Richter 10

by Arthur C. Clarke

“In the fields?” she asked, horrified.

  “Or construction, or plumbing, or shield maintenance—”

  “Enough. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.” She pointed into the liquefier. “What’s that do?”

  “When I’m finished inputting data,” he said, “I’m going to duplicate last year’s EQ. This is an exact geologic map of this area. I’ve filled it with tiny sensors to read changes. With luck, the river will alter its course and ultimately end up where it is today. If it does, it means I’ve calculated correctly. If it doesn’t, it’s back to the basics.”

  “How many times have you tried this?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “A dozen or so. There’s no instant gratification in science. But I’m getting closer.”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “I hear the white woman is going to marry the earthquake man.”

  He shook his head, freeing his mouth from her hand. “I like your subtle approach, Khadijah. Yes, it’s quite true that Lanie and Crane will marry,” he said, adding sardonically, “next week as a matter of fact and at a lodge in the Himalayas with a superb view of Mt. Everest. I’m sure Crane chose the location. He’s nothing if not dramatic.”

  “The tone of your voice makes me believe you are free of her.”

  Talib merely shrugged.

  “She will not be yours?” Khadijah persisted.

  “No.”

  “Then I have a proposition for you.”

  What now, Talib wondered, smiling wryly. “Does a proper Muslim woman proposition a man?”

  She made an exasperated sound. “Look, you have no woman. I have no man. I am of the right blood. It’s a perfect political alliance.”

  “What is?”

  “Our marriage! What do you think I’m talking about?”

  He laughed loudly. “Our marriage? Are you joking with me?”

  “Oh, do shut up and listen to me,” she said angrily. “This is hard enough for me to do without you making fun. I know you are a… good man. You would be kind to me.”

  “And keep you near the top of the power curve, huh?”

  “What’s wrong with that? If you haven’t noticed, it’s kind of genetic… anyway, traditional with me and my brothers. I like excitement as much as the next person. I’d also make you a good wife and keep an Islamic home. I could give you children; I’m strong.” Her voice lost its power and she stared down at the floor. Speaking in almost a whisper, she added, “You would have my heart and my dedication forever.”

  “Stop,” he said, quietly but sternly, taking her shoulders. “Don’t… do this. We can’t marry. We won’t. I’m flattered and you’re wonderful. Soon, some man will—”

  “I’m too headstrong for Islamic men.”

  “Well, yeah… there’s that.”

  “You will need to wed and father children. We’ll make future leaders together. Don’t you understand how right this is, how destined?”

  “Khadijah, I don’t love you.”

  “We’re not talking about love,” she said. “I could never love an egotist like you. Marry me. Your woman belongs to someone else.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can just stop loving her!”

  “Love again. What is this? Life goes on, Abu Talib, with or without you.”

  His hands were trembling on her arms. “Leave me alone,” he said. He turned from her and walked through the French doors. He leaned on the veranda rail and looked at the bustle below, a neverending river of people snaking into history. He had accomplished so much. God, why did he feel such pain?

  Khadijah was at his arm, touching lightly. “I’m still a virgin,” she said. “I will give that to you right now, if you’d like. I know I can please you.”

  “It would please me,” he said, “if you would forget this discussion ever took place. Don’t sacrifice yourself on the altar of Dan Newcombe.”

  “Abu Talib,” she corrected, stepping very close and pressing her body to his, “that is your name. And I am your future.”

  Slowly, she pushed away, turned and, head erect, strode from the veranda. He watched her go through the room and out into the hall, then looked back over his domain, a blue sea of shields stretching in all directions as far as he could see. And he thought about Lanie.

  It was bad enough that she was marrying Crane so fast, and when he’d heard the rumor she was pregnant, it had been a true punch in the gut. Marrying and having a family had been a major issue between him and Lanie for so many years—but with Crane, she’d been instantly ready for full commitment.

