Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“What are you going to do?”

“Stay here. Do my job. I’ve still got an earthquake coming that I need to warn people about. Just because the government decided it wasn’t going to happen doesn’t mean it won’t.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. “Crane, I can’t—I won’t let you stay on alone. I’m with you—”

“No. You’ve got to leave. Get everybody back as fast as you can. Work on the globe. Work hard. We’ll do what we can at the Foundation until the money runs out.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ve never been all right.” He took a drink. “Go on. Get out of here. I don’t need my people getting arrested in Tennessee.”

“Arrested?”

“I’m a charlatan, remember? I’ve perpetrated a fraud. Charges and arrests are just around the corner no matter what happens with the quake. I’ll probably be in jail when it hits.” He looked hard at her. “I’m counting on you … on you, Lanie. The globe is everything. Only you can carry on with that work.”

Tears filled her eyes. Finally, she nodded and was rewarded by one of Crane’s warm, broad smiles, all the more beautiful because it was so rare. “That’s my imager,” he said and patted her on the shoulder. Then he looked away, his gaze on a far horizon no one else would be able to see.

Lanie stepped back, feeling an alien yearning to embrace Crane, to hold him close and promise that everything would be all right. But that would be an empty promise, a lie. Nothing might ever be right again. And Crane. He was so alone. Alone and crushed by treachery, its origins and at least some of its perpetrators a mystery. She shook herself. The only positive action she could take was to do as Crane wished. Purposeful then, she crammed a hat on her head and raced out of the tent.

Dan was standing alone in the middle of the road, people streaming around him, fleeing the camp as quickly as they had made their way to it. Several hundred yards off, the leveled compound was burning steadily. She walked into the human river and waded toward Dan. When she reached him, her mouth gaped in surprise.

“You’re crying,” she said.

“It was wonderful! I spoke my mind without fear and without remorse for the first time in my life. It felt good, Lanie, so good—and so free.”

She glanced at the devastation all around, the fire threatening to blaze out of control as Whetstone’s people tried to put it out. “It freed all of us,” she said, doubting that Dan even would notice the irony of her tone. “You’re going to join them, aren’t you?”

His answer was a mere shrug. “I want us to spend a lot of time together. It’s all in the open. I can promise you no secrets from now on,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. She slipped from under it.

“No, Dan,” she said, backing away from him. “I can’t. I simply can’t.”

“But I love you.”

“Whether or not you go back to the Foundation, I am going to move into my own house.”

“But, Lanie—”

She spun away then and started off. Dan called her name, but she didn’t turn back. She walked farther into devastation. The site was in ruins. Crane’s reputation was in ruins. The Foundation might be gone in weeks, a month or two at the most. All the bright and wondrous things she’d been envisioning for herself and Dan personally, and for herself and Crane professionally were extinguished.

Suddenly, Lanie saw none of the devastation around her. She saw only Crane as she’d left him in the tent, alone, slumped in a chair, swilling bourbon straight from the bottle. The late-afternoon sunshine was brilliant, but for Lanie King and for Lewis Crane the day had turned black as pitch.

“What do ya think, Doc?” Burt Hill asked as he guided the helo through the gloom up the steep side of Mendenhall to the shelf on which the Foundation stood. “Exactly like ya left it.”

“It’s the sweetest sight I’ve seen in two long weeks.” Crane drank in the sight of the grounds, the mosque. The ruby laser lines welcomed him back from a trip to hell in the outside world. It was Tuesday night, election night, the night that was supposed to have marked his triumph. Instead he’d had to sneak back into LA in disguise lest camheads recognize him and go on the attack. The first thing he’d done when the helo was far from the City and over open country was throw off that disguise.

He turned in his seat and looked full at Burt, whose face had a warm glow from the ruddy light rising from the Foundation. “How many have I lost?” he asked in little more than a whisper.

“A couple. Everybody else is hanging on. They feed you okay in that Tennessee jail?”

He waved the question away. The local police had stuck him in the Memphis city jail early on October 31 when the quake had failed to materialize on the previous day. He’d been transferred to the Shelby County jail two days later and held without bond on felony fraud, charged with reckless endangerment of millions of lives. He was only thankful that the FPF hadn’t gotten involved. He’d sat it out, all the charges miraculously disappearing this morning, election morning. He had apparently served Mr. Li’s purposes, so he could be set free.

“You look skinny to me, Doc. I’m gonna make sure you get something in you before the night’s over. And I don’t mean rum. Solid food.”

Food in jail? Crane didn’t remember eating … or not eating. “I was thinking in jail, Burt. Time passed.”

The helo rose over the shelf, then banked down toward the mosque through buffeting crosswinds. “Is Sumi here?” Crane asked.

“Nobody’s seen him since it all came apart,” Hill said, flashing a concerned glance at Crane.

“We hear he’s got a cushy administrative job with the National Academy of Science. Sounds like blood money to me, a payoff.”

“Give him the benefit of the doubt,” Crane said just as Hill set the helo down gently about thirty feet from the door of the mosque. “Sumi’s been a good friend.”

Hill only grunted.

Crane hated to think that any of the people near him had been treacherous, but his time in jail had given him opportunity to think, to put it all together. The paths along which his thoughts had led were thorny … his final destination a mean and barren place.

“Newcombe still here?” He was out of the helo, walking fast.

“Far as I know.” Hill hurried to catch up with Crane. “Wondered when you’d get around to asking.”

Crane hit the wristpad on the P fiber, his line to the tectonicist. “Where are you, Danny Boy?” he asked.

“Crane?” came the startled response. “Are you out?”

“I’m down,” Crane said, “but I’m not out. Where are you people hiding?”

“We’re in the briefing room watching election returns.”

“Well, I haven’t voted yet. I think I’ll join you.”

He padded out and walked into the mosque, his breath catching at the sight of the globe. God, it was good to be home. When he’d been in jail, he’d spent the first day or two contemplating suicide, but the Foundation and all its unfinished work pulled him back. He wasn’t through yet. Despite Mr. Li. Despite the other people who’d betrayed him and the cause. There was so much to do and he’d barely started. He might be broke, he might be a pariah, but he still had his brain and all that beautiful, beautiful data he’d collected. Besides, death wasn’t an option. It would end the pain that was his heritage and the sole origin of consciousness. His pain could be relieved only by experiencing his pain fully.