They had to float in the water, holding onto each other in a triangle. The rescue crews left them there for another hour before fishing them out, and barely a word passed between them.

And in the middle of all this robust Russian training, they were visited by Frank Turtle and his team, red-eyed from jet lag and overwork, with bundles of charts and vu-graphs and laptops, who took Geena and Arkady through the procedures they were working out in such haste: procedures for the real mission, beyond the technicalities of Soyuz and Station — the flight to the Moon itself.

But still, final approval for launch didn’t come.

Then, one August morning, Henry was woken, to see the new images, of fire and ash and flood coming out of the west coast of America, and he knew there would be no more hesitation.

20

The editorial review was not going well. And, Joely Stern thought with dismay, it was only 9.00 a.m.

Cecilia Stanley, her editor, read from the copy glowing on her screen. “…And from there Earthquake and Thunder went south… They went south first and sank the ground… Every little while there would be an earthquake, then another earthquake, and another earthquake… And then the water would fill those places… ‘That is what human beings will thrive on,’ said Earthquake… Shit, Joely. Earthquake and Thunder. What is this, Sesame Street?”

Joely kept her temper. She’d already lost it once too often in this job.

As an insurance, though, she had her ID in her pocket, in case she was fired on the spot.

“It’s a Yurok myth,” she said evenly.

Sitting behind her desk of expensive dressed stone, Cecilia was a severe, toothy woman of thirty-five. A classic corporate climber; a devourer of souls, thought Joely. “And just what,” Cecilia said in her cool way, “precisely is a Yurok?”

“They’re the natives of this region. The Pacific coast. The legend seems to be a reference to a massive quake in this region in prehistoric times. 1700. A folk memory.”

“If it’s prehistoric, how do you know it was 1700?”

Smartass. “Because they cross-correlated it with a tsunami that washed up across the Pacific, in Honshu.”

“Where?”

“Japan. And that was recorded. And, look, the legend describes what should happen. When the fault gives way the edge of the North American plate slips forward, and what used to be an upward fold in the plate catapults into a downward fold. The sea rushes in, and brings in sediment. And that enriches the land, like the man said. It’s happened several times. They’ve found layers of sea bottom mud and sand over ancient peat.”

Cecilia rubbed her eyes. “Sea bottom mud. Native Americans nobody heard of. Look, Joely, this just isn’t what we’re looking for.” She glanced at Joely. “I’m expecting anger from you here.”

Joely thought it over. She said carefully, “I think I used up my anger. I used it up on all the times you undermined my authority by sending out my copy to those shit-for-brain buddies of yours scattered around the corporation, and having them blind-side me with their e-mails.”

“Joely—”

“All this after you said I had autonomy. At least now you’re being straight with me.”

“This isn’t personal,” Cecilia said. “It’s editorial. Don’t you get that? I don’t want nursery school songs about peat, for Christ’s sake. I want NASA and the USGS and FEMA. Now, if you could have gotten hold of that guy Meacher, the one who’s been shooting his mouth off about going to the Moon, we might have something—”

There was a boom, like remote thunder.

They stared at each other.

Cecilia said, “What the hell was that?”

Joely laughed. It can’t be. Not right on cue.

They went to the window. Cecilia, as a permanent employee of Virtuelle, had a corner office, of course, up here on the third floor. The biggest window faced west, towards the Puget Sound.

The day was clear, if oddly smoggy. They had a good view of the campus. On one of the neat squares of grass a cat was standing. It was facing north, standing oddly, with its legs apart…

Far to the west, over the ocean, there was a giant electrical storm raging. It was a bank of thick black cloud, roiling, spread right along the horizon.

There was sheet lightning, cracking in the gaps in the cloud, and what looked like fireballs, tossed into the air like popcorn. Ball lightning, maybe.

“I think it’s a quake,” Joely said. “A big one.”

“Oh, you’re an expert,” Cecilia said.

“That black stuff could be dust, thrown up by the quake. The rock shears, the water vaporizes… You get a build-up of electricity…” She glanced around the campus. “These buildings — they conform to the California building code. Right?”

“This isn’t California.” Cecilia looked confused. “How would I know?”

“Well, they look like tilt-up construction to me.”

“Is that bad?”

The thunder was replaced by a low rumbling noise overlaid by a crackle, a series of short bangs that sounded like gravel on a tin roof.

Joely listened intently to the low-frequency rumble, fascinated. She knew what that was. She was hearing the shortest-wavelength seismic waves, listening to the vibration of the Earth itself. The longest waves, with a period of an hour or so, corresponded to the whole Earth’s resonant frequency, and were much too low-frequency to hear.

The planet was ringing like a bell.

Now, above the storm, there was a strange cloud formation. Something like a smoke ring, Joely thought, a loose band of fluffy white. Maybe that was the acoustic pressure wave, rising up towards the stratosphere. The satellites would detect it later, a displacement of the atmosphere’s layers by a mile or more.

Now Cecilia was starting to sound nervous. “What’s going on? Are we safe here?”

“I don’t know. That storm front must be hundreds of miles long.”

“But we’re safe, right?”

Of course not. “…Yes. I guess so.”

Cecilia was silent.

On impulse, Joely reached out and took Cecilia’s hand.

Joely thought of the cat. Animals knew how to brace themselves like that, standing with their legs apart, cross-ways to the shock.

That cat is smarter than I am, she thought.

Now there was movement.

A couple of the pine trees at the edge of the campus tipped up, locking their branches together like clasping hands. When they sprang apart, their trunks cracked, and burst into showers of matchwood.

Another line of trees, closer, popped out of the ground, roots and all, like wooden rockets.

Incoming, Joely thought.

“Holy shit,” said Cecilia.

…And then it hit.

It came in a second, without warning. The floor just disappeared from beneath her, and she was thrown into the air — like a kid in her father’s arms — her nose was inches from the ceiling… Then she fell, landing heavily on her back.

An instant of stillness. Something falling to the floor with a soft explosion, maybe Cecilia’s pc monitor. Glass, she thought, and she closed her eyes.

She’d had Cecilia’s hand wrenched out of her grasp in that first moment. She opened her mouth to call her.

Slam, under her back.

Again she was thrown into the air.

She landed with a grunt, on her front this time, mercifully clear of furniture.

And now the ground was pitching. She lay flat, spread-eagled, trying not to be turned over. It was like being on a violent sea, she thought — but not quite, for the motion was compound, shaking her up and down and side to side. More as if she was a flea on the back of a dog, shaking after a swim.

She was surrounded by explosions. The window burst, creating a new hail of glass fragments over her neck and head. The wall cracked with a report like gunfire.

Then the whole building fell, just like that, dropping through several feet, and she landed hard on her front again.