Khadijah and Martin walked over and joined Ishmael in peering at the paper Newcombe held.
“This jagged line shows an area where the earth will sink by as much as fifteen feet. Here, on the other side of the jagged line is an area of uplift that will tear the city in two.”
“It goes right through the War Zone,” Khadijah said.
Newcombe looked at her, their gazes holding. “Yes,” he said, then turned his head to Ishmael. “Do they have a way out of there?”
“Underground … like we have here.”
“Will they listen to me if I warn them?”
“If I tell them to.”
“Tell them.”
“Where would they go?” Martin Aziz asked.
They all stared at one another, Ishmael’s face slowly cracking into a wide smile.
“They’ll go south,” Ishmael said. “Into Mississippi.”
“The promised land,” Khadijah whispered, eyes alight. She clapped her hands.
“They will be the first to make the pilgrimage to our new homeland,” Ishmael continued. “There are hundreds of traditional Africk townships in Mississippi. Our people will locate in one of them and take it over. It will be our beachhead.”
“Perfect.” Newcombe smiled, and Crane’s words from Sado fell out of his mouth unbidden. “What drama!”
“As long as the government of Mississippi doesn’t object,” Aziz said.
Khadijah laughed. “It certainly presents an interesting problem for Mr. Li,” she said.
“If he should allow us to settle,” Ishmael said, on his feet now and starting to pace, “our people will immediately demand separatist status.”
“And if he decides to stop the pilgrimage?” Aziz asked.
Ishmael shook his head. “More martyrs. But I’ve noticed something about businessmen. They dislike killing consumers.”
Aziz nodded, smiling slightly. “Brother Daniel has provided us the impetus to make our revolution active. I approve.”
“Excellent!” Ishmael said, hugging everyone in turn. He laughed after kissing Newcombe on each cheek.
“What is your boss going to think about all this?” he asked.
“He’s too busy trying to blow up the world to notice,” Newcombe replied, surprised at how much anger came out in his voice.
“What?” Ishmael asked.
“You remember you told me the first time we met that Crane had a secret agenda?” Ishmael nodded. “Well, he does. He wants to fuse the continental plates by exploding fifty-three gigaton bombs at key points where the plates intersect. He wants to stop earthquakes completely.”
“He shakes his fist at Allah.” Ishmael said. “Crane puts himself above everything. Just amazing.”
“It’s only amazing in that he wants to,” Newcombe said. “I can’t imagine a government in the world that would consent to a scheme as obviously misguided as his.”
“I cannot believe, Brother, that you underestimate Crane so very much,” Ishmael said, putting an arm around his sister, both of them staring hot fire at Newcombe. “He’s already come back from the dead and is returning to the scene of the crime. No, he’s probably more than capable of convincing people to go along with him.”
Newcombe was puzzled. “You seem almost happy about it.”
“I’ve been waiting for the connection,” Ishmael said, “the collision point between Crane and the Nation of Islam.” He shrugged broadly. “And now I have it. Our greatness will be tested. This is the mountain upon which Dr. Crane and I will take tea.”
“I want to convert,” Newcombe said, watching amusement show on Ishmael’s face. All of them laughed.
“You are a godless man,” Ishmael said. “Why would you wish to become Muslim?”
“Why do you care? I believe you’d want me to convert if I worshipped inkblots. Correct?”
“More than correct, Brother,” Aziz said quickly, rather than let the words pass through Ishmael’s mouth. “By having you go through a public conversion we’d reap major public relations benefits—an intelligent and successful man chooses NOI because he believes in it. The gentle side of Islam balances out the necessarily violent revolutionary side.”
“It also makes him an insider,” Ishmael warned. “He would rapidly become our official voice without meaning to.” He pointed at Newcombe. “You haven’t yet told me why you wish to convert.”
“No mystery,” Newcombe said. “I’m doing it for the Cause. And I’m doing it because it will put me in direct opposition to Lewis Crane when this bomb business becomes public. He’s a madman. I wish to stand against him as one of you.”
“Liar,” Khadijah said. “It has something to do with that white woman.”
“No,” Newcombe said, lowering his head. “Lanie and I are … no longer together. We haven’t been for some time.”
The woman laughed and took a step closer to him. “So maybe you want to teach her a lesson, huh?”
“God, I hope there’s more to me than that.”
Rum bottle between his legs, Crane watched the satellite viddies of the Masada Option. He felt a shameful exhilaration at the monstrous beauty of thirty multimegaton bombs going off all at once. The blast cloud rose, amazingly high from the vantage point of outer space, its crown branching off and flattening out, spreading.
It had been one of those stunning events in world history that forces everyone to remember where he or she was when it happened. Crane remembered that he’d been getting his first aural implanted at that moment. The news of Masada were the first sounds he’d heard through the device. He’d been horrified at first, in shock, along with the rest of the world. But things once done could not be changed, and he’d realized the inherent importance of Masada as field research for his studies on the relationship between nuclear testing and EQs.
He’d been in a burn suit in Sudan by the next afternoon with a truckload of seismos. It was the day after that, standing in Saudi Arabia, that the notion of fusing the plates had come to him. The Rub Al Kali desert was a solid sheet of glass unbroken to the horizon. The intense heat had melted the sand. Under roiling gray clouds and thick rains of radioactive ash, he had skated on the desert.
“Crane,” Lanie called. “You in there?”
“Go away,” he said, taking a drink, watching the Masada cloud beginning to drift eastward, China and The Russia Corporation gradually disappearing beneath a haze of gray.
“It was beyond belief,” Lanie said from right behind him, her voice soft. “I was twenty-two, starting grad school. I remember feeling cheated that I wouldn’t have the chance to inherit the world. There was speculation that everything might go. Plus, Jews were being killed in many places. It was scary.”
“Is that when you became a Cosmie?”
“No,” She laughed, moving around to sit beside him on the couch. “My father was Jewish by birth, not my mother, which left me nowhere in a matrilineal culture. I always remember my dad as a Cosmie. He converted when I was very young. Guess that’s why I gravitated that way. Cosmies are friendly enough folks, like Unitarians with vision. It didn’t stop me from losing a scholarship because they said I was Jewish, though.”
“There was a lot of anger for awhile,” Crane said. “I remember the backlash. That’s why most of my staff members are Jews. Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“You’re a visionary,” she replied immediately. “All visionaries are thought of as crazy by the people they want to serve.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She tilted his face to hers, staring at him. Crane was tense, her touch was electric to him. “Yes, you’re crazy,” she whispered. “You’re just crazy enough to survive the madness we live in.”