeping distance between her and Newcombe. They walked to the globe room. Burt Hill joined them with a faux-chicken sandwich for Crane.

“Stay with us,” Crane said, as Hill literally fed a piece of the sandwich into Crane’s mouth.

“How long since you’ve had a decent night’s sleep?” Hill asked.

“I’ll get one tonight,” Crane answered, chewing, wondering what was happening between Dan and Lanie.

“I’ve got something for you,” Newcombe said. He pulled an envelope out of the cinched waist of his trousers and handed it to Crane.

Crane opened it, pulling out a check made out to the Foundation in the amount of half a million dollars. It was drawn on a Liang Int account out of Beijing.

“It’s a royalty check on EQ-eco,” Dan said. “As promised, it’s for the Foundation.”

“And we can use it,” Crane said, handing the check to Hill, who juggled the sandwich to get it into his overalls pocket. “I’m glad … and surprised to see that you haven’t moved on. I’m sure you’ve had offers.”

“Yeah … some. So far you’re still the best job in town.”

“What my ex-roommate is trying to tell you,” Lanie said, “is that after his little tirade about the Nation of Islam, he’s in as much disrepute as the Foundation.”

Crane looked at Newcombe. “I want you to know I don’t blame you for any of that.”

“I’m not going to stop talking.”

“Fair enough,” Crane said. “Just keep me out of it.”

“Done.”

“That’s it?” Lanie said. “Everything’s in ruins and you two simply move on?”

“Politics is a shifting breeze,” Crane said. “It’s not real, not substantial. I remember times before Mr. Li, and I remember tunes before that. I’m still here. Most of them are gone. As for Dan, he’s a man of integrity.”

Hill stuffed another piece of tasteless sandwich into Crane’s mouth as he sat on a chair in front of the computer banks. Lanie and Newcombe also sat, rolling into a loose circle.

Crane swallowed, waving off the offer of another bite. “Talk to me. What … exactly happened?”

“They continued to use tape of me with Brother Ishmael,” Newcombe said. “Liang Int and government officials decided to go on the attack against NOI, talking openly about some unnamed conspiracy between the two of us, making everyone look guilty of something.”

“Me … it was fraud. But those charges depended upon us actually being frauds, the quake not occurring,” Crane said. “Why would they take a chance like that?”

“They didn’t take no chances,” Hill said. “When the President read that message he knew there wasn’t going to be no damned earthquake. He was too cocky.”

“Then where did we go wrong and how did they know about it?”

Newcombe reached for Crane’s sandwich, but Hill pulled it away. “Maybe the government listened to the other geologists and tectonicists who came down and said we were crazy.”

“I’m tellin’ you,” Hill said, “Gideon was surer than that.”

“Where does that leave us?” Crane asked.

Lanie had been quiet, listening, but Crane could tell she wanted to say something. Finally she spoke.

“Think about this for a minute,” she said. “It’s been making me crazy ever since it happened. The only thing we predicted on, really, were the stress readings on the failed rift. Everything else certainly pointed to a potential quake, and still does. It’s the stress readings that were out of line.”

“Equipment failure?” Crane asked.

“No,” Hill said. “We tested the spike two days ago in the Foundation’s compression chamber. It reads true.”

“Rules it out, then,” Crane said. “We fed the Reelfoot readings directly into the Foundation’s computers.”

“Not exactly,” Newcombe said, pointing to his wrist. “We fed into my pad, which fed into the computer in the van. After all the tests at all the sites were completed, I uploaded everything into the Foundation’s computers at the same time from the van.”

“Two transmissions,” Crane said. “Maybe there was a glitch in the transfer. Do you normally doublecheck data feed?”

“Not if human intervention isn’t a factor,” Lanie said. “Machine to machine we only check file size.”

Crane frowned and looked at Newcombe. “Is the file still in your pad?”

Newcombe nodded.

“Let’s have it, then,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’ll match up your files with the Foundation’s. If they’re the same we rule out the stress readings as a factor.”

Newcombe removed the three-inch-wide pad, tossing it to Crane, who bobbled it with his bad hand, the thing falling to the floor. Lanie retrieved it.

“What’s the filename?” she asked while attaching the interface to one of her globe computers.

“Reelfoot.”

She typed it in, the file coming up on screen as she scanned the index for the Foundation file.

“Put them up next to each other,” Crane said. They rolled their chairs to get a better angle on the screen.

Numbers scrolled beside one another: material density numbers, material type, tensile strength, degrees of dilation. The lists were long, with a separate list for each type of material the spike had touched. The last number in each line was PSI—pounds per square inch. These were the stress numbers that showed exactly how much strain the material was taking.

“Well,” Crane said, “everything seems to be—whoa! What’s this? Just pull the stress numbers from the two files.”

Everything disappeared except for the stress numbers. “Do you see anything?” Crane asked.

“At the thousands place,” Newcombe said, “each number on the Foundation’s computer is one number higher than those on my pad.”

“You’re right,” Lanie said, excited. “With higher stress readings, no wonder we came up with the wrong conclusion. How did this happen?”

“Only two ways,” Hill said, “It’s either a glitch or somebody changed the data on purpose—and I’ll be damned if I can think of a glitch that would affect a whole series of numbers so selectively.”

“Well no one else got near them except me,” Newcombe said. “I loaded it all myself.”

“Yeah,” Hill said. “It was right around the time you were puttin’ together that paper of yours, wasn’t it, Doc Dan?”

“Yes it was, Burt,” Newcombe said, angry. “Do you find some particular significance in the timing?”

“Since you ask me, I’ll tell ya,” Hill said, putting the sandwich on the console, then on the floor when Lanie scowled disapprovingly. “You’re jealous of Doc Crane. You saved your own work just before everything went up in smoke. You controlled the numbers that went haywire.”

“Enough,” Crane said. “Dr. Newcombe told me he didn’t manipulate the numbers and that’s all there is to it!”

“Could the signals have been intercepted before they got here?” Lanie asked.

“Yes,” Crane said. “But it would take someone who not only knew our systems intimately, but also had code access to them.”

“Someone on the inside,” Lanie said.

“It was Sumi,” Hill said, slapping his leg. “Had to be Sumi.”

“A minute ago it had to be Dan,” Crane said. “Let’s worry about a viper in our midst later. Right now let’s try an experiment. Dr. King, would you be so kind as to enter the correct stress readings into the Reelfoot files?”

“My God,” Newcombe said, falling back in his chair. “This means that we may have been right all along. The timing was just a little off.”

“Only now,” Crane said, “no one will listen to us when we warn them.”

“Got the readings,” Lanie said, swinging her chair around and nodding toward the globe. “I’ve put it up there. Ready?”

“Go,” Crane said.

“Take it from the day, from the minute, we made the readings. If we hit a quake, slow it to real time.”

“Working,” Lanie said, all eyes on the huge globe. A spotlight triggered the motions. For a moment nothing happened, then a rumble issued from the innards of the analog Earth, Lanie calibrating the speed to real time.

Crane watched the red line form on Reel-foot, just as they’d thought, the quake emanating from the thirty-mile-deep hypocenter and extending upward and out.

In amazing detail they were watching a preview of a power so destructive as to render even the imagination weak in comparison. The sound, the rumbling, came from the P waves, the Primary or pressure waves, acting like sound waves pulsing through the ground, compressing and dilating the rock, pulling and pushing the earth, manifested as the ground moving violently up and down.

The Secondary waves moved slower than the P waves and whipped through the rock, shaking the ground sideways. On the globe, the earth was rocking hundreds of miles from the thin red line of Reelfoot, the Mississippi and Ohio rivers reforming over and over, looking like huge writhing snakes.

Then came the two L waves, the surface originating waves, counterpointing what was going on deeply underground. Raleigh waves rolled across the planet like ocean waves while the Love waves vibrated wildly at a right angle to their path, the two waves in unison creating a corkscrew motion that no building, tree, or dam could withstand. With nothing to absorb the waves, they spread farther and farther outward. The ground on the globe buckled. Fissures opened; hills rose only to sink again; the Mississippi continued to jerk wildly, a living thing. They called it a failed rift because it had never succeeded in breaking apart from the continent. Now that small geologic notion was getting ready to cause untold suffering two hundred million years later.

Crane heard Lanie gasp as the area of destruction grew wider and wider. Inside of him, tension knotted his muscles, his arm aching involuntarily. He was staring into the sallow mirror of his own fears and anger. It was happening here and it would happen in reality. He could see it, right before him, but he was powerless to stop it.

“Give me a day,” he said low, in almost a whisper.

Lanie turned her body to the console, her gaze glued to the globe. An aftershock rocked the land again no sooner than the first had stopped. She typed with one hand. A second later, blood-red letters five feet high hung suspended in the air before them:

“Oh my God,” Newcombe said. “Three and a half months. Crane, I … dammit, this is scary.”

“Yeah,” Crane said, standing, pacing. “And we’ve got zero credibility. They’ve threatened to arrest me if I even set foot in Tennessee or Missouri.”

“What do we do?” Lame asked.

“Cry wolf again,” Crane said. “Make enough of a pest of myself that if they don’t listen to me at least they’ll remember that I said it.” He paused. “It will re-establish me so they’ll listen next time.”

“Trouble is,” Burt Hill said, “everybody thinks you’re crazy, Doc. Nobody’s gonna listen to you.”

“You think I don’t know? Wait a minute.” Crane ran to Hill and hugged him. “You’ve just given me the idea of a lifetime.”

“I have?”

Crane punched up the Q fiber on his pad, hoping that Whetstone hadn’t deleted him from the preferred list. “Come on, Stoney,” he whispered. “Come on.”

“Am I going to be sorry I answered this call?” came Whetstone’s voice through Crane’s aural.

“You’re a good man.”

“I’m a laughingstock.”

“Maybe. But are you also a gambler?”

“Crane…”

“Meet me tomorrow … Can you?”

“I can do anything I want.”

“Then meet me. I can make you a hero.”

“Not tomorrow. Day after. But tell me something, Crane, why do I listen to you?”

Crane chortled. “Because you’re as crazy as I am.”

Li stood inside his globe, basking in election night victory. Numbers flickered all around him like electronic fireflies. They’d held the presidency easily and won the contested Congressional seats, though some of those races were closer than he’d wished. The bottom ledger line: Liang had retained complete power for another two years at least. He credited the last-minute attacks on Crane and Ishmael—the conspiracy theory—for his success.

“So are you satisfied?” Mr. Mui asked from outside the glowing world. Only the COO was allowed inside the sphere.

“Of course I’m satisfied,” Li said, surprised at the question.

“Then you found tonight’s results a success?”

“Why are you asking me these questions? We were victorious, were we not?”

“According to my figures,” Mui said, “we lost over three hundred seats in state houses around the country. Yo-Yu now has a major foothold.”

“Inconsequential. We retain the power.”

“The political power springs from beneath in this country … through local laws, local statutes. Yo-Yu has outright control of fifteen legislative houses, which means fifteen venues from which to attack our economic base and expand their own.”

“You’re making too much of this,” Li said.

“My reports will mirror my thoughts. Others will judge. Also, my polls show you made a major mistake with the Islamic issue.”

“How so?”

“In the local elections, Yo-Yu candidates took a soft wait-and-see line on the issue of an Islamic state as soon as we came out strongly against it. They favored negotiations over confrontations. Their success in state races is directly attributable to that factor.”

“I disagree.”

