"Richter 10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clarke Arthur, McQuay Mike)

Chapter 2 ERUPTIONS

The sun was lowering behind the Washington Monument and Mr. Li Cheun, head of Liang International in this hemisphere, knew that for the last couple of hours the little American bureaucrats who worked for him, though they didn’t realize it perhaps, had been scurrying home. More important to him, the North American headquarters of Liang International was winding down for the evening. Liang Int, the Chinese star ascendant in the world of business, owned America. Ten years before, Liang Int had managed to get a toehold in America, wresting some business away from the Germans who’d owned the country then. The Masada Option had proved to be better than any business plan or ruthless tactics the Chinese might have devised, for the resultant radioactive cloud and fallout from the explosions had swept southern, central, and eastern Europe. When the Fatherland was devastated, suffering a loss of almost half its population, Liang Int was able to move swiftly and turn its toehold into a stranglehold, not only on America, but on German business operations throughout the world.

Now, standing in the secured boardroom, dim save for the glowing virtual map of the Earth that surrounded him, Li contemplated his empire. The diorama was transparent; he could look through it at the Moon, always full, inspiring the fanciful, but much desired, wish that the Liang Int diggers up there were always working.

There were no windows in this room, thus no day, no evening, only shifts. Every decision that mattered to the continuing business (most would say even the continuing existence) of Canada, the US, Mexico, and the Central American franchises was made right here. The rest of Washington—the mall outside running between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and its occupants, the scores of departments, bureaus, agencies stretching to the beltways and beyond—all was show for the tourists. Liang Int owned it all and ran it all… including the so-called government of the United States of America. President Gideon, Vice President Gabler, the Cabinet, the members of Congress and the Supreme Court were little more than mere employees, figureheads and lackeys. Of course they maintained a pretty fiction of government, but that was all it was, a fiction.

Tonight Li was distracted, his thoughts turning tune and again to the viddy-stract his staff had prepared the previous night and shown him first thing this morning on one Lewis Crane and the events on the Japanese Island of Sado. The Japanese. Upstarts all of them, fools most of them. They’d actually shared their ownership of America with Middle Easterners, back when there had been a Middle East. But their tenure was short. Still, from time to time a Japanese combine would try to take a piece of the business away. He sneered, glad that in response to just such an affront his predecessor at Liang Int North America had ordered the chopping down of the two thousand cherry trees around the tidal basin—trees that the Japanese had given to the Americans shortly after the turn of the last century.

“Rain in the midwest,” said Mui Tsao from the soft darkness of his control panel. “It will delay the wheat harvest. I suggest we contact Buenos Aires and siphon their surplus until the harvest catches up.”

Both men spoke English almost exclusively as a show of good faith to the natives, though American business people and officials were expected to speak fluent Chinese.

“Good,” Li replied. “I saw a report of a major anthrax epidemic in the South American branch. See if you can trade them some cattle for the wheat. Bring them in through Houston.”

“Where do we store?”

“We could store in the warehouses where we’ve got the headache chips.”

“And what do we do with the chips?”

“We’ll give them to the Southern franchises as part of the wheat repayment. By the time they’ve figured out what’s happened, they already will have distributed the chips and be forced to try and follow through with a sales campaign.”

Li heard Mui chuckle softly as the man punched deals into the keypad, and smiled himself. The “headache chip,” as they called it, was an endorphin trigger; it sensed muscle tightness in the neck and immediately flooded the cortex with a shot of mood enabling dorph that stopped the headache before it got started. Only trouble was, the brain enjoyed the dorph hit so much it worked on developing headache after headache just to get the dose, wearing out the implant and leaving the user in the worst pain of his life. Once word had gotten around, Liang Int had been stuck with seven warehouses full of worthless chips.

“Done,” Mui said, typing furiously, “and done.”

“Good.”

Li was in charge of the North American branch, and Mui was his control, his Harpy. Second in command of the decision making, the Harpy was responsible for constantly double-checking his superior, questioning his decisions. It could be irritating, but had a positive effect on business decisions, and business was what held all the world, all of life, together. Should Li fail to make the proper percentage of appropriate decisions, Mui would have his position—with his own little Harpy in place then to watch over him. It made for sleepless nights, but it was the very best thing for Liang Int.

