Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“If you’ve got a plan for ending earthquakes,” Newcombe said, “I’d sure love to hear it.”

Crane merely looked at him. Newcombe turned to Lanie. “Okay, you tell me.”

“I-I’m still confused,” she said. “I’m just not sure what I … what I…”

“You’re a lot of things, Lanie,” Newcombe said, “but confused isn’t one of them. What are you holding back? Why are you holding back?”

“Dan,” Crane said quietly. “Ask me, not Lanie. I’m the one with the secrets.”

Newcombe stared angrily at him. “You’re nothing but secrets. From the first you’ve had some sort of game plan you kept from the rest of us. We’ve had to pick our way through your self-generated darkness. How about a little truth for a change?”

“Come on,” Crane said. “I’ll show you. I don’t suppose it would do any good to swear you to secrecy?”

“There’s been too damned much secrecy,” Newcombe said, following Crane out of the office.

Lame trailed behind, tense. She’d not meant to blurt anything out. God, why did she have to go and open her big mouth? She was surprised to find Crane moving to her controller’s console. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Crane said to the programmers working at their stations, “you may take a thirty-minute break beginning now. I want all of you out of the building. Go.”

Lanie joined them at the console, Crane’s fingers already busy on her keyboard. There were, apparently, things about the globe that even she didn’t know.

“I’ve been studying quakes my entire life,” Crane said, taking the globe offline and reprogramming. “I’d decided early on that I wanted to heal, not just to define. That’s why I entered into the study of the effects of nuclear testing on surrounding strata.”

“We all know your old news, Crane,” Newcombe said. “You’re still credited as the man whose work made the politicos see the light and stop all nuclear testing.”

“Gave me the Nobel Prize for it,” Crane said, and laughed. “But I never earned, nor wanted, that award. And I certainly never wanted to stop nuclear testing.”

“I don’t understand,” Lanie said. Crane hit the enter key and the globe stopped dead, red lights flashing all over its surface.

“Heat,” Crane said, walking to the globe, “enough heat to melt rock … to weld rock.”

“You want to fuse the plates back together,” Newcombe said, his voice hushed, his eyes narrowed in deep suspicion.

“I asked the machine,” Crane said. “I postulated a temperature of five thousand degrees centigrade and asked if it were possible to reconnect the plates through spot welding.” He pointed to the globe. “This is what it gave me. Fifty-three spot welds that, if done properly, will fuse the continental plates and end drift forever.”

“That’s what the globe was for,” Lanie said. “You wanted back-up for your theories.”

“Correct,” Crane said. “We can end the destructive reign of the earthquake in our lifetime.”

“You want to explode fifty-three nuclear bombs?” Newcombe asked, incredulous.

“Fifty-three gigaton bombs,” Crane said.

“You’re crazier than I thought.”

“Am I?” Crane asked. “Think about it. The world sits on enormous stockpiles of nuclear materials, old warheads, waste matter. Done properly, my bombs could eliminate those stockpiles by exploding them back downward, toward the core, which is simply a decaying radioactive process anyway. We could end EQ’s and volcanoes, and get rid of our nuclear mess all at the same time.”

Lanie cocked her head. There was sense to what he said. Deep underground explosions right on the rifts, if handled properly, could relieve all the push-pull pressure. If the bombs were planted deeply enough, they’d pose zero threat to life above ground.

“Has your ego no limits?” Newcombe asked. “Has it occurred to you that earthquakes are a natural part of our world? That the planet may exist because of them? There would be no life on this planet at all if the volcanoes hadn’t pumped life-sustaining matter into the atmosphere. What you’re proposing is nothing less than destruction of the processes which made us what we are. They’re natural, Crane. Leave them alone!”

“What’s natural about an earthquake?” Crane asked. “People are always so quick to judge. Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean it has to stay like that. The globe thinks it will work fine and the globe knows far more than we do.”

“It does not!” Newcombe said loudly. “The globe knows nothing of humanity or of ethics or of common sense. You’re talking about interfering with a basic process of the Earth. God only knows the catastrophe you could cause by trying to make this insanity work!”

“Ask the machine,” Crane said. “See what it thinks.”

“I don’t care about the goddamned machine!” Newcombe shouted. “It’s an extension of your insanity.”

“Wait a minute,” Lanie said. “The globe works. You’ve seen it work. It can be a very useful tool in—”

“You’re as bad as he is,” Newcombe said. “Listen carefully to me: It’s the entire planet you’re putting at risk here. It’s unnatural, Crane. It’s wrong.”

“Strange words from a scientist,” Crane said. “Dams change the course of nature’s rivers. Medicines interfere with the natural process of sickness. Genetic manipulation changes everything from the food we eat to the children we bear, again, going against the nature of life. This is no different.”

Newcombe tapped his wrist pad for the time. “There’s science, Crane, then there’s egotistical arrogance. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I know who I am, doctor,” Crane said. “You should ask that question of yourself.”

“I have,” Newcombe said, “and here’s the answer: I’m the man who’s going to keep you from destroying the Earth.”

With that he turned and strode quickly out of the mosque.

Lanie moved to Crane, put a hand on his good arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have blurted out—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Crane said, watching Newcombe leave the building. “He would have found out soon enough anyway. I’ll be going public.”

He idly reached out and patted her hand. Lanie feared that this might be the last quiet moment of their lives.

Looking down on the Zone from the roof of the two-story warehouse Brother Ishmael had converted to his home, Newcombe felt as though he’d stepped into the past.

The inner city was clean, but crowded, people everywhere on the streets. There were no teevs on the buildings, no projected dinosaurs or camheads running around desperately looking for the visual that would change their lives.

Young children were parading the streets though, all carrying weapons as the onlookers cheered them on. Newcombe was uncomfortable with the weapons.

Above, blue lightning crackled across the black top of the Zone, a protective electronic jam for a city within a city. They existed inside an electric cocoon totally cut off from the white man’s world. Looking at the huge numbers of children and young adults, he concluded that over half the population of the War Zone had probably never even seen the outside world.

He sat with Ishmael, Khadijah, and Martin Aziz. They watched a small teev showing the scene just outside of the gates, in the cleared area that stood as a free fire zone. Several hundred Muslim children were out there charging the FPF positions, throwing rocks and chunks of concrete. The FPF responded with low-frequency infrasound, meant to disrupt the thinking processes, and with nausea gas. The children were going down, writhing and crying, a show for all the world to see.