Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

Sumi looked startled. “When our relationship began with Mr. Li, I was assigned to an onsite job. I have no contact with the government. I’ve been here with you.”

“We need to stop blaming one another,” Crane said, Lanie startling at the sound of a crowd gathering outside, yelling. “We’ve still got the prediction.”

“Your arm doesn’t hurt,” Newcombe said.

“Sir!” came a man’s voice from the tent flap. One of the guards had stuck his head inside. “This is turning into a situation out here.”

“Tell them we’ll talk in a minute,” Crane said, the guard looking to Whetstone, who nodded.

“The stress readings don’t lie,” Crane said. “The other signs don’t lie. That’s what makes no sense here.”

“What about the Ellsworth-Beroza?” Newcombe asked. “Maybe we’re all fools.”

“No, doctor,” Crane said. “We’re not fools. Suggestions?”

Everyone stared at him.

“Crane,” Whetstone said at last, “are you going to stand behind your prediction?”

“My arm doesn’t hurt,” Crane said, smiling slightly. “It doesn’t lie to me. But you see, it doesn’t matter. We’re married to it one way or the other. We have no choice but to proceed full steam ahead. It’s our roll of the dice, don’t you know? Once the pronouncement is made from on high it cannot be rescinded.” He walked toward the tent flap.

“Where are you going?” Lanie called.

He stopped, then turned abruptly, mechanically. “I’m going to go out there and convince those people and the press to ignore what they just heard and believe me instead.”

“You’re going to deny everything?” Newcombe asked.

“Easy to do,” Crane said, smoothing his rumpled hair with little result. “I don’t know anything. All of you stay in here and don’t come out. I’ve taken the glory. Now it’s time to take the flak.” He looked at Newcombe.

“I’ll protect you as best I can.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Newcombe replied.

Crane narrowed his eyes, selected a wide-brimmed hat from those on the rack standing beside the flap, and went into the Tennessee morning. Lanie looked around, realizing all the teevs were showing Crane from the viewpoint of the crowd outside.

Hundreds of people, most with cams, were filling the dirt street in front of HQ. Crane had moved just outside the tent, Whetstone’s people forming a cordon around him and pushing back the bystanders.

“I want to talk to you for a minute,” Crane said, putting up his hands to silence them. When the noise level didn’t abate, he padded himself into the tent city’s speaker system.

Lanie turned to stare at Dan. “I don’t know you anymore,” she said.

“Maybe you never knew me,” he said, his eyes fixed on the screen. “I realize how all this looks. I simply want to say I’m sorry. I love you. I did what I had to do.”

“Friends!” Crane said, voice booming. “Despite what you may have seen and heard moments ago, the Crane Foundation’s prediction is still active and online. We, here, have no idea what the President was talking about. What I do know about is earthquakes. And you’re going to have one.”

Lanie pursed her lips angrily. “Destroying my work by connecting yourself to a man who’d as soon see me dead. Is that what you had to do?”

“Your work?”

“Good morning, Dan! Surprise! Wake up! The globe is my baby, my EQ-eco. And guess what, I think it could be even more important than your work.”

“That globe,” he said with a look of distaste, “is simply the physical manifestation of Crane’s insanity. It’s meaningless.”

She slapped him so hard her hand stung. “Go to hell,” she said, turning on her heel.

Outside, people were shouting questions at Crane about the Nation of Islam.

“Nation of Islam is not connected with our earthquake research in any form. Dr. Newcombe has a long-standing friendship with Mohammad Ishmael and has every right to visit the man on his own time.”

The shouting got louder, Crane still trying to maintain order.

Newcombe growled. “I don’t need him to defend me.”

“Don’t—” Whetstone said, but Newcombe was already going out the flap.

“I’m a free man,” Dan said to the crowd. Proud, the fire in his eyes flared as if he were a lion in a world of hyenas. “Yes, I’ve visited Brother Ishmael. I can visit whomever I damned well please.”

“Did you talk to him about his call for an Islamic State?” someone in the audience asked.

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.”

People were shouting at him, trying to drown him out. Lanie watched his pride turn to anger and feared for the outcome.

Crane spotted real trouble brewing and elbowed his way back to center stage. “If there’s nothing else—”

“Do you support the forced disenfranchisement of southerners to support an Africk homeland?” came a voice, clear as a bell.

Lanie took a deep, steadying breath. Dan’s answer would force her to make a decision.

“For many years,” Newcombe said, “we have kept eight percent of our citizens locked up in ghettoes. Did they do anything? No. Do they deserve the same freedoms and liberties most Americans take for granted … life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness? Yes.”

“But what about forced eviction?”

“Brother Ishmael wishes to move no one. He only wants an Islamic State where the wisdom of Allah and the Koran prevail. The people who live in the Islamic homeland will be free to do as they choose.”

Crane walked wearily back into the tent, Sumi rushing over to comfort him. As Lame listened to NOI rhetoric coming out of Dan’s mouth she felt as if she were being pushed to the edge. She had waited a long time to let herself love him. And now what was there but pain in the loving?

“Are you a member of Nation of Islam?” one of Whetstone’s people called, the security force slowly melting into and becoming part of the crowd.

“That is a decision I have been grappling with,” he responded. “At the moment I’m a citizen of the world. I’m merely speaking my mind and will continue to do so.”

A cold hand clutched Lanie’s heart. As Dan went on shilling for Brother Ishmael, she went deep into herself. Segregation … the veiling of women … the espousal of violence. Could Dan Newcombe—the man she had lived with and loved—really align himself with a movement that advocated those things? She was very much afraid the answer was yes. Suffused with pain, she clenched her jaw and held herself rigid. She could scarcely bear it… Crane! She had to concern herself with Crane.

The moment Crane had realized that with every word Dan spoke the Foundation was losing more and more of its support, he’d located his stashed bottle of bourbon and gone to work on it in earnest. Camheads started to cut away from Dan’s face to show pictures of people leaving the tent city on foot and in vehicles, vandalizing the place as they went. By the time Dan was finished, most of Crane’s dream of saving lives and of positive, collective action at a quake site was either smashed to the ground or stolen. The red tent stood in the midst of rubble. Two days before the date of his prediction that the quake would hit, it was all over…

Lanie went to Crane’s side. There were tears streaming down his face, and he cradled the bourbon in his bad arm. When she touched his shoulder, she awakened him from some dream of horror. His eyes opened wide.

“All I ever wanted to do was help people,” he said, his voice low and very small.

She hugged him. “Maybe we should think about leaving this place.”

“No. Not me. You. Get Burt and tell him to pack it all in and get himself and the rest of the team back to the Foundation grounds as quickly as possible.”