“You gave them fear,” Mui said, “but that simply tied them to the greater fear of the global Islamic movement, which people feel is too large to challenge.”

“I did what had to be done to win the election. All I need to do to remedy the situation is to sacrifice someone on the altar of Islam, put the blame on him, then become more compromising. By the time the next elections come around, this will no longer be an issue.”

“Who shall you sacrifice?”

“President Gideon has let the Vice President make most of the anti-NOI speeches. Perhaps it’s time for Mr. Gabler to step down.” Li smiled. “After all, we can’t have a racist as Vice President, now can we?”

“And who would you put in his place?” Li smiled again, thinking of the frames of Sumi Chan in her bath. With Sumi, control would never be a problem. “I’ve been thinking that it might be time for an Asian-American to step into the forefront of American politics,” he said. “I’ll study the issue in the next few days.”

“Do you have someone in mind?”

“Perhaps. Are you finished attacking me?”

“Sir,” Mui said respectfully. “It is my job to question your decisions, just as it was your job to question your predecessor’s decisions. I respectfully submit that you owe me an apology. Your attitude must also go in my reports, I’m sure you know.”

Li nodded. All they needed were knives to make the bloodletting more public. “I am sorry to have offended you. Is there anything else that will go into your report?”

“Yes,” Mui said, and Li could see the shine of his smiling teeth in the outer darkness. “I’m going to tell them that your deliberate falsification of earthquake prediction figures could potentially destroy the economic viability of this entire sector.”

“Oh, come now,” Li said. “You cannot really believe that clown Crane can predict earthquakes?”

“Why not?”

Li felt anger well up. “Because it’s impossible, that’s why!”

“Ah,” Mui said easily. “Your knowledge and certitude are obviously much more advanced than mine. I would say, wait and see, just like Yo-Yu. But you, Mr. Director, are willing to bet your life on the impossibility of Crane making predictions. Bravo.”

“You’re mocking me,” Li said.

“Yes, sir,” Mui replied. “I am doing just that.”

Chapter 11 THE WAGER

“You know,” Lanie said from the doorway to the living room of Crane’s chalet, cleaned and spiffed up for the occasion, “we’ve all got to drink rum because that’s what Crane has stocked.”

Newcombe smiled at her. Her eyes were glinting. She was pumped up, energized by her success in lobbying Kate Masters all day. When Kate had heard from Stoney that he was coming to the Foundation, she’d decided they should meet up there. But she’d come early, way early, and sought out Lanie immediately. Newcombe wasn’t thrilled. He didn’t like Kate Masters. Something about her showy clothes, her brashness, her mouth bothered him. And he hated the fact that she’d struck up a friendship with Lanie. The Vogelman Procedure was Kate’s fault … and it had been the first rupture in his renewed relationship with Lanie. She came closer to him now. “I’m glad you’ve decided to talk to me, Lanie,” he murmured.

“I had a couple drinks. Makes things easier. I don’t mean to avoid you really. I just don’t handle this kind of thing very well.”

He wanted to reach out and touch her hair, but wouldn’t allow himself to do it. “Maybe, if it bothers you so much, it means you’ve made a mistake.”

“No, Dan, really. Things are better this way.”

He closed the distance between them and seized her by the arms, the drink she held spilling on them both. “Things are not better and you know it.” He put his arms around her, but she stood stiffly in his loose embrace. “Dammit, Lanie,” he whispered, “come home. We’ll forget everything that’s happened and start over.”

She pushed away. “And forget everything that’s going to happen? You’ve chosen a path for yourself, Dan, that I can’t travel with you.”

“We’ll just see. We—”

“Everybody!” Kate Masters called from the living room. “Quick … gather around. I’ve got some news for all of you.”

“I wonder what’s going on?” Lanie asked, turning quickly to avoid Newcombe and walking back into the living room.

He followed dutifully, not able to gauge the intensity of her words. He didn’t mind her being angry at him. It was the pulling away that hurt. Things had been so good this time. What had happened to drive her so far away? He couldn’t believe it was the NOI stance. She knew he had a big mouth. And the publication? Didn’t his giving the big check to Crane show the goodness of his intentions?

Crane and Whetstone, who’d arrived only minutes before, joined the group, drinks in their hands. Burt Hill lay half asleep on a sofa near where Masters stood.

“I’ve been conferencing with my board for the last half hour,” Kate said. “And we’ve made an executive decision.”

“Let’s hear it,” Whetstone said.

Kate ran her hands through her red hair. “I’m waiting for the drum roll.”

Burt Hill pounded rhythmically on his stomach.

Kate turned to Crane. “As president of the Women’s Political Association, I am pleased to announce that we have reconsidered our decision to take your grant money away and are awarding you, for calendar 2025, a sum of five million dollars for earthquake research.”

Crane roared with pleasure as everyone applauded. Masters turned to Lanie. “And you have this woman and her eloquent plea to thank for it. I used some frames of Lanie’s talk with me today to show the board. It passed unanimously.”

Lanie hugged Kate, then turned to Crane, who had made his way to her side. The two of them shared a long, meaningful look before hugging fiercely. Newcombe felt dark vibrations.

“My thanks to the Women’s Political Association,” Crane said. “You have shown great wisdom.”

Standing in a loose circle around Kate, everyone laughed, Crane smiling broadly. The jubilation subsided in moments. Whetstone cast a shrewd glance at Dan and Lanie. “Crane tells me,” he said, “that you tracked the sabotage on the Memphis quake. Hard to believe anyone so closely associated with the project would be that malicious, isn’t it?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Lanie sighed heavily, Newcombe was scowling. Crane’s expression was unreadable. The three of them had talked off and on in the last day and a half about the meaning, the possible impact of the sabotage, and the conversations had served only to make them weary and depressed. Finally, Kate spoke up.

“Do you think Sumi Chan had anything to do with your problems? I like him, but there’s something quite odd going on with that man.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Crane said. He’d fought a hard battle with himself on the subject of the saboteur, triumphed over his rage, and wanted to move on. “The question now is how to repair the damage and make people listen to us again.”

“Not possible,” Whetstone said with authority. “All you are to people now, Crane, is the crazy man who fooled everyone. You don’t recover from that.”

“They’ll have to listen,” Crane said, almost shouting.

Whetstone’s bushy brows arched high. “You’ve recalibrated your figures? You’ve got another date?”

“February 27th,” Newcombe interjected.

“You’re kidding,” Kate said, looking sharply at Crane.

“Unfortunately, no. We’re dead—I repeat, dead—serious,” Crane said, his expression somber.

“Yes, but are you dead certain?” Kate asked impudently.

“Dead certain,” Crane bit out.

“So that’s why you got me here,” Whetstone said. “Okay, what do you want from me?”

“Check your liquidity lately, Stoney?” Crane asked.

“I don’t have to check. If I need hard cash, I can get hold of about three billion dollars, give or take a couple of hundred million.”

“I want to borrow it,” Crane said.

Whetstone laughed. “I imagine you do. And what would you do with it?”

“Place a bet.”

“A bet! I think your jail time has left you completely unhinged. What sort of bet?”

“I want to place a bet with the American people that an earthquake will take place on the Reelfoot Rift on February 27th, 2025. I want the wager to be run through a third-party accounting firm that will verify the numbers and insure impartiality. We’ll give two-to-one odds. People can take up to fifty dollars of that bet, to be paid off the day after the earthquake is predicted if it doesn’t come off.”

“You want to bet three billion dollars of my money that you have correctly predicted the day of the quake, is that right?” Whetstone asked.

“It’ll look like a sucker bet,” Crane said.

“Look like!” Whetstone said loudly. “It is!”

“We’re not wrong, Stoney. We can’t miss. At fifty bucks a pop, a lot of people will get in on the action. The teev will love to cover it because you stand to lose so much. We’ll get our exposure again, maybe even convince some people we’re right and get them the hell out of the danger zones. Once we win the bet, our credibility is restored, plus we won’t have to play politics—the Foundation won’t need government funds to keep running.”

Whetstone just stared at him. “You’re mad.”

“Am I?” Crane returned. “The stress readings don’t lie, and this time I’ll bet we even have the Ellsworth-Beroza to back us up as we get closer to the time.”

“Look, Crane. I’m as altruistic as the next person, but I didn’t manage to make billions of dollars by being an idiot. Why should I risk almost all of my cash on a scheme you’ve already failed at once?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Crane said.

“There’s nothing right about gambling my money away. I’d be ruined. Couldn’t you do it with a million or so?”

“No. The numbers need to be enormous in order to get the exposure and keep interest alive.”

Whetstone shook his white-haired head. “I respect you,” he said, “but this time—”

“May I say something?” Lanie asked, everyone turning to stare at her. No one shut her up, so she continued. “I’ve been working the project for over six months now, taking Crane’s idea for the globe and trying to make it reality. It’s forming before my eyes. My job is to talk to it, to make it understand what it’s trying to accomplish, and as I do so, I’m continually struck by the amazing possibilities beyond EQ prediction.”

“Such as?” Masters asked.

“Such as long-range weather prediction. The Earth, for all of its largesse, is really a totally closed, self-sustaining system on a huge scale that operates under its own set of rigid principles. The globe can make them understandable. It may be the most important piece of machinery ever devised. If we can predict weather patterns long range, it means we can plot areas of famine and plenty, and we can do it years in advance, planning for them, knowing where and when to grow food, where relief will be needed, when hurricanes, floods, and tornados are going to cause destruction.

“Mr. Whetstone, do you understand the implications of what I’m saying? You can help make the globe a life-sustaining, nurturing reality. It has the capacity of changing forever life on planet Earth in the most positive of ways. We may never be able to control the Earth, but we can understand it, which is the next best thing. Don’t take this away from the people of the world.”

“But your globe hasn’t gone online young lady,” Whetstone said. “It may never work.”

“It already does to an extent,” Lanie shot back. “I’ve had success going from known event to known event. I believe our problem is a basic one.”

“Pangaea,” Crane said.

She pointed to him. “Correct. We’ve based the globe on a possibly erroneous assumption—that Pangaea happened the way scientists have speculated it happened. If that speculation is incorrect, then there’s no way our globe will connect with the realities that we do know about for sure. I’ve thought about this a great deal, and I believe we need to go back farther, beyond Pangaea, for our answers.”

“Back to where?” Masters asked.

“All the way, I suppose.”

“The beginning of time?” Masters asked, amazed.

“If that’s what it takes,” Crane said. “We can let the globe tell us about Pangaea.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Whetstone said, “except for the fact that starting with the totally unknown could mean that you create an earth that doesn’t really exist, one simply invented by the globe.”

“No,” Lanie said. “Not possible. My job as a synnoeticist is to communicate with the globe, to talk to it, to form that symbiotic relationship that makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole. We know where our globe ends up. We have real events that must conform. All I have to do is explain to the globe that it must design a world that ends in conformation with what exists. The rest will take care of itself.”

“You can really do this?” Whetstone asked, his voice hushed.

“She’s the best,” Crane said. “Of course she can do it.”

“Mr. Whetstone,” Lanie said, “you can help mankind see the dawning of a new day in which Man and Earth work in conjunction, not opposition. If you turn us down now, you are destroying the hope of humanity rising above its bondage to Nature’s unfeeling destructiveness. You sit in a historic position, sir. How much money do you really need to finish the rest of your life, and how does that stack up against the salvation you can bring?”

“You can really do this?” Whetstone asked again, his voice small, childlike.

