Richter 10

by Arthur C. Clarke

  He turned to her. “Crank it up again,” he said. “We’ll check the program as we go.”

  “No,” she said. “My programmers are tired. I’m tired. Let’s try it again in the morning.”

  “I gave you an order!”

  “And I refused it.”

  “Damn you!” he yelled, flinging his arm up. The half-finished bottle went flying into the globe, smashing on Siberia. Acrid smoke rose where the rum had drenched the wiring. “You’re fired!”

  “Fine,” she said, and turned to the group of programmers huddled around her. “Go on home. We’re through here for the night. Your new boss will tell you what to do tomorrow.”

  “I think we need to get him home,” Sumi said.

  “The hell with him.”

  “Lanie….”

  Lanie nodded wearily and moved to take Crane by his bad arm while Sumi took his good. “Come on, we’ll get you home,” Sumi said. “You need sleep.”

  “I don’t need sleep,” Crane said, reluctantly letting them lead him out, watching the globe as they dragged him away. “I need to sit down and work.” He turned and kissed Lanie on the cheek. “Ah, perhaps it’s a matter of weight. How much did you add to Earth’s total?”

  “A thousand short tons a day because of meteor impacts.”

  “Try adding in more weight than that in earlier times. Meteor activity is far less now than it was a billion years ago.”

  “Whatever you say,” she returned, and they got him outside, Crane brushing them off to stand on his own.

  He looked up at the sky, the Moon three-quarters full, running scenes of bloody car wrecks on its side. “That’s where I need to live,” he said, pointing, then looking at both hands for a bottle that was no longer there. “Up there I could watch the lunacy rise in the morning and set in the evening.” He guffawed.

  They walked toward the staircases set into the mountainside. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about earthquakes on the Moon,” Lanie said.

  Crane and Sumi laughed. “The Moon has earthquakes,” Sumi said.

  “Really?”

  “About three thousand a year,” Crane said, weaving.

  “Is there a core?”

  “Yep,” Crane answered. “A nine-hundred-mile diameter. They’re little quakes though, Richter 2s. Very seldom break the surface. Almost like a quake memory.”

  “A memory of what?” Sumi asked.

  “I don’t know.” Crane stared again at the Moon. “A man could build a world to suit himself up there. Not like the mining companies, the takers, but a world of truth.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Dan,” Sumi said. “There is no truth.”

  “Science is truth,” Lanie said quickly. “Love is truth.”

  “There is no such thing as love,” Sumi replied bitterly, the first time Lanie had ever heard the man expose anything of himself. “Love is simply a disguise for pain.”

  “That’s not true,” Lanie said.

  Sumi looked at her, eyes inscrutable. “Then where is your man tonight?”

  “The lie of freedom,” Crane said, quoting Newcombe. “The lie of security. The lie of politics. The lie of religion.” He turned to Lanie. “You’re not fired.”

  “Thank you… I think.”

  “You must make the globe work. Do you understand what I’m saying? This can’t stop here; it just can’t. The dream… the dream….”

  Lanie shuddered, thinking of dreams and realizing why she was so upset that Dan was gone. She’d have to face the night alone. “I’ll do everything I can to make the globe work,” she said. “Trust me.”

  “I do trust you. I trust you as much as I trust Dan… or Sumi, here.” He patted the small man on the back, Chan looking uncomfortable. It made Lanie sad to think Crane’s world was so small he had to trust Sumi Chan, though she could think of no reason for the feeling.

  A bell sound drifted on the warm breeze across their plateau, followed by the compound computer’s voice saying: “The radiation levels have risen to an unacceptable range. Please take shelter and appropriate precautions immediately.”

  The immediate response was the sound of closing doors and snapping windowshields.

  “The cloud,” Crane said, pointing to the west. The Masada Cloud. “We’d better get indoors. Let’s go up to my place for a drink. What do you say?”

  “Crane,” Lanie said, “if you’d ever open your eyes you’d realize that I can’t go up to your place.”