And that was what mattered. Li was nothing if not a company man.

The map floated around Li, continents rising out of shimmering oceans, the trade routes of the world pulsing in pink, while areas of harvests and famines glowed in celestial blues. Food was always a problem since only filtered fields were able to withstand the full measure of the sun’s wrath and produce.

Nuclear material storage areas glowed unblinking crimson in thirty different spots, leakage into ground water running like capillaries thousands of miles from their source. Movements of precious metals and ambulatory currency spiked metropolitan areas, while consumer spending showed up as gangs of small people, one per million, flashing their spending areas and products like dust motes dancing on sunlight. Production was tracked worldwide, immediate comparisons were made with other similar operations, and the interior of the office was filled with floating hieroglyphics decipherable only by a handful of Liang’s top management. If any member of the team was to leave for a reason other than death, the entire code would be changed.

The Masada Cloud throbbed in dark black, its bulk covering Europe today, moving ever eastward on the jet stream. And the Masada Cloud led Li back once more to Lewis Crane.

Crane had won the Nobel Prize six years before for work that had flowed from his research on the exercise of the Masada Option, specifically its effect on earthquakes. That work also had led directly to the banning of all nuclear testing on Earth because Crane had showed conclusively that nuclear explosions could cause earthquakes hundreds, even thousands, of miles from the site of detonation. As the staff had pointed out to Li in their presentation, Crane had stated that the quake on Sado was, in fact, a direct consequence of the destruction of the Middle East back in ’14.

Would it be possible, Li mused, for someone armed with Crane’s information and programs to cause earthquakes in chosen, distant locations? He shook off the question. It was tangential to what really interested him about Crane at this time; politics and profits—and the question of why Crane was so eager to contact him through Sumi Chan. Indeed, Chan had left a message only hours ago about a meeting Crane wished to arrange.

Ah, these Americans were bold. But Li rather liked them and their country. It was a Third World country, as was Europe, both with real history. Its own corporate gods long dead, America had a cheap labor pool of hard workers who thought nothing of reinvesting all of their wages back into the company through consumerism. Americans were the world’s best consumers. Except, of course, for the headache chip.

There had been nothing but success in Li’s life, which was why he was having such a difficult time with the coming elections. In the past, Li had been able to tolerate America’s fantasy of representative government because Liang’s candidates always had won. But now, for some reason, its chief competitor in multi-nationalism, the Yo-Yu Syndicate, was making inroads with its own candidates. The off-year elections had cost Liang Int seven representatives. It was a nasty trend that Li needed to nip in the bud. But it was difficult because the fickle voters persisted in believing they needed “change” in government and that change was meaningful. With the American fantasy beginning to get in the way of corporate harmoniousness, Li had to act. Hence, Crane and his earthquakes. He could show the citizens how much he loved them by associating Liang Int and the government with earthquake prediction. That should fix Yo-Yu in the elections.

His diorama beeped and squeaked in a thousand different intervals and tones, Li recognizing them all. So, when he distinguished the delicate alto chirping of the telephone, he decided to make his move. He turned in Mui’s direction, waved off the incoming call, and said, “Get Sumi Chan for me, scrambled and secured. Put him over the west coast.”

While waiting, Li smiled. He knew Mui would be watching and listening very carefully.

Sumi Chan’s disembodied face, five inches high, blipped to life, hanging in midair somewhere over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Li would not address the man face to face, however. He had a computer projection that stood in for him so as never to give anything away through inadvertent gesture or expression.

“Hello, Mr. Li,” Sumi Chan said.

There was something expressed in the man’s eyes that Li didn’t understand. “Hello, Sumi,” he said, the computer matching his voice to its projection’s movements. “Are you well?”

“Yes, and I am also most grateful and most excited,” Sumi replied formally. “You have honored me by your attention.”