“I can,” Lanie said. “And with your help, I will.”

Whetstone was staring at her, his lips quivering soundlessly, his eyes locked on some faraway, internal place. He looked at Crane.

“When do we do it?”

“Right now,” Crane said without hesitation. “Tonight.”

“Thanks to your imager,” Stoney said, “you’ve just got three billion dollars.”

“Borrowed,” Crane said. “Borrowed, not ‘got.’ You’ll have every cent of your money back on February 28th.”

“Let’s shake on it,” Stoney said, extending his hand.

Burt broke out a small bottle of the cache of Sumi’s famous dorph, and everyone started to celebrate with it except Crane and Newcombe.

Newcombe felt out of place and wondered what Brother Ishmael was doing right now. He’d stopped drinking alcohol and given up dorph after his visit to the Zone. It was a revelatory experience. He found himself having to deal for the first time with depressions and the kind of minor irritations dorph would take away in an instant. He guessed that he seemed surly to those around him, but inside he felt in touch with his true self at long last. He might suffer petty emotional discomfort, but at least what he felt was for real.

“What are we waiting for?” Stoney asked. “We’ve got the terms of a wager to figure out, an accounting firm to line up, and, I assume, a broadcast to plan, right?”

“Right,” Crane said. “Let’s go down to my office.”

They were off then to pats on the back from Kate, Burt, and Lanie.

Newcombe couldn’t take his eyes off Lanie. She and Kate had hit the dorph pretty hard and were refilling their glasses with rum. He didn’t like that one bit. It wasn’t like Lanie. That thought encouraged him. He missed her terribly, wanted her in his life and his bed; maybe she was suffering too. He walked over to where she was standing with Kate.

“Don’t you think you’d better go a little easy on that stuff?” he asked, taking the glass from Lanie’s hand.

“I think it’s none of your business how much I drink,” Lanie said, snatching the glass and draining it.

“Do you mind, Kate, if I steal her away for a couple of minutes?” Newcombe asked rhetorically. He took Lanie’s elbow, none too gently steering her toward Crane’s bedroom.

“I’ll be right back!” Lanie called over her shoulder. “Don’t get ahead of me!”

He nudged her into the room and closed the door.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lanie asked. “You embarrassed me back there.”

“We weren’t finished with our talk.”

“We were as far as I was concerned. Don’t you get it, Dan? We’ve been tearing each other to pieces for five years now. It’s time to stop the pain, to staunch the bleeding. Dan, it’s over.”

“It’s him, isn’t it?”

She sat heavily on the bed. “What are you talking about?”

“Crane,” he said. “You’ve got something going with that madman.”

“You’re wrong,” she said. “But even if you weren’t, it’s none of your business.”

“You’ve completely sold yourself out to his insane program,” he charged. “I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of your mouth a few minutes ago. How could you say them with a straight face?”

She jumped up and stared him down. “I meant every word of what I said. How dare you belittle my life and my work!”

“Look, you’re good with computers,” he said. “Kudos. But Crane is selling fantasy. How can you possibly believe that globe will ever work?”

“It will work. I’m going to make it work.”

“Then you’re just as crazy as he is.”

She glared at him, and for the first time he saw meanness there, focused anger. “Are you finished?” she asked quietly.

“No, I’m not finished. I’m just getting started.”

“Well, I’ve heard enough, Dr. Newcombe. You’ve got to excuse me. There are two people in the other room who don’t think I’m insane. I’d prefer to be with them.”

“I’m not going to let you go that easily,” he said. “Crane’s infected you somehow with his insanity. I can wait, Lanie. I love you and I’ll always be there for you.”

“Do yourself a favor, Dan,” she said. “Move on.”

Newcombe’s gut was on fire, dorphless rage and despair settling over him as he watched Lanie leave.

Sumi sat at her new desk at the National Academy of Science and tried to concentrate on the grant requests stacked up before her. She was having a difficult time keeping her mind on the job. They’d put Crane in jail—jail!—and it was all her fault. He had always treated her with respect and friendship. And how had she repaid him? With the basest deceit. She wondered how much of herself she could give up and still remain human.

“You seem deep in thought,” came a voice, jerking her back into the here and now.

Mr. Li stood before her desk, smiling beatifically down at her. “Sir,” she said, rising.

“Is it you or a projection?”

He reached across the desk and touched her arm, his touch lingering. “I’m real and I’m here. What I’m going to say is very private.”

“Sir?”

“Sit down, Sumi.” She did as she was told.

Li moved fluidly, snakelike, around to her side of the desk and sat on its edge. “Sometimes,” he said, “life has a way of altering our … circumstances in the most astounding fashion without our having to do anything to precipitate the changes. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I assume my new position here is an example,” she said, not liking the look in his eyes.

“On a small scale, yes. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Yes, I do mind.”

Mr. Li laughed. “I’m finding myself intrigued by your lifestyle. What’s it like to masquerade for some twenty-eight years as the opposite sex?”

In absolute defensive mode, she answered carefully. “It’s not like anything, really. I’ve always done it, so it’s … natural.”

“Do you feel like a man or like a woman?”

“I feel like what I am.”

Mr. Li stood and moved behind Sumi, his hands coming up to massage her shoulders.

“You know what I mean,” he said softly. “Sexually. What are you like sexually?”

“Sir. I do not wish to answer questions of this kind.”

His hands moved down to her arms, rubbing softly, as she fought back feelings of nausea. “You will do whatever I tell you to do,” he said. “Answer the question.”

She sighed deeply, her body rigid as he caressed her. “In order for my deception to work,” she said, “I gave up all thoughts of sexuality many years ago. I couldn’t risk exposure. I simply control those feelings.”

“You’ve never had sex?”

“No, sir.”

“My goodness.” He leaned down and kissed her on the top of the head, then walked away from her. Sumi relaxed immediately. In front of the desk again, he looked at her with raised eyebrows. “I think we’re going to have a very interesting association.”

“How so, sir?” She hoped he couldn’t see her shaking hands.

“I have a new job for you, Sumi. How would you like to be Vice President of the United States?”

Sumi Chan laughed out loud. “You are joking.”

“I’m perfectly serious. It soon will be time for Gabler to resign—and time for the face of China to shine forth in American politics. It will bind the cultures closer together.”

“You must surely realize, Mr. Li, that the American Constitution provides that a Vice President be a natural-born citizen of the United States.”

“Ah,” Mr. Li said, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a small disc. “But you are such a citizen, Sumi. It’s all right here.” He dropped it on the desk. “You are the son of an American Marine, an embassy guard, who married a Chinese national. You were born on a Navy ship that was en route to the US. Unfortunately, your parents died in the flu epidemic several years ago—that much is true, eh? The record is complete. I did an excellent job on it.”

“Even greater lies added to my life,” Sumi said. “Mr. Li, I cannot do this. My ancestral lands—”

“I have acquired them. They were lost to you in the bankruptcy action of your parents. But I knew you would be working to reacquire them, so I did. They are yours when our business is concluded. If you refuse, you will have nothing.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’ve already told you. I like the idea of an Asian being a heartbeat away from the Presidency. And this will also give us the chance to work … closely together. However, we will not make this change for a month or so. I wish you to prepare yourself.”

Mr. Li’s wristpad bleeped insistently. “What?” he asked crossly. He listened glumly for a moment. “Thank you, Mr. Mui,” he said at last and blanked the man. He touched the pad again, Sumi’s wall screen coming up, bringing with it a shot of Crane and Whetstone. She smiled involuntarily. Crane was out of jail.

“People call me a fraud,” Crane was saying. “Well, this is your opportunity to profit from my so-called fraudulent nature.”

Whetstone spoke. “We have put three billion dollars cash into an escrow account. That money talks: It says there will be an earthquake on February 27th in the Mississippi Valley that will cause massive devastation. We are betting on Mr. Crane’s formidable knowledge and scientific genius. We will give two-to-one odds. If anyone wants a piece of the action—”

“What are they doing?” Li asked.

Sumi shook her head. “You never believed it, did you?”

“That Crane could predict earthquakes? Certainly not.”

“You were wrong, Mr. Li. I tried to tell you about it when you had me sabotage their program, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“But what’s happening now?”

She was laughing, with relief and with the irony of it all. “Don’t you see? They’ve discovered my treachery and have corrected their calculations. You are going to have your earthquake, Mr. Li. You are going to know the horror of getting what you asked for.”

“But that … that changes everything!”

“Yes. Everything.” She laughed. “Life, sir, is change.”

Running, Crane circled the programmers within the newly built stationary orb around the globe. “Worthless!” he shouted at the globe. “You’re useless. I’m going to sell you for scrap.”

“Turn off the atmosphere inducers, run in to that globe, and kick the damned thing for me,” Lanie called wearily to him from where she slumped at her console.

He stopped running after he’d caught sight of her. She was dejected. He was only angry. He trotted over to her. She was staring at her keyboard. When the last of the shutdown bells quieted, he said gently, “It’s just something stupid. Don’t give up.”

She didn’t even look at him. “Better be something stupid, because we’re fresh out of smart ideas.”

He turned and stared through the thick ahrensglass at the huge globe. It had shut itself down this time somewhere before the formation of Pangaea during the planet’s watery stage. Some progress at least. Before, during the first two weeks after the bet, they’d reset it twenty times. Twenty times they’d recalibrated, making slight adjustments to the fiery birth of the Earth Mother. And twenty times they’d failed. Then the globe had made a request direct only to Crane—and he’d responded quickly. The globe was transforming itself … Crane knew that, Lanie did, too, though neither of them could predict to what sort of entity.

The globe had urged Crane to reposition its magnetic poles and to reconform its environmental surround to match Earth’s gravitational field through and beyond the Ozone Layer. In response to the request, Crane had ordered all the openings of the globe room, the window and door apertures, to be sealed. Then vast numbers of machines had been brought to the Foundation. Huge vacuum tubes and force field impellers, under the direction of the best physicists Crane could hire, had been placed at dome and base to transform the globe room into a chamber that was a piece of the universe in which the globe-Earth revolved on its axis.

And now, this afternoon, they’d at last been able to test again. And for all the changes—the time, the money, the hard work—they’d got nothing but failure … again. It was maddening.

“You know, the sad thing,” Lanie said, popping a dorph tab, “is that the damned globe doesn’t even hold out any hope of ever constructing itself. It finds no way of getting from point A to point B.”

“We’re just not doing something we should be doing.”

“It’s so simple, though.” She got up and joined him. “We’ve got known factors—a weight of around six and a half sextillion tons of rotating fire. It contains elements we can discern. It rotated faster at the beginning, but we’ve allowed for that.”

“Known factors. You said, known factors.” Something was eating away at Crane, something right in front of his face that he could almost see.

“Maybe Dan was right,” Lanie said. “Maybe both of us are nuts and this is just a fantasy.”

“Dan says a lot of things I don’t agree with.” Newcombe had come out again publicly in support of an Islamic State. True to his word, he’d kept the Foundation’s name out of it both times he appeared on the teev. Instead he billed himself as, “the inventor of EQ-eco.”

It had been a strange month and a half since the night he and Stoney had gone on teev with the wager. The government had viciously attacked him and the bet, calling it a con game meant to bilk the citizens of America. Despite that, the wager had been covered within three days, actually two and a half. It was already out of the news, but that didn’t matter. The closer to the time they came, the bigger an issue it would become. It was a self-generating concept.

