Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

She let the feelings spill over her, warming her, evening her out. Bilious clouds filled the sky, running tapes of Nation of Islam supporters being arrested by the G just outside the beefed-up security checkpoints into East LA. Below, Burt Hill was supervising the setup of a buffet under a large awning for the returning team. There was also a bar, a small aid station, and a stage for a press conference. Sumi would skip the press this time. All she wanted to do was unbind and hide under the covers in the loft bed. She drank from the dorph again. Maybe today, for once, she could lose herself in bliss.

A condor flew high above the defensive perimeter of the Crane Foundation. Keeping lone watch over the intruder alarms and electromagnetic jammers, the compound and its occupants, the bird circled and swooped endlessly, perched and glided continuously. The condor’s sleek beauty was surpassed only by its complexity, for it was completely electronic and its ganglia were connected directly into the brain of Mohammed Ishmael. Fitting, he thought, that a huge black American vulture should be his spy from above. Soon, if all went as he believed it would, he’d have another spy, almost as reliable, within the Foundation itself.

In Brother Ishmael’s opinion, Lewis Crane needed careful watching, for he was the only person on the planet who presented a serious threat to him. Crane challenged Brother Ishmael’s apocalyptic vision of the world. He’d known the first moment he’d set eyes on Crane that somehow their fates were linked, and, so, it did not trouble him overmuch that his intense preoccupation with the man and the work of his foundation might be entirely irrational, wholly personal… and far too time-consuming. It was necessary, though he could not be at all certain why or how.

The eyes of the condor zoomed in on the helo landing zone near the primary building in the Foundation complex. Crane called it “the mosque,” which did not amuse Brother Ishmael at all, though it did amuse him considerably to note that the guests arriving at this minute had been at the meeting at sea in June. Everyone had been invited back except him. He threw back his head and laughed.

Lanie King was spectacular in every way, Crane thought as he looked around the central lab or, as he was encouraging everyone to call it now, the globe room. The last three months Lanie had proved herself time and time again. She lived computers, breathed them … and she wholeheartedly shared his goal for the globe. She’d hired the programmers, moved them out of the dank back rooms and into the main room so they could be close to the object of their work and appreciate at all times the immensity of the project. Good management that, Crane reflected.

The only thing with which he was dissatisfied was his public role. He ricocheted from one performance to the next … song-and-dance man, comic, P.T. Barnum and Cecil B. deMille. By nature introverted, he was depleted by these performances, though he doubted anyone guessed how much they took out of him. This little show today was one of the most crucial of his career. The politicos and money people wanted to see progress; most importantly, Li demanded a quake, and by God he was pretty sure he had one to deliver.

The work of Newcombe and Lanie showed that ground-based radon levels were up by nearly thirty percent all through the Mississippi Valley. Electromagnetic charges were also occurring in the region. Both phenomena possibly came from fault-line stress on rocks: When rocks cracked, radon escaped; when they fractured, they allowed electricity to flow more easily through ground water. Precursors. Probably.

In July, Lanie’s computers had used the seismic gap theory of rate of return to predict a major quake on the New Madrid fault line in Missouri. The last big one there had occurred in 1812. He was going to tell all his guests about that historic quake as a preview of coming attractions. His divided soul felt glee and despondency. He needed the quake to go on with his work and, ultimately, save millions of lives. He felt utter dejection, deep grief at the thought of a quake along the 120-mile New Madrid fault line which could destroy everything from Little Rock to Chicago—including Memphis, St. Louis, Natchez. He needed to be right; he hoped he would be wrong … at least about the extent of the devastation. He looked around the dramatically lighted room. A small stand of plush stadium seating had been built near the front doors for the VIPs. They were there, chatting and drinking Sumi’s enhanced champagne. Even Mr. Li seemed in good spirits, as did Vice President Gabler, sans wife today, and President Gideon. How these people could be so cheerful was beyond Crane. There had been riots for the last two months in the War Zones, backing the NOI demand for a homeland. Heightened security and the curtailment of food shipments were doing little to keep the occupied territories in line. The Islamic fundamentalists in Paris, Lisbon, Algiers, and London supported their American brethren with rioting. Boycotts of Liang Int products were forcing Mr. Li to capitulate in many areas, particularly relenting on withholding food.

A new sex plague was sweeping the Indian subcontinent, once more confounding dire predictions of overpopulation. Genetic plagues and antibiotic resistant strains of viruses and bacteria—as well as the ancient enemy of mankind, famine—were proving the Malthusians wrong every day. The food supply was dismal. Very little grew well in the wild anymore; the UV bleaching of crops destroyed everything that wasn’t grown beneath the cheap sun shields developed under exclusive patent by Yo-Yu, Liang’s major competitor.

In July the President had announced that the government—that is, Liang Int—was funding a major study into the possibility of ozone regeneration, prompting Yo-Yu officials to accuse the administration of attempting to destroy competitive marketing by attacking them directly on the sunblock and sunshield fronts. They called the government study “political terrorism.” Crane could only shake his head at the antics of Man. In opposition to the antics of Nature, however, he was prepared to act … even now. He stepped up onto the platform where Lanie sat at a computer console and Newcombe at the long table with imbedded microphones that projected even a speaker’s whisper through the vast room.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice godlike and booming theatrically from dozens of speakers burrowed into the walls.

The room darkened. Crane waited until his audience grew silent, then said simply, “The universe.”

Brilliant light flashed for ten seconds. “The universe,” Crane continued, “began with a clap of hydrogen and helium, vomiting fiery matter at fantastic speeds in all directions.”

The globe burst into holoprojection flame, vibrant reds and yellows swirled about the globe. “Our planet was born into fire about 4.5 billion years ago. Spinning, its contracting clouds of dusts and gases gradually congealed.” The globe changed as Crane spoke, holographically showing the formation of the planet from gas to solid. The massive scale of the sphere and the changes it demonstrated overwhelmed the people sitting in the darkness. Crane could hear their appreciative muttering.

“At first we were a planet of molten rock. Slowly, the heavier elements, nickel and iron, settled into a dense inner core. Some of the lighter rocky materials, such as basalt and granite, melted, floated upward, and cooled into a thin crust. There was mantle around the core.”

Lanie’s fingers flew over the keys of her computer, and the globe projection transmogrified into a barren, rocky sphere.