Richter 10

  Abu Talib felt rage rise in him. He carried the weight of righteousness on his shoulders. He had to do what no one else could: stop the madman before he destroyed the planet.

  “I can’t believe you’d actually come here.”

  Talib’s head snapped in the direction from which Crane’s voice had come. Crane was flanked by two G, Lanie hung back somewhat, holding her child, her white child. “And I can’t believe you’re actually going to do this,” he said.

  Lanie shoved through the G to enter the room. “Hello, children,” she said to the fifth graders, who had stopped playing when they’d heard the exchange between the two men. “I’d like to ask all of you to choose a locker and remove any communication equipment you may be wearing. Turn off your aurals. Remove your pads and put them in the lockers.”

  They did as they were told. “Thank you,” Lanie said. “Now please go with the policeman, who will give you a tour of the rocks and gems room.”

  The children filed out behind one of the blank-faced security guards. Crane and the other G moved into the processing room to circle the three people.

  “So how many people have you killed today, Dan?” Crane asked. “Have we topped the three-thousand mark yet?”

  “Leave him alone,” Khadijah said. “We fight a war of liberation. People die in wars.”

  “You must be the wife,” Crane said, moving close to her.

  “I will ignore all that, Crane, as NOI is not the issue,” Talib said. “I’m here to give you one last chance to come to your senses. Please stop this insanity now. Walk away from it.”

  “You know me one hell of a lot better than that,” Crane returned.

  “But I do not know you at all, Dr. Crane,” Martin said.

  Crane stared at the man’s white robes. “And who might you be?”

  “Someone who abhors violence as much as you,” Aziz returned.

  “Then you’re associating with a bad crowd.”

  Lanie stepped forward with the baby, Talib’s insides tightening up. “Hello, Dan,” she said softly, and he folded his arms to keep his hands from shaking.

  “So you’re Lanie,” Khadijah said, stepping between the woman and Abu. “I am Khadijah, the wife of Abu Talib. You have a beautiful son.”

  “Thank you,” Lanie said, her eyes still fixed on Talib. “I hear you have a daughter?”

  “And a son on the way,” Khadijah said, patting her stomach. “Did your son inherit his father’s insanity?”

  “I hope so,” Lanie said coldly, still looking at Talib. “Why can’t you leave us alone, Dan? What have we done to you?”

  He broke the eye contact as he felt his resolve crack. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Lanie, this may destroy the planet!”

  “Okay,” Crane said. “I want you out.”

  Talib had never known Crane to hate anyone, but he could feel it now, pulsing from the man in agonizing waves. The enemy. Talib did not protest Crane’s order.

  They returned to processing from the computer room, where a janitor was sweeping just outside. As Talib passed beside the man, a disk was slipped into his jacket pocket.

  They reached Processing, and Talib slipped the disk from his pocket, fed it into the slot in his pad and copied it. He coughed to cover the copy completion bleep, then palmed the disk, slipping it into the trash can by the door as the janitor moved into Processing to sweep.

  Crane and the FPF led them back to the elevators, the fifth graders charging down the hall to join them within minutes. As they walked into the massive lift, Crane grabbed Talib by the arm to stare furiously at him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here after all this time,” he said, “but make it the last time. I don’t ever want, or intend, to see your face again.”

  “Take your hand off of me,” Talib said, jerking free as the door closed between them.

  Crane’s last view of the man was his eyes, bright as lava with hatred. The pipeline of negative emotion worked both ways.

  “Crane!” Lanie called, charging down the hall, Charlie happily riding on her back. “Crane!”

  She reached him, out of breath, frowning at the closed doors of the elevator. “They’ve gone,” she said.

  “Immediately. Of course. Did something happen?”

  “We’re missing a disk.”

  “Which one?”

  “Basic design schematics, blueprints, structural analysis.”

  “Show me,” he said, already heading down the hallway. “If they took something, we’ve got time to stop them aboveground.”

  They rushed to the computer room, dark and cool, hewn out of bare rock.

  “I’d pulled it,” she said, “to check Pany’s alignment problems, then set it right—”

  “Here?” Crane said, picking up a small disk from the other side of the keyboard and holding it up for her.

  “That’s it!” she said, taking it from him to stick in the disk lockbox. Then she turned and looked hard at him. “I didn’t put it there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, Crane staring straight up at the ceiling as if he could see Talib right through solid rock.

  Chapter 18: Hidden Faults

  IMPERIAL VALLEY PROJECT

  30 JUNE 2028, 9:18 P.M.

  Harry Whetstone’s voice echoed down the cavern as he spoke from the small podium set up in the main cavern to the cadre of associates who’d worked the Project. Crane watched him with a strange sense of calm, of demons conquered.

  “We stand this evening at a crossroads of history,” Stoney said, looking frail, looking old. “I never thought that I’d stand inside of a bomb, much less the biggest bomb in the history of the world. I never thought I’d want to see a bomb explode, but in this case I can’t wait. We stand on the brink of mankind’s next step—the taming of our own environment for the good of not only everyone alive, but of everyone yet to be born. And I’m proud to have played a small part in its realization.