To a man, the scientific establishment rang with condemnation, referring to Crane as a “lunatic bent on making himself famous no matter what the cost.” Actually, he’d been glad to hear that. It meant they’d stay away from Reelfoot and leave it to him.

“Cheer up, people,” Newcombe said, moving up to Lanie’s console, a printout in his hand. “It can’t be that bad.”

“The Earth has been keeping her secrets secret,” Crane said amiably. “In line with your speculation.”

Newcombe shrugged. “I’d love to see you succeed. But we’re talking about five billion years of earth history, most of which we know nothing about. It really isn’t possible to expect—”

“You’re wrong in a great many respects,” Lanie said, pointing at her line of programmers, all working fast, inputting data, increasing the globe’s knowledge. “Current data is simply a reflection of the ancient past. In every instance where I’ve worked backward from a known event, I’ve been able to connect it to an unknown event that began the chain. It’s time-consuming, but it works.”

“Then why not apply that to the whole globe?”

“Can’t,” Crane said. “To go backward, an event at a time, would consume the rest of our lives and then some. Each event would be judged independently because we don’t know inherent connections. And when we were done, we still would have made a globe based only on what we know about. What about the geologic eccentricities we haven’t even uncovered?”

“Besides,” Lanie added, “even with the single events I’ve been able to trace backward, I can go only so far. At some point hundreds of millions of years ago, the machine shuts down and says, ‘You can’t get there from here.’ ”

“In other words,” Newcombe said, taking a seat himself, “you can’t go either way with it. Your globe is telling you that the world we have is not the world we had.”

Crane snapped to attention. “That’s exactly what it’s telling us,” he said, staring through the ahrensglass and up the three-story height of the globe. “It’s not the same. Something happened to this planet that changed it drastically, altered it forever. So, what could have happened, what—oh my God. I’ve been so stupid.” He turned to Lanie. “Crank it up. We’re going to go from scratch right now.”

“What?”

“Just do it. I’ve got an idea and we’re going to try it out.”

The globe went dark as the computers reset themselves. Within a minute Crane stared at a ball of fire, spinning wildly in its youth. “All right,” he said. “I want you to increase your six-and-a-half-sextillion-ton mass by one eighty-first.”

“One eighty-first,” Lanie said. “One eighty-first?”

“Do it,” Crane said.

Newcombe laughed. “Crane, you’re batty.”

“Only if I’m wrong.”

“The machine refuses to take the extra weight,” Lanie said. “It’s telling me the increase is unstable by its very nature. The globe can’t support the increase in mass and still hold together.”

“Perfect,” Crane said. “Talk to it, Lanie. Explain to it that it’s all right to build to an unstable state.”

“It’s not going to want to hear that,” she said.

“Tell the globe that the instability will resolve itself.”

“It will?”

“I think so,” he said, as Lanie turned to the computer and opened a line of discussion with its higher reasoning functions.

Crane walked up to Newcombe. “What’s the printout?” he asked.

“Ahh.” Dan smiled, handing him a small stack of seismograms. “Almost forgot. We’ve begun to get Ellsworth-Beroza tremors on the Reelfoot grabens consistent with the beginning phases of a major quake. Also, levels of radon, carbon monoxide, and methane are continuing to rise along with electromagnetic activity.”

Crane nodded, not surprised. He’d make his three billion dollars, but it would be at a cost beyond belief. It was happening, a cycle of real horror beginning its relentless harvest of life and property. And no one was going to listen to his warnings.

“Got it,” Lanie said, swinging her chair around. “However, the globe will only do it if you tell it to, Crane. Would you step over here?”

Crane moved to her console as Lanie typed the command that would start the globe. “The machine refuses to take responsibility for what happens,” she said. “It’s looking for authority from higher up.”

He looked at the screen. It read:

He hit the Y. The screen faded, then read:

“Speak your name into the C channel of your pad,” Lanie said.

Crane did so, and the globe lights immediately came on. The sequence was initiated.

The globe spun quickly, but off balance. All the lights went down. Lanie’s programmers stopped work to watch the spectacle. The Earth is not perfectly round, but this one was obviously way off, its equatorial bulge huge and moving, throwing the planet on a wobbly orbit.

“You’re going to break your toy,” Newcombe said.

Warning lights were flashing up and down the consoles, the screens warning of imminent breakup.

A huge lump of fire now appeared on the globe, threatening to destroy it as centrifugal force drew the fireball slowly away from the globe.

“We’re going to have to shut it down, Crane!” Lanie called.

“You do and you’re fired!” Crane yelled over the warning bells sounding up and down the line.

“It wants to go into shutdown sequence.”

“But it hasn’t, has it?” he returned. “It’s smarter than we are. Let it go!”

The globe was wobbling horribly. It creaked as it tore itself apart, but Crane watched it with a satisfied smile.

Then it happened. The globe, now a lopsided dumbbell shape, was no longer able to sustain the hold on itself and the bulge broke free, spinning off, only to get captured in the larger mass’s gravitational pull. What was left began to spin normally again, all the warning bells and flashers shutting off up and down the line.

They were looking at a planet and its moon, a real chunk of the globe, dancing in synchronous orbit, and the globe was just as happy as it could be.

Newcombe sat staring, his mouth hanging open.

“Is that the Moon?” Lanie asked.

“Well,”—Crane shrugged—“now we know where that came from. Bully. Let’s keep watching.”

“It seems to be orbiting so closely,” Lanie said.

“I think we’ll find,” Crane answered, “that as the Earth’s rotation slows, the Moon will move farther away. Right now, imagine not only the effect the Moon will have on sea tides at this distance, but land tides as well.”

“I can’t believe it’s still working,” Lanie said as the planet cooled and holorains began, the Moon now a bit farther away.

“This is weird,” Newcombe said. “This isn’t some kind of trick, is it, Crane?”

“This is history, my fine fellow,” Crane said. “Earth history as no one’s ever seen it before. If this thing keeps working, we may all be obsolete.”

And work it did, half holo, half “real.” Land emerged from the evaporating waters, the closeness of the Moon causing major havoc on land and sea—quakes, tsunamis, and tidal waves rattling the globe in ways none of them could have anticipated. If there had been a Pangaea as such, they never saw it. For an hour that was hundreds of millions of years, the continental masses seemed to form and reform in a continual dance with the Moon, which moved ever so slowly away.

The globe stopped many times during these early periods, adding holo comets, asteroids, and meteorites to the mix in order to conform to known life later on, but it didn’t shut down—it continued. The farther it went, the more excited the programmers became, until they were shouting and cheering every time the machine hit a glitch and reset itself to continue onward.

The Moon finally distanced itself enough to lose its major impact on sea and land. Here, they saw the beginnings of a stable world, more stable, at least, than the frenzy of its earlier years. The seas calmed. The continents emerged in roughly the same form as today.

For Crane, time did not exist during this exercise. First to last passed in an instant for him. He thought of all the men of science from its beginnings who had measured, timed, and speculated about the nature of their Earth. Without their observations, the globe would not have been possible. For thousands of years scientists had meticulously recorded their findings with no notion of where those findings would lead. This was one of the places. There would be others.

Five hours later, he emerged from his thoughts to the sounds of cheering. The globe stood proudly online, up to date, turning slowly. Dead even with them.

Everyone was still there, including Newcombe, and they had been joined by the rest of the staff. It was a spectacle none of them could pull away from. The addition of new information would continue, but this was the core unit from which ever more knowledge would spring.

“Do you realize what we’ve just done?” Crane called to the applauding group. “However much information we’ve put into this system is merely a grain of sand on the seashore in comparison to what the globe has invented on its own to make our data compatible. Every hairline fissure, every graben, every underground stream or unconfirmed nuclear explosion that has occurred on planet Earth is now ours to know. Information is power, ladies and gentlemen. And we have the power.”

Another cheer. He turned to Newcombe. “Still think I’m crazy?”

“Crazy for trying,” the man said. “Brilliant for succeeding.”

Lanie moved to the two men. “I’m still in shock.” She put her arm around him as Newcombe stiffened.

“You did it,” Crane said, hugging her close then moving away when it felt too good.

“We’re going to call your globe the King Projection.”

“You’re naming it after me?”

“You’re its mama,” Crane replied, then raised his voice for all of them to hear.

“We’ve done the impossible,” he said. “Now let’s try the unthinkable. Dr. King, would you be kind enough to program ahead on the Reelfoot and see what it gives us? Take us forward to a quake, a big quake.”

Lanie hurried to the keyboard. As if it were a monstrous crystal ball, they were using the globe to try and look into the future. It was heady and scary. This was different from the prediction they’d made on the stress readings. This was the Earth simply winding out the certitude of its own history. To the sound of a loud buzzer the globe stopped turning, the spotlight zeroing on the Mississippi Valley, the familiar red lines of a Valley quake jagged as a gash.

“Time,” Crane said, his mouth dry.

Lanie punched up the blood red numbers again. This time they read:

Twenty-three minutes sooner than their earlier calculations.

“We’ve done it,” Crane said. “We’ve conquered the future.”

He looked to Newcombe again. “This is our research source,” he said. “All our answers lie here.”

Newcombe looked hard at him. “All we need now is the guts to use it. Do we really want the responsibility of knowing the future?”

“It’s moot,” Lanie said from the console. “Want it or not, it’s here.”

Newcombe stood and walked to Crane. “Now that you’ve got it,” he whispered, “what are you really going to do with this goddamned thing?”

“Anything I want, doctor.”

The Masada brought rain that night, which meant radioactivity flushing down the streets and into the water supplies. Some sickness and death would result, the greatest toll taken on outdoor life. But it used to be worse, and would continue to be a decreasing threat until it would dissipate in the mid-2030s and be remembered ultimately as a scourge falling somewhere between the Black Plague and the Spanish Inquisition on the scale of suffering of humanity.

This particular night, it was a godsend for Crane. He had celebrated the globe with his people, then drifted to his office when the alarms had driven everyone to shelter. Now, as the rains fell outside, he would have the globe to himself for a while.

He sat at Lanie’s console, explaining exactly what it was he wanted to accomplish. As he finished inputting, Burt Hill came over his aural.

“Where the hell are you, Crane?”

“I’m staying in my office tonight,” Crane replied on the P fiber. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You’re only wantin’ to play with that globe.”

“Can you blame me?”

“Not at all. Got to tell you something, though. An announcement just came through all the teev stations—Vice President Gabler has resigned. Everybody thinks it’s because he’s got blamed for all the problems with the War Zone.”

“Interesting,” Crane said, not finding it interesting at all.

“That’s not the juicy part, boss,” Hill returned. “Gideon has appointed Sumi Chan to fill out the term.”

“Sumi?” Crane said, very interested now. “Wonder how they got around the citizenship requirements.”

“Never mind that,” Hill said. “This clinches it. Sumi’s nothing but a traitorous, slimy—”

“I want you to find a private fiber to Sumi,” Crane said. “I want to talk to him. And when you get to him, be sure to give your most hearty congratulations.”

“But he’s—”

“A powerful man who can help us,” Crane interrupted. “Call me back on this fiber.”

He blanked and looked at the console. Over the last year, he’d fed every morsel of info he’d ever learned on the effects of under- and aboveground nuclear testing on faults. By now the globe knew much more than he did.

He typed his question and hit enter.

The globe hesitated only slightly before revealing a series of flashing red lights all over the Earth, Crane running to it to check locations. All the lights were centered on or near rifts. His heart pounded as he counted them—fifty-three.

This was it, the reason for his existence.