  He stared at her, face slack, then his eyebrows shot up. “Vertigo,” he said. “I remember now. You’re afraid of heights.”

  “Petrified, is more like it,” she said. “My knees weaken and I simply shut down physically.”

  Crane laughed. “I always wonder why you and Dan never come up to visit me. You’re just full of surprises.”

  They had arrived at the stairs; Lanie walked up to the first landing, the lowest level where the bungalow she shared with Dan was located. Crane, using Sumi for support, straggled behind. “If you think that’s something,” she said, “wait until you hear about the nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?” he said, reaching the landing.

  “I dream about Martinique every time I go to sleep.”

  “What are you dreaming?” he asked.

  “I’m remembering little things,” she said and shivered. The wind blowing in with the Cloud was cold. “Pieces. I remember sitting in the dark and touching that poor boy’s body. I remember… rum.”

  “What else?”

  She frowned. Crane seemed upset about her dream. “You’re in the dream,” she said slowly. “You’re wearing a big, bulky suit… all white like a burn suit, only bigger… more solid. You’re all excited about something, but I can’t hear you through all the bulky clothing, I… I’m not sure. There’s screaming and explosions all around me, and that dead boy is there… and all the men covered with mud. I-I guess the worst of it is the feeling it makes me have.”

  “What feeling?”

  “Like I’m waiting to die.” Tears came rolling down her cheeks. She reached for the knob on her front door.

  “Lanie, I—”

  “I’ve got to go in,” she said abruptly. She went inside quickly before Sumi and Crane could see her fall apart.

  “Dan,” she cried softly, burying her face in her hands. “Where the hell are you, you son of a bitch?”

  She went to bed and cried herself to sleep—and had the nightmare again, only this time Crane was reaching for her in his bulky suit, trying to make her take his hands. This time, she could hear the word he was yelling: Pangaea.

  Chapter 8: Chaos Theory

  THE LA WAR ZONE

  3 SEPTEMBER 2024, 9:20 P.M.

  Newcombe walked slowly through the carnival on the edge of darkness, two blocks from the leveled ground surrounding the Zone. The sidewalks, even the streets, were clogged with people rushing to beat the Cloud and with off-duty federal cops killing time.

  Lines were long at the dorph and food markets, customers nervously watching the skies while residents bolted steel shutters and doors to their homes and business establishments, preparing for Masada. Everyone was hoping it wouldn’t rain. As always, the broken streets were camouflaged with the eye candy of swirling light and color as teev played on the blank walls and holoprojections wandered aimlessly through crowds or talked to their owners, keeping them company in line.

  Newcombe was, quite literally, looking for trouble. Brother Ishmael had finally talked him down off the mountain. He was excited. Being with Brother Ishmael, even if it had been only his projection and only twice a week, had made Newcombe feel a part of a larger life force. But the meetings had intensified his internal conflict. He wanted success and acceptance in the white and Asian world, while he also wanted the wholeness of identity and comfort that came from solidarity with his Africk brothers and sisters.

  He stopped a dorph street vendor, a little white man, and bought a liquid dose.

  “You know where the Horizon
Parlor is?” he asked as he took the small bottle that the vendor had poked a straw into.

  “One block… right down there.” The vendor pointed into a kaleidoscopic mass of bright light and motion. “You don’t look the type.”

  “What type is that?”

  “Head jobs… chippies, whatever you want to call them.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at the sides of Newcombe’s head, trying to spot interface ports. “First time?”

  “What’re you, a cop?” Newcombe asked.

  The man’s eyes widened. “You don’t have to insult me!” He marched away with his cart, and Newcombe started to work his way through the mob. Security cams were everywhere, but he always wondered who monitored their output. There were ten times more cameras than people in Los Angeles, with the G there to back them up, their smiling face masks making them look like benign Golems, their small booking robots toddling along with them. But there was to be no trouble tonight. The crowd was polite, evened out. Business as usual.

