Fault Line

by Sarah Andrews

  “You’re talking about plate tectonic theory,” Pet said briskly. “The Earth’s crust is broken into large and small plates that are driven this way and that by those convection cells in the mantle, the molten layer below the crust transferring heat from the core outward. See? I know this stuff. The plates stretch apart, as here at the Wasatch fault, or they collide and push upward, as the Himalayas.”

  I added, “Or they grind past each other, as the San Andreas fault in California. Or one slides under the other, as the Juan de Fuca Plate diving under the North American at Seattle. But the human mind cannot comprehend things happening at such immense scales except in the abstract. We think in a scale as long as our arms, or the lengths of our feet. We’re just scrambling around trying to make a go of it over the few decades we’re alive, always much closer to the edge than we like to contemplate.”

  “But geologists are good at that abstraction. You eat ambiguity for breakfast.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, and for the most part, we do it qualitatively, not quantitatively. That makes it even more difficult to get our points across. If geology were a more quantitative science, it would be easier, because while most people don’t really understand numbers, they’ve at least been taught to respect them. When we give a statistician all the carbon fourteen data we can regarding how many episodes of fault rupture we have and how long ago they occurred, he crunches them through a preset formula and comes up with an average number of how often a quake that size occurs. The public thinks that means they know how likely they are to get hit by a magnitude seven earthquake. They believe it out of hand. When engineers deal with uncertainty, they also put a number on it, and even though that number is conjured out of thin air and dressed up with a fancy title—an ‘uncertainty coefficient,’ or something like that—people get real impressed. But most of the work of geologists is qualitative, because we’re dealing with things that are so large or so long-term that assigning numbers is sometimes meaningless. So we say things like, ‘We’re building houses in a fault zone. Don’t you think we ought to build them stronger, or perhaps build somewhere else?’ And everyone accuses us of being simpleminded. Give them a number—say ‘On average, we’ll only get a magnitude seven quake here every twelve hundred years, and the last one was maybe a thousand years ago’—and they figure they’ve got two hundred years to go, and feel all comforted, like they’ve got the picture straight.”

  “So what would you do?” Pet asked.

  “Well, for one thing, I won’t build a house in a fault zone.”

  “But you rent an apartment in one.” Pet smiled sardonically. The expression looked odd on her perky little face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Seems like I’m a risk-taker after all.” I stared into my beer, trying to take comfort the soft reflection of light off the surface of the brew. “In order to see what we see, we also have to know that we don’t quite see it perfectly. We perceive the imperfection of our own understanding. And that’s necessary, because it keeps us from going off half-cocked, like I said. But it also forces us into an odd kind of humility. It’s a funny package, huh?”

  “You’re like a bunch of lizards, each hiding under his own little rock.”

  I laughed at the image. “We’re born to see things in four and five and six dimensions at once, and it makes us a little apprehensive. Ambiguity can be anxiety-producing. We see our own capacity for error, see the incompleteness of the incoming data. So we appear hesitant, reclusive, while all the time we’re the only ones who can hope to resolve the questions we’re grappling with. When will the next earthquake strike, and where? What, therefore, should be the policy regarding construction of homes in Salt Lake City? Or Boston? How much oil is left to fuel the cars and trucks on which we depend, and where is it? What killed the dinosaurs, why are the coral reefs in the Caribbean dying now, and will similar events kill us?”

  “All right, but yesterday morning, the Warm Springs branch of the fault slipped, and the earth shook. How ambiguous is that?”

  “It isn’t,” I said. “And it is. Where’s the fault?”

  “Well, it’s …” Pet paused. “Oh. Yeah. You’re having to interpret where it is most of the time, not just when it’s going to slip.”

  “Uh-huh, and that spells dollars and cents, because it means that we’re uncertain how to prepare for life in a fault zone. How long before it slips again? Are you going to make everybody build to the expense of Code Four even if the big quakes might not come around except once every twelve hundred years? That’s over fifteen times our lifetime. Do the math. It’s a sticky mess. And finances are finite. If you have only X dollars to spend on seismic renovation, do you spend it all on one or two structures, or do you spend a little bit on all of them? And do you close schools because of the risk of what might happen to the buildings?”

  “You sound like a politician,” Pet said.

  “I just try to understand the problems they face,” I answered. “That way, I don’t get riled enough to kill one of them.”

  Pet smiled. “Now we are back on a riddle we can solve. Dr. Smeeth.”

  “‘Screaming Sidney,’ I’ve heard her called.”

  “Not your typical geologist.”

  “No,” I agreed. “She was much more vocal than most of us. But a damned good geologist, from all I’ve heard about her. And, as director of the UGS, she had to take a lot of flak from above.”

  Pet nodded. “Okay, so Sidney Smeeth answered to the governor—through Maria Teller, the director of Natural Reserves—and neither of them have training in the sciences. What do you suppose that does to the mix?”

  “I don’t know. I guess you’d have to look at what she was answering to them for—her exact mandate, that kind of thing.”

  “Fair enough. The state geologist is there to manage the exploitation of the state’s mineral wealth, and guide examination of things like geologic hazards.”

