“My plan can work. It can.”
“You don’t have to convince me.”
He nodded grimly. “Thanks.” He looked away, then back at the screen.
“Why,” Lanie asked, “do I have such a hard time making eye contact with you?”
He looked at her for a second, looked away. “I have a … difficult time thinking when I look at you. I don’t know what it is. It’s never happened before. I get, I don’t know … lost in your gaze or … or something. Stupid, huh?”
She moved into his line of vision. “It’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she answered, and this time he forced himself to hold the eye contact. “You know,” she went on, “you said a lot of things when we were trapped in that house in Martinique. Do you remember?”
He started to look away, held on. “Yes, I do.”
“Did you mean them?”
“I thought you’d never remember.”
“Did you mean them?”
“I meant them,” he said, looking down, her fingers lifting his face back to hers. “I’m sorry, I … didn’t mean to compromise our professional—”
“Oh, the hell with that.” She scooted closer and put her arms around his neck. “You have greatness in you. It excites me.”
“But I’m a cripple, I’m—”
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
In the next few minutes Lewis Crane discovered, for the first time in his life, that communication need not be verbal to be understood and meaningful.
Chapter 13
MERCALLI XII
The barn smelled like wet horses and manure. Newcombe hid in the corner behind bales of hay to make contact with the War Zone.
“There is no doubt,” he was saying into a monitor-cam sitting in his palm and pointing toward his face, “that the quake will happen today. I am speaking under Green Authority. Repeat: Green Authority. Your pilgrimage must begin within the hour if you are to survive. You may have to fight your way at first, but the way will be clear soon enough. You must leave within the hour. Go now!”
He blanked and hoped for the best. He’d been transmitting on the ultrahigh-frequency infrared band that nobody used because of the cost of the reception equipment. But it would be picked up in the War Zone’s focus building in downtown Memphis to be rebroadcast through the connecting cable to the Zone.
His hands were shaking. He had just committed an act of sedition, one that Brother Ishmael had made sure he would have to accomplish. “If you’re convinced of the quake,” Ishmael had said, “if you’re sure, send the message when you know.”
He knew.
The Ellsworth-Beroza nucleation zone was now constant, showing ever-building seismic activity. They had measured hundreds of temblors, undetectable on the surface, but growing to the Big Slip. Cracking rock had released large amounts of trapped gases while dilation occurred throughout the Reelfoot, cutting off the S waves that were unable to move through the water seeping into the cracks. It was classic, all the physical signs coming into line. The horses were kicking nervously against their stalls, neighing and whinnying in fear. Dogs bayed in the distance.
“Dan!” Lanie called. “Dan? Are you in here?”
He slipped the cam into his shirt pocket and moved out of his hiding place. “You caught me,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, moving through the barn doors. She was wrapped head-to-toe, hatted, and block gleamed on her face.
“I had to get away from the madhouse for a few minutes.” he said. “I needed some time alone.”
“If you’d take a couple of dorph—”
“Why are you looking for me?”
She moved close. “They’ve come for Crane,” she said, her voice quavering. “They’re arresting him.”
“Calm down,” he said, hands reaching out to take her arms. “We knew this would happen. Everything’s being done that can be done.”
“I’m scared, Dan. The crowd’s ugly, and the—”
“We’ve got escape routes. Don’t worry. Come on, let’s go give Crane some moral support.”
They went out into the madness of the soybean farm. A man named Jimmy Earl had donated this ten-thousand-acre farm, south of Memphis in Capleville, to Crane for use as a refugee center. His motivation wasn’t altruistic; he was making a viddy about Crane and his prediction from the inside. But none of them had anticipated the reaction of the public. Above, hundreds of helos swarmed like mosquitoes through clouds that ran continuous loops of a speech by President Gideon condemning Crane.
Angry over the debacle of the October folly and whipped into near frenzy by the government and the teev schmoozers, people were descending on Jimmy Earl’s farm like a locust plague. Thousands of people had shown up in the last two days to jeer and demand Crane’s head. Electrified fences had been hurriedly erected around the tent city, and Whetstone’s people, instead of being able to help the refugees, were forced to form security details around the perimeter.
Newcombe pulled his goggles over his eyes. They moved through the barnyard and into the tent city just as the front gates opened and the police cruiser slid in, display lights strobing.
“The command post?” Dan asked. Several members of the crowd rushed in before the gates closed, security massing to beat them back.
“Yeah … giving interviews up to the end.”
“They taking Whetstone, too?”
“Both ‘perpetrators,’ ” she said sarcastically. “By the way, other seismic stations around the world are beginning to pick up our foreshocks. I think some minds are changing.”
“Too late,” he said. “Nobody’s going anywhere, not with the President on the teev calling us everything but child molesters.”
“You’re tense.”
“Yeah, I’m tense. I’ve been going over the Memphis EQ-ecogram and I’m still afraid I haven’t paid enough attention to the river. It’s possible to get in a range with a river that changes course, but my calcs were never designed to deal with a situation like the Mississippi. It needs more refinement.”
“Does Crane know you’re still worried?”
“Yeah. He says he trusts me. I’ve got to work more on this type of situation.”
The rows of tents were empty except for volunteer workers. Not one person had accepted the offer of help, not yet. As they reached the centrally located command tent, the cruiser, lights still flashing, turned into the row, churning dust behind.
Newcombe jerked his goggles up as he entered the tent. Other teevs filled the tent sides, some showing EQ-ecograms of metropolitan centers that would be affected by the quake. Still others showed emergency EQ supply lists, another a list of safe evac locations.
Crane and Whetstone stood together at the front of the room, before an alarming seismogram display showing an almost constantly increasing amplitude on all crests. A crowd of ten camheads was around them, private broadcasters working around the government’s jam of the airwaves. Jimmy Earl, of course, stood in the center of it all, making his viddy.
Crane was speaking. “…in Memphis, because Memphis is going to take the brunt of the quake. We have an observation scale that’s been used for nearly a hundred years called the Mercalli Intensity Scale. I’m predicting Memphis to fall within the range of a Mercalli XII, Damage Total. Practically all buildings damaged greatly or destroyed. Waves seen on ground surface. Lines of sight and level distorted. Objects will be thrown into the air. Please, anyone in Memphis who’s listening right now: Get out of the city. Come south to Capleville. We can help you here.”