“It completes my circle, too. I spent years thinking about this moment in prison … my own punishment, I suppose.”
“You’ve served your time, Dan.” Crane came back with the bottle and glasses and poured them each a highball glass full. “Let it go.”
“If you were me, could you let it go?”
Crane raised his glass. “I don’t know. Pick up your drink. To you, old friend.”
“To both of us,” Newcombe said, toasting, then grimacing at his first taste of alcohol in decades. “You seem awfully happy, considering this is the last day of your life.”
“Endings and beginnings,” Crane said. “You seem pretty happy yourself.”
“Are you kidding? I’m ecstatic. This is the first real decision I’ve made on my own in nearly thirty years. For seventeen years, I woke up with a hangman’s noose every morning. Death certainly holds no fear for me.”
“I died years ago,” Crane said, watching his glass of Scotch shake and shimmer, reacting to the vibrations running through the ground. “Then I came back. I realize now that life and death are only words. I don’t hate EQs anymore either. Funny how everything changes.” He took a long drink, his stomach already burning. “I’m going to get snookered.”
“Me, too,” Newcombe said. “And it’ll take about five minutes.”
Crane nodded. “I still don’t get you. My business here is long finished. I can’t wait to move on. But you … you’ve got a wife, a family, social and political responsibilities.”
“Let’s set the record straight about my responsibilities,” he said, opening his eyes wide and grinning. “It’s a funny story, but this is what I discovered after getting out of prison. My wife, who was sleeping with every man whose pants she could get off, personally killed her brother Ishmael, to get him out of the way. She had his murder passed off as an assassination and used it for propaganda purposes. Then she worked behind the scenes against her other brother, Martin, until I was set free. At that time she had her loyalists kill Martin Aziz so I could assume the position of public demigod and private servant.”
“I… I would never have guessed, never.”
“I’m not finished,” Newcombe said, taking another drink. “Prison changed me. I had no desire for power or fame on any level. I would have given anything to go back to geology, but there I was, stuck, the symbol of Islamic unity for millions of people. My wife said, ‘make the speeches.’ So I made the speeches she wrote. I was just her mouthpiece. I put my time in for the good of the people. Boy, there’s a loaded term. But Khadijah’s ambitions know no boundaries. There have been three attempts on my life. I was able to trace all three back to my loving wife, the last time aided by my loving son, who is apparently what this is all about. Trust me. Khadijah will rule New Cairo through Abu ibn Abu. She’s been ruling through me long enough. I’m happy to get the hell out.”
“That’s a damned poor way to live, Dan.”
Newcombe shook his head. “I didn’t want any of that. In the sixty-seven years of my life, my happiest—my best—years were spent with you, working on EQ-eco and running around the world chasing your damned demons. My work with you was the single best human gesture of my entire life.”
“My testimony at your hearing was mine,” Crane said. “It finally made me question myself. It humanized me. Lewis Crane was able to stop playing God. I thank Sumi for that. She was a hell of a woman.”
“To Sumi,” Newcombe said, raising his glass again.
Both men drank.
“You said something at that hearing I’ve never forgotten,” Newcombe said, both of them watching the ocean in the distance, slight smoke from a dozen different fires making the view hazy. “You said that you could free me without forgiving me and that I could go on with life without asking for forgiveness.” He shook his head. “I can’t. I want your forgiveness now, Crane. I don’t want to … move on without it.”
“I forgave you years ago, Dan,” Crane said. “I had to in order to go on with Charlestown, in order to put it behind me.”
“But you never told me.”
“No … I never did. And for that, I apologize. Seeing you today has been my chance to rectify that error in what I hope will be a profound way.”
They both drank, then refilled their glasses.
“Is Charlestown that Moon colony you’re tied up with?”
“Yeah,” Crane said, leaning close to Newcombe. “Do you have any money?”
“In my pocket, you mean?”
“No. Money, money.”
“I’m filthy with it,” Newcombe said. “Rulers of countries do quite nicely. I’ve managed to sock away several hundred million.”
“I want you to give it to me,” Crane said, “and I think we need to hurry.” He nodded out the window, buildings were swaying. The ground vibrations from the Imperial Valley quake were being felt this far north.
“What do you want it for? You’re getting ready to die, too.”
“Are you ported?” Crane asked, his voice slurring just a touch.
Newcombe nodded quickly.
Crane took a small chip out of his pad with tweezers from his pocket. He passed the tweezers to Newcombe, who was weaving, a touch high, missing the port at first, then hitting the slot and sitting back.
Crane smiled as Newcombe closed his eyes. The chip was a distillation of Charlestown, an optical/vid tour of the place overlaid with Crane’s emotions concerning it. And then there was The Plan.
The experience was designed to hit the brain like a thought stored lifelong, everything Crane knew and felt and believed about Charlestown soaking through osmosis into Newcombe’s mind in an instant—Crane’s feelings, his feelings. The speed of thought.
“Oh, yes …” Newcombe said, smiling, nodding. “This is nice. I understand.”
He tweezed the chip out. “This is amazing,” he said, passing it back to Crane, who slotted it into his pad, transmitting it for the first time to the Moon’s systems. “You can really do this?”
“Sumi thought it up,” he said. “Spent her last years working on it. We’re all a part of that globe, Dan.”
“Are you…”
“Asking you to join us? Yes! Will you?”
“Crane, you son of a bitch!” He laughed. “You’ve beat the system after all. Better believe I’ll join you. It’s the offer of a lifetime.”
“Good. Let’s get all your money first,” Crane replied. “I don’t think your wife and children need it.”
The rumble began then, loud, louder than Tokyo, the buildings outside shaking violently. They shook violently. Newcombe pointed to the floor, at rats charging out of the walls.
“You can’t escape it even in the nice places!” he called over the clatter of breaking glass and crockery. Crane grabbed the bottle just as their table fell over.
“Bank accounts,” Newcombe said, his pad automatically entering his accounts.
“Charlestown account,” Crane said to his pad. “Accept ID funds transfer.”
The building swayed, the glass of their windows popping out to plummet thirty stories to the ground. Huge structures collapsed all around outside. The ocean was throbbing and churning in the distance. It was beautiful, exciting.
“Transfer all funds,” Newcombe said, both men reaching out to place their thumbprint on the other’s pad.
“Transactions complete,” the pad returned in both aurals.
“Good man,” Crane said, pulling out another chip. “Now, hurry, put this in your port.”
“What is it?”
“I’m going to copy your mind and put it into the computers. That chip is blank.”
“Give it to me!” Newcombe yelled. A chair hurtled past. Newcombe went down hard, but protected the Scotch in his hand. The EQ roared all around them.