  “Landslides,” I said. “Earthquakes. Swelling and liquefying soils.”

  “Precisely,” Pet said. “And we have all of those right here in Salt Lake County, as well as most of the state’s human population. In support of public housing but perhaps contrary to public safety, we also have a mandate to develop the ‘built environment’ of the state.”

  “A mandate?”

  “Yes. Building and planning departments work with people who are building. If no one was building anything, the Building Department would not exist, because they make their income by charging fees for writing permits, not by keeping land undeveloped. When you think about it, it’s a conflict of interest to put building and planning in one department.”

  “Do you have a specific development in mind?” I asked.

  “Well, the new stadium, like I said, and the mall it’s attached to. The Towne Centre project.”

  “Hmm. Yesterday’s earthquake put the stadium to the test. It flunked. And the seismic record Hugh Button’s getting may reveal the exact location of that branch of the fault, turning a dashed line into a solid one.”

  Pet nodded. “Makes you wonder why that dashed line was deleted in the first place, doesn’t it?”

  I pulled back, insulted. “You think a USGS geologist would leave a line off a map for political reasons and the UGS would follow suit?”

  “Lots of hands touch those maps.”

  “Now you are sounding paranoid.”

  “And you are sounding naïve.”

  I said, “That deletion of a dashed line is a perfect example of a geologic controversy. One geologist thinks the fault stops somewhere north of town; another looks at the same evidence and says it marches right on through.” I took a sip of beer so I could momentarily hide behind the bottle. “Who put that interpretation into the UGS seismic map anyway?”

  “I hear that the infamous Frank Malone had a hand in it.”

  Frank Malone, the engineering geologist whose name appeared in one of the files Tom had me read. Now is when I definitely begin shuttin
g up! I told myself, but I said, “The same Frank Malone who digs trenches but won’t let anyone see what’s in them? What’s he got to say for himself?”

  Pet replied, “Interestingly enough, I can’t reach him for comment. He is not answering his telephone calls.”

  “Well, there are talented geologists and there are not-so-talented geologists,” I said, evading her gaze by looking out the window.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “The geologist clams up again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Pet replied, the annoyance in her tone putting the lie to my apology. “If I can’t get what I need from a geologist, I think I know who to ask.”

  Embarrassed, I took advantage of the call of nature to take a break from our conversation and headed for the rest room. When I came back, Pet was just finishing up a call on her cell phone. Her tone was much more terse and aggressive than it had been. “I want to ask you about the cracked welds in the new stadium,” she was saying into the phone. “Fine, off the record. What I tell my editor depends on what you tell me. Uh-huh. Right. And I want to talk to you about Sidney Smeeth. Yeah, I have a lit-tle suspicion that you have something to tell me about all that. Mm-hmm. What? Well, okay, eleven will do nicely.” She listened a moment longer, then said acidly, “I understand perfectly.”

  “You get hold of Frank Malone?” I asked when she put the phone down.

  “Perhaps. Let’s just say someone who’d know more about that fault and that stadium than you.”

  That hurt. “You’re getting kind of rough there, Pet.”

  Pet covered her reaction with a final long sip of her beer. At length, she put down the bottle and gave me a deeply probing look, all fluff and playful artifice gone. “I suppose I should say I’m sorry. But this is too important.”

  “I can respect that. Just be careful.”

  Pet shook her head dismissively. “No, you’re being careful, and that’s fine for you, if you must. But let me tell you, being careful doesn’t get you there. Being careful is staying home and doing what mommy tells you to. Being careful is watching it all happen and not doing a damned thing about it. Sometimes you just have to open up your mouth and report what’s happening.”

  That sounded to me like the bull was charging, only I wasn’t sure if Pet would find a matador or an abattoir on the other side of the red cape. And with that thought, it occurred to me that Tom’s cautionary training was finally beginning to take hold. I said, “Well, if you don’t like being careful, there’s also being reasonable.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. I’m right in the middle of trying to figure that out myself.”

  And that was it. Pet went to wherever she was going, and I went home. I phoned in a report to Tom, telling him everything I had just learned. He thanked me for the information but took points off for my being such a sieve. I defended myself by saying that at least I hadn’t blabbed that I was working with the FBI. He said that I had that part straight anyway and to cut the nonsense and make myself scarce next time Pet Mercer came looking for me. I said I would, but I wasn’t entirely sure I meant it. I suggested that he have a talk with her, and he said he would first thing tomorrow.

  After hanging up the phone, I ate a solitary late-evening snack, climbed into bed, did some reading, and eventually got some sleep. How I wish that Pet Mercer had done the same.

