Crane walked wearily back into the tent, Sumi rushing over to comfort him. As Lame listened to NOI rhetoric coming out of Dan’s mouth she felt as if she were being pushed to the edge. She had waited a long time to let herself love him. And now what was there but pain in the loving?
“Are you a member of Nation of Islam?” one of Whetstone’s people called, the security force slowly melting into and becoming part of the crowd.
“That is a decision I have been grappling with,” he responded. “At the moment I’m a citizen of the world. I’m merely speaking my mind and will continue to do so.”
A cold hand clutched Lanie’s heart. As Dan went on shilling for Brother Ishmael, she went deep into herself. Segregation … the veiling of women … the espousal of violence. Could Dan Newcombe—the man she had lived with and loved—really align himself with a movement that advocated those things? She was very much afraid the answer was yes. Suffused with pain, she clenched her jaw and held herself rigid. She could scarcely bear it… Crane! She had to concern herself with Crane.
The moment Crane had realized that with every word Dan spoke the Foundation was losing more and more of its support, he’d located his stashed bottle of bourbon and gone to work on it in earnest. Camheads started to cut away from Dan’s face to show pictures of people leaving the tent city on foot and in vehicles, vandalizing the place as they went. By the time Dan was finished, most of Crane’s dream of saving lives and of positive, collective action at a quake site was either smashed to the ground or stolen. The red tent stood in the midst of rubble. Two days before the date of his prediction that the quake would hit, it was all over…
Lanie went to Crane’s side. There were tears streaming down his face, and he cradled the bourbon in his bad arm. When she touched his shoulder, she awakened him from some dream of horror. His eyes opened wide.
“All I ever wanted to do was help people,” he said, his voice low and very small.
She hugged him. “Maybe we should think about leaving this place.”
“No. Not me. You. Get Burt and tell him to pack it all in and get himself and the rest of the team back to the Foundation grounds as quickly as possible.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Stay here. Do my job. I’ve still got an earthquake coming that I need to warn people about. Just because the government decided it wasn’t going to happen doesn’t mean it won’t.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. “Crane, I can’t—I won’t let you stay on alone. I’m with you—”
“No. You’ve got to leave. Get everybody back as fast as you can. Work on the globe. Work hard. We’ll do what we can at the Foundation until the money runs out.”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“I’ve never been all right.” He took a drink. “Go on. Get out of here. I don’t need my people getting arrested in Tennessee.”
“Arrested?”
“I’m a charlatan, remember? I’ve perpetrated a fraud. Charges and arrests are just around the corner no matter what happens with the quake. I’ll probably be in jail when it hits.” He looked hard at her. “I’m counting on you … on you, Lanie. The globe is everything. Only you can carry on with that work.”
Tears filled her eyes. Finally, she nodded and was rewarded by one of Crane’s warm, broad smiles, all the more beautiful because it was so rare. “That’s my imager,” he said and patted her on the shoulder. Then he looked away, his gaze on a far horizon no one else would be able to see.
Lanie stepped back, feeling an alien yearning to embrace Crane, to hold him close and promise that everything would be all right. But that would be an empty promise, a lie. Nothing might ever be right again. And Crane. He was so alone. Alone and crushed by treachery, its origins and at least some of its perpetrators a mystery. She shook herself. The only positive action she could take was to do as Crane wished. Purposeful then, she crammed a hat on her head and raced out of the tent.
Dan was standing alone in the middle of the road, people streaming around him, fleeing the camp as quickly as they had made their way to it. Several hundred yards off, the leveled compound was burning steadily. She walked into the human river and waded toward Dan. When she reached him, her mouth gaped in surprise.
“You’re crying,” she said.
“It was wonderful! I spoke my mind without fear and without remorse for the first time in my life. It felt good, Lanie, so good—and so free.”
She glanced at the devastation all around, the fire threatening to blaze out of control as Whetstone’s people tried to put it out. “It freed all of us,” she said, doubting that Dan even would notice the irony of her tone. “You’re going to join them, aren’t you?”
His answer was a mere shrug. “I want us to spend a lot of time together. It’s all in the open. I can promise you no secrets from now on,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulder. She slipped from under it.
“No, Dan,” she said, backing away from him. “I can’t. I simply can’t.”
“But I love you.”
“Whether or not you go back to the Foundation, I am going to move into my own house.”
“But, Lanie—”
She spun away then and started off. Dan called her name, but she didn’t turn back. She walked farther into devastation. The site was in ruins. Crane’s reputation was in ruins. The Foundation might be gone in weeks, a month or two at the most. All the bright and wondrous things she’d been envisioning for herself and Dan personally, and for herself and Crane professionally were extinguished.
Suddenly, Lanie saw none of the devastation around her. She saw only Crane as she’d left him in the tent, alone, slumped in a chair, swilling bourbon straight from the bottle. The late-afternoon sunshine was brilliant, but for Lanie King and for Lewis Crane the day had turned black as pitch.
BOOK TWO
Chapter 10
THE FAILED RIFT
“What do ya think, Doc?” Burt Hill asked as he guided the helo through the gloom up the steep side of Mendenhall to the shelf on which the Foundation stood. “Exactly like ya left it.”
“It’s the sweetest sight I’ve seen in two long weeks.” Crane drank in the sight of the grounds, the mosque. The ruby laser lines welcomed him back from a trip to hell in the outside world. It was Tuesday night, election night, the night that was supposed to have marked his triumph. Instead he’d had to sneak back into LA in disguise lest camheads recognize him and go on the attack. The first thing he’d done when the helo was far from the City and over open country was throw off that disguise.
He turned in his seat and looked full at Burt, whose face had a warm glow from the ruddy light rising from the Foundation. “How many have I lost?” he asked in little more than a whisper.
“A couple. Everybody else is hanging on. They feed you okay in that Tennessee jail?”
He waved the question away. The local police had stuck him in the Memphis city jail early on October 31 when the quake had failed to materialize on the previous day. He’d been transferred to the Shelby County jail two days later and held without bond on felony fraud, charged with reckless endangerment of millions of lives. He was only thankful that the FPF hadn’t gotten involved. He’d sat it out, all the charges miraculously disappearing this morning, election morning. He had apparently served Mr. Li’s purposes, so he could be set free.
“You look skinny to me, Doc. I’m gonna make sure you get something in you before the night’s over. And I don’t mean rum. Solid food.”