Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“Li and the others, they made a deal with you,” she said. “They have to keep it.”

“If I can make another earthquake happen,” he whispered, then winked at her.

Scores of boats of all sizes and shapes, a flotilla, surrounded them as they steamed closer to LA. People were waving and calling out to them.

Lanie and he drank in the celebrity, laughing and waving back.

He leaned over the rail and yelled to the closest ship. “Ahoy! What news of earthquakes? I sense something just happened.”

A loudspeaker crackled from one of the news boats. “We received word a little while ago. Martinique has been leveled by an eruption of Mount Pelee.”

“Don’t unpack your bags,” he said to Lanie, then put a foot over the rail and climbed down to the main deck, everything forgotten except the chase, the godalmighty, neverending chase.

No one knew Sumi Chan was a woman. No one. The yi-sheng who’d delivered her in great secrecy had died five years ago. Her own parents, who’d engineered the deception after amniocentesis had revealed that their heir would be female, passed away in ’22, victims of the St. Louis flu. The flu virus, brought from America by traveling salesmen, had been far more devastating than the flu of 1918, killing hundreds of thousands of people in cities throughout the Far East, while sparing the North American continent with a relatively mild epidemic.

So, for the last two years Sumi had been alone with the lie of her life. And she’d have to go on alone … even though her twenty-eight-year masquerade had failed completely in its objective: to inherit her ancestral land, a right forbidden to women. But her birthright no longer existed; the land had been forfeited to bankruptcy; her parents had died destitute.

Being trapped was the operative experience of Sumi’s life. She’d come to America to study science abroad, as was the custom. The U.S. Geological Survey position was a patronage job, simply meant to look good in the long-term corporate portfolio. Now it was all she had, and she feared desperately that her deception would come to light and she would lose her job. Dishonored, she would have nothing. All life was a lie. The only truth Sumi Chan really understood was the fear of exposure that ate away at her.

She sat in the denlike interior of a Liang Corporate helo, a silent eggbeater design favored for its smooth ride, and tried to hold herself together. Crane had been good to her, had given her status and generous amounts of credit for her contributions to his projects. She liked him, too, despite his eccentricities, sometimes even because of them. He didn’t deserve what was about to happen to him.

She watched the crowd of perhaps as many as two hundred people approach the Long Beach Harbor dockside landing pad. The sun was down, a clear star-filled night just dripping onto the skyline of the largest city in the western hemisphere. Umbrellas were clasped firmly under arms now as citizens wiped sunblock off their faces and shed their coats and gloves. The freedom of night had arrived.

Newsmen swarming him like gnats, Crane led the long line down the well-lit docks toward her position. Most of the people following Crane were camheads, unemployed or bored citizens who lived to get on the teev, to see themselves projected onto the sites of buildings and clouds. So many people did it that it was no longer an obsession; it was a demographic.

Crane was flanked by Newcombe and the new woman. Why had Crane brought her in? Sumi didn’t know what to make of Lanie King. She seemed to have Crane’s drive and Newcombe’s emotions, a potentially dangerous combination, but more importantly, Sumi feared the woman would see through her ruse, just as she feared all women would see through her.

The crowd arrived, and Sumi opened the bay door fully to admit Crane and his team.

“Hey, Dr. Crane,” called a newsman in a gold mandarin jacket, “when’s the big one going to hit LA?”

“If I told you it would happen tomorrow,”

Crane replied, grabbing the sliding door from the inside as Newcombe and King slipped in, “what would you do? That’s the question you should ask yourself.”

He slid the door closed and fell heavily into a padded swivel chair. He groaned, relaxing for just a second, his good hand coming up to rub slowly over his face. Then the second passed and he snapped up to the edge of the chair and looked at Sumi. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

Sumi touched the small grille in the arm of the chair. “Go,” she said, the helo rising within seconds. She smiled at Crane. “Next stop, the mosque.”

“The mosque?” Lanie asked as she wiped the rest of the sunblock from her face with a towel.

“It’s what Sumi calls the Foundation,” Newcombe said, stretching. “You’ll see when we get there.”

“Do you have updates on the Pelee?” Crane asked.

“Not with me,” Sumi said.

“Give me what you know off the top. Martinique is in the Antilles Chain, right?”

“Yes.”

Newcombe barged in before she could go on. “There could be more eruptions.”

“Already have been,” Sumi said. “Two others … smaller. The real problem right now is the weather. Twenty rivers run out of Pelee, all of them bloated, flooding. The mountain has been crumbling … coming down as mudslides, carrying away entire villages.” Without pause, Sumi asked, “Can I get anyone a drink? Some dorph?”

“No,” Crane answered, tapping his wrist pad to connect his aural. “Sumi, call the news-people. I want to take a few of them with me down there or they’ll forget who I am by tomorrow. And get Burt Hill at the Foundation. Tell him I want a dozen emergency medical personnel and a dozen big men.”

“Big men?”

“Strong men … men who can dig. Good to see you by the way, Sumi.”

“Yes, sir,” Sumi replied, using the Foundation funded comlink on the chair to set up a forty-way conference memo to the major news organizations.

Crane punched up the exclu-fiber for Harry Whetstone on his key pad. He swiveled to take in the night show of Los Angeles through the bay window while waiting for the call to track down the man. He liked his benefactor, Old Stoney. A great guy. Damned shame his cash, all those billions, was being held hostage by the courts. Kill the lawyers, like Shakespeare said. Still, Stoney had things and people galore at his disposal, so he could provide what was needed.

“Whetstone,” came a firm but friendly voice.

“Stoney, this is Crane.”

“Hey, great to hear from you. So how the hell did it go with the Big—”

“No time for that now, pal. I want your plane and I need equipment.”

“Pelee?”

“I should leave within the hour. Can you get the plane to my landing strip in the next thirty minutes?”

“Sorry, I can only give you a big bird. Old jet with no focus. I’ll have to see if it’s gassed up. If so, you’ll have it on your timetable. If not, it’ll take over half an hour just for fueling. I’ve got access to some heavy equipment I can send along if you’d like.”

“God, no,” Crane said. “What I need are picks and shovels. Can you get me those?”

“Are you sure you—”

“Picks and shovels, Stoney. Call me back on the Q fiber when you’ve got an ETA. Hurry.”

The city was alive below him, teev pictures seemingly juicing in liquid crystal from every horizontal surface—buildings, billboards, walls and vehicles—the tallest buildings assuming the veneer of life as huge videos filled all twenty and thirty stories of them. They headed north toward Mendenhall Peak in the San Gabriel Mountains.