“As you have honored me by your invitation to meet with Dr. Crane.” Li paused, allowing Sumi to begin offering up information about the meeting. When the man was not immediately forthcoming, he added, “I assume I am not to meet with him alone.”

“Not unless you desire to do so. Dr. Crane wishes to present you and a number of other distinguished leaders with some of his ideas … and proposals.”

Li nodded. “A very timely meeting. His exploits on Sado are being reported continuously and everywhere, I’m told.”

“Yes, Sado. A great tragedy, but one whose human consequences could have been averted in large measure.”

“Economic consequences, too, of course.”

“Of course,” Sumi echoed. “May we count on your attendance?”

“If my schedule permits, I should certainly like to be a part of such a gathering. I would ask, however, that you coordinate with Mr. Mui Tsao on the guest list, the arrangements, and so forth.”

“That goes without saying, sir. May I tell you how pleased I know Dr. Crane will be?”

Li grunted and waved his hand dismissively. He’d had quite enough of this, and with a smile and a nod, he concluded, “Stay in the shade, Sumi Chan.”

“And you also, sir.”

Sumi’s face instantly blipped off, and Li paced a few steps up and past the Arctic. He could walk freely within the body of his virtual world and literally feel the flow of capital and goods pumped through the beating heart of consumerism. The world was a living network of corporate deities and he was a demigod. Things were as they were supposed to be.

As an official of the Geological Survey, Sumi Chan actually worked for him. Tacitly understood in their conversation was the fact that he, Li Cheun, would call the shots on Crane’s meeting. He would brief Mui on what he wished to accomplish. Yes, things were as they were supposed to be.

“Mr. Li Cheun is, of course, the one on this list who counts, the man to convince if you wish to succeed, Crane,” Sumi said, smiling slightly, “and I trust you will dazzle him. I fear I’m going to use up all my chits on him.” What he left unsaid was that he feared he’d already used up all his chits … with Mui Tsao, to whom he’d been talking until just ten minutes ago. There could be no doubt that Li Cheun had a definite use in mind for Lewis Crane.

“Oh, I’ll dazzle him all right, do a veritable song and dance for him,” said Crane, tilting back his chair and drinking directly from a bottle of very old Scotch.

“You’ve got copies of my paper for everyone who’s agreed to attend?” Newcombe asked, trying to steer the conversation back to his concerns.

Sumi nodded. “There will be copies awaiting each of them in their cabins when they board.”

Newcombe shook his head. Why Crane had chosen to spirit them away from Sado on this yacht to rendezvous with Sumi mid-ocean was beyond him. And out in the stratosphere were Crane’s reasons for wanting to hold his high-powered meeting on a boat. Still, the Diatribe was a helluva craft, luxurious and crammed with technology. Who owned it and how Crane had come by it were mysteries Newcombe was fairly sure would not be solved for him.

“Let’s review the politicos again,” Crane said to Sumi. “We’ve got Kate—”

Sumi’s laughter cut him off. “They’re all politicos, every last one of them, the Vice President of the United States being the least political of them all.”

“Gabler,” Newcombe said scornfully, “a fool … a buffoon.”

“And an important showpiece, Dan,” Crane said firmly. “Just leave all this to Sumi and me.”

“With pleasure,” Newcombe retorted. “So let me get to the area where I am an expert. Why are you planning such elaborate maneuvers? We’ve got a pretty straightforward situation as far as I can see. The data on earthquake ecology is on paper—and proven. Sado came in so close to my projections that you’ve got to go five digits past the decimal to find divergence from the actual event. This is something concrete to sell, Crane. Sell it.”

“I’ll use it,” Crane told him, smoothing his free hand over the bright yellow shirt covering his bathing trunks, “but I won’t marry myself to it.”

Newcombe frowned harshly and Sumi quickly refilled his glass with synthchampagne to which he added two drops from a small green bottle containing his own special dorph preparation. Newcombe knew Sumi urgently wanted him to ingest the dorph, but he didn’t mind. Sumi’s understanding of glandular chemistry was legendary.

