Richter 10

  “Yes, sir.”

  He turned to see the edge of the cliff. Motiba was there, and he joined him. The sea was smooth as glass, unusually beautiful in deepest teal blues and greens. But where Aikawa had stood was only empty beach, not even a boat or shack littering the pristine sand that gleamed in the deadly sunlight.

  “I’m sorry,” Crane said, low and hoarse.

  Motiba looked up at him, tears working their way down his cheeks. “I know I should not blame you for this,” he said, “but I do.”

  With that he turned and walked off, leaving Crane absolutely alone with his demons. No one came near. No one reached out a hand or asked if he were all right. To the people left on the plain he was as distant and as untouchable as the dead that surrounded him. But they were wrong. The dead, at least, knew peace.

  Chapter 2: Eruptions

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  15 JUNE 2024, 6:16 P.M.

  The sun was lowering behind the Washington Monument and Mr. Li Cheun, head of Liang International in this hemisphere, knew that for the last couple of hours the little American bureaucrats who worked for him, though they didn’t realize it perhaps, had been scurrying home. More important to him, the North American headquarters of Liang International was winding down for the evening. Liang Int, the Chinese star ascendant in the world of business, owned America. Ten years before, Liang Int had managed to get a toehold in America, wresting some business away from the Germans who’d owned the country then. The Masada Option had proved to be better than any business plan or ruthless tactics the Chinese might have devised, for the resultant radioactive cloud and fallout from the explosions had swept southern, central, and eastern Europe. When the Fatherland was devastated, suffering a loss of almost half its population, Liang Int was able to move swiftly and turn its toehold into a stranglehold, not only on America, but on German business operations throughout the world.

  Now, standing in the secured boardroom, dim save for the glowing virtual map of the Earth that surrounded him, Li contemplated his empire. The diorama was transparent; he could look through it at the Moon, always full, inspiring the fanciful, but much desired, wish that the Liang Int diggers up there were always working.

  There were no windows in this room, thus no day, no evening, only shifts. Every decision that mattered to the continuing business (most would say even the continuing existence) of Canada, the US, Mexico, and the Central American franchises was made right here. The rest of Washington—the mall outside running between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and its occupants, the scores of departments, bureaus, agencies stretching to the beltways and beyond—all was show for the tourists. Liang Int owned it all and ran it all… including the so-called government of the United States of America. President Gideon, Vice President Gabler, the Cabinet, the members of Congress and the Supreme Court were little more than mere employees, figureheads and lackeys. Of course they maintained a pretty fiction of government, but that was all it was, a fiction.

  Tonight Li was distracted, his thoughts turning time and again to the viddy-stract his staff had prepared the previous night and shown him first thing this morning on one Lewis Crane and the events on the Japanese Island of Sado. The Japanese. Upstarts all of them, fools most of them. They’d actually shared their ownership of America with Middle Easterners, back when there had been a Middle East. But their tenure was short. Still, from time to time a Japanese combine would try to take a piece of the business away. He sneered, glad that in response to just such an affront his predecessor at Liang Int North America had ordered the chopping down of the two thousand cherry trees around the tidal basin—trees that the Japanese had given to the Americans shortly after the turn of the last century.

  “Rain in the midwest,” said Mui Tsao from the soft darkness of his control panel. “It will delay the wheat harvest. I suggest we contact Buenos Aires and siphon their surplus until the harvest catches up.”

  Both men spoke English almost exclusively as a show of good faith to the natives, though American business people and officials were expected to speak fluent Chinese.

  “Good,” Li replied. “I saw a report of a major anthrax epidemic in the South American branch. See if you can trade them some cattle for the wheat. Bring them in through Houston.”

  “Where do we store?”

  “We could store in the warehouses where we’ve got the headache chips.”

  “And what do we do with the chips?”

  “We’ll give them to the Southern franchises as part of the wheat repayment. By the time they’ve figured out what’s happened, they already will have distributed the chips and be forced to try and follow through with a sales campaign.”

