by Peter Hernon
Holding a clipboard on his lap, he smiled at the camera.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t have much strength and I tire easily, so I want to get right down to business. Joanne is recording all this. Joanne, say hello to Elizabeth.”
“Hello there, Elizabeth,” his wife said in a light, almost musical voice. “It’s bad enough I have to listen to Otto. Now I’ve got to film him.”
It was so strange for Elizabeth to hear Joanne Prable speak her name. She kept picturing her as she lay on the floor of her bedroom. Elizabeth had to force herself to put the image out of her mind.
There were so many other memories of the Prables: party hosts, intrepid tour guides to northern California, and ballroom dancers. They’d taken up dancing fairly late in life, when Joanne thought it would help her husband get his mind off recent prostate surgery. They were both naturals on the dance floor and were soon winning state competitions, even giving lessons. Elizabeth had gone to several dance contests and marveled at how sexy they looked together, Joanne in a tight blue lamé gown with a daring slit skirt and her robust husband in a white tux. That image lingered, as did the many times she’d met them casually. Joanne loved literature and art and was continually forcing Prable to read her latest best-selling discovery. A beautiful couple.
Now she saw Prable sitting in what looked like his front room. A large fireplace was off to the side.
“Elizabeth, you know what I do,” he said. “I’m a climatologist. I analyze long-range weather patterns and make predictions on how changes in the weather affect agriculture, the amount of grain shipped from the Midwest, or the need for more heating fuel during an unusually cold winter. As a consequence of my work, I’ve become interested in solar activity. The impact of sunspots and other solar events on our planet and on our weather cycles. More out of curiosity than anything else. At least that’s how it started. I began to plot earthquakes according to periods of peak solar activity and found some curious relationships. The eight greatest quakes on record in this century, starting with the San Francisco quake of 1906, all happened at times of extreme solar activity.
“I also plotted,” Prable said, checking his clipboard, “these large quakes according to the earth’s position relative to the sun. Most happened during perihelion, the period when the sun is closest to earth. The bigger quakes tend to bunch up in the months of December and January and close to perihelion. The northern hemisphere was especially vulnerable, possibly because perihelion falls there during the winter. These were also periods of high tides, and as you probably remember I’ve spent a lot of time these last few years looking at how the tides affect our weather.
“I find it extremely interesting that the data from the Apollo space missions to the moon show all kinds of lunar earthquakes happening at perigee, the point where the moon’s orbit is closest to the earth. That’s also a time of maximum tidal pull, and if I’m correct in my analysis, the period of maximum earthquake stress. Clusters of quakes, some of them huge, happen during periods of strong solar activity and tidal pulls.”
Prable looked up and stared directly into the camera. Elizabeth gave a nervous start. He seemed to be staring straight into her eyes.
He managed a weak smile. “I know what’s probably running through your mind about now, Elizabeth. You’re thinking, ‘Oh, God. Not another tidal stress theory to explain earthquakes.’ I understand your skepticism. I felt the same way until I started looking at where these solar and tidal forces were most likely to have some impact. I concluded that a band of latitude running from roughly eighty-two to ninety-three degrees north will be subject to extremely strong tidal forces on or about January twentieth. Then I began to plot areas where stresses were building on known earthquake faults. Weak, unstable places that might be susceptible to tidal triggering. I ran my own computer analysis. Information from the Global Positioning System was especially valuable. The GPS readings showed me how the topography of an area had changed over time—land movement, uplift, and compression. I was able to compare horizontal and vertical displacements with land surveys from the fifties, your basic topo maps. That helped me identify faults where the crust had shifted the most, where stress was building.”
Elizabeth had recently begun using GPS readings in her own work. Geologists had only recently begun to use the satellite system to map topography. The measurement system was based on triangulation. The precision was breathtaking. Locations down to a couple of millimeters could be pinpointed from space. It was possible to track how the earth’s crust was moving and changing from one year to the next.