“I’ll tell you why I don’t sell your EQ-eco, Danny boy,” Crane said, slightly slurring his words. Crane didn’t face living people very well straight. He put a hand over the mouth of his bottle when Sumi tried to bring the eye-dropper of dorph to it. “First of all, you’re out of line in making your suggestion.”

“You hired me for my talent,” Newcombe said. “Along with that conies my mouth.”

“It’s my foundation,” Crane said, “my decision. Your calculations indeed worked wonderfully … because, Dr. Newcombe, you knew in advance where the epicenter was going to be. You knew it because I told you. Your work is only a small part of what the Crane Foundation represents. To focus simply on the EQ-eco limits the amount of grant money available to us. To be perfectly honest, however, I also see a basic flaw in your perceptions. You expect people to do the right thing. They don’t. All the people in Los Angeles know they live atop faults held together by the thinnest of threads, yet they stay there. Would you convince the government to depopulate LA to the tune of thirteen million people? Where would you put them?”

“My system saves lives!”

Crane sighed and took a long pull from his bottle. “Few would consider that a compelling argument, doctor. Saving money is more to people’s tastes.”

“But it was so successful.”

“Exactly why I want to use it, but de-emphasize it at the same time. I want nobody thinking in those terms alone. We’re looking for much more.”

“Like what?”

Crane leaned closer to Newcombe, Sumi automatically drawing near. He spoke low, dramatically. “Have you gentlemen ever thought about what it would be like if all scientific research in a given area were brought under one banner, in one unifying edifice, and properly coordinated?”

“You want everything!” Newcombe laughed. He couldn’t believe it, the brazenness of the man.

Crane grinned. “Liang Int is omninational. Total control of tectonics is a real possibility.

They just need the right sell job. I could run the whole show from the Foundation, have access to every bit of data extant. Suddenly, true prediction—along with a lot more—becomes reality.”

Newcombe began to understand a great deal. “That’s why you hired Lanie. You want her to sort through and make sense of all the data if you pull this off.”

“And that’s why all the support organizations that have vested interests are being invited to attend the coming meeting,” Sumi said, sitting back and shaking his head. “Audacious! So, when I was speaking just moments ago of Li’s importance, you were laughing at me, weren’t you, Crane? Li Cheun was your target all along.”

“Don’t get mad at me, Sumi, please,” Crane said, boyish and charming. He grew serious again almost at once. “Geological research blankets the Earth, but touches very few lives in an obvious way. Clearly, it should. And clearly Liang Int can amply fund our work, get much out of it, and never feel the slightest pinch. They’ll only see profits from their involvement.”

Newcombe stood, Sumi’s dorph doing its work. Well-being washed over him like a summer breeze and there was a sexual edge to it—oxytocins, PEA?—that made him very glad he and Lanie were together again. The ship was rocking gently side to side. “We’re dead in the water,” Newcombe said, puzzled. “They must have put out the drag anchor.”

“Yes indeed they did,” Crane said, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Merely part of a little surprise I’m preparing for our guests … thanks to you, of course.” He winked broadly at Newcombe, who shuddered involuntarily, feeling oddly cold all of a sudden.

“Why do you want so much power?” Newcombe whispered.

“Great power accomplishes great things,” Crane said, the light of otherworldliness shining from his eyes. That the man was insane Newcombe had no doubt, but what he couldn’t peg was the power of his vision. Crane’s antics always had kept them funded, at least until now. Just how far could Dan Newcombe ride Crane’s hellbound train? He knew the answer: He’d take to the rails with the devil himself if he thought it would make his EQ-eco a reality.

Raymond Hsu, a shift supervisor at the Liang Usine Guerin sugar mill in Fort-de-France on the Caribbean island of Martinique, was trying to place an emergency call to the franchise comptroller on Grand Cayman Island to report a work stoppage due to an attack of thousands of fourmisfous, small yellowish, speckled ants, and betes-a-mille-pattes, foot-long black centipedes—both species venomous enough, in large numbers, to kill an adult human.