  “I say a small part because only one person is primary in the achievement of this great goal, a man whose insight and tireless devotion alone has made this gargantuan leap possible—Lewis Crane!”

  Cheers and applause broke out from the seventy people present, sounding louder because of the echo. The attendees included the Project laborers, plus the power brokers and supporters who’d given themselves to Crane’s dream—Sumi Chan, Kate Masters, Stoney, Messrs. Tsao and Tang, Burt Hill, and the key personnel from the Foundation.

  Crane waved to the crowd, and Whetstone raised a glass of champagne. “To you, Crane!” he called. “You have challenged impossible odds with indomitable courage!”

  Everyone drank, Lanie moving up beside him to hug his good arm tightly. “You did it,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “You really did it.”

  “We all did it,” Crane said. “Everyone here has helped make it happen… especially you.”

  “You’re the fulcrum, Crane.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked. He’d been wondering about her all day. She was there physically, but seemed to be deep in thought, thoughts she wasn’t expressing in words.

  “I’m feeling strange,” she said. “This has been a hell of a haul.”

  “Yeah,” he returned, hugging her close, drinking in her feel, her smell. “I love you so much.”

  “Oh, Crane,” she said, kissing him deeply on the mouth, then smiling up into his eyes, “you’ll never know… never understand the magic you’ve made in my life.”

  “Can I ever understand,” he whispered. “I never had a life until I met you. A wife… a family—I never thought these things were possible for me, I—”

  She silenced him with a kiss, then said something quite odd. “Never forget the moments we’ve had,” she said in deadly earnest. “They’ll keep me with you always.”

  There was something about how she said those words that chilled him to the bone. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  “Congratulations, Crane,” said Mr. Mui, bowing formally. “
You’ve delivered early, within budget, no labor problems, no scientific problems. You paid for it yourself and have pledged to return the area to its natural state when you leave. You are a man of your word, sir. I appreciate that.”

  “And I appreciate Liang Int’s commitment to our goal.” Crane also bowed. “You didn’t buckle, even under pressure.”

  Again Mr. Mui bowed. Smiling, Lanie said, “Well, in just about twelve hours we will have the culmination of the project—and my husband’s dream. You gentlemen will have to excuse me. I seem to have misplaced my son.”

  She left them then, though Charlie had been merely an excuse. She knew exactly where her son was. She was doing everything she could to hold herself together tonight. While everyone else was celebrating, she’d drawn inward, fearful. The nightly dreams of death were more intense than ever and all day today she’d felt a cloud of doom floating about her. She’d been unable to shake it and spent most of her time trying to hide her apprehension from others.

  Kate was lugging Charlie around. He was a boy whose feet very rarely touched the ground. Kate and Sumi were talking by the buffet table, Charlie leaning out to sneak canapés, which he promptly threw at anyone walking past.

  Lanie made her way through the excited crowd to join them, grabbing Charlie’s arm just as he was about to launch a food missile on a low trajectory right at Whetstone’s head.

  “So who’s handling whom?” she asked, taking the boy, who was beginning to look tired and irritable. It was way past his bedtime.

  “I’ll take aunt duty anytime to motherhood,” Kate said, realigning her sequins. “Play with ’em, wear ’em out, then give ’em back to mama.”

  “You have a very wonderful child,” Sumi said, turning to her left and speaking to empty air. “Don’t you think, Paul?”

  “Paul?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sumi said, shaking her head. “Let me introduce you. Paul, this is Elena King Crane.”

  “C-call me Lanie,” she said, narrowing her eyes and looking at Kate.

  “Paul is Sumi’s chipmate,” Kate said. “A friend from Sumi’s own mind. Someone to talk with, share with.”

  “You mean like an imaginary friend?” Lanie asked.

  Sumi laughed with Paul, her gaze on thin air. “Imaginary to you,” she said. She looked at Lanie. “To me he’s my better half. He’s intelligent, wise… loves to do things: to travel, go to parties, hiking. In fact, we were wondering if it would be all right if Paul and I did a little exploring down here?”

  “Well, sure,” Lanie said. “Take one of those carts parked beneath the computer room overlook. Go wherever you want, but watch out for the nuke ports. Fall down one and it’s four miles nonstop to the bottom.”

  “Thanks.” Sumi smiled, then turned to Paul. “Let’s go.”

  They wandered off, Lanie looking at Masters. “Is Sumi all right?”

  “Yeah.” Kate smiled. “It’s a Yo-Yu thing. The chip draws directly from the subconscious, but it also stores previous load, like an extra brain, enabling each experience with your ‘friend’ to be recalled and built upon. You’ve been locked up underground too long or you’d have seen this with many people. The chip is a way for basically lonely people to have companionship. Better than that, older people who are not only lonely, but alone, find a whole new world of attachment and happiness in a relationship that doesn’t tax them or judge them.”

  “But Sumi’s Vice President of the United States,” Lanie returned. “Does he always go out in public that way?”

  “Not always,” Kate said, “but a lot. I think that Paul is relatively aggressive in not wanting to miss anything.”

  “You better be sure to warn me when Paul’s around. I don’t want to step on his toes or anything.”

  “The chip is very agile. It avoids contact with others.”

