Richter 10

  The three of them laughed. Crane pointed at Abidan. “Know how to save yourself, boy?” he asked, then glanced at Burt and Dan. “Look at him, he’s already sweating. He’s shaking so much, the picture’s probably wobbly. I can already hear it, down in the Imperial Valley, the fault howling like a wounded animal as it rips apart, pushing farther west, yanking that kink right out of Mount Pinos. Do you understand the immensity of what you have so blithely undertaken, young man? Those people on the streets… they’re ignorant, or out of control, or crazy, or ready to die. The men who sit before you have no fear of death. Do you?”

  Mute, Abidan shook his head.

  “You’re going to get to witness firsthand,” Crane continued, “a monster tsunami east of LA as the Pacific rushes in to fill the mammoth tearing gouge in the body of the Earth. Do you know you’ll see your streets explode before your eyes? Afterward, when the quake is over, you have to live with the consequences. Fresh water runs out first. Then, as you return to a prehistoric environment, diseases are rampant. Are you prepared to bury a couple million bodies? That’s what you’ll have to do to keep the diseases and the smell away as your own sweat makes you smell like death, and your house and your friends and everything else are gone.”

  “Do you think,” Newcombe said to Abidan, “that this cataclysm will be like a gentle push of a raft away from a riverbank? Try to imagine the strength of forces that can level and raise mountains as easily as you turn your eye on. Do you realize that Los Angeles stands zero chance of surviving as the Elysian Park Fault fissures up the whole city, dropping entire blocks miles down into the ground, never to be seen again? California is going to be ripped asunder. There will be a conflagration the likes of which hasn’t been seen on this planet in millions of years. Is it really important that you die in California, at this time?”

  Abidan gulped and shook his head, the cam-eye not moving with his head. “Good,” Newcombe said. “’Cause I want you to let us finish our say, then I want you to get on your horse and get the hell out of here. You’ve got some good years ahead of you. Try and stay alive for them. Don’t be like those idiots on the streets.”

  “T-thank you,” Abidan whispered.

  “I’m surprised,” Crane said to Newcombe. “You’ve learned how to use power.”

  “And you’ve learned to keep your mouth shut occasionally,” Newcombe replied. “We’ve both changed.”

  “Oh, boy,” Hill said, rolling his eyes. “Here we go.”

  Crane leaned toward the cam, pointing to Newcombe. “This man dogged me from the day I hired him in ’23. This man never went along willingly with me on anything in his damned life.”

  “It’s because you were a dictator.” Newcombe laughed. “And you had a hidden agenda.”

  Crane threw his hands in the air. “I guess today we can see why I kept it hidden.”

  “Neither one of you would have done anything without me to keep you off each other’s throats,” Hill said. “It’s me you ought to be thankin’.”

  “Thanks, Burt,” they said in unison.

  “You’re welcome. I didn’t have nothin’ else to do anyway.”

  Crane turned back to the cam. Abidan was shaking visibly, his real eye opened wide in near panic as a small foreshock rumbled through, shaking the set and causing a bank of lights to crash to the floor. The three of them laughed as Abidan hit the deck.

  “Not going to be safe here for long,” Hill said.

  “Let me do this.” Crane got out of his chair and walked over to Abidan, who was lying in a fetal position on the floor, covering his head.

  “Roll over and look at me, son,” Crane said.

  Abidan unwrapped himself slowly and rolled onto his back. The red light on his cam-eye stared up at Crane. “I want to get out of here,” Abidan said.

  “I’ve got a helo waiting in the parking lot,” Crane said. “I’ve saved a seat for you. Just let me say my piece first.” He looked straight at Abidan’s cam-eye. “Ladies and gentlemen, the things we are saying are not exaggerations. If you live west of the San Andreas Faultline, you are in deadly peril. Don’t take for granted that you will be safe anywhere.”

  Crane took a deep breath, preparing to launch into the familiar litany and hoping against hope that there were people out there listening to him who would heed his advice.