They’d attempted to stop the invasion by dumping barrels of crude oil around the mill, the workers flailing away with sugar cane stalks, splashing insect blood all over the mill. At the supervisor’s own house nearby, the maids were killing the ants and centipedes with flatirons, insecticides, and hot oil, while his wife and three children screamed. It wasn’t helping.

The insect invasion was simply the latest in a long string of odd events traceable to Mount Pelee, twenty kilometers to the north. At the end of March there’d been the smell of sulfurous gas lingering on the air. Two weeks later plumes of steam were seen issuing from fumaroles high atop Pelee. The next week, mild tremors rocked Fort-de-France followed by a rain of ash.

The ash had gotten thicker, more unceasing, as the sulfur smell grew over the weeks. In the second week of June the rains had come, filling the myriad rivers that crisscrossed Pelee and its sister mountain, Pitons du Carbet, to bursting and sending boulders and large trees down the mountainside and out to sea in torrents, along with the carcasses of asphyxiated cattle and dead birds. Mountain gorges jammed with ash and created instant lakes in the drowning rains.

As Hsu’s call was being placed in the early hours of June 17, Fort-de-France itself was coming under siege by thousands of fer-de-lance, pit vipers with yellow-brown backs and pink bellies, six feet or more in length and instantly deadly. The population was panicking, taking to the streets with axes and shovels to face the invasion, never realizing the snakes were fleeing in terror from the rumbling mountain. Hundreds would die, mostly children.

The comptroller, a man named Yuen Ren Chao, would tell Raymond Hsu to hire more workers and step up production, even though Pelee was thundering loudly, its peak covered by clouds of ash. Those who could see anything of the long dormant volcano were humbled by Nature’s grandeur—two fiery craters glowing like blast furnaces near the summit, and above them, a cloud filled with lightning.

The mill would not make its quota today. Mr. Yuen would be forced to increase the cane quotas in Cuba while the citizens of Martinique fought the snakes instead of fleeing themselves.

Within two days of Raymond Hsu’s call, an ash-dammed lake would break through its barrier, sending a monstrous wall of lava-heated water down the mountainside and onto the island, crushing the sugar mill and drowning everyone, including Raymond Hsu and his family, in boiling water.

Newcombe climbed the ladder to the forward observation deck, enjoying the southerly breeze and the coolness of the night. He stepped onto the deck. Above, a line of twinkling ore freighters, probably from Union Carbide’s organization, snaked toward the Moon like a conga line of traveling stars. The Liang logo, a simple blue circled L, was displayed in liquid crystal splendor on the surface of the three-quarter Moon.

“Catch your death up here,” he said as he crossed to Lanie, who was moonbathing naked. He plunked down in the chair next to hers. Her eyes were twinkling like the stars as she smiled at him. “The mighty are gathering,” he said, sorry he couldn’t spend the evening up here with this glorious woman, “so Crane wants us to join the party.”

“You look upset.”

“Nothing a little homicide wouldn’t cure—or a fast exit off this boat.” He grimaced. “The ocean’s a good place to meet the people down on the fantail, Lanie. Barracuda, every one of them. So what does that make us, bait?”

She regarded him thoughtfully. “Crane making you crazy?”

He nodded.

She got up and slipped into the party dress lying on the deck beside her. It was white, whiter than her skin, shining under the logoed Moon. “Do I look suitably dressed for cocktails with the Vice President of the United States?” she asked, turning a circle for him.

“Even if he wasn’t a jerk you’d outclass him,” Newcombe said. “You like all this, don’t you?”

She cocked her head and stared at him. “What, the juice? Of course I do. Last week I was just another underemployed Ph.D. in a universe full of them. Today I’m part of the Crane Team, changing the world. In case you haven’t watched the teev, we’re the hottest thing on the circuit right now. Tell me you don’t find that exciting? I can’t sleep at night I’m so pumped up.”

“I noticed.” He stood up. “Just don’t get lost in it. Now that I’ve finally gotten you to come out to the mountain, I want to see you from time to time.”