He broke down and cried then, not stopping until he had Sumi on the line and more business to be done.

Chapter 12 CONTINENTAL DRIFT

Lanie finished the last of her packing, then stepped out onto her porch to watch the final preparations for the pilgrimage to Tennessee. Their condor dropped momentarily into view, Lanie calling to it before it swept past and majestically retreated to higher ground. The sun was gone now, freeing everyone to get out of doors. There were as many as fifty helos, private donations, stacked up on the plain below, being filled with food, water, and medical supplies.

It had been Crane who’d solicited the helos, thinking they might come in handy for evacs and emergency medical. She’d been amazed at how many people still believed in him and were willing to contribute. Besides the supplies, he had a crack medical emergency team in each bird—people, good people, donating their time. Maybe there was hope for the planet after all, she thought.

She saw Dan come out of his chateau, four houses away, carrying his bags. Since the night of the wager, they’d been near strangers. It was amazing how someone who had once been so important to her could simply move into a different role in her mind and heart. She knew that he wanted her to let him back in, but, thankfully, he wasn’t pushing it. She did want to be his friend, though, so when he came over, she gave him an affectionate hug. He responded enthusiastically. “I’m sorry I’ve been so standoffish,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea,” he echoed.

She watched him compose himself. He leaned on the rail, looking down. Burt Hill was directing the loading-up operations, one of Stoney’s jumbo jets taking the bulk of the Foundation’s gear and personnel. Dan shook his head. “What would we do without Burt?”

“Starve,” she answered, leaning on the rail beside him. “Run out of materials. Chaos would ensue.”

He smiled at her. “Undoubtedly.” His lips tightened. “I’m not even sure what happened between us.”

“You want the truth?”

“I think so.”

“Okay,” she said calmly, although her heart pounded like crazy. “I found myself not trusting you. I found myself noticing jealousy between us. I found myself wanting you to be different. One time you said maybe we were finally growing up. I think that’s what happened. We grew up and apart. Besides, you have a whole different life now.”

“I’d give it up in a minute if—”

“No,” she said, putting her hand over his mouth. “You’d feel trapped and miserable. There’s no hope for it, Dan. We’ve just moved on.”

“I can’t stop loving you,” he said.

She nodded, swallowing hard. “We’ll always have that. Let’s remember it that way.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I’ll be there for you if you change your mind. Crane can’t make you happy.”

“This has nothing to do with Crane.”

“You need to be needed,” he said. “Maybe Crane needs you more than I do, though I think that’s impossible.”

“I’m not relating to this discussion, Dan.”

“I know.”

“Friends?” she asked, putting out her hand.

She didn’t understand the smile he gave her. “Friendly adversaries,” he said, shaking her hand. “You going below? I need to check my equipment manifest and make sure they got everything.”

“Aren’t you flying down with us?”

He shook his head. “I’m going to spend the night in LA. I’ll meet you on site tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll walk with you.” They moved down the metal stairs, Dan carrying his suitcases, Lanie unsure as to how she felt about the previous conversation. As with most things concerning Dan, nothing ever seemed to be truly settled. And what did he mean by “friendly adversaries”?

“You look tired,” he said. “Having the dreams again?”

“Again? They’ve never stopped.”

She shivered. It had been rough the night before, the worst yet. She could literally feel the fire burning her as it rose from a pit, while Crane kept reaching for her hand. And that boy was there, that dead boy, only he was alive and she feared for him more than for herself. She’d awakened in terror, drenched in sweat at 2 A.M. and hadn’t even considered the notion of going back to sleep.

“Still think it’s connected to Martinique?”

“It’s got to be.”

They walked into the confusion of helos and support personnel, all running human chains as manifest lists were verbally checked off. “Have you ever asked Crane to help you with it?” Newcombe spotted Hill and waved him over. “He was there with you.”

“He always changes the subject,” she said. “And that’s too bad, because I think if I could simply remember Martinique, all the dreams would go away. It’s right there in front of me … yelling at me.”

“What’s up, Doc Dan?” Hill said, winded from exertion.

“I’ve got to go down to the city tonight,” Dan said. “Is it possible?”

“If you’re willin’ to go now, it is. At the moment, I’ve got three dozen pilots standing around with their thumbs up their butts.” He took Dan’s bags. “Something’ll be waitin’ for you on the main pad in about ten minutes.”

“Thanks, Burt.”

“Stay in the shade, Doc.”

They moved on to the mosque. Dan was looking good tonight, wearing all black, a suit with a turtleneck. He looked like the Atlantic City version of Brother Ishmael. She wondered if he were going to the War Zone.

They walked in, then through to her station. They peered through the ahrensglass at the globe. Lanie always was excited when she saw her handiwork alive and pulsating with information. They were running a full slate of programmers tonight who were dumping weather data into the computer.

“Martinique,” she said, her eyes fixated on the globe. “The answer to my memory loss and to the dreams. I must remember what happened … and I think I’m close. It’s like a fog dissipating.” She watched the West Indies slide past, followed Martinique as it turned, saw its volcano.

“Dan,” Crane called down through a new hole in his office wall that let out into the programmer’s area, “I need the EQ-eco on downtown Memphis!”

“I’ll bring it up.” Dan went to his labs.

Lanie drifted toward Crane’s office. Time was such a strange commodity. It had its own organic structure that worked on people without their consent. Like her and Dan. Sumi Chan, for instance, had gone from valued ally to traitor and back again to friend within the space of a few months. As Vice President, he was once again supporting Crane behind the scenes, and it was support that Crane cheerfully accepted.

She walked into Crane’s office, smiling at all the teevs running his exploits on the walls. He’d been right about the bet. It seemed the entire world was waiting for the events to unwind. It was the money—the bet—right now that counted to the world. Soon, it would be the horror.

“How will they judge me, do you think?” Crane asked her, all but reading her mind.

“Some will blame you. Just like on Sado. Some will praise you, some love you, some hate you. You’ll be a magician and a scientist, a monster and a savior. But none of that matters to you, does it?”

He smiled, his jumpsuit sleeves rolled up as he stuffed a briefcase full of cash. Bail money. “As long as we can keep the funding rolling in, I’m happy,” he said. “People don’t know what’s good for them; they only know what they want. I learned to keep my expectations low a long time ago. It’s good advice for anyone.”

“Dan’s going down the mountain tonight.”

He grimaced but didn’t respond.

Lame looked through the new window at the globe. “I never get over it,” she said. “The damned thing’s still running.”

“And will continue to,” he said. “King’s Projection will be in use millennia after we’re gone.”

“Unless they come up with something better. Now, why haven’t we taken it any farther forward than February 27th? I’m sure there are other quakes to predict. But we haven’t done it. Why?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Newcombe said from the doorway. “Now that he’s got the power, he’s afraid of it.”

“Not far off,” Crane said, reaching for the printouts in Newcombe’s hand. “I just thought it was time for a little reflection before moving forward. Besides, there’s Memphis…”

He took the schematic Newcombe handed him and stared at it. “Here’s the Memphis jail,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll arrest me and take me here.”

“It’s going to be close,” Newcombe said.

“Yeah. The east side of the building looks like it won’t make it, but the cell blocks are stacked on the west side.”

“That’s a narrow ribbon of safe territory. Too narrow.”

“I trust your calculations.”

“I’m not so sure about the river,” Newcombe said. “I know what will happen to the land around it, but things are going to shift and force it to change course. I’ve got no real eco on that.”

“We’ll take our chances.”

“Will you have access to teev?”

“Yes,” Crane said, Lanie finding herself watching a wall show about the quake on Martinique. As she watched, lights began flashing in her head, recognition. God, she could feel the mud getting through her clothes. She itched.

Crane was still talking, but it was coming to Lanie as something from far away. She held her head, pain flashing. She could feel the scar under her hair, then the heat, the darkness, the overpowering fear of suffocation, the house collapsing all around them, everything else fading away.

Hands shaking her, a distant voice in her ear.

“Dan? Is Dan all right?” she said, but something was wrong. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Lanie! Get a grip … Lanie?”

Dan was in front of her. They were in Crane’s office in the Foundation. She was gasping for breath, the sadness all over her as she began crying again.

“What is it?” Crane asked gently.

“That boy,” she said, sobbing. “That poor boy. We never even … even knew h-his name.”

Dan moved to comfort her, but she turned instinctively to Crane, who put his good arm around her.

The doorway opened fully to her then, her memories drifting lazily back—the fear, the interminable questions, the rum. And Crane. A smile spread slowly over her face. “I remember,” she said to him. “I remember everything.”

“What’s to remember?” Newcombe asked.

“The rum bottle … being pushed down the breathing tube. That’s right when you were telling me about your plan for ending earthquakes.”

“Ending earthquakes?” Dan asked.

She looked at Crane, instinctively realizing she’d said something wrong, something meant to be kept private.

“If you’ve got a plan for ending earthquakes,” Newcombe said, “I’d sure love to hear it.”

Crane merely looked at him. Newcombe turned to Lanie. “Okay, you tell me.”

“I-I’m still confused,” she said. “I’m just not sure what I … what I…”

“You’re a lot of things, Lanie,” Newcombe said, “but confused isn’t one of them. What are you holding back? Why are you holding back?”

“Dan,” Crane said quietly. “Ask me, not Lanie. I’m the one with the secrets.”

Newcombe stared angrily at him. “You’re nothing but secrets. From the first you’ve had some sort of game plan you kept from the rest of us. We’ve had to pick our way through your self-generated darkness. How about a little truth for a change?”

“Come on,” Crane said. “I’ll show you. I don’t suppose it would do any good to swear you to secrecy?”

“There’s been too damned much secrecy,” Newcombe said, following Crane out of the office.

Lame trailed behind, tense. She’d not meant to blurt anything out. God, why did she have to go and open her big mouth? She was surprised to find Crane moving to her controller’s console. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Crane said to the programmers working at their stations, “you may take a thirty-minute break beginning now. I want all of you out of the building. Go.”

Lanie joined them at the console, Crane’s fingers already busy on her keyboard. There were, apparently, things about the globe that even she didn’t know.

“I’ve been studying quakes my entire life,” Crane said, taking the globe offline and reprogramming. “I’d decided early on that I wanted to heal, not just to define. That’s why I entered into the study of the effects of nuclear testing on surrounding strata.”

“We all know your old news, Crane,” Newcombe said. “You’re still credited as the man whose work made the politicos see the light and stop all nuclear testing.”

“Gave me the Nobel Prize for it,” Crane said, and laughed. “But I never earned, nor wanted, that award. And I certainly never wanted to stop nuclear testing.”

“I don’t understand,” Lanie said. Crane hit the enter key and the globe stopped dead, red lights flashing all over its surface.

“Heat,” Crane said, walking to the globe, “enough heat to melt rock … to weld rock.”

“You want to fuse the plates back together,” Newcombe said, his voice hushed, his eyes narrowed in deep suspicion.

“I asked the machine,” Crane said. “I postulated a temperature of five thousand degrees centigrade and asked if it were possible to reconnect the plates through spot welding.” He pointed to the globe. “This is what it gave me. Fifty-three spot welds that, if done properly, will fuse the continental plates and end drift forever.”

“That’s what the globe was for,” Lanie said. “You wanted back-up for your theories.”

“Correct,” Crane said. “We can end the destructive reign of the earthquake in our lifetime.”

“You want to explode fifty-three nuclear bombs?” Newcombe asked, incredulous.

