“The last applicant?”
Crane nodded. “The last that I’ll screen. You will bring the total to five thousand citizens. I’ve thrown the stew together. It’s up to you to cook it.”
“You’ve got schools?”
“All the comforts of home, though our schooling tends to be very old-fashioned. We teach kids to work their brains, not their pads. And I don’t know that religion plays a very large part in Charlestown life.”
“My religion’s always been self-reliance,” Tennery said, standing. “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow,” Crane said, “From my complex in Colorado Springs. Pack as much as you can carry.”
Burt Hill filled the doorspace. “Dammit, Crane. You haven’t packed a blinking thing yet.”
“All in good time, Burt. Meet our newest citizen of Charlestown, Jackson Tennery.”
“It’s on the darkside, you know,” Hill said, shaking hands with the man.
“I know.”
Hill cocked his head. “You’re as crazy as the rest of them up there,” he said, then looked again at Crane. “If you want to do that stupid teev show, we have to leave now.”
“Good,” Crane said, standing also. “We’ll accompany Mr. Tennery to his helo.”
They walked out of the office. The Foundation was a beehive of activity as scientists and workmen hurried around carrying boxed equipment and personal belongings. Mendenhall was evacuating. Within several hours, the debris of the Foundation would be part of Baja Island, a new addition to the map of the Pacific.
They moved through the globe room, Crane stopping for one last look at the machine that encompassed all his dreams and all his frustrations. It had been Lanie’s. It had belonged to many others since then, including Sumi, who’d died two years ago of a genetically created cancer virus. The virus had been unleashed by the Brotherhood, the terrorist arm of the Religion of Cosmic Oneness—the Cosmies—who were seeking their own State free of the religious persecution of the world’s Moslems. The plague had killed nearly forty million people worldwide before mutating into a common cold germ, to which Crane had been immune because of his earlier experiences with the disease. Brother Ishmael inadvertently had saved his life.
Sumi… It was Sumi, ultimately, who’d made today possible with her work on the globe. It was Sumi who’d made him understand he didn’t have all the answers and that the pain of life wasn’t his alone to command. It was Sumi who’d come up with the idea that synthesized his entire life, that made today—3 June ’58—the culmination of all his dreams and hopes and expectations. If Lanie had been his great love, then Sumi Chan Crane had been his great teacher. She’d made his life, and his death, worthwhile.
He’d completely rethought Charlestown because of Sumi’s forcing him to testify. He’d realized he was no smarter than anyone else when it came to telling people what to do. It had made all the difference.
Their years together had been the best, the happiest of his life, and he felt doubly blessed for having known two women of remarkable character and insight, two women he’d loved dearly and had to let go of reluctantly.
It was difficult to imagine sometimes that he had known Sumi for nearly fifty years and Lame for less than five. Years compress like fault lines in the mind. While everything else changes, the mind remembers exactly what it wants to remember. A decade can be lost and a year seem like forever. When love is abruptly taken, love remains active.
He’d learned, finally, how to relax under Sumi’s tutelage. He’d learned to sail and they’d taken up oceanography together. He’d seen Charlestown to completion, happily turning the running of it over to its citizens. He’d seen the radioactive cleanup of the water systems finally complete itself when Crane freighters hauled all the waste into a Moon orbit, then slingshot it toward the Sun. The things he’d seen, the things his mind had held, filled him up. No man could have asked for more and no longer did he feel plagued by the failure at the Salton Sea—only one of many things that had happened to him. One of many dreams.
The years had passed quickly, but had left a million memories behind, enough for a king’s lifetime. What more could anyone ask?
The globe was still operating and would continue to operate until the forces of Nature pulled it apart. The Foundation itself was being split between his Cheyenne Mountain headquarters and the Isle of Wight globe station, good, trained people left behind to carry on.
They moved out of the mosque to stand on the flat plain of the Mendenhall Ledge, a continual surge of helos filling airspace around the Foundation. One thing he’d learned in life in seventy-one years was that no matter how far in advance a person knew about something, he would still wait until the last minute to take care of it.
“Is all this really going to be gone later today?” Tennery asked, as they walked him to his rented helo.
“Yes, it is,” Crane said, and a lifetime swept through him like a wave. “Gone but not forgotten. Life changes whether we want it to or not.”
The man, excited, not giving a damn about California, climbed into the helo. “I can’t wait to talk to Mona. She’s really going to sky out. Is there anything you want me to tell them when I get up there? Any messages?”
“Yeah,” Crane said. “Tell them to do the right thing.” He shut the man’s door and smiled at him. Then he turned and walked away, Hill hacking beside him.
“You know you didn’t leave yourself enough time to pack,” the man said, leading Crane toward a passenger helo in the midst of the swarm.
“That’s all right,” Crane said casually. “There’s nothing I need to hold on to.”
“You’re in a hell of a good mood today. I figured today would be a bitch for you, was wonderin’ how I’d keep you glued together when you knew your dream was really over.”
Crane put his arm around the big man’s shoulder. “Nothing’s ever over, Burt. The circles just spin smaller. Besides, I did everything I could to avert this catastrophe—everything.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Yes!” Crane answered emphatically, “Gloriously crazy. Today is just the beginning, Burt.”
“The beginning of what?”
“Stage two.” Crane winked.
Hill shook his head. “I’ll get somebody to pack your stuff up while we’re gone,” he said, reaching the sleek, bulbous ship, climbing in to help Crane up.
“Whatever.”
The seats were plush, and Crane sank back into his, eyes still fixed on the Foundation compound, the chalets on the hills, the covered walkway from Lanie’s level to his. He’d never see these places again, yet felt no remorse. They’d live on in their own way.
The ship rose smoothly into the air, its props silent as they angled toward Los Angeles. The sky was full of ships, hundreds of thousands of people getting out, heading to refugee camps in Oregon and Arizona. No matter how many times it was explained to the population that everything from the Imperial Valley north to San Francisco would be gone, most people still thought in terms of a quake they’d bounce back from, in terms of returning to their homes after the temblors were done.
He wasn’t sure what the fate of Baja was to be. Cosmies in huge numbers were pouring into the area even as so many others left. They intended to declare Baja a free nation the moment it broke from the continent, an island republic belonging to them. It was even possible they could pull it off. There was no power structure in America that would try and stop them and the Islamic world was already crumbling under its own puffed-up weight as the remaining non-Islamic world forged defensive and economic alliances against them. New, streamlined power brokers were emerging from such places as Stockholm and Toronto. Islam had always been as much an emotional issue as an economic one. Once it had reached the limits of its fierce domination of the world, its members immediately began to squabble among themselves and wither as a group. He loved to watch the wheel turn.