“All you had to do was hire me,” she said, fitting easily into his arms. She hugged him, her hair smelling of patchouli. “Oh, Dan. Maybe it will work for us this time.”

“I always hope that,” he said, wishing they hadn’t both been worn down from five years of trying to tame their competing egos. “Come on. Let’s get below. There’s someone special I want you to meet.”

“Who?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

They took the ladder, then the elevator, down to the main deck, and walked along the gangway to the fantail, where they found Crane. Half-drunk, he was holding court near the hors d’oeuvres table, recounting a story from the 2016 Alaskan quake that had sent Anchorage sliding into Cook’s Inlet.

The fantail of the yacht was ringed with teev screens showing continuous feed on the tragedy of Sado, focusing often on Crane at the head of the cliff, presiding over the carnage.

Everyone wore clothing of the thinnest silks and rayons, putting as little between themselves and the night as they could. Dangerous daylight made night an obsession. Vice President Gabler was an empty suit, a ceremonial smiling face, his wife, Rita, giggling beside him as he took direction from Mr. Li, who, as always, had Mr. Mui at his side.

“There’s Kate Masters,” Lanie said, as Sumi slipped up beside her, thrusting a champagne glass into her hand.

Newcombe had already noticed. Masters was something else altogether. Chairman of the WPA, the Women’s Political Association, she was a powerhouse. In a fragmented America, she could deliver forty million votes on any issue at any time. The WPA was second in power only to the Association of Retired Persons, which also had a representative on deck, a man named Aaron Bloom. He was fairly nondescript. Masters was short, with long bright red hair and indiscreet green eyes. She wore a filmy lime-green dress that seemed to hover around her like an alien fog. As she moved, parts of her body would slip into view for a second, only to disappear in a wisp of green. She smiled wickedly in their direction, Lanie smiling wickedly back.

“I’ll bet she eats little girls for breakfast,” Newcombe said. Sumi hovered, his eyedropper raised above the champagne glass.

“Something special for the pretty lady?” Sumi asked.

Lanie smiled and held up three fingers. “Private stock?”

Sumi nodded. “For making your own earthquakes, eh?” he said, then narrowed his eyes, studying her with surgical precision. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Lanie said. “I’ve never met the real you.”

“Sumi’s the Foundation’s best friend,” Newcombe said, surprised at Lanie’s reaction to the man.

“So I’ve heard,” Lanie said, taking a sip of the synth and smiling at Chan as Newcombe watched Crane disappear into the cabin area. “What do you think of the success of the EQ-eco?”

“I think the Crane Foundation is very lucky to have Dr. Newcombe on staff,” Sumi said, staring at Newcombe. “He is helping to advance science at a critical point.”

“ ‘Critical’ is certainly the word tonight,” Newcombe said, regretting that he’d ever let Crane talk him into making one very special arrangement.

Sumi Chan smiled, then darted over to Kate Masters, who took an entire eyedropper full of dorph in her glass. Naturally distilled from the human’s own glands, dorph was pure and impossible to overdose on.

Lanie leaned against Newcombe, snuggling, his arms going around her immediately. The PEA had kicked in. He nuzzled her neck just as Crane walked to the center of the deck.

“Friends,” he said. “Thank you for indulging me in my secrecy by clandestinely traveling to Guam and boarding there. You are about to see why. But first I must ask that we meet a prearranged condition and shut down any and all transmission equipment.” Crane pulled himself to his full height. The moment was replete with drama, as he intended.

Lanie wriggled away from Newcombe. She was entranced, all her attention on the scene Crane was creating.

Crane tapped his wrist pad. “On my mark, Captain Florio.” His voice boomed through the ship speakers and all the aurals. “Now!”

Diatribe blacked, every form of energy on the yacht dying—all fifty teev screens simultaneously going dead, all the lights and the music and everything else clicking off at once. The people on deck reached into pockets and onto wrists, concurrently shutting down their own devices of endless transmission and reception. In a world where communication was everything, they had all gone straight back to the Stone Age.