“Fifty-three gigaton bombs,” Crane said.

“You’re crazier than I thought.”

“Am I?” Crane asked. “Think about it. The world sits on enormous stockpiles of nuclear materials, old warheads, waste matter. Done properly, my bombs could eliminate those stockpiles by exploding them back downward, toward the core, which is simply a decaying radioactive process anyway. We could end EQ’s and volcanoes, and get rid of our nuclear mess all at the same time.”

Lanie cocked her head. There was sense to what he said. Deep underground explosions right on the rifts, if handled properly, could relieve all the push-pull pressure. If the bombs were planted deeply enough, they’d pose zero threat to life above ground.

“Has your ego no limits?” Newcombe asked. “Has it occurred to you that earthquakes are a natural part of our world? That the planet may exist because of them? There would be no life on this planet at all if the volcanoes hadn’t pumped life-sustaining matter into the atmosphere. What you’re proposing is nothing less than destruction of the processes which made us what we are. They’re natural, Crane. Leave them alone!”

“What’s natural about an earthquake?” Crane asked. “People are always so quick to judge. Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean it has to stay like that. The globe thinks it will work fine and the globe knows far more than we do.”

“It does not!” Newcombe said loudly. “The globe knows nothing of humanity or of ethics or of common sense. You’re talking about interfering with a basic process of the Earth. God only knows the catastrophe you could cause by trying to make this insanity work!”

“Ask the machine,” Crane said. “See what it thinks.”

“I don’t care about the goddamned machine!” Newcombe shouted. “It’s an extension of your insanity.”

“Wait a minute,” Lanie said. “The globe works. You’ve seen it work. It can be a very useful tool in—”

“You’re as bad as he is,” Newcombe said. “Listen carefully to me: It’s the entire planet you’re putting at risk here. It’s unnatural, Crane. It’s wrong.”

“Strange words from a scientist,” Crane said. “Dams change the course of nature’s rivers. Medicines interfere with the natural process of sickness. Genetic manipulation changes everything from the food we eat to the children we bear, again, going against the nature of life. This is no different.”

Newcombe tapped his wrist pad for the time. “There’s science, Crane, then there’s egotistical arrogance. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I know who I am, doctor,” Crane said. “You should ask that question of yourself.”

“I have,” Newcombe said, “and here’s the answer: I’m the man who’s going to keep you from destroying the Earth.”

With that he turned and strode quickly out of the mosque.

Lanie moved to Crane, put a hand on his good arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have blurted out—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Crane said, watching Newcombe leave the building. “He would have found out soon enough anyway. I’ll be going public.”

He idly reached out and patted her hand. Lanie feared that this might be the last quiet moment of their lives.

Looking down on the Zone from the roof of the two-story warehouse Brother Ishmael had converted to his home, Newcombe felt as though he’d stepped into the past.

The inner city was clean, but crowded, people everywhere on the streets. There were no teevs on the buildings, no projected dinosaurs or camheads running around desperately looking for the visual that would change their lives.

Young children were parading the streets though, all carrying weapons as the onlookers cheered them on. Newcombe was uncomfortable with the weapons.

Above, blue lightning crackled across the black top of the Zone, a protective electronic jam for a city within a city. They existed inside an electric cocoon totally cut off from the white man’s world. Looking at the huge numbers of children and young adults, he concluded that over half the population of the War Zone had probably never even seen the outside world.

He sat with Ishmael, Khadijah, and Martin Aziz. They watched a small teev showing the scene just outside of the gates, in the cleared area that stood as a free fire zone. Several hundred Muslim children were out there charging the FPF positions, throwing rocks and chunks of concrete. The FPF responded with low-frequency infrasound, meant to disrupt the thinking processes, and with nausea gas. The children were going down, writhing and crying, a show for all the world to see.

“Why don’t you bring them back in?” Newcombe said, “before they’re taken away … or worse. They’re just kids.”

“They’re martyrs to Islam,” Ishmael said quietly. “Their suffering will open the hearts of the people to our cause. They are the first wave of our Jihad.”

“What’s the second wave?”

“My brother is talking about bombs, about terrorism, about killing,” Martin Aziz said.

“My brother does not have the heart for revolution,” Ishmael said.

“You’re wrong,” Aziz said. “It’s the stomach I lack. I believe that cycles of killing and revenge and more killing will add years to our struggle.”

“And what has inactivity brought us?” Khadijah asked.

“I’m not speaking of inactivity,” Aziz said, Newcombe listening to a sibling patter that was as natural to this family as breathing. “Brother Daniel’s more considered approach through the media has already brought us endorsements from prominent citizens.”

“Endorsement.” Ishmael snorted, standing to look down over the rail to the streets below. The demonstrators, seeing their spiritual and political leader, broke out in a thunderous cheer, thousands of voices calling his name.

Smiling, Ishmael turned back to Aziz. “And what has my approach brought?” he asked. “In the last month our spiritual brothers all over the world have risen up and demonstrated against Liang Int, boycotts are in progress in thirty countries, and the lands living under Islamic Law already have refused to do business with Liang until we are given a homeland. Our visibility and the suffering of our children have touched billions of hearts, and, more importantly, we are hitting Liang in the pocketbook, the only place they feel pain.”

Aziz simply shook his head and stared at the teev. “Behold the fruit of Islam,” he said sadly.

A large FPF force had broken from behind their barricades and were wading with electric prods into the sea of vomiting children, indiscriminately swinging fifty thousand volts at anyone not quick enough to crawl out of the way.

Grimacing, Ishmael turned from the teev. “That’s enough,” he said. “Call them back.”

Aziz hit the pad. “Open the gates,” he said. “Now!”

On the screen, Newcombe could see the two large gates to the secret city swinging open, the children retreating, screaming and crying, back into the Zone, FPF chasing them, swinging their clubs, stopping thirty feet short of the gates themselves. No one had ever tried to breech the Zone.

The G retook their positions behind a six-foot wall a hundred yards away from the Zone. As they went, they dragged the bodies of dead or unconscious children with them.

“Turn it off,” Ishmael said.

“This is horrifying,” Newcombe said, his stomach in knots. “This can’t be allowed to go on.”

“You’re right,” Ishmael said, patting him on the shoulder, “but all wars have casualties.

Understand that. We may bicker among ourselves, but we must be willing to pay the price in blood to have our freedom.”

There was nothing Newcombe felt he could say. He looked up at the crackling blue fires, and realized the sky always looked the same here.

“How do you power all this?” he asked as Brother Ishmael’s wife, Reena, served cardamom coffee and cookies. “It would take a focus the size of a small building to generate a web this big.”

“You know the Pan Arab Friendship League building downtown?” Ishmael asked.

“Of course, I do,” Newcombe said. “It’s shaped and faceted like a jewel. People come—”

“The whole building is a giant focus,” Khadijah said. “We’ve barely tapped its power.”

“No one has ever suspected,” Ishmael said. “The cables that connect us are in the sewers. You will find something similar in every city that has a War Zone.”

The cheering grew louder, and they all stood to watch. Leaning over the rail, Newcombe saw children as young as six, bloody and battered, some being carried on stretchers, returning home from battle. The procession stopped beneath them. The crowd roared now. Ishmael picked up a bullhorn to address them. Newcombe was startled to realize that most of these people probably didn’t have aurals. It was exciting in its very primitiveness.

“Heroes of the Revolution,” Ishmael said, “we salute you! You are the future! You will live to raise your own children on your own land, with Allah as your guide! Go now … home to your parents who love you!”

To thunderous applause Ishmael returned to his seat, delicately picked up his demitasse cup, and sipped. He sat back and said, “Soon, other cities, other War Zones will join the children’s revolution. We’ll schedule the riots in shifts so that there’s always one going on someplace.” He looked over at Newcombe. “Do you go with the others from the Foundation to Memphis?”

“I leave tomorrow.”

“There’s a small War Zone there,” Aziz said.

“Yes, I know,” Newcombe said. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.” He pulled out the EQ-eco he’d drawn up for the city of Memphis. The War Zone there was circled in black. “Do you see this area? It’s downtown Memphis.”

Khadijah and Martin walked over and joined Ishmael in peering at the paper Newcombe held.

“This jagged line shows an area where the earth will sink by as much as fifteen feet. Here, on the other side of the jagged line is an area of uplift that will tear the city in two.”

“It goes right through the War Zone,” Khadijah said.

Newcombe looked at her, their gazes holding. “Yes,” he said, then turned his head to Ishmael. “Do they have a way out of there?”

“Underground … like we have here.”

“Will they listen to me if I warn them?”

“If I tell them to.”

“Tell them.”

“Where would they go?” Martin Aziz asked.

They all stared at one another, Ishmael’s face slowly cracking into a wide smile.

“They’ll go south,” Ishmael said. “Into Mississippi.”

“The promised land,” Khadijah whispered, eyes alight. She clapped her hands.

“They will be the first to make the pilgrimage to our new homeland,” Ishmael continued. “There are hundreds of traditional Africk townships in Mississippi. Our people will locate in one of them and take it over. It will be our beachhead.”

“Perfect.” Newcombe smiled, and Crane’s words from Sado fell out of his mouth unbidden. “What drama!”

“As long as the government of Mississippi doesn’t object,” Aziz said.

Khadijah laughed. “It certainly presents an interesting problem for Mr. Li,” she said.

“If he should allow us to settle,” Ishmael said, on his feet now and starting to pace, “our people will immediately demand separatist status.”

“And if he decides to stop the pilgrimage?” Aziz asked.

Ishmael shook his head. “More martyrs. But I’ve noticed something about businessmen. They dislike killing consumers.”

Aziz nodded, smiling slightly. “Brother Daniel has provided us the impetus to make our revolution active. I approve.”

“Excellent!” Ishmael said, hugging everyone in turn. He laughed after kissing Newcombe on each cheek.

“What is your boss going to think about all this?” he asked.

“He’s too busy trying to blow up the world to notice,” Newcombe replied, surprised at how much anger came out in his voice.

“What?” Ishmael asked.

“You remember you told me the first time we met that Crane had a secret agenda?” Ishmael nodded. “Well, he does. He wants to fuse the continental plates by exploding fifty-three gigaton bombs at key points where the plates intersect. He wants to stop earthquakes completely.”

“He shakes his fist at Allah.” Ishmael said. “Crane puts himself above everything. Just amazing.”

“It’s only amazing in that he wants to,” Newcombe said. “I can’t imagine a government in the world that would consent to a scheme as obviously misguided as his.”

“I cannot believe, Brother, that you underestimate Crane so very much,” Ishmael said, putting an arm around his sister, both of them staring hot fire at Newcombe. “He’s already come back from the dead and is returning to the scene of the crime. No, he’s probably more than capable of convincing people to go along with him.”

Newcombe was puzzled. “You seem almost happy about it.”

“I’ve been waiting for the connection,” Ishmael said, “the collision point between Crane and the Nation of Islam.” He shrugged broadly. “And now I have it. Our greatness will be tested. This is the mountain upon which Dr. Crane and I will take tea.”

“I want to convert,” Newcombe said, watching amusement show on Ishmael’s face. All of them laughed.

“You are a godless man,” Ishmael said. “Why would you wish to become Muslim?”

“Why do you care? I believe you’d want me to convert if I worshipped inkblots. Correct?”