  19

  THE CLOUDS DIPPED LOW, FILLING THE NIGHT AIR WITH freezing fleece. Pet Mercer stood in the parking lot beside her car, waiting. As she waited, she smiled. Even though the mercury was nearing zero, the air was full of rich aromas. She could smell a story. Her story. It was big. She could almost smell the ink on her Pulitzer, could see it hanging in her cubicle at the Tribune, could … She arched her neck backward, staring up into the streetlamp that bloomed in the thick snow that sifted down over her head. The snow was falling faster now, the big soft flakes obscuring everything but the lamp, her car, and the surrounding twenty feet of pavement. Her search had mounted to a crescendo, gaining rapidly in the last few hours. What she had gotten from the geologists had clinched her theory. She had made the perfect phone call at the perfect moment, caught the right person off guard, ready to talk, and now here she was, waiting for him to come and spill it all to her under the cloak of darkness and in the silence of the falling snow.

  In ecstasy, she opened her mouth to the falling crystals and let them melt on her tongue.

  Pulitzer. L.A. Times, Washington Post, maybe even New York …

  Her ear pricked to the sound of the approaching motor. Was that him?

  She straightened her neck, then looked down. Snow was just beginning to collect on the blacktop.

  The sounds of the approaching car grew, and she could see a brightening where the glow from its headlights roamed hungrily through the falling whiteness. Now she could see individual beams, now the form of the car. It was a Ford Explorer. She laughed to herself. How predictable. He was driving the most common vehicle in Salt Lake City.

  As the vehicle pulled up next to her, she noticed that it was not exactly like every other Ford Explorer in town. This one had something mounted on the front bumper. It looked like a sheet of plywood, or … no, it was cardboard. How odd.

  The driver’s window slithered down. “Pet? Pet Mercer?” a man asked.

  Her heart beat even faster. “Yes, it’s me,” she said brightly, going into her act. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Um, sorry about this. I—”

  “It’s okay. I haven’t been waiting long.”

  “Yeah. Just … just let me get this thing parked,” the man said. He put the vehicle in reverse and rolled quickly backward, cutting his headlights as he went.

  Pet lost sight of him in the snow. She looked down at her feet. The tire tracks had come quite close, but they were quickly disappearing in the gathering whiteness. The sound of the Explorer’s engine seemed to have receded quite far. Now she heard it change gears. Why was he parking so far away? The engine was idling; now its sound indicated it was in forward, coming back her way, now accelerating.

  Why? What?

  Pet’s quick little brain spun quickly, recalculating her conclusions, spurring her feet to move, but she was wearing the wrong shoes. The leather soles slipped on the frozen pavement, and she went down just as the Explorer barreled into her, crushing the fleeting light of life from her tender body.

  20

  The fire made its own draft … .

  By Wednesday afternoon, inside of twelve hours, half the heart of the city was gone. At the time I watched the vast conflagration from out on the bay. It was dead calm. Not a flicker of wind stirred. Yet from every side wind was pouring in upon the city. East, west, north, and south, strong winds were blowing upon the doomed city. The heated air rising made an enormous suck. Thus did the fire of itself build its own colossal chimney through the atmosphere. Day and night the dead calm continued, and yet, near to the flames, the wind was often half a gale, so mighty was the suck.

  —Jack London, “The Story of an Eyewitness” (Collier’s, May 5, 1906), describing the devastating fire that consumed San Francisco immediately following the April 18, 1906, magnitude 8.2 earthquake that was centered in Olema. The quake burst water mains, causing cisterns to drain, leaving firefighters without hope of battling the blaze. By contrast, as the result of far better planning and preparation, only about two square blocks of San Francisco burned following the 1989 magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake.

  WHEN I AWOKE WEDNESDAY MORNING, IT WAS SNOWING hard. The mood suited me: total isolation under a blanket of cold. Unable to stand the idea of being alone in bed, I jumped up, showered, dressed, and trotted down the stairs to see if there was a copy of the Salt Lake Tribune I could read. I hoped for a follow-up story on the damage the earthquake had done to the stadium. Knowing what I now knew, I wanted to see how this would be reported. I wanted to read Pet’s words. And I thought when I was done basking in my ins
ider’s knowledge, I’d read up on the legions of elite athletes who were now arriving in the Salt Lake area to acclimatize for the coming Olympic games. They were powerful, beautiful, and astonishingly grounded people, and I felt none of that. Like all the rest of creation, I hoped to pick up a little vicarious splendidness just by reading about them and goggling at their pictures in the paper. Or at worst, I thought I’d flip to the editorial page and see what Pat Bagley was doing with them in his cartoon.

  I didn’t subscribe to the paper, but I had found that one of the other occupants of the apartment house in which I lived often waited until evening to read the paper, which left it available to me during the day, providing I was respectful and returned it to the porch in the same condition in which I had originally found it. Or close enough to. I had never actually asked, but no one had come pounding on my door to complain.

  Today, I found the paper in a snowdrift, which meant that I was going to have to thaw it and dry it before I read it, folded it up again, and put it back on the porch, because it had been put out there warm and the snow it landed on had thawed and frozen to it as it had cooled. No matter; I needed to keep busy, right?

  Right, so I stuck it in my oven while I fired up my midget travel iron, which is all the iron I can stand to own. Then I laid the first section flat and began to iron it dry so it wouldn’t wrinkle. Well, the point of all of this is that I usually don’t read the front section, it being a chronicle of events too ephemeral to interest a geologist, but because I was working it over with the iron, I actually read the front page.