  He cursed and slammed his fisted right hand into his left palm. This was stupid, stupid of him. He was internationally famous—revered, even—and he couldn’t get past the fact that Elena King had thrown him over for Crane. He smiled self-derisively. He’d sent them the finest, most exotic and most appropriate wedding present he could find: a Chang Heng earthquake weathercock from the second century A.D. It was a large vase, the outside affixed with eight golden dragons, their bodies pointing downward. Below each dragon sat an openmouthed frog. A bronze ball rested in the mouth of each dragon and, should a tremor occur, the affected dragon would drop his ball into the mouth of his frog, setting off an alarm. The positioning of the dragon would determine the direction of the quake. In 138 A.D. that very urn had measured a quake four hundred miles away. Messengers, riding pell-mell to the capital city of Loyang to deliver the news, had discovered that their information already had been announced by the vase.

  It was a delicate instrument, a beautiful gift. And it was all he could give them. He certainly could not give the gift of his presence at their wedding which, he suspected, both Lanie and Crane wanted for the closure, the reconciliation, the continuity of the relationship between all three that it would signify. But, Talib knew, watching them marry would tear him to emotional shreds, unman him. No, the ceremony would have to proceed without him.

  Talib shivered with emotion. Was it love, race, ego, or competitiveness that drove his engine of jealousy and self-pity? He didn’t know. He did know, however, that he did not want to spend his life alone and childless. There was Khadijah….

  Chapter 15: Endings/Beginnings

  THE HIMALAYAS—NEPAL, INDIA

  23 JULY 2026, 2:00 P.M.

  Alone, wearing a full-length cream-colored satin slip, Lanie stood at the teak-framed window of the old British lodge and gazed out in wonder at the twin peaks of Everest and Kanchenjunga. She hugged herself. In less than an hour she would become Lewis Crane’s wife, in less than seven months she would bear their child. Her cup runneth over.

  Crane had brought her to the roof of the world for their wedding, a place as high as the happiness they shared in each other, in their work, in their life together. The setting perfectly mirrored the way she felt, as Crane had promised it would. She was dazzled and amazed. The peaks she was staring at were nearly thirty thousand feet high, almost six miles up, and the range from which they soared, the Himalayan range, was nearly two hundred miles wide at certain points and stretched over fifteen hundred miles in length. All, of course, had originated in earthquakes. And today, this very afternoon, there would be the first quake since 1255 in this region.

  Another boom shook the lodge, and Lanie felt plaster dust sprinkle her bare shoulders. She laughed aloud. Only Crane would choose this day, this place for their wedding. It was perfect.

  She felt as if she hadn’t been truly alive until she knew Crane had realized they loved each other. And she knew it was the same for him. Lord, he told her often enough. Perhaps even more importantly, he showed her… in every conceivable way. He treated her as an equal partner in their work and day-to-day lives; he treated her as the other half of his self in all things emotional, sexual…. She’d never dreamed she could feel so understanding of and understood by another human being.

  Below, guests gathered in the front lawn under the politically correct Liang Int sunshield. A small but distinguished group of scientists and heads of state were gathering for the wedding, as well as their c
olleagues from the Foundation, supporters, and friends. The lawn turned into forest that rolled up the hillsides. They were at twelve thousand feet, the highest altitude where trees can grow. Farther up the mountains only grasses, lichens, and moss survived the cold, dry air. And higher than that, snow. Everyone, Lanie knew, was as affected as she by the awesome grandeur of the setting.

  Turning away from the window, she caught sight of her gown, newly pressed and hanging in the open closet. She smiled and sat in one of the two leather chairs, separated by a small, delicately carved table, that was ideally placed to take advantage of the view through the window. Splendid Everest rose majestically into the clouds. Another foreshock hit. An incredible sensation, Lanie thought, so different from Sado, from Memphis. She had to laugh at herself. Being a thoroughly happy bride and mother-to-be must make her giddy.

  Feeling awkward in his tuxedo, Crane stood in a tiny bathroom just off the kitchen on the main floor of the lodge. Three other men were crowded in with him, and blue jamming lights arced all around them. They were passing the keypad, finalizing their arrangement. President Gideon sat on the closed commode; Vice President Sumi Chan was wedged into the corner in front of Gideon’s legs. Crane and Mr. Mui were face-to-face, Mui leaning against the washstand.

