Oh hell, he thought.
Larry raised his hands and pressed them against the side of the barge, as if he could hold it off him by strength alone. He knew it was futile, but it was all he could do.
The barge carried him back to the island, and crushed him against the merciless stone with all the weight of the steel hull and the big container flasks and the nuclear fuel.
Larry felt his rib cage cave in. Pain roared like a lion in his skull. He thought of plains and mountain flowers and the way Low Die shifted under him, all the powerful muscle and tendon under his control. Stupid, he thought, a stupid way to die.
The barge rebounded from the island, releasing Larry to slide below the surface. As water poured into Larry’s unresisting lungs, the barge spun on down the foam-flecked river, trailing on the end of its cable the mooring stanchion that had torn free of Poinsett Island.
THIRTY-FIVE
Messrs. Miner & Butler,
A very singular phenomenon took place near Angelica, in the country of Allegany, on Monday morning the 16th of December, which I will state, as related to me by one of the eye witnesses. Early in the morning, about sunrise as sitting at breakfast, he had a strange feeling, and supposed at first that he was fainting, but as his sight did not fail, he then concluded that he was going into a fit, and removed his chair back from the table. —He then had a sensation as though the house was swinging and observed clothes hanging on lines in the room were swinging, as also a large kettle hanging over the fire. He observed that his wife and family appeared to be greatly alarmed, and still supposing that it was in consequence of his apparently falling into a fit, but on enquiry found that all felt the same sensation. This continued as he supposed for at least 15 minutes. There was no noise or trembling, nor any wind, but only an appearance of swinging or rocking, as he supposed, equal to the house rocking two feet one way and the other. —One of his neighbors felt the same, and on the opposite side of the river, at the farmhouse and dwelling house of Phillip Church, the same motions and sensations were felt. Mrs. Church was in bed, and when she first felt the motion, and a strange sensation as if suffocating, she jumped out of bed, supposing the house was on fire. The motion was so considerable as to set all the bells in the several rooms a ringing, and an inside door was observed to swing open and shut. The same motions were felt up the river, about eight miles above, at a house near a small brook; the people ran out of the house, and observed the water to have the same motion. Accounts state, that the same motions have been felt at sundry other places 30 miles distant. I could relate many other similar motions felt and perceived at the same time, but leave it for the present. How to account for it I know not. If you think it worthy of notice, you may make it public, and if the same or similar motions have been felt at other places, doubtless it will be communicated. I should like to hear it accounted for on rational principles.
“God damn, not again!”
Jessica sat with Pat beneath the kitchen table and listened to the house bang around them. They had moved back into their house only hours before—Jessica, her head echoing with the President’s bizarre call, concluded that the emergency had ebbed to the point where she didn’t need to be physically present at headquarters every minute of the day—and the quake struck just as they were eating their first home-cooked meal since before the emergency. Jessica had prepared tagliarini verdi ghiottona, lovely green pasta noodles with a sauce of onions, tomatoes, carrots, chicken livers, veal, and ham—the recipe called for prosciutto, which was not precisely available, but one of the civilians she’d helped in the early days of M1 had given her a smoked Cajun ham, which proved an effective substitute. When the P wave hit and the house gave a sudden leap, Jessica and Pat slid neatly beneath the table before the S waves had a chance to reach them. Each kept a firm grip on priorities, and therefore retained both plate and fork.
“Right in the middle of fucking dinner!” Jessica muttered as the moaning quake enveloped them. Platters bounced loudly over her head. Something went smash in the bedroom. She was beginning to miss her helmet.
“At least there aren’t any operations going on right now,” Pat commented. His voice was as conversational as the circumstances permitted, shouting over the banging furniture and moaning earth.
“I hope I don’t lose an eye,” Jessica said. Rayleigh waves rattled her teeth as she spoke.
“I was hoping to keep your mind off that.”
“That was good of you.”
A wineglass walked off the edge of the table. Jessica snatched for it in midair, but the earth took a lurch at that instant and robust red wine splattered over the dining room floor. The solid Baccarat crystal, the sort of glassware out of which a major general was expected to serve her guests, didn’t so much as chip. She closed her right eye and peered out with her damaged left, tried to determine if she was losing any vision. But the earth was heaving and leaping too much for her to keep her eye focused on anything long enough.
The earth thrashed a few last times and then the vibrations died down. In the precarious silence, Jessica took a defiant bite of her dinner, handed the plate to Pat, and cautiously ventured into the front room to find her cellphone in the corner, having leaped from where she’d placed it on the coffee table. It was already ringing.
She was in communication with her headquarters immediately, and with Washington in a few minutes. Her staff were well practiced by now; they smoothly gathered information and fed it to her as it arrived. Jessica had time to scarf her dinner before Sergeant Zook arrived with her car. Pat stayed behind to get the house in order. On her way to headquarters in the Humvee, she hit the speed dialer number for Larry Hallock, but didn’t get an answer.
She tried three more times over the next hour, then tried some other numbers. She was unable to raise anyone at Poinsett Island. Then she got absorbed in her work, in the information flooding in and the deployments that needed to be made, and didn’t try calling again.
It was while looking at a hastily made printout of Prime Power deployments that she absently raised her hand to her right eye and looked at the list with her left.
A chill whispered up her spine as she realized that her left eye had gone blurry. She looked at the list for the length of three long, slow heartbeats, then reached for her cellphone and hit Pat’s speed dial number.
“Do you know the gentleman I saw this morning?” she said. “The gentleman in Jackson?”
“Yes.”
“I need to see him again,” Jessica said. “I need you to make the appointment.”
“Are you—”
“It’s not like it was last time,” Jessica said. “The situation has improved, but I still need to see the gentleman.”
“Jessica,” Pat said, “you are not keeping this job at the expense of your sight.”
“I hear you,” said Jessica, and rang off.
Her phone chirped again the instant she returned it to her pocket. Her caller was Helen Hallock, Larry’s wife, wondering if her husband had checked in. “When I last talked to him, he was about to call for his helicopter.”