  Li heard Mui chuckle softly as the man punched deals into the keypad, and smiled himself. The “headache chip,” as they called it, was an endorphin trigger; it sensed muscle tightness in the neck and immediately flooded the cortex with a shot of mood enabling dorph that stopped the headache before it got started. Only trouble was, the brain enjoyed the dorph hit so much it worked on developing headache after headache just to get the dose, wearing out the implant and leaving the user in the worst pain of his life. Once word had gotten around, Liang Int had been stuck with seven warehouses full of worthless chips.

  “Done,” Mui said, typing furiously, “and done.”

  “Good.”

  Li was in charge of the North American branch, and Mui was his control, his Harpy. Second in command of the decision making, the Harpy was responsible for constantly double-checking his superior, questioning his decisions. It could be irritating, but had a positive effect on business decisions, and business was what held all the world, all of life, together. Should Li fail to make the proper percentage of appropriate decisions, Mui would have his position—with his own little Harpy in place then to watch over him. It made for sleepless nights, but it was the very best thing for Liang Int.

  And that was what mattered. Li was nothing if not a company man.

  The map floated around Li, continents rising out of shimmering oceans, the trade routes of the world pulsing in pink, while areas of harvests and famines glowed in celestial blues. Food was always a problem since only filtered fields were able to withstand the full measure of the sun’s wrath and produce.

  Nuclear material storage areas glowed unblinking crimson in thirty different spots, leakage into ground water running like capillaries thousands of miles from their source. Movements of precious metals and ambulatory currency spiked metropolitan areas, while consumer spending showed up as gangs of small people, one per million, flashing their spending areas and products like dust motes dancing on sunlight. Production was tracked worldwide, immediate comparisons were made with other similar operations, and the interior of the office was filled with floating hieroglyphics decipherable only by a handful of Liang’s top management. If any member of the team was to leave for a reason other than death, the entire code would be changed.

  The Masada Cloud throbbed in dark black, its bulk covering Europe today, moving ever eastward on the jet stream. And the Masada Cloud led Li back once more to Lewis Crane.

  Crane had won the Nobel Prize six years before for work that had flowed from his research on the exercise of the Masada Option, specifically its effect on earthquakes. That work also had led directly to the banning of all nuclear testing on Earth because Crane had showed conclusively that nuclear explosions could cause earthquakes hundreds, even thousands, of miles from the site of detonation. As the staff had pointed out to Li in their presentation, Crane had stated that the quake on Sado was, in fact, a direct consequence of the destruction of the Middle East back in ’14.

  Would it be possible, Li mused, for someone armed with Crane’s information and programs to cause earthquakes in chosen, distant locations? He shook off the question. It was tangential to what really interested him about Crane at this time: politics and profits—and the question of why Crane was so eager to contact him through Sumi Chan. Indeed, Chan had left a message o
nly hours ago about a meeting Crane wished to arrange.

  Ah, these Americans were bold. But Li rather liked them and their country. It was a Third World country, as was Europe, both with real history. Its own corporate gods long dead, America had a cheap labor pool of hard workers who thought nothing of reinvesting all of their wages back into the company through consumerism. Americans were the world’s best consumers. Except, of course, for the headache chip.

  There had been nothing but success in Li’s life, which was why he was having such a difficult time with the coming elections. In the past, Li had been able to tolerate America’s fantasy of representative government because Liang’s candidates always had won. But now, for some reason, its chief competitor in multinationalism, the Yo-Yu Syndicate, was making inroads with its own candidates. The off-year elections had cost Liang Int seven representatives. It was a nasty trend that Li needed to nip in the bud. But it was difficult because the fickle voters persisted in believing they needed “change” in government and that change was meaningful. With the American fantasy beginning to get in the way of corporate harmoniousness, Li had to act. Hence, Crane and his earthquakes. He could show the citizens how much he loved them by associating Liang Int and the government with earthquake prediction. That should fix Yo-Yu in the elections.