  “Will you begin the project soon?” the Liang boss asked, pressing his thumb to the keypad. The light registered green, indicating that his print had been identified.

  “Right after the wedding,” Crane said.

  “No honeymoon?” Gideon asked. “That’s a pretty little woman you got yourself there.”

  The concept had never occurred to Crane. “There’s too much to do,” he said. “We have only five years before it will be too late to make the weld. No time to waste.”

  Mui handed him the key pad. “Security around the site will have to be intense.”

  “We’ll be operating as a deep drilling operation called Northwest Gemstone. Our avowed business purpose will be exploration primarily for focus crystals.” Crane placed his thumb on the black metallic plate. It registered within a second. “We’ll put up a security building called Gem Processing and work the nuclear materials in there. We’ll assemble the devices on site. I’ve already contacted my weapons researchers to do the job.”

  “What about deliveries of the nuclear material?” Gideon asked.

  “I’ve purchased several trucks, sir,” Crane said, handing the man the pad, “which we are now retrofitting in order to haul atomic contraband. They’ll have Northwest Gemstone logos painted on both sides and appear to be equipment haulers.”

  Sumi took the pad from the President, affixing her own thumbprint to complete the circle. An agreement had just been forged.

  “Done,” Sumi said, smiling as the machine registered a bindable contract, albeit a private one. “Your dream is online, Crane. How long before delivery?”

  “Two years,” Crane said, taking back the keypad and interfacing with his wristpad to get his copy. The two machines sang together, then bleeped their satisfaction.

  “Crane!” came a voice from the hallway. “Dammit, Crane! There’s a party going on without you. Where are you?”

  “It’s Stoney.” Crane smiled, disconnecting and giving the keypad back to Mui, who pocketed it.

  “Does he know?” Mui asked.

  Crane shook his head. “Outside of this room, only Lanie knows. Even the people I’ve hired to dig the tunnels don’t know. They think we’re making an underground vault to store records. The pyro guys who’ll build the bomb think it’s a secret U.S. mission leading to the renewal of underground testing, and were chosen for their security clearances.”

  “Crane!”

  “In here, Stoney,” Crane called, opening the door.

  Twenty feet down the hall, Stoney smiled when he saw four of them coming out. “When I was a kid,” he said, hobbling over to them, his cane the only reminder of his near brush with death in Memphis, “four men coming out of a bathroom together usually would have been followed by a cloud of smoke.”

  “Where’s Lanie?” Crane asked.

  “With the rest of the guests,” Stoney said, waving to the other men as they hurried on. “She’s attempting to keep from going crazy looking for you.”

  “Be a good guy,” Crane said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Go back and tell Lanie I’ll be right there.”

  “Your show,” Whetstone said and shook hands with him. “Congratulations, old man. You know, I looked my entire life and never found a woman like Lanie.”

  “Thank you, Stoney,” Crane said, hugging him. The man hobbled off then, leaning heavily on his cane made from Tennessee poplar.

  Lanie. Crane had no idea of what he’d done to deserve her. He had orchestrated every other aspect of his life, but suddenly she had shown up and changed it all. It was the most wonderful thing that ever had happened. As far as he was concerned Lanie was the only woman in the entire world. And she loved to work as much as he did! His entire life had come together, all the pieces falling into place. Dreams, and dreams beyond dreams.

  He savored the moment. He’d known too few of its kind.

  His bad arm throbbed painfully, the quake nearly upon them. He supposed some would think him odd for celebrating his wedding amidst the devastation of an EQ, but he looked at it as a tragedy averted, a cause for celebration. There’d be homelessness and suffering, but nothing like what would have happened had no one been alerted.

