Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

An aftershock hit then, everyone going to the ground again as a hydrant exploded and shot a hundred feet into the air.

There was a roaring sound that Crane couldn’t identify. He and Jimmy Earl lay Whetstone gently on the ground and went to investigate.

They carefully picked their way across the broken street, moving toward the west and the impenetrable smoke that blocked their view. They hadn’t walked fifty feet into the smoke, when Crane realized it wasn’t smoke at all, but a fine mist, a spray, like frothy drizzle.

“Oh, my God,” Jimmy Earl said.

They were standing on the bank of the Mississippi River, looking out over a raging torrent that used to be Memphis, Tennessee. The skeletons of dead buildings poked through the raging waters, bodies and homes floating past. Memphis had been a city of a million people. Now it was river bottom. A little farther up-stream, where the fairgrounds had stood, was a sight magnificent in its beautiful, deadly symmetry. A waterfall a hundred feet high now occupied what had been downtown Memphis and as they watched in amazement, the incredible span of the Memphis-Arkansas bridge floated over the edge of the falls to crash, in slow motion, into the river below.

It was beyond imagination—even Crane’s.

Jimmy Earl fell to his knees and began retching into the river. “No time for that now,” Crane said, pulling him up by the collar. “You wanted this and now you’re going to get it all on tape.”

“Time,” he said to his pad, 4:39 coming through the aural.

He dragged Jimmy Earl back to Whetstone, the man pale, but conscious. He hunkered down.

“You’re something, Crane,” Whetstone said weakly. “We walked into a lulu, didn’t we?”

“Save it,” Crane replied. “You’ll need your strength. Dammit, we’ve still got work to do on the globe. The quake hit fifty-eight minutes early.”

“That’s not so bad in f-five billion years.”

“Yeah,” Crane said, preoccupied. He looked up at Jimmy Earl. “Anyone who can still hear me right now, you need to remember two things. Get away from anything that can fall on you and try to administer first aid to those who need it. Worry about your losses later.”

Heedless of the sun, he pulled off his shirt and slid it under Whetstone. “This is going to hurt,” he said, knotting the shirt over the man’s ribs and jerking it tight. Whetstone grimaced.

Crane addressed the cam. “People are going to be in shock. They’re going to be wandering around dazed. Take these people under your wing, protect them.” He yanked on Stoney’s shoulder, slipping the ball joint back into place, and Whetstone sighed with relief.

Screams came from the remaining cell blocks, the ones on the higher levels. Men were hanging out of windows and rents in the walls. “You men!” Crane called to the Zoners who were standing, watching the end of the world. “Grab debris, steel and concrete. Start piling it up securely against the side of the block. Make a platform to bring those people down!”

He pulled off Whetstone’s belt, doubled it over and jammed it into the man’s mouth. Without a word, he jerked hard on the elbow, working the broken bone. Stoney bit down hard on the belt, blanched and passed out.

Jimmy Earl stood before him, recording it all, tears streaming down his face. “Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Crane said softly. “This is important.”

“I-I never t-thought—”

“Not now!” Crane said sternly as he checked the gash on Whetstone’s head.

He stood and moved to a plot of ground wet from the gushing fire hydrant, taking Jimmy Earl with him. He spoke to the camera. “If you have injured people who are bleeding,” he said, “Nature provides her own remedy.”

He dug his hands down into the ground. “Mud,” he said, holding up two handfuls. “Pack the wound in mud.”

He hurried back to Whetstone, demonstrating the mud technique on the injured man, packing his head in it. “This will stop the bleeding. Worry about infection later.”

A huge explosion from the university complex punctuated his sentence, followed by another shock, a strong one that hurled people to the ground.

He pulled the belt out of Stoney’s mouth and ran it around his shoulder to make a sling for the broken arm. Behind him, the Zoners were working quickly to build the tower to get the people out of the top of the rubble of the jail. Everyone was fighting against the darkness of despair.

Jimmy Earl had backed up and was framing the action as men formed a human chain to hand up pieces of debris, the cops pitching in to help. Humanity was happening, petty hatreds and politics crumbling in the face of danger to the family of Man.

There was life; there was hope.

Stoney came around, groaning, then smiled up at Crane. “I’d thank you,” he said, “but you’ll probably find a way to charge me for this.”

“Charge you? Hell, man, I’m saving you money.”

“How’s that?”

“The whole police station’s gone.” Crane smiled. “We don’t have to bail ourselves out.”

Mohammed Ishmael’s condor glided gently on the thermals high above Constitution Avenue, following Crane and his motorcade as it tracked through the ghost town of Washington, DC, toward the Capitol building.

Much had changed during the past year—and each change brought surprises. When Li Cheun had told the President of the United States in February of ’25 there would be no quake on the Mississippi, he could not have guessed that he would be dead within thirty-six hours. And by his own hand.

The cataclysm on the Reelfoot had been so devastating in so many areas—and so much more so because of Mr. Li’s connivance—that within a day it had been obvious Liang Int America would show a loss for calendar 2025, a first in its North American history.

Upon seeing the financial projections and being a man of honor, Mr. Li had doused himself in Sterno, stepped within his beloved diorama, and set himself ablaze. Most considerate of Mr. Li, Mui Tsao thought. His death made it possible to carry on without having to change much of anything. Had Mr. Li gone into exile or been imprisoned, company rules would have compelled a change of every code.

Mr. Mui then survived a corporate inquisition by bringing forth all the records he had sent to the home office in Beijing concerning what he had termed Mr. Li’s “increasingly foolish” behavior. He also accused the dead man of “egotism and intractability” in his business dealings and vowed to be a more levelheaded, compromising manager who would put Liang America back in the black within a year. That last part was, of course, a lie and everyone knew it, but optimism is fundamental in business theory.

Mr. Mui immediately acquired his own Harpy, a young and ambitious corporate man named Tang. The new Harpy was pushing hard for Liang to compete with Yo-Yu in the mind chip business, an area in which he had great interest as he himself was a double-ported chippy.

Truth of the matter was, the Liang Int empire was slowly collapsing under its own weight and the Reelfoot quake, along with its associated eight hundred aftershocks, simply had accelerated the process.

In 2011, Liang had bought up all of America’s debts, all its chits. Basically, it owned the country, with most of the taxes collected going to interest payments on the huge debt owed to Liang, although a small amount of tax dollars had to be applied to various programs for the people. Liang Int not only owned and exploited America, but also didn’t want to maintain its investment. Since the company was the de facto government, however, it was left holding the bag when Reelfoot hit.