  “There!” someone called. Newcombe tightened up, but was immediately relieved to see that people were pointing upward at the night sky. The first wisps of black cloud were drifting overhead. He needed to get indoors.

  He picked up the pace, relieved to see the word HORIZON in blood-red Gothic print, drifting in the air in front of an unmarked steel two-story building. He hurried to the sole door he could see in its windowless facade and got inside.

  He’d never been in a chip club before, had no idea what to expect. Liang had condemned the use of direct access brain chips long ago because chip addicts didn’t consume much except chips. But free enterprise was not to be denied and Yo-Yu had moved in to fill the void left by Liang, opening chip clubs despite bans against advertising and aggressively restrictive zoning laws.

  He passed through a narrow, dark foyer, then through another door into a wide white beach looking out into an endless ocean. He could smell the ocean and feel the hot, salty breeze. He could barely hear the noise of the outside world, the warning horns bleating, telling the citizens to get off the streets.

  A Chinese man in a swimsuit was walking toward him from way down the beach. Newcombe sat on a canvas chair and waited.

  The man came close. “Excuse me… sir!” he called.

  The man stopped and turned. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”

  “I’m wondering if you could help—”

  “I’ve got to go. I’ve lost my dog,” he said.

  A gull flew down to perch on Newcombe’s shoulder. “Sorry,” the gull said. “I was tied up in back. Someone didn’t want to vacate when their time was up. Waiting long?”

  “I’m supposed to meet someone here,” Newcombe said carefully.

  The gull took to the skies, flying circles around Newcombe. “If you don’t have a reservation,” it said, “you won’t be doing anything. We’re always booked solid on Masada nights.”

  “My name is Enos Mann.”

  The bird squawked, then landed on his head. “Ah, Arabian adventure,” it said. “We’ve been expecting you. Follow me.”

  The gull flew out over the ocean. Newcombe followed, stepping into the water without getting wet. He felt a curtain in his face, and parted it to find a hallway filled with doorways. A man was staring at him. “This way, please,” he said in the gull’s voice.

  Moans and cries issued from behind the closed doors. Newcombe had seen chippies on the teev, but Liang always had them portrayed as emaciated shells, living only for the brain fix. He had no idea of what it was really like to interface directly with a computer, though the thought of joining with the Foundation’s machines struck him as a marvelous notion.

  The man opened the next to last door, ushering him into a bare utilitarian room containing a bed and a recliner, with a small table set between them. An inch-square chip sat in the center of a tiny red pillow. Alongside on the Formica of the table was a box with flashing numbers, its meter.

  “You heard the horns?” the man asked as he slid the bed aside to reveal a manhole cover in the floor.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re here for the night.” The man stomped twice on the manhole, then left, the steel door clicking locked behind him.

  His heart beating fast, Newcombe stared around the room. He picked up the chip, studied it, wondered about the moans and laughter he’d heard. If he were to change his mind, this would be the last possible instant in which he could get out. He looked at the door, then at the manhole in the floor.

  It moved. Newcombe jumped back as it lifted, a smiling face peering out of the darkness. “Brother Daniel!” Mohammed Ishmael said and chuckled, “How pale you’ve turned.”

  “You make a grand entrance.” Ishmael climbed out of the hole and hugged Newcombe. Two young men eased over the rim and into the room. They had scanners and came close to examine Newcombe.

  “I see there was a big meeting today at the Foundation,” Ishmael said, straightening his dashiki.

  “How did you know that?” Newcombe asked, raising his hands up so they could scan under his arms.

  “I keep tabs on my brother,” Ishmael said. “He moves in elite circles. How is President Gideon? What’s he like?”

  Newcombe shrugged. “He’s a politician.”

  “Who isn’t? Is Liang still insisting on a quick prediction?”

  “Very quick.”

  Ishmael fixed him with bright eyes. “It’s a rollover, Brother. Remember I told you that. Watch out.”

  The scanners were buzzing. “Two transmitters,” one of the young men reported. “One on the right hand, the other on the left sleeve.”