  He walked out onto the wide wooden porch. A hundred chattering guests silenced immediately. All eyes had turned toward him. A canopy hung above the wide lawn. Lanie, in white taffeta and sheer veil, stood fifty feet away, smiling calmly. She held a bouquet of white orchids. A red-cloaked Cosmie minister stood at her left; Kate Masters, also carrying flowers, was at her right. Stoney awaited Crane at the porch steps.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Lightning crackled overhead, leaping between the mountains and the sky. The celebrants looked somewhat nervous.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Crane said loudly, opening his arms. “Trust me!”

  They laughed then, relieving the tension. Crane looked at Stoney. “Now, I’m ready. Got the ring?”

  “What ring?” Stoney laughed. “Bad joke. Sorry. Of course I have the ring.”

  To Wagner’s traditional wedding march from Lohengrin, they walked down the red carpet toward Lanie. Crane surprised himself by being more nervous now than when he’d been affixing the agreement with Liang.

  He reached Lanie’s side and was trapped immediately in her luminescent hazel gaze. Her eyes were wide with love and inquisitiveness. “God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered to a loud rumble. He grasped her hands.

  “Never mind that,” she whispered. “How did it go?”

  “It’s done,” he whispered in return. Lanie threw her arms around his neck.

  “Perhaps we’d better get on with it,” the minister said, looking around suspiciously at the quivering lawn furniture, the trembling ornamental plants and flowers.

  Crane padded the time—2:36:30. He smiled at the man. “Your show, Padre.”

  “The name’s Al,” the minister said. “Just Al.”

  “Quickly, Al,” Crane said, the ground shaking laterally beneath their feet.

  “Brothers in Oneness!” the minister began. “As all life is made from the same molecules, so, too, do these beings who stand before us wish to become One through the pair bonding institution of—”

  The rest of his speech was mercifully drowned out by the rumbling quakes, originating from a twenty-five-mile-deep hypocenter near Dhangarhi as the Indian Plate finally relieved its slippage. It was a monster quake, its likes not seen for almost sixty years, since the big Alaska quake in 1967.

  As the minister pronounced them “co-beings in Oneness,” the ground had begun rolling like waves on the sea, the shelf creaking above them. Crane kissed the bride and hoped the dams would stand despite his predictions, but he knew they wouldn’t.

  The sky had d
arkened now, lightning a continual fireworks show halfway up the peaks that towered over everything. Everyone walked out from under the canopy to watch the display as a section of Everest, large as a city, sheared off the side of the mountain and fell to the valleys far below.

  “What a wonderful wedding present,” Lanie said, her arms around Crane as they watched the spectacle. “It’s amazing.”

  “Our child’s first EQ,” Crane said.

  “What do you do, Crane,” Lanie asked, “when you’ve finally achieved your dream and ended all this?”

  “I don’t know.” He grinned. “Take up accounting?”

  The valleys screamed all around them, whined—the sound like fingernails on a chalk board amplified billions of times. Crane almost could hear voices in it. Wailing. Forlorn and frightened.

  The guests were bending over, hands covering their ears to shut out the din as the wind picked up, blowing wildly into their faces, whipping dresses and hair in swirling frenzy. The inferior Liang sunscreen collapsed in on itself, but fortunately no one was beneath the thing.

  And then it happened, right before their eyes. Everest, amidst the howling wind and the cries of dying rock, shook like the old man it was, large bits of it cracking loudly just as the trees breaking in the forest and falling off were creaking loudly. And then it grew. As if rising to walk away, the six-mile mountain abruptly jutted upward, rising higher into the clouds, eating the slippage and growing—young again, a new mountain.

  The whole process took three minutes to accomplish. Three minutes to change the topography of the planet. Three minutes to grow the world’s tallest mountain fifty feet taller. The next man to climb it would be climbing higher than Sir Edmund Hillary did in the same spot.

  Out of destruction, birth.

  Sumi Chan stood with Burt Hill, who was wearing a too-small tuxedo. He looked like a monkey without an organ grinder as he watched the reception tangle all around them. The lodge’s main hall was filled to bursting, wedding presents lining the walls and filling the small conference room next door. Professional talkers talked all around them, drinking synth before a fireplace so large it consumed whole treetrunks as its logs.