“My conclusion from all this, Elizabeth, the reason I made this tape for you, is that I believe there’s a good chance for a serious quake, possibly a magnitude 7, somewhere in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The topography data shows an unusually heavy buildup of stress there. My projections indicate the greatest likelihood for such a quake will be during a period two or three days on either side of January twentieth. What makes the New Madrid fault particularly interesting to me is its history.
“As you know, it’s produced some of the strongest earthquakes ever to happen in the northern hemisphere. These tremors happened after almost two years of virtually no sunspot activity whatsoever. We’ve just gone through a similar period. It’s only been in the last three months that the solar flares and sunspots have picked up again. Heavy solar activity is predicted for January sixteenth. That’s four days before the date of maximum tidal pull.”
The theory here, never proven but much debated, was that solar flares and sunspots unleashed powerful solar winds, thereby increasing the number of charged particles streaming from the sun. The solar winds could cause turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere, turbulence that could affect the planet’s rotation. These slight variations in rotation, so the theory went, could trigger earthquakes.
Prable was visibly weakening. He’d slumped lower in his chair and was having difficulty breathing. He looked into the camera and smiled again. It was taking more effort. The pain showed in the tightness at the corners of his mouth.
“I had my last chemo yesterday,” he said. “I stopped it. Total waste of time. It knocks the hell out of me.”
Prable took a sip of water. “Elizabeth. Please understand that I haven’t limited my analysis solely to solar activity and geological stresses. I’ve also factored in some other data, which I’m more familiar with—weather assessments and river stages. The New Madrid Seismic Zone cuts straight across the Mississippi River, which drains the entire upper Midwest. That region has sustained almost nine straight months of near-record rainfall. The Mississippi and Ohio rivers have hovered at or near flood stage for five months out of the last eleven. It’s likely that more water, in the form of melted snow, will come downstream in the next month or so. All that water will increase the stress on the fault, making it more vulnerable to fracture.
“I’ll make the rest of this brief. I can’t talk much longer. I want you to check my data. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake, miscalculated somewhere. I don’t believe so, and I’m not afraid to tell you that even though I’m dying, it frightens the living shit out of me. If a large quake hit on the New Madrid Seismic Zone with anywhere near the magnitude of those in the early nineteenth century, it would be a disaster, a national calamity. In my opinion worse, by far, than the Civil War.”
Prable waved his hand at the camera, a feeble gesture. “You’ll have to do what you think best with all of this, Elizabeth. I wish I were there to help. If there’s anything to what my wife the Roman Catholic has been telling me these last few months, maybe I will be able to help you. In spirit as they say.”
Prable smiled, a warm, open smile that radiated from his gaunt face.
“I’ve changed my will. You are now one of my favored beneficiaries. My net worth may come as a surprise. You’ll soon be a wealthy woman, Elizabeth. Consider it partial payment for what I’ve done to you.”
The tape went blank. Elizabeth sat there unable
to move, transfixed by what she’d just seen. She closed her eyes and could still see his face.
NEAR MAYFIELD, KENTUCKY
JANUARY 9
5:10 P.M.
ATKINS SAT IN THE FRONT SEAT OF BEN HARVEY’S pickup, watching the cattle. They’d driven to one of his far pastures. Sheriff Hessel had left to get back to his office in Mayfield. He was worried about the weather icing up the roads.
The behavior of some of the animals was bizarre. Cows normally moved slowly as they grazed. Atkins watched as the animals—individually or sometimes three and four at a time—suddenly lifted their heads up from the feed trough and trotted stiffly in wide circles.
Harvey couldn’t explain it. Or hide his concern.
“They’ve been doing that on and off for a week,” he said. “I haven’t got an explanation. Neither does the vet.”
“Have you felt any tremors lately?”
