Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“There,” Crane said. “Do you see the red zone opening up on the base?”

Bright red blinked just south of Bakersfield and began creeping through a fault line that ultimately encompassed a huge slab of the Pacific Plate, all the way to the Philippines. Los Angeles was on the wrong side of the ripping fault. So was San Francisco. The tear went all the way south, into Mexico, cutting off the Baja Peninsula at the northern end of the Gulf of California.

“The red spot is so large at the Bumper,” Sumi said.

“That’s because the entire Bumper is getting ready to come apart. Watch.”

Sumi gasped.

The entire flange was now throbbing red, straining. Then it simply crumbled as all the strain was relieved at once. The Pacific Plate moved. There were no people pictured on the globe, but as the yellow cities began pulsating in ugly red, any human watching could have heard the screams of hundreds of thousands of hurt and dying people.

“What we’re looking at is the true detachment of Southern California from the North American Plate,” Crane said. “It is becoming an island, containing the carcasses of two of the world’s major cities, not to mention that all of oceanside California, so heavily developed, becomes a cadaver. See? A new mini-continent is born, pushing north.”

The chunk of continent slowly crept toward eventual subduction beneath the northern ridge of the Plate.

“Amazing,” Sumi whispered. “And the year?”

“Keep watching.”

Crane tapped Lanie who yanked her goggles up to stare at him. He shrugged, she returned the shrug, then blew him a kiss before jerking her goggles back into place.

He pulled his on again just as the numbers 6-3-2058 came up on the screen. “I want to remind you, Sumi,” he said, “this is no simulation or set of speculations. You are looking into a crystal ball and gazing directly into the future, the real future.”

“Thirty-two years.” Sumi pressed the pad to pause the disk. They all raised their goggles. Sumi’s face was strained and pale. “What a sadness it must be to watch such horror all the time, to know how inescapable it is.”

“But is it inescapable?” Crane asked, watching Sumi’s eyes narrow.

“You just told me we were gazing into a crystal ball.”

“A crystal ball that shows a future that is real only when it arrives.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Turn your disk back on. I want to show you another future.”

The globe relit inside the goggles. Time rewound. “Look farther south on the Fault, down in the Imperial Valley. Watch for a small red zone to open up.”

As he spoke a small spot along the San Andreas Fault’s southern arm blazed red for several seconds. Then it was gone.

“What was that?” Sumi asked.

“Watch,” Crane said. “The globe is going to pick up speed.”

It spun wildly, chasing the years, finally stopping on California. The numbers 6-3-2058 again, but everything appeared whole and placid. The show ended; its viewers removed their goggles.

Sumi stared at Lanie, then back at Crane.

“All right. What happened … what made the difference?”

“I asked the globe,” Crane said, pausing dramatically, “if it were possible to avoid the destruction of California by fusing the plates.”

“How do you fuse tectonic plates, Crane?”

“Heat. Heat so intense it would melt solid rock and bond it together.”

“And how would you produce such intense heat?”

“A thermonuclear reaction is the only way I can think of. In this particular case a five gigaton explosion along a six-mile stretch of underground twenty miles beneath the Earth’s surface right on the spot indicated by the globe.”

“You’re talking about an explosion thousands of times more powerful than anything previously detonated.”

Nodding vigorously, he said quickly, “But deflected downward, into the thermonuclear core. It wouldn’t even cause a ripple on the surface. We’ve simulated it. It works.”

“But how could you know it would result in anything other than a major break in the fault and the hastening of catastrophic destruction?”

“Sumi, didn’t you tell me that the Crane Report is required reading for heads of state? Well, the Crane Report is based on the globe’s functions and it hasn’t been wrong yet. We’re just using it here in a slightly different way. Think about this: Fusing the plates farther down the fault where there is no strain at the moment will take all the pressure off the Bumper. In fact, this one weld actually slows down the rate of continental drift by joining the two plates back together. For fifty years after the event, we show an eighty percent decrease in drift in these two plates, with a concurrent decrease in EQ activity.”

Sumi jumped up and started to pace. “You’re sure the strain doesn’t come out some place else? Maybe we’d be destroying South America to save LA.”

“I went forward 250 years on the globe and found no activity that wasn’t already destined to happen. Perhaps farther on there might be, but how much insurance do you want? We’ve learned that this one weld decreases worldwide temblor activity by seven percent.”

“You mean it?”

“I mean it.”

Sumi walked out of the rows of seating to stand at the end of their aisle. She pointed at Crane. “This is bigger than California with you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Crane said simply. “The globe has shown me fifty-three weld spots that, when completed, will halt continental drift completely, along with their associated EQs, volcanoes, and tsunamis. I figured that talking the world into doing it will be one hell of a lot easier once we’ve shown it works in one place.”

“Thirty-two years is two lifetimes for a politician! That presents problems.”

“It’s tougher than that,” Crane said. “We’ve got only a five-year window, at the most, on the San Andreas weld. By September of 2033 the pressure will have increased enough all along the fault that the weld won’t be possible without starting a major quake.”

Sumi moved along the aisle and sat beside him, staring up at the justices’ bench. “And what would you need, exactly, from the government?”

“A lot of things except money. First off, we’d have to figure out a way to get around the ban on detonating nukes. I’d need the right permissions to dig down into the Imperial Valley in the Salton Trough. And, of course, I’d need access to nuclear stockpiles.”

“Maybe,” Sumi said, “it wouldn’t be quite so difficult as you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re an expert on nukes,” Sumi answered. “Do you remember the development of the first atomic bomb?”

“The Manhattan Project,” Crane said. “So what?”

“It was done in utmost secrecy, the government treating it as a national security measure, not telling anyone about it until it was dropped on the Japanese.”

“Are you suggesting we could do this whole thing secretly?” Lanie asked.

Sumi nodded, then looked at Crane, and touched his arm. “I’ve always had faith in you. If you say to me, this is possible, then I believe it is possible. You’re a gracious man. I’ve wronged you badly and I owe you, and you know I do. It’s an obligation.”

“No, Sumi, I’d never—”

Sumi put her hand up for silence. “Please. Allow me to retrieve my honor and gain face. Liang Int has suffered a severe blow. They would ultimately approve the project if we could run it right near the next election and succeed—especially if it won’t cost them anything. That’s the ringer here.”

“I understand,” Crane said.

“It would be in absolutely no one’s interest to let this leak to the world. I can just hear the outcry now, especially with the Masada Cloud circumnavigating the globe every seventeen days to remind people of the nuclear terror. This may be an historic period for you, the chance at last to realize your dream. I assume this is what you’ve been aiming for all this time?”