Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“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 window-shields.

“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.

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?”