Harvey smiled. “We get three or four little shakes a year around here. You get used to that pretty quick you live in this country. Five, six years ago there was a good jolt. Maybe a 5 on that Richter scale. It didn’t do any damage to speak of except maybe snap a few sewer lines and some gas pipes. And, friend, it never made my cattle go nuts.”
Harvey invited Atkins for dinner and drove back to the farmhouse. Atkins was eager to leave but Harvey and his wife, Barbara, insisted that he stay. The pot roast was already in the oven. The delicious aroma of meat, onions, and simmering gravy filled the kitchen.
Barbara drew a glass of water from the tap.
“Smell that,” Harvey said, handing the glass to Atkins.
The odor of sulfur was unmistakable. The water was slightly clouded.
“Three days ago that water was clear and sweet,” Harvey said.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Harvey said, looking out the window. “It’s finally starting.”
The wind came in gusts, and Atkins heard the sleet hitting the glass like handfuls of pebbles.
“You better spend the night, Mister Atkins,” Ben Harvey said. “This keeps up, the road’s gonna be solid ice. It’s really coming down.”
Atkins didn’t want to put them out. Even more to the point, he wanted to get back to Memphis as soon as possible and start going over Walt Jacobs’ data on the New Madrid Seismic Zone.
“Now that the boys are grown and living on their own farms, we’ve got four empty bedrooms upstairs,” Harvey said. “You’re welcome to one of them. I wouldn’t go out in that.”
Although he was eager to leave, Atkins accepted the offer with gratitude. He enjoyed a huge meal, and afterward Ben Harvey got out a bottle of Old Granddad and poured each of them a jigger. They sat by the fire in the farmhouse’s spacious living room. When they turned in, it was still sleeting.
A little after midnight a telephone awakened Atkins. Moments later, Ben Harvey knocked on the bedroom door.
“What is it?” Atkins asked, struggling to clear his head. He’d been in a deep sleep.
“Poachers,” Harvey said.
The caller was a hired hand who worked for him. He and his wife lived in a trailer on the far side of the farm. He was getting ready to turn in for the night and had looked outside to check if it was still sleeting. He’d seen some lights in the hills.
“I told him to call the sheriff,” Harvey said. “I’ll head on out there and take a look myself. There’s a lot of deer that winter in those hills. The poachers come after them at night with four-by-fours. The bastards use spotlights. You catch a deer in the light, it won’t move, and you can pick it off easy. We had a hell of a problem with poachers a few years back. We finally ran them off. At least I thought we had. It looks like they’re back in business.”
Harvey put on his raincoat and boots and got a rifle out of a gun case in the family room. He asked Atkins if he wanted to go with him.
“I wouldn’t mind the company if you’re up to it. You gotta sit out there in the dark and hope they come your way. It can get kinda boring.”
Left unsaid was what they’d do if someone did come their way.
They walked out to the truck and headed down one of the dirt roads that crisscrossed the farm. The sleet had stopped. They had to drive a few miles, the wheels crunching through thick sheets of ice.
Looming ahead, Atkins saw the low hills, snake-backed and dark.
They were still a mile away when a flash of bluish-white light lit up one of the hillsides.
Harvey stopped and said, “That’s no lantern.”
The light alternated from a pale, luminescent blue to reddish-orange. It flashed, then flashed again, lingering for a few seconds with a strong afterglow. The band of light appeared to hover directly over the ridgeline.
“Are there any power lines or buried cables running across those hills?” Atkins asked.
“Not that I know of,” Harvey said. He let out a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
The hillside had gone dark then the lights burst out again, brighter than ever. They seemed to rise from the ground and settle over the tops of the trees, a color spectrum of white, various shades of blue and orange that radiated in waves.
“What do you think’s causing that?” the farmer asked.