  “If you can’t get east of the line in the next hour or so, do not go into your homes. They are deathtraps. Avoid large trees. Get to as much open ground as you can find. This advice will save some of you, some it won’t. I’ve personally witnessed five dozen quakes in my lifetime and been on site at hundreds more. Believe me. Los Angeles: gone. San Francisco: gone. Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Diego, Tijuana, any large city from Baja to San Francisco is probably going to die today. If you don’t want to die with it, listen to me. You can’t control this with your mind or your rationalizations. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen to you unless you do something now! Now!”

  Crane stood back. “That’s it. Cut it off. Let those people go.”

  He helped Abidan to his feet. “The helo’s in the parking lot,” he said. “Get in it.”

  Abidan ran.

  “We need to talk,” Newcombe said, joining Crane in the front of the set.

  “You have a helo waiting?”

  The man shook his head. “Interesting,” Crane said. “You’re welcome to mine.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Come on,” Hill said. “Let’s put some miles between us and this damned place.”

  He led them out into the parking lot, Abidan already strapped in and holding tight in one of the ten passenger seats. Hill climbed in and reached for Crane.

  “You go ahead,” Crane said, shaking his head.

  “You ain’t comin’,” Hill said in sad resignation. “I knew something was up.” He looked at Newcombe.

  “Me either.” He smiled.

  Hill’s face went slack, and he searched for words.

  “You’ve helped me say the final farewells to two wives, Burt,” Crane said, moving to the loading bay to embrace him, without tears, without remorse. They had both done as well as they could have and there was no sadness in that. “You helped me through the death of a son. You helped me when I was so down I thought I’d never laugh again. You’ve saved my life a thousand times in a thousand ways. Thank you.”

  “I-I can’t come with you on this trip.” Hill sniffed. Pulling away, he hacked, then spit. He looked from Crane to Newcombe and back. “I’m not ready for it yet.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be,” Crane said. “Besides, I’ve got to learn to do something for myself. Sit down, Burt. You understand I have to close the circle?”

  Hill nodded, then sat. “I’m gonna miss you, Doc.”

  Crane nodded, smiling, then slapped the side of the machine, pointing up with his thumb for the pilot, who took to the air immediately.

  They had about an hour.

  “Care to take a walk?” Crane asked Newcombe.

  “Sounds good.” He leaned close to Crane and whispered, “You know, what I’d really like is a drink.”

  “It’s not Islamic.”

  Newcombe smiled wide. “I think Allah will understand, given the circumstances.”

  “Good. Let’s find a rooftop restaurant somewhere, a really tall one where we can feel the whiplash.”

  They walked into the guts of the city, destruction and anarchy reigning all around them. So much had changed in Crane’s time on Earth; so much had stayed the same. There were the looters, the Rockers, who were now called Seismos, the suicides, and the Cosmies dressed in white robes with the Third Eye emblazoned in red on their chests. Today Crane was one of them and maybe he’d always been. Part of the city was burning. Looters helping the EQ. Thoughtful.

  They moved along unmolested. The suicides always had the look about them, and people automatically granted them privacy for their demise.

  After several blocks of brilliant sunshine and a warm wind
in the city of angels, they found a shaky-looking tower of steel and lots of glass on Wilshire that had a working elevator up to its rooftop restaurant. It was whiplash material if Crane had ever seen it.

  The restaurant had a marvelous view of the city in all directions. They smashed through the glass door to get inside, then chose a table with a view to the west. Crane went behind the bar to grab a bottle of good Scotch. The sky was full of hovering helos, thick, like swarming flies—curiosity-seekers there to watch one world die and another come painfully into being.

  “Why are you doing this?” Crane asked as he found a couple of clean glasses. He hadn’t had a drink in nearly fifteen years.

  “It completes my circle, too. I spent years thinking about this moment in prison… my own punishment, I suppose.”

  “You’ve served your time, Dan.” Crane came back with the bottle and glasses and poured them each a highball glass full. “Let it go.”

  “If you were me, could you let it go?”