Lanie turned off her aural. Suddenly, she felt distressed, almost frightened, and realized she was beginning to hyperventilate. She tossed back the near-full glass of dorph-enhanced synth in her champagne glass, wondering if the others on deck, bathed in moonlight and cloaked in silence, were feeling, too, such profound anxiety at being cut off. If so, they weren’t showing it.

“This is—this is so exciting,” she whispered to Newcombe, whose deep responsive chuckle only tightened the string of her nerves.

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” he whispered back.

Her sharp stare at Newcombe was deflected by the sudden movements of Crane. He’d removed a small scanner from his shirt pocket, turned it on, and was whirling around in a circle.

“Nothing,” he announced, stopping and smiling. “We’re alone. And now, I beg your indulgence yet again. There is one more guest on board, a participant you haven’t had the opportunity to encounter.”

A door to the gangway off which the cabins were located slid open, and everyone on deck was caught in a withering blast of charisma as a tall Africk stepped out.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Crane said, “may I present Mohammed Ishmael.”

A harsh collective gasp greeted the head of the militant Nation of Islam, outcast, fugitive, and some said, archcriminal and terrorist. Mohammed was well over six feet tall, and appeared even taller because of the black fez atop his head and the black dashiki that elongated his body in the shimmering moonlight. His stance was princely, the glance he swept over the participants majestic.

Riveted in place, the people on deck merely gaped, the silence astounding. But the tableau was short-lived. Turmoil erupted.

“My God!” Lanie exclaimed amidst the murmurs of outrage and surprise from the others, recovering now. “It’s him!”

Two burly Secret Servicemen threw themselves in front of Mr. Li, who appeared to be laughing. Was it from shock, Lanie wondered, or in glee over the surprise to which he might have been privy? Vice President Gabler was waving his arms and sputtering, while other participants milled and muttered, with Kate Masters’ throaty, nervous guffaws carrying over the sounds of all the others. Sumi Chan was, clearly, astonished, and only Mui Tsao of all the people on deck seemed entirely self-possessed.

Mui stepped forward. “I suggest a recess … a brief recess. Perhaps everyone could retire to his or her cabin?”

It wasn’t a suggestion, but an order, Lanie realized, glancing quickly to Newcombe. She drew in a sharp breath at the expression on his face. Three hundred years of the hatred of the shackled Africk gleamed in his eyes.

“I don’t believe it. You’re part of this,” she said.

He looked down at her, his expression softening. “I helped to arrange to get the good brother to attend, yes, and I helped to spirit him aboard, just shortly after we picked up all our other distinguished guests in Guam. That cutting of engines, the anchor drag, remember?”

Lanie gulped. “After all—after everything—I mean, I—”

“Because of my past support of the Nation of Islam nearly destroying my career?” He nodded grimly. “I’ve got Crane’s support on this now. And it’s important, Lanie, very important—for the Foundation and for every Africk alive.” He took her arm.

Guests were brushing by in the exodus from the deck and Newcombe was drawing her aft toward the spot where she saw that Sumi had backed Crane against the rail. Sumi’s small fist pounded Crane’s chest.

“Disaster,” Sumi shouted. “The man’s a wanted criminal, a total brigand. Such an affront to Mr. Li… He will own me. Own me, I tell you. Why didn’t you let me know about this?” he demanded of Crane, clearly beside himself with anger and fear.

“Would you have drawn the others here had you known?” Crane asked.

“Certainly not!”

Crane merely shrugged.

“Sedition, aiding and abetting—”

“Diplomacy,” Crane said. “Peacemaking. And good politics. You will see, Sumi, you will see.”

“I fear I will see nothing except my head on a plate held by Mr. Li Cheun.”

“Your head? Not likely.” Crane roared with laughter, then quickly sobered. He stared at Sumi, patted his frail shoulders, calming the man. “Is our other little surprise in place?” Sumi nodded. “Very well, then I suggest you start making calls on the occupants of each cabin with your synthchampagne in one hand and your little green bottle in the other, okay? Tell them we will reassemble here in ten minutes.” He glanced at his wrist pad. “Perfect timing.”

