Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“He shakes his fist at Allah.” Ishmael said. “Crane puts himself above everything. Just amazing.”

“It’s only amazing in that he wants to,” Newcombe said. “I can’t imagine a government in the world that would consent to a scheme as obviously misguided as his.”

“I cannot believe, Brother, that you underestimate Crane so very much,” Ishmael said, putting an arm around his sister, both of them staring hot fire at Newcombe. “He’s already come back from the dead and is returning to the scene of the crime. No, he’s probably more than capable of convincing people to go along with him.”

Newcombe was puzzled. “You seem almost happy about it.”

“I’ve been waiting for the connection,” Ishmael said, “the collision point between Crane and the Nation of Islam.” He shrugged broadly. “And now I have it. Our greatness will be tested. This is the mountain upon which Dr. Crane and I will take tea.”

“I want to convert,” Newcombe said, watching amusement show on Ishmael’s face. All of them laughed.

“You are a godless man,” Ishmael said. “Why would you wish to become Muslim?”

“Why do you care? I believe you’d want me to convert if I worshipped inkblots. Correct?”

“More than correct, Brother,” Aziz said quickly, rather than let the words pass through Ishmael’s mouth. “By having you go through a public conversion we’d reap major public relations benefits—an intelligent and successful man chooses NOI because he believes in it. The gentle side of Islam balances out the necessarily violent revolutionary side.”

“It also makes him an insider,” Ishmael warned. “He would rapidly become our official voice without meaning to.” He pointed at Newcombe. “You haven’t yet told me why you wish to convert.”

“No mystery,” Newcombe said. “I’m doing it for the Cause. And I’m doing it because it will put me in direct opposition to Lewis Crane when this bomb business becomes public. He’s a madman. I wish to stand against him as one of you.”

“Liar,” Khadijah said. “It has something to do with that white woman.”

“No,” Newcombe said, lowering his head. “Lanie and I are … no longer together. We haven’t been for some time.”

The woman laughed and took a step closer to him. “So maybe you want to teach her a lesson, huh?”

“God, I hope there’s more to me than that.”

Rum bottle between his legs, Crane watched the satellite viddies of the Masada Option. He felt a shameful exhilaration at the monstrous beauty of thirty multimegaton bombs going off all at once. The blast cloud rose, amazingly high from the vantage point of outer space, its crown branching off and flattening out, spreading.

It had been one of those stunning events in world history that forces everyone to remember where he or she was when it happened. Crane remembered that he’d been getting his first aural implanted at that moment. The news of Masada were the first sounds he’d heard through the device. He’d been horrified at first, in shock, along with the rest of the world. But things once done could not be changed, and he’d realized the inherent importance of Masada as field research for his studies on the relationship between nuclear testing and EQs.

He’d been in a burn suit in Sudan by the next afternoon with a truckload of seismos. It was the day after that, standing in Saudi Arabia, that the notion of fusing the plates had come to him. The Rub Al Kali desert was a solid sheet of glass unbroken to the horizon. The intense heat had melted the sand. Under roiling gray clouds and thick rains of radioactive ash, he had skated on the desert.

“Crane,” Lanie called. “You in there?”

“Go away,” he said, taking a drink, watching the Masada cloud beginning to drift eastward, China and The Russia Corporation gradually disappearing beneath a haze of gray.

“It was beyond belief,” Lanie said from right behind him, her voice soft. “I was twenty-two, starting grad school. I remember feeling cheated that I wouldn’t have the chance to inherit the world. There was speculation that everything might go. Plus, Jews were being killed in many places. It was scary.”

“Is that when you became a Cosmie?”

“No,” She laughed, moving around to sit beside him on the couch. “My father was Jewish by birth, not my mother, which left me nowhere in a matrilineal culture. I always remember my dad as a Cosmie. He converted when I was very young. Guess that’s why I gravitated that way. Cosmies are friendly enough folks, like Unitarians with vision. It didn’t stop me from losing a scholarship because they said I was Jewish, though.”

“There was a lot of anger for awhile,” Crane said. “I remember the backlash. That’s why most of my staff members are Jews. Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“You’re a visionary,” she replied immediately. “All visionaries are thought of as crazy by the people they want to serve.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

She tilted his face to hers, staring at him. Crane was tense, her touch was electric to him. “Yes, you’re crazy,” she whispered. “You’re just crazy enough to survive the madness we live in.”

“My plan can work. It can.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

He nodded grimly. “Thanks.” He looked away, then back at the screen.

“Why,” Lanie asked, “do I have such a hard time making eye contact with you?”

He looked at her for a second, looked away. “I have a … difficult time thinking when I look at you. I don’t know what it is. It’s never happened before. I get, I don’t know … lost in your gaze or … or something. Stupid, huh?”

She moved into his line of vision. “It’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she answered, and this time he forced himself to hold the eye contact. “You know,” she went on, “you said a lot of things when we were trapped in that house in Martinique. Do you remember?”

He started to look away, held on. “Yes, I do.”

“Did you mean them?”

“I thought you’d never remember.”

“Did you mean them?”

“I meant them,” he said, looking down, her fingers lifting his face back to hers. “I’m sorry, I … didn’t mean to compromise our professional—”

“Oh, the hell with that.” She scooted closer and put her arms around his neck. “You have greatness in you. It excites me.”

“But I’m a cripple, I’m—”

“Just shut up and kiss me.”

In the next few minutes Lewis Crane discovered, for the first time in his life, that communication need not be verbal to be understood and meaningful.

The barn smelled like wet horses and manure. Newcombe hid in the corner behind bales of hay to make contact with the War Zone.

“There is no doubt,” he was saying into a monitor-cam sitting in his palm and pointing toward his face, “that the quake will happen today. I am speaking under Green Authority. Repeat: Green Authority. Your pilgrimage must begin within the hour if you are to survive. You may have to fight your way at first, but the way will be clear soon enough. You must leave within the hour. Go now!”

He blanked and hoped for the best. He’d been transmitting on the ultrahigh-frequency infrared band that nobody used because of the cost of the reception equipment. But it would be picked up in the War Zone’s focus building in downtown Memphis to be rebroadcast through the connecting cable to the Zone.

His hands were shaking. He had just committed an act of sedition, one that Brother Ishmael had made sure he would have to accomplish. “If you’re convinced of the quake,” Ishmael had said, “if you’re sure, send the message when you know.”