  Crane raised his glass. “I don’t know. Pick up your drink. To you, old friend.”

  “To both of us,” Newcombe said, toasting, then grimacing at his first taste of alcohol in decades. “You seem awfully happy, considering this is the last day of your life.”

  “Endings and beginnings,” Crane said. “You seem pretty happy yourself.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m ecstatic. This is the first real decision I’ve made on my own in nearly thirty years. For seventeen years, I woke up with a hangman’s noose every morning. Death certainly holds no fear for me.”

  “I died years ago,” Crane said, watching his glass of Scotch shake and shimmer, reacting to the vibrations running through the ground. “Then I came back. I realize now that life and death are only words. I don’t hate EQs anymore, either. Funny how everything changes.” He took a long drink, his stomach already burning. “I’m going to get snookered.”

  “Me, too,” Newcombe said. “And it’ll take about five minutes.”

  Crane nodded. “I still don’t get you. My business here is long finished. I can’t wait to move on. But you… you’ve got a wife, a family, social and political responsibilities.”

  “Let’s set the record straight about my responsibilities,” he said, opening his eyes wide and grinning. “It’s a funny story, but this is what I discovered after getting out of prison. My wife, who was sleeping with every man whose pants she could get off, personally killed her brother Ishmael, to get him out of the way. She had his murder passed off as an assassination and used it for propaganda purposes. Then she worked behind the scenes against her other brother, Martin, until I was set free. At that time she had her loyalists kill Martin Aziz so I could assume the position of public demigod and private servant.”

  “I… I would never have guessed, never.”

  “I’m not finished,” Newcombe said, taking another drink. “Prison changed me. I had no desire for power or fame on any level. I would have given anything to go back to geology, but there I was, stuck, the symbol of Islamic unity for millions of people. My wife said, ‘make the speeches.’ So I made the speeches she wrote. I was just her mouthpiece. I put my time in for the good of the people. Boy, there’s a loaded term. But Khadijah’s ambitions know no boundaries. There have been three attempts on my life. I was able to trace all three back to my loving wife, the last time aided by my loving son, who is apparently what this is all about. Trust me. Khadijah will rule New Cairo through Abu ibn Abu. She’s been ruling through me long enough. I’m happy to get the hell out.”

  “That’s a damned poor way to live, Dan.”

  Newcombe shook his head. “I didn’t want any of that. In the sixty-seven years of my life, my happiest—my best—years were spent with you, working on EQ-eco and running around the world chasing your damned demons. My work with you was the single best human gesture of my entire life.”

  “My testimony at your hearing was mine,” Crane said. “It finally made me question myself. It humanized me. Lewis Crane was able to stop playing God. I thank Sumi for that. She was a hell of a woman.”

  “To Sumi,” Newcombe said, raising his glass again.

  Both men drank.

  “You said something at that hearing I’ve never forgotten,” Newcombe said, both of them watching the ocean in the distance, slight smoke from a dozen different fires making the view hazy. “You said that you could free me without forgiving me and that I could go on with life without asking for forgiveness.” He shook his head. “I can’t. I want your forgiveness now, Crane. I don’t want to… move on without it.”

  “I forgave you years ago, Dan,” Crane said. “I had to in order to go on with Charlestown, in order to put it behind me.”

  “But you never told me.”

  “No… I never did. And for that, I apologize. Seeing you today has been my chance to rectify that error in what I hope will be a profound way.”

  They both drank, then refilled their glasses.

  “Is Charlestown that Moon colony you’re tied up with?”

  “Yeah,” Crane said, leaning close to Newcombe. “Do you have any money?”

  “In my pocket, you mean?”

  “No. Money money.”

  “I’m filthy with it,” Newcombe said. “Rulers of countries do quite nicely. I’ve managed to sock away several hundred million.”

  “I want you to give it to me,” Crane said, “and I think we need to hurry.” He nodded out the window, buildings were swaying. The ground vibrations from the Imperial Valley quake were being felt this far north.

  “What do you want it for? You’re getting ready to die, too.”