“I don’t know,” Atkins said. And he meant it. He’d read about “earthquake lights,” but had never seen them before. Most seismologists—himself included—were skeptical about such lights, even in the face of some fairly dramatic reports. The light show—and according to the descriptions, it could be even more spectacular than this—usually happened before or during an earthquake. The entire sky had reportedly lit up like the northern lights just before a powerful quake struck in Italy in May 1976. More recently, twenty-three spottings of earthquake lights were reported in and around the Japanese city of Kobe before the 7.2 magnitude quake on January 17, 1995. Most appeared as streaks of lightning, arcs of light, or quivering fan-shaped bands of color that appeared to rise above the ground.
They differed substantially from the northern or southern “auroral” lights, which were caused by solar storms that sent energy pulsing into the upper atmosphere along magnetic field lines. The auroral lights were usually seen in northern latitudes, more rarely in southern. They tended to be green or yellow. Earthquake lights were usually blue, white, or orange.
Sightings of earthquake lights were plentiful but good photographs of the phenomenon were rare. They’d often been reported along the coasts of northern California or Mexico, frequently just offshore. Their origin remained a mystery. One theory suggested that the main cause might be the discharge of polarized electricity from rocks during heavy ground shaking.
Atkins stepped out of the pickup. Harvey got out on the other side. The lights that continued to hover over the hills were more vivid now. It looked like sheet lightning.
Atkins wished he had a tape recorder to dictate his description. Or a camera.
“Ben,” he said to the farmer. “I’ll need to get back to Memphis first thing in the morning. I’ll take my chances with the ice.”
SANTA MONICA
JANUARY 9
10:25 P.M.
OTTO PRABLE’S OFFICES WERE JUST OFF WILSHIRE Boulevard in Santa Monica, a low-rise, nondescript building that he owned. Elizabeth Holleran drove straight there after watching the video again. She used the key he’d sent her to open the front door.
Her heart was pounding when she stepped inside. The walls to the spacious office were covered with graphs and color-coded maps that showed the earth’s topography in sharp detail. There was also an array of weather charts—rainfall, river stages, and flood projections from the Army Corps of Engineers. The most recent reports were only four days old. And from the way they were filed, it appeared to Holleran that Prable had worked almost up to the time he took his life.
On a table that ran the entire length of the room, eight computer terminals were arrayed. Holleran almost gasped when she saw them. They were all Sun Spare 10s, exceptionally powerful
computers with a prodigious megabyte capacity. They cost around $40,000 apiece. Holleran’s department had only two of the machines, and on-line time was at a premium. She’d never seen so many of them in one place.
Prable was linked through his computer network to the National Weather Service forecasting bureau in Kansas City, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, the National Geomagnetic Information Center, and the National Earthquake Information Center.
Most of the data was in real time. His computers—all were in the “sleep” mode—captured the information the moment it was produced by the host computers.
Prable even had his own analogue seismograph, which was mounted in a glass case next to what must have been his principal work desk, a kidney-shaped expanse of polished cherry.
Holleran also noticed the direct computer linkup with the Global Positioning System.
She sat down at Prable’s desk and logged on to his personal computer, using a password he’d provided: GINNY, his wife’s middle name. The first file to appear on screen was a series of color images taken by the Solar Maximum Mission Spacecraft. She remembered Prable’s controversial ideas about the triggering effects of solar activity on earthquakes. The eight photographs arrayed on the computer’s color monitor were a time-lapse chronograph of a recent coronal mass ejection, or CME, from the sun.
It resembled a hazy gas bubble forming on the surface, rapidly expanding frame by frame until it blew up in long tendrils of brilliant white light, the violent birth of a solar windstorm. The CME images were provided by the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
Holleran clicked onto another icon. Prable had plotted the approach of this solar windstorm toward earth.
Peak solar activity was predicted for January 16, one week away. Prable’s computer graphics showed how the winds were expected to affect the earth’s magnetosphere on or about that date. When this solar shock wave hit the earth, Prable had calculated that it would set off a geomagnetic storm strong enough to alter the tides as well as satellite transmissions. And possibly set into motion a chain of events that might result in an earthquake somewhere in the New Madrid Seismic Zone.