Elizabeth slipped the video into her cassette player and sat down. When it started, Otto Prable was slumped in a chair. He wore a dark suit and tie, the same suit he’d worn when he took his life. His face was ghastly. Hollow cheeks, deep-set eyes that peered out from the sockets. His skull showed through his skin.
Holding a clipboard on his lap, he smiled at the camera.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” he said, clearing his throat. “I don’t have much strength and I tire easily, so I want to get right down to business. Joanne is recording all this. Joanne, say hello to Elizabeth.”
“Hello there, Elizabeth,” his wife said in a light, almost musical voice. “It’s bad enough I have to listen to Otto. Now I’ve got to film him.”
It was so strange for Elizabeth to hear Joanne Prable speak her name. She kept picturing her as she lay on the floor of her bedroom. Elizabeth had to force herself to put the image out of her mind.
There were so many other memories of the Prables: party hosts, intrepid tour guides to northern California, and ballroom dancers. They’d taken up dancing fairly late in life, when Joanne thought it would help her husband get his mind off recent prostate surgery. They were both naturals on the dance floor and were soon winning state competitions, even giving lessons. Elizabeth had gone to several dance contests and marveled at how sexy they looked together, Joanne in a tight blue lame gown with a daring slit skirt and her robust husband in a white tux. That image lingered, as did the many times she’d met them casually. Joanne loved literature and art and was continually forcing Prable to read her latest best-selling discovery. A beautiful couple.
Now she saw Prable sitting in what looked like his front room. A large fireplace was off to the side.
“Elizabeth, you know what I do,” he said. “I’m a climatologist. I analyze long-range weather patterns and make predictions on how changes in the weather affect agriculture, the amount of grain shipped from the Midwest, or the need for more heating fuel during an unusually cold winter. As a consequence of my work, I’ve become interested in solar activity. The impact of sunspots and other solar events on our planet and on our weather cycles. More out of curiosity than anything else. At least that’s how it started. I began to plot earthquakes according to periods of peak solar activity and found some curious relationships. The eight greatest quakes on record in this century, starting with the San Francisco quake of 1906, all happened at times of extreme solar activity.
“I also plotted,” Prable said, checking his clipboard, “these large quakes according to the earth’s position relative to the sun. Most happened during perihelion, the period when the sun is closest to earth. The bigger quakes tend to bunch up in the months of December and January and close to perihelion. The northern hemisphere was especially vulnerable, possibly because perihelion falls there during the winter. These were also periods of high tides, and as you probably remember I’ve spent a lot of time these last few years looking at how the tides affect our weather.
“I find it extremely interesting that the data from the Apollo space missions to the moon show all kinds of lunar earthquakes happening at perigee, the point where the moon’s orbit is closest to the earth. That’s also a time of maximum tidal pull, and if I’m correct in my analysis, the period of maximum earthquake stress. Clusters of quakes, some of them huge, happen during periods of strong solar activity and tidal pulls.”
Prable looked up and stared directly into the camera. Elizabeth gave a nervous start. He seemed to be staring straight into her eyes.
He managed a weak smile. “I know what’s probably running through your mind about now, Elizabeth. You’re thinking, ‘Oh, God. Not another tidal stress theory to explain earthquakes.’ I understand your skepticism. I felt the same way until I started looking at where these solar and tidal forces were most likely to have some impact. I concluded that a band of latitude running from roughly eighty-two to ninety-three degrees north will be subject to extremely strong tidal forces on or about January twentieth. Then I began to plot areas where stresses were building on known earthquake faults. Weak, unstable places that might be susceptible to tidal triggering. I ran my own computer analysis. Information from the Global Positioning System was especially valuable. The GPS readings showed me how the topography of an area had changed over time—land movement, uplift, and compression. I was able to compare horizontal and vertical displacements with land surveys from the fifties, your basic topo maps. That helped me identify faults where the crust had shifted the most, where stress was building.”
Elizabeth had recently begun using GPS readings in her own work. Geologists had only recently begun to use the satellite system to map topography. The measurement system was based on triangulation. The precision was breathtaking. Locations down to a couple of millimeters could be pinpointed from space. It was possible to track how the earth’s crust was moving and changing from one year to the next.
“My conclusion from all this, Elizabeth, the reason I made this tape for you, is that I believe there’s a good chance for a serious quake, possibly a magnitude 7, somewhere in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The topography data shows an unusually heavy buildup of stress there. My projections indicate the greatest likelihood for such a quake will be during a period two or three days on either side of January twentieth. What makes the New Madrid fault particularly interesting to me is its history.
“As you know, it’s produced some of the strongest earthquakes ever to happen in the northern hemisphere. These tremors happened after almost two years of virtually no sunspot activity whatsoever. We’ve just gone through a similar period. It’s only been in the last three months that the solar flares and sunspots have picked up again. Heavy solar activity is predicted for January sixteenth. That’s four days before the date of maximum tidal pull.”
The theory here, never proven but much debated, was that solar flares and sunspots unleashed powerful solar winds, thereby increasing the number of charged particles streaming from the sun. The solar winds could cause turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere, turbulence that could affect the planet’s rotation. These slight variations in rotation, so the theory went, could trigger earthquakes.
Prable was visibly weakening. He’d slumped lower in his chair and was having difficulty breathing. He looked into the camera and smiled again. It was taking more effort. The pain showed in the tightness at the corners of his mouth.
“I had my last chemo yesterday,” he said. “I stopped it. Total waste of time. It knocks the hell out of me.”
Prable took a sip of water. “Elizabeth. Please understand that I haven’t limited my analysis solely to solar activity and geological stresses. I’ve also factored in some other data, which I’m more familiar with—weather assessments and river stages. The New Madrid Seismic Zone cuts straight across the Mississippi River, which drains the entire upper Midwest. That region has sustained almost nine straight months of near-record rainfall. The Mississippi and Ohio rivers have hovered at or near flood stage for five months out of the last eleven. It’s likely that more water, in the form of melted snow, will come downstream in the next month or so. All that water will increase the stress on the fault, making it more vulnerable to fracture.
“I’ll make the rest of this brief. I can’t talk much longer. I want you to check my data. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake, miscalculated somewhere. I don’t believe so, and I’m not afraid to tell you that even though I’m dying, it frightens the living shit out of me. If a large quake hit on the New Madrid Seismic Zone with anywhere near the magnitude of those in the early nineteenth century, it would be a disaster, a national calamity. In my opinion worse, by far, than the Civil War.”
Prable waved his hand at the camera, a feeble gesture. “You’ll have to do what you think best with all of this, Elizabeth. I wish I were there to help. If there’s anything to what my wife the Roman Catholic has been telling me these last few months, maybe I will be able to help you. In spirit as they say.”
Prable smiled, a warm, open smile that radiated from his gaunt face.
“I’ve changed my will. You are now one of my favored beneficiaries. My net worth may come as a surprise. You’ll soon be a wealthy woman, Elizabeth. Consider it partial payment for what I’ve done to you.”
The tape went blank. Elizabeth sat there unable to move, transfixed by what she’d just seen. She closed her eyes and could still see his face.
