Lanie gulped. “After all—after everything—I mean, I—”
“Because of my past support of the Nation of Islam nearly destroying my career?” He nodded grimly. “I’ve got Crane’s support on this now. And it’s important, Lanie, very important—for the Foundation and for every Africk alive.” He took her arm.
Guests were brushing by in the exodus from the deck and Newcombe was drawing her aft toward the spot where she saw that Sumi had backed Crane against the rail. Sumi’s small fist pounded Crane’s chest.
“Disaster,” Sumi shouted. “The man’s a wanted criminal, a total brigand. Such an affront to Mr. Li… He will own me. Own me, I tell you. Why didn’t you let me know about this?” he demanded of Crane, clearly beside himself with anger and fear.
“Would you have drawn the others here had you known?” Crane asked.
“Certainly not!”
Crane merely shrugged.
“Sedition, aiding and abetting—”
“Diplomacy,” Crane said. “Peacemaking. And good politics. You will see, Sumi, you will see.”
“I fear I will see nothing except my head on a plate held by Mr. Li Cheun.”
“Your head? Not likely.” Crane roared with laughter, then quickly sobered. He stared at Sumi, patted his frail shoulders, calming the man. “Is our other little surprise in place?” Sumi nodded. “Very well, then I suggest you start making calls on the occupants of each cabin with your synthchampagne in one hand and your little green bottle in the other, okay? Tell them we will reassemble here in ten minutes.” He glanced at his wrist pad. “Perfect timing.”
“Yesss,” Sumi hissed, turning abruptly and rushing across the deck. He got halfway before he said over his shoulder, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and sink.”
Lanie looked from Newcombe to Crane. She felt way out of her depth, a little lost. She needed her ten minutes alone … to think, and quickly excused herself to make her way back up to the observation deck. Actually, she fled, ran to the sanctuary high atop the ship. There, under the stars, she tried to digest the events of the evening so far. It was painful. She found herself unwilling, as always, to face the troubled world in which she lived. She dealt with the “realities” by trying to avoid them, by throwing herself into her work and personal affairs … or just blanking out. But Crane had launched her into a new orbit with a very high apex and, she knew, she had to face up to some very unpleasant facts, first and foremost, of course, this whole business with Mohammed Ishmael.
The Nation of Islam, the NOI, was dreaded and feared … and had been herded into the War Zones. She remembered that when the zones had first been created, her father had called them “ghettoes,” a word that was chilling to the daughter of a Jew, openly discriminated against during her teenage years after the Masada Option. But she’d been prepared for the discrimination. She’d grown up with terror that had emanated from her father, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. Germans had run the country from the time she was scarcely more than a toddler until she was almost a teenager, and, though they bent over backwards to disassociate themselves from their ancient Nazi past, the Germans nonetheless exhibited the kind of authoritarianism that made her father fear a concentration camp was being built around every corner.
She winced, and kept her eyes closed. Ugly. So ugly, the ways of humankind in its prejudices and hatreds and violence. People had been divided and pitted against each other by racial, religious, or ethnic differences ever since she could remember. She rarely let herself think about all that she and Dan and others had suffered, because it hurt too much. Tears collected in the corners of her still closed eyes.
Dan had told her the worst of his suffering had begun with the Safe Streets Act of 2005, when it had become almost illegal to have dark skin. The Act freed ignorant, prejudiced white Americans from the hypocrisy of political correctness to allow them to express their hatred openly. The curfews, housing restrictions, and other indignities imposed by the law had confined Africks to certain areas of cities and towns throughout the country and curtailed their liberty to a few restricted daylight hours. Along with successive and even more oppressive laws, the Streets Act had been responsible for creating the Zones; the rise of the militant Africk Islamic fundamentalists had been responsible for the modifier before “Zones”—War. No one knew precisely what went on within the War Zones. The NOI was supposed to be indoctrinating Africks, arming them, training them, and, indeed, there were violent skirmishes with the Federal Police Force ringing the zones that gave credence to all the rumors about what went on within.
The most wanted “criminal” of them all? Mohammed Ishmael. The man’s background of forceful resistance against the FPF, his rhetoric—well, everything about him, Lanie thought—made him one of the most wanted, hated, and allegedly dangerous men on the planet. Why had Crane brought him to this meeting? He should have foreseen the disruptive effect. More to the point, why had Dan made the contact with Mohammed Ishmael, who was known not to speak with any white person, and helped to get him here? Dan had supported the idea of NOI at the University of China, San Diego, been booted out, and very nearly ruined all his prospects. It made no sense. For Dan.
Lanie suddenly could see Crane’s strategy. As well as Mohammed Ishmael, he had induced Kate Masters, the head of the Women’s Political Association, and Aaron Bloom, the head of the Association of Retired Persons, to attend. Ishmael, Masters and Bloom represented the voting blocks in the United States of America. They were Crane’s stick with Liang Int, the real power. And the earthquake prediction project was the carrot Crane offered them all, the opportunity to save lives and property and trauma among their constituencies, or at least appear to do so … appear to care. And Liang Int was, of course, interested in the man-hours and buildings and equipment to be saved … protecting profit. Lanie shook her head sadly. Profit was the motivator of almost everyone everywhere in the world. Everyone except Crane and the handful of people like him and like her and Dan.
A gong sounded.
Lanie levered herself out of the deck chair, feeling more ambivalent than she ever had. Part of her wanted to run away from the politicos below; the other half wanted to race toward the excitement that Crane generated and the potential he was gambling everything on to realize tonight.
Chapter 3
THE GREAT RIFT, THE PACIFIC OCEAN
A huge submarine, its bubbled-out glass foresection like a giant, staring eye, sat starboard of the Diatribe, dwarfing the yacht. Deckhands were slipping out of the conning tower to throw lashing ropes to their counterparts on the yacht as the guests reassembled on its deck. VEMA II was emblazoned on the hull of the sub.
“Prepare to spend the rest of tonight beneath the ocean,” Crane announced. “I promise you an experience you’ll never forget.”
“Rift runner,” Newcombe said beneath his breath.
“Rift runner?” Lanie asked.
“Yeah. We’re going to see a mother giving birth.”
“Mother … what mother?”
“Mother Earth,” he replied.
Within minutes they’d all been herded into VEMA II’s observation hall. Crane stood at the head of a long table and smiled at the aggregate of crooks and bastards sitting before him. In all the world, he had determined, these were the people who could best give him what he had to have, and a more intensely self-serving lot of rogues he’d never seen. Camus had said that politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. So be it. If he couldn’t talk sense, he’d put on a show. It was, after all, how he’d survived the thirty years since the death of his parents.