movement in California and along the West Coast. You may have read or seen something on television about how scientists are trying to figure ways of defusing earthquakes before stress between plates gets so severe that one plate slips and there's a major earthquake.'
'So,' Rourke said thoughtfully, studying the girl's face— she had green eyes. 'So you were studying plate movement here to get a handle on what— other than geologic age— has contributed to stability and to learn what you could engineer into this defusing process.'
'Yeah,' she interrupted him. 'Exactly. So we could learn what we might be able to do to stabilize plate movement on the West Coast. If we investigated the end result of a quiescent fault system then we might learn what sort of things we could do to relieve plate tensions on the West Coast.'
'Was it working?' Rourke asked her.
'Yes— I think so. I mean, all the preliminary data we were accumulating seemed to indicate our research was going along the right direction and everything. But it was really too early to tell, then there was the—' The girl stopped, turning her face away to stare at the ground.
'What? Were you sort of like Noah's dove— they sent you out to see if there were still a world left?'
'No,' she answered, her voice so soft Rourke could barely hear it. He guessed the girl was about twenty- seven or twenty-eight. And Rourke also guessed there was something that was frightening her, more terribly than the pursuit of the Brigands or even the War itself.
'You discovered something, something that couldn't wait any longer,' he surmised.
'Yes— we did. It was really an accident, but we're certain about the findings, at least as certain as we can be without field investigation on the spot. I don't know if that's possible. We figured somebody had to tell the Army, or even if the Russians had won the War, tell them. Somebody had to do something. And there isn't time to wait.'
'Tell them what?' Rourke asked her, studying the glowing reddish tip of his cigar.
'Who won the War?' The girl looked at him, her eyes wide.
'We all lost— the Soviets have some troops over here, but... You're a scientist, you should see that better than I do. If it's summer now— then why are we wearing heavy clothes, why has the temperature been dipping to the freezing mark at night? What did you find?'
'Tell me one thing first— was the West Coast bombed heavily.'
'You have people there?'
'Yes, but— from a scientific standpoint, I need to know. Do you know?'
'Apparently the fault line ruptured under the impact of the explosions there— the old fears about California slipping off into the sea. Well,' Rourke sighed, 'it happened— there is no West Coast anymore. None— it's gone.'
The girl made the sign of the cross, staring down at the ground, heavy sobbing her only response to his words.
Rourke stood up, walking toward the river bank, studying the water, the tip of his cigar, the toes of his black combat boots. He heard her voice behind him, the words difficult to understand through the sounds of her tears. 'Did they bomb Florida?' But the girl didn't wait for him to answer as he turned to face her. He watched as she stared straight ahead into the trees.
'Well— then we're right. The night of the bombing.'
'The Night of the War?' Rourke almost whispered. 'The bombing did something that shouldn't have been possible, but it created an artificial fault line— I guess you'd call it that. The instruments we had implanted all up and down the coast went insane when the bombs dropped that night. But they were built to withstand massive shock and most of them held up. We then found a fault line that wasn't there before the War, gradually growing. It could be days from now, just a few, but it could also be hours. There's going to be an earthquake, one of the most massive ever recorded. There could be thousands of people killed. Maybe millions. I don't know how many people there are down there since the War began. But soon—' The girl sobbed heavily. Rourke took a few steps nearer to her, then dropped to one knee beside her. 'Soon, there's going to be an earthquake along that new fault line, and it will separate the Florida peninsula from the rest of the continent and the peninsula will crash down into the sea. There should be tidal waves all along the coast, into the Gulf too. But the whole Florida Peninsula will disappear from the face of the earth.'
The girl looked up at him, turning around awkwardly because of her wounds. Rourke saw something pleading in her eyes and he folded her into his arms, letting her cry against his chest.
'So many, so many people— Jesus,' the girl cried.
Rourke looked down into the girl's hair, then over his shoulder toward the ferry boat. The motorcycle on the deck was almost completely out of gasoline after the high-speed chase. 'Paul,' Rourke whispered.
'My God...'
Rourke let the girl cry for a while— the tension of everything that had happened to her demanded it, he realized. He guessed she'd been close to some of the people who had died in the San Andreas quake that had wiped out California. And now she saw it happening all over again. She said nothing else yet, but Rourke realized now why she had been sent by the others of her team. The knowledge of the impending disaster had forced them to do something. Rourke wondered silently if Cuba or perhaps the Russians could be somehow alerted to help in the evacuation. Certainly the government of United States II should be told. All three had a stake in the population of Florida. Rourke wondered how many men, women, and children had survived the Night of the War, the reported Communist Cuban occupation.
There was his own search for Sarah and the children to consider. But perhaps they would be near the coast where the tidal waves provide a built-in warning as the tides begin rising. There would at least be a chance for them, Rourke thought. But his friend Paul Rubenstein was likely in Florida by now. There would be no chance for him. Rourke thought about the young man. Before the Night of the War, neither had known the other existed. And in the space of a few hours after the crash of the diverted jetliner they had all ridden, Rourke and Paul Rubenstein—
ultimately the only two survivors from the passengers and crew— had begun the friendship that had carried them across two-thirds of the United States. Rourke suddenly realized he had no idea why the New York City-based editor with a trade magazine had been in Canada to begin with and headed toward Atlanta. Rourke shook his head, a smile crossing his lips.
Rourke thought about himself a moment. He had made few friends in his life, had always had few relatives.
