He’d been at Moonbase Charlestown, supervising the unending small details of a project so massive and in such unlivable conditions as to overpower anyone, when he’d gotten sick. He’d never really been sick before. The cancer was advanced when they discovered it. They’d treated him chemically, then told him his body would do the rest. What they didn’t tell him was the terrible price he’d pay physically. The war his body waged had gone on for eight excruciating months. When it was finally over he was cancer-free, in fact, immune to most forms of the disease, but he was weak; he tired easily. He couldn’t drink anymore and felt like an old man at fifty-eight. And this day he was going to witness a quake the likes of which he’d never seen.
Tokyo sat at the juncture of four plates: the Philippine, the Pacific, the Eurasian, and the trailing edge of the North American, by way of the Japan and Isu Trenches. A major subduction quake was getting ready to occur at the Japan/Izu Trench conjunction, and it would destroy most of Tokyo.
An eerie scenario had developed around the Crane Report in recent years. Discredited by many, respected by others, the Report was used by a few to plan their adventures and their deaths. Whenever a major EQ was predicted, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people showed up to test themselves against its power. Like running with the bulls, men used it as a proof of manhood. Others planned it as a dramatic suicide.
The firebreak loomed below, a jagged gash of buildings butted together, cutting the city in half. Their steel shutters were already locked down tight, huge water cannons at the ready. Ironically, it was September 1, traditionally Earthquake Day in Japan since September 1st, 1923, when forty thousand people burned to death in the firestorm that leveled Edo, as Tokyo had been known then. All told, one hundred and fifty thousand people died that day.
The helo stalked Shirahega. There was a crowded observation station built atop one of the central buildings, a helopad right alongside. The pilot banked them in and bullseyed the pad, the young techs jumping out of the machine no sooner than it had set down. They were there to help with the survivors—for besides the gatecrashers, there were always people who refused to evacuate.
Crane and Hill climbed out last, Crane waving Hill off when he tried to help him. “I may be a cripple,” he said, grunting as he took the long step down, “but I’m not a damned cripple.”
He had only been on the roof for a number of seconds when he experienced the first tremor. “Do you feel it, Burt?”
“Sir?” Hill mumbled.
Crane was feeling the temblors up his leg, shaking his whole body, vibrating it like a tuning fork. “I think you’d better position yourself. It will only be moments now.”
Sway belts were connected to the metal front wall of the firebreak. Hill helped him belt in. He picked up a pair of binoculars hanging beside the belt. Below, groups of people on the surrounding streets were still partying, many dressed alike. There was a group in black shiny suits with bright red stripes shoulder to ankle. There was another group of young men, and a few women, who were naked except for shoes, their clothes tied in bundles they carried on their shoulders. Another group dressed in clown outfits. All young, foolish people. They were called Rockers because they challenged geology on its own terms.
The suicides he could see farther back in the city, all ages, all looking for a shaky building to scale, for some large structure beneath which they could wait. The Rockers stayed close enough to the firebreak to run. The suicides wandered aimlessly, but far enough away from Shirahega that they couldn’t reach it in a firestorm. Those who simply refused to believe in the quake were, he presumed, in their homes or offices, doing whatever they normally did.
“Got a moment for an old friend?” came a voice from behind. He turned to see Sumi Chan. Her hair was shoulder length, her eyes made up with pale blue shadow.
“Oh my,” Crane said. He reached out as Sumi hurried to hug him. “Let me look at you.”
She stepped back from their brief embrace. She wore a black jumpsuit and hiking boots and looked sexy. She had aged welclass="underline" A lifetime of controlling her emotions had left her with a remarkably unlined face. In fact, Crane realized, Sumi was beautiful—all the more so because her eyes were friendlier than he’d ever seen them, more intimate in their gaze. He nodded, once he was able to discern that she was healthy and quite comfortable with herself.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, as she moved to hug an already-strapped-in Burt Hill.
“I heard you were coming, so I popped over,” she said. “We’re practically neighbors.”
A loud rumble bellowed out of the earth. The building began shaking, and Crane grabbed Sumi. He pulled her to the wall to help her strap in.
“Hang on!” he yelled. “It’s going to be a rough one!”
The building shook violently from side to side, S waves, big ones shivering the mantle. It didn’t stop, it intensified, P waves joining the assault, up-and-down waves making the earth heave.
Crane grabbed the facade before him with a still-strong right hand, his gaze locked on the city twenty stories below. People were scattering, everyone forgetting mock heroic plans in the face of catastrophe. They ran, falling, back toward the firebreak. Huge rumbling fissures opened in the streets and the whole group of naked Rockers disappeared into the bowels of the Beast.
The shaking intensified, entire blocks of buildings simply falling over where the ground turned liquid. The smashing of glass and concrete as buildings fell mixed with the rumble of the EQ in an overpowering wall of noise. A cloud of dust rose from demolished structures and spread across the city.
The explosions started, the temblor only thirty seconds old. Bridges and overpasses fell, dumping cars full of last-minute evacs into empty space, spilling people and automobiles across the crumbling cityscape.
And then the fires began.
Ninety seconds passed and still the ground rolled and pitched, the firebreak creaking beneath them. Thirty feet away, the helo that had brought them bounced itself to the side of the building, then pitched over the edge.
“I told you, Crane,” Hill said. “We’re right in the damned middle of it again.”
“And it’s great,” Crane said low, his insides burning, alive! He could feel himself surge with the Beast’s power, his enemy putting life back into him. He hadn’t felt this good in years.
“Look at Tokyo Bay,” Sumi said, taking his bad arm, grasping hard.
The Bay was drained, empty, the ugly jagged scar of the trench evident several miles out in the mudhole.
“That wind,” Hill said.
“The firestorm’s creating a vacuum, consuming all the oxygen around it,” Crane said loudly, above the noise. “That wind is just the air rushing back in to fill the space.”
The shaking had slowed. But the firestorm was moving closer to them, eating Tokyo a block at a time.
“Feel the heat?” Sumi said, her hands in front of her face, the fire now an unbroken line ten miles long and two miles wide. It roared toward them, a mile and closing, as an aftershock jerked them sideways.
The smoke was thick, Crane’s blood hotter than the inferno he faced. The fire, huge and unrelenting, rolled like an ocean in shimmering waves that crashed and broke, leaping up like bright orange surfspray.
They were sweating, all of them, as the water cannons came on, pumping sea water under pressure, a wall of water to match the wall of fire. A thick spray of water refracted the bright orange, producing countless minirainbows in the midst of conflagration. One of the cannons was pointed straight up, the water spraying over the top of the building, cooling them, drenching their legs before hitting drainholes and arcing back out toward the fire. The same drama was being enacted along the entire firebreak. Shirahega was the city’s only hope.