“More than correct, Brother,” Aziz said quickly, rather than let the words pass through Ishmael’s mouth. “By having you go through a public conversion we’d reap major public relations benefits—an intelligent and successful man chooses NOI because he believes in it. The gentle side of Islam balances out the necessarily violent revolutionary side.”

“It also makes him an insider,” Ishmael warned. “He would rapidly become our official voice without meaning to.” He pointed at Newcombe. “You haven’t yet told me why you wish to convert.”

“No mystery,” Newcombe said. “I’m doing it for the Cause. And I’m doing it because it will put me in direct opposition to Lewis Crane when this bomb business becomes public. He’s a madman. I wish to stand against him as one of you.”

“Liar,” Khadijah said. “It has something to do with that white woman.”

“No,” Newcombe said, lowering his head. “Lanie and I are … no longer together. We haven’t been for some time.”

The woman laughed and took a step closer to him. “So maybe you want to teach her a lesson, huh?”

“God, I hope there’s more to me than that.”

Rum bottle between his legs, Crane watched the satellite viddies of the Masada Option. He felt a shameful exhilaration at the monstrous beauty of thirty multimegaton bombs going off all at once. The blast cloud rose, amazingly high from the vantage point of outer space, its crown branching off and flattening out, spreading.

It had been one of those stunning events in world history that forces everyone to remember where he or she was when it happened. Crane remembered that he’d been getting his first aural implanted at that moment. The news of Masada were the first sounds he’d heard through the device. He’d been horrified at first, in shock, along with the rest of the world. But things once done could not be changed, and he’d realized the inherent importance of Masada as field research for his studies on the relationship between nuclear testing and EQs.

He’d been in a burn suit in Sudan by the next afternoon with a truckload of seismos. It was the day after that, standing in Saudi Arabia, that the notion of fusing the plates had come to him. The Rub Al Kali desert was a solid sheet of glass unbroken to the horizon. The intense heat had melted the sand. Under roiling gray clouds and thick rains of radioactive ash, he had skated on the desert.

“Crane,” Lanie called. “You in there?”

“Go away,” he said, taking a drink, watching the Masada cloud beginning to drift eastward, China and The Russia Corporation gradually disappearing beneath a haze of gray.

“It was beyond belief,” Lanie said from right behind him, her voice soft. “I was twenty-two, starting grad school. I remember feeling cheated that I wouldn’t have the chance to inherit the world. There was speculation that everything might go. Plus, Jews were being killed in many places. It was scary.”

“Is that when you became a Cosmie?”

“No,” She laughed, moving around to sit beside him on the couch. “My father was Jewish by birth, not my mother, which left me nowhere in a matrilineal culture. I always remember my dad as a Cosmie. He converted when I was very young. Guess that’s why I gravitated that way. Cosmies are friendly enough folks, like Unitarians with vision. It didn’t stop me from losing a scholarship because they said I was Jewish, though.”

“There was a lot of anger for awhile,” Crane said. “I remember the backlash. That’s why most of my staff members are Jews. Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“You’re a visionary,” she replied immediately. “All visionaries are thought of as crazy by the people they want to serve.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She tilted his face to hers, staring at him. Crane was tense, her touch was electric to him. “Yes, you’re crazy,” she whispered. “You’re just crazy enough to survive the madness we live in.”

“My plan can work. It can.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

He nodded grimly. “Thanks.” He looked away, then back at the screen.

“Why,” Lanie asked, “do I have such a hard time making eye contact with you?”

He looked at her for a second, looked away. “I have a … difficult time thinking when I look at you. I don’t know what it is. It’s never happened before. I get, I don’t know … lost in your gaze or … or something. Stupid, huh?”

She moved into his line of vision. “It’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she answered, and this time he forced himself to hold the eye contact. “You know,” she went on, “you said a lot of things when we were trapped in that house in Martinique. Do you remember?”

He started to look away, held on. “Yes, I do.”

“Did you mean them?”

“I thought you’d never remember.”

“Did you mean them?”

“I meant them,” he said, looking down, her fingers lifting his face back to hers. “I’m sorry, I … didn’t mean to compromise our professional—”

“Oh, the hell with that.” She scooted closer and put her arms around his neck. “You have greatness in you. It excites me.”

“But I’m a cripple, I’m—”

“Just shut up and kiss me.”

In the next few minutes Lewis Crane discovered, for the first time in his life, that communication need not be verbal to be understood and meaningful.

Chapter 13 MERCALLI XII

The barn smelled like wet horses and manure. Newcombe hid in the corner behind bales of hay to make contact with the War Zone.

“There is no doubt,” he was saying into a monitor-cam sitting in his palm and pointing toward his face, “that the quake will happen today. I am speaking under Green Authority. Repeat: Green Authority. Your pilgrimage must begin within the hour if you are to survive. You may have to fight your way at first, but the way will be clear soon enough. You must leave within the hour. Go now!”

He blanked and hoped for the best. He’d been transmitting on the ultrahigh-frequency infrared band that nobody used because of the cost of the reception equipment. But it would be picked up in the War Zone’s focus building in downtown Memphis to be rebroadcast through the connecting cable to the Zone.

His hands were shaking. He had just committed an act of sedition, one that Brother Ishmael had made sure he would have to accomplish. “If you’re convinced of the quake,” Ishmael had said, “if you’re sure, send the message when you know.”

He knew.

The Ellsworth-Beroza nucleation zone was now constant, showing ever-building seismic activity. They had measured hundreds of temblors, undetectable on the surface, but growing to the Big Slip. Cracking rock had released large amounts of trapped gases while dilation occurred throughout the Reelfoot, cutting off the S waves that were unable to move through the water seeping into the cracks. It was classic, all the physical signs coming into line. The horses were kicking nervously against their stalls, neighing and whinnying in fear. Dogs bayed in the distance.

“Dan!” Lanie called. “Dan? Are you in here?”

He slipped the cam into his shirt pocket and moved out of his hiding place. “You caught me,” he said, smiling sheepishly.

“What are you doing in here?” she asked, moving through the barn doors. She was wrapped head-to-toe, hatted, and block gleamed on her face.

“I had to get away from the madhouse for a few minutes.” he said. “I needed some time alone.”

“If you’d take a couple of dorph—”

“Why are you looking for me?”

She moved close. “They’ve come for Crane,” she said, her voice quavering. “They’re arresting him.”

“Calm down,” he said, hands reaching out to take her arms. “We knew this would happen. Everything’s being done that can be done.”

“I’m scared, Dan. The crowd’s ugly, and the—”

“We’ve got escape routes. Don’t worry. Come on, let’s go give Crane some moral support.”

They went out into the madness of the soybean farm. A man named Jimmy Earl had donated this ten-thousand-acre farm, south of Memphis in Capleville, to Crane for use as a refugee center. His motivation wasn’t altruistic; he was making a viddy about Crane and his prediction from the inside. But none of them had anticipated the reaction of the public. Above, hundreds of helos swarmed like mosquitoes through clouds that ran continuous loops of a speech by President Gideon condemning Crane.

Angry over the debacle of the October folly and whipped into near frenzy by the government and the teev schmoozers, people were descending on Jimmy Earl’s farm like a locust plague. Thousands of people had shown up in the last two days to jeer and demand Crane’s head. Electrified fences had been hurriedly erected around the tent city, and Whetstone’s people, instead of being able to help the refugees, were forced to form security details around the perimeter.

Newcombe pulled his goggles over his eyes. They moved through the barnyard and into the tent city just as the front gates opened and the police cruiser slid in, display lights strobing.

“The command post?” Dan asked. Several members of the crowd rushed in before the gates closed, security massing to beat them back.

“Yeah … giving interviews up to the end.”

“They taking Whetstone, too?”

“Both ‘perpetrators,’ ” she said sarcastically. “By the way, other seismic stations around the world are beginning to pick up our foreshocks. I think some minds are changing.”

“Too late,” he said. “Nobody’s going anywhere, not with the President on the teev calling us everything but child molesters.”

“You’re tense.”

“Yeah, I’m tense. I’ve been going over the Memphis EQ-ecogram and I’m still afraid I haven’t paid enough attention to the river. It’s possible to get in a range with a river that changes course, but my calcs were never designed to deal with a situation like the Mississippi. It needs more refinement.”

“Does Crane know you’re still worried?”

“Yeah. He says he trusts me. I’ve got to work more on this type of situation.”

The rows of tents were empty except for volunteer workers. Not one person had accepted the offer of help, not yet. As they reached the centrally located command tent, the cruiser, lights still flashing, turned into the row, churning dust behind.

Newcombe jerked his goggles up as he entered the tent. Other teevs filled the tent sides, some showing EQ-ecograms of metropolitan centers that would be affected by the quake. Still others showed emergency EQ supply lists, another a list of safe evac locations.

Crane and Whetstone stood together at the front of the room, before an alarming seismogram display showing an almost constantly increasing amplitude on all crests. A crowd of ten camheads was around them, private broadcasters working around the government’s jam of the airwaves. Jimmy Earl, of course, stood in the center of it all, making his viddy.

Crane was speaking. “…in Memphis, because Memphis is going to take the brunt of the quake. We have an observation scale that’s been used for nearly a hundred years called the Mercalli Intensity Scale. I’m predicting Memphis to fall within the range of a Mercalli XII, Damage Total. Practically all buildings damaged greatly or destroyed. Waves seen on ground surface. Lines of sight and level distorted. Objects will be thrown into the air. Please, anyone in Memphis who’s listening right now: Get out of the city. Come south to Capleville. We can help you here.”

“Crane,” Newcombe called. “They’re here.”

Crane frowned and looked at Whetstone. The two shook hands and walked toward the flap just as the police entered.

“You’re in charge now,” Crane told Newcombe. “I’ll get back here as soon as I can.”

“I don’t trust the river,” Newcombe replied. “Can’t they—”

“No,” Crane interrupted. “It’s too late. We’ll have to take our chances.”

“I’m Chief Hoskins of the Memphis PD,” the man cuffing Whetstone said, then nodded to his partner. “This here is Mr. Lyle Withington, the mayor of our fair city. I have a warrant for the arrest of Lewis Crane and Harry Whetstone.”

“It will give me great pleasure, sir,” the mayor said to Crane, “to watch you being put away where you can do no more harm.”

“Do you live outside of the city, Mr. Mayor?” Crane asked as they put the cuffs on him.

“Why, no … I have a house right in—”

“Then get your family out before they’re hurt.”

“Now, really … sir.”

“Is there a Jimmy Earl here?” Chief Hoskins called.

“Right here!” Jimmy, a big country boy with rosy cheeks and a fatback smile that never left his face, elbowed his way to them. Inherited money, Newcombe thought.

“You can come along, too.” the Chief said. “The mayor’s given you permission to videotape in the cell.”

“Thanks, Uncle Lyle,” Earl said, pumping the man’s hand.

Crane turned to the other camheads. “People of Memphis,” he said as Hoskins led him to the door, “go to your main power boxes and shut down the focus. If you have anything that runs on natural gas, cut the valve at the source. Do it now.”

They moved through the tent, Newcombe following, pulling his goggles back on with the rest of them as they got out in the sun, the crowds jeering loudly when Crane was spotted.

“Chief Hoskins,” Newcombe said, pointing to the crowds, “can’t you disperse those people? They’re trespassing on private property.”

“No!” Crane said as they shoved him into the car. “They’re safe here and they’ll be able to help after the quake.”

Lanie leaned through the window to give Crane a long kiss as the cams pulled in tight, Newcombe feeling a flush of rage that he fought down.