  “You act as if we’re talking about a real person.”

  “As real as Sumi, I suppose,” Kate said. “What about you? You don’t look as excited as I would have expected you to be on the most important night of your life.”

  “It’s that obvious?”

  “In fact you look scared, honey. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Lanie said, holding Charlie close to her breast, nuzzling him with her cheek. “This cavern has begun to feel like a… a crypt, or something. When this is over, I never want to go in another cave as long as I live.”

  “You’re the second person I’ve heard say that tonight.”

  “Who’s the other?”

  “Burt Hill.”

  Burt Hill was at the bottom of Tube #33, systematically searching for conspirators. He had climbed out of the cage and was walking around the nuclear core, a journey of ten seconds’ duration. He’d felt danger all over him, the way he used to before Doc Crane had taken him out of the hospital and given him a job. Like a sudden chill descending and enfolding him, he could feel the icy grip of betrayal strangling his heart.

  He looked up to see faint light, a glowing spot four miles above, a giant eye looking down at him. He climbed back in the cage and hit the lever. The cage zipped silently upward, markers on the wall indicating how far he’d risen. The wall was paved with explosives. He could never check all hundred tubes tonight. He’d have to think of something else. Then an idea hit him.

  Crane sat with Whetstone in the computer room. For once, Stoney was more drunk than Crane. Although, Crane thought, that wasn’t quite true. Since Lanie had stepped into his soul, he scarcely drank. They watched the party through the window, its sound muffled.

  “Do you find it like a dream sometimes?” Whetstone asked, his skin pale, nearly translucent, his lips tinged purple.

  “All this?” Crane asked. “Not a dream, actually. Hell, I was here for every shovelful of dirt that came out of that stinking desert ground. It’s too real to me. But… there is something… I don’t know how to put it.”

  “Let me help you.” Stoney smiled. “You’ve devoted your entire life to one thought, one goal. Now that you’re on the verge of achieving it, you feel disconnected somehow, maybe even useless.”

  “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

  “That’s where I was when I met you, dear boy. A man can make only so much money before its pursuit loses its fire. You and your wild notions put the fire back in my life. And, with this, I feel like my life has been worthwhile.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “I die now, Crane.”

  “Oh, come on, Stoney. This isn’t the night to—”

  “No,” Whetstone said. “It’s true. My life of drive and dissipation has finally caught up with me.”

  “Isn’t there anything to be done?”

  Whetstone shrugged. “They have all these extraordinary machines for keeping rich folk alive for decades after we should have died. That’s not for me. Too ghoulish. I lived as a man. I’ll not die as Suction Valve A-57 of some damned machine.”

  “How long have you got?”

  The man looked wistful. “How long does it take a leaf to detach itself from a tree in the fall and float to the ground? It’s fall, Crane.”

  Crane looked him in the eye without pity or anguish. They were both men who knew what death was and weren’t afraid of it. “I’m going to miss you,” he said.

  “You and my ex-wives.” Stoney laughed feebly. “They’ll have to find a way to support themselves now. I’m leaving everything to the Foundation.”

  “The Foundation doesn’t need your money.”

  “I know you, Crane. I know how you think, how you live. Your life will have to go on beyond tomorrow morning. You’ll have to think of what to do next. The Foundation, at this point, pretty well runs itself. You’ll be at a loss.”

  “I’ve thought about that.”

  The man set his drink on the floor and reached out for Crane’s good hand. “You’re a wise man, Crane,” he said, “but age also brings its own wisdom. Listen to me: Dedicate your life to something new, something positive. You’re a special h
uman being and have dreams to contribute that no one else has. Don’t lose sight of yourself. Work as hard on the last day of your life as the first. You taught me the value of dedication. I’m giving it back to you now. Remember our three-billion-dollar bet?”

  “Remember it? It made all this possible.”

  “Well, sometime you’re going to want to take another three-billion-dollar gamble and my old bones will dance with joy in my grave if I am the one who can make it happen.”

  “Thank you, Stoney. For everything. You’ve been like a father to me.”

  “It’s been my most extreme pleasure to have known you, to have shared your dreams,” the man said, standing, leaning heavily on his Tennessee poplar cane. He started for the door, then stopped and turned back. “Except for that plane you gave away that time.” He shook his head. “Lost a wife over that one. It had been a birthday present.”

  “Are you talking about Yvette… the wife who was playing hide-the-stick with every delivery boy who walked in the front door?”

  “Yeah. I guess there was that about her. I find as I get older, I only remember the good things.” He stared at Crane for a long moment, then raised his cane, pointing it. “I’ll see you in hell, boy.”

  Crane watched him go, and knew he’d never see Stoney again. Man’s bodily functions moved only toward death, but the mind could continue to enrich itself even as everything else embraced entropy. It was dignity that Stoney exemplified tonight, and Crane hoped he was half the man Harry Whetstone was.

  Suddenly, Burt Hill replaced Whetstone in the doorway. “Boss, we gotta talk.”

  “All right,” Crane said. He moved over to the radiation monitoring station, a hundred green lights blinking there. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “How long would it take to blow this thing?” Hill was pacing, wringing his hands.