  His diorama beeped and squeaked in a thousand different intervals and tones, Li recognizing them all. So, when he distinguished the delicate alto chirping of the telephone, he decided to make his move. He turned in Mui’s direction, waved off the incoming call, and said, “Get Sumi Chan for me, scrambled and secured. Put him over the west coast.”

  While waiting, Li smiled. He knew Mui would be watching and listening very carefully.

  Sumi Chan’s disembodied face, five inches high, blipped to life, hanging in midair somewhere over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Li would not address the man face to face, however. He had a computer projection that stood in for him so as never to give anything away through inadvertent gesture or expression.

  “Hello, Mr. Li,” Sumi Chan said.

  There was something expressed in the man’s eyes that Li didn’t understand. “Hello, Sumi,” he said, the computer matching his voice to its projection’s movements. “Are you well?”

  “Yes, and I am also most grateful and most excited,” Sumi replied formally. “You have honored me by your attention.”

  “As you have honored me by your invitation to meet with Dr. Crane.” Li paused, allowing Sumi to begin offering up information about the meeting. When the man was not immediately forthcoming, he added, “I assume I am not to meet with him alone.”

  “Not unless you desire to do so. Dr. Crane wishes to present you and a number of other distinguished leaders with some of his ideas… and proposals.”

  Li nodded. “A very timely meeting. His exploits on Sado are being reported continuously and everywhere, I’m told.”

  “Yes, Sado. A great tragedy, but one whose human consequences could have been averted in large measure.”

  “Economic consequences, too, of course.”

  “Of course,” Sumi echoed. “May we count on your attendance?”

  “If my schedule permits, I should certainly like to be a part of such a gathering. I would ask, however, that you coordinate with Mr. Mui Tsao on the guest list, the arrangements, and so forth.”

  “That goes without saying, sir. May I tell you how pleased I know Dr. Crane will be?”

  Li grunted and waved his hand dismissively. He’d had quite enough of this, and with a smile and a nod, he concluded, “Stay in the shade, Sumi Chan.”

  “And you also, sir.”

  Sumi’s face instantly blipped off, and Li paced a few steps up and past the Arctic. He could walk freely within the body of his virtual world and literally feel the flow of capital and goods pumped through the beating heart of consumerism. The world was a living network of corporate deities and he was a demigod. Things were as they were supposed to be.

  As an official of the Geological Survey, Sumi Chan actually worked for him. Tacitly understood in their conversation was the fact that he, Li Cheun, would call the shots on Crane’s meeting. He would brief Mui on what he wished to accomplish. Yes, things were as they were supposed to be.

  CONCOCTIONS

  ON THE YACHT DIATRIBE, THE PACIFIC OCEAN

  15 JUNE 2024, 9:35 P.M.

  “Mr. Li Cheun is, of course, the one on this list who counts, the man to convince if you wish to succeed, Crane,” Sumi said, smiling slightly, “and I trust you will dazzle him. I fear I’m going to use up all my chits on him.” What he left unsaid was that he feared he’d already used up all his chits… with Mui Tsao, to whom he’d been talking until just ten minutes ago. There could be no doubt that Li Cheun had a definite use in mind for Lewis Crane.

  “Oh, I’ll dazzle him all right, do a veritable song and dance for him,” said Crane, tilting back his chair and drinking directly from a bottle of very old Scotch.

  “You’ve got copies of my paper for everyone who’s agreed to attend?” Newcombe asked, trying to steer the conversation back to his concerns.

  Sumi nodded. “There will be copies awaiting each of them in their cabins when they board.”

  Newcombe shook his head. Why Crane had chosen to spirit them away from Sado on this yacht to rendezvous with Sumi mid-ocean was beyond him. And out in the stratosphere were Crane’s reasons for wanting to hold his high-powered meeting on a boat. Still, the Diatribe was a helluva craft, luxurious and crammed with technology. Who owned it and how Crane had come by it were mysteries Newcombe was fairly sure would not be solved for him.