She stepped back, Crane sticking his head out the door and talking into the lenses of the cameras held by the camheads. “Take heavy objects off your shelves,” he called. “Take down glass and chandeliers. Get flammable materials out of your home. Now! Right away!”

Hoskins slid behind the wheel as Whetstone and an excited Jimmy Earl climbed in back with Crane.

Mayor Withington stared hard at Newcombe. “I’d advise you to pack up your belongings and get out of here,” he said. “There’s not a cop in Tennessee who’ll protect you from those people out there.”

“You’ll be blessing us for being here before the day’s out, Mayor,” Newcombe said, turning from the man and walking back into the tent, Lanie on his heels. He padded onto the P fiber. “Burt … Burt, are you there?”

“Yeah, Doc Dan.”

“You keeping track of that lawyer Crane dragged down here from Memphis?”

“Yeah … he’s right here.”

“Crane’s been arrested. Give the lawyer his retainer from the cash box. Tell him to go into town tomorrow and work the bail—that’s if the jail’s still standing tomorrow.”

“Got it.”

“What the hell?” Lanie said. Dan blanked Hill and turned to her. She was watching the screens. Africks and Hispanics were pouring out of the city’s sewer system, firing guns into the air. They were hotwiring cars on the streets and driving off. Cars were bumper-to-bumper on State Highway 51, Elvis Presley Boulevard.

“What the hell’s going on?” Lanie asked.

“The start of the revolution,” Newcombe said, his mind screaming, And I did it!

“What time is it?” she asked.

“3:45,” he said without looking. “We’ve got less than two hours.”

The Memphis city jail was part of the new law enforcement complex built on the old station house at 201 Poplar Street in the aging section of town, five miles from the Mississippi River and down the street from U China Tennessee State and the tree-lined splendor of Audubon Park. Of course, the park’s trees had mostly died. The city fathers undertook a campaign years before of filling the dead branches with artificial leaves so that the city’s ambience could remain intact. And they constantly reminded everyone that it was beautiful winter or summer.

They took Crane and Whetstone into the station amidst confusion. The War Zone had just exploded from its nest and flowed into the city proper, the entire force mobilized to fight. But the Zoners appeared not to want to fight—only to flee.

Dozens of Muslims were being dragged into the station, all demanding they be given the right to leave the region. Crane was thrilled that somebody was listening to him.

By the time they were booked and thrown into the tank—the huge holding cell that was filled to capacity with angry Zoners yelling for freedom—it was 4:00 P.M. When the tank was filled to capacity, people were jammed into other cells, then the halls, the whole block being locked down tight.

And during the entire procedure, Crane had never stopped talking, never stopped speaking into Jimmy Earl’s camera, rigged not just for recording, but also for broadcast.

“Time is running short,” he said. “The people in here with me are from the War Zone. They are trying to escape the disaster.

“You must listen carefully to me if you want to save your lives. It’s too late, I fear, for you to escape if you haven’t already. So, get shoes on. Wear heavy clothing and pack a bag. Take dry goods, canned goods. Fill water bottles. Fresh water will be the thing you most need in the hours to come. Your biggest problem right now, though, is your home. Your home is full of death—flying glass will kill you; objects hanging on your walls or sitting on your mantels are deadly projectiles; chimneys will crush you; your water pipes are explosives; the roof of your own home could fall and bury you. Bricks are bombs; splinters are swords. Get out of your house.

“There are dead trees everywhere. Avoid them. Stay off the roads. Look for open ground. Remember, emergency services are set up in Capleville. If you can see the EQ-eco on your region, gravitate toward the less dangerous areas. There will be aftershocks, several hundred of them in the next few days, so keep moving toward the safe areas.

“Fresh water … fresh water. Please … fill bottles now. There’s not much—”

He heard it then, the low rumbling roar coming from beneath them. It suddenly got deathly quiet in the cell block as the noise increased.

“It’s here,” Crane said. “It’s here! Out of your homes! Now! Now!”

The roar was upon them, the cell floor buckling, throwing them all to the floor as the sidewalks, streets, and lawns outside began exploding.

Jimmy Earl screamed and grabbed the bars for support. The entire line of bars fell outward, on top of the men in the halls as the building shook, plaster dust raining down on them. The lights went out.

“Stoney!” Crane shouted. The floor rolled and pitched like a ship on stormy seas. The wail of human beings joined the sickening roar in a stentorian cry of despair. “Stoney!”

“C-Crane!” came the pained response. “Here … here!”

Crane cursed the cops for putting too many people in the holding tank. He crawled through the writhing mass of flesh on the rocking floor. Pieces of the ceiling were falling all around. He was alert, not scared. Death would toy with him for a long time before taking him.

“Crane!”

He found Whetstone in the corner of the cell, his face bleeding so much his white hair was bright red. His arm was broken, maybe his shoulder. Pieces of ceiling had crushed his rib cage.

“Your legs!” Crane screamed against the roar that seemed to go on forever, though he knew only half a minute had passed. “Can you stand?”

“Oh, God … Crane! The pain!”

“Can you use your legs?”

“I … I think so…”

“Then hang on.” Crane threw himself over Stoney, covering the man’s body as more of the ceiling fell in. But the rocking was less, the sound more distant. The first shock had passed.

He struggled to his feet; others did the same. He dragged Stoney while screaming, “Get out! Get out now! There’ll be more shocks.”

Huge holes were gouged through the walls. The prisoners straggled toward the light coming in from outside, Crane’s wristpad was bleeping. He kept hold of Stoney and opened the fiber with his nose. “What?”

“C-Crane?” It was Lanie. “Are you all right?”

“Barely,” he said. “It’s a mess here. I’m trying to get out of the jail now. What’s it look like?”

“All we can see is smoke on the helo views,” she said. “Nothing else. Smoke.”

“It’ll clear. I’ve got to go. I’ll get back with you. Tell Newcombe we cut it a little too close.”

He blanked and kept moving. It was difficult not to trip. Bodies littered the floor.

They made it into the middle of the hallway, jammed with people piling up in front of a hole in the wall. “We’ve got a safe exit,” he called to the crowd. “Nothing to worry about. We’re all decent people. Help one another through. We’re all right. We’ll stay all right.”

Jimmy Earl caught up with him just before he got through the hole, the man still framing CD, still making his “movie.” He helped get through the hole and out with Whetstone.

“Hang in there, you bastard,” Crane said to Whetstone who was moaning. Crane was afraid for his friend, whose breathing was ragged. “I owe you three billion bucks, Stoney. Don’t conk out on me.”

They got onto Poplar, a few cops walking around in a daze, their entire station house, all ten stories of it, collapsing, dust rising from the debris, the air tasting dirty.

Smoke rolled through the area. A haze of smoke, fires and dust burned their eyes. As near as Crane could see, Memphis was gone. The elevated roadways had crumpled like paper, the hospital that had blocked his view on the drive in simply wasn’t there anymore. He couldn’t see the fairgrounds, the smoke was too thick. What was left of the university was burning out of control. The streets, the sidewalks, the lawns had buckled under the Slip, then cracked, opening huge fissures all around them. There were geysers of city water shooting high into the air from broken mains.

An aftershock hit then, everyone going to the ground again as a hydrant exploded and shot a hundred feet into the air.

There was a roaring sound that Crane couldn’t identify. He and Jimmy Earl lay Whetstone gently on the ground and went to investigate.

They carefully picked their way across the broken street, moving toward the west and the impenetrable smoke that blocked their view. They hadn’t walked fifty feet into the smoke, when Crane realized it wasn’t smoke at all, but a fine mist, a spray, like frothy drizzle.

“Oh, my God,” Jimmy Earl said.

They were standing on the bank of the Mississippi River, looking out over a raging torrent that used to be Memphis, Tennessee. The skeletons of dead buildings poked through the raging waters, bodies and homes floating past. Memphis had been a city of a million people. Now it was river bottom. A little farther up-stream, where the fairgrounds had stood, was a sight magnificent in its beautiful, deadly symmetry. A waterfall a hundred feet high now occupied what had been downtown Memphis and as they watched in amazement, the incredible span of the Memphis-Arkansas bridge floated over the edge of the falls to crash, in slow motion, into the river below.

It was beyond imagination—even Crane’s.

Jimmy Earl fell to his knees and began retching into the river. “No time for that now,” Crane said, pulling him up by the collar. “You wanted this and now you’re going to get it all on tape.”

“Time,” he said to his pad, 4:39 coming through the aural.

He dragged Jimmy Earl back to Whetstone, the man pale, but conscious. He hunkered down.

“You’re something, Crane,” Whetstone said weakly. “We walked into a lulu, didn’t we?”

“Save it,” Crane replied. “You’ll need your strength. Dammit, we’ve still got work to do on the globe. The quake hit fifty-eight minutes early.”

“That’s not so bad in f-five billion years.”

“Yeah,” Crane said, preoccupied. He looked up at Jimmy Earl. “Anyone who can still hear me right now, you need to remember two things. Get away from anything that can fall on you and try to administer first aid to those who need it. Worry about your losses later.”

Heedless of the sun, he pulled off his shirt and slid it under Whetstone. “This is going to hurt,” he said, knotting the shirt over the man’s ribs and jerking it tight. Whetstone grimaced.

Crane addressed the cam. “People are going to be in shock. They’re going to be wandering around dazed. Take these people under your wing, protect them.” He yanked on Stoney’s shoulder, slipping the ball joint back into place, and Whetstone sighed with relief.

Screams came from the remaining cell blocks, the ones on the higher levels. Men were hanging out of windows and rents in the walls. “You men!” Crane called to the Zoners who were standing, watching the end of the world. “Grab debris, steel and concrete. Start piling it up securely against the side of the block. Make a platform to bring those people down!”

He pulled off Whetstone’s belt, doubled it over and jammed it into the man’s mouth. Without a word, he jerked hard on the elbow, working the broken bone. Stoney bit down hard on the belt, blanched and passed out.

Jimmy Earl stood before him, recording it all, tears streaming down his face. “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Crane said softly. “This is important.”

“I-I never t-thought—”

“Not now!” Crane said sternly as he checked the gash on Whetstone’s head.

He stood and moved to a plot of ground wet from the gushing fire hydrant, taking Jimmy Earl with him. He spoke to the camera. “If you have injured people who are bleeding,” he said, “Nature provides her own remedy.”

He dug his hands down into the ground. “Mud,” he said, holding up two handfuls. “Pack the wound in mud.”

He hurried back to Whetstone, demonstrating the mud technique on the injured man, packing his head in it. “This will stop the bleeding. Worry about infection later.”

A huge explosion from the university complex punctuated his sentence, followed by another shock, a strong one that hurled people to the ground.

He pulled the belt out of Stoney’s mouth and ran it around his shoulder to make a sling for the broken arm. Behind him, the Zoners were working quickly to build the tower to get the people out of the top of the rubble of the jail. Everyone was fighting against the darkness of despair.

Jimmy Earl had backed up and was framing the action as men formed a human chain to hand up pieces of debris, the cops pitching in to help. Humanity was happening, petty hatreds and politics crumbling in the face of danger to the family of Man.

There was life; there was hope.

Stoney came around, groaning, then smiled up at Crane. “I’d thank you,” he said, “but you’ll probably find a way to charge me for this.”

“Charge you? Hell, man, I’m saving you money.”

“How’s that?”

“The whole police station’s gone.” Crane smiled. “We don’t have to bail ourselves out.”