“Yesss,” Sumi hissed, turning abruptly and rushing across the deck. He got halfway before he said over his shoulder, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and sink.”

Lanie looked from Newcombe to Crane. She felt way out of her depth, a little lost. She needed her ten minutes alone … to think, and quickly excused herself to make her way back up to the observation deck. Actually, she fled, ran to the sanctuary high atop the ship. There, under the stars, she tried to digest the events of the evening so far. It was painful. She found herself unwilling, as always, to face the troubled world in which she lived. She dealt with the “realities” by trying to avoid them, by throwing herself into her work and personal affairs … or just blanking out. But Crane had launched her into a new orbit with a very high apex and, she knew, she had to face up to some very unpleasant facts, first and foremost, of course, this whole business with Mohammed Ishmael.

The Nation of Islam, the NOI, was dreaded and feared … and had been herded into the War Zones. She remembered that when the zones had first been created, her father had called them “ghettoes,” a word that was chilling to the daughter of a Jew, openly discriminated against during her teenage years after the Masada Option. But she’d been prepared for the discrimination. She’d grown up with terror that had emanated from her father, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. Germans had run the country from the time she was scarcely more than a toddler until she was almost a teenager, and, though they bent over backwards to disassociate themselves from their ancient Nazi past, the Germans nonetheless exhibited the kind of authoritarianism that made her father fear a concentration camp was being built around every corner.

She winced, and kept her eyes closed. Ugly. So ugly, the ways of humankind in its prejudices and hatreds and violence. People had been divided and pitted against each other by racial, religious, or ethnic differences ever since she could remember. She rarely let herself think about all that she and Dan and others had suffered, because it hurt too much. Tears collected in the corners of her still closed eyes.

Dan had told her the worst of his suffering had begun with the Safe Streets Act of 2005, when it had become almost illegal to have dark skin. The Act freed ignorant, prejudiced white Americans from the hypocrisy of political correctness to allow them to express their hatred openly. The curfews, housing restrictions, and other indignities imposed by the law had confined Africks to certain areas of cities and towns throughout the country and curtailed their liberty to a few restricted daylight hours. Along with successive and even more oppressive laws, the Streets Act had been responsible for creating the Zones; the rise of the militant Africk Islamic fundamentalists had been responsible for the modifier before “Zones”—War. No one knew precisely what went on within the War Zones. The NOI was supposed to be indoctrinating Africks, arming them, training them, and, indeed, there were violent skirmishes with the Federal Police Force ringing the zones that gave credence to all the rumors about what went on within.

The most wanted “criminal” of them all? Mohammed Ishmael. The man’s background of forceful resistance against the FPF, his rhetoric—well, everything about him, Lanie thought—made him one of the most wanted, hated, and allegedly dangerous men on the planet. Why had Crane brought him to this meeting? He should have foreseen the disruptive effect. More to the point, why had Dan made the contact with Mohammed Ishmael, who was known not to speak with any white person, and helped to get him here? Dan had supported the idea of NOI at the University of China, San Diego, been booted out, and very nearly ruined all his prospects. It made no sense. For Dan.

Lanie suddenly could see Crane’s strategy. As well as Mohammed Ishmael, he had induced Kate Masters, the head of the Women’s Political Association, and Aaron Bloom, the head of the Association of Retired Persons, to attend. Ishmael, Masters and Bloom represented the voting blocks in the United States of America. They were Crane’s stick with Liang Int, the real power. And the earthquake prediction project was the carrot Crane offered them all, the opportunity to save lives and property and trauma among their constituencies, or at least appear to do so … appear to care. And Liang Int was, of course, interested in the man-hours and buildings and equipment to be saved … protecting profit. Lanie shook her head sadly. Profit was the motivator of almost everyone everywhere in the world. Everyone except Crane and the handful of people like him and like her and Dan.

A gong sounded.

Lanie levered herself out of the deck chair, feeling more ambivalent than she ever had. Part of her wanted to run away from the politicos below; the other half wanted to race toward the excitement that Crane generated and the potential he was gambling everything on to realize tonight.