“Here they are,” Lehrman said as the screens blanked.

Crockerman apparently had been told what to expect. Lines of glowing white rimmed in red and blue-green laced across a midnight-black background. “You know,” Crockerman said softly, standing back from the screens, “I was right after all. Goddammit, Irwin, I was right, and I was wrong at the same time. How do you figure that?”

Schwartz stared at the glowing lines, not making any sense of them until a grid and labels came up with the display. This was the North Atlantic; the lines were trenches, midocean ridges and faults.

“The white,” Lehrman said, “is heat residue from thermonuclear explosions. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, maybe tens of thousands — all along the Earth’s deep-ocean seams and wrinkles.”

The First Lady half sobbed, half caught her breath. Crockerman stared at the displays with a sad grin.

“Now the western Pacific,” Lehrman said. More white lines. “By the way, Hawaii has been heavily assaulted by tsunamis. The West Coast of North America is about twenty, thirty minutes away from major waves; I’d guess it’s already been hit by waves from these areas.” He pointed to stacks of white lines near Alaska and California. “The damage could be extensive. The energy released by all the explosions is enormous; weather patterns around the world will change. The Earth’s heat budget…” He shook his head. “But I doubt we’ll be given much time to worry about it.”

“It’s a softening up?” Schwartz asked.

Lehrman shrugged. “Who can understand the design, or what this means? We’re not dead yet, so it’s a preliminary; that’s all anybody knows. Seismic stations all over are reporting heavy anomalistic fault behavior.”

“I don’t think the bullets have collided yet,” Crockerman said. “Irwin’s hit the nail on the head. It’s a softening up.”

Lehrman sat down at the large diamond-shaped table and held out his hands: your guess is as good as mine.

“I think we have maybe an hour, maybe less,” the President said. “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing we could have ever done.”

Schwartz studied the Diamond Apple displays with a slight squint. They still conveyed no convincing reality. They were attractive abstractions. What did Hawaii look like now? What would San Francisco look like in a few minutes? Or New York?

“I’m sorry not everybody is here,” Crockerman said. “I’d like to thank them.”

“We’re not evacuating…again?” Schwartz asked automatically.

Lehrman gave him a sharp, ironic look. “We don’t have a lunar settlement, Irwin. The President, when he was a senator, was instrumental in getting those funds cut in 1990.”

“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.