Arthur Clarke - Richter 10

“It’s done,” he whispered in return. Lanie threw her arms around his neck.

“Perhaps we’d better get on with it,” the minister said, looking around suspiciously at the quivering lawn furniture, the trembling ornamental plants and flowers.

Crane padded the time—2:36:30. He smiled at the man. “Your show, Padre.”

“The name’s Al,” the minister said. “Just Al.”

“Quickly, Al,” Crane said, the ground shaking laterally beneath their feet.

“Brothers in Oneness!” the minister began. “As all life is made from the same molecules, so, too, do these beings who stand before us wish to become One through the pair bonding institution of—”

The rest of his speech was mercifully drowned out by the rumbling quakes, originating from a twenty-five-mile-deep hypo-center near Dhangarhi as the Indian Plate finally relieved its slippage. It was a monster quake, its likes not seen for almost sixty years, since the big Alaska quake in 1967.

As the minister pronounced them “co-beings in Oneness,” the ground had begun rolling like waves on the sea, the shelf creaking above them. Crane kissed the bride and hoped the dams would stand despite his predictions, but he knew they wouldn’t.

The sky had darkened now, lightning a continual fireworks show halfway up the peaks that towered over everything. Everyone walked out from under the canopy to watch the display as a section of Everest, large as a city, sheared off the side of the mountain and fell to the valleys far below.

“What a wonderful wedding present,” Lanie said, her arms around Crane as they watched the spectacle. “It’s amazing.”

“Our child’s first EQ,” Crane said.

“What do you do, Crane,” Lanie asked, “when you’ve finally achieved your dream and ended all this?”

“I don’t know.” He grinned. “Take up accounting?”

The valleys screamed all around them, whined—the sound like fingernails on a chalk board amplified billions of times. Crane almost could hear voices in it. Wailing. Forlorn and frightened.

The guests were bending over, hands covering their ears to shut out the din as the wind picked up, blowing wildly into their faces, whipping dresses and hair in swirling frenzy. The inferior Liang sunscreen collapsed in on itself, but fortunately no one was beneath the thing.

And then it happened, right before their eyes. Everest, amidst the howling wind and the cries of dying rock, shook like the old man it was, large bits of it cracking loudly just as the trees breaking in the forest and falling off were creaking loudly. And then it grew. As if rising to walk away, the six-mile mountain abruptly jutted upward, rising higher into the clouds, eating the slippage and growing—young again, a new mountain.

The whole process took three minutes to accomplish. Three minutes to change the topography of the planet. Three minutes to grow the world’s tallest mountain fifty feet taller. The next man to climb it would be climbing higher than Sir Edmund Hillery did in the same spot.

Out of destruction, birth.

Sumi Chan stood with Burt Hill who was wearing a too-small tuxedo. He looked like a monkey without an organ grinder as he watched the reception tangle all around them. The lodge’s main hall was filled to bursting, wedding presents lining the walls and filling the small conference room next door. Professional talkers talked all around them, drinking synth before a fireplace so large it consumed whole treetrunks as its logs.

“Nine on the Richter,” Hill said. “Higher than they could really measure precisely.” He shook his head and took another sip of the dorphed booze in his glass. “Folks are calling it a miracle. The death toll’s still under five hundred. It should have been hundreds of thousands. The four busted dams flooded out fifty cities.”

She shook her head. “A massive cleanup.”

“Yeah. But Liang’ll spend the money here. They’re busy fighting with the Moslems for control of all this. That’s a lot of consumers.”

Sumi sipped her own dorph blend, the only thing that got her through social occasions these days. “Does Crane know about the results of the quake?”

“Naw,” Hill said, pointing to Crane, who was dancing with his new wife. “For once in his life, the man is thinkin’ about something other than quakes. A wonderful sight, ain’t it?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happy before.”

“Buddy,” Hill said, “that’s ’cause he ain’t ever been happy before. It’s a scary idea.”

“Scary … how?”

Hill got thoughtful. “When you get happy,” he said, lowering his voice, “you forget to look behind you. You start trusting people. You make mistakes.”

“Then, I guess,” Sumi said, “I’ll not make any more mistakes.”

The man stared hard at her. “I’m talkin’ about Crane,” Hill said, finishing his drink. He looked at the glass. “I’m going for more refreshments.”

She watched him leave, realizing he didn’t trust her. Of course not, why should he? It didn’t matter anyway. Soon, she would be exposed for more of a fraud than any of them thought. She hoped it wouldn’t interfere in any way with Crane’s dream. She’d wanted to give that to him, to make up for everything she’d done.

“I hate to drink alone,” Kate Masters said from beside her. “How about you?”

Sumi smiled wanly. “I enjoy your company very much.”

“Good. How about your dorph recipe?”

“My secret.”

A group of Nepalese Sherpas had come out from their hidey-hole and were doing a vigorous display of acrobatics, tumbling and diving in syncopation over one another to the delight of the crowd.

“You have a lot of secrets, I think.”

Sumi’s body jerked involuntarily. “How so?”

“You really want to talk about this?”

“Yes.”

“Well, first off, you’re not who you say you are.”

Sumi’s heart was pounding. She could feel it in her throat as her face flushed. “You are mistaken, I—”

“I knew your mother,” Masters said. “The Women’s Political Association was in a limited partnership with your parents in a business deal. We all took a beating on that deal, your folks most of all. Your mother spoke of you constantly. It always bothered me that you dishonored her name by remaking your past.”

“It would have been a greater dishonor had I not,” Sumi replied, eyes cast down. “You knew, yet you said nothing?”

“I’d hoped we were friends. Are we?”

“Outside of Crane, I never had a friend.”

“And look what you did to him.”

Sumi was surprised again. “How—”

“I figured it out. I’m a smart girl.”

“Yeah,” Sumi said. “Me, too.”

Masters just stared at her, but her eyes were different. They were studying, dissecting. “You mean that literally?”

Sumi nodded. “Mr. Li knew and forced me to change my ancestry. To keep the world from discovering my parents’ deception I went along with him.”

“Does anyone else—”

“Only you.”

“Why are you telling me?”

Sumi took a deep breath. “I’m in trouble. I-I’m not sure what to do. I need … help.”

Masters fell forward, as if she’d tripped, her hand swinging out, touching Sumi’s crotch, pulling back immediately as she straightened. “Sorry, hon,” she said. “I’m from Missouri, still the ‘Show Me’ state. What sort of trouble?”

“By law,” Sumi said, “the President and Vice President must take a physical once a year. I’ve managed to avoid it far too long. The White House physicians are getting contentious about it. People are wondering why I’m avoiding it. Believe me, that kind of wondering will lead to terrible trouble for me.”