  “Let’s review the politicos again,” Crane said to Sumi. “We’ve got Kate—”

  Sumi’s laughter cut him off. “They’re all politicos, every last one of them, the Vice President of the United States being the least political of them all.”

  “Gabler,” Newcombe said scornfully, “a fool… a buffoon.”

  “And an important showpiece, Dan,” Crane said firmly. “Just leave all this to Sumi and me.”

  “With pleasure,” Newcombe retorted. “So let me get to the area where I am an expert. Why are you planning such elaborate maneuvers? We’ve got a pretty straightforward situation as far as I can see. The data on earthquake ecology is on paper—and proven. Sado came in so close to my projections that you’ve got to go five digits past the decimal to find divergence from the actual event. This is something concrete to sell, Crane. Sell it.”

  “I’ll use it,” Crane told him, smoothing his free hand over the bright yellow shirt covering his bathing trunks, “but I won’t marry myself to it.”

  Newcombe frowned harshly and Sumi quickly refilled his glass with synthchampagne to which he added two drops from a small green bottle containing his own special dorph preparation. Newcombe knew Sumi urgently wanted him to ingest the dorph, but he didn’t mind. Sumi’s understanding of glandular chemistry was legendary.

  “I’ll tell you why I don’t sell your EQ-eco, Danny boy,” Crane said, slightly slurring his words. Crane didn’t face living people very well straight. He put a hand over the mouth of his bottle when Sumi tried to bring the eyedropper of dorph to it. “First of all, you’re out of line in making your suggestion.”

  “You hired me for my talent,” Newcombe said. “Along with that comes my mouth.”

  “It’s my foundation,” Crane said, “my decision. Your calculations indeed worked wonderfully… because, Dr. Newcombe, you knew in advance where the epicenter was going to be. You knew it because I told you. Your work is only a small part of what the Crane Foundation represents. To focus simply on the EQ-eco limits the amount of grant money available to us. To be perfectly honest, however, I also see a basic flaw in your perceptions. You expect people to do the right thing. They don’t. All the people in Los Angeles know they live atop faults held together by the thinnest of threads, yet they stay there. Would you convince the government to depopulate LA to the tune of thirteen million people? Where would you
put them?”

  “My system saves lives!”

  Crane sighed and took a long pull from his bottle. “Few would consider that a compelling argument, doctor. Saving money is more to people’s tastes.”

  “But it was so successful.”

  “Exactly why I want to use it, but de-emphasize it at the same time. I want nobody thinking in those terms alone. We’re looking for much more.”

  “Like what?”

  Crane leaned closer to Newcombe, Sumi automatically drawing near. He spoke low, dramatically. “Have you gentlemen ever thought about what it would be like if all scientific research in a given area were brought under one banner, in one unifying edifice, and properly coordinated?”

  “You want everything!” Newcombe laughed. He couldn’t believe it, the brazenness of the man.

  Crane grinned. “Liang Int is omninational. Total control of tectonics is a real possibility. They just need the right sell job. I could run the whole show from the Foundation, have access to every bit of data extant. Suddenly, true prediction—along with a lot more—becomes reality.”

  Newcombe began to understand a great deal. “That’s why you hired Lanie. You want her to sort through and make sense of all the data if you pull this off.”

  “And that’s why all the support organizations that have vested interests are being invited to attend the coming meeting,” Sumi said, sitting back and shaking his head. “Audacious! So, when I was speaking just moments ago of Li’s importance, you were laughing at me, weren’t you, Crane? Li Cheun was your target all along.”

  “Don’t get mad at me, Sumi, please,” Crane said, boyish and charming. He grew serious again almost at once. “Geological research blankets the Earth, but touches very few lives in an obvious way. Clearly, it should. And clearly Liang Int can amply fund our work, get much out of it, and never feel the slightest pinch. They’ll only see profits from their involvement.”