  “The one on the hand is mine,” Ishmael said, moving to look at Newcombe’s sleeve.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” Newcombe said, suddenly frightened at the position he’d put himself into. “I would never—”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Ishmael said, pulling the bug, scarcely bigger than a mite, off his sleeve and stomping on it. “This could have come from anyplace. They float on the breezes outside.”

  “We must go,” one of the bodyguards said.

  Ishmael nodded and moved to the manhole. “Follow me, Brother.” He started climbing down.

  Newcombe was really scared now. The bug queered everything. Not only was he consorting with the enemy, but also there was someone who knew about it. Gently pushed from behind by one of the bodyguards, he realized as he walked to the opening in the floor that he was no longer in control of his life, and wondered if Ishmael had planned it this way.

  A metal ladder led down into darkness. He looked over his shoulder at the bodyguards, one climbing down on his heels, the other locking the manhole over them. He reached ground about thirty feet later, Ishmael right beside him, his face glowing faintly in the haze of a red dry cell light in the brick sewer.

  He started to speak but was interrupted by a menacing buzzer. “Uh-oh,” Ishmael said loudly over the noise. “The G is at the door. Come on, you’ll get to see what it’s like to be a revolutionary.”

  They strode through a long tunnel, lit with the same bloody haze. It seemed to stretch on forever. They were moving fast, the bodyguards always right behind.

  “This doesn’t look like the sewer system,” Newcombe said as they hurried along.

  “It’s not. We built it.”

  “How?”

  “Prisoners dig. That’s what they do.” He took a sharp right turn and walked into, then through, a wall. Newcombe followed, the wall a projection. He found himself in another hallway, this one tiled and well lit. It branched off to either side at ten-foot intervals. “We will fight in these tunnels and escape through them, should it come to that,” Ishmael said.

  He turned into another wall, and Newcombe, confused, followed closely. They were at the top of an ornate winding staircase. They descended. Or was it an illusion?

  “I didn’t mean how did you dig them,” Newcombe said. “I meant how did you afford to dig them?”

  “Money is not a problem for
us. Space is. We have many benefactors, people like you who have found their way to us and are sympathetic to an Islamic State on this continent. There is much you don’t understand.”

  “Apparently. And, by the way, I really didn’t lead the G here intentionally. I have no idea how that—”

  “Nature of the white man’s world,” Ishmael said, waving it off as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

  They were in a vast echoing cave honeycombed with tunnels. It was lit by torches, hundreds of them. Ishmael moved quickly across the chamber.

  “Are we going to be caught?” Newcombe called from behind as he hurried without prompting now.

  “Hope not!”

  They ran for nearly a minute before reaching rock walls. Ishmael pulled on a ground-level boulder, the cave face creaking open to reveal an elevator within.

  Once they were all inside, Ishmael pushed a button to close the rock doors. They moved through the virtual back of the machine and into another hallway whose walls, ceiling, floor were tiled in ceramic squares of the palest blues and yellows. There were no doors. Ishmael slowed his pace, Newcombe realizing they were close to their destination. The beauty of the elevator was that its function motor could disguise the virtual projection equipment.

  “Does the elevator go down?” he asked.

  “And up,” Ishmael said. “It leads into a myriad other passages, even into the real sewer system. You’re the one who’s in trouble, you know.”

  Newcombe knew. “Whoever owns that bug owns my ass,” he said bitterly. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  Ishmael looked Newcombe dead in the eye and shook his head. “We’re on the same side, Brother.”

  “I hope so,” Newcombe said. The hallway was well lit now and twisted sharply to the right.

  The hallway was cracked all the way around, the walls out of line. “How far down are we?” Newcombe asked.

  “Fifty… seventy-five feet. The earth shifts a bit, eh?”

  “This is part of the Elysian system of faults,” he said, excited to look at a transform fault. He ran his hand over the jagged, angry crack. “How long has it been like this?”