“This is history, my fine fellow,” Crane said. “Earth history as no one’s ever seen it before. If this thing keeps working, we may all be obsolete.”
And work it did, half holo, half “real.” Land emerged from the evaporating waters, the closeness of the Moon causing major havoc on land and sea—quakes, tsunamis, and tidal waves rattling the globe in ways none of them could have anticipated. If there had been a Pangaea as such, they never saw it. For an hour that was hundreds of millions of years, the continental masses seemed to form and reform in a continual dance with the Moon, which moved ever so slowly away.
The globe stopped many times during these early periods, adding holo comets, asteroids, and meteorites to the mix in order to conform to known life later on, but it didn’t shut down—it continued. The farther it went, the more excited the programmers became, until they were shouting and cheering every time the machine hit a glitch and reset itself to continue onward.
The Moon finally distanced itself enough to lose its major impact on sea and land. Here, they saw the beginnings of a stable world, more stable, at least, than the frenzy of its earlier years. The seas calmed. The continents emerged in roughly the same form as today.
For Crane, time did not exist during this exercise. First to last passed in an instant for him. He thought of all the men of science from its beginnings who had measured, timed, and speculated about the nature of their Earth. Without their observations, the globe would not have been possible. For thousands of years scientists had meticulously recorded their findings with no notion of where those findings would lead. This was one of the places. There would be others.
Five hours later, he emerged from his thoughts to the sounds of cheering. The globe stood proudly online, up to date, turning slowly. Dead even with them.
Everyone was still there, including Newcombe, and they had been joined by the rest of the staff. It was a spectacle none of them could pull away from. The addition of new information would continue, but this was the core unit from which ever more knowledge would spring.
“Do you realize what we’ve just done?” Crane called to the applauding group. “However much information we’ve put into this system is merely a grain of sand on the seashore in comparison to what the globe has invented on its own to make our data compatible. Every hairline fissure, every graben, every underground stream or unconfirmed nuclear explosion that has occurred on planet Earth is now ours to know. Information is power, ladies and gentlemen. And we have the power.”
Another cheer. He turned to Newcombe. “Still think I’m crazy?”
“Crazy for trying,” the man said. “Brilliant for succeeding.”
Lanie moved to the two men. “I’m still in shock.” She put her arm around him as Newcombe stiffened.
“You did it,” Crane said, hugging her close then moving away when it felt too good.
“We’re going to call your globe the King Projection.”
“You’re naming it after me?”
“You’re its mama,” Crane replied, then raised his voice for all of them to hear.
“We’ve done the impossible,” he said. “Now let’s try the unthinkable. Dr. King, would you be kind enough to program ahead on the Reelfoot and see what it gives us? Take us forward to a quake, a big quake.”
Lanie hurried to the keyboard. As if it were a monstrous crystal ball, they were using the globe to try and look into the future. It was heady and scary. This was different from the prediction they’d made on the stress readings. This was the Earth simply winding out the certitude of its own history. To the sound of a loud buzzer the globe stopped turning, the spotlight zeroing on the Mississippi Valley, the familiar red lines of a Valley quake jagged as a gash.
“Time,” Crane said, his mouth dry.
Lanie punched up the blood red numbers again. This time they read:
Twenty-three minutes sooner than their earlier calculations.
“We’ve done it,” Crane said. “We’ve conquered the future.”
He looked to Newcombe again. “This is our research source,” he said. “All our answers lie here.”
Newcombe looked hard at him. “All we need now is the guts to use it. Do we really want the responsibility of knowing the future?”
“It’s moot,” Lanie said from the console. “Want it or not, it’s here.”
Newcombe stood and walked to Crane. “Now that you’ve got it,” he whispered, “what are you really going to do with this goddamned thing?”
“Anything I want, doctor.”
The Masada brought rain that night, which meant radioactivity flushing down the streets and into the water supplies. Some sickness and death would result, the greatest toll taken on outdoor life. But it used to be worse, and would continue to be a decreasing threat until it would dissipate in the mid-2030s and be remembered ultimately as a scourge falling somewhere between the Black Plague and the Spanish Inquisition on the scale of suffering of humanity.
This particular night, it was a godsend for Crane. He had celebrated the globe with his people, then drifted to his office when the alarms had driven everyone to shelter. Now, as the rains fell outside, he would have the globe to himself for a while.
He sat at Lanie’s console, explaining exactly what it was he wanted to accomplish. As he finished inputting, Burt Hill came over his aural.
“Where the hell are you, Crane?”
“I’m staying in my office tonight,” Crane replied on the P fiber. “Don’t worry about me.”
“You’re only wantin’ to play with that globe.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Not at all. Got to tell you something, though. An announcement just came through all the teev stations—Vice President Gabler has resigned. Everybody thinks it’s because he’s got blamed for all the problems with the War Zone.”
“Interesting,” Crane said, not finding it interesting at all.
“That’s not the juicy part, boss,” Hill returned. “Gideon has appointed Sumi Chan to fill out the term.”
“Sumi?” Crane said, very interested now. “Wonder how they got around the citizenship requirements.”
“Never mind that,” Hill said. “This clinches it. Sumi’s nothing but a traitorous, slimy—”
“I want you to find a private fiber to Sumi,” Crane said. “I want to talk to him. And when you get to him, be sure to give your most hearty congratulations.”
“But he’s—”
“A powerful man who can help us,” Crane interrupted. “Call me back on this fiber.”
He blanked and looked at the console. Over the last year, he’d fed every morsel of info he’d ever learned on the effects of under- and aboveground nuclear testing on faults. By now the globe knew much more than he did.
He typed his question and hit enter.
The globe hesitated only slightly before revealing a series of flashing red lights all over the Earth, Crane running to it to check locations. All the lights were centered on or near rifts. His heart pounded as he counted them—fifty-three.
This was it, the reason for his existence.
He broke down and cried then, not stopping until he had Sumi on the line and more business to be done.
Chapter 12
CONTINENTAL DRIFT
Lanie finished the last of her packing, then stepped out onto her porch to watch the final preparations for the pilgrimage to Tennessee. Their condor dropped momentarily into view, Lanie calling to it before it swept past and majestically retreated to higher ground. The sun was gone now, freeing everyone to get out of doors. There were as many as fifty helos, private donations, stacked up on the plain below, being filled with food, water, and medical supplies.