  “Are you ported?” Crane asked, his voice slurring just a touch.

  Newcombe nodded quickly.

  Crane took a small chip out of his pad with tweezers from his pocket. He passed the tweezers to Newcombe, who was weaving, a touch high, missing the port at first, then hitting the slot and sitting back.

  Crane smiled as Newcombe closed his eyes. The chip was a distillation of Charlestown, an optical/vid tour of the place overlaid with Crane’s emotions concerning it. And then there was The Plan.

  The experience was designed to hit the brain like a thought stored lifelong, everything Crane knew and felt and believed about Charlestown soaking through osmosis into Newcombe’s mind in an instant—Crane’s feelings, his feelings. The speed of thought.

  “Oh, yes…” Newcombe said, smiling, nodding. “This is nice. I understand.”

  He tweezed the chip out. “This is amazing,” he said, passing it back to Crane, who slotted it into his pad, transmitting it for the first time to the Moon’s systems. “You can really do this?”

  “Sumi thought it up,” he said. “Spent her last years working on it. We’re all a part of that globe, Dan.”

  “Are you….”

  “Asking you to join us? Yes! Will you?”

  “Crane, you son of a bitch!” He laughed. “You’ve beat the system after all. Better believe I’ll join you. It’s the offer of a lifetime.”

  “Good. Let’s get all your money first,” Crane replied. “I don’t think your wife and children need it.”

  The rumble began then, loud, louder than Tokyo, the buildings outside shaking violently. They shook violently. Newcombe pointed to the floor, at rats charging out of the walls.

  “You can’t escape it even in the nice places!” he called over the clatter of breaking glass and crockery. Crane grabbed the bottle just as their table fell over.

  “Bank accounts,” Newcombe said, his pad automatically entering his accounts.

  “Charlestown account,” Crane said to his pad. “Accept ID funds transfer.”

  The building swayed, the glass of their windows popping out to plummet thirty stories to the ground. Huge structures collapsed all around outside. The ocean was throbbing and churning in the distance. It was beautiful, exciting.

  “Transfer all funds,” Newcombe said, both men reaching out to place their thumbprint on the other’s pad.

>   “Transactions complete,” the pad returned in both aurals.

  “Good man,” Crane said, pulling out another chip. “Now, hurry, put this in your port.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m going to copy your mind and put it into the computers. That chip is blank.”

  “Give it to me!” Newcombe yelled. A chair hurtled past. Newcombe went down hard, but protected the Scotch in his hand. The EQ roared all around them.

  “Here!” Crane shouted.

  Newcombe reached up to grab the chip and port it.

  “Do it… hurry!” Crane said.

  The chairs and tables were bouncing across the floor even as the entire structure moaned and danced. Crane reveled in experiencing whiplash firsthand. Another violent jolt or two and the restaurant was going to be first-floor property.

  Newcombe ported, his head twisted as the chip sucked his mind into an inch-square sheet of clear plastic. The building was bellowing as it swayed dangerously. Crane, on his knees now, took a quick drink.

  Newcombe pulled the chip out of his port. “I’m ready to go,” he said, handing it to Crane, who quickly fed it into his pad and transmitted. “God, am I ready to go.”

  A wild spasm caught them, both men tossed across the room, slamming into the bar which was bouncing in their direction. And, then, the Beast began to scream in earnest as the rending agony built.

  “It’s the craziest thing,” Crane shouted over the roaring, “but my arm… it doesn’t hurt!”

  The building began to crumble, bits of ceiling falling in on them. And the world tumbled then. Lewis Crane jerked a chip out of his own head and jammed it into his pad, even as he felt himself falling… falling…

  … the image pulling away. Distant. A city collapsing, a house of cards built in a wind tunnel, swept away in an instant.

  Epilogue

  The geography helo vanished, replaced by Moonscape. Geodesic domes, reflecting brilliant sunlight and stretching to the horizon, were connected by skyways and tunnels and catwalks. A central plaza sat just within view; a working King Projection globe of the Moon dominated it.