“My mistake,” Crockerman said, his tone almost bantering. At that moment, had Schwartz had a pistol, he would have killed the man; his anger was a helpless, undirected passion that could just as easily leave him in tears as draw him into violence. The displays conveyed no reality; Crockerman, however, conveyed it all.
“We really are children,” Schwartz said after the flush had gone out of his face and his hands had stopped trembling. “We never had a chance.”
Crockerman looked around as the floor shook beneath their feet. “I’m almost anxious for the end,” he said. “I hurt so bad inside.”
The shaking became more violent.
The First Lady held the doorframe and then leaned on the table. Schwartz reached out to help her to a chair. Secret Service agents entered the room, struggling to stay on their feet, catching hold of the table edge. After Schwartz had seated the First Lady, he sat down again himself and gripped the wooden arms of the chair. The shaking was not dying away; it was getting worse.
“How long will it take, do you think?” Crockerman asked nobody in particular.
“Mr. President, we should get you out of the building and onto the grounds,” said the agent who had made the most progress into the situation room; His voice quavered. He was terrified. “Everybody else, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Crockerman said. “If the roof fell on me now, it would be a goddamn blessing. Right, Irwin?” His smile was bright, but there were tears in his eyes.
The display on the screen went out, and the lights in the room dimmed shortly after, to return with less conviction.
Schwartz stood. Time once again to be an example. “I think we should let these men do their job, Mr. President.” He had a sudden heavy sensation in his stomach, as if he were in a fast-rising elevator. Crockerman stumbled and an agent caught him. The rising sensation continued, seemingly forever, and then stopped with a suddenness that lifted the White House a fraction of an inch from its foundations. The framework of steel beams that had been built into the White House shell in the late forties and early fifties squealed and groaned, but held. Plaster fell in clouds and patches from the ceiling and a rich wood panel split with a loud report.
Schwartz heard the President calling his name. From where he lay on the floor — somehow he had rolled under the table — he tried to answer, but all the breath had been knocked out of him. Gasping, blinking, wiping plaster dust from his eyes, he listened to a hideous creaking and splitting noise overhead. He heard enormous thuds outside — stone facing coming loose, he guessed, or columns toppling. He was forcibly reminded of so many movies about the demise of ancient cities by earthquake or volcano, huge blocks of marble tumbling onto crowds of hapless citizens.
Not the White House…Surely not that.
“Irwin, Otto…” The President again. A pair of legs walking with short jerks near the table.
“Under here, sir,” Schwartz said. He saw a brief portrait of his wife in his mind, her features indistinct, as if he looked at an old, badly focused picture. She smiled. Then he saw their daughter, married and living in South Carolina…if the ocean had spared her.
Again the rising. He was pressed to the floor. It was brief, only a second or two, but he knew it was enough. When it stopped, he waited for the collapse of the upper floors, eyes scrunched tight. Jesus, is the entire eastern seaboard going up? The wait and the silence seemed interminable. Schwartz could not decide whether to open his eyes again…or to wait out the long seconds, feeling the sway of the building above.
He turned his head to one side and opened his eyes.
The President had fallen and lay faceup beside the table, ghost-white with dust. His eyes were open but not aware.
The White House regained its voice and screamed like a thing alive.
The massive legs of the table buckled and exploded in splinters. They could not withstand the weight of tons of cement and steel and stone.
71
Quaint, Edward thought; quaint and touching and he wished he could muster up the emotion to join them; a group of twenty or more had gathered by now in a circle a hundred yards behind the Granite Point, singing hymns and more folk songs. Betsy clung to him on the asphalt path. Fresh tremors had subsided, but the air itself seemed to be grumbling, complaining.
Ironically, having climbed the trail to have a good vantage, they now stood well back from the rim. A foot-wide crack had appeared in the terrace stonework. From where they stood, they could see only the upper third of the opposite wall of the valley.
“You’re a geologist,” Betsy said, massaging his neck with one hand, something he had not asked her to do, but which felt good. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“No,” he said.
“It’s not just an earthquake, though?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So it’s beginning now. We just got up here.”
He nodded and swallowed back a lump of fear. Now that it had come, he was near panic. He felt trapped, claustrophobic, with only all of the Earth and sky to move in — not even that, lacking wings. He felt squeezed between steel plates of gravity and his own puny weakness. His body was forcibly reminding him that fear was difficult to control, and presence of mind in the face of death was rare.
“God,” Betsy said, placing her cheek against his, looking toward the Point. She was shaking, too. “I thought at least we’d have time to talk about it, sit around a campfire…”
Edward held her more tightly. He imagined her as a wife, and then thought of Stella, marveling at the fickleness of his fantasies; he was grasping for many lives, now that his own seemed so short. Over his fear he thought of long years together with both of them.
The tremors had almost passed.
The hymn singers continued searching for a common key, hopelessly lost. Minelli and Inez came from the trees and climbed the hill between the close switchbacks of the asphalt path. Minelli whooped out loud and ran his hand through his hair. “Jesus, isn’t adrenaline great?”
“He’s crazy,” Inez said, breathing hard, her face pale. “Maybe not the craziest I’ve met, but close.”
“Does it feel warmer to you?” Betsy asked.
Edward considered that possibility. Would heat transmit itself before a shock wave? No. If the bullets were colliding, or had collided only a short time ago, deep in the center of the Earth, the expanding and irresistible plasma of their mutual destruction would crack the Earth wide before heat could ever reach the surface.
“I don’t think it’s warmer because of…the end,” Edward said. He had never felt his mind racing so rapidly over so many subjects. He wanted to see what was happening in the valley.
“Shall we?” he asked, pointing to the terraces and the still-intact rim.
“What else did we come here for?” Minelli asked, laughing and shaking his head like a wet dog. Sweat flew from his hair. He whooped again and took Inez’s plump hand, dragging her across the gravel to the terraces.
“Minelli,” she protested, looking back at them for help. Edward glanced at Betsy, and she nodded once, face flushed.
“I am so terrified” she whispered. “It’s like being high.” They walked together toward the edge. “I pity all those folks who stayed home. I really do.”
The two couples stood alone on the terrace, looking down into the valley. Not much had changed; there was no visible damage, not at first glance, anyway. Then Minelli pointed to a thick column of smoke. “Look.”
The Ahwanee was on fire. Nearly the entire hotel was ablaze.
“I love that old place,” Betsy said. Inez moaned and wrung her hands.
“How much longer, do you think?” Inez asked, her expression that of someone about to sneeze, or shriek. She did neither.